"I’m putting miles on my body, I’m ‘bout due for a tune-up and this airport food ain’t really helping,
But I’m loving every minute; every road sign is a reminder of exactly why I did it to begin with..."
~Gym Class Heroes, Seven Weeks

I walked into "my" room at my mom’s house in Raleigh last night at half past midnight, Eastern Time. Which meant that it was 6am on Monday, May 28 in Paris, and that the last time my head had awoken on a pillow was 8am on Saturday, May 26. To be fair, I slept for probably four hours on the planes, but they were both full, and I couldn’t find a place to put my head. I have never felt as miserable as I did on those two flights. I had two carry-ons with me that weighed 38 pounds and 18 pounds, respectively, AND my winter coat in my arms. And I just kept thinking how all that trouble could have been avoided if I had just STAYED in Paris. I am still in denial about being back here; denying the fact that I am IN the US, that "home" is no longer Square Alboni and that I am going to be speaking English for an awfully long time. I woke up this morning (with, of course, no idea where I was) and looked in the mirror to see my inSANEly jetlagged face, circles under my eyes, hair sticking out wrongly, in a t-shirt I hadn’t seen in nine months.
In the corner of my mirror, I found this written:

"Today is all you’ve got now
And today is all you’ll ever have.
Don’t close your eyes, this is your life:
Are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger, and you had everything to lose?"

It’s from a song that I liked three years ago, when I was in the process of graduating high school, which makes me highly doubt my musical taste, but that is irrelevant. It’s kind of dramatic... but so is my life, I am beginning to realize.

I’ll always miss Paris, the same way I’ll always miss a lot of the places that I’ve been. But I’ll be back; the way it seems to me, I don’t really have a chance. Paris has my heart, and until that changes (or maybe it never will), I could never imagine not returning. I know I can never have the life I did for the last year, but returning to a place I have such fond memories of will be amazing no matter what.

So I am sad, I miss Paris, I miss those friends, those nights, those conversations and those moments... but I also refuse to let myself revel in what I am missing. For the moment, it’s on to Los Angeles, where I will live with my eyes wide open.

And in a year? Who knows?

I am finally learning that being 21 is probably the most exciting thing in the world because it means that in JUST ONE YEAR I get to do whatever I want, wherever I want. In true Gypsy form, I’ve already got a pretty good idea of where I want to end up...

I always knew I’d have to leave Paris eventually, which in theory should have made it easier to go, but it still hurts so much more than I thought it would. What scares me about it is that as soon as I got to Paris, the Mountain seemed so far away, and before that, as soon as I got to the Mountain, Emory seemed a world and a half away. So when I get to Los Angeles am I going to forget Paris?

Luckily when I got back to the US, my mom presented me with a stack of papers the size of one of those sheaves you put in a copy machine.

"What is this?" I asked, flipping through it listlessly and exhausted, my eyes widening as I realized I had written it all, every last word on those pages. The "manuscript" edition of this blog is four and a half inches thick. Trust me, I measured. What a present... I am thrilled to have a solid tangible copy of it– the funny part is that I have often, in the last year, felt at a complete loss for how to explain my life in Paris, limited by the constraints of language and my lack of time. If you added the letters I wrote to other people, the emails I typed out frantically every time I made it to the internet bar, and my personal journals, the size would be more than doubled, I am sure. And I could keep writing for the entire summer about anecdotes and culture and experiences and thoughts about my time in Europe, but that would mean me accepting and admitting that it is, truly, over. And I am not quite ready to dwell on that yet.
I’ve got one year ahead of me.

I was in Paris for a year, right? And that flew by... so give me a twelvemonth here– I ain’t scared, I’ll make it back to the other side of the pond on my tadpole legs and I’ll show the Parisians what they missed without me there.

So I’ve got a year. I’m moving in four more days.

From the City Of Light to the City Of Angels...
~Always yours,
Always Gypsy.

Also... in case you're interested:
http://www.americangypsyinlosangeles.blogspot.com
I can't help it; now I'm addicted.

"I lace my Chucks, I walk the aisle. I take my pills, the babies cry, all I hear is what’s playing through the in-flight radio. Now every word of every song I ever heard that made me want to stay is what’s playing through the in-flight radio."
~Jack’s Mannequin, Bruised.

I’m writing this from the plane taking me back to the US... am not particularly THRILLED by that, but am none the less going to tell you the story of the last few days I spent in Paris.

Thursday night was the Erasmus party– a party at a club in Paris every week that is free for international students. I’ve been a few times, but this week Rachel’s boyfriend and his friend were in town, so Rachel and I decided we ought to take them. We got to the club around midnight, sat down in a corner for about a minute and a half, and then hit the dance floor. The night is a complete blur for me– I had so much fun, we danced so much and so fast and so wonderfully that I didn’t really pay any attention to anything but the four of us. I sweated through my top by the end of the third song, but I mean, we were at a club in France (called Les Planches, which is one of my favorite French words– it means "The Boards.") which was probably not air-conditioned, so whatever. On our way into the club, I realized that every time I have attempted to dance with European guys at a club or a concert or whatever, it is always the utmost in hilarious.
(To begin with, the concept of me dancing at all is mildly amusing for anyone lucky enough to watch. I learned to dance as a summer camp staff worker, which I never thought would permanently affect me until I was at a club in Paris one time and a guy of European nationality who had lived in America came up to me and asked if I had ever worked at a summer camp. Ouch.)
So anyway, me dancing at all= funny. European guys dancing= amazing and funny. Me attempting to keep up with them= so pitiable it’s ridiculous.

We walk into the club on Thursday, and I realize we have just arrived WITH two European guys (easy to forget since they both speak English) and I got a little nervous. We walked out onto the dance floor, and immediately I realized my worries were needless– apparently my European dancing experience has been limited to guys from the CONTINENT of Europe and not the UK (Rachel’s boyfriend is Irish, the other was English). This is not to say that they danced like Americans (because they didn’t, and so, for the night, neither did I), but the one I danced with most all of the night was so good it didn’t really matter how he danced, I still kept up. So we start dancing like absolute crazy people to the most awesome European kind of songs (things you never get to hear at American clubs), and suddenly I look up and realize there are six people on the dance floor, and we are four of them.

"Rachel!" I yelled over the shoulder (and thus probably into the ear) of the English guy we had come with. "Why is it clearing out?"

"WHAT?" she bellowed back.

"WHY ARE WE THE ONLY ONES HERE?" Now, I don’t know if you have ever BEEN on a dance floor when you are one of only two couples out there– the club had not emptied, everyone had just migrated from the dance floor to the tables around it, because they were exhausted and not as hardcore as Rachel, Frank, Adam, and I. But suffice it to say, it’s quite an experience dancing pretty much ALONE with a whole audience of Europeans watching you. Since we hadn’t realized we were alone, we were still going at it furiously, dancing our little ex-patriate hearts out.
Rachel looked around and realized I was right about being the only ones on the floor, took her phone out and yelled back, "BECAUSE IT’S 4am!"
The Metro in Paris closes on weeknights at 1230ish and opens back up at 530am. We knew we wouldn’t be able to make it home BEFORE it closed, so we thought we would catch a cab, walk, or take the night bus home from where we were... But it was 4am, and we were all still going strong. So we did what any hardcore rockstars would have done in our shoes– we moved to the dead CENTER of the dance floor and kept on dancing. That night definitely goes on the list of one of my favorite nights in Paris– I love going dancing (it’s pretty much the only time I really ENJOY sweating) and I love good music and I love the friends I was hanging out with and most of all, I love being young enough that, at 430am when I had been up since 8am that morning, I was still going strong enough to not WANT to stop dancing. We kept the party going until 530am, when the club lights came on, killing the mood and sending us walking to the Metro in the gray dawn of the Champs des Elysees. We went back to Rachel’s apartment, debating all the way what we would do upon arrival ("Let’s make omelettes! With cheese and lardons!" "No, let’s go shower, we all stink like our own sweat and other people’s cigarettes!")

And upon our arrival, we did nothing but lay around rubbing each other’s shoulders until we realized it was 8am and we should maybe go to sleep, so I headed back to my place (meaning I had to get on the Metro at 815am on a Friday morning, wearing a strapless black top and sparkly black shoes with eyeliner all over my face... standing there with all the businessmen trying to look like a legitimate person was kind of difficult– my outfit screamed that it had been a crazy night, the wild look of my sweaty ponytailed hair confirmed it). I’ll miss clubs like that, nights like that, friends like that in the US. I remember it hazily even now– a song, a wild dance, the golden lights sparkling in my face as we all got hotter and hotter...

I love being young, and I love that I am going to work the ultimate YOUNG person’s job for the summer... Intern at a record label. ROCK. ON.

Saturday was my last full day in Paris, and Rachel’s 21st birthday. Her boyfriend Frank was playing in a Gaelic football game (if you don’t know what that is, combine every sport you can think of, add violence and imagine everyone playing it yelling unintelligible things in thick Irish accents), so Rachel, Adam and I were going to go watch the game and picnic it up. Here is what our picnic consisted of, and why I am going to miss Europe so much:
Half a watermelon
Two baguettes
Half a wheel of reblochon cheese, and a decent sized wedge of brie
Five fresh apricots
Three peaches
A bag of cherries
Two giant bottles of water
Two jambonneaux
A bottle of Pol Remy framboise, which means, for you anglophones, Pol Remy Raspberry.

Framboise is this drink that tastes like KoolAid, is bright pink, fizzy, and costs about 1Euro80. Rachel and I like it because it is the absolute epitome of girly... For the same reason, Frank and Adam never wanted to touch it. But in a fit of classiness, we forgot cups to pour it into. So we have a bottle of framboise to drink, and nothing to drink it out of. But relax! We were not to be deterred, deciding it was better to drink from the bottle than face the risks of dehydration.

Jambonneaux are these... meat things that Rachel and I have found ourselves periodically buying throughout the year when we find ourselves having dinner at her apartment. It’s some cut of ham that comes smoked on a bone and wrapped in... well... skin. They are pretty much the best thing I have ever eaten, and also the most caveman-like. When Rachel and I eat them at her apartment, we make a huge mess– attempting in the bleachers of a football stadium was ridiculous. We were afraid we would be searched on our way in like in the US (yeah right), and since we had brought a sharp knife to cut the jambonneau, we figured we ought to hide it. So we inserted it into on the baguettes we had brought with us, like a file in a cake.

(P.S. A jambonneau is HUGE. There were three of us eating it, and thus absolutely no reason why we needed TWO of them, except that we are hardcore.) We realized quickly the knife was not working without a table to press on, so we gave up that plan and commenced to eating the jambonneaux with our hands. Rachel and I, being the only ones that had ever had it, began.

So imagine with me, if you will: here are two 21-year-old American girls, one of whom is fairly classy (Rachel) and the other of whom dresses like a vegan emo chick, even though she is not (me). With them is a 21-year-old English guy with a Hugh Grant-esque accent, looking every bit like an English rockstar, eyeing the Americans over the top of his glasses as they remove two giant hunks of pink meat from a greasy paper bag and begin to gnaw on them. I took a bite of mine, sighed contentedly, and held it out to Adam.
"Wanna try?" I asked through a mouthful of jambonneau. [This is the other thing I enjoy about being young: we didn’t even ask each other if it was cool to gnaw after each other, we just did it.]
"I think I am good for the moment, thanks," he answered in his extremely aristocratic-sounding accent, shaking his head at the two of us.

"Hey, can you pass the framboise, please?" Rachel asked, setting down her chunk of meat gingerly on the bag. Adam, the only one left with clean hands, handed her the bottle and Rachel took a swig, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand because we had already run out of napkins.
She and I continued to gnaw thoughtfully for awhile, trying to keep up with the game and not drop our slippery hunks of pig. Finally Adam became acclimated to the idea that the girls he was with were half-cavewomen and held out his hand for the jambonneau, taking a cautious bite (he did not, to his credit, dive in and get grease all over his face the way we did).

"Rachel, what are you doing about your hands? I am so... sticky and greasy now," I asked after awhile.
"Yeah, I was just kind of going for the rub-them-together-briskly and then wipe-them-on-your-pants method."
"Ok, as long as you have a plan," I replied, happily doing the same, ruining the pants I was supposed to wear on my ten-hour flight home the next day. We soon finished the framboise, and more importantly converted this previously-elegant and classy Englishman to the ways of Pig-Eating.
After the game, we all went home, cleaned up and dressed up, and met at a restaurant on my favorite street in Paris (Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, just for the record) for a celebratory dinner of the world famous Aztec hot chocolate at La Jacobine. I had brought a cake for Rachel, which we planned on eating right afterward in front of Notre Dame, but we got distracted and ended up at Le Rhubarb, a cheap student hangout in the Latin Quarter. We drank appletinis made with fans of sliced apples in the low-ceilinged vaulted basement that used to be a wine cellar until the bright lights blinded us and the bartender told us they were closing.
"But... but... it’s only 130am!"
"Yeah, sorry, mate," he said, his tone clearly indicating he was anything but. We headed to an Irish bar closeby that is stationed in a neighborhood with strict noise ordinances– we tapped on the metal door, a tiny trap door was slid open, and one of us said, in French, "Ahh... bonsoir?" not really knowing the protocol for getting into a real speakeasy. They let us in, but it was so crowded and obnoxious we left and walked most of the way home in the cold before we found a cab.
Walking into Rachel’s apartment at 430am (again), we finally lit the candles and ate the cake, and, as he took his last bite, Adam (the English guy) suddenly piped up with "So, ladies... is there any of that pig left?"
He’s been converted.

We had no jambonneau left, so he and I left to go buy breakfast at about 5am from Moulin de la Vierge, my favorite boulangerie in the 7th. Adam took French in high school, about as much as I took Spanish, so he must have spoken it pretty well back in the day. Now his French has deteriorated into this kind of Pepe LePew accented English, but he still understands a lot. We walked into the boulangerie, I ordered us a baguette and a Viennoise au Chocolat, trying to act like it was normal that two 21year old anglophones walked into this bakery about two minutes after they opened, wearing last night’s clothes. We walked back to Rachel’s apartment, armed with our breads, and got to her door when we realized we didn’t have her key. No big deal, we knock. So we did.
And no one answered.

And just then the hallway light died, leaving us standing in this pitch dark hallway at 530am, knocking on a door in an effort to not wake the whole building.

"KNOCK LOUDER!" I hissed to Adam, who had only barely tapped the door with his baguette.
"Shhh!" he whispered– we could hear voices from behind the neighbor’s door. I knocked again. Nothing. Finally I remembered Rachel’s doorbell– every time it’s rung, it shorts out everything in her studio.
"Fine," I thought, "if they can’t hear our knocking, they’ll surely notice when all the lights go out."
I rang. I heard it buzz and then the click of all the circuits in her room flipping. No one came to the door. Just then the bathroom door down the hall was thrown open.
Adam and I both jumped out of our skin at the noise (and the thought of the awkwardness of the two of us standing in the dark in the hall, wielding warm loaves of bread). So Adam dove behind me, then reached around me, holding his bread out like a peace offering, and said, sounding EXACTLY like the Pink Panther, "Bonjooooooour!" as though he expected the girl at the end of the hall to take the bread. I stood frozen, vaguely aware of the bread he was holding out in front of me, more aware that I should try to make things less awkward. I knocked his hand down, afraid she would think the bread WAS a gift and take our breakfast. Confusedly, I grinned at her, shrugged, and stood there frozen until she disappeared into her room.
"WHAT was that?" I hissed as soon as she had left.
"What?" he asked, genuinely confused at what the problem had been.
"You tried to give away our breakfast! And you left me to fend her off by myself– she totally saw you scrambling to get behind me, you know."
"Behind you? What are you talking about?"
"Nevermind. We still need to get into this room."
"Why? We got the breakfast out here."
"They probably fell asleep."
"It’s dark out here, you know. We could eat breakfast out here and then go to sleep."
"In the hallway?"
"Yeah, I guess it’s a little weird..." he acknowledged, turning to lean on the door at the exact moment Rachel opened it sleepily from the inside. He collapsed into her, and she yawned, surprised.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
"Getting breakfast!" he answered, "But then you didn’t answer the door for like 45 minutes, so we’ve been having a hall party."
"FORTY-FIVE MINUTES!?" Rachel shrieked. "We fell asleep... I had no idea! Why didn’t you knock?"
Adam and I looked at each other and burst into hysterics.
"Never mind," I said, "we brought food!" so we sat down at the table and ate baguette and viennoise until our eyes could hardly stay open, at which point I walked to the Metro for the last time and headed to my wonderful apartment on Square Alboni, where I had just over two hours to get my stuff packed completely and downstairs for the cab. I won’t write about the rest– about the ten hours in one plane and the three hours in another to get me home... I’ll just tell you that those last few days were wonderful for me– surreal enough to keep my mind off of my imminent return to the US, fun enough to make me not care, and exciting enough to keep me up all night long... twice.

Live from 30,000 feet over your head,
B

"I’m looking for the tower of learning
I’m looking for the copious prize
I saw it in your eyes what I’m looking for
I saw it in your eyes what I’m looking for
I really do feel that I’m dying
I really do feel that I’m dead
I saw it in your eyes what I’m looking for
I saw it in your eyes, what will make me live
All the sights of Paris
Pale inside your iris
Tip the Eiffel Tower with one glance
Stained glass cathedrals with one glint
You smashed it with your eyes, what I’m looking for
One blink and then my heart wasn’t there no more
I’m looking for the tower of learning
I’m looking for the copious prize..."
~Rufus Wainwright, Tower Of Learning.

Someone played me that song two months before I left for France the first time. I remember listening to it in the Kentucky dark and almost crying, knowing it was one of those things that would stick with me. And it has. And now I listen to it and I remember hearing it for the first time, and then I think about the Tower that I could see out my bedroom window, and I think about everything I am about to leave, and it is such beautiful melancholy. I am going to miss this place so much, I don’t think I can really even fathom it yet... I know I can’t.

Because the thing is that I’ve become used to it. And that makes it so much harder. When I got here it was this gorgeous new life that I was going to lead, and so it didn’t matter (No, it did matter, but I convinced myself that it would be ok) that I was leaving behind all these amazing relationships I had– people from Emory, new friends from summers, etc.

And if I had left in December, then the four months I spent here would have been a respite from American culture which I would have returned to still able to understand.
The thing is that now I’ve forgotten how to be an American. Oh, that sounds so dramatic. And I don’t mean it that way– I still remember that our presidential terms are only four years, that Ford was Kennedy’s vice-president (no, wait, Nixon’s?), and what we celebrate at Thanksgiving.

But I am afraid to go back, in a way that I was never afraid to come here, because going back means having to quit living THIS life, and quitting means forgetting. I know that I won’t understand the way living in France has affected me until later– but I know that there are certain things that are going to be hard to shake:
The words "Zut" and "Alors" are going to take awhile to get out of my vocabulary, as well as "Oh-la-la."
My taste for strong, soft white cheese at the end of every meal is not going to fade easily.
My masochistic enjoyment of red wine that makes me feel sophisticated is not going to be understood by my very American non-alcohol-drinking friends.
And there are all kinds of things that I’ve forgotten we don’t DO in the US: I don’t think I’ve ever been to a grocery store in the States with a cheese counter, and I am fairly sure I had never had camembert, comte, reblochon, or REAL brie until I got to this country. I know I am going to miss being able to pick up a crepe at any time of the night or day, and I’ll miss national holidays that completely shut down the country. I’ll miss knowing that I can get home from anywhere within half an hour because that is how long the Metro always takes from where I live, and I’ll miss having to buy all my groceries from a grocery store instead of from the market. I’ll miss clubs that don’t get hopping until 1am, and knowing that if I miss the Metro at 130am, I have to stay out until 530am when it opens again.

So, yes, I am going to miss this country more than I missed my own when I first arrived here, because leaving here is so much more final than leaving the US ever was. Leaving France is leaving the adventure I’ve lived every minute for the last nine months, and through the lenses of the life I live now, I am finding it harder and harder to imagine that there ARE any adventures to be had when you speak the same language as everyone around you. The simplification of everything can not be over-emphasized.

But there are things I have missed about the US... what am I going to do when I get back?
I am going to take a long hot bubble bath... and when the water gets cold, I’ll put more in.
I am going to eat sweet pickles, my mom’s homemade macaroni and cheese, and doughnuts from Dunkin Donuts, and MEXICAN FOOD.
I am going to drink iced coffee, and, yes, finally, Dr. Pepper.
I am going to listen to the radio and not have to risk the threat of a DJ I can’t understand or French rap (shudder).
I am going to get my hair cut, without taking a picture to the salon, and while the stylist is cutting my hair, I am going to make small talk until I am blue in the face.
And I am going to pet my cat until she has no fur left.

Those are all my planned activities. The inadvertent things I will probably do are as follows:
I am sure I will attempt to greet people with a double cheek kiss.
I am sure I will introduce myself to people by saying "My name is Blair, like Tony Blair."
I am sure I will do stupid things and mutter "Zut!"
I am sure I will continue to refer to college as "University" and say "pardon?" instead of "what?"
I am sure I will injure myself and blurt "Aie!" instead of "Ow!"
I am sure I will make conversation with everyone I see, cashiers, hairstylists, strangers pumping gas next to me, the people in front and behind me in the grocery store line...
All of which are either things that are completely accepted here or else things that I just haven’t been able to do in the past nine months. But the thing is that all those habits I picked up here in a desperate effort to fit in are all things that are considered pretentious (spelling? That’s the French way...) in the US. The only people that do the double cheek kiss are Hollywood starlets.

There’s still so much I want to say about THIS life, so much I still want to do in Paris, and France, and Europe...
You know how they always say quit while you’re ahead? Leave ‘em wanting more? What they don’t tell you is that actually doing the leaving when you are still having a good time bites. So I’m leaving this country, just like I left the Mountain, and just like I left Emory before that, not ready to go yet. Always excited about the next chapter, but never wanting to leave the current one. And perhaps it’s worst of all with France, with Paris, because for as long as I can remember, Paris has been The Goal. I was working toward this in high school, in my art history classes after I got to college I constantly filed away the names of all the works I wanted to see that happened to be in Paris (here’s a hint: most of them), and when I had to double up on French grammar classes during the second semester of my sophomore year in order to BE ABLE to come to France, I endured it bravely everyday because it meant that I was one step closer to fulfilling what had been my dream all along... I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to live in Paris; I think I was in elementary school when I learned about the concept of studying abroad, and even then I realized I wanted to do it in Paris. So this year has been a succession of awed moments (and odd moments) of me sitting on a Metro car, or walking to class, or sitting in a class in one of the oldest Universities in the world, and suddenly realizing, even in those mundane moments, that I am living a dream. Even those everyday kind of things– the boulangerie I always go to, the nighttime walks home from wherever I’ve been with my friends, market days– all those things will be surrounded in some kind of hazy golden glow whenever I think about this time in Paris. But the thing is that, because Paris was the End-All for me for so long, I have also had to readjust my goals during my time here... so if first semester here was me being awed, proud, and shocked to finally be living the dream I had for so long, then second semester was me learning to adjust my clock, my plans, etc. Living here, for me, was the transition I needed from being a college student to being a "real person;" or perhaps more applicable, from being still technically a teenager to being a (gasp) 20something. And I can’t explain the vacillation and confusion when one moment is filled with the realization that you are doing the EXACT thing you have wanted to do and worked to do for years and years... and the next moment is realizing that you have to have a next chapter– YES, I have lived this dream for the last year, but now there has to be new goals and plans and dreams and hopes put in its place. And where I was scared of that and scared of "growing up" when I go back to the US and have only one more year of school, I am excited about it now. No, that’s a lie. I am not excited about the return to American college culture... but I am excited about the summer.
It’s the next step in the adventure, the next bridge to jump off of, and I am excited to get started and see where I end up. Summers are made for awesomeness... and this one is going to be no exception, I can already tell. Paris was, for me, the fulfillment of so many dreams, the answer to so many questions, and the stepping stone for so many future decisions. I’ll always miss it; I’ll always have part of me here on these cobbled streets...

But the trick, as I taught myself long ago, is to remember that whenever there is a goodbye at one end of a plane flight, there is always a new hello at the other...

Always searching for the copious prize,
La têtarde

On my way out today, I began thinking about how Paris changes things... and how different I am as a person NOW as opposed to when I arrived here. A brief (completely NON exhaustive) list of lessons I have picked up along the way...


*I’ve learned, since coming to this country, the difference between rosemary honey and lavender honey, which one is good on bread and which is good in tea.
*I’ve learned that cheese has a season the same way as fruit, and should be served DURING its season, matching the meal the same way the wine does.
*I’ve learned how to slice cheese at a formal dinner.
*I’ve learned how to open a bottle of wine gracefully, in one pull, and then how to pour it without dripping it down the side.
*I’ve learned how to drink a glass of the driest wine without flinching.
*I’ve learned how to nod and respond appropriately, even when I don’t have a clue what is going on.
*I’ve learned how NOT to sneak backstage at rock concerts.
*I’ve learned how to eat crepes without dripping the filling all over my shoes or the wrapper.
*I’ve learned how to ride the Metro without holding onto the pole.
*I’ve learned how to avoid being asked for money under the Eiffel Tower.
*I’ve learned that I walk at least 5 kilometers in a day, that I can subsist on 2 liters of milk a week, that 28 degrees is quite hot, and that if I forget to eat dinner before a wine tasting I will end up tipsy.
*I’ve learned how to say "not allowed" in five different languages.
*I’ve learned how to make it through customs without being stopped, despite the odd number of stamps in my passport for someone my age and the two cancelled visas.
*I’ve learned that bread is better bought fresh that day, that fruit is best unwashed from streetside stands, and that sometimes nothing will quench your hotness like a Magnum bar.
*I’ve learned that it’s possible to get pretty much anything for free in Paris if you are young, foreign, well-dressed, and willing to bat your eyes when people marvel at the coolness of your home country.
*I’ve learned that accidentally propositioning your professors, no matter their age, is not an appropriate way to get good grades– or dates.
*I’ve learned that "some fruits are too good to eat not one at a time."
*I’ve learned that, just because two wines are the same color, the one that costs 1,80Euro will unfailingly be better than the one that costs 11Euro, particularly if it is pink.
*I’ve learned that anything can happen in a Metro station.
*I’ve learned that the only places people know anything about in the US are California and New York.
*I’ve learned that you ought always to buy sushi in Chinatown, falafel in the Jewish Quarter, paninis in the Latin Quarter, and crepes at the stands to the left of the door of every concert venue in this city.
*I’ve learned that no one makes bagels the way Americans do.
*I’ve learned that lardons are like manna from heaven that make any food infinitely better.
*I’ve learned that anything is possible (and everything is survivable) when you are 8000 miles from everything you’ve ever known.
*I’ve learned that it’s much more impressive to drink espresso, much more romantic to drink café crème.
*I’ve learned that cabs are for high-rollers and pansies.
*I’ve learned that "walking distance" is a frame of mind.
*I’ve learned how to avoid the pigeon doo without looking at the sidewalk in front of me.
*I’ve learned to walk in stilettos on cobblestones.
*I’ve learned to blend in better than a chameleon when I need to.
*I’ve learned that nothing is ever more surprising (or rewarding) than the unexpected kindnesses of strangers.
*I’ve learned that, when you’re 8000 miles from everything you’ve ever known, a friendly clerk can make your day– and a rude airport employee can send you into tears in the baggage claim terminal of CDG.

And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned to look at everything as an adventure... strange diseases, strange meat, bad haircuts, bad grades, lost reservations, lost money, lost ID, lost luggage, misunderstandings, miscommunications, accidental propositions, on-purpose propositions, being lost, bad couscous, being sick on the Metro, eating duck, eating whole miniature octopi, eating stingray, eating raw tuna, paying too much for coffee, getting a falafel/my portrait/an impromptu accordion concert for free "because you have such lovely eyes," inadvertently being rude, inadvertently being speechless, inadvertently having conversations without knowing how to respond. That is the lesson that will most affect me for the rest of my life– all of life is an adventure as long as you look at it that way.

L'amour,
B

As much so that I never forget as to help you understand:

Paris sounds like a million voices washing over you in words you will never fully comprehend; accordions in Metro cars playing Edith Piaf songs; church bells in the middle of the day; and unsolicited compliments from strangers when you least expect them.

Paris looks like a sky that is never completely dark because of the sweeping beam of the Eiffel Tower at night; sandstone-colored apartments built a century before I was born; women so beautiful they can’t be real and men so handsome they can’t be pretend.

Paris smells like roses from the florists at every street corner; fresh bread from the boulangeries I pass every day on my way to school; frying lardons in my kitchen; and cigarettes.

Paris tastes like a million things impossible to explain– bitter red wine, buttery flaky croissants, smooth rich Kinder chocolate, warm chewy nutella crepes, tangy strong brie, Pol Remy pink framboise-flavored champagne, NOT Dr. Pepper, tiny sweet clementines, melons that unfailingly surprise me when I cut them open because we don’t have the same ones in the US, café cremes with warm milk foam on top, muesli with the milk I’ve made do with for a year now, and crispy tomato-filled paninis from the best Lebanese bakery I’ve ever been to.

Paris feels like smooth cashmere pashminas in the winter; breezy fluffy cotton skirts in the summer, copper 1centime pieces that make their way into all my pockets and seem like plastic, and sore heels from a full day in stiletto boots.

And Paris IS the place I have felt most at home in a long time; the most adventurous, the most myself... I’ll miss this place so much I can’t explain it in words, because even if/when I am back here to live, it will never be the same as it is now.

And it’s no wonder, really, I mean, to put it in the words of my favorite candlestick,
"After all, Miss, this is France..."

Gros Bisous,
Blair, like Tony.

As long as we’re on the subject of academics, I feel I should clarify something, once and for all, and then I will probably be permanently done speaking of it:

I have been asked over and over since coming here (by people I left back in the US) if "I am fluent yet." I think perhaps when I arrived I thought that by this time I would be– everybody tells you immersion is the only way to learn a language, and I LIVE WITH a French person after all, right? So shouldn’t I just be soaking it up like a sponge?

But fluency, like beauty, is in the eye, or rather the ear, of the listener. If you’ve never lived outside of an English-speaking country, then fluency is the ability to ask how much something is, to pay a bill, to get/give directions– all of which I can do without batting an eye.

If you have lived in a foreign-language environment, the definition of fluency changes to being able to understand idioms, to catch on to pickup lines, to comprehend what people are saying to you at a club with loud music blaring, to figure out the lyrics to popular songs– all of which I CAN do, though not perfectly.

And, if you are a former English major at a university with a pretty wickedly amazing liberal arts department, the definition of fluency turns into being able to understand the difference between words like "smell" and "fragrance." Or the nuances that exist when someone says "is there any way you could please go..." instead of just "go." How to say words like "fizz" and "snap" and the sound a sneeze makes and the translation of a phrase like "you rock my world."
These are the ones that still stump me, the grit of learning a new language... I’ve learned to say "tu déchires!" when I would usually throw in a "you rock," but I still find myself using the limited vocabulary I have– though, to be honest, it must be less limited than I think it is, because my American friends, my Swedish friend, and a few French people have commented on the randomness of the words that I know. I may not know the verb to use for "taking notes," but I know the word for faucet. (In France, by way of explanation, you don’t turn off the water– you "close the faucet.")

And when I think about the amount of times I’ve been completely stumped lately, it has to signal progress that it hasn’t happened since I can remember, right? Last semester things would happen all the time that would have the person I was talking to rolling their eyes and switching to English, or looking at me confusedly as I shut my eyes and tried to think through whatever it was I needed to say after I had come out with something as tactful as "Do you want me?" which I blurted, quite accidentally, to a PROFESSOR of all things, when staying after class to try to figure out when the final exam was. But now– I may occasionally have to repeat something when my accent has obscured the slight difference between "fois" (time) and "froid" (cold) and "foie" (liver paté), but now I understand how to handle the miscommunication, I know when to give up, how to rephrase whatever it is I need to say, and how to console myself out of an experience with a rude clerk or boulanger who couldn’t understand.

And I think of it now, and how I feel like that is such progress, and it is, even for me, but the truth is that even though there were things I often made a fool of myself doing, when I first got here, I was so completely at my wits’ end, so totally at rock-bottom, that the fact that I was speaking an unintelligible form of Franglais never really occurred to me as something to be embarrassed by. Because let’s think back nine months, shall we?

I remember not writing about it, because I didn’t want everyone to think I was miserable, but when I got here... pretty much everything that could have fallen apart, did. Well, maybe that is dramatizing it a little bit, but that’s how it felt anyway. I arrived without any possessions except for my MP3 player, a bag of sunflower seeds, my passport, 20 DOLLARS in cash (useless upon arrival, remember), and a book of sudoku puzzles. And that was it. Oh, and the clothes on my back.

I didn’t even have a toothbrush, and since it was Sunday, there was no place open to buy one. Because my luggage chose to go on a world tour without me. And since I didn’t have any address to give the airport, I spent everyday calling my program office to try to see if they had any news for me.

And the morning after I arrived, I woke up feeling as though I had been run over. I will never forget that morning– I felt so awful I couldn’t eat the "authentic French" breakfast our program had provided us. I sweated through my clothes before I made it to the Metro station– the clothes that weren’t even mine, but my roommate’s, who was sweet enough to let me use EVERYTHING of hers for days until my belongings arrived. And then I got to the room where we were supposed to sit through a three-hour meeting, and I remember sitting there as the words in French washed over and around me, comprehending nothing and hoping that my roommate would be able to explain to me whatever they had said later– I remember sitting there, soaked in sweat as everyone else was dry and comfortable in the early fall Paris weather, and praying and praying that I wouldn’t pass out. I felt my vision going fuzzy just as my roommate handed me her water bottle that she had filled up with orange juice that morning. I think I drank the whole thing down without blinking. I made it through without passing out, but even when I acquired a fever of 39 or 40 or something, I kept telling myself I had a cold and that the doctor here would be too much to deal with, so I should just bear up. I dragged myself to the airport one day because someone in the US told someone who told me that it would help if I went in person. I sat waiting and waiting and waiting in the customer service office of Continental Airlines, behind a monk in full-on monk robes, wondering what he could possibly have had in his checked baggage other than more burlap robes. I eventually was "helped" by a condescending French woman, who spoke to me so rudely in perfectly clipped English, and I felt too bad to try to stand up for myself. I remember how I walked out of that room, sat down on the first chair I saw, in front of the conveyor belt of luggage coming in from Dubai, and cried.

If you know me, you know that this should have been the only sign I needed that I was terribly, awfully sick. Because I don’t cry, ever, not in front of people, not alone, and most CERTAINLY not in public. I sat there in my roommate’s clothes, alone, and cried for probably not more than five minutes, at which point I got up, put my sunglasses on, and tried to figure out how to get back home. It was the first time I had gone anywhere alone in Paris. I fell asleep in the middle of my grammar class’s game of charades one day– I stopped eating and quit drinking almost completely because it hurt too badly to swallow anything. I went to bed, head propped to try to keep my nose from being too stuffed up, but I awoke at 430am, my fever raging, my nose stuffed, my throat so sore it felt like it was full of hot tar.
I went to my open windows, stood there pressing my burning face against the glass to try to cool down, and cried for real. I remember saying to myself, or possibly aloud, "this is not how it’s supposed to be! This is not the place I was supposed to have come to!" But even then one question kept popping into my head: "Where would you rather be?" And I just kept thinking that there was nowhere else I wanted to be; I knew the coming adventure would be worth it; I just kept thinking that there had to have been a better way to GET TO that adventure than the route I had, quite inadvertently, chosen.

I didn’t know then that my luggage would arrive three days later, unfolded and mashed, but otherwise none the worse for wear.

I didn’t know then that I had mono, and would spend many many afternoons napping in that warm bed in which I had awoken bawling my eyes out that morning.

I didn’t know then that I would love that city, that neighborhood, enough that I would decide to stay for twice as long as I had originally intended.

And I didn't know then that, nine months later, I'd be getting ready to leave and dreading the fact that I will "lose" my French when I get back to the US.

And now here I am, conversing, spending one of my last days in Paris taking three exams of 2.5 hours each, writing until my hand almost falls off, all of it in French and all of it without batting an eye. Maybe this fluency thing really is all it's cracked up to be...

I am made,
B

I don’t really get embarrassed anymore– no, really. I don’t know how that is possible, since I spent most of my childhood mortified for one reason or another, but somewhere between starting college and working two summers at camp, I became highly immune to embarrassment... which is probably another reason why I have done so well in France. Not getting embarrassed, though, is NOT synonymous with not being awkward. All of my most easily embarrassed friends are also the least awkward... I, on the other hand, am impossible to embarrass but I also find it completely impossible to be NOT awkward. Alors, I present for your reading pleasure:

Top 8 Awkward Moments since I arrived in France:

8. Crying in a phone booth on the Boulevard du President Kennedy when I had no luggage and couldn’t figure out how to call the US, then turning around to see a line of people waiting to USE the phone booth, watching me have a Mariah-Carey-esque breakdown in the plexiglas rectangle.

7. Acting out two people being in a box instead of in a nightclub when playing charades in my grammar class. Is it MY fault the words are almost the same in French?

6. Two Spanish guys asking a [girl] friend and I in French if we "wanted to kiss." How are you supposed to respond to that other than with a resounding "Actually... NO!"

5. My archaeology professor blurting out, in the middle of my oral final exam, "You forgot the
orgies," after my explanation of what went on in Roman triclinia.

4. Walking into the doctor’s office to be told, in English, by a French doctor, "You’re fucked." I don’t THINK she knew exactly what it meant.*

3. Saying to my 25-year-old professor: "Do you want me?" instead of "When should I take the final exam?"

2. Being asked out by the guy who works at the cheese counter at my grocery store WHILE almost being run over by a zamboni.

And number 1: Walking into my kitchen one morning in my pajamas when Madame was out of town, only to find that there was an entire WALL missing and a repairman standing on a ladder in front of the gap who greeted me with "How are you?" in French. At 6am. (Upon telling a friend this story, she responded with "how do you know he was a repairman? He could have been a burglar!" "Yeah," I answered, "but he was INSIDE the house... how would he have gotten in?" "Duh! You said there was a wall missing– he probably blasted out the wall, climbed in, put his ladder over the other side and was busy climbing in when you interrupted him.")

*The fact that I don’t think I ever explained the background to this doctor story occurred to me after I wrote it. A note of background: I had been in France about a week and a half when I realized that nearly passing out every time I had to stand up for more than 15 minutes was not normal, and that I should probably go to a doctor. I made an appointment with a bilingual doctor, and I’ll spare you the story of the whole incident, because there is an awful lot of complicated details, of which my favorite are these: the doctor had no reception staff, so she knew that I was American and young just from talking to me on the phone. Awhile after I arrived, the doctor herself walked into the waiting room, looked at me and said, "I’ve gotta see the old lady first, but you’re next, ok?" in French, in FRONT OF the "old lady." I get called back eventually, she takes my temperature with a mercury filled thermometer and flips out because my temperature is, like, 40 or something. I looked at her blankly and she fished around in her desk until she found a conversion chart– no wonder she flipped out, I was on Advil to keep my fever down and it was still 104. Having finally convinced herself that I didn’t have strep, she ordered me to the lab down the street for mono tests, where I dutifully reported the next morning to have my blood drawn by a guy who didn’t wear gloves in a 19th century apartment building. Oh, he didn’t use tubes either, just a needle with a funnel attached to it.
I walked back in to her office that night to see her sitting behind her desk. "Sit down," she gestured, which I did, and her next words were, I kid you not, "Well, you’re fucked."
If that were to happen now, I would probably be more surprised than I was then– everything was so new then that I couldn’t really process anything, and I remember telling myself, "It must be a French word..." before I realized that it definitely wasn’t.

Now, wait– as though the whole thing wasn’t ridiculous enough: this woman was at least my mother’s age, dressed very classily in a white lab coat and heels. She was a wonderful doctor and SO nice to me, and so helpful when she realized I had no idea what I was doing, even calling MY fellow-family-practitioner father to explain to him PRECISELY why I was so... well... you know.
She learned English when she went to undergrad in the US, so my only guess is that she picked up that word in the States and never really learned the implications of it. Obviously curse words don’t really translate, and though there are equivalents in French, there is not really anything AS bad. It was the first really big run in I had with the language barrier, and the funny part is that I forgot about it immediately afterward, because the next words out of her mouth were "you have mono." It was a couple days later before the whole situation occurred to me again, and it was months later before I really thought it was funny. The other best part of that whole event was her telling me that I needed to "stop kissing people!" as though I had been busy making out with everyone in her waiting room. She also warned me that I should probably not tell anyone because in France there is a stigma attached to mono in kind of the same way that there is a stigma attached to, like, herpes in the US. And the best part was that I got it from, like, sharing a drink or something not even sketchy.

Oh, B, you've done it now...

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then you will have it with you always, wherever you go, for Paris is a moveable feast.
~Hemingway

I know I should be grateful for getting to live in such a wonderful place for so long... Forget Paris, forget Europe, I just mean this apartment. And Madame. I know I should be grateful to have lived with her for a year...
And I am, so much that it hurts.

I had my last dinner with Madame tonight, and as soon as we finished I almost started crying right there while we cleared the table. This woman is amazing; she has such amazing stories, and she is SO patient with my bad French and so sweet when she tells stories and always has to stop in the middle to think of synonyms for whatever she wants to say so that I will understand.
I want to go to California so much I can’t even explain it to you. But I love this place (city, neighborhood, lifestyle, apartment) so much that it kills me to think about it. Madame has become the French mother I needed to make it through all the confusion of living here for the first time. I’ll be back, I know it– I don’t think I really have a choice. But it will never be the same to come back and NOT live in this wonderful apartment with one of the most amazing people I have ever met. I wish I could explain to you just WHY she is so cool– part of it is her stories, part of it is how every now and then I walk into the kitchen to see her cooking endives in pressed pants with the whitest oxford button-down shirt on, collar, of course, up in the back and folded in the front, but most of it is just her hilarious mannerisms– the way she mutters "zut!" and the way she is always, unfailingly, the most gracious hostess I have ever met.

I had a really amazing friend who used to ask me all the time to sum things up for her: "If you had only one word to describe yourself, what would it be?" and "Top 3 events of this semester– go!" and "Favorite Christmas carol and Christmas pop song?" If she were here now, she would ask me for one word to describe my time in Paris, and though that seems an extremely weighty question, the answer would, of course, be adventure.

It seems nothing that happens in France affects me as being normal. Everything here will always stick out in my mind as being either So Wonderful or Completely Awful (but still an adventure, either way). Mind-numbingly beautiful or heart-wrenchingly ugly. From the things that have happened to me (getting mono and getting my dream job) to the things I have seen in this city that have nothing to do with me (the Louvre and the homeless people), it seems that nothing here is just... average. I’ll miss that feeling of spinning out of control, of being totally given over to the beauty of every situation I find myself in, because no matter the situation, there was always (after my first six days here) the sensation that it was only just real enough to make an adventure, not real enough to permanently affect anything.
~B

Anais: "You know what I mean? It was just so... awkward!"
Blair: "Anais, I still don’t think you really know how to use that word."
Anais: "Yeah, I know... but every time I do use it, I always think about you."
~A conversation between me and Anais today while walking through the pouring rain from Place des Victoires to Les Halles.

So there’s this widespread misconception in the US that Europeans hate Americans...
And this converse misconception in Europe that Americans hate Europeans...
Neither of which are true.
Obviously, that is a generality. There are Europeans who hate Americans (if I had to deal with the utter obnoxiousness of most tourists day in and day out, I would probably be one of them), and there are Americans who hate Europeans (i.e., everyone who ever asked me "why in the world I would choose to go to France?").

For the most part, though, Americans have a great awe of European culture– I think we feel as though we are not quite legitimately our own culture in comparison to the thousands of years of history you find in Europe at every corner.

Or perhaps I only speak for myself, but I know that before I LIVED in Europe, I had no idea that America HAD a culture. It always seemed to me that we existed in a vacuum of culturelessness. We pride ourselves on being a melting pot to the point that we have lost (or failed to create) our own culture. I thought.
How wrong I was.

And Europeans, for the most part are awed and impressed by American society, though they often have no idea exactly what it entails. (I am NOT saying they are jealous– that’s another misconception that runs hand in hand with "why would you choose FRANCE?") I’m constantly being asked where my ancestors came from, "because you are all REALLY Europeans in the US, right?" In my family’s case, yes– European to the core, technically, but my family has lived in the US so long that it really doesn’t matter. If you pie-charted my heritage, the largest portion of anything would only be about 10% or something, which is not a lot, but if you tell a European that your origins are technically German, they immediately suppose that you are thus, on some level, familiar with German culture, attitudes, and food, which is not at all true. The traditions my family has are all American to the max– watermelon at the fourth of July, turkey on Thanksgiving, easter baskets on Easter, shopping on Memorial Day... it’s pretty much as prototypical as you can get.

But there are two stereotypes I’ve encountered over and over since coming to Europe as a "jeune fille américaine," one from people around my age and the other from people around my grandparents’ age.

People my age always think that Americans don’t really like Europeans, and are thus surprised when I speak so highly of their country/continent and are impressed by my desire to live here for a year.

And people my grandparents’ age esteem Americans to the max– not the tourists, but those who live here and those who live in America. Perhaps it’s a lasting consequence of World War II, but people of that age group are constantly saying things about "the innate hospitality" of Americans, how friendly and warm we always are, etc. It’s nice being told things like that about the place I come from– nice to know that we have a decent reputation among some circle of the world.
~B

P.S. Today I was on the Metro, and one stop after I got on, a guy got on and sat down in the seat next to me, which was a little odd since protocol is that you don’t do that unless the other rows are full, and we were the only two in that end of the car. But I didn’t think anything of it, kept on listening intently to whatever too-loud music was playing into my ears through my headphones. But I noticed he was staring at me intently, and I started to wig out a little bit. Suddenly he leaned over to my ear and mumbled something, of which all I caught was "hrmmnyh hrrmnnuh hmm?" I jumped nearly out of my skin– I mean, seriously, if he had been American (or really if he had just been NORMAL), he would have laid off then– I wasn’t making it easy for him. So I spazz out and in the process my headphones fall off, forcing me to turn to him and mutter "Quoi?" which is roughly equivalent to "Huh?" in English. Now that my headphones are off, there is no reason to continue with this speaking into my ear thing, but he didn’t seem to realize that, and leaned over and said, "J’aimerais bien de vous connaître," which means, literally, "I would love to meet you." As we’ve already discussed that I may be the least smooth person in the world, I said, and I quote, "Thank you."

What? Who does that?

So he, having gleaned from the, like, two and a half syllables that I have uttered, hazards a guess, in French: "You are English?"

"Yes," I say, keeping my answer purposely short to disguise the fact that I am, in fact, not English.

"Where are you from?" he asks next.

SHOOT OH NO, BLAIR, THINK OF A CITY IN BRITAIN, ANY CITY WILL DO, HECK, MAKE ONE UP– AS LONG AS IT ENDS IN ‘SHIRE,’ THIS GUY WILL HAVE NO IDEA! DUBLIN– NO, DUMMY, THAT’S IRELAND! NANTES! NO, THAT IS STILL FRANCE! LONDON, LONDON, YES, London...

"Londres," I say, after the slightest pause.

"Where?"

"Londres? The capital of England?" I say, still in French.

"Oh, I love London!"
Crap.

"Where in London? SoHo? West End? King’s Crawley?"

CrapCrapCrap. YOU WOULD PICK THE ONE CITY IN BRITAIN THAT EVERYONE KNOWS– ALL YOU HAD TO SAY WAS Hampsterworcestershire and you would have been fine, but you HAD to go and pick London...

"Um, oh, you know... just London..." and he mercifully cut me off.

"Where are you going?"

"Me? Right now?"
This is how intelligent I get when I am caught unaware (keep in mind this was Sunday morning on a Metro).

"Yeah."

"Oh... I’m on my way to meet my boyfriend."

"Your what?"

"Yeah, my boyfriend, my..." and then I inserted the French word for a very serious relationship, basically a fiancee.

"Do you come to Paris often, then?"
Wow, this guy really doesn’t give up. Had I been thinking clearer, I would have given him at least a C for Effort, but instead I was really just completely thrown off.

"Yes," I said, and I swear the next words just rolled out of my mouth, in French: "Yeah, he lives here, so I come here a lot."

I said them and didn’t really even realize what I had said until after the words were out of my mouth and I thought about it. And then I tried to gather myself quickly and get out of the Metro– you can’t spend a lot of time fishing around for your bag and putting on your jacket when things like this happen, because then they think it’s like an invitation to come with you, and had that happened, my French fiancee farce would have quickly fallen apart. So I jump off the Metro, practically before it has stopped, not looking back, and wincing again at my own un-smoothness. I am SUCH an awkward person.
"I like your sleeves..."

Top 7 Favorite Moments since coming to France:

7. Hitch-hiking through Alsace with the coolest roommate ever.

6. Discovering Le Paros, the best Greek restaurant this side of Athens, on a chilly autumn night with my best friend from the US, and having the restaurant’s cat climb onto my lap during the dessert course.

5. Going to the Killers concert with a dozen of the coolest Europeans ever, and suddenly realizing that I had a group of friends in France.

4. The thousands of café cremes I drank at Le Montparnasse, the café Laura and I visited at least twice a week since the second half of first semester, sitting watching people walk by in the dark and the wind, cozy inside with Rasmus on the stereo and the waiters never quite understanding WHY we stayed for hours at a time.

3. Preparing for the Christmas party to end all Christmas parties in the smallest kitchen ever in the history of the world at Lydia’s apartment.

2. Climbing the Eiffel Tower at the stroke of midnight, under a full moon, on the coldest night of the year with Cliff, bundled to the absolute MAX, and being able to spot my apartment from the top.

1. Waking up at 630am on a Thursday, getting ready and leaving my apartment at 7 to wander around in a brand new outfit in an effort to forget all my "troubles:" I had no bags, I was out of cash (traveller’s cheques in baggage), had a raging fever so high I could hardly walk that had woken me up at 6am, and I couldn’t figure out how to use European phones and thus couldn’t call anyone. I went storming through my neighborhood, walking faster because I thought that perhaps thus I would outrun everything freaking me out. I turned a corner at full speed, looked up, and caught sight of the Eiffel Tower, shrouded in fog from the first deck upward, at a distant of less than 1/4 mile, but I had no idea it was there. Funny, if you had asked me then, I would have marvelled at it because it was beautiful and amazing, but since I was so miserable then, I would not have said it would make it to my top ten list... even then I knew that those would be the worst days of my life and adventure in Paris– I knew immediately that I had knocked out ALL of the potential troubles in the first week and a half, that after that, it would be a breeze, but I also knew that SURVIVING that first week and a half was going to be nearly impossible. I remember thinking that morning as I stormed through our quartier without a thought to where I was going that there was nowhere in the world I would rather be– even then I didn’t want to go back to the US– but that there was really nothing that could realistically have made the situation worse. But I stopped when I saw the Eiffel Tower then and looked at it for close to fifteen minutes– I just stood there, thinking about where I was and how excited I was, and how I knew somehow that the next nine months would be full of unexpected surprises like that.

And that song keeps playing through my head...

With a map of the world etched on my face,
B

"Hollywood... it’s the most addicting drug in the world."
~Jay-Z

From a letter I wrote during my second week in Paris:
"I have moments now when I forget I am in France– or perhaps it’s that I forget this is not MY country. Sometimes I forget this is even my life... Paris changes everything and I still miss you.
This place is amazing, even though I have no makeup and no hairbrush and no music to listen to because everything in my life is in those bags that are probably floating somewhere in the Atlantic.
On the one hand I want to live here forever and on the other I cannot communicate with anyone. My French is essentially useless– I can get by at our internet bar where the bartenders speak French to me but slowly and just barely... paying for things is still hard because I still can’t tell which euros are which.
I’m sitting now in a café close to Metro Luxembourg with a too-hot café au lait and a very burned tarte au poire. My pants are rolled up because the bottoms were rain-soaked and I know that my hair is a frizzy gypsy-looking mess. But somehow I feel that my world is at my fingertips. I am 20 years old and on my own 8000 miles away from everyone I know. The problem, I think, is that I love being independent too much, and this city, this country, changes things. I’ve been suckered into the romance of the whole thing... I want to stroll down the road in a fluffy skirt, messenger bag, and headphones, with the wind in my hair, a baguette in my hand, and an Orangina on reserve in my purse, with everyone I pass thinking ‘Look at that Parisian girl...’ That’s what’s weird about being here– in the US, I strive to stand out from the crowd, to be independent and different, but here... in Paris, I’m dying to blend in. When someone walks past me without giving me the American Look, when an unknowing barista or pharmacist starts a conversation with me in French, I am thrilled because it means I AM BLENDING IN– I look like one of these beautiful people with their beautiful voices and beautiful clothes and always their silly worn-out shoes."

And from my journal the night I found out I had mono:

"Aarrgghh! Who does this? WHO goes to another country for nine months, loses their bags AND contracts mono-freaking-nucleosis, ALL IN A PLACE WHERE SHE BARELY SPEAKS THE LANGUAGE? What is wrong with me, and more importantly, WHOSE life is this???
[big space and some scribbles.]
No, wait, it is definitely mine. It seems for as long as I can remember my unintentional motto has been ‘Why do things simple when you can complicate the bejeebees out of life?’ And this has, of course, become no exception. Also, I don’t think my French is getting any better, I think I am just getting used to not being understood on the first try and without gestures."

Oh, how I miss that girl...
B

Today is Fête de la Victoire 1945. Which basically means that it is a national holiday celebrating the end of World War II.

We technically have this holiday in the US too, but nobody knows about it and no one cares, which is really too bad. I think that is another part of the acultural mentality of America– or perhaps the overcultured mentality of France. It’s odd, though, that France has SO MUCH history and still puts such an emphasis on this holiday, and we (the US) as a country have a comparatively short list of important events, but we don’t focus on this one at all. I don’t know if they celebrate this holiday in England the way they do here; I am quite sure they don’t in Germany or Italy, but in France it’s huge. We have Memorial Day, I suppose that’s the closest we come in the US to this kind of thing, but I didn’t know what Memorial Day was in memory OF until, oh, high school. And even then, no one does anything about it– it’s just a day for sales. Here, everything closes for the Fête de Victoire 1945, and even the 11-year-old I tutor knows what it commemorates. If nothing else, this says it all: in the très Catholic nation that is France (way over 90% of the population here claims Catholicism), the Fête de Victoire overrides whatever saint’s day is today. On every calendar in France, the saint of each day is written– in Medieval times there were feasts for the important ones, now it’s just nice to know the day of the person you were named for. But on May 8, the calendar has no saint, just the celebration of victory.

I took a 20th century French history class last semester, and one of the biggest things we talked about through it all was the fact that France, during World War II, was not so much a poor captive nation as it was a nation with a government that thought the Germans were going to win the war and thus decided to side with them while the getting was good, in hopes that after the war they would be considered part of the winning team. That was the oddest part about the course– I’ve taken European history classes in the US and they are always fairly neutral, or at least told from the point of view of whoever was under the oppressor’s thumb. The class here, though, was all about how the French had failed, over and over– failed at the Dreyfus affair, failed at World War I, and most especially failed with regard to Vichy France. In the US, World War II history classes unfailingly teach that the French were this noble people who were just unfortunate enough to have to be neighbors with Germany, and thus got stuck getting invaded and conquered after having fought the good fight. Here they taught us that the French government (headed at the time by Pétain, the DeGaulle of World War I who lost all credibility after his involvement in World War II) saw that Germany was winning, that America refused to be involved, and that Britain couldn’t help, decided that Germany, thus, would win, and that if they switched sides and gave in to Germany, they would be considered among the winners at the end of the war. (The class I took even excused the US for not being involved: "they had to take care of the economic crisis in their own country.") The French people, for the most part, were still thoroughly opposed to the whole idea of complying with the Germans, but it’s a subtly important distinction between choosing surrender and being conquered.

Anyway, Madame always talks about how during the Occupation (for which she was slightly younger than me), the German soldiers were a subject of complete terror. They would be on every corner, in the Metro stations, and even after they had been there for years of Occupation, Madame never became used to them, never ceased to be afraid of them. They never really did anything bad, she says, but they always had their guns and sometimes they would hoot and catcall or just make general nuisances of themselves, stopping the eighteen-year-old Madame on her way to buy groceries because, obviously, she was extremely suspicious.
But when the Americans arrived (and on this one I feel for the British– the Americans weren’t the ONLY ones that liberated France, but for some reason no one, even the French, remembers anyone else), they were so friendly– Madame has said before how much better behaved they were than the German soldiers (pretty impressive, considering once they made it here an awful lot of them had been marching for weeks), how polite, and how friendly. After the Liberation, there was still a curfew for awhile, just so things didn’t turn to anarchy in the streets, I guess, but she always says that even with regard to that, the Americans were always all about helping the French, while the Germans were only concerned with getting people in trouble.
I’ve been told about American GI’s who walked through Paris immediately after the Liberation throwing candy and bubble gum to the kids on the street who had never had it before. And though those things are so small, instances like that, perhaps, are what makes the old people love us. When I asked Madame if there would be any special celebration for today’s holiday, she said that "even if there were, my dear, nothing could compare to that wonderful day in 1945."

It’s just like out of a movie, her recollections of the time: she had never had Coca-cola until after the war, but one day she walked past an American soldier who was just cracking open a glass bottle of Coke, and, seeing her curious look, he told her what it was and gave her the bottle. According to her, she had also never had a cigarette (in a country where the butter ration by the end of the war was 25 grams a month, tobacco was a luxury no one had. 25 grams, by the way, is about the size of a large walnut.), but the young American soldiers ("who were all so handsome, you know!") would share theirs willingly. Madame doesn’t smoke now, but probably, like everyone else back in the day, she did then. I don’t really know.

"What was it like, having to use ration cards?" I asked, the whole concept completely boggling my mind.
"Oh, it was a terrible hassle– my father used to have to wait in line for hours, and by the time he got to the front of the line they’d be out of sugar and flour and meat, so what were we supposed to do?"
I shook my head in awe, and she continued: "You know, I was very young then... but I remember all I wanted from 1941 onward was just a banana. I thought I would die without ever tasting another banana in all my life; I longed for the day the rations would be over and I would just be able to eat a piece of fruit, but especially a banana..." she trailed off.

"It’s funny," she added a moment later, "how you can get so focused on one thing, you know? We hardly had any meat, we only had bread and no butter, and no cheese ever. Our whole diet was just crazy, and all I could think of was a banana."

And I thought, "how lucky am I that the closest thing I can relate to this is my madly desperate search for a can of Dr. Pepper on the continent of Europe?"

Madame’s parents had always been terribly strict– she was the baby of the family, so when she would go out with French friends, her parents always said, "What boys will be going? Who are his parents? Is he a good boy?" and things like that, but if she was going out with the Americans, her parents "practically pushed me out the door," never caring who the boy was because if he was American, he had to be good.

The day of the Liberation, she says, was an unbelievable party– the only thing I can think of to liken it to would be the turn of the Millenium in Times Square. The Champs Elysees here is the biggest road in Paris, and it was packed so full of people that no one could move. Madame says the Germans were still trying to enforce the curfew, still trying to convince everyone that the onset of the Americans was a myth, but no one listened anymore. You know the picture of the American sailor kissing the girl in the street in New York that became so famous in the US? Apparently the streets here were like that– Madame said "everyone was hugging and kissing everyone else, it didn’t matter who they were, and we were all crying and screaming and waving American flags and the tricolor, everyone singing the Marseillaise and so, so excited to have our home back."

How cool is that? I love this place with its sense of history and the value it places on things like that...
~B

Last night Madame got back from Sicily, where she spent the last week and a half vacationing with eight of her friends. This woman, I feel I should insert here, is 81 years old, and just spent a week and a half in a rented villa in Sicily with eight of her best friends.

It kind of reminds me of the trips I take with my friends in the US, only far more glamourous, and completely amazing. It’s like spring break for her, I guess– so she got back last night, and I went to see her as soon as I got home to say hello. I walked into the room where she was unpacking, and her face absolutely lit up– "Ahh! Chèrie! I am so glad you came to say hello! I have missed you! How are you? Was everything ok while I was gone?" she asked as she kissed my cheeks. I assured her that things had been fine, and tried to ask her how Sicily was, but before I could even get a word out she was inquiring about my family, my exams, etc. I grinned and told her, asked her about Sicily and she said, "Oh, my dear, the weather was just terrible! It was cold and rainy, but we were like little archaeologists– we went to the temples, and saw columns, and ruins, and churches, and ancient little towns, it was wonderful! Oh, and I brought you something!" She hopped over to her suitcase and pulled out a bag of the most delicious candied almonds I have ever tasted, and a beautiful jade-colored bracelet. I can’t remember if I had told her I have been looking for a jade bracelet for weeks now, but I haven’t been able to find one that doesn’t cost a million euro and is still cute. I love this woman!

Unfortunately, all this made me start thinking about the fact that it is THIS MONTH that I will be leaving France, and I don’t like that plan one bit. May 27, I am gone... The countdown is on, and I hate it. I am still thrilled to be going to California for the summer, but leaving France is something that I can’t even fathom when I stop to try to think about it. This place has become such a part of me– this place has BECOME my life, and I don’t even know anymore what it will be like to leave.
I was talking to one of my French friends yesterday and she asked if I was sad about it yet– I told her I probably would be if I let myself stop and think about it, but I just don’t have time to dwell on it right now. Right now there is housing, and finals, and tons of other things to deal with, so I won’t let myself be officially sad about this until I am sitting on a plane to the US. Then, I’ll get off the plane and have a whole nother batch of things to take care of– unpacking from a year in Europe, repacking for a summer on the West Coast...
So that eight hour plane ride will be devoted to being miserable.
Other than that, I just don’t have time for emotions. Ha.

Also, I went to the Bois de Boulogne last week with one of my good friends from high school. We decided to have a picnic there, since the weather is so beautiful and the Bois (which means woods) is so gorgeous. Unfortunately, the Bois de Boulogne is also hands-down the most dangerous place to be in Paris after nightfall. I’ve never known of a place that can make such a turnaround between day and night– in the daytime it’s full of joggers, fishermen, picnickers, and lovers laying around on blankets on the shore of the gorgeous lake, feeding each other grapes.

At night... Well, I’ve never been at night, because I’ve heard the stories and pretty much if you set foot in there at night, you’re liable to not come out alive.
That’s probably an exaggeration. But not by much. At night it’s filled with prostitutes, drug dealers, petty criminals, homeless people, and the assorted fellows that hang out with all of the above. But during the day... it’s wonderful.
So Emma and I went– our lunch was comprised of a pain au chocolat which we split, a couple carrots, two apples dipped in peanut butter, and a tangerine. Ha. Then, as we sat there watching people go by in there rented rowboats, I mumbled something about how I had always wanted to go for a ride in one of those boats before I left Paris. They are kind of the more glamourous French equivalent of paddleboats at an American park... straight out of The Notebook, I can not imagine anything more cinematic. (There is also a lake that rents them at Versailles... That’s another dream for another time, but I will make it on to that lake sometime.)

But Emma being Emma, and me being me, we decided to do it. So what if we were the only two GIRLS to ever rent one of the rowboats, so what if we were both in skirts, so what? We didn’t have enough money to leave the required deposit on the boat (50Euro that they give back if you return the boat in one piece), but luckily the guy accepted our passports as collateral (the general thing to be left at a restaurant/hotel/etc. if you can’t pay). The boat ride itself was only 10Euro for an hour, so we climbed in, skirts and all, Emma as Captain and me as... "What is it? Who are you again? Second partner?"
"I think you mean First Mate, thanks," I answered, though it was clear that I was going to have just as intense job as she did– neither of us had ever rowed before, so I had to steer us as she paddled.
"First mate, ok... you can be Smee."
"So that makes you Capitan Crochet, I guess?" (The french title for Captain Hook.)
"Yeah, exactly, Smee." So we rowed along, my feet dangling in the cool water, sun shining down brightly on us, laughing hysterically as a boat of guys who looked about as capable as us floated toward us too quickly for either of us to do anything about it. We looked at the guys apologetically as their boat collided with ours, and then as soon as they were out of sight burst into giggles at the fact that, in the huge lake, we still managed to collide with someone. At least we didn’t capsize. In some weird way, it felt as though we were somewhere in New England that only FELT like Europe– the whole thing was vaguely reminiscent of the scenery from Ever After, but almost too much so... surreal to the point that it seemed it shouldn’t really BE Europe in the Spring.

I love this place,
B

"Going to war without France is like going deer-hunting without your accordion."
~Norman Schwarzkopf (sp?)

Today are the French elections. So when I was hanging out with one of my French friends this morning, I asked her if she had voted already, and she had. (They do elections here on Sunday, which makes a lot more sense than in the US– they do it at schools, so they don’t interrupt anything. In the States, my high school was a voting place, and every time there was an election, things were crazy.)

Anyway, quick recap in case you didn’t know: in France they do the first round of elections two weeks before the second round. The first round eliminates about a dozen candidates; the second round thus ALWAYS has only two candidates, but no one ever knows what party they will be from.

Everyone here hates Chirac, there is talk of formally censuring him after he gets out of office. I asked my French friend when the new president would take over, and she said, "Well, tomorrow obviously!" I must have looked confused, because she explained a little more: the polls in France are open from this morning to tonight at 8pm. At precisely 8pm, the polls shut down and the results are given. And tomorrow, someone else wakes up in the Elysée, which is the French equivalent of the White House.

She looked at me and said, "isn’t that how they do it in the US?"
"No!" I responded.

I already knew that the ballots themselves are completely different here– I suppose it’s because this right now is the fifth Republic in France, and it’s only been around since about 1960 (DeGaulle’s second term as president, significantly after World War II). I know in the US, the people at the election places (what is the word for this in English??) are usually old women who just sit there and cross your name off a list. Here, though, it’s hardcore soldiers. You sign your name, like in the US, and then you walk along the table and pick up a post-it-sized sheet of paper for each candidate. Each sheet has the name of a candidate already printed on it. You take it into a tiny curtained booth, throw all the ones you don’t want to vote for away, then put the one you like in a matching blue envelope, leave the booth and drop the envelope in a giant clear box. Thus with the unwrapping of the envelopes alone I don’t understand how the results are given so quickly. Because this is Paris, there are, of course, huge lines to vote– but I was watching the news tonight and they interviewed this guy who said "Oh, yeah, I’ve been waiting 40 minutes, but that’s democracy, right? So it’s good, it makes me happy!" Everyone there said the same thing– I guess their Republic is still young enough that they count it good to be able to vote at all. (Women here, PS, didn’t get the right to vote until the 1960s.)

So my French friend looked at me and said, "You don’t do it this way in the US?"
"No!"I said, "we elect them on a Tuesday in November, the results are announced the next day, and they start their term in January."
"But that’s like two months!"
"Yeah?"
"Why do you have such a huge delay?"
"I think it’s because the US is so big that back in the day they had to have that much time to ride the horses around and collect all the votes."
"But now you don’t need that much time."
"I guess not."
"So why not change it?"
"Because that’s how we do it."
"Yeah, but I’m just saying, it seems stupid to not change it if there is not a reason."

Anyone else think this is odd? A FRENCH person, THE PREMIERE NATION of useless un-understood rules, customs, etc. that exist only because they HAVE existed since the year 1200 is criticizing the US for a useless rule we have.

So tomorrow we’ll have a new president, but all day today the news was filled with images from throughout Paris. Perhaps it’s because I’m in the nation’s capital, or maybe it’s just different than in the US, but all over Paris there were huge crowds all day waiting to find out what was going on. Each candidate had three huge outdoor locations where their supporters had gathered– even with the last two American presidential elections, I don’t remember ever seeing anything like this. It looked like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. And the funniest part is that since today is the first Sunday of the month, all the museums are free. Which means the Louvre is always PACKED. And the weather is nice, which means the garden right outside the Louvre (the Tuileries) is PACKED. And what is attached to that garden, and thus the Louvre?
The Place de la Concorde. The biggest political hotspot in Paris. And attached to that? The Elysée.
So there is the Louvre/Tuileries, with its madding crowd of tourists...
And then as soon as you get away from that, the Place de la Concorde, FILLED with politically-aware Parisians dying to know what’s going on.
It’s absolute madness.

Sarkozy won (he’s pro-American). At 19h45 they put a huge countdown up on the news. At 19h59, the anchor stood in front of a green screen with a blurry map of France on it– as the time ticked toward 20h00, the map grew less and less fuzzy until Sarkozy’s picture was clearly visible as the new president, at exactly 20h. Crazy.

THEN he left his office to go to the Elysée and begin being president, and there was footage all over the news of him riding there in an absolutely normal FIAT with the windows down. No armored cars, bulletproof anything in France.
~B

Today I had my design class– last week the prof (the one that calls me Mademoiselle Parle-Anglais) told us to meet in front of the Fontaine des Medicis for class, then turned to me and said, in sweetly condescending French, "and does our lovely little foreigner understand? The [here he switched to English] Medici fountain? Over there?" I wanted to tell him I have probably, in my nine months in this country, spent more time at that fountain than he has in the entire 60 years he’s lived in Paris, but of course, since it’s not my language, I just nodded like a deaf-mute.

So this week we meet there, and of course the first thing he does is turn to me and say, in French, "Oh, you are here! The young American! I am so DELIGHTED to have you with us this week!" As though I don’t ALWAYS come to class– I’ve never missed his class. THEN, he switches to English and says, in a thick French accent, "I received your... your... petit... little... words."
A literal translation of the French expression "petit mot," or, in English, "message."
I had to send him an email this week, but since I didn’t want to SIGN it "Mademoiselle Parle-Anglais, I introduced myself in the email as "I am the American student in your design class..." and now he was teasing me about it.
"Oh," he continues in French, "I am just EVER so glad you told me you were American! All this time I thought you came from... from..." here he stops, searching for the word. "Britain?" I suggested, because he did once call me "the British one" to the class while talking about my work.
"No! Of course not BRITAIN!" he responds. "Italy, perhaps, or... or... Marrakesh! With that lovely accent..."
"Oh, yes," I answered, having now picked up on the fact that I was being teased. "I know... I have a terribly Italian accent, but I just can’t seem to get rid of it."

He fell into hysterics, and I knew I had just scored major points. It may take me awhile to pick up on teasing when it’s in another language, but once I do... well, I mean, I wasn’t raised with four rowdy uncles for nothing. Heck, I didn’t work on the Mountain for the craziest boss ever and learn nothing about responding to teasing.

The prof set us up next to the fountain to draw "exactly what we see." I was sitting right behind a huge pot, so that was the center of my design, and when he arrived to check on me the first time I was almost finished with the pot.
He walked up behind me, looked over my shoulder, and burst into hysterics. The first time he laughed at me, the first week of the class, I decided he was a tool. This time I just shook my head, turned to look at him, and asked "Mais quoi!?"
"What’s the problem?" Thinking my design was, honestly, rather good.

"Mademoiselle Upside-Down, maybe I should call you instead..." he sighed. I looked down and realized he had a point– I had turned the pad nearly 180degrees in an effort to get the curve of the base right.
"Is that how they teach you to do it in America?" he asked.
"Yes," I said haughtily, "The curve is never right unless you can use your wrist to make it." He laughed, but didn’t correct my design, and left.

The next time he made it back to me, he crouched down behind me, looked at my design and then at my angle, and said, very solemnly and with great gravity: "Vous, mademoiselle, vous êtes monteuse. Je sais, it’s horrifying, no?"
"You, my dear, you are a CLIMBER. How terrible!"
I was trying to remember the last time I was called a climber, and wondered how he could possibly know anything about it, given that this time I hadn’t moved from my seat for fear of losing my perspective.
As it turned out, he decided I was using two different perspectives, as though my eyes were higher than they actually were. "But," he consoled in French, "it is very [switched to English] picturesque, I think."
"Picturesque!" I scoffed, knowing that this was a completely back-handed compliment, like comparing my work to Thomas Kinkade or some equally frowned-upon artist.
"Oui, picturesque," he confirmed.
"You think so?" I shot back in French. "It’s not too... american? Not too much like, oh, Norman Rockwell?"
"Where do you come from in the US?" he asked.
"Floride," I answered.
"Florida," he corrected me, pronouncing it the English way, then stating, more as a fact than question, "You don’t have fountains like this in FLORIDA."
"No, you’re right. We do have Mickey Mouse, though."
"Mais, cherie! So do we!"

At one point I asked him how he had learned English, because he obviously isn’t fluent, and he has a very obvious French accent, but he knows all the very technical words– vanishing point, skyline, picturesque, etc. He said he had studied at the Institute of Architecture, which is somewhere in the US, I think, and all he remembered is how the professors used to yell when he was doing aquarelles– "C’est-a-dire... ahhh, watercolors," the profs would snap, "MORE SHADOW! USE MORE SHADOW!" And that was how he learned.

I think he’s crazy. But now I kind of like him. He seems like the kind of professor who probably rents out the top floor of his house to college students who also think he is crazy but still kind of like him. I’m also almost positive that if I walked into class late he wouldn’t comment on it, but every time the guys in the class do it, they are always in trouble. I guess I don’t even need ribbons in my pigtails...

In conclusion, I am a climber, the Medici fountain remains one of my two favorite places in Paris, and being from Florida is never a bad thing.
~B

P.S. The last time he checked my sketch before we split up, he looked down at it, then looked at the landscape I had tried to copy, and said, I quote, translated from French:
"Not bad, not bad at all. I mean, you know, in Europe we haven’t really used this kind of split perspective since the 16th century Renaissance, but perhaps our innovations haven’t made it all the way to Florida yet."
Oh, France.

"Third-year American girls in Paris think they have it all figured out..."
~An American In Paris.

The thing about my life is that nothing can ever just BE. It’s never simple with me– if we’re driving somewhere, we’ll get lost. If I have a map, the road will be closed because of bad weather. If I have a 5-minute errand to do, I can about guarantee that either I will encounter a stranger in the process that ends up becoming a good friend, OR that the five minute will turn into at least a half hour.

Like last week, when I had to return a book to the bookstore. I have avoided even attempting to return things to the store here, the French are notoriously NOT OK with the concept of returns and exchanges– the germophobe in me has even gone so far as to eat a jar of jam that I got home and realized wasn’t sealed, because I knew it wasn’t worth it to even attempt to try to explain it to the people at Monoprix.

(Sidenote: I realized today that I may officially have grown up– I was at Monoprix and realized that the guy in the produce department who always weighs my fruit for me had gotten a haircut... I NOTICED THAT MY FRUIT WEIGHER HAD GOTTEN A HAIRCUT– do you realize what this means? That I have "a grocery store" that is mine now. Lord, next thing you know I’ll be buying mutual life plans or something.)

Anyway, I went back to the store to return this book, and this is how it went:
I walk into Gibert-Jeune (which, for the record, is the only large-scale bookstore in Paris, and still much smaller than any run-of-the-mill Barnes & Noble), wait in line at the cashier, book in hand, with receipt, and get to the front of the line to be told (obviously in French) that I had to go to a different floor to return it.
"Which floor?" I asked innocently.

"Ahh, I don’t know, 2nd, I think." I walk to the second floor, wait in line at the point d’information and ask to return my book– am told "Oh, mademoiselle, you have to go to the THIRD floor for that."

I walk to the third floor, wait in line, and then the guy tells me that I am at the HISTORY point d’information and to return a book about ART HISTORY, I have to be at the ART point d’information on the other end of the floor.

I wait in that line, get to the front, the guy takes my book (AT LAST, I think to myself), and gives me a form that I have to take back to the entrance to get (not money, obviously), but "Gibert cash" which is shaped like Euros and kind of looks like them but can only be spent there.
I lost track of how many lines I waited in after four. It’s things like that which I have forgotten used to be so simple– because I went into that errand fully aware that it would take at least that long, and require at least that many lines.

I was actually kind of proud when it was said and done that I hadn’t screwed up the language at all.
That same bookstore serves as the University bookstore– that is to say, the Sorbonne, where I go to school, is old enough (like, you know, 700 years) that it doesn’t have the "requisite" college things like, oh, a bookstore, so one has to go to Gibert Jeune to buy one’s school books, which is unbelievably annoying, because there are four of these bookstores in the Latin Quarter, but each one only sells certain subjects of books. (So if you need an art history book, you have to go to the one on Bd St Michel, but if you want a book on Biology, you go to the one in the restaurant district, see?) So yesterday I went to buy a book for one of my classes, a book the prof wrote. This is the only bookstore in the city of Paris that sells the book, and, of course, they don’t have any.
It’s not like I’m last minute– the prof only just told us about the book last week. The exam is three weeks away and THERE IS NOWHERE IN THIS CITY TO BUY THE TEXTBOOK. And the lady actually said to me when I asked "Yeah, you know, it’s odd that we don’t have any– you’re the third person in here this week to ask for it!"
No kidding.

Today, also is a jour ferie-- a national holiday. The French, as I now know, do one thing well, and that is party. In May, there are three national French holidays, but they must be every college prof's worst nightmare, because they are seven days apart each-- so I won't have my Tuesday classes for another two weeks. This week the holiday is "premier Mai"-- May 1st. That's the name of the holiday. And when I've asked people WHY it is a holiday/what it celebrates, I get the same answer every time: "Well, it's a day off work, obviously!"
???
I had forgotten how France shuts down on jours feries-- particularly ones on Tuesdays or Thursdays, because then all the French people "font le pont" (jump the bridge) and take off work on the Monday before or the Friday after to make it a REALLY long weekend. So today, though I had no classes, I got up at the crack of dawn to go tutor Fabrice. I arrived, and his parents answered the door in pajamas, because they didn't know I was coming. Not really my fault-- they didn't tell me not to and it's not a holiday in MY country, but I was mortified. Also, it's Fabrice's little brother's birthday today, so they had the whole house set up indian-themed for the party. A huge teepee in the living room, and homemade totem pole in the hallway... I think his poor mom thought I would be offended, given that I'm American. I wasn't, but the whole thing was hilarious-- they had a poster set up with all the kids Indian names, things like "Loup Puissant," and "Aigle Courageux." (Powerful Wolf and Brave Eagle.) I told Fabrice that when I was little I lived on an Indian reservation for awhile (true story, I swear), and had an Indian name. He asked what it was, and I told him, and he failed to be as impressed as I thought he ought to be. I think he thought mine was too masculine, that I should have had a name like "Tigerlily" or "Morning Princess" or something as poetic as "Powerful Wolf" instead of the one I did have.
How,
B

P.S. In exactly a week the third Pirates Of The Caribbean movie comes out here, which means there is a huge premiere on the Champs-Elysees. And as we all know, I came here with only one objective, one duty, to all American womankind, as it were, and that was to meet Johnny Depp. Because he lives in Paris. And will obviously be at the Champs-Elysees premiere. (Probably along with Orlando Bloom-- I guess I ought to be excited about that too. But I have a friend who lives literally in the same building as Bloom in London, so he seems not quite as exotic.) Anyway, I've failed in my mission thus far, but today I found out when I am leaving Paris for good (May 27-- the end is in sight, which is scary), and now I have a time limit on this plan... and luckily a movie premiere that is open to the public to go see. My (american) friends and I are already making plans, because my European friends really could care less.