I’ve been working in this hostel long enough to have lost track of how long exactly it’s been since I arrived. I also forget what day it is sometimes, oftentimes. I think I like it here, but then maybe I’m not as comfortable as I think because I find myself doing things like not taking the five cents change that’s owed to me out of the cash register when I buy myself a drink from the bar, because I can feel the secretary watching me and I’m afraid that she’ll accuse me of stealing. I like the people I work with and I think they like me too. They buy me beers and answer all my stupid questions with a smile. (On dit un montre? –Une montre, ma petite.) But every once in a while something will happen, like Hélène will invite everyone except me to have a cigarette on her balcony. Maybe-probably-it’s just because I’m the only one who doesn’t smoke that I’m not invited. But then I can’t help but think that they’ve all been plotting: What activity can we do that we don’t have to invite the American to?

I once poured a Jupiler into an Appleboq glass and my boss Brigitte had to (I’m pretty sure literally) hold herself back from strangling me. When I was helping the chef Alex in the kitchen he asked, in French obviously, to get the cilantro out of the freezer. Except I forget the French word for cilantro so I said, “You want me to get what out of the freezers?” He did not try and hide his irritation. But this is the same Brigitte who tells me my outfit is pretty and the same Alex who makes meatless pasta sauce especially for me. So I just need to stop being so sensitive, I guess. The Belgians are like the French and unlike the Americans in that they don’t feel obligated to hide negative emotions and put on a happy face when they don’t feel like it. Whereas Americans who show any signs of displeasure are not only saying, “I’m pissed off” but also “I hope you know it and feel bad about it because I blame you.” The French/Belgian way is probably healthier.

I’ve made a new friend, she shares the room with me and her name is Myriam. We get along swimmingly. She’s from Rennes, so she’s French yet friendly and unrefined. She doesn’t try to speak English with me, she doesn’t get frustrated when I don’t understand her argot. She forces me to go out when she knows I’ll have fun and she walks home with me when I’m tired. There’s only one problem: she’s nineteen years old. She’s even younger than my brother. We weren’t even in high school at the same time. Until now it’s been my unofficial rule that I only hang out with people older than me or no more than months younger than me. It used to be because I didn’t get along with people younger than me. They had immaturity and naiveté oozing from their pores. Even when younger people didn’t irritate me they had nothing in common with me. Now I guess that’s changed and I feel like a real adult. I can drive, I can vote, I could smoke if I wanted to, and when I ask my parents to send me my birth control pills no one blinks. For all these reason I feel grown up, but now that I’m apparently at the age where age doesn’t matter I feel truly old.