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.

13 Things

It's really late, and yet again cold and gray in Paris, and since I don't have too much time to write, the time has come to list. So, things I've discovered so far:

1. French women DO get fat. Just not morbidly obese.
2. Starbucks has taken over the world, apparently. Even in the 13th, an "up and coming" arrondissement without the same level of affluence as other parts of the city, there's a stretch of yuppie chains just a ten-minute walk from my house. One of them is Starbucks. Clearly there is no escape from them. There is also no escaping Brigitte Bardot.
3. You know you're from Seattle when having a coffee maker in your apartment makes it feel approximately 1000 more times like home.
4. French kids are adorable. They also don't understand English, so when you introduce yourself to a classroom full of 8-year-olds in English, it's best to talk about your time with them in terms of years, not months.
5. On a similar note, the cutest thing I've seen so far was a little kid in the class I met today asking the teacher, " 'Seven,' c'est sept?"
6. The Luxembourg Gardens close at 7 in the evening. This means that if you try to go there in the early evening for a walk before dinner, you should probably reconcile yourself to wandering around the Latin Quarter.
7. ...which is not nearly as fun as wandering around the Marais.
8. Even though people don't greet each other on the street, everyone in my building says bonjour/soir if they run into each other in the hallway or the courtyard. I love this. It makes me feel like even though I live in a little tiny studio in a huge city by myself, I am still living in a community.
9. ...which is largely populated by people my age, and families with babies. There is also a man who walks his chihuahua at night.
10. The Paris in "Amelie" is a fairy tale Paris, but sometimes it still feels like I live in that world.
11. Everything here is named after famous people. The schools I work at are named after Denis Diderot and Yuri Gagarin, the park next to my apartment is named after Heloise and Abelard, the footbridge over the Seine is named after Simone de Beauvoir, and just a look at a Metro map is a bit like looking at the index of a history book.
12. It's funniest when these famous people clearly aren't French. I have so far encountered two Boulevards President John F. Kennedy.
13. The 13th is where I live. The more I see it, the more I like it. Although I'm still waiting for my apartment to feel like home.

But the coffee maker is helping.

Paris in the Rain

Another beautiful night in Paris. It was raining, but this was more than made up for by Nutella and banana crepes on Rue Mouffetard, followed by kir (white wine + creme de cassis) and conversation at a sidewalk bar followed by a bottle of cheap wine in the ancient, fancy apartment one of my friends has been staying in with a quirky old lady while searching for housing. Everyone I know, through some protracted search or a bit of luck, has now found a place to live.

I caught the Metro back by the Bastille - only the top of it was bright enough to shine through the rain - and then back to my little corner of the world on Rue du Chevaleret. Life is good.

Sometimes being here is all about the simple pleasures, like reading on the Metro or having someone ask you for directions in French for the sixth time or the way the way the Bastille looks in the rain. Those are the things that make me happy I live here.

This is what it's like to live in Paris.

This is what it's like to live in Paris. I think I get it now. You live in your small apartment and cook simple, cheap staples for yourself, and then spend lots of money on delicious Mediterranean food and red wine when you go out with your friends. You live in a neighborhood that isn't touristy at all, because it doesn't have any tourist attractions in it, but it does have a lot of Parisians in it, of every imaginable appearance and age and ethnicity and religion and socioeconomic status, and sometimes you take the Metro into the more touristy or especially beautiful parts of the city to get felafel at that one place in the Marais, or to meet friends, or to go to Musee d'Orsay because it's your favorite, or just to wander around because you live in Paris, and no matter how much you wander through Paris, you will never see or understand or experience all of it. After your time in those places, you come back to your Metro stop and get off with everyone else who lives in your quartier, walk a few blocks from the Metro, type in your Digicode, enter your building's courtyard, type in your Digicode again, enter your building, and climb six flights of stairs back up to your small apartment to wash your face, hop in bed, and call it a night.

Because you live in Paris. And you don't have to do everything in Paris in one day. Because you know you can't.

Or maybe that's just me. I just got back to my apartment after the aforementioned dinner in the Marais, and I realized as I crossed the Seine in the Metro that this is how it's going to be. It's not too different from my life in Seattle, really, except that I got to stop and stare at the Bastille before catching my train back to the 13th.

God damn. I love it here.

161 Rue du Chevaleret, 5eme DD

I got the apartment. My landlord is the gnome. I moved in today, and I am no longer in the hostel from hell. This is good, but also a little weird. I've never signed a lease for nine months before, and what if my apartment ends up having no hot water or being overrun with roaches? What if I break my leg and I can no longer walk up six flights of stairs to get to it and my claustrophobia prevents me from using the lift? The type of commitment involved here is very strange to me. I guess I feel a little strange because this is my first apartment and it's in Paris. And Paris is a city of infinite options. And in a city of infinite options, I am committing myself to only one, and to a very tiny one, with a futon for sleeping and sofa-ing, a kitchenette with a fridge and hot plates and a sink, and a bathroom with a French-style shower. I also have a big window with a wrought-iron rose over the bottom of it, and I love my view of the other apartment buildings. It's just that making decisions is something that I have never been particularly skilled at, and it's something I did yesterday, without knowing too much about the surrounding area.

And the 13th arrondissement is really confusing me. It's like a combination of every other neighborhood in Paris, but only glimpses. There's a bigger immigrant and low-income population here, because this arrondissement, and my quartier, is where a lot of low-income housing was set up in the 70s and 80s. So there are a lot of ugly high-rise apartment buildings, set up against elegant classically Parisian, classically expensive Haussman-style buildings. A few blocks away is the train to the suburbs, and thus, the train tracks, so if Paris has a wrong side of the tracks, it is probably the 13th, except that I'm pretty sure the wrong side of the tracks is actually the suburbs, and the 13th is generally accepted to be not much of a tourist attraction, but pretty safe, so... I'm getting befuddled here.

Okay, so there's a huge mix economically among the people here. There are a lot of families and a lot of single people my age, which also confuses me. And it's basically Chinatown, so there are a lot of Asian restaurants and the population is a lot more diverse than, say, in the Marais. There's a lot of construction going on too, and a lot of buildings linked to the university.

My neighborhood is in the left bank, across the Seine from the Bastille (I'm going to walk there one day) but it's pretty nondescript. Except that out of nowhere, there are a bunch of art galleries in the midst of the residential and business buildings. None of this makes sense to me. It's like pieces of Paris all jumbled up together in one place, and in a city where they have rules about building height, it's a bit jarring to suddenly be in a part of Paris that is so full of contrasts. I also tend to get disoriented when I'm in a new place. I'm sure by next week I'll have some favorite spot in the 13th that I will probably wax poetic about annoyingly for hours on end, but for now I'm just getting used to it.

Also. Try moving using only the Metro. I did that today. It was actually not that bad, and pretty much reminded me of when I moved houses at Smith my first year and I just walked my stuff across the lawn from one house to another. It took three trips and now I know my Metro line really well. I could have taken a taxi, but it made me feel very Parisian to use the Metro, and now that I'm paying rent... well, I'd rather save my taxi money and just use my Navigo pass.

Tomorrow is a trip to Ikea in the suburbs to make my apartment feel a little more like my apartment and also because I need sheets. Apparently you have to take the RER and a bus to get there, but I honestly don't really mind. I'm really excited about making my place feel more like home. Buying groceries today was fun too, because a branch of Paris's cheapest grocery chain is just one stop away on the Metro. There's nothing like cereal and new sheets to make you feel at home.

Attrapper-ing un rhume with the unaccompanied majors

And the time has come for Hostel #3. I was staying at a really nice, kind of pricy hostel in the 14th, but they ran out of space after two nights, so here I am at Aloha Hostel in the 15th, which reminds me of the unaccompanied minors room I once spent a few hours in before my connecting flight to Paris when I was eleven. It was a chaotic little room in an airport where a bunch of unaccompanied minors ran around wearing stickers declaring their unaccompanied minor status and watched movies until they were allowed to go to their gates. It was a little chaotic. Here everyone is my age, but because Paris is having a torrential downpour day, everyone is inside watching Lord of the Rings or checking email. This, compounded by the fact that Aloha's color scheme is neon and they also have a beer vending machine, makes it like a grown up room of unaccompanied minors. Only, instead of catching a flight, I'm waiting to get an apartment.

And I found the perfect studio in the 13th yesterday, so I have my fingers crossed that it will come through. It's in a nice old-ish building, not Haussman, but still pretty, with a courtyard/parking lot and views of other buildings around the courtyard. The studio is on the fifth floor, and it's being rented by a man who honest to god looks just like a gnome and kept on extolling the virtues of the building's lift, which is so small it could probably be an effective torture device on the claustrophobic. It fits three people leaning between two uncomfortably close walls and you can't turn around in it. And the gnome man kept telling me that the building is great because you don't have to take the stairs.

Um. If I get the apartment, I will only take the stairs. But I appreciated the sentiment.

Anyway, the studio itself is a good size, with a bedroom with a huge window and furniture (!) and an equipped kitchen and even a nice bathroom. It's the same price as the studio I saw in the 10th, and I wouldn't have to buy any furniture for it. This is a plus.

The area it's in is the 13th, which isn't as swank as a lot of other areas of Paris - it's a bit more working class, but all in all I don't think it would be a bad place to live. And the building is just off the Metro and it was really lively when I was there and felt really safe.

The other people visiting the apartment were mostly students, and the gnome said he wanted to rent it to someone who doesn't have to get their parents' permission first to rent it. He also seemed reassured that I have a job and a contract for a specific amount of time. He said that I am one of three people he's considering for the apartment, and I am really hoping it works out. When I told him I was American, he told me that I don't have an American accent, and that my accent sounds more Italian. I took it as a compliment.

This was after I looked at an room in the suburbs that is being rented by yet another middle-aged Frenchman. He kept talking about how the suburb was rich and white and conservative - all of which he presented as major pluses - and he was really nice but seemed a little bit racist. And after seeing the apartment and the surrounding area (it's like Bellevue in Washington State - comment dit-on "no way in hell"?) I know that I want to live in Paris no matter what. It might mean staying in youth hostels a bit longer or subletting or living in a less fancy district, but there is no way I am succumbing to the suburbs. I hate them at home, and I hate them here too. I'll take Paris any day, with all its grime and noise and air pollution. I mean, I kind of like those things.

Nuit Blanche was also a success. I went with some other assistants, and got crepes and watched a video installation outside of Centre Pompidou, which had free admission on Nuit Blanche, so we got to go in and see an exhibition of work by women artists, including Rachel Whitereade, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Nan Goldin...basically everyone who was included in the feminist art unit of my art history class last spring. It was really cool to see the pieces in real life, though, just because when I see art in class I never think that I'll actually get a chance to see it in real life. It was a really good night. There was also a giant disco ball hovering over the Luxembourg Gardens.

Oh, and I managed to get a cold the next morning, so now I'm sniffling around Paris, discovering the joys of French cold medicine and tea. Last night I had dinner with some family friends, and they sent me home with both. It was great to see them, and to have all of my dumb Paris questions answered, although by the end of the night my French had seriously deteriorated. I've been spending a lot of time with the other assistants, and the program has some oversight, and the directors are doing their best to get us acclimated, but sometimes it just helps to talk to a French person who isn't paid to tell you that the children will love you because you're American.

Things are still a bit disorganized - I was supposed to meet the contact person for my school(s?) today, and I'm not scheduled to meet with him until Monday. But given that this is France, I am just glad there's a meeting at all.

I hope it stops raining soon. But this hostel is playing Nico and the Clash in the lobby, so it's an okay place to be stuck with a cold for now.

Ruminations on a Futon and Shopping Under the Influence

It's officially cold in Paris, as of yesterday. The wool jackets are out, and the only place where it's warm is the Metro. Right now I'm at one of my coffee places in the Marais - the front of it is totally open, so everyone is huddled inside wearing coats and sitting at their laptops.

I saw apartment #2 yesterday in the 10th arrondissement - it was about the size of my dorm room last year, with a tiny kitchen that at least had hot plates, a fridge, and a small sink (some of them don't!) and a really big bathroom. It wasn't furnished though, and it's just a little out of my price range, and I don't really want to have to buy and deal with a futon at the moment. Plus, the guy who's renting it is a little more legit than many people in France who rent their apartments - he's taking dossiers from applicants, and then he'll pick a few to follow up with. I wouldn't mind living there, but at the same time...futon. C'est complique. Tomorrow I'm visiting an apartment in Antony, which isn't actually Paris, but it might be an okay place to crash for now - we'll see. It's a colocation with some other people, none of whom I think are incredibly old. And on Monday I have an au pair interview with a British woman who rents out a room in her apartment on the cheap in exchange for some baby-sitting. It seems a little intense, but I only work twelve hours at my job, so it might be a good option. Plus it's centrally located.

Also, people keep asking me for directions. Most of the time, if it's in the Marais and they're tourists, I can usually help them out, and they're usually pretty excited when they find out I speak English, but on Thursday when I was at an RER stop, totally lost on the way to my orientation, a French woman asked me for directions. While I was lost. This struck me as being particularly funny for that reason alone, and then I was a little concerned that Parisians get lost on the RER too. I mean, they live here. Like, all the time.

Anyway, the apartment search continues. And tonight I'm going to Nuit Blanche, which is basically a city-wide art exhibit and an excuse for everything to be open incredibly late, including department stores, who I think will do pretty well. I like shopping when it's daytime and my judgment is totally fine. Imagine how many impulse buys must occur when everyone's judgment has slid by 3 a.m., and that's not even factoring in that Nuit Blanche is basically an all night party. Drunk shopping strikes me as being a little like drunk knitting. Friends should not let friends do it.

I'm headed to a new area in Paris and I'm really going to miss the Marais. After living here for a week, I really do feel like it's my neighborhood. Underneath the touristy thing, it's really a cool neighborhood - it's the old Jewish quartier, currently Paris's gay neighborhood, and it's just a really interesting mix of people, including tourists and Parisians. I'm going to miss its little cafes and patisseries and being so close to Place des Vosges. It would be really nice to live here, and who knows - maybe a tiny little studio is around here just waiting for me.

Or maybe I'll move to the tiny apartment in the 10th, and I won't be too far away on the metro. The good thing about Paris is that with metro, you're never too far away from anything.

...And then again, sometimes I hate you.

Still homeless for all intents and purposes, which in France translates to: tres screwed. I need an address to open a bank account in order to be paid for my work, but I can't use my hostel de la semaine for it, and I still haven't found a permanent place yet, so things feel really stalled at the moment. I started my orientation for work, and even that is horribly disorganized. I mean, I love Paris, but thus far I am not loving the French school system. And it doesn't help that everyone in my program, for the most part, has already found housing. This is also the only thing they seem to talk about. And at our orientation, I sometimes feel like I'm stuck in high school French again. Perhaps sitting in a room full of Americans as we try to speak French together will always be a little reminiscent of being fifteen and daydreaming about Paris as my teacher, who was American, and had a severe American accent, described something really riveting like...I don't know...French fashion terms. Which, given that our book was from 1984, wasn't going to be applicable anyway in real life. Although acid washed jeans are back, so you never know. Maybe I should have paid attention.

Every time I tell someone from my program that I don't know where I'm living yet, they give me big sloppy puppy dog eyes like I just informed them that I have a rare and painful but incommunicable disease that sucks for me, but luckily they won't catch it. Most people got here about a month ago, it seems, which leaves me feeling really unprepared and haphazard. What can I say, though? Some of us were still recovering from abdominal surgery a month ago and that's why we don't have an apartment yet? I think that might be all kinds of awkward.

Anyway, I'm about to head to the tenth to look for an apartment that I may or may not have the correct address for, and then I'm going out to dinner with two girls from the program who aren't in the same section of Versailles as me. They don't have housing either. I also met a boy who's working in Creteil and also hosteling it for now, so I'm not exactly an anomaly. It can be hard to remember this when someone extols their new apartment as "meant to be" but it is, in fact, the reality of moving to Paris.

The best times I've had have been nowhere near orientations or paperwork or anything like that anyway. They've been in the Marais, wandering around, sometimes alone and sometimes with other people, eating delicious felafel and shawarma, and gelato and fruit and hanging out at Place des Vosges and exploring the city in a very casual, relaxed way. Also, today I ordered my lunch in French at the cafe I go to every day to check my email without the woman behind the counter switching over to English. This was an accomplishment, because I was at the equivalent of French Starbucks, which means that if your accent is even a little bad or your grammar the least bit shaky, they won't even give you chance to continue in French. So I may not have an apartment, and my job may be super disorganized, but at least I can order my own sandwich in French.

A petite studette meublee in a nice neighborhood can't be far behind.