So I just put on some
So anyway. It’s very strange and disorienting, much as I’d expected and been told it would be. There is good news and bad news about the situation as I see it thus far. The first bit of bad news, first because it’s probably the worst (though honestly I’m sure there are much worse things), is that there’s no Internet chez moi. Hmm. The good news is that my host mother seems nice, and it looks like a nice neighborhood, and I do indeed have a room and bathroom to myself. The other sort of discouraging news is that, at first, she seems a little… touchy… a little particular and a little more French than I’d have liked, in that she seems to like her own way, and explains things at least three times… She gave me a little crash course of practicalities, which included how to use the key, general stuff about meals, going out, etc. The key stuff all seems easy enough, but she took a lot of time to show me and show me again, and watch me try it myself… not in the nurturing making-sure-you’re-okay way; seemingly more so in a neurotic, high-strung way. But maybe this is just the French disposition, naturally less easy going than I’m used to. I can’t help thinking of my mom, though, and how easy-going and wonderful she’d be to anyone staying with her, and how much at home she would make them feel, and how much she’d smile and laugh. Sigh.
Hailey had told me she’d followed up with an ancien (former) CUPA student we spoke to at our pre-orientation session at
Anyway, back to my arrival… I was approached by someone asking me if I needed a taxi, so I said I did and where I was going. I actually understood all that he asked me… Just in making conversation, I apologized that my French wasn’t great and that I was an American student, and he said “Oh, you’re American? Your French is very good!” Ça m’a plait beaucoup (that made me pretty happy). I asked him what would be a good gift for my famille d’acceuil (host family), and he suggested chocolates or flowers. Good, because I’d bought some kind of cheesy
I arrived at 32 rue Robert Lindet, where the driver helped me in with my bags (well, certainly should, after I paid him 80 euros!) and I buzzed Madame on the interphone. She came down and sent me up in the elevator, which was so classically French and tiny, I barely fit in there with all my stuff. She took the stairs, to the deuxième étage, which to Americans is the third floor. They start counting one floor up from the ground floor (rez-de-chaussée).
I got in and finally, still all smiles, reached out my hand for an attempt at a more formal hello, and said “Enchanté,” which I had been told is the usual way of saying “Nice to meet you”, but she looked at me kind of strangely, so maybe that’s not what you say. Anyway, though she smiled and moved quickly and was energetic enough, as I started to explain before, the excitement on her part seemed a bit more nervous than warm and inviting. She showed me around the apartment, and excused it’s clutteredness, and explained that her parents were moving out of their apartment into a maison de retraite (retirement home), so there were pieces of their furniture scattered around. I have my own bathroom, but as French bathrooms are, it’s literally a bath room – a shower and a sink. It’s pretty tiny, and the showerhead is on a cord and doesn’t hang up or fix onto anything—I have to hold it—so that’ll be an adjustment. The toilette is on the other side of the apartment, in another closet-like little room next to the kitchen (though when I say other side of the apartment, well, it’s not that far). It’s actually pretty cute. The place isn’t cute in a French, Amélie kind of way, nor as adorable as the flat in the old apartment building with the formidable door (and without an elevator) that I stayed in with Dad and Liz and Zach in the quartier Latin several years ago, but it’s still French (read: small) and cute. And it smells French too, or at least foreign – not only does the place have its own smell to it that’s not overbearing but strong in the sense that it’s identifiable; nothing like the airy, fruity, breezy, or even musty scents of Long Island homes that I’m used to, but there was also a pungent, interestingly spicy smell of food cooking in the kitchen, where she was preparing a meal for lunch. She said I could eat with them (her daughter was arriving with her husband and son), or sleep and eat dinner with them at around 8. So after she sat down and explained the few rules she has (she said she’d just tell me these few things, and otherwise it’s comme tu veux – as I want), I slept. I actually wasn’t that tired, I didn’t think, but I was out like a light when my head hit the pillow.
So the basic rules/important things include: don’t lose the key (because then she’d have to change the whole system and there’d be a very large abonnement), try not to take long showers because the water’s expensive, don’t use the phone (my program had told her all the students will get portables – cell phones – because the telephone in France is expensive)… see a pattern here?... , no boys at the house at all, since she once had a problem with that, and if une copine (girl friend) wants to come by, I have to ask her permission first. For dinner, she provides me with six meals per week (as the program says), so she suggested samedi (Saturday) as the day I find my own meal, as she typically goes out Saturdays. I am to tell her a day in advance if I won’t be home for dinner the next night, as she knows sometimes I will want to eat with my friends, etc. – that way she can plan what to buy, as each morning she shops for the day’s meals. So different from how in the
After that I went to sleep - when I woke up it was 7, and I came out and said hello. She explained that her daughter and husband had gone out to the cinéma, so we weren’t going to eat together as she’d thought – she asked if I was hungry, and I was, so she said she’d call me in ten minutes. I met the little baby, Thomas, who is adorable. In ten minutes as I was looking up what le veau is (veal, as I’d thought – she’d offered me a choice between that and a tarte – like a quiche – and I took the tarte), she called me to dinner, and she placed our two trays on the table in the séjour (living room), where we ate while watching TV. I wonder if that’s typical or just her. There wasn’t much on besides commercials; elle n’a que six chaînes (she only gets six channels). I didn’t care, though – I was interested in my food, and in talking to her. The tarte had tomatoes, goat cheese, and something else in it, and was delicious. We each had a small salad, a bottle of water and a glass, and a yogurt, which I figured would be eaten at the end, so I waited for her to eat hers and then ate mine. She had a glass of wine too, which I’m surprised she didn’t offer me. Not that I mind that much –but, I don’t know, thinking of all this now, it just doesn’t seem like the ideal situation/warm family I was looking for, but we’ll see, and I’ll manage, anyway. I think of how much worse it could be.
It’s very easy, as I’ve been told and that I can now understand, to shy away from the idealistic initial desire to immerse yourself in a country and language and lifestyle completely new, and instead wish nothing other than to be with your family and friends, or to think about nothing other than how things were, in my case, less than 24 hours ago. Already I’m imagining driving along
I can’t even believe I was on the phone talking to my parents and friends just before I took off, in the waiting room and on the plane – even that seems lightyears away. Ah, I wish I could just pick up my phone… the first need I feel is for contact, to speak, to connect with my other world… I mentioned to Madame a few times using my phone card to call my parents, but she thinks it will cost her money and explains, again, that using the phone is expensive in
Listened to:
Goodnight, pavement puddle stars… Ooh, but it’s only tear gas tears…
BONJOUR tout le monde! I am now a blogger. I don’t know how I feel about that. But regardless, rather than sending mass emails to everyone I know, I’m setting this up to leave a trail of my five forthcoming months in Paris – as much for myself to have a souvenir of sorts, as for some friends and family at home to see what I’m up to. I apologize in advance for uninteresting or too-much-detail posts. Please comment if that happens.
Disclaimer: My first couple entries are quite long, but this won’t be the norm – I’m keeping a journal at the same time, and will occasionnally paste parts of it here, but for the most part will keep this mostly events and interesting things-related, rather than like a livejournal.
Alors! Il faut commencer…
