I am walking down Michigan Avenue and a cold, distant Chicago breeze passes me by. The city is damp tonight, reminding me very much of Amsterdam, but without its depth of character. This is the problem with American cities. Their superficiality gives a false illusion of character.

In Chicago, the dampness only brings out the cities true ugliness. Dirt, both human and material, seems to stand out in the subtle darkness. In Amsterdam, a European city that lends it self to the dampness of an oncoming rain, this sort of atmosphere lends allows the city to come alive with all its fantastic characters illuminating through every shadow. It brings a kind of beauty not found in an unadorned countryside, or that of the Garden at Versailles, but a sinister beauty. The kind that must be looked at in just the precise way to be appreciated. Gaze through the darkness, and you will find a rose under the blaring red lights. Here, in Chicago, gaze through the darkness, and you will find an emptiness, forcing a smile, trying to hide its despair.

A blistering cold wind begins to ransack my body. I look for cover in one of the towering skyscrapers, but I decide not to run. Not to escape to the warm inside, knowing eventually I will have to go back outside. No running or hiding behind glass doors, mirrors of illusion, that is the American way and I, bless the heavens, am not American. No, I am French, and in France we do not hide ourselves behind walls. In France, we do not run.

Random drops of rain begin to speed at me, spiking me with their icy touch. Not at all like the cool, soothing rains of Paris, in which lovers dance and frolic in. The calmness of the French rain is replaced here in America with the senseless, violent fury that emulates the unprovoked ignorance which Americans posses towards each other.

A country whose people continuously put on the mask of having everything. Hiding the emptiness, and loneliness behind a mask of material possessions. How pathetic because behind this mask is the unfaced realization that having everything does not evolve into having what matters.

You see, in France, we do not work ourselves to death for the sake of monetary rewards. You Americans laugh at our purported laziness, but it is jealousy that consumes you. Yes, the French work 35 hours a week. We have twice as much vacation time. We have the opportunity to appreciate life through its natural beauty. We don't slave ourselves for 60 hours a week just so we can buy a big screen TV that we can never even watch because we are always at work, or buy fancy cars that we have the opportunity to drive only once per week for barely an hour. Perhaps the French do not have the means to acquire the material possessions that you Americans do, but at the same time we don't need them. We don't yearn for them. No, you stupid Americans, you will never see a Frenchman with a head full of stress. The food we eat is exquisite, not like the greasy fat you fill yourselves with. The women we romance are slender and tall. Their accents sing like a siren, not like your women whose voices are more like bark. We sleep, we relax, we enjoy, and we appreciate. We are also happy, unlike half your population that is doped up on anti-depressants. It seems the only happiness your greed can buy you is in a prescription bottle. You puzzle me. All of you. When I decided to come to this country and write about it, I did not think it would be like this, but I somehow find the courage to walk amongst you everyday. What courage it is. You see, happiness, my idiot American step-cousins, is not found in having. It is found in appreciation. Something you will never understand so long as you bury yourselves so far deep in your delusions.