The tape here is rouge

The aspect of adulthood that I most dreaded growing up was bureaucracy. To be an adult meant, I realized, having to fill out your own forms, make your own appointments, make phone calls that lead to getting put on hold, not only paying bills in the sense of needing to earn money but also, more horribly, having to keep track of account numbers and receipts. All of this has turned out to be an accurate assessment of adulthood, although in retrospect, the makework homework of childhood, added to the forced socialization with other kids on account of you're the same age, you must have tons in common, meant that childhood was not such a free life-stage either.

Somehow, despite not being terribly much a fan of red tape (is anyone?), I decided to study France. This was all well and good until I started to study France in France. The amount of fuss required to do research on the one hand makes the moments when I'm actually sitting with a text all the more delightful, but on the other makes me wonder if spending my entire stipend ordering appropriate text from French Amazon and, if necessary, antiquarian bookstores and doing the whole thing from NY wouldn't have been the worst idea.

But! The cheese!

But! The complete and utter lack of cultural germophobia, such that every time you hold onto anything in the Metro, it's a safe bet that the person who did just before you coughed into that same hand, and/or picked at a scab with it.

But! The wine! The flan!

But! And so it continues.