kate-encore-k

July was the hottest month in recorded history in France, I took the non-airconditioned subway to my non-airconditioned campus, and sat through a lot of miserable meetings, traded war stories with other teachers about how many students passed out during exams (I handed out scratch paper and told everyone to make fans, a colleague walked up and down the aisles with a spray bottle and just sprayed kids that looked like they were wilting). My last day was July 17th, the latest last day in recorded history in Kate World.

On what was technically a school night we went to see Interpol, a band I don't think I'd listened to in a decade. The show was sold out, and we had the best time and I don't think I've ever been sweatier. I did unexpectedly tear up during NYC because André used to play that album all the time, and it was a sudden thud of oh I miss him, but the upside of everybody sweating so much is nobody can tell you're crying.

A slightly delayed stop drop and selfie for @causticgrip, featuring a bag of peanut M&Ms from last night's Hacks binge and my asthma inhaler.

In Nice we walked past my first real grown-up apartment (not the two closed shutters directly above the pizza place, the two open ones above that). My first two years in France, my housing was arranged for me by the schools I worked for. This one I got by buying copies of the local newspaper, looking at ads that were one or two lines long at most, making calls and taking the one-hour train ride from the smaller town where I was living.

I remember when I moved in, everything I owned in one massive suitcase and one small backpack. I made it by myself, onto and off the train, hauling that huge thing across town, and when I got inside I just could not get it up the stairs. In my memory I spent an eternity heaving and wrangling and only getting it up and over three steps (it was probably like five minutes in reality). I was getting ready to dump it out and just carry handfuls of stuff until the suitcase was light enough for my spaghetti arms, when a guy coming downstairs saw me, picked the bag up like it was nothing, asked which floor and dropped it right in front of my door. I never saw him again. I got rid of that suitcase only about four years ago.