Paris has been tucked under a cloud layer for what seems like weeks.  Though that sort of Parisian weather is often quite pleasant, I miss the sun.  It's becoming rather wet and wintery.  I have frequently experienced what I now call "Parisian rain," which is a mist without origin or direction; umbrellas offer no defense.  Often while wandering through the city during this kind of weather, I feel like a vegetable keeping fresh in the produce aisle.

As the semester finishes, the work load gets heavier.  After tomorrow, I have only five days left with my class at the Sorbonne, which has come to rank high on my list of greatest educational experiences.  Our final written exam is November 29th, and the oral follows a few days later.  Paris will soon begin to empty of the people that have colored my life here.  The first goes home Tuesday the 25th without funds to change his ticket to stay for the exam.  The next few leave a week later, and with each departure a piece of what I have made here will begin to disappear.  They will disperse across the globe like the plumes of a dandelion wish, taking with them the understanding of how I've lived my first few months of twenty-one.  Some of them will blow too far to encounter again -- too far to see what grows where they land -- and others I may see again before the summer.

Among the emotions that arrive with impending loss comes a desire for the South that swells, pulsing each time I dream of forests or dirt roads.  Though college has often separated me from my family for extended periods, I have never anticipated their embrace quite as strongly as I have this season.  That troubles all of us in Paris, I think -- finding ourselves with two places at our fingertips without the ability to touch both at once.

I have not forgotten my promises to report on Istanbul.  Finding time between homework, studying for exams, and a ten-pager on Diane Arbus has been difficult lately, but I hope to write again soon.