February 5, 2005

Cheese Ball, Dog Poo, and other Good Travel Advice

I suppose that any way for one to start a travel journal is, by nature, cliché. Humans have been moving about since they were nomads, and life, in and of itself, a journey. Even most literature can be simplified into two basic themes: journey and a stranger came to town. At this point, I fall into both. I’m a stranger to the city of Strasbourg and I am, in many ways, on a journey. See what I mean? I’m already a cliché!

I left home three days ago with two bags and enough
advice to count as a second carry on. I’ve heard just about everything: don’t over-pack, don’t under-pack, don’t smoke pot, don’t drink more than two glasses of wine, don’t encourage creepy French men, don’t walk alone, don’t look American, don’t forget to pack the cheese ball. Ok, so I’ll explain that last one. My grandmother is afraid that I’ll starve
to death so she made me, of all things, a cheese ball! It’s her way of saying, “I love you.” Unfortunately, I don’t think that a three pound brick of homemade cheese ball wrapped in aluminum foil would’ve made it through customs.

So here I sit in my kitchen in Strasbourg, sans cheese ball of course, attempting to comprehend the fact that I’ll be spending

the next three and a half months in a foreign country with
my 23 classmates. Thus far, I have made two significant observations: 1) I have led a sheltered life and 2) Strasbourg is a far cry from rural Kentucky. Well, I’ve also had the opportunity to observe, on the bottom of my shoes, that the French do not usually clean up after their pets, but let’s not trivialize.