The City of Lakes

 "You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, like you’ll not only miss the people you love, but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again." -Azar Nafisi
 
     Joyeux Poisson d'Avril !  I feel like the joke's on me when I really look at what date it is, which I usually avoid as much as possible. How can it already be April? I've never felt a year go by so fast. Sometimes I even catch myself saying to people that I just got back to the U.S.
     I also can't believe that my time at Augsburg is almost up. I've spent the last few days running errands downtown and it made me a little melancholy that I won't be living in Minneapolis for at least the next few years. I read the above quote by Azar Nafisi around the time I was leaving Paris in June and reading it now, just a few weeks before leaving Augsburg, it makes a lot of sense again. I'm a pretty sentimental person when it comes to places (and especially people), so I'm sure leaving Minneapolis for the next foreseeable few years will be rough, especially considering I've called this city "home" for the last four. The video below, "Why We're Here" from Seven and Sixty Productions, really gets me going, too. I'm proud of our little hidden gem community that we have, despite our godawful winters that I will never get used to (I say it's because I was born in Texas). I'll be thinking about our friendly Minnesotan smiles at places like the grocery store when I'm standing in line at Franprix and customers are getting increasingly pissed when I don't have exact change or, God forbid, I have to use une carte.

Late March downtown sights

     Lately I've also been watching a lot of creative Paris videos, which makes me more excited about this fall. My aunt sent me the above video, "A Day in Paris" by Darren Fisher and I found this other one on Vimeo by House of Nod. Both of them remind me so much of my life there last spring that I might as well make an appearance. But I suppose anyone who has spent any time in Paris would feel like that, too. And I never thought I'd be missing the métro quite like I do!

Rachel