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.