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!