Les Vacances

1. Officially on vacation for the next two weeks. Merci, French school holidays.
2. Family arrives in two days. I cannot express how happy this makes me.
3. I have old lady hands. Thanks, Parisian snow.
4. Moving to the Montsouris apartment next Thursday. Sent my landlord notice but have not heard from him.
5. Tonight is quiche and tarts on Rue Mouffetard with the friends followed by some kind of warm beverage. Wandering would be on the schedule, but the cold and the snow are cramping my Parisian style.
6. If a French boy throws a snowball at you, it means he likes you. However, that does not make it any less annoying. Or actually creepy, since it reminded me of Beer Can Dude. If I can go a week without having some random guy throw something at me I'll be pleased.
7. I applied to NYU.
8. And Wisconsin at Madison.
9. It turns out that children are really difficult to teach the day before vacation. Who knew?
10. I had a moment today, in the hallway, between classes, when a bunch of kids filed past me and wanted to know how to say things in English, and kept saying, "Hay-lo, Meg-ann, Meg-ann, hay-lo, are you teaching us today?" and for a minute, I kind of got it. For a moment, I really felt like this is what I want to do. I think I might want to be a teacher after all.
11.  One of my coworkers gave me a ride to the train station. She's middle-aged and has kids my age, and is always really nice to me.  On the way to the gare, we talked about her bricolage (DIY) projects and the history of France and our holiday plans, and when she dropped me off, she said, "Megan, I really enjoyed talking to you. It's always very interesting. Let's continue our conversation after the vacation. Bonne Noel!" This might not seem like much, but when you're living alone in Paris, it can sometimes feel like a really cold place (figuratively), so you've got to store up moments like that. As I made my way to the train back to Paris, as people hurried past me and I checked my watch, I felt just a little warmer, despite the cold.
12. Putting on several hundred more layers, then hopping on the metro.

The 14th Arrondissement

I was offered the room in the 14th in the apartment and area I was in love with. I think I am going to move there. There is still a lot of moving out business to muddle through -- like giving my landlord notice that I'm leaving, and potentially dealing with having to pay double rent one month. But this place is actually amazing. It's a fourth-floor apartment just off Rue de General LeClerc and Rue d'Alesia, which are busy, urban boulevards. But the street it's on is quiet and calm, and the buildings are pristine and gorgeous. The building itself is adorable, and the apartment is really nice. My roommate is a 23-year-old French guy who studies engineering. He's really nice, and we bonded over our mutual love for MC Solaar. He speaks English but we are planning on sticking to French while I live there. The apartment has two sunny bedrooms, a washing machine, an oven and a full kitchen, and lots of light. It's pleasant. Really pleasant. And it's about two blocks -- hard to tell, since Paris doesn't really have blocks, since it was built in a giant circle...ANYWAY -- the apartment is right next to Parc Montsouris. The one from my favorite movie. I can go running in the park that was used in my favorite movie. I can't believe that.

So basically, things are going to be pretty quintessentially Parisian in a few weeks. I can't wait. I'm just glad I found a friendly roommate and a nice apartment. That this all happens to be in the 14th makes me feel really lucky and excited. I'll be right below Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter. But mainly I just love the neighborhood.

A segment from "Paris, Je T'Aime" on my new home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2EbK0NEl5A. Just watch it. It's good.

The Paris Apt. Search, Part Deux

Tonight I'm looking forward to an evening of grad school applications (yay?) and quesadillas (YAY!) after spending the day checking out rooms in apartments with roommates, accompanied by one of my lovely and patient friends. We met up early this morning near Place d'Italie to check out a room a middle-aged woman was renting out -- cheap, but too strange to live with an old woman, I decided. But we discovered immediately after that Place d'Italie also is home to an amazing boulangerie. For lunch we split a chocolate-pistachio snail pastry (like a giant pinwheel of dough, but they call it a snail) and a puff of bread stuffed with chocolate-banana filling and sucked down café crèmes in a café at Place d'It to ward off the intense cold that has lately sunk into Paris, making warm socks and millions of layers imperative.

We hung out a little at Maison Bric-a-Brac, then headed to our next destination -- the 14th. To look at an apartment near Parc Montsouris. We stepped off the metro, and I fell in love. The 14th is beautiful. It's well maintained, with tall, elegant buildings and tons of shopping and cafés and Parc Montsouris itself, which is in Cléo de 5 à 7, aka FAVORITE MOVIE EVER. The area is gorgeous. And even if I don't get the room I looked at, I plan to keep looking at places in the 14th. It reminds me of the 17th -- beautiful, quintessentially Parisian, with everything you might want (including... wait for it... a SEPHORA!) within walking distance, and it feels like Paris, it feels like a city, but with none of the touristy atmosphere you find in central Paris. It manages to be beautiful and real at the same time. I love it.

I also saw a room in an apartment in the 9th this week, totally gorgeous and cheap (and close to Montmartre, and on a wonderful busy boulevard), and it occurred to me that sharing an apartment means two things: 1) CHEAPER, and 2) PRETTY. The apartments I've seen so far have all been really nice. I guess that's what splitting rent will do for you. Also, WASHING MACHINES. And OVENS. Whoa.

The search continues. I'm headed back to the 14th to see a different apartment tomorrow, then the 12th on Monday, and eventually the 15th and Montmartre, appointments with current habitants pending. I feel a lot better since I decided to move. As much as I hate to admit it, amenities kind of matter to me. But the more important part is having someone around to say hello to, someone who will notice should I be kidnapped or mysteriously disappear. I have all of Paris to wander on my own. I don't need an apartment -- even a very small apartment -- all to myself.

You can't make me not love Paris.

I am not Amélie Poulain. I'm probably that introverted, but as it turns out, I don't really like living alone. I realized this yesterday morning when I woke up in my quiet, tiny apartment. I thought to myself, oh yes, this is all very bohemian and writer-ly, but... dude. I need people. I need someone to say hi to when I come home, even if it's just someone I share the apartment with. I live in a big city, and I have friends, but living alone in a tiny, only moderately cheap studio isn't worth it. Colocations are way cheaper, and the apartments are often nicer. I mean, my place is cute, for sure, but sometimes I feel like it's la Maison Bric-a-Brac, like if I stomp around too much one of the walls might begin to fall apart.

So I'm looking for a new place. And more importantly, I'm looking for roommates. It's a bit dramatic, because I have to break my contract with my landlord, but according to French law, you can get out of a lease without penalty if you give 30 days notice. So I only hope the gnome is up on his French law, because I really want my security deposit back.

Things have been really up and down lately. Like, on Sunday, I was walking down Tolbiac and this drunk homeless man kept trying to talk to me. So I ignored him. Because I do that. And then, just as I was passing him, he launched his beer can at the back of my neck.

Okay, a few things:
1. I'm glad it wasn't a bottle, and also that he was too incapacitated to throw that hard.
2. Still. It was almost full.
3. Dude wasted his beer.
4. And got beer all over my wool bomber jacket.
5. Can I just say, I was terrified. I ran.

I called the police and when I returned to Tolbiac the next day, the sketchy homeless guys had apparently been removed. Now, I do feel a little weird about calling the police about homeless people. But I also need to feel safe where I live, and I shouldn't have to cut into my budget to dry clean my jacket because it got drenched in cheap beer because this guy wanted me to talk to him.

So I was pretty bummed after that. Paris is Dreamland for me, and so when very real things happen, it shakes me up. Then yesterday morning, feeling residual angst over Beer Man and getting ready to launch my new housing search, I went to my quartier's marché. I picked up my apples as usual, and then, because I was feeling down, I went to the flower man to buy some little yellow flowers for my apartment. I think he could tell that I was sad, because he said, "Ça va?" and when I gave an unconvincing, "Ça va," he picked out a small pink rose for me from his stand and gave it to me for free with my little yellow flowers. It was such a small, sweet gesture, but it did make me feel better. And it was the antithesis of the creepy guys hitting on you all the time in Paris. Sometimes I think it's these little interactions that make Paris what it is.

That afternoon, my head full of images of shared apartments with clean, new bathrooms and washing machines, I got on the metro to meet one of my closest friends at the Abbesses metro stop in Montmartre. Montmartre is my favorite place in Paris, and it was the reminder I needed if why I love Paris. We wandered to Sacre-Coeur, and through the gloomy mist of a rainy Paris evening, we pointed out Notre Dame and l'Hôtel de Ville and the towers of the Bibliothèque Nationale far off in the distance. It looked magical and tiny in the layer of fog and rain. Paris looks so small from Sacre-Coeur - like a toy Paris. I love seeing it from that perspective. It reminds you of how many people live here, of how many tiny worlds exist here. As we wandered down to Pigalle (hello sex shops, hello red-light district, hello tourists in line for Moulin Rouge) we said good-bye to the winding streets, the tall old buildings leaning into the Butte, the Christmas lights strung along the narrow alleys. I might go back tonight. So take that Beer Can Man. You can get beer on my jacket, but you can't make me not love Paris.

Sénégal neex na

Today the New York Times has a really good article on the Senegalese music scene in Dakar -- they mention Just4U and the French Cultural Institute, two places where I spent time when I was in Dakar.  One of the guys in my boarding house the last month I was there was a musician, so my roommates and I would see his shows at Just4U -- it's kind of a swank nightclub frequented by aging ex-pats, but still fun.  And the l'Institute Française was where we would hang out to do work sometimes -- it's just a really pleasant outdoor space in downtown Dakar with a library for research, and a fair trade shop, and yes, a concert venue.

His descriptions of Dakar at night are spot-on, and the map shows the area around the airport, which is where I lived with my host family.  And he mentions Youssou N'Dour as well as the Senegalese hip-hop scene, both worth checking out.

It's too bad he recommends the fancy beachfront hotels, though.  Not only are they mad expensive, but they're very generic and separated from the real Dakar, which while it is definitely crazy and disturbing and the capital of a developing country, is really awesome.  The woman who ran my boarding house also rented out rooms (nice rooms) for very cheap for short-term stays.  I remember this really neurotic couple we met who were staying there as we tucked into our communal bowl of delicious meat and rice one night.

Yeah, I miss Senegal.  I miss every place I've lived, and it's a lot.  So remembering my heat-exhaustion-infused, buzzing with activity, overwhelmed by sensory overload and so much music and noise days in Dakar is a nice way to spend a rainy morning in Paris.

I'm going to head to the marché and the library, and eventually out to the Christmas market at l'Hôtel de Ville with one of my best friends in Paris, but for now it's nice to recall all the colorful Ndiaga Ndiayes, and the near-constant "Allah-huuuuuuuuuuu akbar!  Allah-huuuuuuuuu akbar!" crackling from the minarets across the city every day.  And the palm trees.  And the sidewalk baguettes with Nutella.  And fresh mangoes.  And eating my breakfast while my host brother watched cartoons before sliding through the sand to the bus stop in increasingly thin flip-flops.  And the almost palpable heat.  When we left, one of our directors told us that, for better or for worse, Africa had now entered our blood.  And literally, that's true.  I'm pretty sure I still can't donate blood.  But even two years later, I'm still figuring out the extent to what she said is still true in the way she really meant it.

After I came home from Dakar, I think I slept for about a whole day.  Then I went running in my running shoes I took with me to Dakar, and kicked the red-orange dirt from Kedougou and the sand from Dakar across the concrete of the Pacific Northwest neighborhood where I grew up in between Puget Sound and the mountains.

It's strange to think that this month in 2007 I was working on my independent research project, living with my roommates in our boarding house, hanging out with my host family, and getting ready to go home in time for Christmas.  And keeping like three journals.  And writing poems.

Dakar, je t'aime.  Or, because Wolof is the real language there, Senegal neex na.

For better or for worse?  I think for the better.  Sans question.

You and Your Racist Friend

One of the drawbacks of living in Paris is that little by little, you become aware of the things about Paris that are not beautiful, inspiring, or fun.  For me it's the awful sensation of being both extremely visible and invisible at the same time.  This stems from the fact that if you are a woman, in Paris, and are even moderately attractive and young, you will be stared at by sleazy, sketchy men everywhere you go.  And all bets are off if you like to go running.  Welcome to anomaly-hood.  So, everywhere I go, no matter how sloppy I look, I get stared at by men.  It would be less creepy if it were the beautifully dressed beautiful boys who I see on the metro all the time and are actually my age, but it's usually the creepy old dudes.  I've checked with my friends and this is something that happens to us every day.  To those men I just say, seriously?  Read your book.  It's fine to notice someone who's attractive but if I see you staring at me every time I look up from my book on the metro, I am creeped out, not interested.  Okay thanks.  Au revoir!

As for invisible?  I have been stepped on, bumped into, pushed, shoved, and squished so frequently since I've been here that I sometimes feel like I live in a city of blind people.

Another thing?  Well, in a word, racism.  At the last party I went to, I met this guy, who in between talking about his love for techno while his friend explained the intricacies of building a better hashish cigarette to me, informed me that immigrants are just a problem and should assimilate and be French or not come to France at all.

To which I was like, "Hmmm, in the US we see it a little differently, because, you know, everyone came from somewhere else."

To which he said, "Yeah, but in the US you guys have problems with immigrants too, you know.  They really shouldn't be allowed into the country."

To which I decided that we should probably just agree to disagree -- you know, him back to talking about techno, me back to smiling and nodding.

This reminded me of this guy who interviewed me to share an apartment with him, and informed me that where he lived was best because there weren't immigrants around to cause trouble.

Seriously?  If immigrants cause trouble, whose fault is that?  The immigrants, or the stigma that the French have towards them that causes them to have trouble accessing basic services?  I mean, really.  What do you think perpetuates what?

It just makes me mad that there's this tacit racism that's treated like it ain't no thing.  Of course we have racism in the US, but we also have this idea of political correctness and the importance of "diversity," which, while sometimes cloying and just a cover for the real problems, at least has its heart in the right place.  Sometimes I think France could care less about diversity.  And it's times like this that I am so glad that, yes, that's right, I live in Chinatown.  Where there are people from other countries.  And poor people.  And everything doesn't look perfect and strictly French to the point of scary.

This has been really bothering me lately, and I think it all started when I heard about how Switzerland is banning minarets.  This really upset me, because minarets are beautiful.  When I lived in Senegal, you could always look out across the city and see all the minarets from the mosques.  I loved them!  And there's also the whole lack of freedom of religion the ban implies.

Oh yeah, you guys can totally have your mosque, but please dispense with that annoying call to prayer.  Love, the Swiss Government.

Nothing about it is okay.  I mean, do they think that minarets cause terrorism?  Really?

I am so not down with the anti-Arab sentiment I detect here.  Again, it's something I just thought was worse in the US, but here it's just repressed and comes out in really subtle or shocking ways, which isn't better.  I really do think that in the United States we have a more open view of what makes a culture or a country of value.  I guess because the notion of ranking them is just stupid.  But many Parisians think of Paris as "the capital of the world," and there's very much a sense that the French way of doing things is the right way.

I really do love Paris.  But there are times when I am just so happy to blast the Ramones on my iPod on the metro while wearing my running shoes and unflattering jeans and my Space Travel t-shirt and a hoodie and my glasses and no makeup.  While clutching a paper cup from Starbucks.  Because when it all comes down to it, I am American.  And while I have my qualms with where I'm from, it's home.  Luckily I live in a part of Paris that feels a little like Seattle -- Tang Freres is no Uwajimaya, but I can get Japanese food a few blocks from my apartment, and when I look out onto the eyesore construction around the train station with the towers of the Bibliotheque Nationale in the distance, it could totally be the place where downtown Seattle and industrial Seattle come together.

At first I didn't like this, and I bemoaned my quartier's lack of perfection, but I actually think it's kind of a wonderful and interesting place to live.

Also?  Today I sent in my application to UC Irvine.  And after disastrous nanny duty, I made quesadillas in my apartment.  I had to use emmental and kidney beans, but they tasted really good.  In Paris, even home-made pseudo-Mexican food feels like a delicious rarity.

Frustration aside, I'm remembering a saying I learned in Senegal.  Ku mun muun.  Indirectly translated, it means I'm pressing on.  "Your Racist Friend" by They Might Be Giants is pretty special to me right now, though.

Also, my across the hall neighbor is my new favorite person.  He opens jars for me.  You know you no longer go to Smith when you share a hallway with two guys, one of whom is a rad jar-opener and the other just plays bizarre soft rock way too loudly.

They also have never complained to me about blasting the Clash, which given that I'm in a transition and they're my go to transition band, well, my neighbors are pretty okay.

So I guess this one goes out to the treizième.  I go back and forth, but right now it's home sweet home.  Also, I realized yesterday that I have best friends in Paris, who will console me on the phone while I'm in Carrefour buying groceries and freaking out about work, and with whom I am going to eat sushi and eclairs and watch Love Actually and color and paint nails on Friday.  And somehow, just knowing that I have people here, that bear hugs are just a phone call away, is pretty damn reassuring.

This Is Just To Say

It's sort of lame to have two posts in one day, but...

MY APARTMENT BUILDING HAS CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS UP!

As I was leaving my apartment to go swimming today, I ran into our gardienne (think the old woman in "Amélie" who takes care of the building, kind of like a super I guess...) on the stairs and she was putting up adorable Christmas decorations.  And it just warmed my little MFA app-exhausted, children-exhausted, occasionally homesick heart.

Don't worry; they have a very lovely life.

So yesterday I was observed at work (before being paid... tell me how that makes sense), I taught They Might Be Giants' days of the week song to a class of children who can pronounce the days now (but nothing else), and I went to my nanny job until about 6. It was a long day. When I came home, my apartment was freezing, and I was so cold and exhausted that all I wanted to do was sit in front of my heater wearing yoga pants and eating Muesli out of a box. It felt pathetic and really enjoyable at the same time. Sometimes that's what living alone is all about.

However, I had made plans with a friend of mine who, after a day of teaching and then her own nanny job (we both take care of cranky little kids), was equally exhausted. We had planned to go to a concert at this bar we like near Bastille that is in a basement and kind of resembles a speakeasy, but we missed it because she got off work late, and so decided to spend our evening wearing plaid shirts and sitting in our place near her apartment, being cozy instead of pretty. It's this old brasserie way outside of the center of Paris, and it takes me a long time to get there on the metro, but sitting in a crinkly maroon booth with friendly conversation and a glass of cider, surrounded by car racing paraphernalia and the place's middle-aged clientele and the owner's puppies was the going out equivalent of Muesli and sitting in front of my heater. I can't think of a better way to end a long day in Paris.

When I got back to my apartment, I checked my bank balance for what felt like the hundredth time since I was told I'd been paid (on Wednesday), and they weren't lying, it turns out: I have officially been paid. I have euros in my French bank account. How weird to say that. And I feel so much more secure knowing I have money to spend, even if it is just on rent and groceries and occasionally going out.

Today I'm going to be sequestered in my apartment with grad school applications, and sometimes living in Paris on a tight budget can be hard, but my evening out reminded me of an episode of Sex and the City about living alone. I like Sex and the City. Anyway, so in this episode, an animal shelter opens up next to Carrie's apartment and she's woken up by a rooster crowing early in the morning. After attempting to coexist with the rooster, she talks to one of animal shelter employees, and they take the rooster inside. When Carrie says they don't have to do that, the woman replies, "Don't worry; they have a very lovely life."

This same phrase is then applied to the characters in the show, who all live alone, but, as evidenced by a rooftop party they have with transvestites in the Meatpacking District later on in the episode, do have a very lovely life.

Sex and the City may seem like a silly point of reference, but one of the things that I think the show does really well is to show what it's like to live in a big, glamorous, amazing city by yourself. It's a show about single women, and it's also about being lonely and not having everything you want even when you live in one of the coolest places in the world, and even though there's often a touch of melancholy to its descriptions of being a single woman in a big city, the entire series could be summed up in that phrase alone.

And even though my friends and I don't have a lot and we all live by ourselves in Paris, after coming home last night on the metro, I think the same can be said for us.

C'est un total eclipse of the heart

A couple of things:

1. I really miss burritos.

2. My discount grocery store plays the strangest French versions of American songs. Last time it was "Let the Sunshine In" from "Hair." Today it was "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and the song from "Flashdance." Surreal when you're digging through the discount gouda selection. Or really just surreal...

3. The funny thing about grad school applications is that they make you write. This week I've written way more than in the whole time I've been here. I am conjuring up images of spending next year in New York or Boston or Iowa or SoCal. Or, you know, Wisconsin.

4. About a month from now, my family will be in Paris!

5. Today I ran to the Bastille from my house. Turns out it's like 4 miles. So I guess I'm getting back in shape.

6. I made pasta puttanesca successfully for a second time. Mastering the art of normal cooking is coming in right on schedule.

7. One of my friends has a jar of peanut butter. Our level of excitement over this is kind of ridiculous.

8. Still people-sick. Who wants a postcard?

9. Leonard Cohen's music was totally made for Paris. Nothing makes me feel quite like a young bohemian writer making my way in Paris like listening to Leonard Cohen while cooking in my shabby kitchen in my tiny apartment between looking out at Paris night windows over the courtyard and writing.

10. Or perhaps I'm just kind of pretentious.

Crunch Time for Nounou

I am officially a nanny for a Senegalese family in Montparnasse, and I have yet to get over the irony of this. First of all, Montparnasse, once the bohemian and artistic center of Paris is where I go to babysit. Hello, bourgeoisie. Maybe the 13th isn't so bad. It's where the poor artists are. Which is way more bohemian than the wealthy non-artists of Montparnasse. I still sometimes wish I lived there, but don't tell anyone.

Anyway, all over Paris, you see North African nannies taking care of white babies, and then there's the six-year-old girl I babysit for, and me. We are an odd and unexpected pair in Paris, but I kind of love that my nannying situation is the opposite of what you usually see.

Today we were walking home and one of the kids from her school walked up to her and said, "Who is that? Your mom or your sister? Nounou?"

And I realized that I am a nounou. This is the French word for nanny. I wasn't sure whether to find it cute or to be sort of weirded out.

Nose is set to the proverbial grindstone (why do people always think that using the word "proverbial" makes clichés sound less lame? Well whatever. This is a blog.) on grad school applications to MFA programs. Definitely have a newfound appreciation for online applications. But UC Irvine's sneaky 2-writing-sample-requirement? Not so much. For shame, UC Irvine. Why must you be one of my top choices?

Also, sometimes I have these moments where I just think, oh dear, why am I a teacher again? Because one of the teachers at one of the schools I work for asked me if I knew a song that includes all of the days of the week, to teach the kids the words in English, and my first thought was "Police On My Back." By the Clash. And for a minute I was like, well, they probably wouldn't understand the lyrics anyway, and I don't think the teachers would care, and "I been runnin' Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday" is pretty catchy. And what day in Paris do I ever not have the thought, "What have I done?"

Then I remembered that it has lines about shootings and stuff. And I am a teacher. So I went with a song that has no lyrics except for the actual days of the week, and a youtube video with a man singing in a fluffy hat. With hand puppets.

Also, when do you know you work with kids? When you pull out your umbrella because it's rainy in Paris and a flash card comes floating out onto the sidewalk with the word "NOODLES" on one side.

Plastic Wrap Jesus, Our Lady of the Garage, and A Bad Case of People-Sickness

I found out this week that the beautiful old church at Place Jeanne d'Arc near my apartment is called Notre Dame de la Gare. This is pretty much "Our Lady of the Train Station," or, less charitably, "Our Lady of the Garage." Coincidentally, I live down the street from a Portuguese bookstore that sells Jesus figurines, which are some of the scariest I've ever seen. I mean, the concept of Jesus doesn't bother me, it's just these bizarre plastic figures that are grotesque and crucified. I don't know. Crucifixes, particularly of the gory Catholic variety, have always sort of freaked me out. The most terrifying Jesus on display, and one that has never been sold since I've gotten here, is still wrapped in its plastic wrap. It's creepy enough to see Jesus looking all battered and scary. But the plastic wrap adds (my apologies) a whole new layer.

So there you have it. I live in the quartier of plastic wrap Jesus and Our Lady of the Garage. France does weird stuff with religion.

Today I ate American French toast for the first time in probably months at one of my friends' apartments. It definitely beat Parisian petit dejeuner, where you have to pay about 8 euros for coffee and a croissant and get hungry twenty minutes later.

So much of my life here revolves around food. Have I mentioned that I love grocery shopping here? It's way cheaper than it is in the US, and probably the only that is in France. Two days ago I discovered the holy grail (can't seem to get away from these religious references...) of food shopping -- the French discount grocery store, where you can get fromage blanc (France's delicious answer to plain yogurt), honey, fair trade coffee, and all of my weekly staples (couscous, lentils, eggs, fruit, veggies) and even sort of fancy stuff (harissa! olive oil! organic things!) all for around a euro each, if that.

Mmmmm. I love saving money. And I love cooking delicious things. I am learning how to cook here, and definitely not in the Julia Child sense of the word, either. But given that I could probably count the number of times I cooked anything before coming here, and also that my kitchen is literally two hot plates, a minifridge, and a sink, I think I'm doing pretty well. Couscous and lentils, harissa, kidney bean burgers, a variety of omelets... the next project is pasta puttanesca.

As always, at breakfast we started talking about not leaving. And it's tempting. I'm applying to grad school this winter, and if I get into one of my top choices, I'm definitely going. But I thought about it a little. I mean, if I was going to be here for more than a year, I probably wouldn't want to stay in my tiny apartment. I would probably want to find something cheaper, and maybe a little bigger (c'est possible!) in one of three Ms: the Marais, Montparnasse, or Montmartre. Or the 17th arrondissement because I know it and love it.

And I would want to get a magic jack for my computer (it turns your computer into a phone, way easier than Skype), and probably a toaster oven. And I would probably need more clothes. And a renewed visa. And probably a little more patience with the whole French bureaucracy thing.

But I thought about it.

And then I remembered that while I don't get homesick much anymore, I am constantly people-sick. I miss getting coffee with my friends at home and at school and walking around Greenlake together and going out dancing and doing stupid things like watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or searching for bubbletea in the university district at midnight or listening to Leonard Cohen driving around late at night. I miss watching "Mad Men" with my parents. I miss the back office at 826. And you know your life has gotten kind of strange when the people you miss are on both coasts of the United States and even in different countries. How did I get here? I left Seattle for college when I was 18, and I spent four years in Northampton, well, four months were spent in Senegal. That's key. I'm pretty sure that's when the wanderlust happened.

And now I live in Paris. And depending on where I end up getting into grad school, I have no idea where I'll be around this time next year.

A while ago, my mom told me that most 22-year-olds don't live by themselves in Paris. One of my friends said that if she could transplant the people she loves at home to Paris, she would never want to leave. And they're both right. Such is the conundrum of being one of the 22-year-olds that do live by themselves in Paris. If you happen to know one of us, we probably miss you. A lot.

Sometimes, though, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Life's a circus don't be so sad!

A few things have happened in the past few days:
1. I found out that French cobblers are really good at fixing boots.
2. Today I went to the open artist studios at 59 Rivoli with some friends. A painter sauntered into his studio and sang everything he said to us ("Helloooo, where are you froooom? Please correct my Eeeenglish! I like to paint, my name is Francesco!"), then gave us a tour of some of his work, and when one of my friends bought one of his paintings (a cheap one on a tiny piece of paper, we are teaching assistants here), he made little sketches of us at a circus. He said, "You see, life's a circus, don't be so sad."
3. Immediately after, we went to a free exhibition on war photography at l'Hotel de Ville. Some of the photographs were really effecting, but it was really crowded and poorly-organized.
4. We went to Starbucks. I know Starbucks is corporate, American, and evil, but I don't care. Nothing feels like home as much as a holiday latte consumed on the steps inside Starbucks between two of my friends while it pours outside.

It was a really good Saturday.

Life's a circus. Don't be so sad.

What comes is better than what came before.

Let me just say, there are few things that cannot be made a little better by delicious Israeli shawerma in the Marais followed by a cheap beer and listening to one of your friends play somewhat incomprehensible, really fun songs in a hipster (but not too scene-y) bar in the 11th, all with a good friend.

The pipes in my apartment are about a million years old, and there was some minor flooding today, but the above was pretty much a cure-all. Well, that and the fact that my landlord fixed it while I was out.

New favorite first line of a song: "The ashtray said you were up all night."

Things here get stressful more than I'd like them to, but I've been listening to Lou Reed lately (and Cat Power's cover of Lou Reed), and he has some good advice:

Oh, I do believe
you are what you perceive
What comes is better
than what came before.

Everything sucks until you find out Wes Anderson is your neighbor.

So, this week was kind of insane -- my apartment had hot-water issues, I found out the French government is definitely not paying me until December, my phone broke, and the French educational powers that be made me want to cry on several occasions. I also convinced myself that I had a bat bite, because I had a bug bite that looked kind of weird and even though I have never seen a bat in my apartment, I decided that the holes in my walls are big enough to let them in. I would blame this on the fact that my house at Smith had actual bat problems and so I'm a little abnormally paranoid about these things, but really? Anxiety overload causes bizarre worries and fixations. Sometimes being a grown up sucks, and it really is strange that I'm figuring out how to be one in Paris, of all places.

Then I found out that Wes Anderson is practically my neighbor. According to a profile in the New Yorker, he lives in Montparnasse. Montparnasse is a few stops away on the metro from the 13th, aka right near where I live.

Wes Anderson is also my favorite director. Well, actually Agnes Varda probably is. And I bet she lives in Paris too. But my favorite movie is "The Royal Tenenbaums" and he directed it.

But really. My job stuff is driving me crazy right now, and I had an insanely stressful week, but Wes Anderson is pretty much my neighbor.

Sometimes Paris makes me feel like crying and then sometimes I find out my favorite director lives on the left bank, which is also where I live, which is also where Ernest Hemingway lived, which is also where Man Ray and Simone de Beauvoir are buried, and you know what? It kind of puts the other things in perspective in the most surreal, wonderful way that will only ever happen in Paris.

So I guess that's pretty cool. And I guess I'll be on the lookout for an awkward gangly blonde-haired man in custom-made suits and Rivers Cuomo glasses. Because it might be Wes Anderson!

Sad cats, cheap cheese, and Victor Hugo

This morning I hit up the American Church for the first time since I was still looking for a place to live, with the hope that some cute Franco-American family was looking for an American babysitter to take care of their kids a few days a week. Not really the case -- there's an Irish setter that needs to be walked every single day for a couple in the center of Paris, and a lot of people want maids. Huh. Not so much with the success.

On the way home, I stopped at my quartier marche -- it's a small market on Saturday and Wednesday (not the same as my Sunday market, which is at Place Jeanne d'Arc) -- the Vincent-Auriol market goes underneath the above ground metro line and is full of produce sellers who will shout at you claiming to sell the cheapest produce. Reminds me of Senegal. I always go to a middle-aged woman and a younger guy who sell me cheap fruit and don't shout at me. They're nice and reasonably priced. Today I spent about half of what I would spend on fruit at the supermarche on bananas, apples, and tomatoes. There's also a cheese stand, where you can buy delicious cheese, and if you stick to small amounts (a sliver of cumin gouda, a little mound of chevre) it's also pretty cheap. And then there is the flower man, who sells fresh-cut flowers for a fraction of what you pay in the neighborhood florist shops.

I should add that the people I buy my cheese and produce from are really friendly. In Paris, people who have these jobs are often just plain rude -- not all the time, but there's less of a need to be overly friendly like in the US -- so it's really nice to have the cheese lady put up with my need to "reflechir" over the fromage and then only charge me 4 euro for two kinds that will last me all week.

I also discovered a boulangerie today that is apparently run by a woman with a sense of humor. This made my day. The thing is -- okay, my salary is not very much. I haven't even been paid yet, and when I do get paid, most of my pay will go to rent. So when I spend money, I'm more careful about it here. I like to linger over the pastry case before I pick out my pain au chocolat. I want to get my money's worth. I mean, I don't want to spend it on an unworthy, sub-par, not delicious enough pastry. When you're doing Paris on the cheap, you've got to make these things count. And a lot of times, Parisians aren't really fans of customers leaning over the pastry case deep in thought for a mini-eternity, when you could just buy your baguette and a pastry and head out.

But this woman? As I looked around her bakery and comparison-shopped tonight's dessert and explained myself by saying, "I have to reflect a little bit," she said, "That's fine. I'm open until 5."

Word. I am coming back.

So, things that I love about Paris:
-cumin gouda
-chevre
-French candy (Actually, I think Haribo is German, but still...)
-pain au chocolat
-how much more I read here
-how cheap and delicious my groceries are
-having breakfast in my apartment and looking out onto the other buildings and the courtyard
-free libraries that have excellent English sections
-cheap pools
-goofy little daily interactions
-the best public transit of anywhere I've ever lived
-my tiny kitchen and bedroom, especially since my last Ikea trip
-living alone (can be really nice, especially when the city gets overwhelming)

Things I don't like about Paris:
-my tiny, problematic shower
-having to watch my step over the urine trails on the sidewalk all the time
-how everything kind of slows down when it rains because people just walk everywhere
-old plumbing systems and consequent problems with pipes and stuff
-the fact that one of my hallway neighbors is turning out to be Mr. All Bad Music All The Time and seems to really enjoy the late-night conversations with people with high-pitched voices (and, this being an apartment building and not Smith, I can't just go over there all bleary-eyed and indignant and be like, "I have a test tomorrow, can you please be quiet?")
-living alone (can get lonely sometimes)

Things I miss about home:
-having on oven. I keep wanting to bake some cookies or brownies or something and that is just out of the question when your kitchen is equipped with hot plates and a mini-fridge.
-PANCAKES. Preferably chocolate chip or blueberry. I really want some pancakes. I don't know why, I don't even eat them that often at home.
-Oreos and peanut butter. Okay, so you can get both here, but they're so expensive!
-how everything doesn't close early,
-and how everything is (pretty much) open on Sunday
-a good mocha/latte that doesn't cost more than week's worth of bread
-American bureaucracy. I never thought I'd say that, but not getting paid until almost 3 months after my arrival in Paris? Yeah. I miss you, United States.

But one thing I love about Paris -- these random moments that sometimes happen in the metro. Like today, I was heading home from Invalides and the American Church with my earbuds in, and I was kind of on autopilot. I got to the Etoile/Nation line, and I started down the corridor to the direction of Etoile, when I realized that Nation is the direction where my neighborhood is, and so I quickly spun around and headed over to Nation.

A middle-aged woman in a hijab who was standing in the Nation corridor saw the whole thing and just smiled at me. I could tell she thought it was funny but there was nothing malicious about it. I smiled back and it was like we were in on a joke. This is a stranger I will never see again, but it's funny how you can connect with people in unexpected ways, even fleetingly, in a huge city full of strangers, which is exactly what Paris is.

I have plans to go to Victor Hugo's house this afternoon, but that moment made my day.

I go back to work tomorrow and I can't wait to start teaching again and see my students and attempt to make small talk in the teachers' lounge and have a million French children ask me questions about whether or not I was born in England or the English words for the days of the week or whether or not I have friends in Paris. I've already planned one lesson for Friday. We're playing Bingo with numbers up to 20 in English. Last week they counted pictures on the board and I tried to teach them little bits of English.

"How many sad cats are there?"
"Zair hah firteen sad cats."

"How many cats with hats are there?"
"Zair hah ten cats ins ats."

Vacation, schmacation, France. Maybe it's that pesky American/Protestant/Puritan work ethic, but I like going to work.

Vacation, all I ever wanted.

Vacation continues, and I have to admit, I really miss my teaching routine, which isn't even much of a routine, which is saying something. Also, I was really sad to miss Halloween. I mean, I love Halloween. It's probably my favorite holiday, mostly because I love dressing up. I've been Margot Tenenbaum (okay, well, I did that a lot actually), Patty Hearst, Deb from "Napoleon Dynamite," and as a child I was frequently a witch or a Greek goddess. One year I was Medusa. One of my favorite pictures my parents took of me when I was little is one of me as a four-year-old dressed as a firefighter for Halloween. I even have charcoal smudged on my face for extra effect.

We never skimped on Halloween at my house.

And when I got to college it just got more extreme, culminating in last year, when I made a tank top with the SLA logo on it, as well as a cardboard gun. There was also a beret involved. Looking back on it, it was a pretty politically incorrect costume, and I don't think I'll be Patty Hearsting it again any time soon. But I do love Halloween, and so being in a country where Halloween isn't really a big deal was kind of sad. I mean, I firmly believe that any party is better when it requires a costume. At Smith we often had themed parties -- in the time I was there, we had a communist party, a Candyland party, a Wes Anderson party, an alter egos party (I was Margot, as per), and a lot of themed birthday parties.

So I'm getting worried that maybe college is the only time in your life when it's acceptable to frequently dress ridiculously with very little reason to. Because if this is true, I really should have savored it.

I went out Saturday night, but the first stop was a bar in the Marais for a cheap beer (sensing a theme?) with some American friends, and then a birthday party one of my French friends was having at his place in "the sketchy part of Montmartre." Which, by the way, is actually that sketchy. Welcome to Paris, where ordinary people walk their dogs alongside prostitutes and drug dealers after midnight.

For the record, the French party turned out to be a costume party, which made me feel lame for not having one. Maybe I'll get a second chance at some point.

So today I spent my vacation time doing Important Things, like grocery shopping, which is really more like a hobby for me here, because I love it, returning overpriced and poor quality housewares to a French furniture store (yay! money back!), getting my new monthly metro pass, and taking my phone to the place I bought it in the Marais because today it decided to just up and die. Oops.

After my errands, I returned to the Cimetiere Montparnasse to take pictures, like I've been meaning to since the last time I was there. And Simone de Beauvoir's grave? Still amazing. And I finally found Man Ray's grave. It turns out it doesn't get me like Simone. I think that often times, the art that someone produces is more meaningful than even something like seeing where they're buried. At Smith we were always talking about archives and reading early drafts of famous writing, and learning about the writers that way, but I'm thinking more and more that you can actually get way more out of just looking at the final product -- at the painting, at the book, or in this case, the photograph. Just like Sylvia Plath's poetry means more to me than her drafts or journals, Man Ray's photos are a lot more meaningful to me than seeing where he's buried. Maybe that doesn't make sense. Because Simone de Beauvoir's grave gets me all choked up and I haven't even read anything she's ever written.

There goes my theory.

Also? I am such a Smithie. Ruminating on art and life and death with references to Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, and Man Ray. It's times like this I feel a bit like a stereotype/caricature.

Anyway, something funny happened as I wandered the cemetery. I found Charles Baudelaire's grave (yeah, that's not the funny part) and all of the sudden, just as I was zooming my camera lens onto his name, my camera battery died. Now, usually, I can trick my camera into thinking it has enough battery by messing with the battery slot, but this time it didn't work. At all. The camera just stopped working.

So I'm beginning to think that old Chuck Baudelaire isn't too fond of people photographing his grave. Man Ray doesn't seem to mind though, which, given his field of expertise, just makes sense. And I have to admit, I find that pretty funny.

I cooked dinner at home while listening to Feist and then Duke Ellington again, and I have a new theory about jazz. I'm pretty sure it was invented for people who live alone. Because you can have it on at all hours of the day, and it kind of livens up a quiet apartment, and you never have to turn it off, because you can read to it. Okay, so having music I can read and write to is key. I can't do either if the music I'm listening to has lyrics, because I can only focus on the lyrics. It's like the opposite of ADD. It's like I have some kind of musical fixation syndrome.

So yeah. Even though it makes me feel like I am secretly a 47-year-old man, listening to jazz (Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Miles Davis specifically) is keeping my apartment lively. Even when I'm reading Wuthering Heights after I make dinner.

Next I'll probably be taking up cigars and golf and saying things like "old chap" with no sense of irony whatsoever. And then waxing poetic about Simone de Beauvoir and cooking vegetarian food and writing in my journal while sitting on my flowered sheets. So that'll be interesting. Leave it to Paris to bring out my girly defaults and old man tendencies at the very same time.

The 13th in Pictures

This week we are technically on vacation, and I've been taking photos all the time, mostly of the things I've seen  -- we went to Versailles yesterday for a "real vacation day," although I have to admit that I've spent a lot of my break doing boring logistical but necessary things, like cleaning my apartment and figuring out how to get a library card. Versailles pictures tomorrow, for now it's all about the 13th:

This is a little park near my house, named after Eloise and Abelard. I don't spend much time there, but I love the name.

 

I love this sign.  It's basically just a sign saying that the plants in the park will come back after their winter repose. It's so simple, but phrased in such an absurd/elegant way...

The 13th is full of random little things like this. Kind of a non sequitur here, but I like stumbling on them.

So, there is a lot of graffiti in Paris. Case in point.

And right beside the graffiti, you have this. That's the 13th for you, but it is also just typical of Paris.

Also, no one loves their quartier enough to pick up after their dogs... these signs, while charming, are not very effective.

So I christened my apartment with a dinner party with a friend of mine. Behold our culinary prowess! Kidney bean burgers, tomatoes and avocadoes, a delicious baguette, and kir we mixed ourselves. I was pretty proud. Also, of my ability to rouse up a dining room table in my bedroom. I mean, my mulitpurpose room, I mean, most of my apartment...

It's me! Finally, a picture of a person. Enjoying some kir...

So, I love the combination of the brick, white-ish wall, dark shadow, and the trail left behind by an airplane. It's the view onto an airshaft from my kitchen -- and also just very very typical of old French apartment buildings. I love it.

And because the 13th is full of contrasts, here's a nice juxtaposition for you -- the Bibliotheque Nationale, about as modern as you can get.

So yeah. This is where I live. I'm not sure the pictures provide the whole story, but the 13th is a really crazy, interesting place, and what makes it all the more strange is that it's in such a state of flux right now that I know it will be totally different in even just a year. For now it's Chinatown, art galleries, artist ateliers (including one that used to be a refrigerator), the train lines to the suburbs, rich/poor, young/old, families/single people, old/new architecture, and a Metro line that goes above ground.

I like it.

If Kate Moss and Garth from Wayne's World had a chain-smoking baby...

I just returned from seeing a band that a friend of mine is in at Pop In, a drippingly hipster bar in the 11th. The show was fun, but one of my American friends put it best:

"In America, people who dress like hipsters still have their own identities."

France? Not so much. Pop In is way too much of a scene for me. It's like a bizarre underworld where everyone looks like they're aiming to resemble Garth from "Wayne's World" or Kate Moss, or in the most awkward of French hipster fashion decisions -- a little bit of both. Not to mention the fact that the place is literally packed with these hipsters. As in, you can't move two inches without getting hipstered, or at the very least caught on someone's super-long bangs. They make mine look pretty tame.

The whole time I was there, it was all I could do to keep from making snarky comments while we nursed our cheap beers and tried not to stare too much. You know. "Oh, I should have brought my yeti costume too."

It was a fun night, but the scene was so artificial, and in the end it was the sweet non-hipster company that made it that way. Maybe everyone is as preoccupied with self-presentation as the French hipsters, but I don't know. I sort of doubt it. I mean, I don't wear a costume every day, at least not a Kate Moss Wayne's World one. And there was something so creepily fake about everyone there. I'm looking forward to singing earnestly along to Britney Spears or smiling sincerely over silly things like pain au chocolat to get the hipster out of my system.

I will never be that cool.

Thank God.

Getting better and writing poems with L. Cohen

Disclaimer: The following contains references to my brief medical anomoly-hood this summer that some readers may find upsetting. Proceed with caution, dear readers -- however many of you there may be...

Today I swam for an hour, and I realized that I am getting much stronger after the excision of the Mini Cooper tumor this summer. Or maybe I'm just a faster swimmer because I'm not hauling around 7 extraneous pounds. It felt good, more than I can put into words. Getting better felt good, being better -- hell, just being okay -- defies description.

Also -- French pools sell swimsuits in vending machines, and require women to wear swim caps and men to wear speedos. Supposedly "hygiene" is the reason for this. I have my doubts.

Then my swimming friend and I stopped for a coffee at a small cafe across the street from the pool. It was the perfect antidote to swimming-induced aching (in a good way) limbs. Back at home in the 13th, I went grocery shopping, made dinner, watched "True Blood," drank tea and ate some pain au chocolat, wrote a poem, and listened to Leonard Cohen before bed. "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "So Long Marianne" and especially "Last Year's Man" sound different here. Better, if that's possible. Or maybe I'm just better.

I like Paris. It's been said but it bears repeating.

Lazy Dimanche

How I spent my Sunday:
1. starting my day by reading Ernest Hemingway and drinking coffee after sleeping in.
2. picking up a fresh baguette from my usual boulangerie -- miraculously open even though it's Sunday -- and an avocado from the Sunday marche at Place Jeanne d'Arc.
3. taking the Metro to Mairie des Lilas to see the movie version of "Le Petit Nicolas" with student discount tickets with one of my friends who's also an assistant -- it was adorable.
4. returning to the 13th for a wander around and show her my new neighborhood -- Bibliotheque Nationale Francois Mitterand, Piscine Josephine Baker, the quai and its accompanying nightclub boats, and Les Frigos, an abandoned refrigerator factory that is now an artist colony with requisite awesome graffiti and galleries and it is so cool!
5. ...and then returning from our wanderings to make and eat a delicious vegetarian dinner (kidney bean burgers, a salad of tomatoes and avocadoes, and baguette) and drink homemade kir at my apartment.

It was a good one.

A few more pictures:

More pictures are on their way, including those of my growing vegetarian culinary skillz.

Noble Art and Cheap Beer with Ernest Hemingway

It's funny how teaching at one school I work at makes me totally drained and stressed out, and the other has just the opposite effect. I work at one school Thursday and Friday afternoons, and it's only been a week but I love it. Today I taught colors in one class and had my second class choose their "prenoms americains." We talked about English names they already knew last week, and as a result we now have a Brittany (because they all know who Britney Spears is), a Hannah (Hannah Montana), a Leia (like the princess), and I even agreed to let one of my students call herself Megan on the condition that if it gets too confusing she'll change it to something else. In the colors class, we discussed the difference between "blue" in French and English, and decided that in English it's just a longer "o" sound -- BLOOOOOO. They practiced saying this over and over again, as well as the "r" in orange. I was kind of stressed this morning, because I interviewed for a babysitting job and while I'm pretty sure I didn't get it, I had to to the Metro out to the wealthiest district in Paris at 8 a.m. - kind of a trek for me, as I live in Chinatown and everything - and suffice it to say that the person who interviewed me had a suit and an attitude to match the 16th. At 8 a.m. We have already established that I am not a morning person.

So the moment I stepped into the classroom and started going through "what's your name?" and playing games with the colors in English, it was an instantaneous mood upgrade/change of pace. Teaching can be really hard and hectic, but when it goes well, it's almost an antidote to those things. It's impossible to not be totally engaged.

I read Ernest Hemingway on the train to work and felt both precious and blatantly American. I like his take on Paris, in some respects, although most of the book can be summarized by the following:

"I met up with F. Scott Fitzgerald and we got totally wasted all day long. Writing is a noble art. Oysters. Whiskey. Wine. Cafe cremes. Zelda is such a bitch. Also. I hate punctuation. Shakespeare and Co. shout-out!"

Okay so that's not actually what it sounds like. But I'm definitely not grabbing a double whiskey every morning or deciding on the cheaper oysters at cafes. It's more like a quick coffee in my apartment before I go to work, and deciding on the cheapest everything everywhere. Our Parises are very different places.

I really loved some of his thoughts about Paris, though. Here are a few:

"He [FSF] was always trying to work. Each day he would try and fail. He laid the failure to Paris, the town best organized for a writer to write in that there is."

And in the restored edition's additional Paris sketches:

"The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of cafe cremes, the smell of early morning sweeping out and mopping and luck were all you needed."

EH is totally right about Paris. It is the best place I have ever been for writing. I don't think I've ever been anywhere else where it's completely acceptable to sit and write in a cafe all day if you buy one cafe creme. And the city is basically structured for wandering and concurrent pondering and existential musings. That may sound trite, but it's really true. Even in my quartier, there's a small park, and every time I go past it, there's always someone reading on a bench. The bigger parks are full of destination readers, who sit on benches and just read. And the Metro is always full of open books.

And I love that so much. It makes me feel infinitely more Parisian to have a book on the Metro, and it's one of my favorite things about Paris. People read here. Its history of writers is just kind of a nice addition to the foundation that makes the city itself so hospitable to people who want to make their mark on the world by making up stories and poems. It makes me think that maybe EH's and my Parises aren't as different as they could be.

So. That being said, I haven't really written much at all since I've gotten here. I should get on that.

I've been distracted by the fact that I live in Paris. And learning how to budget and cook for myself and clean my apartment all the time (it turns out that when you have a tiny space, it gets messy fast) and read on the Metro without missing my stop. Last night I had a cheap beer at a hipster bar in the 11th with a friend of a friend whose band opened for Yo La Tengo a while ago. He and his friend told me to be aware of the changes in Paris, that I am living in "a dying city" that will one day just be a museum full of bourgeois people who can afford to live in the center of Paris, and that the Montparnasse Cemetary is okay, but Pere Lachaise is where it's at. Jim Morrison is buried there, as is Picasso, and it's also where you go to smoke pot if you're a Parisian high school student.

They were impressed with the fact that I have a driver's license at home, because though they are both in their twenties, growing up in Paris meant that getting a license was too hard and unnecessary. When one of their cell phones died, and I said, "Oh, that's too bad," they both looked at me like I was crazy and said, "No! It is such a relief to not be able to be contacted."

Then I realized that I was having a beer with two French guys I had just met, one of whom is in a band that opened for Yo La Tengo, in a hipster bar in the 11th in Paris and it was more than a little surreal. Okay, so I really hope Paris doesn't become a museum, and I sometimes get a little panicky when my cell phone dies, and I'm following up that night out with a night in cleaning my apartment and mastering vegetarian cooking and going to work again tomorrow, but really? On the way home, I watched the right bank turn into the left, and it struck me that Paris is a city big enough to house Ernest Hemingway's whiskey-infused meanderings and a hipster bar in the 11th that serves cheap beer to a clientele of musicians and girls with long bangs and the most awkward French hipsters you will ever see. But I said it before and I'll say it again. I don't think they're really that different after all.

Also, I may not live in the trendy part of Paris, but Ernest Hemingway lived on the left bank too.

It's out of focus. But it just seemed appropriate. I spotted it near the Corvisart Metro on my way to get apartment insurance yesterday. "Poetry is an extreme sport."

Photos! Finally! Et la vie quotidienne...

In my last-minute preparations for France, I brought the wrong USB cord for my camera, and I didn't get a replacement until yesterday, which was sad because it meant I was taking some photos, but they didn't have anywhere to go. Here's what I've got so far. It's just the beginning:

This is the front of my building, at 161 Rue du Chevaleret. Typical crazy French facade and fancy door. The building is old, which is not as common in the 13th. My apartment isn't nearly as cool-looking as the facade, but I really like the way my building looks.

And inside - this is the biggest room in my apartment. I only have 17 square meters, but as you can see, I have a very French window and faux balcony in the corner.

I'm not religious at all, but Notre Dame is pretty amazing even for those born secular. I mean, it's beautiful. It's mesmerizing to just look up at it for a long time. Just watch out for all of the tourists taking pictures. I mean, not that I did that or anything... And also, gargoyles? Yeah. I love the gargoyles.

I love these eyes - they were up along the Seine when I first got here. The last time I was back at Quai des Celestins, they had started to peel off, sadly, but Paris is full of ephemeral art (and public art!) like this. And in Paris, even a lot of the graffiti is beautiful. Although there are probably some who would disagree with me.

This is the view from the cafe I would go to every day to check my email when I was staying at Hotel du Fauconnier in the Marais. You could just sit and look out at these buildings (all old, spotless, and pretty) and listen to crowds of people go by on the street below. A nice way to spend an afternoon.

You can take the girl out of the Smith College art department, but you can't take the Smith College art department out of the girl.

Saint-Jacques, near the Marais - I went here during my first few days in France, because from a distance I thought it was Notre Dame. Turns out it isn't, but it's still a beautiful cathedral (I think, maybe it technically isn't...) with a small park surrounding it, which was full of Parisians reading when I was there. Paris is full of places to sit and think or read, which I love, so it was a nice discovery.

So there you have it - photographic evidence that I live here. Further evidence is the fact that I've had my first truly stressful few days not due to trying to find an apartment but due to ordinary things - like Mondays, and then coming home yesterday to find that my land lord had decided to fix one of the pipes in my apartment without calling me first. That was awkward. There are few things as awkward as walking into your hallway to see your apartment door open and then to see a gnome pop out holding a wrench, informing you that he would have called but his cell phone died.

Then, later in the evening, the previous tenant of my apartment showed up just as I was getting home for the second time trying to get his mail out of my mailbox. He explained that he transferred his address but his mail is still coming here. So I gave him anything in my boite aux lettres that was clearly his, and then he gave me his email address so that I can email him if anything else comes for him.

So basically, a day of awkward interactions, not really abated by the fact that I have an earache at the moment, and all I really wanted to do was make couscous and lentils and try out my brand new French ear drops and watch True Blood. Sometimes it really is the little things.

Today got off to a better start. I went to my quartier's market, which goes under the Metro (it's above ground here), and people sell all manner of fruits and veggies and cheese and flowers and junk and Indian scarves and Chinese food, and the prices are way cheaper than supermarches. I got a huge bag of apples, oranges, and tomatoes, a tiny piece of fancy gouda and a small pat of chevre, and a bunch of irises for my desk. On the way home, I picked up a schedule for yoga classes at a community center near my apartment, and picked up my daily 40 centimes demi-baguette at Boulangerie Jeanne d'Arc. I think the market is definitely the way to go for cheap produce, but the cheese was pretty quality, and I think if I stick to the generic cheese at the supermarche, that might be the cheaper way to go. This is very mundane, but shopping for food in Paris, while way cheaper than buying groceries in the United States, relies on comparison-shopping and trying out as many options as possible. And there are a lot of options - everything from cheap discount grocery stores to more ordinary grocery stores, to borderline Target-ish stores full of pricy food and crying kids in the cereal aisle. Apparently one's desire for Frosted Flakes and consequent tantrum is not an American phenomenon. Who knew?

I've found that Carrefour is pretty reasonably priced if you buy the Carrefour products (this is my grocery store of choice), Leader Price is dirt cheap but kind of scary, Casino is a bit more expensive than Carrefour, and Monoprix, while it is essentially called "one price" is overpriced. I'm a big fan of my generic Carrefour cereal and lentils and couscous and fresh fruit and fromage blanc (which is cheese, but it's like a more runny version of plain yogurt) with jam. A lot of things here are really affordable - coffee beans are cheaper, as are basic staples. And totally random things are more expensive. American things are more expensive too, obviously - any international foods section in a typical grocery store will have incredibly pricy peanut butter and pancakes and maple syrup on the American shelf.

I've found that life in Paris is definitely as glamorous as you'd want it to be - you really can just buy a cafe creme and sit in a cafe for hours reading and writing. The majority of the people who live here dress beautifully, the food is delicious and sometimes even cheap, and every day I walk past beautiful things that are just here and have been forever. I also tend to stumble over things that I love - especially bookstores. The Metro is amazing and makes getting around really easy - nothing is too far away. I can hop on in the 13th and get off in the Marais or Montmartre.

But - a big part of living here is also what it would be anywhere else - figuring out how to save the most money on groceries, figuring out how to get to work on time, figuring out which boulangerie in your neighborhood has the best bread at the cheapest price, figuring out how to plunge your toilet, putting up with the annoying parts of living in an old Parisian apartment building. It's a lot of logistics and getting oriented, which I guess is really the difference between being here as a tourist and being here because you live here.

But I never wanted to live here because I like visiting the Eiffel Tower, anyway.

Now it's rainy, and I'm in my apartment listening to Iron and Wine, putting off going out again for boring but necessary errands. La vie quotidienne, I guess.

More pictures are on the way. I now have a whole memory card to fill up, and I am really excited to finally be able to photograph the things I see every day.

A Case of the Mondays

I live in Paris. I only work three days a week. I am housed, clothed, living in a neighborhood I am falling in love with, I'm getting to know people in Paris, one of my oldest and dearest friends from home is coming to see me in February for a backpacking trip across Europe, my family is coming for Christmas, and my greatest troubles tend to revolve around having to buy generic chocolate-hazelnut spread instead of Nutella (cheaper), frequently getting lost (which in Paris is a good way to get around), and my apartment has been having some hot water issues lately. The latter, I should say, is partially due to the fact that my dream to live in an old Parisian apartment building came true, and old buildings come with old pipes, however romantic their facades and faux-balconies may be.

And yet, the Monday morning wake up alarm at 6:30 am is something I will probably never get used to. The 8:30-4:30 workday I have on Mondays? That too. And teaching approximately 16 mini English lessons on those days as classes of 25 kids and more cycle through in 5-person groups? Yeah, rapid-fire language learning? Not so much with the reality.

That said, sometimes I love teaching. They call me the professeur d'anglais at both of my schools, which just makes very little sense to me, because I have no training whatsoever, but it sounds kind of cool. Also, I will never feel more like a rock star than I do when I go to work. Being the American English teacher is like being a minor celebrity. The kids, even the ones I don't teach, stare at me whenever I go anywhere in the school, point me out to their parents when they get picked up, and try to say hello and goodbye to me in English as often as possible. It is adorable. Kind of scary though. Tons of children staring at you relentlessly? When it isn't cute, it's definitely unsettling.

In one of my classes I'm working with ten 7- and 8-year-olds for 45 minutes once a week. They're in a split-grade-level class, so they have English with me while their teacher works with the other students. And these kids are lovely. They're really hilarious and cute and very focused. But every class is different, and I'm getting the sense that Mondays are just going to require massive amounts of caffeine and patience, only one of which is totally guaranteed, and definitely a book for the train ride, which wouldn't be a big deal, because I'm ten minutes from the train line I take, and it takes twenty minutes to get to the town, but then I'm no longer in Paris and public transit isn't as perfect, so I have to wait a long time for the bus to take me to my schools.

And I forgot how much being tired makes me feel like a zombie. It kind of makes me understand my time in high school better. I wonder what it would have been like to be fifteen and not have to get up at 6:30 every morning. What else could I have accomplished in those four years that I didn't get around to because I spent so much of it totally sleep-deprived?

I know, I know. Complain complain complain, girl who lives in Paris and only works 12 hours a week.

I still think they should start school later.

Sharif don't like it.

I just returned from my first Parisian party, where I discovered three things:

1) You have never really heard "Rock the Casbah" until you have heard French people singing along to "Rock the Casbah."

2) You know you don't go to Smith anymore when you go to a party and men are just there, voluntarily, hanging out, the music is American rap when it isn't "Rock the Casbah," and although your command of the language isn't perfect, you're pretty sure no one has used the word "hegemony" in the last hour.

3) The Metro runs until 2 a.m., and even if you live in the sleepiest part of the 13th arrondissement, you won't be the only one coming home on the Metro late at night.

Good to know.

The End of Ikea

The French have it in for flat sheets. They like fitted sheets, and they're big fans of duvets and huge, fluffy square pillows, but flat sheets are like the annoying thing that comes in between you and your duvet. They hate them so much that at Ikea you can't buy them in any color besides white, which is kind of a drag if your fitted sheet is dark blue, and you bought two of them thinking one was a flat sheet, and you only brought one back to Ikea to exchange it for a flat sheet... Yeah, I now have mismatched flat and fitted sheets. What of it?

The good news is that I finally conquered Ikea. As in, I walked in, got the stuff I needed, scrutinized over prices to make sure I didn't get anything too expensive to be worth it or too cheap to be functional, and my apartment is now fitted out with a flat sheet, a new paper lantern over the naked bulb my bedroom came with, a mattress pad for my futon/sofa/bed (they call them clic-clacs here, way less complicated...), and a bedside lamp. In the interest of being a Responsible Adult, I set a spending limit for today's trip, and I did not exceed it. Now, this may not seem like a big thing. But I have a weakness for pretty things, and Ikea casts this glowy fluorescent spell on me that last time made me buy a gratuitous pair of slippers and picture frames that are too big for the photos I brought from home, so it's kind of an accomplishment that I didn't buy anything cute and stupid that I didn't really need.

Because really, this is Paris. Beautiful clothes can be had here at very cheap prices. If I'm going to blow my money on things I don't need - and I don't even really want to do that - they might as well be clothes. Or lavish meals. Or cafe cremes outside at cafe-brasseries.

I am never going back to Ikea. From here on out, it's flea markets and things I stumble upon in Paris. Scandinavian design has a special place in my heart, but I can get it at home.

Something I can't do at home is wander around Montmartre. And that is what I did after rearranging my furniture and making my Ikea spoils make my place feel more like home. I took the Metro to Montparnasse, then to Montmartre, where I meandered up to the Butte and my favorite view of Paris from Sacre-Coeur. I tried to find my neighborhood, but either you can't see it from there or my Paris geography is still iffy. Montmartre is always full of tourists, no matter what day it is or what else is going on or how many other places there are to be in Paris. But it's probably my favorite place in Paris, and I plan to go there as often as I can while I live here, no matter how many mimes try to talk to me or how many guys on the street try to sell me Eiffel Tower key chains or beer. After getting a look at the view, I decided to go back down the back of the hill rather than the (touristy) front, and as I wandered down the hill, I walked right through a movie set. I mean, a movie was being filmed on a street in Montmartre not far from the Montmartre Museum, and the actors were there as well as the camera crew, and they were just letting people walk through where they were filming. It was crazy. I guess I live in a city where movies get made now. It must be something that Parisians and New Yorkers are accustomed to, but it was really strange that the area they were shooting in wasn't blocked off at all.

I walked from Montmartre into the 17th arrondissement, where I found a wonderful bookstore at Place de Clichy. They had so many books, and I even found Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath translated into French. I was tempted to buy Mrs. Dalloway, because it's my favorite, but then I decided that if I read something in French, it should probably be French. I should be reading someone like Camus in French.

I also walked past the Montmartre cemetery. I'm not suddenly a cemetary fan, but it is also cool looking, although I think Montparnasse is really much prettier. Montmartre is darker and more gothic looking. There's something a little Buffy the Vampire Slayer about it, like you could picture an undead Jim Morrison wandering around if you went there late at night...

On the Metro home, I read the biography of Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth, and as I looked around the Metro car and thought of people I've spotted all over Paris, I thought that Diane Arbus would probably have a field day with Paris. There are so many weird looking people here. I keep reading Patricia Bosworth's descriptions of the people she photographed, and they're really sensational, as if Diane Arbus's subjects were really that unusual. And I think, definitely with the exception of the giants and dwarfs, they all sort of look like people I've seen on the Metro in Paris.

After my Montmartre walk, I came home, put on Duke Ellington, made a ham and brie scramble for dinner and realized that one of the best things about living in Paris is looking out your window at night and seeing all of the other windows around you lit up in the darkness, and knowing that each one is its own small world.

Oh, you know, just chilling with Simone de Beauvoir, NBD

Today, after learning how to do laundry in Paris (1. laundromat, and 2. hanging wet clothes on available surfaces in one's apartment to dry) I hopped on the line 6 Metro, which is the line that goes the closest to my apartment, and I got off at the Cimitiere Montparnasse. And this may seem strange, but it was amazing. Really. The cemetary is huge, and has its own map to show you where famous people are buried - Serge Gainsbourg is there, as is Jean Seberg, who was in "A Bout de Souffle," directed by Jean-Luc Godard (who is buried somewhere else, probably the Montmartre cemetary, because famous French people seem to be buried in one of the two places), Baudelaire is there and Man Ray and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I was most looking forward to seeing Man Ray's tomb, but almost as soon as I entered the cemetary - it's crazy - a beautiful veritable city of tombs and mausoleums and it's very bright and full of trees and yes, beautiful - I practically tripped over Simone de Beauvoir's grave. She's buried with Jean-Paul Sartre. Anyhow, I stood there and just kind of stared at it, like, that's Simone de Beauvoir. Right in front of me. People had left little notes and Metro tickets on her grave, and someone had kissed it and left behind a huge pink mouth print.

And I don't know why, because I haven't read The Second Sex or anything, I'm not a rabid Simone de Beauvoir fan, although I do think she was cool, but seeing her grave and the notes on it made me stop and stare and I almost felt like crying, not because it was sad that she was dead or because it was depressing, but because there was something so beautiful about this tomb and the idea of someone being so affected by the things that she wrote that they would kiss her grave or bring notes to it years after her death. That in itself is really amazing to me. I don't know why, but it is.

After Simone, I looked around for Man Ray's grave, but the cemetery, like many things in Paris, was very confusing, and I kept thinking to myself, "Where the hell are you, Man Ray?" But he continued to elude me. Which is fine. His photos mean more to me than seeing where he's buried anyhow.

And then I remembered that Man Ray is buried with his wife, who changed her name to Juliet Man Ray, and I have always found that kind of ridiculous. I mean, Man Ray was a name that Emanuelle Radnitzky assumed as an artist, it wasn't a real name and it definitely wasn't a last name. It would be like assuming your husband's first name, but not even that, because come on now, there will never be another Man Ray. It always struck me as kind of stupid. Especially considering that Man Ray's long-term mistress in Paris was a woman named Lee Miller, who was also a photographer and who we hear nothing about. I wonder why Juliet Man Ray chose to call herself that. I don't know what she did for a living or if anything makes her notable, and I find that sad. It also makes me sad that although Man Ray's work as a photographer is amazing and kind of my favorite, Lee Miller's work doesn't seem to exist.

And then I thought of Simone de Beauvoir. Maybe I responded to seeing her grave the way I did because she is identified through her own accomplishments, not Jean-Paul Sartre's. After all, her grave doesn't say Simone de Jean-Paul Sartre. In Paris, great artists and philosophers of the past are typically men, and the women that they spent their lives with typically labeled as "muses." Exhibit A: Camille Claudel and Lee Miller, artists in their own right, lovers of male artists of much greater renown.

So amen to Simone de Beauvoir. Kisses and notes on a tomb just for her, because of the things she wrote, and Jean-Paul Sartre is there too, but you go to see both of them. That's how it should be done.

After visiting Simone de Beauvoir, I walked from Montparnasse to the Eiffel Tower. Because I felt like it. I was out for nearly four hours, fortified by a butter and sugar crepe, just wandering the city until I had gotten to the Eiffel Tower and it got too cold and dark to not descend to the Metro and head home. And it was nice to get off in my neighborhood, away from the spotless, chichi buildings of the central arrondissements. I was thinking about Simone de Beauvoir, and Man Ray, and this guy I call the Bob Marley troubadour who rides line 6 a lot, and only seems to know how to play one song - "Redemption Song."

Paris has given me so much to think about.