This is what I can't wait to come back to: a five minute walk to class, three hour meals at the dining hall just to waste time, the glow of the Dome through the trees on the walk back from D6, sitting on the chapel floor in pajamas at Sunday night Mass, stumbling home after a night out only to stay up chatting with the security guard, late night delirium at The Observer, the Basilica's bells, the ever-smiling Grab-n-Go ladies, having my best friends a bunk or a room away and even Turtle Creek (maybe).

This is what I don't want to leave: Paris.

It's a dilemma; though, not one that merits sympathy. When my family or friends ask if I'm ready to come home, I always say "yes." And in some ways it's true. I do miss home, in both sense of the word — good ol' Flushing, Mich., and Ind., 46556.

I miss taking for granted the fact that everyone speaks English. I miss the comfort zone of people who understand my stupid jokes and my grumpy moods. I miss going to a Catholic school. I might even miss snow.

At Thanksgiving last weekend, my quintmates and I (reunited in London for the feast) sat around worrying about the move back to Notre Dame. All semester we've been building up our return, our reunion. We'll be back in Walsh, getting in trouble for violating quiet hours and laughing at the same stupid movies and the world will be right again. But it might not be as smooth a transition as we hope.

For one thing, it won't be the same Notre Dame we left. Friends will be abroad second semester that we won't see until senior year. One-fourth of the faces we pass on the quad will be freshmen we don't know. A football season will have come and gone, a semester of campus news and gossip will be foreign and every building will look a little different than the way we remember leaving it.

At the same time, we've changed as well. New friends, a photo album full of travels and stories of living in another country. Big cities have toughened us a little; the confusion of another language has helped us laugh at ourselves. We feel more confident that we can strike it out on our own and yet we feel overwhelmed at how huge the world really is.

Timing is everything. So, I keep thinking that once January rolls around and I board the plane home, it will feel right. I needed a break from life in South Bend, a breather to help me appreciate what I have there. Now I feel ready to get back.

I think coming home will feel real and after living in this dream world for four months, something raw and gritty will probably do me good. As my friends here get sentimental about leaving, we make the grand promises that everyone does when they part, "I'm coming to see you so many times next semester you'll get sick of me — Philly is only, what, 12 hours away?"

But deep down I know it might not happen, at least not as much as I'd hope. That's the reality of it — I'll go back, and Notre Dame will be home again and I won't be able to imagine how I ever left.

I read somewhere that every story is about coming to a new place or leaving a familiar one. Maybe that's what drives us to write when we're young — it seems like we're always slipping into a new story. I can't really sit around and miss Paris, especially while I'm still here, because there's something new just around the corner. This semester had its time and place and so will the next.

Yesterday, my friends and I went to Disneyland Paris, which on its own, probably says I'm hungry for American culture. And as we rode "It's a Small World" for the fourth time in a row (because, who else goes to Disney when it's cold, raining and December?), I started thinking that the last time I'd laughed at all the happy dancing puppets, I'd been in Florida with my roommates last fall break.

While I may not have grown up at all (the Haunted House ride still makes me jump), I'm now an ocean away, speaking another language with friends I hadn't known existed a year ago. I couldn't wax philosophical for too long, considering I was surrounded by Technicolor trees and talking animals. But it made me realize how much can change in a year. Maybe looking back to see how much we've changed is the only constant we can count on.

In any case, it was a relief to know Paris loves cheezy Americana as much as I do. Makes it feel a little more like home.

The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Laura Kelly is a junior English and French major. She can be reached at lkelly@nd.edu. French Connection appears Mondays in Scene.

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