Expat Blues: France +2, US -3...

I'm sorry to say I have to continue on that slightly deprecating-towards-the-US spirit...

Current Reasons that France Rocks:
1. People cry when THEIR two-term president leaves
2. An Inconvenient Truth is third on Virgin's bestselling list, a good portion of tonight's news was spent on SmartCars and other environmentally friendly cars, and one of today's papers published a segment about huge masses of ice melting in the south pole - obviously not great news but at least it's getting blatantly out there

Current Reasons the US doesn't:
1. Today a couple students were turned away from a museum because they were under no circumstances allowed to bring in their laptops, since there could be bombing devices inside and they didn't have a mechanism to check them... We were like "Seriously? We're students." and the guard says, "Well, look what's happened with students in America..."
2. Encouragement of students carrying GUNS with them at all times ON CAMPUS in Utah and Texas?!? WHAT??!
3. Paul Wolfowitz

sigh. I'm sorry. I really do love my country and am excited to go back to it, I just can't ignore the day's events that have made this list.... Please, if anyone reads this, feel more than free to make some counter-comments to make me feel better about where I'm from!! I know the reasons exist, I just can't seem to think of them right now!

Sarko & Spoiled Tor

Wow. So this blog became just about as ambitious a project as the ziploc bags full of ticket stubs sitting on my floor at home somewhere intended to be scrapbooked. Oh well!

So today while we met outside the Musée de l'Orangerie in the Tuileries before our class there, we saw all the police cars rolling into the Place de la Concorde (where I really wish I'd been last weekend just for the experience) : the signal that Sarko was near. Yup, today Nicolas Sarkozy was officially handed over the power by Chirac in front of the Élysée - okay it's also officially too annoying to put in the accents. Anyway. My art history professor said it was "dommage" - too bad. I mentioned a conversation I had with my host mom last night, and they seem to be in agreement that the new pres will try, unfortunately, to bring France closer to the US and Britain in terms of work and economy - optionally longer workweeks, welfare cuts - basically eroding away some of what I think are key defining values in France that it'd be really a shame to lose. Yes, he'll probably boost the country's economy - but from what everyone says, and like what I'm told happened under Blair (I tread carefully with words like "I hear" and "I'm told" because I don't pretend to hide my ignorance), the poor should plan to get poorer and the rich to get richer. He's said to be closer to Bush's policies than any of the other candidates, and anticipated to bring about a lot of change to move in that direction, which my host mom shook her head at. She only said she was wary of that in terms of the war aspect - she wants her country to stay out of things like war, like they have been - but I'd be wary for the rest, too.

The values that I mentioned - what I meant by that were a deference to leisure time (which means, broken down: necessary time for family, for oneself, for travel - 36 hour workweeks, 6 week starting vacations and paternity leave - ) and a laid back attitude that knows how to enjoy life a little more day by day, and to embrace art and culture as a continuous, fluid element of it. Not to say that Sarkozy is out to change these things or that a country's people could lose some of its longstanding core values and traditions just like that, it's just that I think (fear) that it's all part of the same spirit that's about to get attacked in one way or another in the upcoming years. I like this element of France that's been a refresher to me - whether I'm really still an American at heart that will take every moment possible to work harder, make more money, more more more, I don't know - but in any case it'd be sad for the country to lose a bit of uniqueness. That's just me.

In OTHER news, things are great these days - came back from a lovely weekend in the south of France (my tan lines and weirdly placed and painful burns are starting to subside), and am currently working on finding a job (eeeek), preparing to make the most of my last month here, booking a weekend in Canada pronto, and anticipating some much-awaited catch-ups with family and friends! (Even though some of those friends are doing silly things like doing a Europe tour after I've left, leaving for the whole summer in Maine before I get home, or like, living in California or something... Thanks.) Ha, well, I'm excited and all, but what's more frappant... Striking, I mean... (the French words sometimes just come first!!!) is how sad I'll be to leave. I kinda realized, crap, this may be as good as it gets. Not that it should get any better - I couldn't ask for a more wonderful experience than the one I've been given for the past couple months - but just, wow, these are perhaps some of the best months of my life, and I'll never be in this situation again. Unless I live in Europe later in life (okay - actually I am planning on it - ), chances to come back here will be few and far between. When I get restless and need a change of scenery I won't be able to just hop on a train or a RyanAir flight and go somewhere beautiful and old that I haven't been before. And I'll certainly never have this much leisure time again... besides perhaps this summer, it might just be all downhill from here... aaaah! End of study abroad semester blues!

But in any case, ::snap-out-of-it headshake:: I'm going to just be incredibly thankful for being able to do this and try to really make the most (as in, get my ass out of bed earlier on thursdays fridays saturdays and sundays, spend a little less time on facebook, and make more of an effort to do something different every day) of the rest of my time here. Yyyyyeah!

3rd round of classes...

…and more interesting cultural differences. So today in my sociology of the city class, we’re going through the article she gave us to read, going through each paragraph and making sure we have the main ideas. Our assignment had been to summarize each paragraph in a sentence or quote, so she was asking us for our suggestions and giving her own. This was great for me, as the subject matter was at times tricky enough itself without the French to weigh it down – but I guess it might have been rather boring for a French student, because an hour into the class, some guy raises his hand, and says more or less: “Is this… all we’re doing today? Are we going to read the whole thing?” (pause.) “Because… I mean, I read this (or maybe he said could read this) on my own.” The teacher, rather than yell at him for being disrespectful, explained her reason for going through it rather slowly, saying she was trying to make sure we understood the method of reading a text, that next time she’d just have us do it on our own, and that she was sorry if he thought she was wasting his time. I think it was left at that for the moment, but he did get up about a minute later, making three other people get up in order for him to get out and creating a bunch of noise, seemingly to make a phone call. My mouth was probably still gaped open at that point…

Other than that, the class was really good and interesting, and I even raised my hand and offered an answer once – which apparently was good because she asked me to repeat it so everyone else could write it down! Woohoo!

Drawing class was also good – which I take with Jules, Susannah, and 10 or so French people, from one high school kid to men and women in their fifties (or so, I’d say). Today we had a live model and she was great, definitely the best model I’ve drawn – very interesting poses. Maybe I was just sitting in a good spot. Who knows.

The next day I had my film class… um…
(a) we watched movies for nearly the whole time again, with him talking for only about a half hour (it’s a three hour class, like the others – only once a week)
(b) He hands back my “fiche pédagogique” to me which I had to ask him fill out for my program; it has space for him to write out what work I will be required to do for the semester and what dates – he has written: “ORAL, MAI. DST, MAI.” =oral exam in may, test in class may. No subject material indicated whatsoever, no dates indicated. Sweet. My program’s going to love this.
(c) He says that there is no class next week… because he is sick?? I could swear I heard the word “malade”.

And all throughout the day I continued my ongoing search for bathrooms. They are hard to find, and with toilet paper? That’s another thing.

Another day in a French university!

First Day of School

(Warning: Journal entry.)

Yes, my classes just started today. I love France.

Well, my real classes started today, you could say – my CUPA program course (art history: 19^th century French painting) and atelier course (figure drawing, in an independent studio in my arrondissement) already have, but the other three courses are at Université Paris VIII – St. Denis. It’s about an hour metro ride from me, which doesn’t seem that bad in this context since it’s on the metro and I’m used to factoring in a half hour/forty minutes for getting pretty much anywhere, but when I think of being back at Georgetown, wow, an hour commute to classes? It was enough to be “off-campus” and have to bear the 15-minute walk. It’s so different living and going to school in a city – perhaps I now can get a sense of what non-campus city schools like NYU and GW are like. Plus, in France, as we’re told, campuses aren’t as much of a home for students at all – besides not actually housing them, they’re more like just stops that have to be made during the day; where you come, take your class, and leave. There isn’t a connection to one’s university like there is at home in the US. There isn’t all that school pride and varsity sports teams and tradition and social events and all that make us so homesick for our universities in the states; that make our campuses become more home to us than where we’re really from.

Anyway, St. Denis isn’t um, the nicest area, but the school is pretty cool. They offer a lot of really fascinating sounding courses – many of which I didn’t sign up for because I was either afraid to take a high-level course in French or unwilling to take anything at remotely inconvenient times, including days like Thursdays and Fridays (ha) – and have all the departments I’d consider taking classes in. Hardly any of the other universities had a psychology department.

So here are some thoughts/notes from my first day; already some differences between the French system and what I’m used to are vividly apparent:

I arrived to my first class (Psychologie de la Santé) (santé = health) a half hour early, with something to read; I’d left myself plenty of time to find everything and see how long the metro journey was. I was surprised to see about 15 other students already there this early. It’s a good thing I got there though, because by the time 9am rolled around (when the class was supposed to start) (I had to concede and take one horribly early class), 30 or 40 more had piled in, and the last 20 or so had to go across the hall and grab tables and chairs from another room. The extra tables and chairs were packed so close to each other and to the professor’s desk that there was barely any space for her to speak, let alone sit down. I didn’t like this because I’d chosen a seat at the end of a table near the door, so I could get up and leave as inconspicuously as possible if I needed to for any reason, but now there were chairs placed in every possible space so that I’d have to make at least four people stand up to worm my way out of the room.

The professor finally arrived at 9:20, and it was not the professor listed on the course offering. Nope – that’s it. She didn’t even know the guy who everyone had expected to see. She then said something I didn’t understand and everyone got up, so I followed suit and realized we were moving to the room across the hall, which I didn’t think was much bigger, and it wasn’t, but at least we all had seats and table space now. So by the time we actually got going, it was closer to 9:30 – fine by me if that’s what happens every time, considering it’s a three hour course.

So, some things that surprised me: the first thing she did without saying anything about the subject was say that there would be a written final exam but that we could also choose to do an exposé (oral presentation) instead, and asked for a show of hands for who’d like to do that, and asked those people to come see her during the break and sign up. I mention this as surprising because it’s pretty much the first thing she said, at home we’d be given lots of time to decide what we wanted to do, and lots of information on each of the options before having to choose one. And we certainly wouldn’t be choosing our topics and dates on the first day either. Moving on… During class, a student said she couldn’t see what was written on the board, and suggested the teacher borrow her dry-erase pen since it was red – and she took it and used it – this is just interesting because it makes it seem like there’s less distance between the student and professor, as if she’s on the same level as we are, which is the opposite of what I’ve been told about French professors. I guess it varies. This was confirmed at the break, when everyone went outside and put their coats on and lit up a cigarette – including the professor. She smoked and talked with the other students, and looked like one too. Funny. We came back in after 20 minutes and in the second half, the students were talking to each other so loud – while the professor was lecturing – that sometimes I could barely hear what she was saying (ha, let alone understand it). I was amazed at their audacity – blatantly leaning over, joking around with each other, laughing, clearly paying no attention – and then it was the strangest thing, they seemed to know when she’d say something important, and everyone would get quiet all at once, and start taking notes. Hmm.

The three-hour course wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was, but maybe that’s because it started late…

I headed to my next three-hour course straight after, which started at the same time this one ended. Thankfully this one also started late. This professor carried herself very differently: she told us straight off, don’t talk when I talk, and this is an exchange: I spent time preparing a program for you, so do your part by cooperating with me.

This was Sociology de la Ville (of the city). The first thing she had us do was write down a list of words we associate with “city”, and then she had several of us read them out loud, and after the girl from Columbia went, whose French was far more terrible than mine, I was sufficiently encouraged to try, and read my list a few people later. Seems like a really interesting class, though it also seems I’m going to have to work! I suppose that’s kind of the point – I forget that sometimes nowadays.

Here are some pictures of the inside of my new favorite bathroom – haha – that sounds really weird but seriously, this bathroom is very interesting – it appears the wallpaper is very amenable to suggestions and additions, most often in the form of captions.

This one I like - according to the artist, this woman is thinking,
« I think that I love him but how can I be sure? Love is only an illusion... »

My place...

my bed, with some nice reminders of home on the wall – actually this picture was added much later, when I finally put them up


my desk


the balcony, closet and clothes rack – apparently I only felt like hanging one thing up


my little bathroom


le séjour – the living room


the little kitchen


and the note she left me this morning

Day One

So I just put on some Phoenix, because the Viva Voce song I had stuck in my head was too melancholy, and that’s not what I’m going for right now. I’ve only been here for about 12 hours, only four of which I’ve been awake for, and it’s already very clear that I am in a completely different world, with seemingly more than just an ocean separating me from the one I know. Ugh, which sounds so pathetically cliché but in my defense I’m reminded of Chuck Klosterman, who somewhere in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs said that the most real things are cliché: when you find yourself in situations and emotional states that are typically described over and over again in the same simplistic language, such as when in love, or after a break up, or… when arriving in a new, foreign place you’re about to spend five months in… The only words you can seem to find to express yourself are those very ones used in Hallmark cards and boy band and emo songs, cheesy and uninventive as they may otherwise seem.

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 Georgetown and asked for his family’s info since he’d spoken so highly of them and his experience… she requested them on her housing info sheet and wrote that she thought it would be a good match. That was a good idea. I hate to say, I’m wishing the other thing had worked out, with the family I’d initially been placed with, and thinking the neighborhood would have been better, I’d have been closer to a métro, having kids around would actually be nice (at least it’d be louder and there’d be life, and perhaps I’d have less of an obligation to commit to dinner plans the night before), and maybe they’d have had internet. I never imagined not having access could make this much of a difference. Really, I was imagining myself here logging on, sending a few emails, going on AIM and talking to a few people, looking into Skype and into setting up a blog, and looking at my program info… how different I would feel! Seriously, I think my whole temperament and outlook would change and I wouldn’t at all be looking at pictures or avoiding sad music or yearning for American life… Well, I’m going to speak with the coordinator, who seems very nice and understanding (Nathalie), and see if there isn’t anything that can be done. On va voir (we shall see).

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 New York chocolates at JFK after they threw out the Crabtree & Evelyn lotion-y gift thing that I’d stupidly put in my carry-on. Oh well. She seemed to like the chocolates. She said they would go well with the café (here café can mean the drink or the place).

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 U.S. we do huge supermarket runs for weeks of meals at a time!

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 Jerusalem Avenue yesterday, in my mom’s car with my Winter Mix blasting from the CD player, driving in to Eckerd to pick up necessities for my trip, or stopping by Dunkin Donuts to pick up a blueberry latté via the drive-through. I realize that sitting here in beautiful Paris and dreaming about a crappy Dunkin Donuts drive-thru is more than just a little sad, but, the general sentiment is of course understandable, no? Just having been in a state of running my own life, being responsible for myself, deciding what I needed to do and hopping in the car and doing it, talking to my friends several times a day and coordinating plans… well, you don’t realize what kind of life you’re in until you leave it behind.

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 France and she does not want to pay an abonnement (sum) for it. I also really want to get out and walk around a bit, at least get a slightly larger glimpse of the world I’m living in than just this small apartment, and more importantly try to find an internet café, or a payphone, something – but she said she would prefer I stayed in tonight. As she reiterated for about the fifth or sixth time, she will take me around tomorrow and show me the quartier (neighborhood), and look for the internet café (cyber-café) her friend told her of (though she’s not sure it’ll be open on Sunday, as most commercial establishments aren’t—all the more reason I see for me to try and check it out tonight…). Ah. And it’s late here, 10:22 pm, but I’ve just slept 8 hours and am awake and… Ooh! Just got my hearing in my left ear back! …and, what better time to get out and stretch my legs and see the Paris night? And search for un moyen (means) of contact? Housebound. That’s not the word I want. House… I don’t know…. and stir-crazy, until tomorrow morning.

Listened to: Phoenix, Iron & Wine/Calexico, The Shins, The Long Winters, Jason Collett, Voxtrot, The Elected, Rilo Kiley.

Goodnight, pavement puddle stars… Ooh, but it’s only tear gas tears…