A Relaxing Summer?

Jazz music. I’d forgotten how much I love jazz music. As I sit here in this café, sipping on my cup of French vanilla coffee and playing my Nintendo DS, I realize that the French really do have something going with the whole idea of a brasserie. I’ve also realized that I’m deathly addicted to coffee.

Today, I write to you not from a dorm, or anywhere near Williamsburg, but from my favorite coffee shop and dessert place in Richmond: the Desserterie. You know you can’t go wrong when you eat and drink just mere feet away from rows upon rows of cakes and tarts.

Welcome to my summer. Imagine a world with no internet, minimal digital cable, and no car. Your nearest buddy is 15 minutes away, and your nearest favorite coffee shop is 30, that’s somewhat close to what I’m going through right now.

To most people, plopping down on a couch and watching reruns of House with a video game in hand would be an ideal summer vacation, and indeed, for the first day, it was. But this easygoing, couch potato life isn’t for me, and I’m sure that it’s not for plenty of other William and Mary students.

To me, I hate to say it, but it makes me feel like a lazy bum. I guess you could say that I’m one of those people that are constantly on the move and always on the run. Sometimes, I’m both at the same time. So sitting down for hours at a time, doing nothing? That’s not really my kind of summer break.

But summer has a way of bringing up weird ironies that I’ve never realized, and I guess this is just one of them. For once, I’m stuck at home, with people to see but no way to see them, things to do but no way to do them, and places to be but no way to get there.

Perhaps this is just an example of what the French call “c’est la vie.”

And on the days that I do have a car, well I can travel to places like this one which is probably one of the lesser known, but better coffee shops around Richmond, and my personal favorite. Best of all, they have free wi-fi, and I can catch up with the rest of the civilized world.

Until the end of this month, when I study abroad in China, looks like I’ll be having a rather “relaxing” summer. Until then, at least if I need a decent cup of coffee and a place to “properly” catch a Pikachu, looks like I’ve found my ideal watering hole.