hiatus.

The blog has been on hiatus. I will not feel guilty for it; I was not sent to France to blog but to live. And I have been doing just that. As for my writing guilt, I've been pouring my energy into a job application that is due Tuesday. Once it is finished, I will feel myself slowly coming back into my writing life, I am certain of it. For now, though, I will tell you this story.

In 2007, I tried to take a bus in Paris. Once. Just once. I ended up so dreadfully confused and painfully lost that I vowed not to take the bus again. If I couldn't walk somewhere, I'd take the Metro. And if I couldn't take the Metro somewhere, I'd walk. It worked well enough for my three months here.

A couple of months later, someone told me that they believe that you don't really know a city until you've learned to take the bus in it. That any meandering idiot can figure out a Metro map but that the bus map takes it to a whole other level.

If so, then I am no longer a meandering idiot. I have fallen in love with the bus system in Paris. It is not the fastest way to get anywhere, because driving in Paris is a mix of insanity and ...insanity. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen cars sitting in the middle of intersections at a supposedly red light just watching as cars speed past them, seemingly not noticing that a car is clearly stuck in the middle and simply trying to not die. The buses, though, are sturdy and clean and feel, for now, quite safe. And I've learned to take them.

It started a couple of weeks ago. My friends and I decided to go to Reims on a day trip. We wanted to see the famous cathedral and the Christmas village (I. love. Christmas. villages.). We were taking a train quite early in the morning and I looked online to see the fastest route to get there. According to the RATP website, it would be faster at the time of day for me to take a bus (one that left just outside of my house and went direct to the train station) than to take two Metros. I, Kate Fussner, surprise of all surprises, was nervous. The bus? I worried I was going to end up on the other side of Paris, miss my train, lose my friends, and somehow wind up canoeing myself home on the Seine. But instead of taking the long way on the Metro, I decided to take on the bus adventure and see what happened.

The truth is, that's the best part of the story. That I shoved my nervous worries out of the way and climbed onto the bus. Because the fact of the matter is that taking the bus was quite easy. Early on a Saturday morning, no one is out and so there's little traffic, fewer stops, and the city looks beautiful above ground. Below ground, the air feels more stale, the sun is further away, and the visions of Paris are non-existent. Above ground, I saw the neighborhoods coming and going, I saw how they piece together, and I started to recognize just how well I knew the landscape after all.

Reims was a beautiful but small and gray city. A one time visit that I am glad I had, to see the cathedral that I studied and to see a marching band made up entirely of men dressed in Santa suits.

Winter does feel as though it is beginning to settle in. It is grayer, it is colder, the days of sun feel short and the weeks of darkness feel long. But there is a warmth in the air this year that I can't quite pinpoint. It is a comfort, it is an awareness that, like me, many of the people I know are seeking ways to feel at home. I am constantly reminded of this transitionary state we are in. "Find a job." "Find a place to live." "Find a home." The seasons seem to ground me and say, "Just find a way to enjoy this. It'll change soon enough."