the comeback

I didn't even realize it had been a month since I last wrote an entry on this blog. Oopsie. Things got a little hectic once Christmas vacation rolled around and haven't slowed down until very recently, now that all the visitors and guests have gone back to their respective countries and I'm back to a more normal schedule.

The Maftei family went south for the holidays. We spent ten blissful days in Guadeloupe. The toughest decisions I had to make all week were what bathing suit to wear and whether or not my base tan was good enough to stop applying SPF 30. I did all the obligatory tourist things; eat fresh coconut, drink insanely strong rhum-based cocktails, roast in the sun all day and scuba dive. Although the highlight of the week was without a doubt the cheesy day-trip we took out to an island that was recently converted into a national park. I thought this was going to be one of those lame Mexico-all-inclusive style boat cruises where you're told you're going to swim with the sharks but instead you stand in line for half an hour only to find out that by "swim" they mean "hold" a disgruntled-looking mini-shark.

Instead, we were given scuba gear and were left to our own devices on a beautiful wild beach until lunchtime. Then the booze started flowing. Before I knew it, I had downed 2 Planteur (rhum and fruit juice cocktail) and 3 ti'punch (rhum, cane sugar, lime slice) and was trying to hide my glass from the captain, who kept filling it up. I narrowly escaped being temporarily married to one of the crew members, to the dismay of my brother who was thoroughly enjoying the fact that I was the target of most of the captains' jokes. And once I had sufficiently sobered up, I headed back into the water and swam with baracudas and sting-rays until we had to pack up and leave.

Obviously upon returning to the cold temperatures of Paris I got sick, and the excessive partying and lack of sleep since being back have certainly not helped. I long for those lazy days spent lounging around in tie-dyed hippie pants, sipping cocktails and reading trashy magazines, instead of sitting in this cold, dark office without natural light, struggling through the US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual...