Same city, different life

Different, extremely busy life, to be more precise. Which is why I haven't been updating this blog even though there are about 8953398 things to tell.

Just after having written my last entry, I moved across Paris from Oberkampf in the 11th arrondissement to St. Augustin/ St. Lazare in the 8th. I now live in a cute, albeit oddly shaped, apartment with my friend Stephanie. She goes to Wellesley and spent this year abroad in Aix-en-Provence. She's interning at the Musee d'Orsay (the great impressionist art museum here in Paris, personally one of my favorites), and therefore, her schedule is normal and she gets weekends off, something I'm ridiculously jealous of, but we'll get to that later.

Where I live now is just about as different as you can get from where I used to live. It's rich, residential, tame, full of businessmen during the day and nobody at night. The grand magasins (the big department stores) are literally a 5 minute walk away, which came in handing once the soldes (the bi-annual, gov't regulated sales) started. I miss the hip bars and cafes, young artsy crowds, and ethnicity of the 11th. I miss entering my door code next to a packed bar when I got home at night. I do like that our new apartment has a balcony, but we're right around the corner from Boulevard Haussmann, one of the busiest streets in Paris during the day, PLUS there's freaking construction going on at the church next door, so it's always way too loud at my place. Still, I'm not complaining. I like it here.

Now, I said I'm jealous of Stephanie for having a normal schedule because mine is as hectic and ridiculous as you can get. And not just because I've been doing traveling too. This whole summer, all tour guiding/interning/ English-teaching things were decided at the last minute, and often, my tour guiding schedule would be MESSED UP. quite often. There's nothing more irritating to me than a lack of order in my life (though I'll let my room get pretty messy...), and this whole ridiculous lack of scheduling has driven me NUTS. I feel like the days that I would go traveling were the only days I had off, because otherwise, I was working 7 days a week. And because of that, I went through a brief period of not enjoying myself in Paris. I know, you never thought you'd hear me say that, but it's true. I realized I wasn't getting a chance to just hang out and wander and chill like I did when I was just a student here.

Then I realized, however, that this was the whole point of me staying for the summer (well, that and getting to be in France for Bastille Day, and not having to be in LA for the summer...but anyway)-- to see what life is like when you're NOT a student in Paris. When you actually have to work and can't just go to museums and chill in the gardens in your spare time. This whole year I've told myself that I want to move back to Paris after college, but I wondered whether I would truly enjoy a different, working-woman lifestyle here. You know what, it's tough! And that's life. But I'll come back and do it again, definitely. It was just hard getting used to it.

I should talk more about my traveling and Bastille Day and co-piloting a plane and other fun stuff in another post (soon, promise), but I should at least mention things about the boy I brought up in my last post. Yann. He's amazing. He's so sweet and funny. I'm absolutely crazy about him. Unfortunately, on June 1st he went down to Bilbao, Spain, to intern there. I went down to visit him for 6 days in his hometown, Biscarrosse, in Southwestern France (aka southern california) (aka one of the best places to surf in France. Did I mention he surfs?), and we did a whole tour of that area, hitting up the ritzy beach town of Biarritz, the Basque town of St. Jean-de-Luz, and finally, Bilbao, which was charming. That was at the end of June, and I haven't seen him since, but we talk/skype rather often, and I'm dying of impatience because he's coming up to Paris this weekend!!!!!!!! After that... we'll see... he's studying abroad in Canada in the fall, so... we'll see what we do. All I have to say is, I'm only one of at least 5 friends who have met amazing guys just toward the very end of their stay here in France, and none of us think it's fair. :(

Another update will come soon. There's so much to blog about it's not even funny. I just don't want to overload you all.

Gros bisous!