In a month and change, I will board a plane from New York to Paris for the third time in my life.

The first time, I was fifteen and with my parents. They regret not having taken me to Italy instead. They say I fell in love with France. I say I began to learn the meaning of appreciative disdain.

The second time, I was twenty and with a large group of fellow students. I stayed five months. Just enough time to build a romantic dream and to stamp a map of the métro in my heart. I wept when I left.

This time, I will be twenty-three and on my own. I’ll stay in Paris only a few days – enough time for a visit to la fameuse Micheline Sébaoun (better known, simply, as “Madame”) if she is still alive, a handful of pains au chocolat, and a Rue des Rosiers fallafel. And for my much-missed endless Paris walks.

Then off to Toulouse and the very large handful of unknowns that await me.

I’ll be teaching English in the écoles primaires of a town called Mazamet, about an hour by train east of Toulouse. I have never worked with small children. I don’t particularly like small children. The few English lessons I tried to give to my host-sister in Bordeaux two and a half years ago were disastrous.

Why is this, then, a good idea? Because la République, god bless it, will give me its spare change and a visa. Because I’ll work twelve hours a week and have six or seven weeks of paid vacation (social democracy at work). I’ll technically be a fonctionnaire of the French government, with many of the attendant benefits and all of the discounts (like cheap rail passes). Encore une fois, vive la République. Because every privileged recent college graduate is entitled to her year’s tour of Europe and environs.

My beloved Liam (who is responsible for this blog’s title) has inspired me with his Conscientious Orientalist, so I will chart my travels here. My ravings on my favorite subject, French politics, are not as coherent, nuanced, well-researched, or even germane as Liam’s on the Middle East can be, but I insist that you enjoy them nevertheless. There is, after all, a wonderfully hilarious présidentielle on the way. And those uppity Arabs to keep track of. I promise very little.

In fact, this blog will likely amount to a commentary on the delights of cheap wine and cassoulet.

Enjoy.