Touching down in Chicago

I'm back home again. So far, it's been a weird combination of comfortable familiarity and uncomfortable unfamiliarity. They changed the nickels on me. When did that happen? Why wasn't I informed?

On the plane home, I was seated next to a Frenchman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Vegetable Lasagna. This was enough to keep me occupied and amused for the eight hour and forty-five minute flight, because I am a simpleton. I passed the time by sneaking glances at him and giggling to myself, imagining Elaine berating Puddy for "making time with some floozy across the aisle." And before I knew it, we were coming in for a landing over the Rosemont Horizon, where I rocked out to INXS in seventh grade. I was pretty cool then, with my perm and all.

I immediately dragged my boyfriend to Bittersweet Bakery, out of some sick need to attempt to replicate Paris in Illinois. I didn't really succeed. It's a perfectly lovely bakery, but the chocolate macarons I tried seemed chewy and slightly stale, probably because nobody orders them. My boyfriend's turtle tart was good but tasted tooth-achingly sweet to me. I felt a little crestfallen, but it was my own fault. I just need to stick with our strengths: pizza, polish sausage, spicy food, Mexican, milkshakes at Homer's and so forth.

The Chicago readjustment has made me feel like Alice in Wonderland. My bowl of pho at Tank Noodle seemed ridiculously enormous, almost the size of a bathtub. The scale of everything here is just so giant. The cars, the skyscrapers, the people, the portions. Even the discussions are big. At lunch the other day, my fellow diners at Opart Thai seemed to be shouting at one another. I could hear their entire conversation across the room. "Are they being really noisy, or am I just used to extremely hushed conversations?" I asked my boyfriend. "A little of both," he replied.

It's also been hard to shake the "hello" habit. In Paris, you're expected to greet the clerks in every shop. If you fail to do this, they think you're an asshole. It's become so ingrained that yesterday, I chirped a cheery hello after walking into a big, gloomy Vietnamese supermarket on Broadway. The bored-looking checkout girl just glanced at me briefly and then looked away, presumably unimpressed by what seemed like my desperate attempt to make friends.

Other than that, it's back to life as usual, except now I have to find a job. But of course this means there will be lots of culinarily-induced procrastination in my near future, so check back. I might even post a good recipe or two...