Embarcation

I'm working on my BU application at Centre Pompidou, one of the few places in Paris where there's coffee and free wifi in one place, but I'm feeling pretty antsy. Because tomorrow, I'm going to get up painfully early, take the RER to CDG, and meet one of my oldest friends from Seattle. On Saturday, we are leaving Paris for an adventure across Europe, that's going to go something like this: Paris --> Amsterdam --> Berlin --> Prague --> Salzburg --> Paris. We're backpacking across Europe. But we both have train passes, so we can change our plans at any moment. I'm really looking forward to this. I picked up my interrail pass (like the Eurail, but for residents of the EU, and I am one of those!) today at the Montparnasse train station, and we're slowly making hostel reservations, reading up on the cities we're going to, and trying to connect with anyone who will let us stay with them while we're traveling. I've already been to Amsterdam, so that will be familiar -- part of the plan, so we don't get lost and confused immediately -- but I'm so excited to be in the cities I've never visited, unable to speak the local language, and having some adventures. It's just a lovely feeling and really exciting. I love traveling. Well, obviously. And when you live in Paris, it's a mix of awesome and terrible, but the feeling of newness that you get from being a tourist dissipates after a while. Reality sets in. I still love Paris, but I love ordinary things about it. I'm less enchanted by the things that caught my attention the first time I came here. I love getting a cheap coffee and pastry at the bar at my favorite boulangerie after work, and reading some James Joyce for a good hour. I love my friends. I love knowing exactly where to go on the metro. I love knowing I can go to Centre Pompidou to look at art whenever I want, and then not going very often. I love the rare sunny days when I can wear my obnoxiously American knockoff Ray-Bans, and I love getting to know the city beyond what originally drew me to it. On some level, I even love knowing that there are things about Paris that I actually really dislike. That's what makes it feel like home, I suppose.

But that said, I'm looking forward to going somewhere new, with one of my oldest friends, and not-too-well-laid plans and an open-ended train pass, and a backpack, and some books, and my camera.

Sometimes I still wonder what I'm doing here. I have those moments of utter confusion and uncertainty. Sometimes I really miss being at Smith, where the feeling of being productive and using time well came from getting the reading done or finishing papers. But that's a cheap way of assessing success. It's a limited way of measuring what it means to be a good person, which, ultimately, isn't something that needs to be measured, it isn't possible to measure. So I think what I'm doing here is pretty simple, when it all comes down to it. I'm just living my life, however scary and strange that may feel. But I think that's why we have things like friends and James Joyce and 1 euro espressos and sunny days in Paris and petite tartes au sucre and knockoff Ray-Bans and public libraries and mix CDs sent across the Atlantic by close friends that are far away and Interrail passes and soft American Apparel v-neck t-shirts and postcards of Sonia Delauney paintings and crepes with Nutella and banana and black beans and Wes Anderson movies and Bikram's yoga and and Skype and bookstores and window-shopping and adventures across Europe with old friends and, very occasionally, interactions with strangers that leave us feeling better rather than worse about the world.

Calls to mind something from one of my favorite movies, Stranger Than Fiction:

As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.

When all of this freedom gets daunting, these are the things I like to remember. In the meantime, away we go to Amsterdam.

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.

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.

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.