Going to France was a revelatory experience for me. It was - and this is hard to explain - like coming home to a place I'd never been before. As I walked the streets of Toulouse, sampled the restaurants, peered in the shops, interacted with the people as much as I could, I was cointinually conscious of the fact that I had never felt so comfortable anywhere else. Odd I know, but there it is. I felt safe! I felt at home! More at home than I'd ever felt in America. And in a country where I couldn't even speak the language.
Why? Ah, that's the question. Could it be that my family is part French - Cajuns on my dad's side, still living in and around Baton Rouge and New Orleans, still speaking their mish-mash of French and English? what would that be? Frenglish? Or could it be that I lived in Europe until I was six years old, and the culture shock of comeing back to the States is something I've never gotten over? Could it be that my way of seeing the world was shaped by my early years in Europe, thinking that Europe was my home and wondering why we "were going home" when it was obvious to me that we were, in fact, leaving home? This might then explain my taste in French movies and French cooking.
Whatever the case, I only know that I felt more at home, at ease, in Toulouse than I ever did in Idaho or NoDak or New York or any of the other places I've lived since my parents informed me in 1966 that we were "going home."
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