Sunday, April 13, 2008

A Taste of Home

There were seven of us crammed into my tiny french kitchen. We were grilling burgers and enjoying a completely American kind of get together. We had brought our "steak hache" and our 10-packs of Kronenburg and Heineken and now we were crowded into the kitchen, watching our friend cook up our hamburgers just the way we liked them, medium rare. We turned my laptop into a makeshift TV and found a Mets-Brewers baseball game to cheer for while we savored our sandwiches and chugged our beer. We laughed at stupid jokes and sang silly cheers as we rooted for the the Mets. Not all of us were Mets fans and many of us don't watch baseball but that didn't matter because this night was not about the baseball; and it wasn't really about the burgers or the beer either. The night was about us. We are American and even though we are here in Paris right now, fully engulfed in a new culture and a different way of life, every once and a while we need to celebrate our silly American traditions and remember home...