Far Away

I had a reoccurring dream before I came here. I'm on a horse, running down a city hill into a busy intersection of ongoing traffic. I pull the reigns, but to no avail, we ride faster and faster. I begin to slowly accept the fate ahead. I let go of the reigns...and I wake up.

Where to start?
...
I began with a crash.
It was a spiraling brakeless descent of unfortunate events, which of course added and bottled up, became every unfortunate event that had ever happened.
My Macbook, my teal blue Cannon Powershot, my cheap French Cellphone, my iPod...all my music, my forty useless American dollars, and my passport-stolen.
Staring at my empty desk, in my empty french apartment, no trace or decoration of home or of myself, no communication with anything outside this little room,
I found myself, for the first time, truly, far away.

So, this is my excuse for being so absent from my blog lately.
The last two/three weeks have been filled with filing police reports, getting locks changed, planning trips to Paris, and finding time to walk 30 minutes to the school computer lab.
I've had no such honeymoon period, that period in which is supposed to set into students as my Office of International Education warned.

As I sat in my room that night, unsure what to do, nothing really to do, I found myself oddly and unescapably here. How Zen right? Except here, in France, I still can barely mutter French sentences or even read a newspaper. But I'm here. I'm taking the numerous bad luck weekends, and my often naivety as signs, because this slow sabotage can't be for nothing, I refuse to believe otherwise.
This month means two things to me:

1.) This isn't your place. Get out of this program. Go join an organic farm somewhere. Truly immerse yourself. Get away.
or
2.) Stay. It can only get better.

So I found myself 2 weekends ago, on a 6:30 a.m. train to Paris and an 8 a.m. taxi ride to the U.S. Embassy.