european boy

This picture is from the wonderful film Le Ballon rouge, or The Red Balloon. It is a 34 minute short film about a boy befriending a red balloon and the 2 of them having adventures through the streets of Paris. Highly recommended. Last year when I was home for Christmas I saw this and several other short films at the Peace Center in Greenville with Cate and friends...fun times!

Last week I was reading The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson and smiled when I read a particular paragraph.....this is for all my American friends who have a hankering for Europe every now and then. These days my thoughts are on America and home and all the wonderful things about my home country. But when I am home, it happens that I long for the smaller streets, the better cheese, the bicycles.
Bryson writes about himself as a young, Iowa boy:
"From that moment on, I wanted to be a European boy. I wanted to live in an apartment across from a park in the heart of a city, and from my bedroom window look out on a crowded vista of hills and roof-tops. I wanted to ride trams and understand strange languages. I wanted friends named Wermer and Marco who wore short pants and played soccer in the street and owned toys made of wood. I cannot for the life of me think why. I wanted my mother to send me out ot buy long loaves of bread from a shop with a wooden pretzel hanging above the entrance."