Thoughts on a voleur

Once again, apologies on not writing in sooner. The most pertinent thing at this point is to give my point of view on the Spring Vacation. As some of you know and many of you don't, my parents and I were robbed on the last day of our drive through Provence. All of our baggage was stolen and the rental car window was broken apart as well. At this point, I have replaced everything that was of importance and believe that I can look on it with some sort of distance.

My first thought is that getting robbed sucks. It is also a very surreal experience. It's one of those moments where you feel like you should be in a movie and the music should start to get very dramatic and the shots get quicker, but in fact, all that really happens is that moment of silence where it dawns on you that yes, in fact you've been taken advantage of. You try to think of the right thing to do, how did this happen and what am I supposed to do now? The biggest problem is that no one quite knows what to do either. You call the police, but they've got more important things to worry about, they're not going to come to you, you have to go to them. So you find out where to go. Then half an hour later, you get there and wait and wait. Don't they understand? Everything I own is GONE. What do I do? So you go and file a report and that's it. You try to remember everything you had in your bag, you drive home and you try your best to get over it and start replacing stuff.

So what did I learn from this? That I'll be ok. That stuff is replacable. That in the end, we're still alive, able to recuperate from a bad experience. Do I look down on the French as a result? Certainly not. After all, there are depserate people everywhere and we all can only do our best in any given moment. Do I regret my naivete in thinking that our stuff would be ok, if only for a few hours? Sure, but I can learn from that.

I guess in the end, I'm also proud of my abilities to cope and my abilities to speak French. If I can get us through that, ordering a sandwich and having a chat en francais won't be so bad either.