A Little on the Trashy Side

In just about every aspect of my life, I am stereotypically girly.

I love shoes and holding hands, slow dancing and grand gestures, I've spent my share of days confined to bed with movies and Ben & Jerrys, and I cry every time Meryl Streep lets her husband drive away from Clint Eastwood in the pouring rain of Madison County. I tend to be over-analytical. I get attached too easily and I admit to owning such classic literature as He's Just Not That Into You.

Yes, in many ways, I pretty much define what it means to be girly…and I've been pretty comfortable with that my whole life.

But honestly… I'm a beast at pool. I love the smell of chewing tobacco and I think pickup trucks are incredibly attractive.. and I could tell you an embarrassing amount of information about yankees baseball and college football. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was up until 5 in the morning watching the NFL draft

Paris has been going great, as the light at the end of the tunnel is now apparent- and with less than 2 weeks left here, I'm really enjoying what I have left. Last night was particularly interesting, as, after meeting up with a friend and some of his friends at a bar, my friend and I ended up taking a cab back to their house to hang out…now, there house is ACTUALLY located in eurodisney (they work for Disney as stuntmen in the wild west show…seriously, I couldn't make this up)

I went back with my friend, mostly because I didn't want to leave her alone and didn't know what situation she was getting herself into, and I knew I could handle myself fine. Honestly, when we got to their house, I was very hesitant…and, to be frank, kind of a bitch. There we were, two small twenty year old girls with no way to get home until the buses started up at 5am (unless we wanted to pay 80 euro for a cab) in a house full of 6 or 7 guys in good shape in their mid twenties- who all had each other to back them up.

My anxiety mustve been pretty apparent, after I turned down drinks and made sure to stay standing and alert, keeping my eyes locked on my friend, to make sure everything was okay.

After a little while, I walked out on the porch, where a few of the guys were smoking…I was tired and really, just wanted to go home, but the given my options (which were few) there wasn't much i could do but sit down and wait until Melanie was ready to go, so I sad on the steps and looked up at the guys standing next to me, at which point I was greeted by a site so familiar to me back at school…something I hadn't seen since my last time in America- in the back pockets of their jeans, all of the guys had matching lightened circles…or, as they're commonly known 'skoal rings'

I immediately loosened up and let out a sigh of relief. FINALLY a familiar site. After all of this time in Paris, i've gotten pretty sick of the eurotrash guys here with their tight jeans and manicured hands, and I hadn't even stopped to notice that the guys we had been hanging out with all night had a midwestern twang that was unmistakable accompanied by the kind of manners that, i've now learned, are truly American.

We sat around talking and, as these things usually do, the conversation lead to me taking out my ipod, after being challenged the fact that I liked country music. Sitting up until 7 in the morning, to the sound of my country playlist and the scent of berry blend skoal (which their parents shipped them from America) was certainly not how I expected to spend my night- it was such a pleasant surprise. As we were leaving, I apologized for the way I had acted only hours earlier, assuming the worst about them, rolling my eyes, and trying to get my friend to leave, an apology they all accepted with laughter and, i think, a little bit of understanding.

"who woulda guessed," one of the boys laughed, putting his cowboy hat on my head, "that all it would take to make the New York City girl comfortable would be a skoal can and some George Strait!"

Who, indeed.