Tu Vas Faire Attention!

Things that have risen in my estimation this week:
Hand sanitizer
Barack Obama (still pissed about healthcare and how centrist he is and also Afghanistan but I watched the State of the Union and it helped)
the French healthcare system
movie passes that allow you unlimited movies for cheap
my job (well, making my job enjoyable through reading Vonnegut during breaks, planning ahead, telling the kids, "tu vas faire attention" -- you are going to pay attention -- or "je m'enfiche" -- I don't care, and having more of a sense of humor about the whole thing)
Kurt Vonnegut
Jens Lekman
after-work pastries in the afternoon instead of after dinner (my, my, I am becoming so French)
ordering a cup of tea in a cafe
the tramway at Porte d'Orleans

I also capped off a ridiculous day at work during which I ran a videoconference with the British kids because neither teacher could speak the other's language with the Serge Gainsbourg biopic. It was utterly ridiculous. Pretty, for sure. But made me think Serge Gainsbourg was kind of an ass. Also, Jane Birkin's French was apparently terrible. Brigitte Bardot was also a character in it, though, and livened it up. Made me want to wear copious eyeliner and order strange men to take care of my dog while requesting croissants. She was just that ridiculous.

And here's some really good commuting on the train music:



And my pinkeye is almost all better.

What Red Eyes You Have

My ridiculous weekend was followed by a harsh realization: I think the kids gave me pinkeye on Monday.

Cue tea-drinking and the French medical system. Let's hope they're as good as everyone says they are. This just reminds me of when I got pinkeye from a microscope in high school and had to be at orchestra camp with a hugely swollen, red eye. Playing my oboe. Incidentally, that was also the first time I heard the Postal Service, so it wasn't a lost weekend after all.


I guess this is what happens when you work with kids and forget hand sanitizer. Lesson learned. Now I need to get me some antibiotics.

Nocturnal Wanderings, Frivolity, Museums, Chanel/Stravinsky, and a 5 Euro Formula for Happiness

This weekend went by in what felt like a matter of seconds. I had some adventures with several different people. These things happened:
-two museums in two days: Pompidou on Saturday, Rodin on Sunday, both for free with my visa -- Pompidou's permanent collection is a floor of awesome. They have Diane Arbus, Lisette Model, this painter I really like, Sonia Delauney, this insane surrealist photographer whose name escapes me, Matisse's paper cutouts, Karel Appels and people like him, and Chagall and Dada and other stuff I can't think of right now. Amazing. I love Centre Pompidou so much. Rodin is good too, but especially the garden and The Thinker
-nutella/banana crepes, shawerma, beer, chocolat chaud, and late-night quesadillas in my kitchen
-a movie, "Coco Chanel et Igor Stravinsky," with my French fairy godmother, this wonderful lady professor I'm friends with who will take me out for coffee or to see a dumb movie and remind me that it's okay to be confused when you're 22. The movie was kind of dumb, but with "The Rite of Spring," playing constantly. I love Rite of Spring. Also, the actress who played Coco Chanel made me want to become a fashion designer just so that I can dangle a cigarette in one hand and pins in the other while I adjust something on a dress someone's wearing. That I designed. There was also a subplot involving the inception of Chanel no. 5. Frivolous, pretty, fun.
-Rue Mouffetard/The Latin Quarter, the Marais, Saint Michel on both days
-party in my apartment on Saturday night after wandering the city until after midnight. I played cards with my roommate's friends until I couldn't keep my eyes open. Not as riveting as the Risk night, but it's a nice feeling to come back to your apartment to find a party is going on.
-things I did not do: laundry, grocery shopping, enough running, sitting alone in a cafe writing
-wandering from the Marais to the Latin Quarter to Montparnasse and back again
-so much good conversation with wonderful people
-starting my day with a latte, Pema Chodron, and the New York Times

I'm beginning to think that all you really need in Paris is somewhere to walk, ~5 euro for coffee or beer, and someone to talk to while you wander or sit down to said beverages. It is easily my favorite thing about this city.

Back to work and reality tomorrow. Things are certainly still hard. I still have no idea what I'm doing when my contract ends in April. Uncertainty and confusion are daily companions.

But this felt like my first real weekend in Paris.

Here Comes the Sun In My New Notebook

I just got home from work, exhausted and cold, a sketchbook and a notebook richer, with some obscene opera on Arte and a demi-baguette in my stomach. Yum. Today was ordinary, but I made a great discovery -- Gibert Jeune. Gibert Jeune is like Powell's, but French, and bigger than a city block. I went there today on the way home from work, because my moleskine's full up and I am very much dependent on tiny notebooks. It's right outside the Notre Dame/Saint Michel metro stop (where I get the RER) and I love it. Just floors and floors and piles and piles of books and notebooks and art supplies. I wanna live there, but my sweet new 14th arrondissement apartment is pretty okay too.

Something occurred to me this week -- well, a lot of things did -- but one that I should have noticed before is that I don't really like my job. I mean, when teaching is going well, I love teaching, but a lot of it is struggling against shitacular bureaucracy, attempting to make sense of a colossally disorganized system, dealing with bratty children and cranky teachers, and commuting an hour and a half to and from Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. It's not like I don't have good days, but this is definitely not something I would want to do in the long term. Part of what I'm grappling with right now is that awful question people ask you daily when you're a senior in college -- whatcha gonna do after you graduate? When I graduate from my year of working as an English assistant here, I hope that I'll be going to grad school, but the grad school gods may disagree. They might want me to have more life experience or something. I think back to my time at 826 this summer a lot, and hindsight is 20/20, as per usual. That's the kind of teaching I could see myself doing in the long term. It's meaningful and fun and generous teaching, it's really something that those kids can't get anywhere else. It's an offering. It's something I wish they had for grown-ups. Suffice it to say that I don't get the same validation from saying Myyyyyyyyyyy. Naaaaaaayyyyyyy-muh. Izzzzzzzzzzzz. repeatedly.

Although having the kids sing Beatles songs on Monday was a nice change. They actually had fun, I think. And tried to sing "Here Comes the Sun," which I translated as, "Ummm...le printemps arrive et on est content. Le soleil arrive."

Any you know what? Spring is coming. It's slow to arrive, obviously, especially given Paris's cold snap of the century. But there was a little blue sky peeking out today. And things felt almost indetectably lighter, the way they do when winter starts to give way to spring. There's this tentative warmth that calls attention to everybody's hunched shoulders and itchy wool hats, and you begin to unpeel your winter mask without even noticing. I like this time of year. Although now that I rely on public transportation, I kind of wish it would hurry up.

A lot went on this week. I wandered around the Latin Quarter, played Risk with a bunch of hashish-smoking French boys until the wee hours of the morning, went running at night in my quartier because I could, and explained what the word "riot" means to the guy I tutor in business English. I finally started reading Kurt Vonnegut and it turns out I love him. I made a date to visit one of my friends in England, and realized that I have to start planning a European adventure with one of my very best friends from home. We leave at the end of February.

So in other words, I guess it's good I got a new notebook.

Pictures, because, come on, it's about time:

The fam at Jane and Fred's apartment.

 Me + elles@centrepompidou. Taken by Mom. Get it? Gotta love feminist art.

Constant Vigilance, Meet Yogini Française

As crazy up and down as things have been, I feel like I'm gradually finding my center again after moving, my family's visit, and the end of vacation. I finally started going to a yoga class here. It's expensive, like everything in Paris, but well worth it. It's at a Bikram studio tucked away into a courtyard in the sketchy part of Montmartre. They even have a few classes in English, although it's yoga, so if you can see the instructor, it's very doable in French. And I forgot what a good workout it is -- the last French yoga class I went to felt very much like organized nap time for grownups, so a 90-minute workout with much sweating and kicking your legs in the air and spinal twists is just what I need. Especially when Paris's impression of western Massachusetts means running is a little limited. Although today there was some blue sky, and Montsouris is a really wonderful place to run. It's two minutes from my apartment and just really beautiful and almost always full of other runners.

Then I realized that my job contract ends in April, and I decided that I needed to make a list of things I want to do before then:

see Agnes Varda at Denfert-Rochereau
write at Les Deux Magots (one of Ernest Hemingway's hangouts)
go running in Luxembourg Gardens
buy Ben Simon sneakers
see old French movies in theatres
go to Musee d'Orsay, Musee du Quai Branly, Jeu de Paume, Fondation Cartier
go to the Brigitte Bardot exhibition
ride a Velib' around my neighborhood
learn how to make lasagna, enchiladas, and a crustless pear tart
eat Senegalese food again
go to The Red Wheelbarrow (English-language bookstore in the Marais)
find a third job
traveling: Amsterdam/Berlin/Prague with one of my oldest friends from home (coming up in February), London, maybe Barcelona
Bikram yoga in Montmartremore trips to the Butte de Montmartre
see a movie at the film institute
drink cheap wine beside the Seine
go out for onion soup and cafe creme at the brasserie near my metro stop
have a picnic in Parc Montsouris
cardboard box dinner parties
go to the top of the Eiffel Tower
visit Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway's houses
go out for moelleux au chocolat and ice cream sundaes
visit the Centre Pompidou permanent collection for free with my visa
get a Jean Seberg haircut and frolick around Paris in a red dress
read a book on a bench in Parc Montsouris

Okay so that list is just going to grow.

Also, you know you don't go to Smith anymore when you get back to your apartment after dinner with your closest friend in the Marais to find it full of French guys smoking, drinking, and playing a guitar while listening to French rap, offering you whiskey and Coke, and asking you if you know who Kurt Cobain was because you happen to be from Seattle.

And okay, so that kind of made me happy.

Every morning, I wake up and listen to NPR on my computer, and I keep hearing about the earthquake in Haiti. It goes without saying that while I wish no horrific earthquakes on any countries, I think about Haiti, and I just think, why did it have to happen there? It's very devastating and the images on the New York Times web site are really disturbing. And I realized that this is the first time I've been hearing about such a significant tragedy in the news and haven't been at home or at Smith. At home, we would talk about it at dinner. At Smith, we would be talking about it everywhere. In Paris, I'm not sure who to talk to about it. My friends and I talked about it for sure, and it's been in the newspapers (well, the free ones I read on the way to work, anyway) but it's disorienting to be living abroad when things like this happen. Sometimes the language barrier really bothers me, and not being able to talk about what's going on in the world with other people is something that really gets to me. Dear Megan's French, please improve soon. I also wish I could contribute money, and I would have when I was in college, but my budget doesn't really allow for it right now.

Here's something that bothers me about Paris, and the Haiti thing made me think about it. There are a lot of homeless people here. You see them pitching tents in swanky neighborhoods, perched on stairs in the metro, sitting on the ground outside the metro, begging outside of Notre Dame, sleeping at metro stops, sleeping on the metro. This confuses me for a couple of reasons. First, I kind of always thought that a country like France, which has such a good healthcare system and resources for its citizens, wouldn't have such a big problem with homelessness. Secondly, a lot of the homeless people here are really aggressive about asking for money. When I lived in Northampton, it was full of homeless people, but I would always say hi to the guitar dude outside of CVS, or the marimba man, or the bucket-playing Motown guy. It was always a gesture I could provide even if I couldn't or didn't want to give these people spare change. In Paris, I feel like I can't even do that, and that's hard for me. A certain level of vigilance for my own safety kind of takes over, which ultimately is probably a good thing.

And I really love cities. But I don't think that this kind of adopted hardness is something that I would want to keep up for too long. And I guess that's why Bikram yoga has been so important to me lately. It's a chance to acknowledge strangers and focus on the present moment, something that can be nearly impossible when you're in a crowded metro car.

It reminds me of that dumb graduation speech song. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in southern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. It's all about balance, I guess. And it makes places like Northampton and Seattle look pretty good.

Then I remember that I live in Paris. Paris is my present moment. It's where I wake up and open my shutters every morning. It's where I go grocery shopping. It's where I meet my friends for coffee. It's where I friggin' go to yoga class. And as hard as it can be sometimes, I am really lucky to call it home.

On est toujours "in flux."

A lot has happened since the last time I posted. I managed to keep a regular blog when I studied abroad -- it's a little harder to maintain for a year and not four months. ANYWAY. I had Christmas with my parents. Owen and I went out with my friends to the Latin Quarter on New Years. I finally had a solid day of (maybe) good teaching. I moved! I'm now living in the 14th arrondissement in a technically-one-bedroom-but-we-actually-have-two. My roommate is perhaps the most chill, nice person I have ever met. Our apartment has an oven (in which I have already made enchiladas!) and a shower that will provide you with more than ten minutes of warmth. We even have a washing machine. Our metro stop is flanked by cafes that are open late and two movie theatres, and we're within walking distance of really good shopping and a street where there's always a market. The buildings are elegant, we have a lot of wonderful boulangeries, lovely Parc Montsouris, and even a neighborhood giant -- it's a decoration on a building...pictures to come.

Okay. So now for the bad news. My new commute takes an hour and a half, and I have to time it pretty carefully because I take the metro to one train line to a different train line to a bus. This is okay, although not ideal, but today Paris and its environs had a collective panic attack because it's been snowing lately. Now, Paris is a lot like Seattle in that people do not know how to handle snow. But it's even worse because everyone relies on public transit. During last year's snowstorm in Seattle, the buses hardly ran, and it caused a lot of problems. And not very many people in Seattle even take the bus. In Paris, we've got the metro, RER, and then transit systems in the suburbs, that -- with the exception of the miraculous metro -- are fraught with delays, accidents, and interrupted commutes. Just to give you a better idea of what happens -- today, instead of the metro, two trains, and a bus to get to work, I took the metro, a train, another metro line, another train line, another train line, and finally a bus to get to work, all because of a technical problem at one of the stations in Paris that kept traffic from leaving towards the southeast all day long.

And yesterday the bus I take to work didn't even come, so I walked from the train station to school. An hour.

I just got home from work today after too many transit connections, and a long walk through the neighborhood. It feels good to be home in my cozy but freezing apartment with a cup of tea.

I still feel like I'm in a bizarre state of missing my family who just returned to the States and getting used to being on my own again, except with a roommate, so that's different too, and I'm getting oriented to the new neighborhood as well. I really love it here, and I don't miss the 13th at all, but sometimes I just expect these transitions to be seamless and they never, ever are. I'm honestly quite frazzled at all of the organizing things I have to take care of, so I'm taking it one day at a time. And trying to manage my time better -- which, by the way, is way harder in real life than it was in college, when I felt like I was always being productive just by reading books and doing art projects. It's hard. It really is. Although I know objectively that pretty soon this will just be home. Until then, I'm contenting myself with baguettes tradition from the boulangerie and learning how to cook pork and potatoes and going on long walks in the quartier and sitting down to many a cafe creme. And enjoying the perks of having a roommate. Dinner parties on a cardboard box  with "Franco-Mexican cuisine" have already begun. And by Franco-Mexican, I mean we couldn't find all the right ingredients.

A la prochaine!

Bonne année.

I just made some espresso, heard from my parents who are at CDG heading home. My roommate is in our tiny kitchen making quiche lorraine, I'm about to head out for a croissant before hitting the Columbia app, and some of my Michigan materials are taking too long to come in, which stresses me out, and right now, this is how I feel about Paris:



Welcome, 2010.