What to wear

I've been more than looking forward to being home for a lot of reasons, one being that I didn't really jive with the southern hemisphere situation and missed seasonally appropriate fall and winter, but another reason was because I'd get to change my clothes. For almost 4 months I had the same 4 outfits, almost all of which I donated in Valparaiso. The last few days I had been wearing a gray pair of pants with two holes in the crotch, two buttons missing from the waist tab closure, and a ripped belt loop, it felt satisfying to leave them in Pucon. What I came home with was a pair of black leggings, a black dress to go over the leggings and a cardigan to match, a few t-shirts, my yoga pants and two sun dresses. I couldnt remember exactly what clothes I had left in my apartment but it was a huge ikea bag and I knew I would be like a kid at Christmas tearing through it all.

So when I got home and couldnt find the bag the excitement was even heightened, a melange of Christmas and Easter, I had to hunt for the bag in a tiny NYC apartment. Unfortunately when I finally found it, there were no pants were in the bag. So here I am in New York, it's cold, and for four days, I have a pair of black leggings to wear.

To be completely honest I have one other pair of dress pants hanging in the coat closet. I bought them just before I left when I had been about 10 pounds lighter. I know I could wear these pants, but the idea of trying them on and finding them too tight is not an appealing idea. I know they will be too tight, but they could range anywhere from unzippable to just taut.

So its probably a good thing that Sylvain and I went to the gym last night, we got our workout on, and had a nice walk through Harlem. My contract ended in November but because I wasnt here to officially cancel my membership Ive already paid for December. Sylvain was impressed, I'm a member at Planet Fitness and my Harlem branch just opened last year so almost everything is still fresh and new, its only 20 bucks a month and I can also bring a guest for free. I dont think any city will ever feel as much like home as NY. Its true, Im ready to move on, but there are things like my gym which I wont find in France, at least not for $20 a month. Americans are gym people, we start in school and we keep going, in France they dont have teams in school, and everyone smokes anyway so no one really works out, Sylvain is an exception to the working out aspect of the equation. While there are sure to be gyms in Paris they wont be cheap, and they probably wont come with a free guest pass. In London when I went to the gym, you had to buy a membership and in addition pay a fee between 2 and 4 dollars every time you used it depending on whether you wanted to swim or use the treadmill and whether it was a peak hour or not. I'm going to miss working out at Planet Fitness. I'm also going to miss my blackberry. I will probably have some sort of pay as you go hand me down phone from Sylvain, but I wont have the luxuriousness of email, internet, camera and phone all in one. We have a free but unfurnished apartment lined up in Paris, which is great, but knowing that I have a whole furnished- and nicely furnished apartment here in NYC makes it kind of a bummer, we could live like the adults we are, but in all likelihood we will have a pull-out couch and some random furniture Sylvain might be able to nab from home along with a spare kitchen and none of the art I have here. Frankly though, like Chile its only for a few months, and poor or not, I'll still be living in Paris.