bonjourfeuilles’ blog

8.7.08

The moral of my story that I always forget is that I need at least a week to freak out and to completely doubt myself whenever I arrive someplace new.  Ok, that’s not really a moral; it’s my pattern.  Perhaps the fact that recently it seems to take only about a week for me to feel mostly at ease and at least comfortable in the discomfort of transition is proof that I am growing up a bit.  It was startling to watch myself slip so far away from myself last week though.  There were a few really low days when all I wanted to do was to sit around and stare at the wall.  Or maybe all I wanted to do was to return to Paris and all I could bring myself to do was to sit around and stare at the wall.  I felt as though I was twelve years old again and the most uninteresting, boring, uninspiring human being on earth.  I could not find reasons why anyone would want to hold a conversation with me and I couldn’t even figure out how to relax enough around new people to feel like they weren’t all wondering what was wrong with me.  Becky slipped away and was replaced with Katie’s-little-twelve-year-old-who-doesn’t-even-know-how-to-be-herself-or-who-herself-is-sister.  Let me tell you that is heavy.  It is also frustrating to feel that way at the age of almost 24.

But, like I started to say, the good news is that about a week after those few really low days during which I cried more than I did during my entire ten months in Paris, I have bounced back and while I am still worried about finding a job and while I still want to find venues through which to make my own friends, I have remembered who I am and I no longer want to spend my days curled up in a ball hating everyone.  On Monday morning Katie helped me drive around handing out cover letters and my resume to various private schools in the area.  While none of the schools are currently hiring, I was able to speak with some of the principals and hopefully I made a good impression.  A few of them were very interested in keeping me on file as a substitute teacher, which at the very least could bring in a little money and get me known in the schools.  Tutoring also seems to be a possibility and there might be some clerical work that I could do at one of the schools too.  If nothing else, I was reminded what a difference it makes to look someone in the eye, to smile and to at the very least pretend to be full of confidence.  After the first school the fake confidence was replaced with real confidence because it went so well.  I am just bouncing all over the place emotionally here.

I did just have a very unexpected, very sharp moment of “I miss France!”  It was actually simply “I miss Europe!”  I was looking around on facebook to kill some time because I don’t have anything in particular that I need to be doing right now and since I am at a coffee shop with Internet, I am taking advantage of it.  I looked at a picture that someone had put up of Eva in front of a door and something about the picture, Eva and the way she and her friend were dressed caused this sharp intake of breath and “I miss Europe!” moment.  I really cannot put words to it or explain what it is that I miss precisely.  Part of me wants to say that I miss the adventure and discovery of exploring Europe, but I am in an entirely new part of the U.S. that I can explore and discover here.  Maybe part of it is the language.  Maybe part of it is the fact that I was there on my own.

One realization to which I came last week was that part of my unhappiness here came from the fact that I don’t feel as though I have anything to look forward to at this point in my life.  It is actually the first time in my life that I have really faced this.  Up until now there has always been something – school, my Masters degree/student teaching, living abroad, moving in with my sister . . .  Now I have moved in with my sister and the future is really up in the air.  The job situation is so undefined right now and last week I had convinced myself that I simply would never find a job here; therefore getting a job was not in the realm of things to which I can look forward.  I kept reassuring myself that I can move back to France next year if life here does not turn out to be something that I wish to continue, but it still wasn’t the same as having something on the horizon to look forward to.  I guess it’s just that moment of “I’m no longer a student and have to deal with big grown up adult life.”  After handing in my resume, I have been able to turn that from fear and anxiety to excitement and possibility.

Speaking of possibility, I have begun reading a book that my host mother Brigitte gave me for my birthday last year.  I have attempted to read this book on multiple occasions with no success.  The name of the book translates to “The Knights of the Subjunctive” and it’s a book about the subjunctive, which is kind of a verb tense, often called a mood, that exists in French and some other languages, but which does not exist in English.  It is often one of the hardest parts of French for Anglophones to learn because we have not grown up with it.  The way it works is that after certain expressions of doubt, hope, and possibility such as “I imagine that” or “It is possible that” or “I am afraid that” the second verb must be used in its subjunctive form.  The book that I am reading is written like a fairy tale/adventure book about a girl who has been stranded on an archipelago called “Words.”  The book I am reading is actually a sequel that I have not read.  The first book is the story of how Jeanne and her brother get stranded on the island.  In this book Jeanne, who is twelve years old, is on a quest to find out what love is.  Along the way she ends up exploring the island of the subjunctive with a cartographer and I am at the part in the book where she starts to connect love with the subjunctive – the mood through which hope, possibility, doubt, fear, and other unclearly defined realms of emotion and expression exist.  Now that I have forced myself to read past the first few chapters, I am really into it.  I love it when grammar makes sense and is meaningful.  In some ways it seems like I am living in a subjunctive period in my life and that is perhaps why I am feeling such a strong connection to this book.

Oops, it is later than I realized and I should go eat some lunch chez moi.  The gym is in order today and then I believe that the plan is to do karaoke tonight.  Everyone seems to be feeling mildly under the weather right now, so I’ll go rest a bit with Katie before heading over the Chavez Center.

7.28.08

I’m having a hard time feeling any sense of emotional stability.  The hardest part is when I feel good and optimistic and excited because I get tricked into thinking that I’m done feeling bad.  Then when I start to feel not so great, I get frustrated.  For whatever reason a serious funk took over yesterday after an unsuccessful day of bed hunting.  I ended up at Michelle and Jordi’s house, two of Katie’s friends, hanging out with all of them.  Though, to be perfectly honest, “hanging out” is a bit of a stretch.  I mean, physically I was there.  When addressed directly, I responded, but that was about all I could muster.  Finally I said that I had a headache and needed to go home.  It was true.  The headache started in my right shoulder and crept up my neck.  I was also hungry.  When I got home, I found Casey, Rosie and Rosie’s friend Bucket at the house.  Rosie was cleaning the kitchen and cooking.  I was able to grab a snack but felt completely unable to be around people, so doing my best to seem mildly cheery and friendly, I excused myself to go to the Chavez Center for a workout.  

I had been planning on going in any case, but getting away from other human beings became a very strong urge and while I was rather tired at the beginning of my workout, I ended up staying at the Chavez Center for at least an hour and a half.  One thing that I’m surprisingly good at is being really nice to myself when I feel like total shit.  It took me a while to perfect this and it doesn’t always work, but very often when I feel crappy and am aware of it, I will be very conscious to do nice things for myself or to be extra nice to me.  For example, I will go get a latte and sit quietly with it, feeling bad and not even trying to change it.  Last night at the gym I decided that I wouldn’t do a hard workout, but I would just go easy on myself and take my time.  I realized that I had all the time in the world and so I started on the treadmill.  Intended as a simple walking warm up, I actually worked my way up to running and successfully completed ten minutes of running (well, eight minutes running, two walking, two more running).  I hit the elliptical after that and went much more slowly than usual.  I followed this up with a nice, calm session of stretching and breathing and finished up with a gentle ride on the recline bike, pedaling along with Beethoven and Bill Bryson to help pass the time.  I felt much better when I left than I had been feeling when I arrived, but I was still not particularly in the best of moods.

I’m sure that the details of my visit to the gym are not actually all that exciting and maybe it says something about how I am easing into my life here that it was the highlight of my day, but in the worst of moods it definitely helped.  The other reason why I bring it up is because while I was on the treadmill, I looked down at my iPod to see what time it was.  Much to my surprise I saw 4AM and then remembered that my iPod is set to Paris time.  Later on in the car I glanced at my stereo, which is brand new just bought before leaving Massachusetts, and saw 12:30AM.  I have yet to change that clock from Eastern Standard Time.  My cell phone automatically changed to the correct time zone all by itself and the watch that I rarely wear, I would assume, is still set to Paris time.  I was struck by the idea that I am living among three different time zones right now, not quite ready to settle into the one where I physically exist.

7.26.08

A little bit of masochism never hurt anyone, right?  My weapon of choice this evening is the fourth chapter of Bill Bryson’s book “Neither Here Nor There; Travels in Europe.”  The title of chapter for is . . . “Paris.”  I began reading “Neither Here Nor There” on the drive here simply because I was in need of a little bathroom reading material and since I had nothing with me that I was reading, I borrowed it from Katie.  I was not particularly excited about it and assumed that it would serve it’s purpose by providing me with some fairly interesting reading while I was doing, uh, business, but expected little more than that.  I mean no offense to Bill Bryson; my lack of expectations was simply because so many people I know LOVE his writing and the few times that I attempted to read “A Walk In The Woods,” I was rather disappointed.  For me, it was a book that I put down and simply never felt the urge to pick up again.  I was told that I needed to give it a chance and to force my way into it, for a few chapters in I would discover how hysterically funny and interesting Mr. Bryson is.  I just never got that far.

Perhaps it is simply that “Neither Here Nor There” is about Europe and I am coming off of a European high that grabbed me when I started to read this book.  Maybe the style is a little different.  For whatever reason I found myself asking Katie for it on several bathroom trips and then I even felt compelled to read it in other venues.  When I went to the gym today (it’s actually a fabulous community center with a gym, a huge pool, an indoor ice rink and other athletic facilities), I was in Paris.  When I read at the gym, I can only read when doing the recline bikes.  Actually, the recline bike is my moment of being the best human being I can possibly be because I combine exercise, reading and classical music for a solid twenty-thirty minutes.  Ok, maybe that makes me the epitome of the overscheduled American who is juggling so many things that life has become one continuous exercise in multitasking, but it’s a nice moment to read and the classical music is more soothing and less distracting than music with words.  Anyway, I am getting off track here.

What I am trying to write about is the fact that I sat there pedaling away on a stationary bike after a long empty day of no responsibilities, no scheduled activities, no structure, listening to the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony and reading about the city that I just left with a very strong sense of nostalgia and longing.  I also felt a certain measure of guilt as I engaged in my own little conversation with good old Bill about whether or not the stereotypes about Parisians are true, Bill’s opinion being that, when he visited years ago the stereotypes were painfully accurate and today there are certain elements of Parisianness that align with the old stereotypes while a new level of friendliness and politeness have developed.  Not having the ability to compare today with twenty years ago, I was rather put off by his claim that the stereotypes hold true until I realized that he had changed his mind somewhat upon his second visit.  The guilt arose because I made the decision to leave Paris and being in a new city facing a new stage in my life, I feel as though I should be looking forward with hope at the opportunities and possibilities that are in front of me rather than looking back at what I had and where I could have chosen to stay.

Of course there was the rational part of me that reassured the nostalgic and guilty parts of me that I am allowed to feel sad and to miss Paris, even if I did make the conscious choice to leave there.  I have only been in Santa Fe since Wednesday night and it doesn’t even make any sense to compare the two cities or the two lives.  Paris is the sum of ten months of me carving out a place for myself on my own and right now Santa Fe is barely three days old and holds little concrete for me aside from my sister, Casey (her boyfriend), and her circle of friends.  Plus, I moved to Paris because I was offered a job.  When the job was finished I came back here because I wanted to live with my sister.  Living with someone is more abstract and less structured than a job is.  It means that I have the company and support of someone I love.  I guess over the past two years I’ve become really accustomed to having my life be shaped by requirements, responsibilities and structured programs/work.  My graduate program and my job teaching English were what dictated where I needed to be and what I needed to get done.  Creating a social life and finding friendship and camaraderie was directly related to whom I met through my work and what I was able to fit into my spare time (when I had it).  Part of what I value so much about the past two years is that I have learned to be very independent and to fill up days on my own in ways that are fulfilling and pleasing to me, even though others might find it boring or strange.

When I was a kid one of the many visions I had of my future was that I would be Aunt Becky, the crazy, eccentric, free-spirited aunt who spent her life traveling the world and adventuring from one continent to another only to sweep through the States from occasionally with enough time to give her nieces and nephews some exotic presents and to share stories of the wonders she discovered on her travels.  For a while I forgot about that dream of mine because I became very focused on the idea of motherhood and of creating a life in which my most important role would be mom/wife.  When I remembered the Aunt Becky vision, I was struck by how that dream placed me in relation to others as sister and aunt (and daughter to my parents, to whom I would also give fabulous gifts from afar).  There was no husband in the scene, no children, no house, nothing to tie me down to any one place.  My friendships, in fact, would not come from a community, but would last as long as my stays in any given location and hopefully be sustained through postcards and future visits.  I would simply be on the move and when I needed to rest I would come back to my family.

Clearly two ten-month stints in France do not really count as this Aunt Becky version of myself becoming a reality.  For one thing, there are no nieces or nephews to shower with gifts.  But the little piece of it that rings true and brings this childhood dream back to my mind right now is the idea that my time abroad was a mixture of independence and adventure allowing me to exist not in relation to my family or anyone else.  I arrived as Rebecca Michael and was able to shape Rebecca’s life into whatever I wanted.  Me in relation to my family stayed in the U.S.  Well, I suppose that’s not really entirely true or fair.  Who I am is, no need really to even say it, so hugely the result of my family and my relationship with them.  Even so, I was just me there.  In Dijon I wasn’t entirely sure who that was and I spent a lot of time with myself working it out.  In Paris I still was not entirely sure, but was able to force myself into social situations and interacts that allowed me to come out of my shell and to develop more in reaction and in relation to other people.  I also cherished the ability to slip back away from all of that and to be that solitary person that I grew to love in Dijon.  

Paris is beautiful.  Walking through the streets from arrondissement to arrondissement, watching the sometimes gradual, sometimes more abrupt shift in neighborhood character and flavor, getting almost run over while crossing the street, impatiently pushing past tourists who seem to take up the whole sidewalk, salivating over pastries that I would rarely actually eat, noticing the way the air smells different as I pass in from fruit market (mmm) to fish market (ew) to cheese store (mm in my opinion, though many would say ‘ew’) to butcher . . . I am lucky to have had the time I had to experience and to enjoy it.  And yes I just f***ing miss it.  I am here in Santa Fe where the sky goes on forever, where the clouds are so close above head that I could reach up and grab a handful, where you can watch a storm cloud pour rain over some distant part of the state while standing under a blue, sunny sky, where my life is right now and I miss Paris.    

I think that it’s supposed to be like this though.  There would be something severely wrong if I didn’t miss it.  The joke among my friends and family these days is that I have a heart made of stone and that I have no emotions.  It’s true that I detach very easily, that I cry rarely, that I push forward in my life taking no prisoners, getting things done and doing what I need to do.  I don’t like to depend on others and I don’t like to be taken care of.  I don’t like to have regrets and I have learned to stop being afraid of change.  But there is a difference between being afraid of change and allowing yourself to feel sad in moments of transition and change.  Beginnings are full of possibilities and excitement, but beginnings follow endings and when leaving behind something that was as wonderful as the past ten months that I spent in Paris, the ending not only requires, but also deserves a bit of mourning.  It was hard to feel that when I was home because home was a temporary moment between two times and two places.  Home is so familiar and worn in that it is easy to arrive there and to forget that anything else exists.  Even now I still feel like I’m on vacation, but with these uncertain days of job hunting and figuring out how to make this place mine, the reality is setting in.

The fact that I am jobless and directionless (that is a bit of an overstatement, but still) is something else that might be worth exploring through writing as it is something that I am finding mildly stressful and uncomfortable, but for the moment I just want to wallow in this moment of longing to be back in France.  Actually, ironically enough, sitting out here on my front porch, listening to the chirping of crickets and having the ability to sit alone writing and thinking reminds me a little of what I loved so much in France.  

7.24.08

Somehow the end of my time in Paris slipped through my fingers but my fingers were not on this keyboard typing out the stories that made up that bit of time in my life.  It’s hard to put words to it really, which is why I suppose I never bothered forcing myself to sit down to work it out on paper.  I did everything that I wanted to do before leaving.  I walked and walked and walked through the city, and spent time with the usual suspects and some who were not so usual as well.  I reconnected with Ikram finally only to find that my fear and apprehension that she would hate me for having been so out of touch with her was simply misplaced guilt.  My good friend Katie C. came to visit, which I have perhaps already mentioned.  I know I brought up the fact that I went skydiving.  I spent a good amount of time with Lise.  On the day before I left I had a very poorly organized goodbye picnic by the Eiffel Tower and a good number of people actually showed up despite my very vague invitation – come have a picnic with me on the Champ de Mars next to the Eiffel Tower between 4PM and 7PM.  The Champ de Mars is HUGE and on a beautiful day incredibly crowded, making it a challenge to connect with friends unless the meeting point is very specific.  I also had the misfortune of running out of credit on my cell phone and since my bankcard had been turned in on Friday, I had no way to recharge it.  In the end the people who I really anted to see somehow found me and it was a nice afternoon.  Sarah had a party at her apartment on Saturday night and that was lots of fun.  I ended up staying the night and as I walked to the train station to go home at around 8AM on Sunday, I thought sadly about how that was the last time I’d be walking home to catch a morning train after a night out in Paris (not that I did that all that frequently, but it happened and there was always something really special and particular about being up that early).

Anyway, these last minute Parisian moments come flooding back to me now as I sit on the couch on my new front porch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  After about three weeks at home my sister flew in from Santa Fe to help get me packed up and then to drive back here with me.  The time I spent at home was hard.  It was hard in that I was jetlagged and tired at first.  Going from a huge bustling city like Paris to a little suburban town like Longmeadow was a huge culture shock.  It felt lonely and quiet and boring.  I missed walking everywhere to do everything and found that getting physical activity required a lot more motivation and was much less appealing than it had been.  I did not unpack my bags really, though one kind of exploded because I needed the cloths in it, and never really felt like I was settled in.  I guess that’s because I was not settling in as much as I was passing through.  

Of course my brother, sister-in-law and parents were there and it was really nice to spend time with them.  Luckily for me they were able to put up with my sometimes-strange mood swings and to ignore me when I needed to be left alone.  By the time my sister flew in I had gotten into a fairly acceptable routine and was starting to almost feel settled and content there.  I finally saw some of the kids I normally babysit for in the summer and it just about broke my heart because this summer I am not home babysitting for them.  I guess that is perhaps the strangest thing for me right now.  Instead of packing up at the end of August and heading out to begin another academic school year, it is the end of July and I have just packed up basically everything I could ever want from my parents’ house and moved out to New Mexico.  I have no job lined up, even if I have plans to find one soon, and I have no idea what my life holds beyond this year that lays in front of me.  Up to this point I’ve always had at least some vague thought, but for the first time in my life, I just don’t know.  And what makes me think that maybe I’ve grown up a little bit is that I’m feeling fine with that.

The drive out was fun.  We left at 5:47AM Monday morning Eastern standard time and rolled in here about 10:15PM Eastern standard time yesterday (Wednesday).  We drove about 12-15 hours a day and spent two nights in random motels.  The air conditioning in my car broke right before leaving, which only really became a problem yesterday as we drove through Oklahoma and Texas, where temperatures ranged from 94-104 degrees.  My entire left arm is very sunburned from hours of driving with the sun beating down on it and though we guzzled bottle after bottle of water, we both felt dehydrated last night upon arriving.  I know that Katie was anxious to get back to Santa Fe because already has various things with which she’s involved here and she wanted to get back to life here.  I would have been happy to drive forever.  For the entire first part of the trip I kept waiting for the landscape to change, but even through Illinois and Missouri it was not drastically different from home.  I haven’t driven out west since . . . wow, I want to say I haven’t driven out west since my brother’s junior year in college when I was still in high school.  I drove from Santa Fe back to Massachusetts right after my freshman year of college and I drove from Massachusetts to Chicago the summer after I lived in Dijon France, but I have not driven from Massachusetts out west in a long time.  

When the scenery did finally start to change, the land looked expansive and it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.   I kept wondering if people really did live in those little towns we’d speed past and I wanted to know if they were happy there.  We passed many run down, dilapidated buildings and houses that could not possibly have been in use.  I wondered about the people who had first built those and whether or not they thought these structures would be somewhere that people would call home for years to come.  I want to know why they were abandoned and who is responsible for them now.  At some point in the worst of the heat in Texas yesterday we decided to stop so that we could stretch and sit somewhere air conditioned for a while.  We ended up pulling into McLean, Texas, population 830.  Right off of the highway there was a kitschy looking steak house and we went in to get some food.  For a place that seems to be in no man’s land, business did not seem bad.  Our waitress was not the friendliest person I had ever met in my life, but I kept thinking, “Well, she is a waitress in a steak house in McLean Texas, maybe she just isn’t very happy.”  Then I would think, “Who am I to pass judgment just because I would never want to live in McLean?  Maybe she really is happy here.  Maybe this is exactly where she wants to be and what she wants to be doing . . .”

I sometimes think that I was born with the need to be on the move in my blood.  It seems as though a migratory life is, in a way, a part of my heritage.  If I look back to my grandparents’ generation I find one grandmother who moved from England to California and a grandfather who settled in California after having grown up in Kansas and served in WWII.  My other grandfather also served in WWII and though he stayed in New York where he grew up, he still did a fair amount of travel with the Navy.  Pushing back one generation I have great-grandparents who came through Ellis Island from Europe, presumably in search of a better life.  Keeping closer to my life, even my parents did their fair share of moving around before settling in Massachusetts.  They lived everywhere from Pennsylvania to Alaska to California.  Sure when they finally arrived in Massachusetts and were ready to raise a family, they really settled in and have not moved in twenty-four or twenty-five years, but before they got there they tried out a lot of different places.

It was easier for my parents to try out different homes in different parts of the country than it had been for my great-grandparents to leave their homelands to cross the ocean in hopes of something new and better.  Perhaps it has been easier for me to pick up and move to France for ten months here and there than it would have been for my parents to do so.  Mobility is something that I take for granted too much I think.  Because of those great-grandparents and grandparents and parents who wanted a better life for their families, I grew up with endless choice and freedom.  I can chose whatever career I wanted and live wherever I find a place that really feels like home.  It’s exciting and I am grateful to have a life that is so open and full of possibilities.  Sometimes it gets a little overwhelming though and I wonder what it would be like to come from a small town in the middle of nowhere where the expectation is that you get a decent job when grow up and settle down to raise a good family.  I’m sure that’s a horrible oversimplification of what small town expectations are, but I guess I mean I wonder if everyone dreams of going somewhere else to seek . . . I don’t even know what.  Maybe part of what I get out of moving around and traveling is simply the opportunity to see what I can find somewhere new.

Well, here I am somewhere new and when I awoke in my new bedroom this morning, I thought to myself, “This is my room.”  I liked it.  I did not feel disoriented, anxious or stressed out about what comes next.  The sun was shining but not so much that it awoke me.  I could see trees through my window from the futon mattress on the floor that is currently serving as my bed.  I was neither hot nor cold.  I was able to fall back to sleep for a bit but did not feel exhausted.  Now that I am outside writing this, the air is almost cool with a slight breeze and the sky is clear and blue.  Who knows what this year will hold for me, but so far I’m feeling good about it.  I think that I will do my best to keep writing when I feel inspired or maybe even not when I feel inspired.  It is no longer Michael en France and I should mention that I do miss Paris a lot.  But now it is Michael out west and new adventures await . . .    

6.27.08

I have been going to bed no earlier than 3AM all week long.  Several nights I haven’t actually gotten into bed with the lights off until 4AM.  I haven’t actually been doing anything of importance, but I guess I’ve just been trying to drag the days out as long as I can.  Despite my best efforts to make sure that every day last as long as possible, it is already Friday evening.  It is already 9:13PM Friday evening.  Simon is having a little soiree chez lui that starts now-ish and I am not feeling very motivated to go.

I started packing early this week.  It was overwhelming and stressful as it always is, but by yesterday I had gotten most everything into suitcases or at least into piles that will be put into suitcases.  There is a box on my floor full of books and odds and ends that I need to seal up so that I can take it to the post office tomorrow morning.  I also have a pile of stuff to give to Simon (a few books, a jar of peanut butter, some cold medicine, etc.), a much larger pile of stuff for Sarah and a pile for Ikram.  

I spent a good deal of time this week seeing people for one last goodbye.  I kind of hate that.  It’s always so awkward at the end because no one really wants to say, “I don’t know if I’ll actually ever see you again or not, but it’s been nice knowing you,” but the truth is that with a lot of people this is in fact the case.  This does not by any means negate the fact that these people have been important pieces of my life here, but after six or so years of changing location every few months I know that there are people who will simply remain memories.  One of the best indicators of how well this year went for me is how many of those people I have come across.  But for me, when it comes to casual acquaintances I almost prefer not having a formal goodbye.  Of course as I am writing this I am also thinking about how nice it has been this week to see the random people I have been seeing.  It’s also a good break from packing and a nice distraction from the fact that I am leaving.

And then there are those people who I really do hope to see again and to whom I do not want to say goodbye at all.  That list is also longer than I ever would have anticipated and it makes me feel and overwhelming sense of gratitude and happiness as well as a great deal of sadness to know that I will be leaving them on Monday.  When I lived in Dijon I spent a lot of time alone and enjoying the challenges and rewards of living a slightly solitary, very independent life.  This year I have focused a lot more on pushing myself socially and I have found that it isn’t anywhere near as hard as I used to think.  I guess that’s maturity – go figure.

Oh dear I’ve lost my train of thought.  I guess the point is that I am in a state of disbelief and have this sort of anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I am super congested and have a horrendously runny/stuffy nose.  I guess that’s what I get for averaging about 4 to 6 hours of sleep a night all week long.  

I turned in my bankcard today.  I did not, however, shut down my account.  When I went on Monday to take care of it, my bank dude said, “So you are leaving for good then?”  It is a question that I get asked about every five minutes these days.  My standard answer has become, “for a year at least.”  When I said this to the bank guy he suggested leaving my account here open (with no fees or charges) so that if I do decide to come back, I don’t have to go through all of the rigmarole it takes to open an account here.  That is what I have done.  As for how serious I am when I give this answer . . . I don’t know.  I think part of the reason I tell everyone I might be back in a year or so is because it makes it easier to say goodbye.  It gives both of us hope that we have the potential to continue our friendship in the future and the sting of finality is dulled.  And part of me does hope that I will be back and wonders where I will be and if I will be ready in a year or two.  But I don’t know.  What I do know is that a lot changes over the course of one year and even if I were to come back after next year, things would be different.  My friends will have continued to live their lives here, meeting new people, having new experiences and creating new habits.  I will have done the same in New Mexico.  It doesn’t mean that coming back would be a bad idea or would not work, but I know that while it is all good and well to hang onto the idea that I’ll just have to come back and pick up again, it is more a comfort and an unrealistic idea than a reality.  The reality is that if I come back, it will be to rebuild another life here that will hopefully contain some of the old characters and locations, but will undoubtedly include the unforeseeable.  When I think back on this year, I am dumbfounded again and again over all of the surprises that I stumbled across.  So in the end I say maybe I’ll be back and I know that whether or not I’m back, I’ll take fabulous memories with me into the future which will be full of all sorts of other surprises and not yet made memories.  But man I am going to miss this year.

6.24.08

I used to be terrified of change.  I didn’t even realize how terrifying it was to me until it hit me full force my freshman year of college.  Leaving home, having my heart broken and realizing that ultimately I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life was overwhelming to say the least.  After years of stability and comfort at home, I did not know how to deal with all of the instability and ambiguity in which my life seemed to be enveloped.  Eventually I convinced myself that I would just have to get comfortable being uncomfortable until outside of my comfort zone became a part of my comfort zone.  Of course that was all part of transitioning from adolescents into young adulthood and hard as it may have been, it was necessary.

These days change does not have the same affect on me.  I’m not sure if I’ve become braver or numb or just accustomed to the fact that life is full of the unexpected and you just have to roll with it.  Just for kicks tonight I went into my old journal and looked at the entries for June 24th from years past.  The earliest one I found was the summer before freshman year back when I was still dating Rick and convinced that he and I would be able to survive my imminent departure to college.  The entry was peppered with “it was great” and now six years later I can easily see through my younger attempt at convincing myself that I was doing great.  I wasn’t really, but I guess maybe I didn’t realize it at the time and that might have been for the better.  The following year’s entry, after a slightly turbulent and confusing year at Clark, was a debate that I was having with myself in which I could not decide if transferring to UMASS Amherst to be a music ed. major was the right decision or not.  I was torn between that and throwing everything away to go to Hallmark Institute of photography to become a photographer.  I don’t think I ever actually told anyone about that and in the end I went back to Clark anyway.  The idea I had when going back to Clark was to major in history with an Asian studies concentration.  Somehow I ended up a French major.  The entry from the summer after I went back to Clark was about babysitting – one of the few constants in my life over the past five or so years.  And that was the summer before my first ten months abroad.

Reading through all of that reminded me about how much goes on in a matter of months, how much changes, how much control I have over the course of my life and also how many surprises and opportunities arise on their own.  Interestingly when I decided to be a French major I planned out the rest of my college years so that I would get my BA, come back to France and then get a Masters in Teaching.  Flip those last two around and that is what actually happened.  Some of my plans over the years have been mislaid, but I have actually worked out others.

One week from today I will no longer be in Paris.  My room will be packed away and I will have said my goodbyes.  I have not done much journaling over the past month or so because I have been busy trying to live my life here as much as possible before it ends.  I’ve been trying hard not to consider this last month here a countdown to the end.  Rather I’ve been trying my best to live it to the fullest and to take advantage of whatever opportunities popped up along the way and as it turns out, there have been many.  As a result I have been busy and every time I sit down to try to write down the stories of what I have been up to, I feel so overwhelmed by all of the details that feel so important to me right now.  So what have I been up to . . .

Since I last wrote in here I have . . . had two friends pass through Paris.  First was Sian who is a friend of mine from Clark.  She was traveling with some friends and had a place to stay with them.  It worked out nicely because we would meet up during the day and tool around Paris doing whatever all day long (Montmartre, the Louvre, the Opera House, etc.), but if I had other things that I needed to do then I didn’t have to worry about her.  And, in fact, there were at least two or three times while she was here when I had to go to the bank and then to the doctor (in that order).  The bank was because I was helping Tanya and Whitney close their accounts before they left for the States.  It was helpful because I am not worried about closing mine now that I’ve seen what I need to do.  The doctor is another story.

About a month or so ago I went to a party at Bastien’s house.  At first it was awkward and stressful for me because all of his friends have known each other basically since middle school and I felt very conspicuous.  Being both foreign and one of the five girls there (none of the four French girls made any effort to talk to me at all), I had a hard time finding my way into conversations.  Finally Bastien’s friend Richard started chatting with me.  At some point in the conversation he mentioned his plans to go skydiving in about a month.  I immediately said, “hey, can my friend and I go too?”  Now, I’ve never had any particular desire to go skydiving, but Tanya and I had talked about a trip to go paragliding or something and this seemed like an opportunity upon which I needed to jump (harhar).  Furthermore, one of my personal goals this year has been to stop worrying/hesitating/being so afraid of everything all the time and to just live my life.  I guess in some ways it was about the idea of doing it to prove to myself that I could do it.  Anyway, Richard did not really believe that I was serious until I asked Bastien for his e-mail address and e-mailed him asking for more details.  Upon mentioning all of this to Sarah, she wanted in on it too.

How is this related to the doctor?  Well, Richard told us that we would need to pay a 50E deposit and to have a note from a doctor certifying that we were in good enough health to jump out of an airplane.  For about a week or so Tanya and I unsuccessfully tried to find a time to go to the doctor together and it always seemed to fall on a day when I was supposed to accompany someone to the bank.  As a result planning with Sian went something like this:  

Sian:    “So Becky, what time do you want to meet up tomorrow?”
Me:    “Well, let’s see . . . I have to be at the bank around 10AM and then once I’m done there I am going to head over to the doctor’s office, so . . . “
Sian:    “Didn’t you already go to the bank?  And to the doctors office?”
Me:    “Well, I went to the bank but I have to go back because of blahblahblah and I didn’t actually get to the doctor last time and it’s getting really close to the jump.”

Truth be told, going to the doctor made me infinitely more nervous than skydiving.  As I sat in the waiting room and got closer and closer to being called in, my heart rate increased and I had to take deep breaths so that it wouldn’t be out of control when it was my turn.  Wouldn’t that have been a good story – I tried to go skydiving but the doctor made me so nervous that my heart rate was really high and she told me I was not in good enough health to jump.  Mostly I was nervous about explaining what I needed and I wasn’t sure if the doctor would know what I was taking about.  Luckily the doctor, who I visited once before, knew exactly what I needed and was delighted to hear that I was going skydiving.  Her son went and it was fabulous and how exciting and was it going to be my first time . . .  After a quick listen to my heart and the simple question, “do you have any health concerns?” she wrote me a note, signed it, asked if I had insurance and when I said no charged me 22E and sent me on my way.  I was greatly relieved that it went so smoothly because I went merely three days before the trip.

The skydiving adventure began on Friday when Sarah came over to bake goodies with me and then to spend the night.  Because we had to be up early and take the RER C to meet the rest of the people, I thought it’d be easier to have her stay chez moi.  Plus it seemed like it would be a fun way to get us pumped for the jump.  We ended up with the apartment to ourselves for most of the evening, which worked well because we baked a chocolate cake, blueberry muffins and cranberry bread.  When we finished with our baking adventure I made us dinner and we sat down for a nice meal and a glass of wine.  Then J and a friend of hers who was staying here too got back from dinner and we all chatted for a while.  Sarah and I soon retired to my room to watch a DVD and then to try to sleep.  I felt the same rush of excitement as I used to feel on Christmas Eve and probably slept as little as I used to as well.

We got up early, took quick showers, packed up checking to make sure that we had everything on our checklist and headed out.  We met Tanya at the train station and soon got on the train.  We arrived rather early, which was my plan, and hung around a parking lot at a train station for a while.  Eventually we realized we were in the wrong place and met up with the rest of the group that was going.  The group was comprised of Bastien and Richard’s friends and there were a total of eleven of us going to jump.  Two non-jumpers came with us to hang out and to cheer us on.  We all got into various cars and proceeded to drive for at least an hour, if not an hour and a half to the site.  By the time we arrived it was noon and there were ominous clouds overhead.  Worried that we would have to postpone the adventure for a week, we headed in to find out what was going on.

And because it is late and suddenly I am tired, you will have to wait to find out what went on.  

6.7.08

Thursday was a busy day for me.  I had to be in Versailles at 11:30AM to meet my second year students for a picnic at the gardens of Versailles.  They met me at the train station and we walked over to the palais together.  It was mildly awkward at first because out of the classroom context, the conversational dynamics shifted a bit and as they chatted away amongst themselves I thought, “oh man, I am going to have to put in some real effort to come up with interesting things to talk about and I have to do it in French.”  However, one very sweet girl came to walk next to me and made conversation with me during the walk.  I got the impression that most of them wanted to chat with me, in fact, but were almost a little shy to do so.  One big conclusion that I have come to this year, which I believe I have mentioned before, is that when there are one or more people involved in a conversation that is not in their native language, it is really the native speaker’s responsibility to direct and hold up the conversation.  

The gardens were beautiful and although it was a rather chilly day, the sky was blue and it was not bad weather for a picnic.  We sat in a big circle and everyone pulled out some sort of snack food brought for the group, tossed it in the middle and we spent the next three or so hours eating and chatting and hanging out.  We spoke almost exclusively in French, except for when one girl decided that we should do “announcements” like in class.  I told her that she could be in charge, so she proceeded to make every person say something in English and then threw them each a piece of candy.  It was quite humorous.  Also humorous, Paul spent a good amount of time telling jokes and I understood the majority of them.  

Partway through the afternoon a chunk of the group had to go, leaving me with two girls and three boys.  One of the girls, who had arrived a little late and I had not really gotten a chance to talk to, started chatting with me about my plans to go home and such.  Then she asked me a very good, very hard to answer question.  She said, “what’s your best memory from France this year?”  The is the type of question that I would use in an oral class – “what’s your best summer memory?  What’s your worst?”  Of course when I teach and when I ask the question, it’s easy because I’ve either already thought of how I would answer it or else I don’t have to answer it at all.  When she asked me all I could say at first was, “huh . . . that’s a really good question . . . “

A few memories came to mind that I didn’t really want to tell them about, so I stammered some more.  Then I tried to explain that my life here, in some ways, feels very compartmentalized.  I have my school life, then I have my au pair life, I have my American friends and more recently I’ve been spending time with some of my students outside of school.  There was the September period when I was living with Guy and Ikram (who, by the way, I finally contacted recently and will be hanging out with next week).  It seems like I have really wonderful memories from all of these different parts of my life and it is hard to pick one specific one that is THE best.

After the picnic, I headed back to Paris but only for a few hours because I had to go back out to St. Quentin, which is further than Versailles, for a dinner with my 3rd year students.  Of course I was late getting there, but they were excited to see me and we had a really lovely evening.  We ended up being a group of about ten and I did not have a chance to talk with all of them because the table was long and I was at one end of it.  One of the students from t his class, Jonathon, will be working as a T.A. in South Carolina next year so he and I talked a bit about that.  He is incredibly sweet and adorable and I am so excited for him.  I told him that he and Kassandra, another one of the students from this class who was not there and who is also going to South Carolina, should come to my house for Thanksgiving and he seemed really enthusiastic about it.  I keep telling all of my students – well, the ones I like – that they need to come visit me next year.  I know it’s far and expensive, so I’m not sure how many of them will actually take me up on it, but I have been shown so much generosity and kindness here that I am itching to return the favor.  Plus I love sharing places I know and love with people I appreciate.

I took the good old RER C back from St. Quentin after dinner, making sure to get in a car with other people.  I also made sure to stay awake for the entire ride back since it was nighttime and I’m not used to riding the RER C after dark.  I got back with no trouble whatsoever and decided that instead of switching to the 6, I would walk the rest of the way.  It wasn’t too late at night and in any case there are always people out and about in my neighborhood until at least midnight, even during the week.  I put my headphones in but kept the volume down.  Then I pulled my hood over my ears and started out on the familiar trek from The Seine back to my apartment.

I followed the route that became so habitual for me this semester.  Exit so that the first thing I see upon coming up from underground is the Eiffel Tower.  Cross the street and stay to the left of the line six, which runs aboveground for the length of my neighborhood.  I walked past the strange park/field that appears between two buildings and past Tanya’s Franprix.  I passed Tanya’s street, the cafe she loves and I tolerate at the end of her street, down to the metro stop Dupleix where Boulevard Grenelle jogs a bit to the left.  Dupleix was my metro stop when I lived with Guy and Ikram during the month of September.  It was where I got off to walk to their house when I first arrived.  It is where Tanya and I used to meet up for big salads before the waiter at that first pizza place got a little too friendly.  It is where I used to always cross under the 6 to the other side of Boulevard Grenelle to walk along to the right of it.  This semester, for who knows what reason, I got into the habit of continuing down the left until Motte-Piquet.  At the Motte-Piquet stop, I turn right and cross Boulevard Grenelle so that I am under the metro and then cross Boulevard Grenelle again on the other side so that I am by Monoprix and Rue de Commerce.  I turn left and continue down Boulevard Grenelle until I get to the metro stop Cambronne.  There is a semicircle at the metro stop Cambronne with several cafes and a convenience store that is open very late.  I walk around the semi-circle, looking at the people sitting at the cafes and turn right onto Cambronne, which take that down to where I live.  

The walk takes me twenty to thirty minutes depending on my clip and the weight of whatever bag I happen to be toting with me.  Thursday night as I neared the end of my walk, always the longest part it seems, I got a surge of comfort and joy.  My normal frustration at being caught behind a group of slow moving tourists who were returning to their hotel gave way to a moment of nostalgia for the moment that I was living.  Then I realized – that is my best memory.  Well, no, not that specific moment, but those moments.  Sure I have some grand memories and a few more in the making and those will obviously stand out in the landscape of this year – Thanksgiving, the Marches de Noel, Amsterdam, London, my IUP students’ conference, having people visit me, among others – but in the end, what I will miss the most, what seems most significant to me here is the sense of belonging and of being at home in this city and those moments are little and sometimes silly.  Those are metro moments, walking down a street, laying in bed listening to people outside my window, baking a loaf of banana bread with Lise, or watching the neighboring building while eating my favorite breakfast (a banana and Greek yoghurt).  Take away all of those little, insignificant pieces of my day-to-day life and replace it with more grandeur and crazy adventures and this year would not mean nearly as much to me as it did.  I’m sure my students would have thought it a little odd if I had said, “my favorite memory is riding home on the metro by myself after a night out with so and so” or “walking underneath the line 6 listening to my iPod” or “playing cards with Lise,” so it’s probably OK that I didn’t think of those things when the question was asked.  But for me, that’s where it is.  And that’s where I’ve been.  And that’s what I’ll walk away from here with.

Anyway, it is now 9:45PM on Saturday night and I am doing nothing and loving it.  I could have gone out had I wanted to, but I was tired and had a headache.  Lise and J are at a friend’s for dinner so I have the apartment all to myself.  It is very rare that I get the apartment to myself at night and so when I thought about it, I thought, “hm, will I feel lame and uncool if I stay in alone on Saturday night?  Maybe, but man oh man how nice would it be to bake a loaf of banana bread while listening to the music I want to listen to and then maybe taking a nice, long, hot bath and then maybe watching a little T.V. and doing whatever I want.  Yeah, that sounds good and really, when have I cared about being cool?”  So the banana bread has 18 minutes left and then perhaps it will be time for a bath.

6.4.08

There is a song by Belle and Sebastian called, “Oh Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying,” that I rather like.  There have been moments in my life over the past few years when the title of the song has resonated with me – moments of feeling stuck in Worcester or feeling trapped by the fear of not living up to my own expectations or of wondering how on earth my life would ever progress period.  The song itself is rather catchy and slightly upbeat and in those moments of feeling trapped in a place I didn’t want to be, physically, emotionally or mentally, I might go for a walk with Belle and Sebastian singing in my ear.  The rhythm and pace of the song would move me along and despite the fact that my walks always end up back at the same place where they begin, I would temporarily feel as though I was going somewhere and that would help.

“Oh Get Me Away From Here” is on my mind tonight for very different reasons.  Getting away from here is certainly not a priority for me right now.  I mean, obviously I will soon be leaving and therefore it is not really possible for me to feel stuck.  There is one particular line in the song that has popped into my head a few times recently and makes me think, “huh.” The specific line is the one that comes at the end of the following passage:

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story
About a boy who's just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You're so naive!
After a while they always get it
They always reach a sorry end
Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then
With a winning smile, the boy
With naivety succeeds
At the final moment, I cried
I always cry at endings.

When I hear that last part – I cried, I always cry at endings – it reminds me that I am quite the opposite.  Or at least ever since beginning college I am quite the opposite.  In the song he is singing about the endings of books, but I am thinking about endings in my life.  I sometimes think that I cried all of the tears that my body is able to produce during my first semester of college.  Between breaking up with Rick and being away from home for the first time, I cried a lot.  Since then I find that about once a year in a moment of extreme stress, I might break down, but otherwise tears do not come easily for me.  Unless, of course, Danny Tanner happens to be helping Michelle, DJ and Stephanie learn some important life lesson and concluding that lesson with a big family hug.  That kind of utterly cheesy, mindless crap can, for some bizarre reason, evoke watery eyes on occasion.  The big stuff – leaving for Dijon, coming home from Dijon, saying goodbye to friends after graduating, saying goodbye to my students at South last year, leaving for Paris this year – those huge transitions and momentous moments get nothing.  I suppose they are too surreal for me and maybe the bigness of it is just beyond my comprehension.  I suppose too that I am good at switching on the pragmatic part of my brain and allowing that to overshadow the emotional response.

So I’m wondering if I will cry at this ending.  On a very concrete level, I have actually noticed that over the past month my eyes do not tend to water easily in general.  Eye drops will moisten them for a bit, but they are dry most of the time.  I think it is connected to whatever was going on with my gums, my perpetual runny nose and inability to make it to 100% healthy here.  I blame the water, pollution and also take a little responsibility because of my bad sleeping habits.  Anyway, assuming that my eyes are physically capable of producing tears, will I cry at the airport?  On the plane maybe?  When I get home?  Maybe weeks after getting home I’ll see a photograph that will move me to tears.  Maybe not.  The weeks following my arrival in the States will be an interesting mix of getting my life (and my personal belongings) together for another big move and also having free time.  Walking around Longmeadow is nothing compared to walking around Paris and I won’t be able to call Tanya up to get big salads or to walk to St. Michel to meet Bastien for coffee.  But I will be able to go for bike rides with my Mom, or to go over to the college where my Dad works to go for a swim at their pool.  

A while back I asked Bastien, very hesitantly, if there is any way he could give me a ride to the airport the day that I leave.  Unfortunately I leave on a Monday morning and that is not easy.  We’d have to leave incredibly early in the morning and he has an internship that he’d have to get to on time.  He said he’d think about it and that if it were a weekend he’d do it no problem.  Most likely I will get a cab.  In some ways I think it’ll be better – or easier at least – to go on my own.  I find that there is something really . . . sacred (for lack of a better word) about traveling alone for me.  The journey itself is a nice in that it forces the transition to be real and also forces me to just accept it, to just sit back and to pamper myself a little bit.

Huh, I have no idea what I’m rambling on about anymore.  I should stop writing about the end because I still have time.  I had a lot of trouble sleeping Monday morning, I think.  I kept waking up every hour on the hour and I suspect that it is anxiety about leaving that was the culprit.  Tonight I should sleep well because I have clean sheets on my bed and I spent all morning cleaning my room.  In fact, I set my alarm for 10AM and the very first thing I did when I got out of bed was to pull the sheets off and to put a wash on.  My first wash of the day (yes that is right, I did multiple washes) contained my sheets, one towel, two pair of underwear and two pair of socks.  That was all that fit.  I put it on the hottest temperature for the water because it was sheets and towels – oops, I mean towel.  The washing machine, by the way, is brand new because the other one broke.  Well, I’m not sure if I did something wrong or if it was the temperature or what, but the wash that I put in at 10AM did not finish until noon.  Yes, that is right, TWO HOURS to wash five articles.  Then I had to run across the street to dry it, which only took ten minutes.  Well, technically it took ten minutes to get the stuff mostly dry and I was too cheap to spring for another 1E ten minute round in the dryer.  So I dragged the damp articles back here and hung the sheets over my door and closet door and the towel over my chair.

Over the course of the rest of the day I successfully washed just about everything I own.  I did three other washes, none of which took as long.  The problem was that other than sheets and towels, I don’t actually machine dry my laundry and I have limited hanging space to dry things.  As a result the bathroom is currently full of my cloths and I have seven damp pieces of cloths hanging on hangers in my closet to dry.  There are three chairs in my bedroom and on the back and seat of two of them I have shirts drying.  There is a shirt drying on the back of the chair in which I am currently seated and therefore I am sitting with extremely good posture since I cannot lean back on the wet tank top.  Three other tank tops are hanging from my shelves that also have a pair of jeans and a sweater draped on them.  My sports bra is hanging on the radiator, my boxer shorts are over a drawer that I pulled out and socks are scattered throughout the room on anything that can hold them.  But you know what?  It is much better than all of those cloths being dirty in piles on the floor.  And my room smells like clean laundry.

And now I’m tired and ready to crawl into those clean sheets.
 
 

6.1.08

It is June.  I updated maybe twice in the month of May.  I have one month left here.  I went to Dijon last weekend and when I got home, I began to write about it.  I felt inspired and was able to concentrate for about a half hour, maybe less.  Obviously I never posted what I wrote and that is because I never actually finished it.

My stomach is doing flip-flops right now.  It could be the banana that I just ate that was perhaps one of the most enormous bananas I’ve ever seen in my life.  More likely, it is dormant stress and anxiety about only having one month left here.  Today I have to go recharge my metro pass for the last time.  My room is, needless to say, a bit of a disaster.  Since I have an entire month left, it doesn’t seem like I need to start packing and organizing yet.  Since I only have one little month left, it seems like I need to start packing and organizing.  I love Paris and do not want to leave.  I am genuinely excited and happy that I am moving to Santa Fe with my sister and cannot wait to get myself set up there.  I feel torn in half, anxious and overwhelmed and totally calm and unfeeling all at once.  

It seems that all I do these days is spend money.  Because I have been very good about not spending excessively this year, I do have a fair amount of money stored up so it’s not a huge deal.  However, in general I am one to always buy the cheapest thing, to avoid spending money unless necessary and to fret over how much things cost.  Having money to spend and endless amounts of free time is strange for me.  Obviously I’m not just throwing money away, but I’m making decisions such as, “OK, I’ll go out to the movies and dancing afterwards and I won’t worry about whether or not I have to pay to get into the dance club.  It is Friday night and I want to enjoy myself.”  Last week I bought tickets to go see the Lion King (the Broadway musical) before I leave here.  On Friday I bought myself two new dresses.  They were both relatively inexpensive and I probably should not be buying more things because I’ll have to transport them somehow back to the U.S., but the dresses were really cute and looked good on me.  So I bought them.

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with Lise recently.  Our relationship has really grown over the past month, or it feels that way to me.  We keep each other company around the apartment and chitchat all the time about anything and everything.  Last Thursday we baked a loaf of banana bread and last night we went to the movies together on the Champs Elysees.  A few weeks ago we spent a lovely afternoon walking to the Jardins de Luxembourg, where we played cards, people watched and then went for Starbucks.  Because she has decided that she really wants to take tango lessons, I showed her a clip from the movie The Moulin Rouge – the tango Roxanne – and found out she’d never seen the movie.  So we set my computer up in the living room (because my DVD won’t work in their DVD player) and watched The Moulin Rouge together.  At first she thought it was incredibly strange, which it kind of is, but then she loved it.  Every since she has been singing the songs and whenever we are cooking or playing cards, we’ll put it on and sing along.  She recently wrote a little story, in French, and asked me to read it.  

In addition to spending time with Lise, I am continuing to spend time with my students and random people who I know from school, or through friends.  Emeline, one of my Versailles students, is going to go to the Lion King with me.  Friday night’s attempt to see Sex And The City (I say attempt because it was sold out when we got there – oops) involved ten people, four of whom I knew beforehand.  It may not seem like a big deal to a normal, well-adjusted person, but I can be very shy and often feel very awkward and out of place in groups of people who I don’t know.  Forcing myself to go out with my students and to hang out in groups in which I am not well integrated this past month has been really good practice for me and has boosted my confidence.  I always have to laugh a bit when I think back on how shy I used to be.

This month promises to be interesting, exciting, a little heartbreaking and fairly busy.  Of course I have all of the logistical details to clean up before leaving – bank account, cleaning my room, making sure I’m getting paid for July and August, etc.  I also have at least two friends coming to visit – Sian and Katie Compton.  I haven’t seen Sian in at least a year and I’m really looking forward to seeing her again.  She’s coming through Paris with some friends so she has a place to stay.  However, she and I are planning on hanging out as much as possible while she is here.  I’m looking forward to long walks through Paris with her and good conversation.  Katie Compton arrives soon after Sian leaves and will be staying with me for a few nights.  Despite the fact that Katie and I both began taking French at the very same time in the very same class and both of us majored in French in college AND are both French teachers (well, she’s in the process of becoming one), we have never been in France at the same time.  Sharing Paris with someone who is as passionate about it and who knows the city will be exciting.  I adore showing people around Paris and watching them discover the city and what interests them here, but this will be my first time hanging out with a friend who knows it too and that will be an awesome experience in its own way.  And Katie is here when I’m going to the Lion King, so of course she’s coming to that too.

Becky T was supposed to do some traveling/visiting with me this month as well, but I have not heard from her in quite some time and therefore do not know what is going on with that.  Obviously I’d love to see her and spend time with her before she leaves, but it is impossible to make plans without communicating.  I recently found out that Irena will be traveling to Europe with her.  I’m not sure what that means once they get to Europe and so I really don’t know what that means for me.  I’m feeling a bit anxious to find out what is going on with this trip simply because it is about a week or two before I leave here and I am already feeling anxious about leaving and getting organized.  But, whatever happens happens.  I’m thrilled to be having Sian and Katie come and it would also be exciting to see Tucker and Irena.  

And then it’s back to the States.  I don’t feel like I have the time or mental capacity to start writing about that right now, so I’ll just end with Happy June!

5.23.08

Lise called her cousin today because her cousin's baby turned one and Lise wanted to offer her birthday wishes.  She was chatting with her cousin on the phone in her room and from my room I could hear Lise's end of the conversation.  At one point I heard her say, "No, my mom's at work right now . . ."  Then she paused and said, "Well, I'm here with, um, uh, a woman . . . she watches me," and then she and I looked at each other from across the hall and burst out laughing at the same time.  When she got off of the phone, she popped over to my room and said, "Well, I didn't quite know what to say because if I referred to you as a friend, my cousin would think that I'm here with another fourteen year old," and I joked that she should have said, "She left me with an American!  This weird foreigner!"  We laughed some more and agreed that in the end I am in fact a woman, I am in fact her friend, and I am in fact a weird foreigner.  Then she went to bed.  She is fabulous and I am going to miss her next year.