I can't believe it's the last day of my trip. I can't believe that in (technically) less than 24 hours I'll be back home on US turf. I don't know how I feel about this--I've spent the whole day in a sort of melancholia where I'll blubbler a bit here and there on, mostly on the train...I've had such an amazing time, a truly wild and eye-opening experience. Despite the curse of overpacking, which was definitely the biggest drawback, I have enjoyed myself to no end. Except when standing around crying, because I'm lost or because I don't wanna go home. There, I've said it, I don't want to come home. I love this continent, I want to explore every inch of it, I want to know these people and live in these cities and go on learning and seeing and doing things, meeting random kids (like Florin, from the Indian shop, may go into full detail later but you'll have to email me for the gories), and just generally having a ball. i'm exhausted now, and I have a hard time countenancing the idea of dragging my bags, one more day, down to Heathrow, and on home. Plus, and I can't remember who all I sent this address to, I have a nasty surprise in wait for mi familia and I'm rather apprehensive about the welcome I'll get when I finally run into them. Subsequently I'm wearing my most mature and muted garb for tomorrow. Which will make mom happy-ish. I am excited to see how much weight I've lost cause I've got lots more bones sticking out than I did before---which is so extraordinarily cool when all you do is drink beer and eat bread. On a much more sober note, however, I have a mass of dark brown bruises on my left thigh that seem to keep multiplying. The left knee has been bum for a while and IT certainly isn't sorry that the trip's come to an end, however, this whole bruise thing has me spooked. We're all aware that I'm prone to MDA, but nothing like this has happened lately and I'm really kind of worried. So it's off to the Good Doctor upon my return.

Anyway, Florin, well, he's 26, he's a painter (it's true and it's SUCH a cliche but he was sooooo cute) and he was shorter than me, which was a bit of a surprise. I guess cause i'd busted out the boots for the occasion. He has beautiful, beautiful eyes and the greatest accent (he says "I fink" instead of "I think"), he spent the last 6 months in India hence the Indian shop, he rolls his own cigarettes and he's definitely a lighter-thief (fortunately managed to hold on to lucky ScottishGuyAmsterdam lighter), he's polite but thinks Americans are stupid, he wants to get some friends together to take over a castle in his old village where they can start artist studios and workshops. There's more, I guess, but that's really all you need to know; we talked about Kafka and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where we want to go in the world and why, just talking. He talked a lot about India, which was cool, because I was simply waiting for the inevitable to happen: the French are very interested in the politics of things and I was not surprised when gradually, as we had a few drinks more, the conversation inched its way around to Bush and 9.11. Talk about a difficult subject to broach: I always thought that, given the opportunity to wax rhetorical with the French, I could convince them of the strong contingent of American opposition to the war. But when I get the chance I'm dumbstruck. There was nothing I could really say to convince him and for whatever reason, the way he phrased his question about 9.11 started this stream of flashbacks and memories, so that I legitimately couldn't talk about it. That kind of thing is harder to explain than you expect. We dropped the subject eventually but I don't think I've made much headway into ye olde French attitude about Americans. c'est la vie.

Home tomorrow, guys. I feel another crying fit coming on--I'm gonna go find Bec and EJ. A demain!!!!!!!!!