Coming back up the rue de Seine from buying a baguette the other day, Diana and I passed by a truly unique old lady that I struggle to find words to describe. She was quite old, in at least her 80s I believe. What made her so striking was that she was absolutely decked out in the most over-done style I have ever seen. Her skirt suit was made out of something that probably should have been curtains, brightly and intricately patterned with little flowers. Chunky ruffles protruded prominently from her shoulders. Her tall hat matched. Make-up had been caked onto her face so heavily that the eyes that looked out from behind her large, red-rimmed glasses hardly looked real. She hobbled along stiffly in her high heels.
Some things are hard not to stare at.
A man in a suit rides his motorbike through the intersection of blvd Saint Germain des Pres and rue de Seine. Coming up behind him is another motorbike driven by a young boy, an older woman (his mother?) straddled on the back of the seat behind him. Then comes another with a woman, dressed her best in a short black skirt and a undefinably fashionable top, her perfect, carefully groomed face shining from beneath her helmet. Then a little, old man hits the gas on his. They weave among the cars, as there are never any lane-lines, fighting through the mess of Paris traffic to see who can get down the street the fastest. The motorbikes always win.
There is an ice cream shop in the market that must be the best because it has the longest lines. Diana and I have been there three times now. They scoop two flavors of ice cream into your cone in such a way that it comes out looking like a flower. The artwork still provides fresh amazement every time. And there are many, many more combination of two flavors we have left to try before we grow bored of that ice cream shop.
People kiss in public in Paris. This is a well-known fact which people generally seem to find is one of the city’s endearing qualities. Sometimes people make out in public too, which is an extra-special treat. Tonight, we were fortunate enough to witness a very obese couple, seized with the sudden urge to make a public display of their affection, perform a magnificent kiss, complete with a large hand-stroke over voluptuous, mammoth-sized butt! It was the hand on the butt that did it. We totally lost whatever train of conversation we had going and laughed pretty much the rest of the way home once we were past them.
If I were making out in public, I don’t think I would give a damn whether people were looking or what they thought.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
silly americans!!
At a very nice and expensive restaurant, the first weekend we were here, Diana asked for the location of the “salle de bain” so she could wash her hands before eating. The waiter gave her the most priceless look, highly amused that one of his customers would specifically request a room with a bath. The proper word for bathroom in French is “toilette.”
The word for peach, pêche, is feminine in French. I didn’t really know this, but I wanted to verify with the man who sells the peaches at the stand in the market that the peaches I was buying were the white kind instead of the yellow kind. The word I used for white was “blancs,” and his correction came as a reflex: “blanches.” Sometimes you can’t bear to hear your language slaughtered and it’s worth correcting the offender.
Deciphering French signs and labels can sometimes be too overwhelming to do with 100% accuracy, as Diana learned tonight when she made pasta with a can of cocktail sauce instead of spaghetti sauce! Sometimes you’re too hungry to care and you eat it anyway.
Young girls as naive as me can be almost purposefully oblivious to the intentions of guys who are flirting with them. Today I was waiting for Diana outside of the supermarché, and I got to talking with a hobo-type of guy who appeared to be waiting too, but probably was sitting there just for the opportunity to hit on me. He asked me right off the bat if I was French, which I had to reply “no” to (somehow it’s still obvious that I’m a foreigner; I’ve been trying!) Dying for a conversation in French, though, I happily explained to him where Illinois is, using Chicago as my reference. Then I found out he was from Normandy, and before I knew it, I was held captive by a very long story about how the Vikings landed at in Normandy in the 10th century and settled there. I found this whole exchange completely, innocently delighting, though it did become difficult to find a breaking point once Diana had emerged (he adamantly ignored all hints that I was trying to leave). According to her recounting of the event later, he was very clearly hitting on me by the end, asking me my name and where I live (which I frankly don’t remember, I was so confused about what he was saying by then). She told me that as things dragged on, she and this other man who also happened to be standing around were watching the two of us. The two of them had an absolute riot exchanging meaningful glances as they burst their sides with barely contained laughter at how completely oblivious I was to what was going on. For me, I feel it was a matter of perspective. I had a cultural experience, thank you. But I’m happy to provide amusement to onlookers. To each their own.
On the bright side, neither of us has been run down by a car yet, thank God.
The word for peach, pêche, is feminine in French. I didn’t really know this, but I wanted to verify with the man who sells the peaches at the stand in the market that the peaches I was buying were the white kind instead of the yellow kind. The word I used for white was “blancs,” and his correction came as a reflex: “blanches.” Sometimes you can’t bear to hear your language slaughtered and it’s worth correcting the offender.
Deciphering French signs and labels can sometimes be too overwhelming to do with 100% accuracy, as Diana learned tonight when she made pasta with a can of cocktail sauce instead of spaghetti sauce! Sometimes you’re too hungry to care and you eat it anyway.
Young girls as naive as me can be almost purposefully oblivious to the intentions of guys who are flirting with them. Today I was waiting for Diana outside of the supermarché, and I got to talking with a hobo-type of guy who appeared to be waiting too, but probably was sitting there just for the opportunity to hit on me. He asked me right off the bat if I was French, which I had to reply “no” to (somehow it’s still obvious that I’m a foreigner; I’ve been trying!) Dying for a conversation in French, though, I happily explained to him where Illinois is, using Chicago as my reference. Then I found out he was from Normandy, and before I knew it, I was held captive by a very long story about how the Vikings landed at in Normandy in the 10th century and settled there. I found this whole exchange completely, innocently delighting, though it did become difficult to find a breaking point once Diana had emerged (he adamantly ignored all hints that I was trying to leave). According to her recounting of the event later, he was very clearly hitting on me by the end, asking me my name and where I live (which I frankly don’t remember, I was so confused about what he was saying by then). She told me that as things dragged on, she and this other man who also happened to be standing around were watching the two of us. The two of them had an absolute riot exchanging meaningful glances as they burst their sides with barely contained laughter at how completely oblivious I was to what was going on. For me, I feel it was a matter of perspective. I had a cultural experience, thank you. But I’m happy to provide amusement to onlookers. To each their own.
On the bright side, neither of us has been run down by a car yet, thank God.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
signs of life
As we revel in our Parisian vacation, there have been signs that life is going to eventually settle into a routine.
Yesterday was Sunday. Immediately upon dragging myself out of bed, I went to meet with the owner of my apartment. It was a short walk up the street to where my apartment is. I entered the building code he had given me and walked up three flights of stairs. A couple seconds after being ushered in through the front door, I did a double-take as I matched up in my head the apartment I saw before me with the pictures I had looked at so many times online. It’s really the same place. It’s really going to be mine soon.
I have to say, the meeting went really smoothly. I had him go over every single clause of the contract to make sure I understood everything. I told him the story of Colleen’s apartment getting pooped on, in order to make sure that if any such disasters happened to me, there would be something I could do to get out of it. We went over the whole inventory together. He’s truly taken the term “furnished apartment” to the extreme. He’s a very nice, genial guy, but I’m a little put-off because he really hasn’t done a great job of clearing out the apartment. He seems to think it’s perfect okay to leave all his stuff in the apartment. Having a bed and furniture is one thing. Having a completely set of kitchen items is a slightly weirder thing, though still pretty cool. But, correct me if I’m wrong, having to babysit six full shelves of his books, a whole rack of his CDs, a ton of hanging artwork and pictures, a third of a closet and a huge drawer of his junk is considerably less cool. Despite the morning’s successes, the experience was off-setting to me. For the first time, I was going out into the world on my own without even Diana. I realized that I really am about to live alone, in a little studio (no Colleen or anything). And on top of that, it seems nearly impossible to personalize that studio enough to make it feel like mine. I mean, listen to this. There is a little table in the corner by the fold-out bed that is covered with not only bottles of alcohol but also a hookah jar!!! I am unclear about whether the hookah thing is staying, but he said that the alcohol is. He’s like, “feel free to drink any of it,” as if he’s doing me some kind of favor! It has bothered me enough in the time since I left that I think I will talk to him about it when I see him next. I’m going to be like, “oh, so you don’t mind if I throw it all out, then, right?”
Sigh... Positive thoughts consist of a plan to put all his stuff away in what I have left of the closet, take down all the pictures and pile them in a corner, just to get it out of sight. Then I can do what I will with the visible space in the apartment. I’m hoping that will help. It will be a good project with which to fill up my time anyway.
The other sign that settled life is approaching is that we met with Isabelle that evening. Isabelle is our harp teacher. She had been insistent that we telephone her once we got to Paris, and then once we did she very kindly invited us to meet at her apartment. The ones of us who are here already are four Americans: me, Marta, Diana, and Tasha. There were going to be eight of us total in Isabelle’s Ecole Normale studio, but Tasha just found out that she is pregnant (over the summer, by her boyfriend of five years) and she’s going to have to go back home to L.A. It’s a shame, because she seems like she would have been cool to get to know, but it’s happy news.
Isabelle wanted to teach us all lessons early next week, because she’s going to be out of town for the first week of school and she needs to make up the lesson we’ll all miss at some point. But I haven’t touched a harp in so long, and neither has Diana, that we opted to have our make-up lesson during our fall break instead. That will give us time to get back into practicing. We won’t even receive our rental harps until October anyway, so we have to travel all the way out on the metro and reserve time at Camac in order to practice until then.
As an amusing side-note. I now have specific information about when our breaks are throughout the year. Marta was reading them off to us as we marked them down in our planners. It is remarkable how many breaks there are; you’re all going to be so jealous! We get two weeks off at a time, the first one at the end of October, barely after we’ve started, one at Christmas, one in February, and another in April, and then exams are at the beginning of June! It’s almost ridiculous, but I think it will be great. Maybe I’ll get to take some little trips to other European countries as vacations. I’ll let you know!
C’est tout!
Yesterday was Sunday. Immediately upon dragging myself out of bed, I went to meet with the owner of my apartment. It was a short walk up the street to where my apartment is. I entered the building code he had given me and walked up three flights of stairs. A couple seconds after being ushered in through the front door, I did a double-take as I matched up in my head the apartment I saw before me with the pictures I had looked at so many times online. It’s really the same place. It’s really going to be mine soon.
I have to say, the meeting went really smoothly. I had him go over every single clause of the contract to make sure I understood everything. I told him the story of Colleen’s apartment getting pooped on, in order to make sure that if any such disasters happened to me, there would be something I could do to get out of it. We went over the whole inventory together. He’s truly taken the term “furnished apartment” to the extreme. He’s a very nice, genial guy, but I’m a little put-off because he really hasn’t done a great job of clearing out the apartment. He seems to think it’s perfect okay to leave all his stuff in the apartment. Having a bed and furniture is one thing. Having a completely set of kitchen items is a slightly weirder thing, though still pretty cool. But, correct me if I’m wrong, having to babysit six full shelves of his books, a whole rack of his CDs, a ton of hanging artwork and pictures, a third of a closet and a huge drawer of his junk is considerably less cool. Despite the morning’s successes, the experience was off-setting to me. For the first time, I was going out into the world on my own without even Diana. I realized that I really am about to live alone, in a little studio (no Colleen or anything). And on top of that, it seems nearly impossible to personalize that studio enough to make it feel like mine. I mean, listen to this. There is a little table in the corner by the fold-out bed that is covered with not only bottles of alcohol but also a hookah jar!!! I am unclear about whether the hookah thing is staying, but he said that the alcohol is. He’s like, “feel free to drink any of it,” as if he’s doing me some kind of favor! It has bothered me enough in the time since I left that I think I will talk to him about it when I see him next. I’m going to be like, “oh, so you don’t mind if I throw it all out, then, right?”
Sigh... Positive thoughts consist of a plan to put all his stuff away in what I have left of the closet, take down all the pictures and pile them in a corner, just to get it out of sight. Then I can do what I will with the visible space in the apartment. I’m hoping that will help. It will be a good project with which to fill up my time anyway.
The other sign that settled life is approaching is that we met with Isabelle that evening. Isabelle is our harp teacher. She had been insistent that we telephone her once we got to Paris, and then once we did she very kindly invited us to meet at her apartment. The ones of us who are here already are four Americans: me, Marta, Diana, and Tasha. There were going to be eight of us total in Isabelle’s Ecole Normale studio, but Tasha just found out that she is pregnant (over the summer, by her boyfriend of five years) and she’s going to have to go back home to L.A. It’s a shame, because she seems like she would have been cool to get to know, but it’s happy news.
Isabelle wanted to teach us all lessons early next week, because she’s going to be out of town for the first week of school and she needs to make up the lesson we’ll all miss at some point. But I haven’t touched a harp in so long, and neither has Diana, that we opted to have our make-up lesson during our fall break instead. That will give us time to get back into practicing. We won’t even receive our rental harps until October anyway, so we have to travel all the way out on the metro and reserve time at Camac in order to practice until then.
As an amusing side-note. I now have specific information about when our breaks are throughout the year. Marta was reading them off to us as we marked them down in our planners. It is remarkable how many breaks there are; you’re all going to be so jealous! We get two weeks off at a time, the first one at the end of October, barely after we’ve started, one at Christmas, one in February, and another in April, and then exams are at the beginning of June! It’s almost ridiculous, but I think it will be great. Maybe I’ll get to take some little trips to other European countries as vacations. I’ll let you know!
C’est tout!
Friday, September 08, 2006
de Paris
Dear world,
I am here, in Paris, actually here, for real. I am typing to you from an adorable little apartment tucked away in the depths of an 1820s building on the Rue de Seine in the Latin quarter. My friend Diana and I are rooming together temporarily until we each get settled in our long-term apartments. Mine should be ready sometime next week.
Everything in Paris, no matter how small or out-of-the-way or insignificant, is made with the care of a sensitive artisan. Every little space is put to use. Everywhere you look is breath-taking, from realizing that our tiny little stall of a bathroom has cloth flowers sprouting from the corners, to turning a corner when we're out on a walk and coming suddenly face-to-face with a thousand-year-old monument. The way Diana puts it, we're living in a postcard.
I feel almost immediately comfortable in Paris. Anybody who has been here knows that it is a really unique city, as compared to other big cities. It's not dominated by skyscrapers, nor sectioned off into commercial versus residential areas. Paris is a city that has been gradually growing and building on itself for centuries longer than any in modern America. You can feel the history and tradition here. Everywhere you go, people are out on the streets, skillfully dodging each other as they walk wherever they can find a clear path, or lounging out at cafes. We hear French spoken around us all the time, but are still on the outside. Big cities are a little hard to break into at first. There can be a million people around, but yet you are not a part of it until you find a way in. It's not realistically an option to randomly meet someone on the street and become friends. For now, we settle with only practicing our French when it comes time to order a delicious meal or to understand how much money I'm supposed to pay for the little pink schedule book that I found at the stationery store. Take it up a notch, though, when it comes time to find a bank account for real today.
This is only my third day here, and we've already walked probably a hundred miles. Walking is the thing to do in Paris. For one, you can walk wherever you need to go--there's really no need for a car--and for two, it's fun and everybody does it. It's such good exercise, that once you get over how much your feet hurt, you realize that you can buy nutella crepes from the random stands along the sidewalk and not worry about gaining weight!
My most impressive walking experiences so far were the first day I got here. Dear Marta met me at the airport and helped me get all my baggage through the metro system, down to Diana's apartment. This took nearly two hours, and I have nearly my body-weight worth of baggage with me. Even split between the two of us, the load was nearly unbearable. Somehow, with mere grit and determination (and with the occasional assistance of strong men who decided to take pity on us) we made it. One would think that that would have earned me a rest, but Marta and Diana then decided it would be best for my jet lag if we then spent the whole evening walking too! So we went out for Chinese (absolutely gourmet) and then visited Marta in her apartment, met her boyfriend Damien, and then circled back around and saw Notre Dame two times on the way back because we couldn't quite figure out how to go the right direction to get home...
I don't know how much that all helped my jet lag, but it was fun. The next day I woke up at 3pm. But then last night I couldn't fall asleep at all and then woke up early this morning and couldn't fall back asleep. The muffled noises of the city filter through our windows. There's a dry-cleaners just below us, which has its own orchestra of unusual sounds, including a periodic bell, a squirting air machine, and the radio. Ahh, the cultural flavor :)
There's so much else to tell, but we have to go start our day now. Items on the list: find breakfast, go to the market, meet Marta in order to hunt down banks, call my apartment owner to schedule a rendez-vous, and call Isabelle, our teacher, to let her know we're actually here. Oh, and anything else that comes up along the way.
I'll be back!
I am here, in Paris, actually here, for real. I am typing to you from an adorable little apartment tucked away in the depths of an 1820s building on the Rue de Seine in the Latin quarter. My friend Diana and I are rooming together temporarily until we each get settled in our long-term apartments. Mine should be ready sometime next week.
Everything in Paris, no matter how small or out-of-the-way or insignificant, is made with the care of a sensitive artisan. Every little space is put to use. Everywhere you look is breath-taking, from realizing that our tiny little stall of a bathroom has cloth flowers sprouting from the corners, to turning a corner when we're out on a walk and coming suddenly face-to-face with a thousand-year-old monument. The way Diana puts it, we're living in a postcard.
I feel almost immediately comfortable in Paris. Anybody who has been here knows that it is a really unique city, as compared to other big cities. It's not dominated by skyscrapers, nor sectioned off into commercial versus residential areas. Paris is a city that has been gradually growing and building on itself for centuries longer than any in modern America. You can feel the history and tradition here. Everywhere you go, people are out on the streets, skillfully dodging each other as they walk wherever they can find a clear path, or lounging out at cafes. We hear French spoken around us all the time, but are still on the outside. Big cities are a little hard to break into at first. There can be a million people around, but yet you are not a part of it until you find a way in. It's not realistically an option to randomly meet someone on the street and become friends. For now, we settle with only practicing our French when it comes time to order a delicious meal or to understand how much money I'm supposed to pay for the little pink schedule book that I found at the stationery store. Take it up a notch, though, when it comes time to find a bank account for real today.
This is only my third day here, and we've already walked probably a hundred miles. Walking is the thing to do in Paris. For one, you can walk wherever you need to go--there's really no need for a car--and for two, it's fun and everybody does it. It's such good exercise, that once you get over how much your feet hurt, you realize that you can buy nutella crepes from the random stands along the sidewalk and not worry about gaining weight!
My most impressive walking experiences so far were the first day I got here. Dear Marta met me at the airport and helped me get all my baggage through the metro system, down to Diana's apartment. This took nearly two hours, and I have nearly my body-weight worth of baggage with me. Even split between the two of us, the load was nearly unbearable. Somehow, with mere grit and determination (and with the occasional assistance of strong men who decided to take pity on us) we made it. One would think that that would have earned me a rest, but Marta and Diana then decided it would be best for my jet lag if we then spent the whole evening walking too! So we went out for Chinese (absolutely gourmet) and then visited Marta in her apartment, met her boyfriend Damien, and then circled back around and saw Notre Dame two times on the way back because we couldn't quite figure out how to go the right direction to get home...
I don't know how much that all helped my jet lag, but it was fun. The next day I woke up at 3pm. But then last night I couldn't fall asleep at all and then woke up early this morning and couldn't fall back asleep. The muffled noises of the city filter through our windows. There's a dry-cleaners just below us, which has its own orchestra of unusual sounds, including a periodic bell, a squirting air machine, and the radio. Ahh, the cultural flavor :)
There's so much else to tell, but we have to go start our day now. Items on the list: find breakfast, go to the market, meet Marta in order to hunt down banks, call my apartment owner to schedule a rendez-vous, and call Isabelle, our teacher, to let her know we're actually here. Oh, and anything else that comes up along the way.
I'll be back!
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