La vieille a vingt-quatre ans maintenant! The same thing happens every December. I promise myself that now that I’m a year older, I’m going to improve myself by…. But then I have all my happy birthday phone calls/texts/emails/facebook messages (always a few of which are from people whose birthdays I totally forgot that year), and then my big birthday meal (which hasn’t happened yet this year, but I have been promised). So by the afternoon I’m feeling guilty and loved and stuffed full of curry and crème brûlée and it’s cold and dark outside and everything’s closed. So I say, actually I’m going back to bed with my stack of books and DVDs I got as presents and I’ll start my resolutions in six days like everyone else. Ironically, or maybe fittingly, my resolution is usually to stop procrastinating, and this year is no exception. Tomorrow I’m going to start sending out my resume, fill out my FAFSA, and seriously start looking into my study abroad options for the fall semester, no more excuses. Now that I’ve explained that, I can stop feeling guilty and enjoy my last few hours of laziness.

Since people have been asking-highlights of my trip so far: the flight from Miami to Lisbon had surprisingly good food, rice and fish with chunks of tomatoes and cheesecake with some kind of raspberry topping. Watching the in-flight movie, Ruby Sparks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4RJYlSgDKM) was much better than the alternative airplane activity, staring at a blank screen and begging my body to go to sleep. When I landed in Paris I found out that my phone didn’t work, which was cool, so the next day I had to get a new SIM card and thus a new number. I stayed in three hostels: Young and Happy (http://www.youngandhappy.fr/), which I found pretty okay until I realized that there was no hot water in the showers, Blue Planet (http://www.hostelblueplanet.com/), where there was only one key per room and no wifi or electricity in the outlets, and Peace and Love (http://www.paris-hostels.com/), where I stayed on my birthday and was super depressing because it was near where Ader used to live in the dixième and we used to walk past and laugh at the name. It’s an inside joke, hard to explain.

Otherwise I’ve been couchsurfing, and it’s been que du bonheur. I give a different version (all of which are true) of my story about what I’m doing in Paris to each person—I found a cheap ticket, I came to chase my ex and have since reconsidered my strategy, I’m working on a novel, I just needed to be back in France for a while. In any case Paris has been the perfect setting for my six days of being a year older but not at all improved.   

I'm back! I finally have time to write again because I’m between semesters but not enough time/access to the internet to keep everyone individually updated on my adventures. So…I finished my first semester of law school. We don’t get our grades until February, so all I can say now is that 1- law school aint no joke and that 2-I don’t think I flunked out yet.

Miami is warm all the time and therefore inhabited by adorable little lizards and more foreigners than (eww) Americans. Whenever I’m really about to lose my mind I can hop on my bike and in a few minutes either be lying by the pool on campus or at Whole Foods for the free samples of cheese, or if it’s a really good day sushi and popcorn. Plus it’s cheaper and easier to go to New Jersey for the weekend than when I was in Albany, so I went three times last semester. My point is that it’s been bearable, mostly.

As everyone who cares probably knows by now, Rose and Ader are no more, since September 13, 2012. Long story short, even though Ader still loves me, I’m not marriage material, at least not right now, and he’s not getting any younger—his words, translated and paraphrased. I wouldn’t say I’m over it exactly. Losing your best friends, your plans for the future and one of the places you refer to as ‘home’ isn’t something you get over. But after a few weeks the involuntary tears stopped coming at inappropriate times and my appetite and ability to fall asleep came crawling back.

I still have hope that one day—in my day dreams it’s sometime in early May 2015 but it doesn’t have to be—Ader will come around, we’ll pick up where we left off, he’ll come to my graduation, stay and take study breaks with me until I pass the bar exam. Then we’ll move back to Montrouge, I’ll make a dent in my student loans, we’ll move to a bigger apartment in the sezième or somewhere else where the sidewalks don’t smell like urine, quietly get a marriage certificate at a city hall in Paris and then maybe a year later, when I’ve made an even bigger dent in my student loans, we’ll have a kind-of wedding/excuse to have a party in Morocco and then in the US, in a state where gay marriage is recognized, ‘cause that’s only fair. Then sometime after I turn thirty we’ll have a baby girl named Varenne, after the metro station where we used to meet when we first started dating, which isn’t entirely true but you can’t name a baby Place de Châtelet.

And in the meantime, I think I know how I can keep myself occupied. My whole family reads this blog so that’s all I’m going to say on the matter, but those of you with whom I routinely overshare—I’ll fill you in.