The Rucksack

Bon Voyage!!!

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• infusion
• Abby Meadow
• Photos from Abby Meadow's Etsy store, Infusion (please follow link to see more of her wonderful creations) 

This is not going to be a post about a bag. Well, it sort of is.

I bought the Longchamp French bag that every preppy college girl who has any respect for herself has. It was actaully a gift from an ex-boyfriend. It was his going away present before I spent a year studying abroad in Paris. 

“So you can carry me with you wherever you go,” he said.

Barf, I know. Well, I only think that now that we are not together. It was a very nice, expensive gift and sweet statement at the time. 

Two years later in May of 2011, I graduated college with a liberal arts degree with a concentration in literature, writing and French and a position teaching English for the French government. Sweet deal. There was one problem though. 

I was walking home from work yesterday, and fumbling around trying to get my new iphone out that I don’t know how to use. I noticed that the zipper on my Navy Longchamp purse had split. 

“Oh, great! Now what am I going to do for a book bag in France,” I thought to myself. 

I have a thirty minute commute from the centre ville of Toulon where my apartment will be to Six Fours Les Plages, the little fishing village where I will be teaching. How am I going to carry my teaching materials in a bag with a broken zipper. Come to think of it, my life is a little like a broken zipper right now. I am stuck in the middle of something I don’t know how to finish. Even worse, when I try to budge myself out of my rut, I start pulling on the fabric of the bag, causing more tears and rips. 

Most of my friends and acquaintances know that I have an etsy obsession because I have made a handful of my friends likewise obsessed with etsy. It was a particularly quiet week of work at Sarah Lawrence because most faculty and college employees are on vacation. Earlier in the week, I had introduced my friend to etsy, and she said it was the only thing that saved her from work. My friend spent the countless hours at work with nothing to do surfing the treasure chests of various treasure collectors and makers on etsy.

On our walk home from work, she said she had finished her last week by treating herself to a whole new outfit on etsy. She bought three items; a belted shirt dress, a pair of black doc marten-type boots, and a canvas bag with a cute design of two boxers. It was a perfectly adorable, new outfit for the start of the school year

Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on vintage, handmade and art supplies. The items span a wide range of categories, including art, clothing, jewelry, edibles, quilts and tsotchkes. The site tries to replicate what a flea market or craft fair would be like but online. The difference between places like amazon or ebay is that etsy offers artists and treasure collectors the opportunity to open their own store, thus it is craftier and more artistic. 

Each time someone signs onto etsy, the viewer is shown a screen of hand-picked items that fit their interests. The “treasure chest,” as it is called by the etsy creators is similar to a newsfeed on facebook. It is a newsfeed of knick-knacks-- hazarai (Yiddish for junk or trash) as my Jewish father would say. 

In my treasure chest, a rucksack in cinnamon brown popped up from Abby Meadow’s store, Infusion. The moment I saw it, I knew it was the bag that I needed for my year in France. It was the perfect blend of classy and casual, backpack and messenger bag for all my everyday needs, books and papers. 

The bag represents my own personal treasure chest of hopes and aspirations while I am abroad. As opposed to the stylish preppy Longchamp bag, Abby’s rucksack is made of organic materials, is durable and heavy duty and ready to experience a lifetime at my side. 

I am packing my rucksack full of plans for next year, and I will be carrying it on the plane with me to Paris. I’ll be able to pack memories and experiences in there aswell. For now, however, this is what I am putting in my rucksack: studying spanish, working a part time job or two in addition to my English teaching job, probably babysitting or tutoring, reading and writing of course, blogging about anything and everything, applying to grad school programs (psychology, literature, French, writing), traveling, journaling, researching babysitting jobs in Paris for the summer, researching courses at the French university for summer, researching AIESEC international internships, and researching the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage in Espana!