I'm Back. And I'm in Marseilles.

I was running, sweating, errand-ing before I left. From class to pick up my newly-fixed computer, home to pack and shower and then I just HAD TO have drinks with a few friends before I hopped on the train.

My information on the computer was somehow not lost, which they told me it would be. I love you .

So now I am here on a trip with my Marseilles and the Mediterranean World class, a little class of 8 plus the teacher and another NYU administrator. It was a nice three hour train ride and an amazing dinner last night, some museums and city walking today. A more detailed description to come later, I have something else on my mind.

Landmarks.

At breakfast, before we left this morning, I realized I had never seen the Mediterranean Sea. It's interesting that I had not even considered the fact before today. It is such a central place when it comes to history, the basis of modern civilization, education and thought, that it somehow seemed familiar. I felt like I had been there, like I knew it for some reason. When I realized that I was taking it for granted, I got really excited and nervous about this landmark in my life, seeing this, the Mediterranean Sea for the first time.

So later in the day the point comes in which we climb hundreds of stairs to the highest point in Marseilles, to Notre-Dame de la Garde and I refuse to look behind me as I climb the steep hill. I want to get to the top and turn around and faint or have an seizure or something like that as I stare out at the turquoise water. I know behind me is Chateau d'If where Monte Cristo famously planned his fictional revenge and the amazing Vieux Port with it's fortress rising out of the sea and all this is in my mind.

So I turn around, and of course nothing like that happens. I don't mean to say I was disappointed, because I got out my journal and started to write about the beauty (which of course exists). I wanted to write in that moment words that would be monumental, I was hoping for some moving description that my grandkids would find in the attic someday and frame. But instead I just felt like a schmuck sitting there writing. It was just pretty and that's all I could write. It wasn't a 'landmark' moment in my life. I will always remember it, sure, but I felt nothing sacred.

But wait, there is more.

Later, we went to concert that my teacher found for us. That's what she said, "we are going to a concert." I didn't ask, I had no expectations.

Well, I guess I expected a band to play, which happened and was fine and dandy, but nothing out of the ordinary. It was after about 9 minutes that a man in a tux emerged from the shadows, came onto the slightly foggy stage in front of the red lights and began to dance. Flamenco. He was in the center of the stage with the band behind him and he was dancing. I have never seen anyone dance like that before. Stomping, sweating, spinning tossing his coat this way and that, it was shocking.

I have not been as inspired as I was tonight in a long time. And it was because I wasn't expecting it. It was not what I thought I was getting myself into, and so I could not be disappointed. There was such a sense of passion in that room, it was performer-audience community at it's best and it inspired me. It was at that point that I couldn't STOP writing in my journal, as much as I wanted to watch the band play and dancers dance.

I had never seen the Mediterranean until today. I saw it today when that man came onstage and began to dance. I was a foreigner in a new world. I thought I had a sense of what the Mediterranean was, but I had no idea. We keep talking about it in class, and I just didn't understand it until tonight. The Mediterranean is not a body of water, it's not a group of people, it's not a region, and no one can really agree what makes it what it is. Honestly, I don't know either, but I liked it and I want more.