Please, Spice Up My Life

How weary I have grown of the mild cream and butter flavors of France! I'm desperate for cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, clove, basil, masala! Spices!!! I made the grave mistake today of daydreaming of a world of zesty veggies: Indian food- and I nearly went mad. My body is aching for zest. Burning for spice. Hungry for heat!! Citrus! Peppers! Uuugghhhh. A girl who found her earliest culinary loves in Thai and Indian cuisine should never have chosen French as her heart's lacking language. 

In desperation I sent a message to a friend and San Francisco dweller begging that she send me a flat rate of boxed Indian foods. Incomparable to restaurant quality of course, but oh so much better than nothing. 

Lately I've been facing a heightened awareness of the lack of flavor in my life. I went on a quest to not 1, not 2, but 3 super markets seeking jalapenos, a grocery store staple in the states, but couldn't find the elusive buggers anywhere. Here food is seasoned with butter, salt, oil, herbs; garlic occasionally, but the slightest pick to your tongue you are hard pressed to find. My desire for saucy spicy burritos; steaming coconut curries, and colorful vegetable stir fries has just about pushed me out the window and to an un-timely and overly dramatic death. 

And I wont even mention Kombucha. !!!

First person to mail me a spicy care package gets an authentic Eiffel tower key chain. who's in? Anyone?

A Chance for Escape

The new blogger layout is actually discouraging me from posting. Very unpleasant. 

The news of the month is that I am returning to my island paradise on the 4th of July and I'm taking the best part of France with me. That's right, thanks to my favorite student travel website, I'm finally living the dream and am taking TMI home with me to meet the parents and the tropical lieu of my naissance. 18 hours of flight time, but who's counting when your lover is there with you, right? 

On the downside, after the chimerical wonder of having my mate in my homeland has expired,I'm faced with the usual "where in the world am I supposed to be?" dilema. France is expensive, lonely, and lets face it, impractical for someone with roots on the opposite side of the globe. Not to mention unhealthy. I can't seem to stop gaining weight here and my boredom and loneliness are heavier each passing day. The signs all point to a more normal settling ground, which, thanks to my online studies could be just about anywhere, but the human I'm in love with happens to live here, in Dijn, France. Rats. 

Seriously about the getting fat, btw, I was 104 when I left the US a year and a 3 months ago, now I think I'm pushing about 112, roughly a pound a month in this butter cream haven. When I lived in Hawaii or on the West coast it was easy to be a vegetarian, and freedom of mobility as well an employment and same-denomination currency made gym memberships easily attainable. 

But still, I'm thrilled for the coming adventure. Between then and now I have 6 more weeks of Dijon, 3 of which TMI has an internship in the South, so I may get to spend some weekends away. meeeeeh.

Le Respect, la Relation, et le Risqué

Dad I know you read my blog from time to time and this is one of those posts that I ask you avert your eyes and skip over. Seriously.

Keeping an anonymous blog is harder than one may think. That said, I want to again address something I mentioned lightly before. Respect, and the risque. Can we objectify in the bedroom and retain respect in a relationship? Specifically, must we only make love to stay in love, or can we also have sex? Where is the correct medium between slipping into the banal and crashing into the unacceptable?

I'm currently in a very sexual relationship, and I find myself regularly conflicted about what's the most healthy for us. I worry that if we don't have enough sex, or enough exciting sex, things will get boring and we'll cool off into a typical long term; or that we'll go too far and loose a necessary respect for one another. I'm not sure if the later is even possible - granted I haven't seen signs of it, but, (and now for the not-dad-safe sentence) could any amount of oral or anal sex somehow skew our positive feelings for each other? Admittedly, we aren't worshipping one another in these situations; we're objectifying one another. In spite of how much we enjoy it, I can't decide if this is wildly healthy or flat out detrimental.

On the other end of the spectrum, a friend who volunteers with me in my little Dijonaise cafe faces relationship problems amusingly inverse to my own. She's passionately God-fearing, and refuses to have sex, or even extensive physical contact, before marriage. (I know, I know! I thought France was predominantly devoid of that!) This is a kind of love I know nothing about, and, for that matter, can't even begin to imagine. Sex is such an immense part of romantic connection; an integral facet of truly knowing someone, and the final frontier of openness and trust to your partner. Yet she, like me,

-I just found chocolate smeared on my keyboard and have no idea how it got there-

Yet she, like me, spends hours hoing, humming, and heart-aching over what she believes is love.

How much does sex define a relationship? Does it make it or break it? And, if it's such a powerful element, as I believe it to be, can it govern our feelings outside of the bedroom?