St. Clair and France

Yesterday, I spent my waking hours musing about having a foreign implant among my current course classmates and earning a trip to Europe from charity. Oddly enough, I wrote in an essay I did for one of last semester's classes that I didn't want to live anywhere else aside from Iloilo City. I can be so shallow sometimes.

I finished reading Stephanie Perkins' Anna and the French Kiss last night and I'm really disappointed by how weak my resolve to stay in the Philippines for the rest of my life is. That (and my guilt, though I really think I'll get over this) aside, reading the book made me realize that I'm still the Western groupie kid I was five years ago.

While the story is painfully mainstream and predictable, and the characters are not as profound as I want them to be, the book is a refreshing break from academic selections. Consider this: it's like the water you  drink between spoonfuls of heavy meat during dinner. I enjoyed it because it made me feel less compelled to read perfectly-written novels (at least for the day.) It's the simple, neuro-friendly book we all once enjoyed in earlier youth. Besides, the characters are "tragic" enough; I guess that counts for being literally-capable.

Then again, I won't recommend this to you if you're looking for romance novels akin to Love in the Time of Cholera.

And because my heart was (and still is) aching for big doses of Paris and the book's male protagonist, Etienne St. Clair, I bought a copy (and the only one left, lucky me!) of Schaum's Outlines French Grammar. Self-taught French, I shall accomplish you before the year ends!