And then my cousin arrived

The day after the bachelorette party, my cousin from Minnesota arrived for a week stay.

21 and freshly graduated from college (well, except for some credits she's missing), she added on a trip to a friend near Dresden and to see me to a mission trip she is doing in Ireland.

I kind of knew my cousin was religious and had grown up a Lutheran; what I didn't realize was that she was practically a born-again Christian and a dedicated missionary. And an American who has never been to France before.

The good thing about my cousin's visit is that I'm glad I'm no longer 21 trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life and learning to "become an adult". I know how to manage a household, what it takes to sustain a long term relationship, and the idea of buying a house doesn't scare me.

The mission trip to Ireland is a repeat of a trip my cousin did last year during which she discovered that working with and counseling youth is what she would like to do as a career. I'm glad she discovered that, but from all she told me about the company that organizes the mission trips, she's practically paying them so she can work for free (but she's okay with it because she's "doing God's work").

Other than the whole religious side (for those of you who know my husband you can imagine how much of a fan he was...) I was reminded of all those little French things I've quietly absorbed: bars won't serve a beer at 11:30pm if they close at midnight, cafés don't do iced coffees, gas stations don't always have toilets, wait until "heures creuses" to do the laundry and the dishwasher, turn off lights as soon as you don't need them, finish some food even when you could do without the extra mouthful because otherwise it's wasted...

I also got some perspective on myself: my cousin is traveling on a tight budget (that she has a hard time managing, but that's another story) which means she turns down certain opportunities, such as visiting the castle in Foix when we visited Ariège. I've traveled on a budget myself and decided to forgo things, but I think there is a line you can cross where if you travel so many km to a location, but then don't go inside the building at the destination, you lose much of the reason for going so far. It's definitely something I'll keep in mind when I'm traveling in Canada and the US in the upcoming weeks.

I'm glad I was able to reconnect with my cousin since we haven't seen each other for a long time, and glad she was able to discover a little bit of France, but it was also a relief to drop her off at the airport. When I came home I cleaned up the coffee mug and bowl of cereal she left on the kitchen counter, the foot prints in the bathroom, and the dirt she tracked on the rug.