For the last two weeks I've been working at the coffee shop's location at the Louvre. This is exciting for not a whole lot of reasons, EXCEPT that I got a Louvre employee badge out of it, which gives me access to all sorts of closed-to-the-public areas of the museum, including secret washrooms (for anyone who has eve had the pleasure of visiting a Louvre washroom, you know that this is a luxury!), and the Louvre gym! Who knew that among the museum's masterwork galleries there's a fabulous room where the men and women of the Louvre can go to work up a sweat? I suppose that if you're responsible for ensuring the safety of the Mona Lisa and her friends, you might want to muscle up a bit in order to discourage any would-be art vandals/heisters.

I'm in full trip research mode now. I don't have a lot of time left before I hit the road, and because there are so many things I want to do in my ten weeks, I'm feeling a need to be more diligent than normal about beforehand research. This trip is proving to be a little more complicated to plan if only because I've never taken a trip that requires so many border crossings and visas; as of now, not counting stops in the EU, the border crossings that require visas are Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Egypt. I'm struggling between wanting to see it all, but not wanting to rush through everything, and so I'm contemplating paring down my destination list, but it's so hard to cut anywhere! The more research I do, the more I want to do everything...scuba diving in Turkey and Egypt, visiting ancient ruins everywhere(which ones are must sees, which ones to take a miss on???), hiking the Lycian Way, etc...tough decisions, right??;)

Lastly, goodness gracious, where has the time gone? In two and a half weeks, my life in Paris as I know it will be all but over. Honestly, as I'm coming up on the eleven month mark of my Paris sojourn, I feel like I'm ready to move on. That's not to say that I'm sick of Paris, or am unhappy here, it's just that I've seen Paris through almost one full cycle of the seasons, and I've come to appreciate everything that this city has to offer, but I feel like the last year has really been a year if living in a fantasy land, and I'm ready to get back to "real" life, whatever that might entail. I'm feeling indecisive about what's going to happen once i get home. Vancouver or Toronto? Go teach English abroad? More school? Hopefully the answers will come to me somewhere along the road from Paris to Jerusalem....