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.