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!