| Hm |
[Sep. 12th, 2007|05:39 pm] |
So I think that I am going to start using a different blog - www.vox.com. I like it because it allows me to post pictures and either I can't on here or I'm not quite bright enough to figure out how. Anyway, to see the new blog, use the following link:
http://bonjourfeuilles.vox.com/ |
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| Missing Fall . . . |
[Sep. 12th, 2007|01:11 am] |
I woke up with a sore throat today. Ikram has been sick recently – mostly coughing through the night. She thinks maybe it’s the cat, but Mimi has never posed a problem for her before. I think it might be the changing weather, or at least that is what I attribute my sore throat to. I went on a walk wearing flip-flops, capris and a tank top yesterday and was chilly. When I went out for a walk today, I threw on my hoodie just in case and it’s a good thing that I did. The air is changing, it is September, and fall is arriving.
For me fall is almost as much of a renewal and an awakening as spring is. With the bulk of my life revolving around the academic calendar, fall is the season of beginning for me and the return of crisp air, scarves, and layers is accompanied by fond memories of back to school, leaf piles, Halloween, pumpkin picking, hay rides, apple picking, camping, and the list goes on. On my walk today I noticed some trees here turning color, but the color was a burnt orange-brown and not at all like the fire of color that spreads through New England forests. As I returned from my walk later on, my attention was caught by a dry, rustling, crunching sound and I looked down to find fallen leaves lining the sidewalk. Paris is filled with chestnut trees, and fallen, cracked-open chestnuts too are everywhere to be found. In my room here I have a chestnut that I picked up in Hyde Park in London when I was there with Elizabeth three years ago. The chestnut lived in my pocket as a good luck symbol that fall, and I often ran my fingers over its smooth, slightly lumpy surface. I picked up a chestnut today to keep in my pocket, but it feel out before I got back. I let it roll away because I know that I still have time to find another, perhaps more perfect, one.
In an e-mail to Heather Roberts the other day I was trying to explain how traveling and living abroad makes me be a much better version of myself. The way I see it is that when I am traveling or living abroad there are two possible people who I could be. Person number one is nervous, suspicious, anxious, tired, uptight, overly cautious, worried, shy, and incredibly self-conscious. Person number two let’s go of all of that, focuses on the bigger picture, remembers that no matter what time will keep on ticking away, lives in the moment, opens up, takes an active interest in others, and is as generous as possible. Or perhaps what I mean is that person number one inhibits person number two, and there is the potential for me to be either or these people and I guess a mixture as well.
Anyway, I was not really looking forward to today when I awoke because I had absolutely nothing to do. Yesterday I met with a woman about doing some temporary babysitting in the next week or so, which gave me a reason to leave the apartment. She seemed almost scared of me, but I’m assuming it’s because she found me online and she wants to make sure that she has someone competent to watch her only child, who is eight months old. Her apartment is HUGE and very fancy, though I only saw a bit of it. I’m going back to learn the ropes with her on Thursday and then I’ll be babysitting a few days next week. So today I had no concrete reason to leave the house, and it made me feel a little . . . off.
I putzed around the apartment for a while. Ikram was out when I got up, but soon came back and had all sorts of stories to tell me about things that were not going right with her day. She gets irritated fairly easily, like yours truly, and I can relate to the need to vent. I also think it’s interesting because it reminds me of when I used to babysit for a three-month-old baby and I would talk to him about anything and everything despite the fact that he obviously couldn’t understand me or offer anything in response. Granted I understand more than a three-month-old, I bet it’s nice, in a way, to be able to vent to someone who doesn’t quite have enough language yet to respond at length. It’s so important to have someone who genuinely listens to what you are saying and sometimes there is no need for a real response or any advice. So I am Ikram’s three-month-old therapist. Ha.
Eventually I forced myself to go out and I walked forever. I walked all the way from here to the Louvre, which took me about an hour. I sat down by a fountain in the Jardin des Tuileries (I definitely just spelled that wrong) and ate an apple. Then I continued towards the Opera, popped into a few stores along the way, grabbed a latte at Starbucks (yes, yes, I’m ashamed, fine) and headed back only to get a bit lost, thus making my return trip a much lengthier walk than it needed to be. I was out of the apartment for probably around three hours, though I was not walking that entire time.
I got back and chatted with Ikram, who had more stories of her day sucking to share. Then I checked my e-mail to find a message from Tanya, one of the other American teaching assistants. She said to give her a call if I was around, so I did and we ended up going out for a very late dinner together. She is incredibly sweet, thrilled to be in Paris and I think that we are going to get along very well. She reminds me a bit of Emily – lots of energy, very fast-paced conversation and teaches little kids (ESL). She is thirty-four and married. Her husband will be coming to visit from their home in South Carolina at some point, but not for too long. Tanya is really looking forward to visiting museums, taking a cooking class, improving her French and generally taking advantage of living in Paris for a year.
I thought I had more interesting, more insightful things to say, but it’s chilly out here on my balcony and I am tired, so I should call it a night. |
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| apparently there are things to report . . . |
[Sep. 10th, 2007|01:50 am] |
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| |  grateful | ] |
When I started writing this, I titled it "Not much to report . . ." and then five pages later I finished writing the entry.
Well I have been here for one week and one day, and things are moving right along. Or perhaps I have gotten to the point where they’re no longer moving, but that’s simply because everything I needed to do is taken care of. I went to the administrative offices of Versailles and signed whatever it was they needed signed there. I opened a bank account. I found a place to live for the rest of the year. I deposited my travelers’ checks. I paid this month’s rent in full (finally yesterday). And now all I have to do is to wait until work starts.
I have an informal meeting on Thursday of this week, which is nice because it gives me at least one concrete reason for existing at the moment. I’m also looking forward to finally meeting Susan, the woman with whom I have been in contact all summer. When I was having issues getting my visa sorted out, I sent her a few panicked, frustrated, angry, whiney e-mails and I was concerned that I was not making the best first impression. Obviously I was anxious because I needed to get my visa issued before leaving, but still, I don’t like to be demanding or obnoxious and I had yet to meet this woman. In subsequent e-mails it has been made clear that she does not find me to be any of the above and actually seems to have a very positive picture of me in her mind.
On Friday I was convinced that it was Thursday. Did I already mention that? Keeping track of the days is hard, and the fact that Guy works strange hours and Ikram doesn’t work at all makes it that much more difficult. Today was Sunday; I did know that. I got caught up reading old e-mails and old journal entries last night and did not go to bed until very, very late. Normal for me these days, sure, but what was actually quite fantastic is that by the time I actually got into bed I was beyond exhausted and I slept straight through until around 11:30 this morning. I wasn’t having trouble falling asleep last week, but I kept waking up early, at 7:00 or so, checking the time on my cell phone, which I keep in my bed, and falling back asleep. And once I’ve woken up the first time, I continually woke up every fifteen to thirty minutes, convinced that hours had passed. For the most part last week I was up before Ikram, but today I slept long and hard and it was lovely.
I did laundry today. I must confess that last week I noticed a not so pleasant smell in my room and realized that it was definitely time to wash a few of my shirts and a pair of pants that I had been wearing repeatedly. Ikram showed me how to use the washing machine yesterday and when I got up today I forced myself to do a wash. I say, “forced” because I didn’t really want to do it. It’s not hard or anything, but it means that I had to find something to wear while doing the wash and the wash consisted of the majority of cloths here that I wear on a regular basis. And although Ikram and Guy were both out of the apartment when I awoke and got my stuff together for the wash, I didn’t know when they would return so doing the wash naked didn’t seem like the best option. AND I was mighty dirty myself this morning, so before doing the wash I showered, which meant that I needed to make sure whatever I put on was clean. Anyway, you can see how complicated doing this wash became for me. But I did it.
Have I mentioned yet that they only have a washing machine and no dryer? Ikram has been doing a lot of laundry recently and one day she wanted it to dry quickly so she turned the heat in the apartment on and put the cloths by radiators around the apartment – interesting idea, but it sure got hot! I wasn’t in desperate need of the cloths drying because I did eventually find something to wear, so I hung them up on my balcony to dry in the sun. Ikram gave me hangers for my tank tops, so I decorated my balcony with colorful tank tops hanging from the black iron railing on my balcony. She also lent me a plastic box thing in which I put my unmentionables (!) and I set that out on the balcony to dry as well.
I’m out on my balcony right now as I write this, in fact, and I can see the lights from the Eiffel tower reflected in a building across the way. I am going to miss this room when I move at the end of the month, but at least I had the opportunity to live in it for a whole month. Beyond the apartment itself, it has been so wonderful living with Ikram and Guy. I have been watching a lot of television in French and Ikram and I chat about anything and everything all the time. The two of them make a very cute couple and surprisingly it doesn’t irritate me when they are cutesy with each other, though I’d imagine that if I stayed here long-term it probably would.
In terms of the language, I’m finding that I understand about 70-80% of what is said. Generally I understand the major ideas that are being conveyed, but I am still missing words here and there, especially because they speak quickly and sometimes mumble (they, in this case, being everyone who speaks French here). It doesn’t freak me out though, and I’ve gotten very good at hearing the cadence and rhythm of what is being said in addition to the words themselves. This is helpful because the sound-structure, if you will, often clues me in on how to react in a more or less appropriate way, even if I’ve missed half of what was said. For example, I know what it sounds like when Ikram is telling me about something that really bugs her, which she does a lot (remind you of anyone?) and I know when to jump in with a, “oh, c’est pas vrai!” (oh that’s not true!) or a, “t’as raison, c’est fou ca!” (you’re right, that’s nuts!), even when I’m not 100% clear on what exactly the offending person did or said. Obviously I could ask for clarification if I wanted to, and I do from time to time, but often when it’s casual conversation, or a story someone is telling me, it’s easier to just keep going. For the moment, my global understanding is good and since I have only been here for a week, I’m satisfied with it at the moment.
While my wash was washing away in the kitchen, Ikram and I watched t.v. together in the living room. Oh, I have to mention that the washing machine is the kind that opens in the front and has a glass window, so you can see your wash as it spins around. I was afraid that I had put the soap in the wrong spot or accidentally made the water too hot (it’s in centigrade here), and I was afraid of going into the kitchen lest I look over to see that the dye in my red tank top had run and stained the rest of my cloths, which it did not. Anyway, we were watching t.v. and Ikram mentioned that some bar near the Three Ducks Hostel has live gospel music every Sunday. Now I wasn’t really sure what to expect from live gospel music at a bar, but I thought, “you know what? I should go just to be social, to get out, to experience something, so sure, live gospel music at a bar, awesome.” I did want to get some exercise though, so I went for a walk after hanging up my laundry.
I walked down to Rue de Commerce, which is about ten minutes from the apartment building. Rue de Commerce, if you can believe it, is a street that has lots of shops on it. I found this out yesterday when I went shopping there with Marannie. We went to H&M and I thought of Jeremy. Actually, I got a little nostalgic for the family while I was looking through the racks and thinking about how nice it would be to be there with them. Other than H&M Mar and I didn’t go to many other stores, but the street has a Gap, several other clothing boutiques, some shoe stores, etc. The street itself is not exactly cobblestone, but stone and old looking and reminds me of Dijon. Because it is Sunday all of the stores were closed, but there were still people out walking around, looking into windows and enjoying the sunny weather.
There is a church at the end of the street, which is next to the Three Ducks Hostel and I turned left to go down another interesting looking street. A few streets later I found myself on Rue de Mademoiselle, which is where I will be moving at the end of the month. I wandered down towards my new building to get a sense for what the neighborhood is like. I like it a lot, it seems a little cleaner, a little smaller and a little older-feeling (except for my building, of course) then where I am now. Granted it’s only a fifteen-minute walk from here, but it feels more tucked away, I guess is what I’m trying to say. And on my way back I found a really pretty park that is merely a few blocks from my new place. Up until today my walks have been more on main streets and along the Seine, which has been nice, but today was different. Today I almost could have been in Dijon because there was the feeling that I wasn’t in a huge city, but rather in a little one like Dijon. It felt like a city in a city and I liked it.
Speaking of walks, yesterday I went for quite the walk. After Mar and I finished shopping on Rue de Commerce we went to drop stuff off at her temporary apartment, and it turns out that she actually has to stay at a different family member’s place until Tuesday because there were other people staying at her aunt’s this weekend – very complicated. The people were there, but she wasn’t expecting them to be, so she quickly grabbed her stuff and we took it over to her cousin’s apartment. Then we went in search of food and finally found a cafe in the Marais (3eme arrondissement). The weather was gorgeous so Mar thought she’d buy a book and then we could go sit by the Seine for a while (I was going to play set, which I had on me). She didn’t find a book she wanted and we were both kind of tired, so we went our separate ways.
I decided to wander around a bit more because I was in one of the neighborhoods I had not yet visited since arriving – the area with the hotel de ville, near Notre Dame. The streets were beyond crowded. I walked to Notre Dame and then decided to take a nice leisurely stroll back to the apartment. Well, let me tell you that Notre Dame is quite a distance from where I am staying and it took me quite some time to get back here. I had metro tickets with me and could have taken the metro, but by the time I was tired enough to do so, I was already more than halfway there and decided to just suck it up and finish the walk. And of course once I got back here, I had six flights of stairs awaiting me to top it all off. But I’m glad I did it, I got to see a lot of Paris and to be among the throngs of people on the street.
Anyway, I’m jumping around a bit. Back to today. I wish that I had some fantastic, hilarious story to share about live gospel music at the bar – like we arrived at a tiny, smoke filled bar that was empty save us and a thirty person gospel choir in robes, complete with a tambourine waving, jumping up and down director who insisted that we too join in the jumping, dancing and shouting of “HALLELUIA, PRAISES BE!” And, as luck would have it, they broke into a rendition of “Elijah Rock,” which I performed with Lyrics (my chorus) senior year in high school, so I was able to join in on that one. I was so good, in fact, and they were so impressed, that they asked me if I would consider joining their choir, which happens to be going on tour in a few months, and I said with a smile in perfect French, “how could I turn down such beautiful choir robes?” which made them love me that much more. Unfortunately, my story is far less exciting than that. If you prefer the one I just made up, go ahead and skip the next paragraph and we’ll never speak of it again.
In reality, after today’s walk, I got back to find Ikram and Guy getting ready to go to the bar, so I quickly changed, washed my face, put on some cover-up and mascara, threw on a pair of heels (not the ones that made me bleed though!) and we headed out. We walked back to the Rue de Commerce and got to the bar to find that there was no gospel because they were showing the Rugby World Cup. Not surprised, we sat down for a drink anyway. The bar, Charlie Birdies (or something like that), was really nice. We sat on a sofa and there were comfy, but chic, chairs all around. It is a very large place and serves lunch, dinner and brunch on Sundays (complete with live gospel music). Ikram and I got coffees and Guy got a coke. The television screen was sort of behind me, so I had to turn awkwardly to watch the game. I also chatted with Ikram a bit and she told me that she is going to make reservations at a Moroccan (I believe) restaurant on the 29th to celebrate her birthday. She wanted to know if I am going, and also asked me to ask Mar and her cousin.
When we left the bar we strolled around for a bit and ended up back at the park that I had discovered. The park was filled to the brim with families and small children running around. You could barely walk two steps without almost stepping on or being run over by a kid chasing after a ball or a sibling. Ikram and Guy said that today we would see kids and their parents and tomorrow if we were to go back, it would be children and their au pairs. I suppose had I ended up with an au pair job with small children, the park might have become my new hang out. As it is, it’s great to know that there is a park near where I will be living – a good place to read and write.
We continued on our stroll and I could tell that they were going somewhere specific for some reason, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. We ended up at a Lebanese restaurant because Irkam wanted to get a kebab and she wanted to have me try one. Kebabs are very common in France and are kind of like fast food here. The kebab I got was a pita stuff with chicken, some garlic sauce and vegetables. It was quite delicious, albeit rather greasy and not the kind of thing that I would eat on a regular basis. I should mention, by the way, that the coffee and the kebab were both paid for by Ikram and Guy. There generosity seems to know no bounds and I have such a hard time trying to insist that I pay or to thank them or whatever. I think that perhaps I’ve already mentioned this in here, but I know that Ikram wants to get a cute trashcan for the kitchen with a lid, and so I think that I will get them one as a thank you present. I know, a trashcan doesn’t really sound like the most exciting thank you present, but I’m also going to think of something to get in addition to that.
I e-mailed Cathie Spingler last night to tell her how things are going here and also to ask if there are any Clarkies in Dijon right now because I’m curious. Turns out that there is one who is there and will be for the whole year. Cathie gave me his name and I sent him an e-mail telling him who I am, that I’m in Paris and that if he needs anything, has any questions, or passes this way to let me know. He wrote back and asked me a few questions about traveling, so I began to respond by telling him about the 12-25 card. Then I remembered about the Saturday train to Paris, then a few websites popped into my mind and suddenly I got this rush of nostalgia for Dijon. In his message he mentioned having walked around Dijon today and having been able to find some life, despite the fact that it is Sunday. I really want to go for a visit soon. I can’t wait to just wander the streets again like I used to and to see my host family. I’m also going to try to see Jess, the Clark alum who lives there. When I left Dijon I felt really good about the time that I had spent there, but I didn’t feel like I was leaving all that much behind, save my host family and a few friends who I knew wouldn’t stay there much longer anyway. It’s nice to realize that going back there means a lot to me.
Anyway, I’ve written far too much as usual and really should get to bed. I have my fingers crossed that things will continue to go as smoothly as they have been, because frankly it seems to good and too easy to be true. |
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| What is wrong with me? |
[Sep. 7th, 2007|12:41 pm] |
Back in college (oh way back then), I had the habit of going to bed late. Late was anytime from 1 AM to 4 AM, generally more in the middle of that I would guess. My reasons then were schoolwork, reading, papers, friends, Internet, etc. When I took Chinese during my sophomore year and had class at 9 AM three times a week, I still went to bed later than I should have. Actually, now that I think about it, going to bed late started back in high school for me. No, actually when I was in middle school and convinced that someone was going to climb up onto the garage roof, walk across the garage to the sleeping porch, break into the porch which is adjacent to my room, and reach their knife-clutching hand through the hole in the window next to my bed to stab me to death, I stayed up late reading until I literally could not keep my eyes open any longer. Then I would fall to sleep on my back so that I would be ready to face my enemy and defend myself.
And for some reason I cannot get out of the habit. Over the summer I was up every morning at 7:30, and rarely went to bed before midnight. I depended on a strong cup of coffee to jumpstart my days of chasing little kids. By the end of the summer I was going to bed around 2 AM, which is 8 AM in Paris, thus putting myself a day ahead of myself, if you will. Now that I am actually in Paris, I find myself staying up until 2 AM generally and last night, for some reason, it was 4 AM. I guess technically it means that I’m going to bed at a reasonable hour by east coast time, but I’m no longer on the east coast.
It’s not that I’m going out clubbing, to the bars, with friends or anything like that either. And while Ikram often goes to bed around midnight and we chat and watch t.v. together sometimes, it’s also not because I am engrossed in deep conversations from which I am unable to disengage. Instead I am playing on the Internet, writing e-mails to friends, researching dance classes, voice lessons, choruses, PhD programs, and other random things. Up until yesterday I spent a good deal of time looking at housing options on appartager.com, fusac.fr, paris.craigslist.org, sublet.lodgis.com/en/paris, nyhabitat.com, and the list goes on and on. However . . . yesterday I found housing and it is done and done.
I e-mailed my parents about it and began my e-mail by explaining what I find disappointing about this housing situation – i.e. it is not perfect. My two main gripes are: 1. It is a new building and I had been dreaming about an old, late 1800s building with tiny rooms, crown molding, parquet floors, a marble fireplace, bad heating, huge windows, balconies, etc. It sounds like I was looking for a very swanky place, but that’s not actually it. What I wanted was character, age, a little shabby, artistic, romantic, you know. Where I will be living is none of those things, and it is the only building on the street that is not an old typically Parisian looking building. Gripe number two is that it is on the ground level and upon opening my eyes this morning to see the sky and skyline beyond my balcony reminded me of how I like to be up high in apartment buildings. There is something about being above the city, or part of the tallness of it all that I find really exhilarating and I am certainly going to miss having my little balcony here. The new place is dark and has no views whatsoever. Actually, where I am right now has everything that I was looking for in terms of character – crown molding, creaky old wooden floors, a balcony, 5th floor (6th for Americans), with paper-thin walls and a lot of charm.
In the e-mail to my parents I went on to explain what the new place consists of and added that really, I can’t complain. But as I also told them and is evidenced in the previous paragraph, I am actually have very refined complaining skills (if only that was something that employers were looking for on a resume). So I suppose what I should say is that I shouldn’t complain about the new place, and this is for a variety of reasons.
1. I have a place to live, assuming all goes well, until the end of the year.
2. The room is big and furnished with a double bed, a desk, and bookshelves, with a very sizable built-in closet that has both shelves and places to hang clothing.
3. I have full use of the bathroom, kitchen and common room.
4. I will have wifi.
5. Did I mention that I will not have to pay anything for this room? No rent, no utilities, nothing. No, I haven’t agreed to some sketchy deal with a rich old Frenchman in need of the company of a young lady. Rather, I found a single mother, Jacqueline, who has one fourteen-year-old daughter, Lise, and she needs a part-time “babysitter” (in quotes because fourteen is certainly no baby) [As I was writing this Ikram woke up, popped in and distracted me with interesting conversation for about an hour and I actually felt like I could contribute interesting things and like my accent is improving a bit, woohoo!]. Jacqueline works at the National Assembly and her hours change weekly. I’m not really clear on what exactly she does there, but she said that depending on what meetings are taking place, she sometimes has to work from 7 PM until 5 AM the following morning. Those nights, and nights when she works late but not overnight, will be when she needs me, and since Lise is fourteen, as long as I’m there by around 7 PM on those evenings, I’m all set. This means that I won’t have to worry about rushing back from the university in time to pick up little ones from school. Jacqueline said that more likely than not she’ll only need me to do this at most twice a week, and sometimes not at all. It will never be on the weekends and Lise often goes to visit her grandmother during school vacations, so I will be free to travel then. I also asked if my sister or my friends came to visit whether or not they could stay in my room with me, and she said as long as I’m not bringing my boyfriend (which I don’t have) over, it’s not a problem. Oh, she also wants me to speak in English with Lise, at least from time to time, to help her get a grasp on casual English.
The only other concern that I did not mention earlier is that with a babysitting schedule that changes week by week, it might be hard to join a choir like I wanted to. However, I can either join a choir, missing rehearsals when I have to, or I could also take private voice lessons as a way to keep singing instead. I also have started looking into dance classes a little bit. Since I will be living rent-free, I am giddy over the different ways I could put my earnings here to use – classes, shoes, mmm, shoes . . .
I should also add that Jacqueline was really very kind, good sense of humor, easy to talk to, and seemed relieved to have found me. I felt really confident at ease the whole time, which was a little surprising to me. I guess if I think about it enough, I can see that I have become a lot more confident over the past few years. Additionally, babysitting is something that I know I can do and I have a lot of experience to back it up. Currently Jacqueline has a Russian girl living in my future room who is doing what I will be doing. The Russian girl will be moving at the end of the month and I will move in. The living situation seems like it will be very relaxed. Jacqueline expects me to tidy up after myself, but never to do hardcore cleaning. I am welcome to eat with them, or to eat on my own if I want. Like I said, I have full access to the kitchen and living room. Lise seemed a little shy and at one point made a comment about having a hard time understanding me when I spoke in English (the first half of our interview was in English, second half in French) and I told her that it is totally normal, that I still have trouble with French sometimes. I think she liked me and she seems really easy-going.
Now that my bank account is open, I’ve done the necessary paperwork at the university and I have found a place to live, I am left here to . . . twiddle my thumbs? Or, I could find temporary babysitting (I have already posted on craigslist) and perhaps take a trip down to Dijon (I am awaiting an e-mail from Brigitte about that). I can also spend long days walking around Paris. Apparently this afternoon I’m going somewhere near the Eiffel Tower with Ikram to hang out where Guy is working and to watch the Rugby world cup on big television screens. At some point I should go out to St. Quentin, where I will be working, to check out the campus and to look at the materials that have been left for the teaching assistants. And right now I’m going to go for a walk while I have some free time.
Et voila, my life here is falling into place shockingly easily (for the moment – fingers crossed!) |
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| Housing and such |
[Sep. 6th, 2007|01:01 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | content | ] |
Things here seem to be moving right along. I am continuing to enjoy living with Ikram and Guy and there is definitely part of me hoping that one of these days they’ll say, “hey, why don’t you just stay here?” But I still don’t really think that’s likely. And I certainly don’t want to make any assumptions, so I’m playing around with different ideas for possible housing.
So far the two best options are to find someone else in need of a roommate (a lot easier said than done, I must say) or to try to work out a part-time babysitting position in exchange for a room. The latter is much easier to find thus far. However, try as I might, I cannot get anyone to give me a straight answer about my schedule for the semester, and so I really can’t commit to any specific babysitting schedule. I’ve found several families interested in me and we’ve e-mailed a bit, but it always ends with, “Well, unfortunately at the moment I can’t make any guarantees and it looks like I won’t be getting my schedule until towards the end of September, but let’s keep in touch and see what happens.”
And frankly if I thought that there was a real possibility that it could work out, I’d not even bother looking into apartment shares. But the scheduling thing is so complicated and disorganized that I think my schedule at the university will more likely than not conflict with any babysitting I find. Most people are looking for someone who can pick their children up from school and watch them for a few hours after school. That means that I would have to be back in Paris by about 4:20/4:15 on days when I work. It takes a good half hour to forty-five minutes to get to/from the university (at least), so I’m afraid I’d end up cutting it too close.
I e-mailed Susan B, my contact person at the university, to find out if I could request to work mornings only, even if it meant going to work every day of the week, but she said that I will be working in tandem with the other American T.A. who has family in Avignon and will most likely want to cram all of her work into two days so she can take long weekends to visit them. Um, so I have to arrange my schedule so that she can go visit family while I’m left struggling to find a place to live? Yeah, I wasn’t really excited to hear that and if it comes down to it, I will make it clear that that is pretty unfair.
And so the au pair/babysitting search is a strange stop-and-go, not-so-likely adventure that I’m on at the moment. I went and met a woman with three kids (4 months, 2 years and 4 years) about an hour ago. She knew about my scheduling issue and thought we may as well meet anyway, just in case. I figured that was a fine idea because I don’t really have much else to do today and I thought maybe she’d fall in love with me and be able to work her schedule around mine. Well, I don’t thinks he fell in love with me, but at least I think she liked me. She’s in her last year of med. school and will be doing research this year. This means that her schedule, which she does not yet know either, may be flexible as well. If I ended up working for her I would live in their apartment with them for a month or so while they find and buy a studio in the neighborhood. AND they would pay me 300E/month on top of housing me (eventually in my own studio). Ummm, can we please make this work? We said we’d keep in touch and I think it went well. The two littlest were sleeping when I was there and the oldest was at school.
At 6:30 tonight I go to meet another woman in need of a babysitter, kind of. I say kind of because her kid is actually a fourteen-year-old girl. This woman, Jacqueline, lives in the 15th and is looking for someone to stay with her daughter a few nights a week when she works late. The deal is that you get a room in exchange for the “babysitting” and never have to work weekends. This one, so far, looks the most feasible in terms of scheduling. My small concern is whether or not it’s the kind of place where I could have friends who come visit stay. Also I want to know if I could just having friends in Paris come over to hang out. I get the impression that the room is in the apartment (which is on the ground floor and I prefer to be up high, but whatever, that is a super petty and picky complaint for me to have at this point), but I’m thinking that maybe it’s like the Louvriers where she has a chambre de bonne (maid’s room) in the top of the building. That could be perfect. So I’ll find that out later on this evening.
I am also in contact with a woman in the 7th looking for someone four days a week, three hours a day in exchange for a room. Again, she knows my scheduling deal and still is interested in talking further with me. I mentioned in my e-mail that I could offer her references and she asked for one. I gave her Sue’s number in England in hopes that she’d call Sue, Sue would talk me up and the woman would end up wanting me so badly that she’ll work around my university schedule. Ha, I am quite the dreamer. Oh but the 7th is one chic neighborhood! So hopefully she’ll call soon and I can go meet her and hopefully win her over.
Et voila, I have several leads, the teenage girl one being the most promising, but I also am really uncomfortable with the idea of waiting until I get my schedule to have a definite place to live. My fear is that I’ll get my schedule, babysitting just won’t work, and I won’t have a place lined up. At this point I think that Ikram would be OK with having me stay a few extra weeks, but I really don’t want to impose because they have been so generous and kind to me. I have one other lead on an apartment share with a semi-retired journalist, but it’s in the 3rd arrondissement, which is way further than I want, and I’ve been really flakey about responding to her e-mails and setting up a meet because I want so much for the babysitting deal to work out. So at this point I don’t even know if she’d take me seriously anymore. The one thing I can say about me waiting to figure this out is that Ikram seems to think babysitting in exchange for a room is a good idea and she knows what’s going on with that and my schedule. At least she’s not suggesting that I give up on it and she seems to be (from what I can tell) supportive of me working that out.
And so here I am, sort of treading water, potentially screwing myself out of a place to live, frustrated that I can’t get my schedule and kind of wishing I could just settle here. I know it will work out one way or another, but it would just be so nice for it to be worked out right now!
Anyway, in other news I went to my very first Clark Alumni event last night! Apparently President Bassett (Clark’s president) was in Europe for something with the Dean of the business school, so they to Paris for the evening to have a little soiree and to try to get the Clark alums in the Paris area together to connect and to begin to form a community here. Mar told me about it earlier in the summer and I wasn’t really sure if I cared to go or not because cocktails, strangers and mingling are rather intimidating to me. And I didn’t realize that it was taking place so soon after I arrived, so when Mar asked me about it the other night I was very surprised and had yet to register.
But in the end I did register and I did go. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and while I officially suck at mingling, I have to say that I held my own when people talked to me. I met up with Mar where she works and we walked to the reception (at a hotel) together. I was in heels and a dress because I enjoy an excuse to dress up. I wore my black heels that I taught in a lot last year, but apparently did not walk much in because I got MAJOR blisters. The blisters were already well-formed and torn open by the time we got to the reception. We were the first guests to arrive, how cool are we, and chatted with the director of alumni events, who is very friendly, and then President and Mrs. Bassett. Turns out it was their anniversary and I got the impression that Mrs. Bassett wasn’t too thrilled to be at the reception. Or maybe she was just tired.
There was champagne and hors d’oeuvres and eventually the dean and the president spoke a bit about how wonderful Clark is. There were mostly business student alums there and we really only talked to one guy who was rather beau (handsome), but there with his girlfriend, who makes gorgeous jewelry! We conversed with them in French, which made me nervous and less communicative. Mar talks so fast and has such a good accent, which makes sense since her father is French, that it makes me even less confident and I trip over words, mumble, trail off at the end of sentences etc. I don’t mean to blame that on her at all, it would be the same with any other Anglophone who speaks better French than I do. I just need to get over it is all.
We ducked out of the party around 9:30 or so and made our way to the metro. My feet were killing me and one of my heels was gushing blood. I didn’t even realize how bad it was until Mar pointed it out. But beauty is pain and if I want to wear these shoes on a regular basis, which I do, I have to break them in. Or break my feet in, ha. Aside from the pain, it was nice to walk around Paris after dark with someone I know while holding a real, fast-paced conversation (in English). I know I should practice French with her and I want to speak it more, but at the same time there is a huge difference between having a conversation without having to search for words and expressions, without having to stumble over strange pronunciation, and without having to explain and re-explain myself. I was going to write that it’s nice to have a conversation without thinking, but really it was more that it was nice to have a conversation in which I could very easily and clearly express what I was thinking. I was able to think about the ideas and the content of the conversation and not about how to express my ideas.
The other important thing that happened since last I wrote is that I opened a bank account. Let me tell you, even if I’m still struggling to get back into the swing of the French language, it was SO much easier to deal with the bank this time around. For starters Ikram gave me all of the papers that I would need to prove that I have a place to live here. Then the guy who helped me open the account was super nice and patient with me. He explained everything and re-explained what I didn’t understand (mainly that I have an overdraft of 460E on my account or something, but I probably would have found it confusing in English anyway). I probably missed 25% of what he said, but I have a feeling that a lot of what I missed was him telling me about promotions and other ways I could use the bank to my advantage. Really I just want a bank account, a debit card, and a checkbook, and that is what I got. Well, I’ll get the card and the checkbook sometime next week.
The only problem at the bank, because really this wouldn’t be France unless there was some sort of an issue, was that they couldn’t deposit my travelers’ checks for me, apparently because they are in dollars. The guy did give me the address of another branch where he was certain they would be able to do it for me, but it’s kind of far from here. Actually, he was really cute because first he talked to a guy at the bank who said that yes we could deposit the checks and he sent us to a lady who then said that we couldn’t. My bankers stood there and argued with her about it. She would say, “Non, non, non, on ne peut pas accepter les dollars ici!” (No, no, no, we can’t accept dollars here) and he would reply with “Si, si, M So-and-So m’a dit oui.” (Yes, yes, Mr. So-and-So said yes). They went back and forth for a while until she finally went to see Mr. So-and-So and we heard them discussing it, a bit loudly, and she came back triumphant and said no. So now I have to go elsewhere. But I don’t have anything to do from now until 6:30, so I’m sure that I can figure it out.
And I think that is it for the moment. Its surprising how easy life here is at the moment, aside from the question of housing. I sleep in every day and so does Ikram. Oh, that is the other thing that makes me smile about being here. Ikram will from time to time come into my room to tell me something or if to answer a question that I’ve asked and she’ll sit down on the bed to chat. The French in general, I believe, have different ideas about privacy and would never dare to come into someone’s bedroom uninvited. Ikram isn’t French, so obviously it’s kind of silly to compare her to the French, but I guess my point is that it’s nice to be in France and yet to be living with someone who is as easy-going and relaxed as she is. It’s comforting to know that she’s so comfortable with me and that I too can be as at ease here. When I arrived they said, “fais comme chez toi” (make yourself at home), but even when people say that I find it hard to do so at first because I don’t really know what their “at home” behavior is like and I want to make a good impression, to be polite, etc. But it’s been not even a week here and I really do feel at home, at ease and comfortable here and it’s great.
And now I am going to go do the dishes because neither of them is home to stop me and I would like to do something to contribute to the household, and obviously cooking will not be my contribution! |
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| Bouncing back |
[Sep. 4th, 2007|12:57 am] |
Wow
Sunday morning I hit bottom here way harder than I ever hit bottom in Dijon, or at least it felt that way. And today, merely one day later, I am finding myself soaring. I guess for the moment I just need to accept that this is going to be a roller coaster ride for a while and all I can really do is hang on.
I just wrote a very long e-mail to my mom about it and am not sure if I really have the energy to write more right now. However it seems that with every passing second something new happens and I should write while I have a little time to do so.
I got up around 9:30 this morning. Guy was gone, he had gotten up at 4:30 and left for work long ago and Ikram was still in bed. I decided to make coffee for both of us, so I headed into the kitchen to figure out what the coffee situation was. Sunday morning when I awoke one of the small things that set me off was the fact that I didn’t know how to make coffee here and I didn’t feel comfortable using their coffee. Well the truth is that they said to make myself at home, and they really meant it. Plus they have a regular old coffee maker and it wasn’t hard to find the coffee, so when Ikram woke up there was a fresh pot of coffee waiting for her. I think she was pleasantly surprised.
Eventually we headed out to get my cell phone up and running. Turns out that I needed a new SIM card since I haven’t used my phone in, oh, three years. It cost 30E, but I got it done and now I have a working cell phone and a new phone number. I got to see the neighborhood a bit while we went to do that and it is really adorable around here. I also went out later on by myself to do some grocery shopping. There is a Monoprix five minutes on foot from here, so I headed out wondering how expensive groceries would be.
Monoprix is the chain where I shopped in Dijon. Eventually in Dijon I had my grocery shopping down to an art. I bought more or less the same things and I usually spent more or less the same amount of money each time I went. There were certain things that I only had to buy every other week or every month even and it was all so routine for me. Well three years later at a Monoprix in Paris I found myself getting right back into the swing of things. It took me a few minutes to remember what I used to buy but it all came back to me and in the end I only spent about 14E for mostly veggies, some soup, some yogurt, some frozen fish and a bunch of bananas. I was quite pleased.
Around 4 PM I decided to go for a walk. I headed out in the same direction as yesterday and made my way to the Eiffel Tower. I bought a snack and sat next to the Eiffel tower thinking about how easy it is for me to just walk there right now. I continued on as far as les Invalides (I think) and ended up walking for a good hour and a half. There are people everywhere all the time, which seems so obvious. It’s Paris, duh! I’m not used to a big bustling city though and at first it was really intimidating. Now I’m starting to find it cozy, if that makes any sense.
I got back from my walk to find Ikram on her way out to meet friends. Guy was in the kitchen cooking something. So the strange thing about Guy is that he is a chef, he cooks for a
living, then he comes home and cooks more and by the time he is done
cooking he doesn't really want to eat it. So Irkam went out and a
little while later Guy pops his head in my room to offer me dinner, if
I'm hungry. I was, so he put together a plate of rice (yes, I ate it)
and chicken (in some sort of a sauce with olives), plus four pieces of
bread (yes, I ate two of them). Then he told me that he wouldn’t be
working tomorrow so he'll try to fix the TV in my room for me
(something about not having the right plug or connector or something),
which lead him to telling me that I could watch DVDs if I want. So
then he brought their entire (extensive) DVD collection to me where I
was sitting in bed in my room eating the dinner that he made and got
the DVD player all set up. THEN he told me to help myself to the
cheese in the fridge, which I eventually did. That was when he
informed me that I never have to worry about doing dishes here. He
showed me all of their cheese, I told him how I had lived in Dijon and
ate epoisse (very stinky cheese) there. He gave me a plate and a big
hunk of fresh bread to go with whatever cheese I wanted. I opened one
and wasn't sure how to cut it and he told me to cut it however I
wanted. Tomorrow night he is thinking of making a fondue with the
swiss-type cheeses he has. I told him that I'd like to learn to cook
better and he offered that anytime I want he'd be happy to teach me.
I kept thanking him but really could only think of one way to do so,
"merci, tu es trop gentil! Mais c'est vraiment trop gentil." (Thanks
you are too kind, really it's too kind). He said something at one
point about how he should thank me because Ikram is really happy with
me. She has told me stories of the 35 year old american woman who
lived here before me who was drunk all the time, noisy, lost six cell
phones, spilled wine everywhere and other things like that. Maybe all
of this is a good sign for the long-term possibility. Or maybe I'll
just leave here with some good memories and some good friends.
Later on after Irkam had returned, I got a call from Mar and decided
to go hang out with her for a bit. I was trying to figure out how to
get there (it's really not far from here) and Ikram offered to walk me
there. No, actually Guy offered, then Ikram decided it'd be nice to
go for a walk so they both came with me. Along the way somehow
Irkam's birthday came up and they said that we'll all have to go out
to a restaurant to celebrate - we all including Mar and her cousin -
and I mentioned that my birthday is October 7th. Of course they said
that we'd all have to go celebrate that too and how perfect it is.
Then Ikram said, "so you're a Libra too then?" Oh, and while I was
eating Guy popped in and said that he had one thing he wanted to ask
me to do. Obviously I was ready to do anything at that point and he
asked me to speak in English with Ikram because it'll help her to get
a job if she can speak English better. She seems happy to have me
speak to her in English and said she'd keep speaking to me in French.
It's pretty hard for her to understand English though, so I think that
I'll still be able to converse with her mostly in French.
Ok, I just copied that whole last part from the e-mail to my mom because it is getting late and I am getting tired. Hopefully I’ll find a moment to write more tomorrow because I feel like I’m just scratching the surface here right now. Suffice it to say that I awoke Sunday morning feeling alone and suddenly I feel like I have a small community growing around me of people who care about me and who like me, despite the fact that I still feel a little shy and awkward and I find it hard to communicate. C’est bien ca. |
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| In Paris and still alive. |
[Sep. 3rd, 2007|12:53 am] |
9.3.07
Where to begin . . .
It is my second night in Paris and I’m not even sure where to begin. I’ve been very down and kind of up since arriving and right now I think I’m OK. OK is much better than I was this morning, that’s for sure. I got in very late last night, somewhere around 1:30 AM I believe, after a night of theater and dinner with Mar and her cousins. The play we saw was quite funny and seemed rather appropriate. It was about a couple that is engaged and has invited an old friend and his current girlfriend over for dinner. When the guests arrive, they are mad at each other, so the girlfriend is very standoffish and doesn’t say much. The engaged couple decides that the girlfriend must not speak French, so they spend the night speaking loudly at her and trying to communicate as best as they can. The girlfriend, as a mean joke, pretends that she is from some made-up country in Eastern Europe and plays along. Anyway, I found it amusing that it was about a woman who, supposedly, doesn’t speak French. I hope that made sense.
After the play we went in search of food. There were five of us and I was the only person not related to the rest of the group – they are all cousins and all know each other. Well, no, I take that back. Nicholas is not Mar’s cousin, or maybe he is, I don’t know, big families are confusing. Point being that there were five of us, an odd number, and the majority of the conversation was held in French. Now I know, I speak French way better than I did when I arrived in Dijon. However, it has been quite some time since I have tried to actually maintain a conversation in French and I am finding that it is not as easy to slip back into as I had hoped. My comprehension is actually quite good – I understood most of the play and could follow most of the conversation. It’s the whole coming up with something worthwhile to add to the conversation that I am able to clearly express in French part that was giving me some trouble. In any case, it was nice to be out and I had barely eaten all day.
Dinner was followed by drinks at another location. I started to worry a little about money, so I didn’t get anything to drink. The conversation there was easier to follow because it was less noisy and it eventually turned to American sitcoms, so at least I had some content-based knowledge that was helpful. And that is how I came to arrive home around 1:30 AM last night. I had worn my pink and red high heels and when I got back to my current building I had to take them off because my apartment is on the 6th floor and there is no elevator.
The stairs up to this apartment are wood and wind upwards (or downwards I suppose) in an oval. They remind me of the stairs in my Dijonais apartment a little, except that the Dijon stairs were stone and the Paris stairs are wood. The apartment itself is small, as apartments in Paris tend to be. When you enter the kitchen is to the diagonal right and the living room is kind of in front of you. There is a toilet between the kitchen and the living room, in what I would assume was at one time a closet. There is a little hallway to the left, which leads to the two bedrooms and the shower room. The shower is at the end of the hallway, my bedroom is to the left and Ikram and Guy’s bedroom is to the right.
My room has a futon-type bed, a tall, long table-thing with one set of draws that runs the length of it. They put a TV in the room, but it is not yet working. There is a tall chair and a laundry basket. The ceilings are very tall and there is beautiful crown molding, so how on earth could I complain? Plus I have beautiful, tall windows that open out onto a small balcony, which is where I am currently sitting. Ikram and Guy are very kind. Ikram is from Morocco originally and has lived in France for five or six years, I believe. Guy is very French, seems to be a bit older than Ikram, and lived in New York for eight hears. Guy is a chef and seems to enjoy cooking food and giving it to Ikram to eat, while he eats nothing. I have benefited from this a bit, which is really helpful because by the time I got settled here on Saturday there was no time to go grocery shopping and most of the stores were closed today because it is Sunday.
There is, however, an open-air market every Sunday a few blocks away from the apartment. Ikram offered to take me to it with her and mentioned that she would probably sleep in until about noon. That sounded fabulous to me, so when I finally crawled into bed last night I was ready for a nice, long night’s sleep. I set my travel clock so that I could check the time in the morning and fell right asleep.
Instead of sleeping in like I had hoped, however, I woke up early (around 7 AM maybe) convinced it was way later and then fell back asleep. I continued to do so every half hour or so until I finally got up at 11 AM. I was afraid that Ikram was up waiting for me to go to the marche with her and I didn’t want to make her late. However when I left my room to go to the bathroom I discovered that she was still in bed. That made me feel a bit better and I decided to crawl back into my own bed to play on the Internet a bit. Somehow during all of this something went off inside of me and I had a huge wave of homesickness. I started to worry about money and felt trapped, hopeless and without any purpose or direction. Being on the 6th floor with all of my belongings not really put away and not really packed made me feel physically trapped. Being far away from home and without a bank account, without any indication of what I am supposed to be doing here this month and without groceries made me feel trapped on another level.
I had been feeling a little homesick when I went to bed last night. I e-mailed Tucker to tell her that I kind of wanted to go home and I told her that I wasn’t going to tell anyone else that. Then this morning it was worse and I e-mailed my mom. I started to think about what going home would entail and I figured that with the money I brought I could easily afford a plane ticket and a taxi ride directly from here to the airport with a little money leftover for when I got home. I went online and checked for teaching jobs in Massachusetts, and then I tried to check kayak.com to see what a flight would cost me. For some reason kayak.com kept causing the Internet to shut down on me, which perhaps was a sign. Instead of taking it as a sign though I used a different browser and found a flight for 444E.
Of course I knew that I was being slightly irrational and that even if I did call it quits and headed home, I would still have a lot of hard work figuring out what to do instead of this. It wouldn’t actually be as easy of a fix as it felt; it would just be more comfortable and easier in the short-term. It just helped, I guess, to know that if it really comes down to it, I am not actually trapped here. Granted I don’t know how easy it would be to get out of my contract, what that would mean for Clark and all of those messy little details. Even so, I know that there are airplanes that fly from here back to the states and, theoretically, I could pack up and get on one.
In reality I got up eventually and faced the day. I crossed paths with Ikram in the hall and she offered me coffee. That was another small thing that had contributed to the wave of homesickness – I couldn’t even get up to make myself coffee or to have my usual breakfast. I said that I would love some and then asked if it would be possible to borrow a towel. When I arrived yesterday she offered that I might want to take a shower. She said something that made me think that she expected me to have my own towel and, of course, instead of just asking her if I could borrow one, I didn’t shower. There was no avoiding a shower this morning and she was, of course, obliging and it was fine. After a shower, some coffee and chatting with Ikram for a bit we went to the marche, which was pretty much shut down.
We came back and Guy made us lunch. Then I spent a good deal of time on the Internet trying to research different housing options. I’m starting to look for people who want a part-time au pair and offering them babysitting in exchange for a room. Ikram was really sweet and came in to help me figure out some metro stuff, looked at some of the ads that I found online, helped me figure out where various places are located in relation to Versailles, etc. She has offered to go when me to get my carte de sejour, though when we looked online together it seems like I will actually have to do that at the university.
Eventually I needed to get off of the computer and out in the world a little. I grabbed my iPod and went out for a walk. I walked in the direction of the Eiffel tower. It reminded me of the first time that I walked to it in Paris and kept losing sight of it every time I turned a corner. It probably only took me about ten minutes to walk to it, so I continued along the Seine. There were people everywhere and the sky was blue. I didn’t feel trapped and I realized that even if all I can afford to do for the next ten months here is to walk around Paris and even if I end up doing it alone, that’s not so bad after all.
I hung out with Ikram a bunch this evening. We watched TV together and chatted (as best as I can right now). I always feel a little guilty when I can’t hold up my end of the conversation, but she seemed happy enough to talk for the both of us. I’m glad that I am here right now, but I still would feel better if I was just settled into the place where I will be living long-term here. Part of me even wishes that I had a place all to myself because even though I am to “fais comme chez moi” (make myself at home), it’s kind of hard with such a small space and new people that I have just met.
Anyway, it’s late. Much later than I thought, actually. I should get some sleep because tomorrow is a weekday and I need to get some things done, though banks apparently aren’t open on Mondays. |
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| Visiting the Old Country |
[Aug. 28th, 2007|09:54 pm] |
Growing up my parents never left my siblings and me with babysitters. When they did go out, which was not terribly often, they left us in the care of my father’s parents and his Aunt, whom we all called “Auntie,” though truth be told, my pronunciation was more like “Antie.” It was a convenient arrangement with one adult per child. The adults were mostly easy-going and willing to accompany us in whatever we did – anything from baking cookies to running around the yard. Sometimes we went to their house, and sometimes they came to ours. Every time we went to their house, Grandma gave us a dum-dum lollipop out of a big bowl of them.
Another tradition we had was to beg Grandma to tell us stories about when she was little. There were only so many stories that she had to tell, but as a child I never tired of hearing the same ones over and over again. She told me all about Ramsbury, the small English town in which she grew up during World War II. She described the beautiful country-side, playing in the fields with her siblings, visiting one of her older sisters in London, the food-rations they had, being forced to swim at school in the gray, cold British weather. One of her favorite stories was of how she and my Grandfather, a paratrooper in the American Army, met on the main street – well, the only street – of the village one day while he was learning to ride a bike and the wind blew his hat to her feet. It was by the huge, old oak tree that stood in the center of the main square in town.
Three years ago when Elizabeth and I met up in London for a mini-vacation together at the beginning of our respective semesters abroad, I had thoughts of journeying to Ramsbury to check it out myself. Unfortunately I couldn’t really figure out how we would get there, for there were no trains to Ramsbury and I couldn’t figure out the bus system. We didn’t have an enormous amount of time in London, so I thought it better to hold off and to hopefully travel there someday in the future. Well, today was that day.
I woke up around 10:30 AM and wandered down the kitchen. Sue was there and as we chatted about what to do with ourselves while the girls were at school, we decided to take a trip to Ramsbury. The night that I arrived I mapquested it and found that it is only an hour’s drive away, so we figured why not go. We were on the road by 11:15 and, with the help of Sue’s navigational system, found our way there with no trouble at all.
Located in Wiltshire County, it feels like Ramsbury is in the middle of nowhere. It sits amidst rolling hills and was the most idyllic rural town under today’s beautiful blue skies with fluffy white clouds. As we drove through the winding roads leading to Ramsbury, we saw some quaint farmhouses and some very fancy looking houses as well. We drove through another small village filled with houses with thatched roofs. There were several thatched roofed houses as we drove into Ramsbury with tiny doors and stones that looked ancient. Some of the moss and vine covered buildings and walls look like they had simply grown right out of the earth.
We parked the car in what looked to be the town square and got out. In the center of the square was a small tree with two benches on either side. Clearly this tree was not the giant oak that I had heard so much about. However, I was pretty sure that that tree had been cut down, so I went over to take a peek at the benches. There were plaques on either one, which read, “Donated by the Yanks of 437th Troop Carrier Group Stationed on the Hill 1944-1945.” I had my digital camera with me, so I was able to take a few pictures. The battery was low, despite having been plugged in all night, but it lasted me long enough to get some good pictures.
We began to wander down the street and popped into the post office to ask where the church and cemetery are. I thought that there was a slight chance that I would be able to find a tombstone with Smith on it, though with Smith being such a common name, I realized that it wouldn’t necessarily be a Smith related to me. The church was set right in the middle of the graveyard and there were tombstones so old that the writing had worn right off of them. Sue and I wandered, looking to see what we could read from them. I couldn’t remember my Great-Grandfather’s name, but I knew that my Great-Grandmother died when my Grandmother was born. I figured that meant that Great-Grandmother must have died in the early 1920s, so we kept our eyes peeled for that.
Although we were unsuccessful, a very kind woman who had overheard me talking about my family with another woman at the post office approached us. She offered us luck and chatted a bit before going on her way. Then another woman who had been told about us by the woman who wished us luck approached us. This second woman asked who we were looking for and suggested that we try going to knock on Mr. Price’s door, for Mr. Price has a map of the cemetery with all of the graves marked. She gave us directions to his place, and though we weren’t sure that we would actually stop by, we headed off in that direction.
Without much difficulty we found the street on which he lives, Union Street. We weren’t sure exactly where he lived, but had a lovely walk through the village and up Union Street. At the top of the street we noticed an adorable pub and decided to stop in for a bite. As we walked to our table, Sue noticed a table with three very elderly looking, very white-haired women. She suggested that I talk to them, but because I felt a little shy, offered to talk to them for me. Before she could do so the waitress came by, so Sue explained why we had come to Ramsbury and asked the waitress if she thought it would be all right to approach the women. The waitress was very kind and suggested that we talk to Ronnie. Ronnie Price, that is, who turns out to be the town crier. We had actually seen a gate with a small plaque that said “town crier” on Union Street, but we assumed it was just there for historic purposes.
In addition to telling us about the town crier, the waitress went and talked to the women for us. They then invited us over to chat. One of the women, Ethel, said that she has lived in Ramsbury for eighty-four years and asked my Grandmother’s name. When I told her, she thought maybe she recognized it, so I told her a bit about the family. She and the other women went back and forth talking about it, but as they discussed it they seemed to turn my Grandmother’s name into Margaret and her three sisters and one brother into two sisters and two brothers. I had a picture of Grandma with me, so I showed it to Ethel, which confirmed that this definitely was not the Smith she was thinking of. They apologized for not being more of a help and we thanked them for taking the time to chat with us. It was worthwhile just to listen to them go back and fourth about the various Smiths and Margarets and people who they had known.
By the time Sue and I finished lunch we needed to head back so that we would be home when the girls arrived back from school. Although I found neither a grave nor a person who knew my family, it was still really neat to be standing by the spot where my Grandmother first saw my Grandfather. We found out from one of the ladies in the cemetery that the old oak tree had indeed been taken down and had indeed stood where the smaller tree with the two benches now resides. Recently my Grandmother has said that she probably wouldn’t want to go back to Ramsbury after all of these years because it would not be the place that she left sixty-something years ago. And while I sure that she is absolutely right, I must say that it does not look like it’s changed much over the years. The streets are still lined with small, brick and stone houses. There are shops with signs that say, “established 1758,” and while the roads may have been paved and some may have been added over the years, they wind around the town in such a way that suggests that they are simply an upgraded version of old paths that were worn into the ground long ago.
I suppose that it is better for her to be able to keep Ramsbury the way it was in her mind. I know that I sometimes think about the small changes that have happened around Longmeadow and think how much better it was before they added this development, or changed that. And at the same time, there have been some changes that are really improvements and that is generally the idea behind change. As I stood in among the old tombstones in the cemetery and thought about how amazing it was to be standing in Ramsbury England, I had to laugh at the thought of my future grandchildren journeying to Longmeadow in search of their roots. Maybe by then it will seem as quaint and adorable to them as Ramsbury does to me – there definitely are some historic houses in Longmeadow. |
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| J’y suis |
[Aug. 27th, 2007|09:52 pm] |
Well, I am officially in Europe and have been for, um, well I’m too jetlagged to try to figure that one out. It is 10 PM London time and I touched down in Ireland at 5:50 AM yesterday morning. My flights were uneventful. Oh, except that as I was sitting down on my first flight I got to chatting with the woman sitting next to me who looked to be in her mid-sixties (jerk got the window seat) and as we chatted she got to asking me where I went to college, which led her to asking me if I was originally from Worcester. I said no, that I am from Springfield, which I usually say when talking with people outside of western Massachusetts because I figure that they are more likely to know where Springfield is than Longmeadow. Anyway, when I said Springfield, she exclaimed, “Oh! I am too!”
“Well, actually I’m from Longmeadow,” I said, since she’d know where that is and wouldn’t you know it, she is apparently also from Longmeadow. Small world. I flew out of Logan, by the way, which makes it much more ironic than had I flown out of Bradley. As we talked more I found out that she lived in Longmeadow when she was in high school and lived there a while after. She had been a counselor at Baystate Medical Center, but is now working towards a Masters degree and wants to be a special education teacher. She was on her way to Manchester England to do some student teaching for two months, which was set up through Bridgewater College.
It was nice to have someone to chat with as we waited for the plane to take off. We had all sorts of interesting connections, things in common and were both amused that we ended up sitting next to each other. In fact, I had originally been seated elsewhere, but in an attempt to get a window seat I ended up moving three rows forward to another isle seat. The woman who checked me in at Logan was new and just learning the ropes. Oh, and that reminds me of another coincidence – while standing in the VERY long line for Aer Lingus in Logan, I saw a woman standing in front of us who looked a lot like my tenth grade English teacher. Then she opened her mouth and I was sure that it was her – there is no way that I could mistake her voice. She seemed to be there with her husband and two sons, one of whom was on the same flight as I was. I avoided eye contact because I wasn’t sure if she’d remember me and I had no interest in having to sustain polite, inevitably awkward, conversation with her as the line crept along.
But back to the plane and the Longmeadow lady. As I was saying, it was really pleasant to talk with her and it really helped pass the time. However, as she talked over the announcements that the flight attendants made while we sat on the ground I started to wonder how I would be able to politely slip on my headphones once we had taken off and wanted to just relax. Then as she continued to talk and talk, I realized that either she was not actually listening to my end of the conversation, or I am very bad at articulating myself because I must have told her that I studied abroad my junior year in college two times and she still asked me if it was my first time going to France. There were other times when she asked me questions that I had already answered for her. And the conversation kind of turned into a list of the various colleges she’s taken classes and the random people she knows. At one point she told me that she worked for the army doing criminal investigation or something and I started to have some doubts about the veracity of what she was telling me. I mean, it is quite likely that everything she said was true, but it got me to thinking about the millions of little lies I could easily tell her about myself and she’d never know the difference.
The plane itself was quite nice. I was in row forty-three, so I was quite close to the back of the plane. There wasn’t much leg room, but that’s what economy is like these days. There was a t.v. screen in the back of the seat in front of me and a variety of movies and t.v. shows that I could watch. Eventually the Longmeadow lady and I stopped chatting, so I was able to watch an episode of “Sex and the City,” “Cheers,” and “The Simpsons.” I also listened to my iPod a bit and nodded in and out of sleep. It was uncomfortable and hard to sleep because there was nothing to rest my head on, so I ended up getting a lot of half sleep and tossing and turning a lot. To my surprise we were served dinner and it was all right. I had chicken and rice, a roll, some cheese, a little salad and there was some cheesecake-like dessert that I opted not to have.
We had an hour layover in Shannon Ireland and she offered me the window seat for the flight to Dublin, which was nice. We were able to get off of the plane in Shannon to stretch our legs and to walk a bit. Walking into the airport, it looked and smelled more like some college kid’s house the morning after a party than an airport. It was totally deserted, save a few women at the gate, and smelled like stale cigarettes. There were empty beer glasses left on tables, and the room was dark and dingy. At first I couldn’t figure out where the bathrooms were, but eventually I found them. There seemed to be one big waiting room in the center of the airport where everyone sat waiting for their flights. It was just as dingy as the area by our gate. The chairs were low to the grown and covered in deep red and deep orange fabric that looked straight out of the seventies. There was a cafe/pub and some shops. The shops were all connected and some of the entries had the metal security gates down. Inside was kind of chaotic, with shelves that looked only half stocked and random boxes sitting on the floor. The whole airport looked like a tired, weary, old place that had run out of energy.
Once off the plane we had to wait to re-board, so eventually a group of people from our plane gathered and sat in the morning-after-a-party area. Once we were on the plane, it only took about forty-five minutes to fly to Dublin. As we began our descent into Dublin, a small child nearby got really excited and decided that it was really important to narrate the whole landing experience. He must have been about three or four and had this very grating, very high-pitched voice. He also stuttered a little bit, which alone doesn’t bother me in the least. I stuttered when I was young too, so I can empathize. However, when you combine my lack of good sleep with his high-pitched, stuttered, DUMB narration, let me tell you, I was not happy. “Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-MOM! The plan is turning! The plane is turning!!!” And of course, whatever important piece of information he had to announce, he would repeat over and over again until his mother acknowledged that she had heard what he had said and that he was right. “Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmMOM! I think the wheels are down. The wheels are down! We are landing!” Occasionally his mom, who was two seats over with his brother in between them, would try to tell him to quiet or calm down, but it not effectively. Granted, I can understand how hard it can be to quiet down loud, excited children, but that child needed to be shut up. I was tempted to tell him to shut it myself, but I didn’t think that the mother would have appreciated it. Sometimes I think I’m becoming a crotchety old lady at the young age of twenty-two because I am starting to find little kids in public SUPER annoying and not cute at all. I have no patience for them.
Anyway, I had about an hour to get to my next plane. Based on previous flying experience, I assumed that I’d hop off the plane, look at a monitor to find my next flight and head right on over. Luckily I was paying enough attention on the airplane to hear the announcement that instructed those with connecting flights to go through the arrivals section and back to the departures. This meant that I had to wait in a very long, very slow line to get my passport stamped, which I was not expecting, then I had to go back through security and finally on to my gate.
At customs I waited in line with my neighbor from the plane who noticed a line moving faster than ours and went over to it. It said “EU PASSPORTS” over it, but she figured she’d try it. She walked up, showed the man her passport and he let her right through. Then I walked up, began to give him my passport and he told me, rather rudely, to go to another queue because this one is for EU passports only and it needs to be left open for people to get through easily. Worried that I would miss my connecting flight, I moved to the closest line and asked the guy who was next in line if I could get in front of him because I was trying to make a flight. He was very kind about it and let me go. Unfortunately the girl who was getting her passport checked was holding everything up.
While we waited for her to get through, a bunch of people with EU passports whizzed through the station with the mean guy. Then a family started to go through but did not have EU passports. The mean man told them to go to a different line, but for some reason the father didn’t quite understand. The father seemed to think that the customs guy was going to let the son through but not the father, so the father began to get upset and kept saying, “but I won’t leave my son.” It seemed like the customs guy either didn’t understand why the father was upset or didn’t hear him, because he got really angry and suddenly bolted out from his little booth and came around to physically push the father back. This, of course, angered the father more and for a split second I thought they were going to get into a fistfight right next to me. However, the customs guy threatened to arrest the father for not listening to him and so the father backed off. They went to a different line and the son went with him. It was crazy, especially because I think that the father simply did not understand what was being asked of him.
Once the girl in front of me was finally let through, I got my passport stamped and went on my way. Unfortunately the airport was not very well marked in the least and I wasn’t quite sure where to go. I headed in one direction and found someone to ask. She told me to keep going out to the arrivals area and then to go back through security. Luckily security had virtually no line and was quick. The Dublin airport had that same rundown feeling that the Shannon one did. Dublin, however, was much more crowded and had a lot more shops. In fact, to get to my gate I had to walk through a shop. There may have been a hallway that I missed, but it seemed like the store acted as the connection between the area right after security and the area with the gates. Almost every seat by my gate was full, so I sat near the window on a counter-type thing. I only had to wait about five or ten minutes until they started boarding, which was pretty much a free-for-all. I had seat 6A. There were three seats on either side of an isle and no first class. I ended up having all three seats to myself. There was no food or drink served, save the stuff you could buy, but the flight was quick and easy. I didn’t have to wait too long for my luggage and there was no customs to go through after I got my bags. I walked out and Sue was sitting right there, so off we went.
So here I am in London, sitting on the bed in Sue’s guest quarters. We went to London today and did a lot of walking, which I always enjoy. The girls had the day off so they were able to come with us. I’m still rather jetlagged, so I don’t think I’ll bother going into details about my stay here yet, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it soon enough. |
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| At the airport |
[Aug. 26th, 2007|09:49 pm] |
Nineteen minutes to boarding, and I am finally seated by my gate. Logan is swamped and with all of the bodies and movement, it is hot. What a way to start the trip – sweaty. In fact, I purposefully waited to shower until an hour before we left so that I would be as fresh and clean as possible for my flight. There goes that plan.
I stayed up until after 3 AM last night. It took me a while to finish packing and then I just sort of watched t.v., played online, straightened up and went over my lists multiple times. I forced myself out of bed at 9 this morning, despite my late bedtime, so that I could run to Target for travel locks and emergen-C. Mom offered to join me, and suggested we try Staples and GNC instead. Staples did not have the locks, but I did get a protective case for my iPod and GNC was successful. Target did in fact have the travel locks.
When we got back from errands Jeremy and Andrea were waiting at the house with bikes because I wanted to get a bike ride in this morning. Despite the thick, humid air and my tired body, we had a good, sweaty, ride. All that was left was to pack up odds and ends, shower and wait. I was able to chat with Kt for a bit, which was nice. Then the town car arrived – yes my parents decided to have a driver drive us to Logan. I was quite pleased with the thought of not having to sit through a stressful drive and it was quite a nice ride. Mom and I played cards and chatted.
It took forever to check in, but at my request Mom and Dad did stay. Small world, my 10th grade English teacher was in front of us in line with her son. I avoided eye contact because I wasn’t sure she’d remember me and I didn’t want to have to carry on an awkward conversation as we waited in the barely moving line. Security was also a zoo and a pain because I had to take my laptop and bag of liquids out, take my shoes and my hoodie off and send it all through the machine. Then I had to put it all back together.
It doesn’t feel real yet, and I’m not quite sure what will make this all feel real. Maybe I’ve just become very accustom to coming and going, or maybe it’s that I just went to California for a week and it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that this is not just a week. Having so many things to keep track of (cloths, money, electronics, etc.) is a little overwhelming and moving around during the next two weeks is also stressing me out a bit. But it is good to know that there are people I know who will be there with me along the way. |
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| Getting organized . . . |
[Aug. 23rd, 2007|11:54 pm] |
8.23.07
Two more nights in my own bed and then I am off on my Parisian adventure. Last Friday through this Tuesday was absolute hell. The French Consulate in Boston had not received the paperwork they needed to issue my visa that was supposedly sent out from France last Monday. When I tried calling to check on it last Wednesday they had not received it. Thursday I got their voice mail, Friday the voice mailbox was full and then I cried.
It was simply awful. All I could think was that the paperwork would never get there and I would have to postpone my flight and I didn’t even know for how long it would need to be postponed. I felt utterly helpless and lost and frustrated because I had done absolutely everything that I could have and needed to do and it was out of my control. Then I began to worry about housing (or lack thereof to be more precise) and I realized that my application to defer my loan payments for next year had not worked.
Sometimes stress motivates me to get things done, but as all this was piling up on me last weekend it had the exact opposite effect. I couldn’t do anything about the visa; especially since the visa office was closed all weekend. With the uncertainty about my visa, I felt completely unmotivated to do any of the packing/organizing that needed to be done. After a good cry – one of the biggest breakdowns I’ve had in quite sometime – I managed to eat and then my mom and I went for a bike ride. Eventually she headed home while I continued on. By the time I got back I felt better, or at least was able to put the stress out of my mind. I figured that if there was nothing I could do about it, there was no point in making myself sick over it.
Without going into every last detail about the rest of the weekend and the beginning of this week, I’ll mention that I went shopping on Saturday and it was rather discouraging. My mom and I went to the Lee Outlets and I felt like everything I tried on looked awful. We were both really on edge because of the visa issue and it was hard to just relax and to put it out of our minds. I was finally able to call the visa office Monday afternoon and had no luck. It was looking like postponing my flight was imminent, but I still wanted to wait another day before spending any money on changing my flight.
Tuesday morning I was sleeping in when the phone rang. No one else was home and I thought, “Hmm, maybe it’s the Consulate,” but I didn’t really feel like getting up so I stayed in bed. Then about a half hour later it rang again. My immediate thought was, again, “perhaps it’s the Consulate.” Then I thought, “if it is not the Consulate and I drag my ass out of bed to find some salesperson on the other end of the phone, I am going to be one unhappy person.” Well, I did drag myself out of bed and saw on the caller I.D. that it was indeed the Consulate. Fingers crossed, I answered the phone and was informed that my visa would be ready for me to pick up the following morning. I was incredibly relieved, but I was also very hesitant to be relieved or happy about it. With all of the frustration, stop and go, and confusion up to that point, I could not help but worry that something would happen in the ensuing twenty-four hours and I would find myself, yet again, without visa and without sanity.
But it was at the point when there was nothing to do but hope for the best. So Mom and I decided to push our luck a bit and go shopping again. This time we went to Kohl’s. I was skeptical that I would find anything, but Mom insisted that we might as well give it a shot. She was right and after trying on about twenty pairs of pants, various shirts and a few dresses, I bought some new pants, a top and a dress. All in all we had a successful afternoon and got some other little things taken care of.
I invited my brother to join me on my trip to the Consulate in Boston on Wednesday. He had some books that he bought as he prepared for the bar that he needed to return to an office in Boston, so it was perfect. I had a hair appointment at 3:30, so we left at 7:30 AM. It turned out that the office where he needed to go is not only in the same building as the Consulate, but is only floor above the Consulate. We drove into Alewife, took the T into Boston, picked up my passport, dropped off his books and headed back home. My haircut went well and I am happy.
Mom and I spent this morning running errands. Andrea and Jeremy came over for dinner, after which Andrea helped me go through my cloths and begin packing. It was surprisingly easier than I expected and I am quite relieved. I will definitely have enough space in my bags, but the weight my pose a problem. We’ll see when I finish tomorrow. Elizabeth also came to lend a hand. The three of us made a quick trip to Kohl’s to get two tank tops and popped into Marshalls to look at shoes. And now here I am.
I realize that this is kind of boring and tedious and I’ll be surprised if anyone actually read all of that. I guess it is just crazy for me to think about the drastic contrast between last weekend and right now. And it’s also crazy to think about all of the little things that I’ve been doing to get ready. I had lists and I have been checking things off all week long.
I’m really looking forward to arriving in Paris. While I don’t have permanent housing lined up, I was able to find a couple that is willing to rent me a room in their apartment for the month of September. As it turns out, Marannie (graduated from Clark two years before me) is currently living in Paris and was able to check the apartment out for me. She said it’s great and that I’ll have a balcony in my room. Oh lala!
I feel like I have so much more to write about, but my latte is starting to wear off and I should probably get to bed sometime soon. Maybe I’ll find it in me to be introspective and thoughtful tomorrow night. Or maybe I’ll go see “The Nanny Diaries.” |
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| Another new beginning |
[Aug. 14th, 2007|02:32 pm] |
8.14.07
It has been so long since I’ve made a practice of journaling that I find myself stumbling as I attempt to begin a new journal. And so for the third or fourth time, I will attempt a new beginning. The new journal, of course, is also, to use a worn out old phrase, a new chapter in my life. Then again for a student, it seems as though with every fall a new chapter begins. But I suppose that technically I am done being a student for a while, and so this beginning is both the beginning of my life beyond the role of student (for the time-being, that is) and also the beginning of another year en France. It seemed appropriate that I start fresh with a new username, but I could not manage the creativity to come up with one. So here I am again - bonjourfeuilles.
Today has been haphazardly perfect, but the perfection of today doesn’t really make sense unless I back track a little bit into last week. Since last week I have been able to make a great deal of progress in terms of preparing for my imminent departure (in ten days, not including today!). It took a few nights of restless sleep to really get me motivated, but I find that once I’ve written a list and at least attempted to take care of one or two things on it, it becomes easier to get things done.
The big things on the list are either taken care of or will be soon. There is an official copy of my birth certificate translated into French sitting on the dining room table and finally the paperwork from France has been sent to the consulate in Boston so that my work visa can be issued. My housing situation is still up in the air – there is a couple who have a room in the 15th arrondissement that I really am hoping to live in. They were supposed to have made a decision by July 30th. It is now August 14th and they said that they would let me know either by or on August 15th. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. If that doesn’t work out, there is a girl who contacted me last night. She is also in the same area, so I e-mailed her and am awaiting a reply. Part of me thinks that I should be very stressed out about the fact that the housing situation is not yet secure, and maybe come tomorrow there will be some sort of a meltdown, but for the time being I am not really worried. The visa and the birth certificate were my main concerns.
This is my final week of babysitting. It is really hard for me to grasp the fact that on Friday I will leave Emeline and June and not return to watch them on Monday. When I started babysitting for them in June, it seemed as though the summer stretched on forever and I was uncertain as to how I would fill eight to nine hours a day with them. But apparently I did. There was the usual playing outside, going to museums, picnics, playgrounds, bikes, etc. We swam a great deal more than we did last summer. June finally took off her floatie in the pool and practiced swimming like a big girl. I also convinced her to get on a bike without training wheels and, with very little help she quickly got the hang of it. She’s had a summer full of moments of which to feel proud. And soon she’ll be off to kindergarten. It makes me feel a little silly to put this down in writing, but it is really sad that I will be so far away from the girls and that big things in their lives will continue to happen that I won’t get to be a part of.
And so it is my last week of babysitting, but I am sitting here writing a journal entry in the middle of the day because . . . I got the day off. Leslie had to go to New York and took the girls with her, letting me go home at 10 AM. It is kind of nice though – haphazardly perfect, as I began to say. When I left her house, I went to drop off a check for her at the bank and went to the market. I came home and soon Jayne came over for a while. She, my mom and I went to the quilting store to pick out some fabric for a pillow my mother is making. Jayne and the rest of her family heads back to London tomorrow and I know Jayne is sad to be leaving, so I thought it would be fun to let her pick out some fabric and to make a little pillow. My Mom agreed to help and Jayne picked out a fabric for Margo as well. We got home and I sent them upstairs to get started while I made lunch. After lunch and the pillows Jayne and I read together for a bit and looked at pictures from my parents’ visit to France when I was there last. Then she headed off to a friend’s house.
I’ve been kind of lazy since then, but was able to make an appointment that I needed to make and called the fancy shoe store about exchanging my danskos for a smaller size, which they said I can do even though I’ve already passed the ten day exchange period. Yesterday I made an appointment for a hair cut for next Tuesday at 5:30. Oh! And how can I forget to mention that Tucker called me this morning and will be coming for a visit this evening! The perfection of today is made up of a lot of little things that are falling into place.
I think that what will ultimately break my heart is this Friday when I leave babysitting for the last time this summer. One afternoon early on in the summer I was leaving and June asked me, “Uh, I watch you leave?” “Sure,” I told her. First she followed me out the back door. Then she ran back in the house and as I walked down the driveway, she walked through the house watching me through the windows. Then she went to the front door, popped her head out and started calling out to me, “BYE BECKY!” Needless to say I felt flattered by the attention. It only took me about a week to notice that she was obsessed with watching EVERYONE leave and I didn’t feel quite so special.
Regardless, she was always interested in what exactly I did once I left her house. It seemed like some great mystery – what would I do without children around to entertain? The truth is that I rushed out of her house so that I could get home, sit for a minute while having a quick snack and then throw on gym cloths and rush off to the gym to get a solid workout in before it closed. Exhausting, absolutely, but I became determined to keep up with it. So our end of the day ritual became her checking with me to see if I was going to the gym and then watching me leave.
Yesterday when I left and she asked if she could watch me, her mom (Leslie) laughed and commented on how cute it is. I laughed too and told her flattered I was to be by June’s desire to see me go until I realized that she does it with everyone. Leslie said that she thinks it all started with me, which allowed me to regain a little satisfaction. When Friday comes this week, June will watch me leave for the last time. I don’t know if she’ll really understand it or not, but like I said, I think that that very moment will be the one to break my heart.
Every summer I say that it could very well be my last summer babysitting for the neighborhood kids and I get sad thinking about how much bigger they will be if I do return. But this summer, I really do think it could be my last. When I get back from France I will be looking for a real, grown up type job. And as it stands now, I will very likely be looking in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my sister hopes to be moving.
Thinking about all of this is making me a little teary eyed right now, so I think I’ll just end this here and wait to face goodbyes until it is absolutely necessary to do so. |
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| The unwilling suspension of disbelief . . . |
[Jun. 28th, 2005|08:43 am] |
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(written late last night)
Well, i suppose that's about it. My suitcases are actually packed and weighing in right about where they should be. My carry on luggage is (mostly) organized and the bags of trash are sitting by my door waiting for me to take them down and out tomorrow. Every drawer here is empty, every wall here is empty, and my head feels kind of empty, but this is my last entry here and i feel as though it should be anything but. Perhaps it's a defense mechanism to keep me from completely breaking down. Even though finishing up with packing this evening wasn't exactly what i'd call a good time, it wasn't horrifically stressful and things have just been kind of calm.
The conference this weekend was good. For clarification purposes i am going to re-explain what this conference was. It was a small conference consisting of 9 scholars of chinese history, 6 of whom are on the editorial board of an academic journal called "Nan Nu: men, women, and gender in china." The conference had a two fold purpose i suppose: 1. it served as an opportunity for the editorial board to have an in person meeting for the first time since their first meeting in 1997 and 2. it was a conference at which each member presented a paper that the rest of the scholars then critiqued and discussed. The conference began friday with an editorial board meeting in the evening, at which their publisher was present, and ran until sunday evening at which time we had a fantastic banquet at a local (well, the only) chinese restaurant in town. Most people left the conference, which took place at a chateau turned hotel in Shengen Luxembourg, today (monday). The chateau was absolutely breathtaking in a perfectly picturesque village next to a river. The rooms were simple but very nice, there was coffee and tea constantly available and the food (all of which we ate there with the exception of the banquet) was delicious - fish, chicken, salad, fresh veggies and fruits, cheese, and always a bottle of wine from the local vineyards.
At first i was rather intimidated because it was very small and most of the participants already knew each other. My first impression of some of them was that they were rather intellectual snobs who needed to get down off of their high horses. Well, there was one in particular who seemed incredibly pretentious and i found myself fantasizing about telling her off just a little: "you're a scholar of IMPERIAL CHINESE HISTORY," i would remind her, "no one actually really CARES about what you do or who you are other than a whole bunch of overeducated, pompous pricks who are as irritating and self absorbed as yourself. We are currently in the year 2005 and the reason why your academic journal doesn't have more subscriptions is that, well, who cares?" But the truth of the matter is that it is rather interesting what these people do (to me at least) and they (for the most part) are not really pompous pricks, but in fact very intelligent, very well educated individuals who have done an enormous amount of research and work in this field and it is impressive. It's just a lot less impressive when accompanied by an attitude.
As i've explained, each participant of the conference had written a paper and was to present it to the others for a discussion and critique. My official duty was to take notes on this. I did my best to keep up, but it was very easy to get lost due to my lack of knowledge of many of the subject matters. However, i don't think that they really needed anyone taking notes anyway. The real intent in having me attend this conference, it seems to me, was to give me a better view at what scholarship is, at what scholars do, at the life of a professor outside of the classroom, and let me tell you, there's a lot that a university student doesn't know or consider. I probably learned the most this weekend outside of the paper sessions, while we sat around in the garden of the chateau sipping wine and chatting. I listened to conversations about research and papers, the difficulties of teaching while trying to really do the research that one wants to, one's life work. I heard talk of books and publishing and this journal. Names of various scholars working in this field and related ones were tossed around, as were complaints about the bureaucratic end of university life. Other complaints included the difficulty in teaching unmotivated students - students who come to class on the first day and raise their hand to ask "what do i have to do to get a C - in your class?" Comparisons were made between the university systems in various countries. There were all sorts of stories of travels all around the world, some travels for research purposes and others for personal. Sometimes it felt as though they were talking in foreign languages and i certainly did far more listening than talking.
Part of my quietness came from the fact that no one seemed to really understand where i fit in at first - myself included. As i already mentioned, out of the 9 scholars, 6 have been on the editorial board of this journal for the past 8 years and thus know each other very well. The others could at least talk shop. I, on the other hand, felt very much lacking in anything worthwhile or intelligent to say at first and so during the free time friday night i opted to watch t.v. in my room instead of to join the others for wine in the garden. However, sometime into saturday things started to warm up and the scholars were more sociable with me. By saturday night i was feeling more at ease and by the banquet sunday night i was having a grand old time.
The banquet was a really good time. Everyone at the conference spoke chinese, so they all talked with the hostess in chinese and it was fun to hear Professor Ropp speaking in chinese. The food was excellent - Professor Ropp had ordered one order of various dishes so we were able to eat various things including duck, frog, chicken, and shrimp. There was, of course, good wine to accompany the food and the conversation was also a nice accompaniment to the meal. When we were done in the restaurant we retired to the garden where we sat chatting until around 11pm or 11:30. This morning was breakfast and goodbyes. And now, after one of the worst train rides ever, i am back in Dijon.
Why was it a bad train ride? Well, the first leg from Luxembourg to Metz ville wasn't awful. Uwe, who just this year retired from being the director of Clark's study abroad office and who helped get me to France, gave me a ride to the train station and we had a really nice chat. I got out of his car feeling really good about the amount of support that i have from my professors and Clark in general. Anyway, that first train ride wasn't bad, but the second one which was 3 hours long was rather awful. For starters, i had the isle seat and it looked as though whoever had the window seat had not shown up as we pulled away. That's not bad. What was bad was when my seat partner showed up and turned out to be some teenage boy who wasn't french (i couldn't figure out what language he was speaking with his travel mates who, for some reason, weren't sitting anywhere near him). The non-frenchness wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that as i sat there with my headphones in listening to my music, i could hear HIS music because he had it turned up so loud. He also was chewing loudly and popping gum, tapping, jiggling his legs, changing c.d.'s every five seconds and basically being incredibly antsy and i just wanted to grab him and say "just calm down and BREATH." But we didn't speak the same language. I came very close to just reaching over and turning his music down. Did i? No. So what did i do? I gave him 50 centimes. Well, the food guy came around and this already totally strung out boy managed to order himself a coke, but didn't have enough money nor did he understand when the man told him that he was 50 centimes short. And so i dug around my bag and paid for him. Why? I'm not quite sure. I guess i just figured that even if he was annoying like no other, he still might have been thirsty.
His loud music continued, his travel companions kept coming over to talk to him and the women across the isle kept glaring in our direction. Finally i had to pee really badly, so i got up to go find a bathroom (taking my bag with me). On my way to find the bathrooms i discovered that there were about 20 free seats just on the other side of our car, so after peeing, i installed myself there and was able to get a little bit of sleep. However there was something wrong with our car because it was unbearably hot and everyone was absolutely melting. I don't know if those trains are supposed to be air conditioned or not, but i don't think that it was normal for it to have been as hot as it was. My head hurt, i was tired and the three hours seemed to last forever. But i did finally arrive in Dijon.
For our last dinner tonight, the Louvrier's took me out. It was a very sweet gesture and meant that we didn't have to deal with the dog, with granny, with a hot kitchen or anything. It was myself, Francois, Brigitte and Charles. We went to a cute restaurant a little ways out of Dijon and drove through some vineyards to get there. The food was nice and it was just so good to have this one last evening with them. Brigitte kept talking about when i come back to France and how when she's doing this or that she'll think of me. We took a different road home and we drove by this neat chateau on the way. The whole while it was just so typical, so normal, so the Louvrier's i suppose. On the way to the restaurant Charles asked me how you say "cave" in english and i told him that it's "wine cellar." He was a bit confused and thought that i had said "seller," which Francois took as a perfect opportunity to tease me about how french is better than english in claiming that such a mistake proves that english is too vague or something like that. I replied matter-of-factly that if i understood correctly two words that are pronounced the same way is called "homonymie" and does indeed exist in french as well. Brigitte said bravo and found an example or two and Francois laughed. Then Brigitte said that she'll miss having me around to help her defend herself against Francois. I suppose that the other noteworthy news from dinner is that Francois called me "Rebecca" or perhaps it was even "Becky."
I'm getting up at 8 tomorrow so that i will be sure to see Brigitte before i leave (or before she leaves for work). Then i'm meeting Hei Won and Tomoko at 9 for breakfast (though i'll have already eaten, i think we'll go for coffee). At 11 Charles is going to give me and my stuff (oh and do i have stuff) to the train station. Tomoko and Hei Won had been planning on helping me drag it all there, but the car will make life a whole lot easier and i'm sure that they can still come if they'd like to. Francois will be around all morning, so no worries about saying goodbye to him. I'm not sure about Edouard and Guillaume. My guess is that Guillaume will be around, but maybe not Edouard. I didn't get to take any pictures of them yet, which is kind of unacceptable. I should be able to at least get a picture or two with Brigitte, Charles, and Francois tomorrow. I still need to take some pictures along la rue de la liberte (which i'm planning on doing either right before i meet Tomoko and Hei Won or with them).
Now here's the thing. I still don't believe that i'm leaving. When Uwe said goodbye to me today, he told me to have courage and not let the US get me too depressed. I thought it was very sweet of him to say and everyone has been really sensitive and understanding about the fact that going home will be a culture shock or it will at least be an adjustment. And the thing is that i can't just up and come back to Dijon for a day or two if i start to miss it, it's far away.
Ug, i feel as though i should have some sort of really deep, retrospective, thoughtful things to say here, as of tomorrow i will no longer be "Michael en France." But there doesn't seem to be much to say and there certainly doesn't seem to be much original to say. This year has been a triumph and an accomplishment. It's been a huge challenge and it's been an eye opening experience. It's been frustrating and it's been rewarding. It's been a lot of time alone, a lot of time face to face with myself. Jess the Clark alum asked me last week if i feel different, changed. She said that after her first year in France she just felt like a whole new person. I'm not really sure what my answer to that is. Part of me wants to say that i am totally changed, part of me feels very much the same, part of me wants to say "well yes i've changed, but who's to say that it was any more or less than it would have been elsewhere" and part of me is thinking that i'm not yet in a position to see the changes that have taken place in me. And it's all perfectly valid in my opinion.
I've been listening a lot to Simon and Garfunkel recently and there is a particular song lyric that has really caught my attention and seems to feel very familiar and right on to me right now: "now the years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly and i am older than i once was and younger than i'll be that's not unusual. No it isn't strange, after changes upon changes we are more or less the same, after changes we are more or less the same." I guess that's my answer. Ok, i know, i'm not some old woman and the years aren't exactly flying by me, but time just seems to be slipping through my fingers these days and i can't really hold on to anything. College is such a strange and kind of unnatural time i think. It's life in a series of months and often feels as though there is a real lack of continuity to it. Coming to France was definitely a disruption in that sense. A good disruption, but a disruption nonetheless. And now it's basically over. Ten months gone, each week checked off and accounted for. And in another ten weeks i will be back at Clark, then two semesters and i graduate and who knows where i'll end up after that. The years are rolling by, but perhaps they aren't actually rocking so evenly as much as they are sometimes bumping and bouncing, stalling and accelerating. In any case, however they are moving, they are moving and i am therefore inevitably older, though i suppose the aging process isn't merely a matter of tallied days and weeks and months and years. It's what fills those man made measurements of time that really makes for growth and age and i think that it's safe to say that my ten carefully measured french months have been full enough that i can say that i'm a little older than i once was, but certainly still much younger than i'll be.
So after changes upon changes . . . I've always had a fear of change. You're looking at a girl who spent all but the first few months of her life living in the very same room in the very same house on the very same street. A girl who went to kindergarten with one of her best friends from high school. Change was always a subtle thing in my life and as it started to get more and more in my face and i learned how to handle it more, one thing that always concerned me was the fear of losing myself in the process of changing. But i think that it's fairly just to say that after changes upon changes we are more or less the same. Or at least i'm finding that it's pretty accurate for myself because the changes that i can feel in myself at this point (in regards to this year) are the type of things that are resting on top of the older, mustier, more aged parts of myself. The reliable, comfortable, worn in things that i like about myself have certainly been shaken up a bit from time to time, challenged a bit perhaps. That's not such a bad thing and in the end they're still there whether or not i'm always aware of them. In fact, in some ways i think that this year has uncovered parts of myself that had long since been buried - little things like feeling passionate about nature, or excited about reading.
So i left France myself and i'm coming home myself. Now i can speak french at a decent level and have visited various countries that i had never seen in person before. I have learned out to pay rent and do grocery shopping. I've lived in a city and made good use of public transportation. My hair is longer than it's been in about seven years and i wear it up on a daily basis. But then i still need to call my mom to ask her things like "is it o.k. if i just throw all of my socks away? They are taking up so much space in my suitcase and i just can't handle it! I figure i can always by cheap ones when i get home." and i'm sure come this fall will still be calling my dad stressing out about my classes and schedule and major and life. I still stay up until hours later than i should and spend the day complaining about how my eyes twitch and wondering what on earth is wrong with me. I could go on listing things but i suppose that that last one about the staying up too late and twitchy eyes is probably trying to tell me something. Sure i can sleep on the plane tomorrow, but i have miles to go before i actually be on the plane and i should be fairly alert for that.
Um, so i guess this is it. Maybe next year when i start to read this journal over, i'll actually believe that i did all of this. |
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| Ok, coffee is probably not the best thing for me to be drinking right now . . . |
[Jun. 22nd, 2005|11:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
The closer i get to leaving the crazier i get. Totally normal, yes, i know and as much as i keep cursing these few days before my depart (for various reasons), i know that they are an important part of this whole thing. This whole week has been such a process.
I managed to stay in bed until 11am this morning. It was hot and i kept waking up, falling back asleep, waking up and thinking "oh god in one week i won't be in France! Oh GOD i have so much to do in order to not be in France in a week! Oh god just go back to sleep." And so until 11am i convinced myself to do so.
I did my so completely mechanical and unchanging morning breakfast routine (and mechanical and unchanging are not meant to be negative at all, in fact it's a very comforting routine), after which i took a shower and got to work. Got to work with what you ask? Ohhhh you know, EVERYTHING. Every single picture came down, every single knickknack was removed from it's home and wrapped yup. Every drawer that had remaining stuff in it (and there actually weren't many) was emptied. I pulled out my big suitcase and put it on the table. Then i started to pack it. Eventually it was rather full. In fact, it was so full that even expanded as much as possible it was quite difficult to close. And then getting it off the table onto the ground . . . well um, i kind of pushed and then there was a big thud. Then i wrestled with it until it was standing and thought to myself "Wow, that thing is absolutely huge . . . crap."
Then i think that i came down here to check email or just to get away from my room. Oh, let's keep in mind that it was well in the 90's today. Anyway, i got the vacuum and went back up, vacuumed, then sat down with the suitcase, unpacked it, repacked it taking some stuff out. Then i came down to get a scale, brought it back up, couldn't get it to work, gave up for the time being, came back down to go to the post office to ask about how on EARTH to fill out those stupid customs forms, talked with an incredibly sweet woman who was like "oh don't worry about it, just make a list of stuff you packed," then called mom and made her convince me to throw my schoolwork away, continued to chat with her about nothing which calmed me down because i was going slightly insane for fear of going overweight with my bags/not being able to deal with dragging my giant suitcase, small suitcase, backpack, and co. from here to the airport etc. Then i came back in, unpacked the box to throw away my school work, repacked the box adding a few books since there was more room without the school work, traded my copy of "the Da Vinci Code" for Charles' copy because his is smaller than mine, filled out the paperwork, went to the post office and got the box sent (the same nice lady took care of it for me), went for a walk to the park in the sweltering heat, sat on a bench and tried to not get killed by the bizarre game of catch that involved six guys randomly throwing a football and a frisbee as hard and violently and randomly as possible to one another, walked back to centre ville, tried on two bikini's that didn't fit but didn't cause my self esteem to plummet either, went back to my room, washed my face and put on a little makeup, went to the train station and took a picture of myself in the same photomat where i took a picture of myself about a week after getting here, came back here and wasted time on the computer for about 45 minutes before dinner.
Then it was dinner. Brigitte had her mom and Charles eat before us so that we could eat calmly and in peace. It was really nice. Apparently no one seems to be able to keep track of when i leave here - well no, actually Francois knew, but Brigitte somehow didn't realize that i leave so soon. We explained it to her and she was totally surprised and kind of sad i think. The dinner kind of continued in that vain. Well, perhaps not the surprised one, but the kind of sad. Except that it wasn't overtly sad and perhaps it was just me. Right, point being that it was one of those good dinners, full of conversation and laughter and Brigitte being in a good mood and not stressed out and i have two more meals with them and that's it. And it kept coming up too, now that everyone knows when i leave it was "but soon you'll be gone and we won't have time to . . . " or "we never got around to doing . . . " " oh we have to, but i guess it's to late . . ." I think that the name of the game was make me cry. It continued to be as sadly wonderful after we finished eating and Francois went to smoke his cigarette because Charles made, or uh attempted to make, blueberry muffins today (using my mom's recipe) and they came out . . . well, they aren't the blueberry muffins that mom makes. So Brigitte and i stayed in the kitchen and went through the recipe. At one point Charles came in and we figured out that the major problem was that he had used an electric mixer (and to be honest, i feel like it's more of a blender, meaning that he like chopped up the blueberries or something). Anyway, now he knows what to do next time. Then Brigitte and i went through the rest of the recipes that mom had sent me to make with them, or at least to give to them. It was all in english and so we went through them together so that i could explain things that were a little complicated. The chicken pot pie recipe was fun because it wasn't so much a recipe as it was mom explaining in an email how to make it. There were funny phrases like "so anyway, no matter what you end up with a pile of chicken chunks," and others like "ok, it's coming back to me now, i remember when i first started making this . . ." Brigitte found it really cute.
Then i don't even know, we continued to chat, she gave me some laundry that she had done for me back and commented on how she won't have any more girls things to wash now that i'm leaving. She also made a comment earlier about how it'll be boring around here without me. I told her that she can keep my laundry basket (one of the mesh foldable ones, she thought it was really great) because i can easily get one in the states and anything that i can leave or get rid of makes my life that much better. "It'll be for Edouard and i'll think of you every time he brings it over . . ." This is exactly what i wanted, to become a part of my host family and to really establish a relationship with them. What i really want is for Charles and Brigitte to come visit me in the states. I'd love for Francois to come too, but he can't really travel much these days. I don't even know, i'm just beyond my abilities to express or write or feel or whatever. I leave for Luxembourg the day after tomorrow. I mean really, starting tomorrow it's all over and it's already all over but it's so not over at all yet. Yeah, how's that for making sense.
Oh, at dinner tonight we finally were able to come to some understanding about my not eating rice, because there was rice again and, pour pas changer, Francois had to comment on it yet again, saying that i don't eat it because i'm afraid of getting fat. Brigitte came to my defense saying that i just don't like it and i was finally able to appease both, so to speak. I explained that yes, fine, one part of the reason why i don't eat it (here at least) is because i don't want to get fat. I know that eating rice alone won't make me fat, i'm not dumb. However, as i explained, i don't particularly love rice, it's not that i hate it, but i don't absolutely love it and if i don't love it and feel like it could be a factor in me putting on weight (i mean, especially here with all of the bread and cheese and other stuff that i eat), why eat it? Francois actually seemed content with this explanation - his "you don't want to get fat bit" was slightly justified, as was Brigitte's "she just doesn't like it" explanation. And Brigitte agreed with me saying "it's hard enough to be good with all of the foods that we DO like, so she's right, why eat something that we aren't crazy about?" They both also commented on the fact that i haven't put on a ton of weight here and that i look good. And i suppose what is most important is that i too am feeling good about how i look after a year here. There will always be something that i don't like i suppose, but i know that i did a good job of eating well and getting exercise as best as i could here.
And that's what we talked about next, eating habits, how we ate here, etc. Then Francois asked me what i'm going to "bring home" in regards to french cooking. It was an interesting question and i told him that i'd like to make some quiches at home, that i probably will opt for oil and vinegar (perhaps with a bit of mustard) instead of pre-made salad dressings and that if i could, i would keep eating french cheeses. I can't really think of much else, other than perhaps just a greater appreciation for food and for food preparation. I mean, just the idea of food is so big in France, we talked about it so much, that i suppose that without realizing it, i've become a lot more aware of food, food quality, where food comes from (they always talk about that), how we eat, how much we eat, when we eat, etc.
And so, tomorrow is a big day. Big day because my goal is to basically get everything except for stuff that i need this weekend packed. Big day because i have to close my bank account. Big day because it's my last full day in Dijon. So what's the game plan? Before i go to bed tonight i am going to "pack" my big backpack with all of my dirty laundry in order to 1. make sure that it fits and 2. have an easy way to transport it over to Jess's tomorrow (you know, Brigitte would probably be really horrified if she knew that i was doing laundry elsewhere, she'd feel badly about it, but it just makes everyone's lives easier, it really does). Tomorrow i will then take my laundry all "packed up" to Jess's, put a load in and head over to the bank to close my account, head back to Jess's to switch loads, and sit and breath for a little bit (watch some t.v. perhaps?). Once my laundry is done, i can pack all of it right then and there and that way, my packing will be done (for the most part). I have a coffee date with Tomoko and Hei Won at 5pm, and i'm wondering if that's going to cause me to rush . . . I want to get a walk in because my walking days here are numbered, but if i get up early to do it (and by early i do mean like 9 or 10) it will be too hot. Well, who am i kidding, it will be too hot no matter what time i get up. Bon enfin bref (which kind of means "anyway"), i should be heading up to my room to organize my laundry and to get to bed because tomorrow will be a full day and then i'm off to Luxembourg. I keep saying it or telling myself or talking about it to try to make it more real. It's kind of not working though.
p.s. - Brigitte showed me a picture from her and Francois' wedding tonight. It was really cute. |
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| I kind of have to pee . . . |
[Jun. 22nd, 2005|12:37 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  hot | ] |
Well, one week from right now, this very absolute moment, i will be on an airplane somewhere over the atlantic ocean. I just got off of the phone with mom - our last phone date. I'm sitting in the Louvrier's living room and listening to an odd mixture of traditional accordion music and rock that are sharing the stage of the place St. Benigne tonight. Dijon itself is a stage tonight for it is the national music festival and throughout the big cities of France the streets have been transformed into concert halls and people are out eating, drinking, dancing, and having a good time. I went out earlier with Nadira and a friend of hers and we walked around for a good two hours, fighting our way through unbelievable crowds of people. We kept saying to each other "But where did they all come from???" The rue de la liberte was closed off and there were just people everywhere. Every half block or so there would be a different band and most likely it would be a different style of music. There were also rappers, electronic music, and it was quite an amusing array of musical styles, often humorously juxtaposed - like the band covering the Beatles right next to this really loud drum and bass music. We were also quite amused by all of the american songs that were being played - american songs that were popular when we were about 11 and 12. In fact, the song that is currently being played across the street is "losing my religion" - good song, just kind of funny to hear it being covered in France. Ha, in fact, the singer was losing his "reeligion" instead of "rihligion." We also heard "wonder wall" and "city of angels" (i think that's what it's called).
Around 11:15 my mom called, which i was expecting. Unfortunately she called right as we were trying to force our way by a heavy metal band, through a shoulder to shoulder crowd of people - half trying to get through, half standing still to listen to the band. I picked up the phone and could barely hear if mom was really on the other end. "MOM" i shouted into the phone, "MOM IF THAT'S YOU I HOPE YOU CAN HEAR ME, I WILL CALL YOU BACK IN FIVE MINUTES, OK? I WILL CALL YOU BACK IN FIVE MINUTES!" Then i hung up, we got through the crowd and i told Nadira and her friend that i was going to head back here. I was pretty exhausted and dehydrated anyway, so i said goodbye, turned around and started to dash off. My dashing was abruptly halted by one of the shin high metal column things that line the street to prevent people from parking there. I slammed my shin into it, may have let out a yell, but it would have been lost in the din anyway, and headed back here.
It has hit 90 every day this week and i am finding that i have less and less of a tolerance for heat with every passing year. I don't know what i'm going to do when i'm old. I was in SUCH an awful mood today. So easily frustrated and ready to yell at people - though i kept all of that in my head. I slept really well last night though, and slept in this morning. That was good. At least the heat doesn't disturb my sleep. Of course i ran into the same problem with getting up around 11am and not being able to do errands because by the time i was dressed and ready to go out, things closed. Well, anyway, of the four things that i was determined to do today i did um, like 2.5. Well, yeah. What i mean is that i weighed the box and found that it is well within the weight limits. Then i tried to fill out the accompanying paperwork and gave up. It was really confusing and i just couldn't deal with it. So i only have finished that. Then i went to the bank, where i found out that i need an APPOINTMENT to close my account. Oi. So the soonest the could give me is thursday at 2pm. Thank god that they had one open before friday. The woman assured me that it should only take about 30-45 minutes and that i can do it all in one day. So i guess that's kind of half done.
My other to tasks were fully accomplished. Nadira and i met up and went to buy our train tickets first. I said that i needed a ticket to Paris the 28th around 11:40am. It was the same really nice guy who took care of my Chamonix tickets, though he did not remember me. Then he said "and for the return?" and i wailed "there is none!" Then Nadira and i exchanged pathetic "i can't believe that we're buying our final tickets!" looks. I said that i was sad to leave and he said "really?" because he thought that i was maybe being sarcastic. I assured him that i was serious. Then Nadira bought the same ticket for July 2nd and we kept saying things like "this is so weird, this is so sad, etc." We decided that for the extra 11E it was worth it to go first class, by the way. I am very content with this decision because this is going to be a long, kind of hard (physically and emotionally) trip and i want it to be as comfortable as possible. Then we went to the airfrance place here and bought shuttle tickets. So now all of my tickets have been bought and all i have to do is show up at the right place at the right time.
I had to go back to Jess's this evening because i had forgotten a shirt there. She asked how things were going and i was telling her about how i've started organizing and trying to pack but i keep getting distracted and sort of running in circles. Then i mentioned how i need to wash some more cloths before packing - it's the tail end of my winter cloths that had gotten dirty and then never washed because it got hot and i didn't need them anymore. They aren't too dirty but i'd rather not put dirty laundry packed up in my suitcase. The second that i mentioned laundry Jess said "Becky! You know that you are more than welcome to come do it here! Seriously, it's totally fine, really." I could technically do it or have it done here, but her offer seemed kind of appealing. Then she said that she'll be at work all day on thursday, so why don't we meet up sometime on thursday, she'll give me her keys, i can come over and do my laundry and have the apartment to myself to just relax and have some personal space for a while. "Put a load in, watch some t.v. while it washes, just relax and kick back for a while." Now that was an offer that i couldn't refuse. She is so right in saying that having that space, even if only for a few hours, will be really good for me. Even though my room here is separate and all, it's still limiting in that i can't just do my laundry, or that if i want coffee i have to be in the apartment. As much as i feel totally at ease and at home here, there's always still a slight feeling of having to be on my best behavior or whatever. Anyway, it'll just be nice. And so we've agreed to meet up around 1pm (which means that i can sleep in) so that she can give me the key. I can put a wash in, then go close my bank account, then head back to change laundry and to just sit and watch t.v.
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Hm, despite the nap this evening, the coffee that i just drank and all, i'm feeling kind of exhausted. It's the heat. I suppose that i could go to bed. Well, no, i'm going to go do some more organizing/packing. I think that pictures are coming down for real tonight. I want to go see a movie tomorrow, so if i do that tonight, i'll feel as though i have time to bum around tomorrow. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 20th, 2005|05:00 pm] |
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Nadira is coming over. |
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| Inevitable, it was inevitable . . . |
[Jun. 20th, 2005|04:51 pm] |
I left here at 11:23 this morning and got back barely an hour ago (3:30ish). I bought disposable cameras and walked all over the place, took pictures, roasted in the sun, and ended up in centre ville where i bought basically everything that i had wanted to get. Then i came back here and made plans to meet up with Nadira at 5pm for coffee. I decided on 5 because i figured that after being out for so long, a nap would be perfect. Umm, yeah, no. I didn't even last two minutes laying down. I had barely closed my eyes when i leapt out of bed because i couldn't be still while thinking about everything that i have to do. And so i thought "ok, well i can pack my carry on stuff now."
So, i got out my massive amounts of bubble wrap and started wrapping breakable stuff up. Then i packed that in a cardboard box and sat it in my suitcase. Then i decided that that was stupid because the box took up too much room and was slightly unnecessary. So i took the box out and started arranging the stuff that was in the box directly in the suitcase. I decided that i would pack it in sweaters and winter clothing and stuff - more padding. So i dragged out all of the sweaters that i have left here. Then suddenly it dawned on me - i can't pack my carry on at all! I'm using that suitcase to go to Luxembourg so it has to remain empty. I mean i could do a "dry run" to see what fits and how it fits and to reassure myself that i'm doing alright on space, sure. But i got fed up and just dumped everything (which had been on my bed) onto the floor. Then i laid down to take another nap. Or to try again to nap.
Then i leapt up again. Ok, well, i could always pack my winter cloths right now. No, wait, no i couldn't. I don't know which of my winter cloths will need to go in carry on and so i don't want to get it all packed away. Then i thought, well why not put the mustard and cassis in the big suitcase. If it's all wrapped up in bubble wrap AND winter clothing, that should be fine. Then i thought "hm, yeah, SHOULD be fine, but if i get home and find my winter clothing encrusted with cassis, mustard and GLASS i will not be a very happy person. Plus, i have these visions of security tearing through my suitcase and in the process of pulling out a sweater, a jar of mustard goes flying out of the suitcase and breaks. Just not a good scenario. And since it's food stuffs, i feel like it needs to be carry on with me.
So i laid down to try to nap again. I don't even know if i got as far as laying down before i thought "ok, room pictures! You can do that, and you have to do it before you pack your room up. You have the disposable camera, so take the pictures!" So i leapt out of bed, grabbed the camera, opened my curtains to find that the sun was directly opposite my room and made for awful lighting. So i took hallway and stair pictures. Then i went back into my room and it was maybe 4:05. I knew that there was no way that i had a prayer of ever getting to sleep, and my room is just a big jumble, so i came down here. I found a movie that i'd like to see and quickly sent Nadira a text to see if we could do that instead. It sounded calming and good. Unfortunately she didn't respond and the movie started 7 minutes ago. I kind of feel like i might need to cancel on her. I don't want to be a jerk, i'm just so overwhelmed and it feels like there is no good place to start so i don't start but i need to start.
I think that the other problem is this: i leave for Luxembourg in three days and everything needs to be pretty well packed before i leave. However, there are certain things that should be packed first, certain things that cannot really be packed at all, and then other things. The things that should be packed first or just could be packed right now are things like pictures, candles, books. They're the kinds of things that make my room my room. Once i take them down, it's just going to be odd. It's fine that i'm leaving and that i have to clean myself out of this room, but i don't want to have to do it before i actually have to leave, you know? Maybe what i should do is i should see if Nadira would mind hanging out in my room while i sort stuff and get organized. It could be nice to have the company and i'm so on edge right now that i don't think coffee is going to be the best thing for me. Or maybe being out but not doing errands or real things will be good for me . . .
I need a plan. A plan is what i need. Order and organization. Ok. Well, i can't take down pictures and the stuff that makes my room "my room" until i have taken pictures of it - no point in taking pictures of it empty and such. Maybe the sun has moved enough so that i could go do that now. Or, maybe what i should do is that i should go straighten up the picture area, the candle area, and that stuff so that i can take pictures of THOSE things. The light is more for taking pictures of the window area and the wooden beams. Those are just pieces of the room, not MY things. Then, once the pictures of those things are taken, i can start to pack them. I mean, come on, i only have tonight (monday), tuesday night, wednesday night and thursday night. Ideally that would all be the last stuff to go, but it's just not practical. Or, maybe i pack all but like one thing, one candle. You know.
And clothing. I'll just start packing it. I mean, i pretty much wear the same two or three tank tops now, a couple of capris, one skirt, etc. Even if i want to leave my sweaters out, there are other things that can easily be packed right now. I just brought down most of the stuff that i want for the conference because it needs to be washed. I can clean out my desk.
Maybe i'll pack up my carry on to make sure it all works and then just unpack it. I could make piles. I could sort everything into piles of what will be packed in what and when i can pack it. Oh and i need to bring my colissimo box down to weigh it so that i can get that in the mail tomorrow. Right. This is doable, this is soooo doable. I am so capable of this. And even if i get it all done early and come wednesday and thursday have nothing to do, that's ok. I'll just hang out, i'll just sit at a cafe, i'll just walk, i'll just read, i'll just see a movie, i'll just be insane. I think that's part of the reason that i put stuff off, because i don't like not having stuff to do. I'd rather be stressed out and insanely scrambling around trying to get stuff together, but at the same time i need to realize that maybe right now is even the time to be scrambling here.
Tomorrow here are the outside of packing things that NEED to be done. Absolutely:
1. CLOSE MY BANK ACCOUNT (i am kind of nervous about how this works, but at LEAST i speak french this time around)
2. Buy train ticket to Paris
3. Buy shuttle ticket from gare de Lyon to CDG
4. Mail colissimo box
I just sent Nadira a text to ask if she'd mind hanging out with me here while i try to get some stuff packed. Now i'm waiting for a response . . . |
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| Literally just wasting time . . . |
[Jun. 20th, 2005|10:43 am] |
Monday morning, 10:34am. I spent this morning tossing and turning, waking up what felt like every half hour and then telling myself "go back to sleep dumbass, it's early, you'll just be tired if you wake up, and it's monday so stores are closed in the morning and you can't do any shopping anyway." Then i would fall back asleep for like a half hour, or maybe only ten minutes, or maybe a full hour that felt like ten minutes, then i'd wake up and it'd start again. Then i fell into a deep, fairly peaceful sleep accompanied by weird dreams (well, all my sleep last night seemed to be accompanied by weird dreams), but was abruptly woken up because my cell phone was ringing. No, well, in fact my cell phone was vibrating in my gray bag all the way across the room and it's kind of ridiculous that i am that sensitive to it. Anyway, i flew out of bed and picked it up in time to see that it was Jess calling but right as i tried to answer she was gone. Then i got a message saying that i had a new voice mail but it wouldn't let me check it because i was out of text-o's/minutes yet again (well, ok last time i specifically only bought a week's worth, and a week was up). So i peed, then i bought another week's worth of text's for another 5E and listened to her message. I forgot a shirt at her place, so she was just wondering if i wanted to pick it up, or meet up somewhere or what. I have to call her back, but it has to be from a phone booth because i didn't buy talking minutes for my cell phone. And seeing as i'm still in my p.j.'s, i have yet to call her back.
Hm, and last night i did indeed clean. I didn't get around to vacuuming or cleaning cleaning, but i threw stuff away, i organized, made piles, totally cleaned up my counter next to my sink that had become a bit of a disaster. My room is less cluttered and more breathable now. But it was strange. Strange to know that i am sort of at the beginning stages of packing EVERYTHING. Anything that's in that room needs to be packed or gotten rid of because i'm leaving. I'm moving. I'm probably going to spend all week writing the same stuff: "I can't believe i'm leaving! It's so weird to be moving etc. etc." but it's true. And so here i am, in my p.j.'s 10:41am. I suppose that i could have slept in more and it wouldn't have made a difference today. Like i said, nothing is open on monday morning, then they have their whole lunch deal from noon - 2pm. Well, no, Monoprix is definitely open and so i think that in like two minutes i will go shower, get dressed, hit monoprix for disposable cameras and start doing my Dijon picture taking. Then this afternoon i am determined to finish any and all souvenir shopping so that i can close my account tomorrow (not that they really depend on each other, but i'd prefer to do it this way). I also forgot to add to yesterday's list to deal with that 34E box that is sitting on my floor waiting to be weighed and mailed. Oh i have my work cut out for me. |
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| *Insert pathetic whine here* |
[Jun. 19th, 2005|10:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
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Well, i am supposed to be cleaning right now because i figure that cleaning is a good place to start for packing. But i'm not cleaning now am i? No, i would be writing and whimpering to myself because i just looked at the calendar and i am LEAVING soon. I've been so looking forward to going home that i hadn't really been paying attention that it is going to be SAD to leave. Sad and hard. I mean, yes i have been saying that recently, but it's just that there will be moments when it hits me and then i realize that this is the home stretch. And i'm sure that if i wasn't going home things would look different. That's just the way it goes. Things don't stay the same forever, things end, people move, blah blah blah. While doing some leadership training in high school, i learned that you should always end a community building game right at the peak, right when everyone is having a great time and laughing and really enjoying themselves. That way, the game ends with everyone feeling good about the game and the community and such. It leaves a good memory and a feeling of cohesiveness among the participants. And the next time you have a chance to do more community games, people will want to play that game again because of the good memories. And really, doesn't that just apply to everything? Ok, maybe not everything, but it makes a whole lot of sense. Leave things on a good note, on an up swing and the whole experience will have that positive overtone to it. He oui, la vie, ca continue sans cesse. Les choses changent, on bouge, on a le bonheur, on rencontre du mal, et a la fin de la journee, c'est peut-etre un choix, c'est l'attitude, c'est le regarde, bon, c'est la vie. C'est comme ca, c'est comme ca, hein?
But let's look at things in a bright, cheery light. Or at least, let's look at the up side of things for a second. Being sad to leave, and every day here making me a little more aware of things that i am going to miss here means that i'm leaving with good memories, good final moments, good feelings, triumph, accomplishment, independence, growth, knowledge and all of that stuff that this trip was supposed to bring. I think that before leaving i kept saying "man, i have no IDEA what this year will bring but at the same time there were some ideas or hopes in my head. Invented images of how things would look because that's only normal. And sometimes things end up matching those images that we create, whether it's chance or our own efforts that makes it so. And i think that the overall experience that i've had here, the overall feelings that i am experiencing, it's what i wanted to get out of it. The ends are living up to what i hoped they would be. The means of getting here, however, were nothing that i could have predicted. In some ways they were so simple, so not exciting, so basic, just getting through day to day, but day to day added up and i am going to miss it here. Just sitting here in my beanbag chair, feet propped up on my bed, music playing, window open, it's mine, it's my France, it's my life, it's my year.
I've had such a nice weekend. My last weekend in Dijon and i couldn't have asked for more. Friday night was the chorale party about which i've already written. Saturday i spent with Jess (the Clark alum). I went over to her place around 3pm and we started to do some laundry that i had brought over, and then just hung out chatting, gossiping about Clark and professors and such. When Julia woke up around 4pm we headed out to Carrefour. I had asked Jess if she'd mind taking me so that i could return the suitcase that i bought this week and pick up a few things. It turned out that she was in need of going anyway to do massive grocery shopping. So granted we took our time and weren't the fastest shoppers ever, we spent about 3 to 3.5 hours there. It was fun. I was able to return my suitcase and let me tell you getting handed 24E cash was amazing. Obviously it wasn't like i was getting paid, but still, receiving money instead of giving it felt great. Then i bought a totally cheapo suitcase that is actually slightly bigger for 9E. Hell yeah. It'll get me to and from Luxembourg and then it will get me home and that is all i am asking of these 9E. Fantastic! And i already know that it works well because i packed some of Jess's groceries in it to transport back to her place. I also bought some other stuff that i had wanted to get, including scotch tape, some mustard, a jar of cassis mustard and a jar of honey candies as a present for Professor Ropp. Jess got, mmm, everything. It was actually quite fun to be doing massive grocery shopping.
While we were in Carrefour she asked me if i'd be free to stay for dinner. I had nothing planned so i gladly accepted. Then when she was at the cheese counter (do we have cheese counters in the states?) i was telling her how i will definitely miss french cheese. So being the sweetheart that she is, she said "Well, pick out a cheese that you really like and we'll get it for after dinner." So i picked morbie (sp?) which i rather enjoy. Then she said that i could pick out another! So i chose epoisse.
When we finally got to the check out, we ended up finding a line that was not too long and our check out lady turned out to be fantastic. I paid for my stuff first because i had less and the woman totally started chatting with me. She noticed that i had bought some typical regional products and so asked if i was on vacation or what, and i explained how i had studied here this year etc. etc. She and Jess chatted a bit too and she thought that Julia was just adorable. She was in no rush to get us through or anything and it was just really pleasant and enjoyable. Jess and i were joking around later about how unfrench this woman was.
We got back to their place, put away groceries, hung out and Roc (Jess's husband) got Julia ready for bed while Jess and i made a salad with all sorts of delicious, fresh vegetables. Jess made a salad dressing to go with it that was delicious. It had chopped red onions, chives, oil, vinegar and parmesan cheese in it. We ate around 9pm, beginning with the salad. At carrefour Jess had bought some pre-made rice and chicken thing to have after the salad, but it was so unbelievably hot and we had been snacking a bit, so after the salad we weren't hungry enough to bother eating it. Plus, there was cheese to be had! Cheese and wine. Roc's big on wine and is pretty knowledgeable about it. By the time the cheese was over, we had finished off a bottle that Jess and i got at carrefour. The cheese was followed by fresh organic cherries and a very juicy peach. And a different wine. This time there was only enough for one glass, which was a good thing because i was feeling a little bit lightheaded. We sat around chatting for a while. Jess asked if i knew any good jokes and all i could come up with was mom's good old "What Irishman only comes out in the summer? Patty O'furinture!" Jess appreciated it.
And before we knew it, it was like 11 or 11:30. We had forgotten about my laundry, so while it was all clean, it was not all dry. However, i was planning on stopping by again at some point to give them my printer, so it wasn't a big deal. They said that i could go over today to pick up my laundry (leaving my suitcase there so that i could transport my laundry in my suitcase). Since it was so late, Roc gave me ride, which was really nice. And Jess sent me off with: half of the rice stuff that we hadn't eaten, the rest of BOTH of the cheeses that i picked out (!! i wasn't expecting that at all), AND toilet bowl cleaner (the end of a bottle) because i had mentioned how i was out and needed to ask Brigitte for some and Jess happened to have some.
I am so glad that i contacted Jess at the beginning of the year and that we got together. Even if we both got busy and didn't hang out a ton (in fact, i believe that we only got together this weekend and one other time this semester), just knowing that she was there, knowing that she was so supportive and encouraging and ready to help me out if i needed anything was such a comfort in and of itself. And anytime that we did get together, or i called her, she was always excited and glad to hear from me. She is just such a good, kind person. She's super self confident and just totally herself and assertive and open and fun to hang out with and it's just so neat that i was able to meet her and to get to know her a bit. I always felt completely welcomed by her and Roc and they were really such a good part of this year.
And i was able to partake in a little more of that goodness today when i went back to give them my printer and to pick up my laundry. I slept in nice and late this morning, went downstairs to find no fruit and to be yelled at by granny for needing more toilet paper and was, as a result, in quite a mood. I showered and got ready to go over to Jess's, printing off my flight info just to have a hard copy of it, then unplugging and packing up my printer. There is now a space on my table that seems kind of empty. Piece by piece this room is becoming no longer mine. It's strange. Anyway, i headed over to Jess's around 2pm or so.
We got my laundry together, i had a glass of water and Jess and i chatted a bit. She had a bunch of correcting to do and as i got ready to go Roc invited me to stay for lunch with him and Leo, his 14 year old son from his first marriage. Jess encouraged me to accept, and so i did. Because of her work, Jess didn't eat with us, so it was just the three of us. Roc is a very calm, very well spoken man. There is a tranquility about him. He does things slowly and quietly, whether it's eating or talking. We had a nice lunch - chicken, left over salad and dressing from last night (which really hit the spot) and then some good cheese. After we finished eating, Roc and i sat around for a good half hour, no, definitely an hour or more, talking about who knows what. Eventually Jess came out and was headed to see a friend of hers. She had decided that Julia (who went down for a nap around when i arrived, though it took her a good hour and a half to finally get to sleep) would not be going with her.
So once Jess was set to go, she and i headed out together because we were walking in the same direction. But then i had to cross the street and she had to keep going straight and so we had to say goodbye. Man, i am no good at goodbyes. I'd much rather just be like "hey, yeah, see you." or just to kind of disappear from someone's life or to have them just kind of disappear from mine. The formality and the ceremony of it and all, each person trying to come up with ways to sum up their relationships or their experiences or whatever, the "yeah maybe i'll see around"'s and all of that. It's not that i find it superficial (well, i mean it can definitely be), it's just that it feels unnatural. Or maybe sometimes it's just too much, it's too emotional or it's too final or it's too weird. However, when Jess and i parted ways today it actually wasn't a totally final goodbye. We know this because she, Roc, and Julia are going to be going to visit her family in the states mid-July and her mom lives probably about two hours north of where i live. So we've exchanged phone numbers and emails and everything and are going to meet up when she's in the states. I'd love it if they (her, Julia, Roc and her mom) would all come to my house for a barbecue, but it might be a little much to drive all the way down there. At the very least though we will meet up somewhere in between where we both live. So that was nice, a goodbye but kind of not really.
I spent the rest of the evening taking a walk and then just sort of bumming around here doing nothing. I watched part of a dvd, i checked email, i had some coffee, ate and such. Then about an hour ago Brigitte got back. She came into the dining room to say hi and looks great. You can tell that this week away did her a world of good and i'm really happy for her. It's also nice to have her back and not only because i know that means that there will always be fruit in the house. We've decided that i'm eating with them every night this week. I mean, it's normal because of meals that i missed while she was away and all. But how nice, i'm really glad that i'll get to eat with them every night of my last week here. And i'm not looking for anything elaborate or super fancy. It's just having this last week to chat, to spend time with them, and all. God and then next weekend i'm in LUXEMBOURG. And then i'm back here and then i'm home. I can't even begin to understand. It's so strange. So strange. It's going to be a culture shock. Oh there are so many things that i'm looking forward to so much and it will all be so normal and so not at all normal and wow. How's that for articulate huh?
And because i obviously haven't put off cleaning enough yet, let's go into list mode hein? What do i have left to accomplish between now and friday?
- Buy one way ticket to Paris (one way . . .)
- Buy ticket for the shuttle between the gare de Lyon and CDG (Jess told me that i can buy one for the airfrance bus that is cheaper than the shuttle that i found online - excellent)
- Finish last minute souvenir shopping
- Laundry (i need to wash a dress or two and a skirt or two for the conference)
- Close my bank account (noooot looking forward to this . . . i think that i'm going to do it on tuesday?)
- Buy disposable cameras and take pictures of Dijon, my room, etc.
- Uh, pack maybe?
- Clean (i know, i know, that's what i'm supppposed to be doing right now, but i'm saying, even if i clean tonight it will inevitably be a mess again by thursday and i want to make sure that i do a decent cleaning, complete with vacuuming and all of that before i leave)
- Um, not go insane?
Yeah that's all i can come up with, i mean, not that i need MORE stuff anyway. Ahhhh. Yeah. I feel like my best means of expressions right now is to make noises. So i'm going to uh go do that. Or, er, i mean, i'm going to clean and uh, sort cloths and um, clean out my desk and hhhuh yeah. That's it. |
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| FIVE MINUTES LATER |
[Jun. 18th, 2005|11:32 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  groggy | ] |
Well, i went back to the door. I listened. I opened it and listened. There was definitely running water in the pipes, you know, late night house noises that creep you out. Still, i wasn't looking forward to coming up here alone. I hesitated, closed the door and locked it. I walked back towards the kitchen were Francois was emptying the dish washer. I paused. I almost went back to the door and then i thought "you know what, just ask him to come stand at the bottom while you walk up. He'll understand." So i went and knocked on the kitchen door (not wanting to intrude if he was in his robe) and poked my head in. He laughed to see me up so late and after we said hi i said "could you do me a favor? I was about to go upstairs and i thought that i heard someone in the stairwell. I'm sure it was nothing, but the lights weren't on and it scared me, so would you mind just coming while i walk upstairs?" Now Francois enjoys poking fun at me, this i know and sometimes it does get to me depending on my mood. This was one time when i really didn't think i'd be able to handle him poking fun at me. I kind of thought that he'd make some joke about me being a girl and being afraid, blah blah. And you know what? He did not make fun of me me in the slightest. He took me completely seriously and was incredibly nice about it. Not only did he come to the stairs with me, he came into the stairwell, looked around, checked to make sure that the door at the bottom was locked (something that i didn't think to do, well, i didn't even get as far as turning the stairwell lights on myself) and he walked about halfway up with me, which actually isn't easy for him because of his leg. It was incredibly sweet. Thinking about it now, i realize that he and Brigitte are always kind of suspicious about things, about doors to the building being locked (or left unlocked) and the bar across the street and all, so i should have known that he would be nice about it. Like i said, he pokes fun at me but it's never ever mean or serious, even if sometimes i'm not in the mood for it or it feels like a little much. He's a really good guy. And now i am safely in my room. From the inside i usually only lock the top lock, but tonight i locked the bottom as well.
It almost seems fitting that tonight should end this way - with Francois doing something nice for me and showing me without showing that he cares about me. Fitting because tonight was the end of the year party for the chorale and i never would have in a million years guess it a month ago, but it was actually rather sad. Sad because i said goodbye to them, sad because i realized that i really like the people in the chorale, sad because i realized (though this has been evident for a while now) that i've become friends with Claire and that she likes me and it was just the idea of saying goodbye i guess. The idea that we all shared something as a group, that we all worked together, that we made music together.
As we were getting ready to leave, Michel called out to everyone that they had to sing us this traditional burgundy song that's basically like "for he's a jolly good fellow" only it's from burgundy, and no one seemed to know the words "Oh, i'm not from Burgundy!" everyone started to say. But anyway, it was funny because when Michel got everyone's attention, he announced that we, Hannah (Hannah being the british TA) and Rebecca were leaving, and i think that no one in the chorale except for perhaps Claire knew my name up until a few weeks ago when Jean, one of the conductors, was doing attendance and said for at least the second or third time this semester "i still don't know who Rebecca is" and i had to say "um, right, that's me." Granted Hannah and i sat there during the first part of the picnic going "wow, i really don't know anyone's name! That lady, she's either Cecile or Celine . . . and that's Mary Jo - no? That's not. Hmmm, ok well that's Dominique for sure, and Michel. Wait, so are they married? They are!? No way! And they have a fifteen year old daughter? Huh." So i suppose them not knowing my name wasn't a huge thing for me, it just struck me as amusing that as we were leaving i was referred to by name. And then a bunch of the ladies walked us to the car and said goodbye and did the bisous (kisses). It was sweet. They're nice people. Claire drove us back to town.
I'm kind of totally going in reverse here now aren't i? Well, backing up the beginning of the picnic, i met up with Hannah and her boyfriend Andy at a bus stop where we waited for a half hour for a spanish girl, another alto, who never showed up. Then we took the bus to a stop where we met Claire who drove us in her car to the picnic spot. The picnic spot was at this small old stone building that once upon a time was uhh, a sheep barn. We couldn't figure out what the english word would be for it. A manger? Well, anyway, an old stone building where the shepherd would keep his sheep. It has since been transformed into a place that people can rent out for picnics and events and such. There is no running water, no electricity, and no heat. And it's in the middle of a field on a windy dirt road in the middle of the countryside. When they gave out directions, a photocopied map, someone asked for a street address. "There is none," Dominique replied, "it's just on this windy old road, you need the map." On one side of the sheep house was a field, on the other a forest. It was just gorgeous. We arrived around 7:45, and the sun was still out, but lowering and making everything glow.
We were only the second people to arrive and the lady who was already there, whose name we never figured out, took Hannah, Andy and i on a walk through the woods across the street to look at wild flowers. More people had arrived by the time we got back, but we didn't start eating for a while longer, it was very french. Gradually more and more people came and there were about 20-25 of us i would say. Claire (i think) had brought a barbecue and so the men set out to cook up some meat. And oh was there meat. Chicken and sausages. And they just kept cooking it and cooking it. Otherwise there were various salads and bread and such. I made the faux pas of opening my fruit salad before we ate the meat and eating some - i later heard people talking about how someone had opened the fruit and ate it as an entree, which, well is sort of understandable, but it's really a dessert and you shouldn't eat it until the dessert course! Ohhhh the french, you even have to stick with the right order when having a picnic in the middle of a field on a friday night. There was also, of course, wine but i only had one glass. It was just so ridiculous and wonderfully enjoyable sitting in the french countryside having a huge picnic complete with wine and cheese (at the end of the meal of course).
Hannah, Andy and i hung out mostly, but we did mingle a bit. We met Mary Jo's husband, who came to hang out with us as it was getting dark and we were finishing up with our generous helpings of chicken and sausage. I think that at this point he was perhaps a bit loosened up from a few glasses of wine (in fact, it seemed as though the majority of the part was pretty well at ease with glasses, er, well plastic cups, of wine in hand). This, however, meant him having a grand old time poking fun at me because i am . . . american! Lovely. He assured me several times that it was in good spirits and when we had talked earlier he hadn't been a jerk or anything. He had been quite pleased that i want to teach french in fact. So i think it was a combination of the wine and uhhh . . . the wine? There were a few times when he said stuff that i didn't catch and Mary Jo, who had wandered over to join us, scolded him and seemed a bit embarrassed. We were all sitting on the ground, and Mary Jo had brought over the cheese for us before sitting to join us and chat. People had just lit candles and a gas lamp that someone had brought, the stars were appearing and the moon was shining brightly in the clear sky free of light pollution. It was really quite beautiful and enjoyable. At one point as we were sitting there, Michel walked by and, shining a flashlight around us, realized that we had the cheese. Flashlight shining on the cheese like a spotlight, everyone sort of stopped, looked over and started laughing. Hannah and i got quite giggly ourselves. It was as though we had been caught hoarding the cheese. Curious thing was that they didn't take it or eat it, it was kind of like they were just looking for it. We realized that actually what they had been looking for was Michel's knife, which was being used to cut the cheese - he just wanted to make sure that it wasn't lost.
Anyway, it was just such a nice atmosphere. I got to talk in french, in english and other than a few times when the guy who was making fun of the states was going at it, it was really nice company. Claire drove us back into town and after dropping off Hannah and Andy, we were chatting a bit and she told me how they tend to get kind of attached to the students in the chorale. Then she said that this year especially. It was sweet. I feel like the french don't show emotions too much and so when they do let you know that they have some sort of emotional something going on, it's kind of touching. I should email Claire when i get home this summer.
I started to get almost teary eyed as i walked up to my room when i got back from the picnic. I think that you'd be hard pressed to live anywhere for ten months and to not get attached in one way or another. It's normal that i'm starting to get sad about leaving, hell it's GOOD. It means that i really got something out of my time here. Just the simple act of going to chorale every thursday, no matter how boring and tiring and long it felt at times, no matter how not so cohesive and uncommunity-like it felt at times, in the end it was worth it. Bah, it's getting late and i have to get up to do things tomorrow. I should go to bed. |
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bonjourfeuilles's journal