If you are a woman of any age, shape, or size and you've walked down a street in any city in the world, you've experienced it: the whistles the cat calls, the winks, the terrible pick up lines. The language may vary, but the message doesn't.

I've spent enough time...

When I tell people I live in the south of France, I am met by jaws slack with envy and any number of variations on that old "must be Nice" joke.

To be sure, there are plenty of wonderful things about living here. It is indeed very nice. But I...

My neighborhood here in Nice feels like a little microcosm of modern France.

From my balcony, I can see the ethnic diversity and historical layers that make up the area. I love the combination of cultures that come together here. As I try to make this foreign city home,...

The worst has happened: I can't sleep.

Usually I can sleep anywhere, anytime. On a bus, on a plane, at a party: It's one of my most useful skills. Along with being able to read on long car journeys without getting sick, its part of what makes me a...

I am terrified of French post offices. There I said it. Ridiculous, I know, but true.

Its not that it's difficult to get to, there is one two blocks from the apartment. I pass by it most days on my way to the beach or the grocery store or wherever....

After 35 hours in transit I made it back to Nice and the city has welcomed me with glorious, bright, warm, sunny weather.

Despite all of my traveling, I have yet to figure out how to pack light. This is a cause of great consternation for the Englishman, who manages...

More than four months after touching down in the U.S., I have finally booked my flight back to France. I have spent nearly as much time back here on the west coast as I have in France in the past months, which, strictly speaking, was not part of the plan.

When I planned my escape from Washington all those many months ago, I wasn't thinking that far into the future. It was only a matter of weeks between the day I hatched my plan to flee the confines of my desk, and the day I actually arrived in the French...

It feels like a long time since I've set foot on US soil.

I have become used to stumbling through the little difficulties of living in a foreign country. Having to try three different ways of saying something before being understood has become second nature. I forgot how easy and...

After a month of traveling in the West Bank and Israel with a couple of pit stops in Paris, I have returned to Nice and am surprised by how glad I am to be "home."

I always feel relived to return from a long trip; to be able to sleep...

Before I left for France, everyone had some advice or opinion about what I would find there:

"Don't take it personally, the French are going to be rude"... "Only order the house wine"... "Try the bouillabaisse"...

Before leaving for Ramallah, I heard no such insights.

Most people don't have...

If adapting to life in France takes learning a new set of rules, spending time in the Palestinian Territories is a lesson in patience.

The West Bank, where the Palestinian town of Ramallah lies, has been occupied by Israel since 1967. To get in or out of the city, you...

I could barely contain my excitement as I ran-walked to the train station to visit my new amour.

I felt a little sheepish as I bid my French teacher au revoir, but as I boarded the train and settled in for the 40-minute journey, the guilt was immediately replaced...

Living in France is like taking a perpetual French etiquette exam, without ever having been allowed to see a textbook. There are so many rules and social codes here, the dos and don'ts of simply drinking coffee wouldn't fit on a pair of tablets.

Just like trying to keep track...

In my quest to discover the places in Nice that the guidebook writers don't know about, I have been spending a lot of time away from the beach in the Borriglione neighborhood.

Its basically a cute, mostly residential area with some of the best little fresh pasta shops and bakeries...

The Provencal sun has set on tourist season here in Nice and the student body has thinned at my adorable little language school, tucked in beside the cumquat trees on Rue D'angleterre

The over sixties have long since returned to their comfortable retirement, and the visiting university students are probably...

My French classes are slowly working bits and pieces of the language into my brain, lodging a word here and a phrase there.

I'll be at the laundromat waiting for my towels to dry or sitting at a cafe and "now" or "tomorrow" will jump out at me from a...

It's a very odd thing to be a foreigner in an unfamiliar country, especially when you don't speak the language. Here I am an educated, functioning adult, stripped down to an illiterate clueless, childlike being totally unable to express myself with even a shred of grace.

I have been wandering...

I have been in France for nearly a month now. The Englishman has gone back to work and I am on my own for the first time.

I vastly overextended my resources in the past few weeks as I flitted around Nice and Corsica pretending not to be woman...

To my Californian ears, Corsica always sounded like one of the most exotic and luxurious destinations on earth. For years its name conjured images of bright beaches mixed with European sophistication. And although the reality did not disappoint, it did surprise.

The Englishman and I decided to travel there by...