Ready for Syndication

Well, not really. There is some option about syndication in the blog settings, but since (unlike the comment page configuration :-)) I had no idea what it meant, I just left it on whatever the default setting was.

I have, however, been toying with different themes that I may (or may not) use on Native Observation, so I thought I'd give you a little preview of topic threads that may come up, along with their oh-so-clever abbreviations and acronyms:

• BNT. I confess: "Native Observation" was not actually my first choice for the title of this blog (but just because my baby was unplanned doesn't mean I love it any less!). For better or worse, many of my early ideas were already taken, in some cases by bloggers who, at least at first glance, do not seem Worthy of using my brilliantly conceived URLs. Because I think it's interesting to consider the road not taken (or in this case, the Blog Not Titled), I may tell you about the other titles we might have had. I suppose this theme could also offer the opportunity for guest bloggers who had their own title suggestions to tell us about them, but it's hard to imagine when I might be ready to relinquish that kind of artistic control. I can be a bit Particular at times.
• HYS. Life in a foreign country offers many opportunities for linguistic glitches, and I will be sharing anecdotes of words and thoughts lost in translation, and all the times I have to ask How You Say?
• MPAS. I have strong opinions on many, many things, and this blog is the ideal forum for sharing them. But sometimes, I may have to warn you that My Politics Are Showing (the correct pronunciation of this blog theme is to be "im-pass").
• TIMM. The question I hear most often when I tell people I'm moving away is, "What are you going to miss about France?" It occurs to me that telling about the Things I'll Miss the Most could be a nice way of sharing some of the loveliness of my adopted home.

OK, this is clearly far too cheesy for syndication, but now that the concept is all spelled out in pixels, I guess I'll stick with it.

UPDATE: One more blog theme I'd thought of but forgot to list: OBG (don't worry, Scott, I'm not going to have an entire topic thread dedicated to gynecological issues!). Way back when, in the dark ages before I started this blog, I sometimes sent out mass e-mails with stories about life in France to selected friends. I may recycle some of these Oldies But Goodies for use on this blog. Partly because, in my far-from-humble opinion, some of the messages were funny and deserve a broader audience, and partly because I'm lazy but can claim that reusing old material makes me Green.

What is the subject?

And so it begins.

I'm an American living in Paris. As I start this blog, I have been in France for just over six years and will be moving back to the U.S. in just over six weeks. I am both very excited to be going to a new place near my family and many friends, and very sad to be leaving this place and the people here that I love. I'm torn between two countries.

A little digression to get us to the point: I have a friend who has a friend who knows someone in the band Counting Crows (by association, I'm practically a rock star!). My friend's friend is an Arabic expert, but she couldn't figure out how to translate "Counting Crows" into Arabic, because the name isn't really clear in English. Does it mean "crows that count", or "the act of counting the crows"? In other words, what is the subject, the crows or the counting? I thought this was a really interesting linguistic question, so I frequently mentioned it to friends, and it always surprised me how adamantly people would defend their opinion one way or the other. (It turns out that the true answer is in the lyrics of the song "A Murder of One," but you'll have to look it up yourself. I can't do all the work here!)

So, what is the subject of this blog, Native Observation? Am I the Native, providing an insider's perspective on her two homelands? Or am I an outsider, offering Observation on the strange rituals and behaviors of the natives of two countries where I don't quite belong? Stick with me here, and maybe we'll figure it out as we go along.

Welcome, and soyez les bienvenus.