looking back

It's been one week and 4 days since I left Paris. I'm finally starting to get used to LA. At first, it was heavy jet lag and quite a bit of depression. LA is a far, far cry from Paris, surtout the San Fernando Valley (hey here's some random news-- Hollywood is thinking of filming a remake of Valley Girl. Apparently the script sucks though. Ha.). I've never noticed the smog so much, nor has the traffic ever seemed so horrible. The first thing I did in LA after getting back? Went out for organic Mexican food with a good friend. How stereotypical can I get? Quote of that day? "When did the 'walk' man go from green to white?" "He was always white." "what? No! He was green!" Apparently I was wrong. Another good quote from that weekend? "We can go get you a new cell today honey." "But mom, it's Sunday." "Yeah, so? We're not in Europe." Point is, there are lots of things I'm getting used to again. How to flush the toilet. The fact that shopworkers tell YOU to have a good day and not vice versa. The volume of everyone's voice. The way people dress. Dollars. Hugging and not kissing. Hearing and seeing English all around me. Who would've thought that'd become weird one day?

But this post was supposed to be about looking back. So let's do that, shall we?

From August 28, 2008 until July 31, 2009, while living in the beautiful, fun, cultural France, I...

• spent more money on alcohol, clothes, taxis, and pastries (specifically macarons) than I should have
• learned how to cut my meat differently
  
• got my French friends addicted to two very American games (wine pong-- slight modification-- and concentration)
• hardly ever studied yet learned more than I could have during a year at Wellesley
• picnicked along the Seine quite often
• guided touristes through the marvels that make up Paris
• participated in a strike.
• traveled to 25 French cities and 15 other European cities
• had a stalker until he wrote me a love poem for Valentine's Day and I wrote a mean text back telling him never to talk to me again
• went from being sick of French guys to falling head over heels for one
• interned, taught English, gave tours, and babysat, so I made a bit of money
• knew all of the waiters at Curieux Spaghetti Bar
• made some truly incredible friends who I miss VERY much right now
• lived on two different sides of Paris
• co-piloted a plane
• learned that the French are wonderful, kindhearted people with an amazing history and culture that they have every right to be damn proud of.
  

I miss it so much.

The end, for now. Because I evidently HAVE to go back one day.

Ca, c'est Paris!

On my first night in Paris, my friend Auni invited me out with some of her friends. I got off at Bastille and wound down the always popular, bar-and-restaurant crowded street named rue de Lappe. I met up with her in a restaurant there and we soon found a bar afterwards. It was a very fun first night out.

Tonight, after a nice last dinner with some American friends, the group walked back to Bastille, and happen to use rue de Lappe to get there. I hadn't been down the street in a while. It was packed and rowdy as ever. I passed by the bar Auni and I went to, where a random group of French people had offered us champagne, and passed the restaurant as well, where French boys gawked as Auni and I hugged hello (because only people in love hug in France. Normal friends kiss.).

It was just a very surreal moment, walking down the rue de Lappe on my last night in Paris while remembering being there on my first night in Paris.

I want to write more, but I get up in about 4 and a half hours, so... yeah. All I have to say is, this has been the best year of my life, and I wish it could continue. I want it to continue. Next year, I'm not writing a senior thesis, so instead, I'll spend as much time as possible figuring out how to come back to France after graduation. Plus, all my French friends will kill me if I don't.

Paris, je t'aimerai toujours. Merci pour tous. Now I'm heading back 'home' to LA...

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!

Police/Racial Profiling/no sleep

This was NOT the entry I was expecting to write about on the day that I move from my host family's place to my apartment. But since I have to do that soon, I'll make this entry quick.

Last night was my friend Miranda's bday and we picnicked at a popular spot for young people, the tip of the Ile de la Cite. The recently-acquired boy in my life, Yann, came too, and he happened to be the only French person in the large group of Miranda's friends. Most of Miranda's friends left around 12:30 to catch the last metro, but some of us stuck around. Yann and I were just thinking of taking a nice romantic stroll along the Seine when chaos ensued.

In French there's a word, racaille, which the dictionary defines as "riff-raff" but the French explain as "those sketchy guys who are immigrants who wear sports clothes/ gangster clothes and are annoying and never leave girls alone and just hang around doing nothing on the Champs Elysees or Chatelet or other popular areas." Note that they are almost always immigrants--they are French Africans or 'Maghreb', aka French North Africans.

Last night, a group of guys that the French would definitely call racaille invaded our picnic briefly. One of them took the bottle of wine that I had bought for Miranda. It was 2/3 done, we didn't care too much about the wine, just about the fact that they thought they could annoy us by taking it which bothered us. So we kept saying "come on Monsieur, it's her birthday, let her have the wine" while simultaneously telling them to get lost. Next thing you know, the leader of the pack, an African wearing all black and a red baseball cap and a shiny silver decorated buckle on his belt (how many times did I have to describe this to the police? Oh hold on, we're getting there) puts down the wine, and takes this girl Victoria's camera, which is sitting right next to the wine bottle. Why she didn't put her camera back in her bag, I don't know, but that's when it got messy. Our friend Ryan (also from LA) was drunk enough to get aggressive with one of the guys... and we got scared. Nothing physical happened, but we knew at this point we weren't getting the camera back. They kept passing it between them, and running off. Other people in the area tried to talk to them as well, but no luck. Yann, the only Frenchy in our group, tried to talk to them, but also no luck. Finally Yann, Ryan, Victoria, and this guy Jonathan (also from LA) started chasing them down the banks of the Seine, while Jonathan is calling the cops. The guys get away, and Ryan leaves, because he isn't legally allowed to be living and working in France, and doesn't want to deal with the cops.

Once the police come, we give them a description of the leader of the pack, the one who took the camera, and within minutes they find someone who matches that exact description. We walk over to Chatelet and we see it's him, it's definitely him. However, they also have about 6 other Africans and two Maghreb guys with them, none of which match our description. That's when I started to get upset. Here were some completely innocent guys, just chillin' in a spot that happened to be where this jackass was apprehended, and because they were black/middle eastern males, the police started interrogating them. Miranda and I kept going up to the police saying "it's not them it's not them we're sure it's not them." All of the guys in that group that took the camera were wearing sporty/gangster shiny black jackets. These guys weren't. We felt horrible.

Then we had to go to the police station, where we stayed for 2 hours as they got down every detail of our story. The guy they apprehended put up a huge fight. He was screaming and banging and I almost started feeling sorry for him. I really did. This whole situation was so messed up. First the racial profiling, then the way they treated this guy (Miranda saw them perform some sort of neck-twisting move on him... not what I wanted to hear), and plus, poor Yann has a final today, and he was NOT supposed to stay out until 4 am being the "translator," despite the fact that we could all speak French pretty well. I felt SO SO SO bad that he was involved in this. I'm moving today, I wasn't supposed to stay out till 4 am either! And Miranda... well, now she's got a crazy story to tell about her 21st.

In the end, they never found the camera, and they never probably will. And now Victoria has to go to court against this guy.

8 months in Paris, and this is the first time something like this has happened...

well, bonjour there

Long time no post, blog-readers.

It's been over a month since my last post, and life has been crazy. Fantastic, yes, but crazy. And strangely enough, now, during finals, is the calmest I've felt in a while. I know you're going WHAAAT? But it's true. Bizarre how that happened. But let's backtrack, shall we? Let's go back in time...

• April 3rd, Mommy arrived in Paris and spent two weeks with me. It was really fantastic, actually, and kept me very busy, of course. Since my family had spent 3 weeks in Paris during the summer of 04, she didn't really find the need to go to the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomph or Louvre again. She basically wanted to see what I enjoyd doing and wanted to mimic my life. So, that we did. We all celebrated Passover, took a day trip to a French chateau (castle) in the town where French whipped cream (Chantilly) gets it's name (wow, I've been to Champagne, Dijon, and Chantilly. What other French towns can I go to who have food/drink named after them?), sat in parks, hit up museums, just had a lot of busy fun. (I also hit up two other chateaux-- Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte-- with SBC).
• Spring break week two (because week one, Mommy was here)-- traveled to Dublin and Stockholm. Honestly, two fascinating cities. Dublin had a lot of charm and character and THE NICEST PEOPLE EVER. Stockholm was beautiful in a very unique way. It's situated on 14 islands, and there is so much to do in Stockholm it's ridiculous. It felt like San Francisco mixed with Amsterdam (which happen to be two of my favorite cities).
• All this while, I was very busy trying to prepare to be a tour guide for this summer, and more importantly, searching for an APARTMENT! Here is what I discovered-- apartment searching in Paris is a pain. A giant pain in the neck. A friend of mine from Wellesley, Stephanie Buhle, and I decided we wanted to split a place together this summer. Not only do I not like living alone, but I also have no idea how to live in an apartment alone. Stephanie, on the contrary, has had an apartment all year in Aix-en-Provence, provided to her by the Wellesley-in-Aix program. So she knows how to cook, clean, do laundry at a laundromat, deal with apartment issues, etc. Plus, I figured it would be easier to find an apartment for two people than for one, because Paris is FULL of students looking to live in "chambres de bonnes," which are tiny student rooms that can be found on the top floor of many apartment buildings, and so I figured, while everyone was looking for small chambres de bonnes, we'll look for something sliiiightly bigger. Well, apparently, it's harder to find something affordable for two people during the summer than we thought. No one wanted to rent for two months, there were less places to choose from, etc. FINALLY, through the help of SBC, we got a two-bedroom place for a ridiculously cheap price. SBC rents this place out during the year to students on our program who prefer independent living. The old couple who have the place are crazy nice, and they wanted to continue to rent it out to students during the summer, and since they trust SBC and they love students, they just handed it to me!! No contract, cheap price (considering it's in the 8th, normally a VERY expensive neighborhood. The Champs Elysees/Arc de Triomph is in the 8th. So you can imagine...), WE'RE SO LUCKY!
  
• went to the Idan Raichel Project concert here on Thursday night!! Marion came up from Aix for the concert, which was great. Always fun to spend time with far-away friends :). The concert was, as always, moving, incredible, beautiful, profound, fantastic. We bought shirts too. They've never had shirts before...God I LOOOOOVE their music. And they played a LOT of songs from their new album, which made me really happy.
• Went to Giverny, where Money lived, with SBC. Had been there before with my parents, but it was beautiful to be there again. SBC gave us the most incredible meal we'd had in a while. Felt spoiled. And full. We did some biking too. All in all, lovely day.
  
• And finally, now, finals... because things felt so crazy before, I feel actually much calmer now, and so finals don't bother me so much. Instead, I'm focusing on having fun with all of my friends before most of them leave. I can't believe they're leaving. But I'll leave that reflection for another post. In the meantime, well, I SHOULD be studying... but that's just an update. If you read all of that, I applaud you...

Sprintime, and life is fabulous

After my super depressing post last time, here's an uplifting one for you:
0. Springtime in Paris! LOVELY! 'nuff said.
1. I went to a ball last Friday at the Opera Garnier.
2. I'm working as a tour guide in Paris this summer!

So let's start, shall we?

First of all, the work-- I interviewed today to work for Sandeman's New Europe Tours (those of you traveling around other European countries may have gone on one of their tours, pub crawls, or bike tours) in Paris, and I got the job! Well, first I have to go on one of their walking tours to make sure I enjoy it, but I'm sure I will. And MY MOM ARRIVES TOMORROW (!!!), so that'll be the pefect excuse to go on one of the tours. Someone else can do all the talking, and not me, for once :-P. I'm. SO. EXCITED! That means that this summer, I will be a) interning for a film production company b)working as a tour guide and c) teaching english, ALL IN PARIS! This is going to be the best summer ever!!!

Now, onto prettier things: the ball! (I'm trying to upload pics but this thing isn't working properly...)

On Friday, March 27^th, after months of anticipation, a large group of friends (both American and French) and I donned our fanciest attire and headed to the Opéra Garnier for the 118^th Bal de l’X. Yes, the Bal de l’X is an actual ball, and not, as a a friend described, “a moisturizer for men with no hair.” It is a beautiful, lavish event for the students of Ecole Polytechnique (known as X), the grandest of the grandes écoles, the Harvard of France, if you will. The entire event, open to students of any school, Polytechnique alumni, and members of various clubs (for example, the Wellesley Club of France), consists of a dinner, a ballet, and finally the ball itself. The whole package being above and beyond the average student’s budget, my friends and I choose to attend only the ball.

The rooms for dancing included of a jazz band room, a classical music room, and a ‘techno’ room. It was thrilling to get a chance to be inside the gorgeous Opéra Garnier, and admire its artistic and architectural works. However, it was equally as thrilling to experience a real ball—an event that sounds like a dream to most Americans, especially in this economic climate. However, in France, this ball is a well-known and completely normal event. Upon mentioning to any French person that I was going to the Bal de l’X, their reaction was one of excitement, for they knew what the event was and they knew it would be wonderful. Mentioning it to American friends, I would get a completely different response, one of surprise, shock, and envy—something along the lines of “wait, you’re going to a what?”

There were two traditional aspects of the ball in particular that fascinated me, being an American outsider to this practice. The first was the outfits worn by the current students of X. The female students wear long red and black gowns, and the males are dressed in fancy military-style uniforms and hats. Another tradition was the dancing of the quadrille by current X students. To me, the dance looked like a scene out of a movie adapted from a Jane Austen novel, especially accompanied by the costumes. My French friends assured me the quadrille was not something they normally learn or practice. When I asked them why, then, did these students perform this dance in these costumes, they responded with that oh-so-French shrug of the shoulders and a “behh… c’est la tradition.” Like cheese at the end of a meal, or kisses on the cheek, these highlights of the dance were simply another French tradition that I’ve been fortunate enough to learn about while abroad this year in Paris.

tristesse, joie, c'est comme ca

Sometimes, Paris is sad. And it makes me appreciate the happier times of my life.

This past weekend, Tanya, one of my best friends since childhood, came to visit me in Paris. I was insanely happy to see her and we had a great time together running around Paris (we saw TWO weddings at the Eiffel Tower! The groom was carrying the bride and spinning her around and it was so romantic I wanted to shoot myself... I mean, um, it was really cute), and we are making plans to travel to Dublin together. But aside from all that, she made a comment that I find myself often making-- "I feel so bad for those cute puppies in the street."

She is referring to the fact that the streets of Paris are full of homeless men and women, and their dogs. It is sad enough to see so many people living on the streets of gorgeous, lavish Paris, who have literally nothing, but it is absolutely heartbreaking to see them with their cute pets (once I stopped dead on the street because I saw a homeless man, his dog, and his dogs newborn puppies without their eyes even open, nursing from their mother. In the dead of winter). And yes, they're always cute, which made me wonder-- are these really the dogs and cats of the SDF, as they're called in Paris? (SDF= sans domicile fixe, or without a fixed home) While discussing this with a friend last fall, she mentioned that France has some law that states that a SDF cannot be arrested if they posess an animal, because the police don't know what to do with the animal. She also mentioned this while talking about how beggars in Paris often live a life somewhat like a prostitute, to the extent that they have 'pimps' who teach them how to beg and take a share of their money. She mentioned that probably the beggar pimps give the homeless these cute animals to get them money from sympathetic people. I'll believe the beggar pimps, but to this day I don't know if the law concerning homeless and animals is true or not. I've tried looking it up online, but no luck, and it's not something I remember to bring into conversation with my host family or French friends.

Assuming that it was true, however, made sense logically. And it made me feel so bad for these animals, forced to work as a means to earn money for their owners by doing nothing all day. I wonder how much food the animals get, or if their SDF owners ever take them on a walk around Paris. Probably not. I'm so heartbroken each time I see one (which is often several times a day) that I want to start carrying around cans of dog food with me, and distribute them to the owners. But... wait a minute. What about the owners?

Is it wrong of me to feel sympathy for the innocent pet, but not for the human being sitting in front of me? I mean, I do feel sympathy for him or her, but I don't see myself saying "I should carry extra baguettes around in my bag to give to them." Is it because I've become so jaded by the sight of homeless beggars, having grown up in a big city myself full of homeless people? Is it because I believe that most homeless people have brought themselves into this desolate state through drinking and drug abuse? Is it because I now assume that all Parisian beggars are part of this begging ring, and my money will mostly go to their pimp? I like to think not, I do know that there are people out there who started with nothing and their whole lives have had nothing, and do not have the background or education or tools or physical/mental capacity to have a job and a place to live, and that I should help them. But then we get back to the problem of 'how do I KNOW that?' Every time I hear a "bonjour messieurs-dames, excusez-moi de vous deranger..." in that rehearsed, often foreign voice on the metro, how do I know if this is someone who is part of this ring, or if they're asking for alcohol money, or if they really want some change to buy a baguette? (well, a lot of them say something along the lines of "I have 2 kids and we have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat" so I've started to assume that's part of a memorized script)

I feel guilty for wanting to help the animals more than the people, but I won't even donate une piece (change) to people for fear of where my money is truly going. And I won't even give money to music performers on the metro because then I feel like I'd have to give money to everyyy performer, because who I am to judge who deserves money for their talent and who doesn't? And what about the gypsies? I know nothing about the gypsies, but they're always begging for money. Should I help them out? Gypsies don't exist in the States, y'know. What's their story?

Oy, this has turned into a long rant. I need to go back to writing a paper, but the point is, as beautiful and gorgeous and spectacular as Paris is for me, it is a world of despair and emptiness and tristesse (sadness) for others. And I should never, ever forget that.

To end on other happy things-- I'm getting somewhere with my possible internship and possible job in Paris this summer, I'm making more international friends, and I'm patiently awaiting the mythical springtime in Paris. My school was blocked again this week (though I did convince one of the girls blocking it to let me in! hah! and then the Professor didn't show up...), but oh well, somehow it'll all sort itself out, right?