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.