Tomorrow morning I will leave for my spring break and the largest stretch of traveling I will be able to do while in Europe. While nobody is exactly sure why our two weeks of spring break come in the last month of our semester (see: two weeks of break and then two weeks of finals) it's an excellent chance to explore the continent when the weather is finally nice. I finished arranging my travel plans approximately 5 hours ago, and though I'm excited for impending travels everything seems to have come together very last minute. While I love the idea of an organized-in-advance vacation - for example, one where I do not realize the night before that I don't have train tickets for the first leg of my journey - I know that this is hardly my strength. Whatever happens for the next two weeks I'll roll with and will have to assume that all is well. While I'm excited for the destinations (Marseille, Lake Como, Florence, and Prague) it's the traveling I love. I assume I'll feel differently after my eighth hour on a bus through European farmland, but it's hard to ignore the sense of adventure.
The past week in general has been a whirlwind. My lovely family came to Paris and we've been gallivanting around the city for the past ten days as I attempt to guide, translate, catch up, and simply enjoy their company. It was interesting to see the two worlds collide, but I loved having them here and running around the city with me. My host family actually hosted the real family for dinner one night (there was a great deal of translation, some miming, and a thoroughly appropriate amount of cheese) and I was able to do a few of the touristy activities I hadn't yet experienced. It's bizarre to think that I'll be back in the United States in about a month, but even more strange to think that I'll no longer be in Paris in one month. Seeing my family has made me miss the states a bit, but planning for spring break and this summer in Washington D.C. has made me miss Paris even more.
I have no way of knowing whether I will ever have the chance to spend this much time in Paris, or any European city, in the future. I hope that the next two weeks of traveling will give me a slightly better idea of what to expect elsewhere in Europe, but I can't help feeling that I have to seize opportunities I'll never have again. Chances are I will never visit many of these places again in my life (and hopefully that I never spend this many consecutive hours on a bus in the future) and it's a tragic sort of finale before even beginning my break. However despite the short nature of my stays, my difficulties in organizing any form of public transit, and the pile of finals that will be waiting for me when I get back, I know that the next two weeks should be big fun.