Juxtaposition, as per request.

I had rather thought that a summer vacation from the blog would be necessary, until a certain someone at the high school suggested that the juxtaposition of life in Manlius and life in Paris was essential.

Hmph.

At any rate, I can attempt a sort of dishonorable summary of the summer, which is something like:

The Producers,

The Renaissance Fest,

Binghamton,

Manlius,

Binghamton,

Manlius,

Rochester,

Bristol Hills Music Camp,

Virginia Beach,

Manlius,

Plattsburgh,

Albany,

Manlius,

The NYS Fair,

Elmira,

Manlius,

Rochester,

Manlius,

Binghamton,

NYC,

Binghamton,

Elmira,

Manlius.

Call it a tour de force of New York State. The only major city I seem to have missed is probably Buffalo, and not for lack of reasons to go (sorry Carrie :(, I love you! ). You can probably hazard a guess as to why I went where, so I'll skip the explanations ...

While I could elaborate at length about the level of utter relaxation, stress, and general confusion these three months at home have brought me, I suppose the more relevant matter is the resolution.

I'm going back. As an au pair for the family I babysat all last year :) I am not teaching (which, as Burns pointed out, leaves me with more time for reading and writing). I have officially done battle against the forces of evil ... I mean, the French Consulate ... and have obtained a visa. It makes my face look fat. Eric, my personal hero, Fed-Ex'ed my passport/visa/paperwork to me after picking it up. Because some of us can't wait around for a week while they print off a sticker, because NEW YORK IS A BIG STATE.

So now the cycle restarts itself, much like laundry that I leave in the washing machine for too long because I forgot about it because I was busy finishing a trilogy called The Hunger Games because CSweens told me I had to. It was good, incidentally.

Orchestra schedule came a few days ago; concerts at the end of October and November (eek), and then leaving for the tour in China Christmas day. Did some researching about visas for China the other day ... Not really sure what to expect.

Oh well, sticking to the "Things happen for a reason" philosophy. It seems to be working out so far ...