À Bientôt

Of course I miss Paris.

Not for the obvious reasons of beautiful weather, wondrously delectable food, gorgeous avenues, and an intangible joie de vivre. Instead, I miss the people: the hypomanic goal-directed Ethiopian-French lawyers and their dazzling Air France stewardess sisters, the West African-born East Arfican-raised Heinz representatives, the Abu Dhabi interior designers, and even the GI Jehovah-Catholic proselytizers. Especially, I’ll miss hanging out with surly, infectious, Jewish-Ethiopians and witty, ebullient Asiastani Dubai natives. The former I can hardly imagine a daily life without (she’s on her way to Chicago) and the latter I hardly had a chance to explore (he’s a migrant soul in London).

More so because we’ve just sent her off. After a cozy evening of brie, tomatoes, olives, and wine, we’ve bade our farewells to Ribka. She protests of course that she’s not going that far, and that she will certainly keep up through an elaborate system of text messaging through the next three years. Dubious as all of this sounds, we are feeling a bit melancholy. Perhaps its just that the idea that this dream of fourth year is slowly coming to a slow and beautiful end.