Wishing to Be Elsewhere

I’m not. I don't. That isn’t the point. It's something a Belgian friend said to me years ago.

She used to give dinner parties at which the guests -- who might be from France or Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, or any of the French-speaking African countries -- all spoke French. An American with only high school French but some experience living in Paris, I found it a rich opportunity, because besides the language of the conversation, there were the subjects, which always included much cross-cultural explanation and discussion, but also, for all of us, it was an escape from the surrounding prairie, flat land that stretched uninterrupted to the horizon in all directions, planted almost exclusively in corn.

At the end of one such evening, my hostess sighed happily and exclaimed, intending no humor or irony, “Champaign-Urbana is such a wonderful place! There are so many interesting people here who wish that they were elsewhere!”