I have to admit that I’m getting pretty nervous about my move to Paris in September, something that becomes more of a reality each day. I experienced this same anxiety before I moved there in ‘05. Then, I barely slept for a month, and not even sleeping pills would put me out of my misery. Up until now, I’ve been generally excited, but going to the consulate last week to deal with my visa kind of threw me off. When I arrived for my appointment, I couldn’t contain my nerves, almost certain that they’d look at some document and just say, no, no you are not the right person for us. As I aproached the counter, the man asked me, “Vous parlez français?” “Oui,” I said. He asked for my application forms and a few other papers that I handed out silently, asking only, “vous voulez la photocopie? ou l’original?” Then he asked (in French): “What will you be doing with your time in France?” I was expecting a question like this, but not exactly in the way he phrased. I was expecting something more along the lines of “Why do you want to go to Paris for a year? Why do you want this visa?” The what will you be doing seemed like a trap to catch me confessing to some activity I’m not supposed to be engaging in. Flustered, I came off as an airhead, “Je…je…je vais vivre avec mes cousins…Uh, sorry, can we just do this in English please?” “But I though you speeeek French?” “Oui, oui, c’est vrai, I do. I’m just very…nervous. Flustered. I’m nervous. Sorry.” Ugh. Faux-pas number 1. Faux pas number 2 included some errors in my paperwork (blasted!) meaning I would have to come back with the right supporting documents next week.
But since that incident, I’ve begun to freak out just a bit. Not so much about logistics because that always figures itself out, but with the issue of feeling alone, something that I’ve struggled with for years. There were only a few times I really felt at home in Paris. Now I’m going without the structure of school, and without a group of people I already know. (If you’re reading and have friends in Paris, hook a sister up!) And as a writer who works from home, I often find it easy to spend days and days completely alone now. It’s something that feels normal here in New York, where I grew up. I do have friends and connections in Paris, but it doesn’t feel like the same thing.
For me, that year was largely about missed connections. Not just with the hundreds of dissappointing missed connections between me and the handsome guys I saw in bars, on the street, in class, that I wanted to sweep me off my feet. But also between my idea of what living in Paris would be like, and what it was actually like. A lot of that had to do with where I lived. I remember arriving to my host family’s apartment for the first time to find it completely empty. There was something romantic about the emptiness as I explored the rooms of the Parisian apartment, running my fingers over the cold marble fireplace, stepping onto the living room balcony, listening to the wooden floorboards creak down the long, long hallway. It was a dream apartment. But I found out soon after that the people who lived in it weren’t what I expected. And outside, there were missed connections everywhere, in language exchanges, ideas, morals. At the same time, however, I still managed to fall in love with France on my own terms.
This is not to say I’m not excited - this will be a challenge. And part of me knows that I’ll be able to conquer it. This time I’m going in with a much, much, much higher language level. Better yet, there was a feeling of regularity that came rushing back to me when I was in Paris back in November. The feeling while walking around the Panthéon that it would have been natural to walk the next few blocks home. And the same feeling in February, in the Amsterdam train station, that it would seem only natural that I’d be there to get on a train to Paris, just like I had on a previous trip.
Next step: getting those papers corrected next week, connecting the missing pieces.
Comme toute bonne princesse qui se respecte, vous aimez les bagues ;-)
Et bien voici de quoi ne jamais être en manque de bague. Cette belle collection de bagues en papier est réalisée par TT:NT. Il suffit de les découper, parfois de les rouler, d’en plier certaines.. Bref, c’est assez simple. À savoir que chaque bague correspond à un mois de l’année :
À quand les montres en papier avec un vrai mécanisme renouvelable ?
I would like to send my cousins in France a thank you present for helping with all my visa papers. I was thinking about things from the United States I missed while living in Paris, and all I could come up with peanut butter. But is that weird to send? So, what would you miss from the U.S. if you were living abroad? Or what’s just a good, nice thing that ships well internationally? Also, presents for:
-A 7-year-old girl
-A 12-year-old boy
Good books for this age group? Or other things?
Stephen Colbert is my ideal man. I’ve dreamt of the moment we meet, the sparks fly, and we run off into a rainbow-painted sky on our unicorns. Last night, I couldn’t sleep, and spent a few hours randomly clicking through old Colbert Report clips, and began thinking, how could I make my dream a reality, and meet the man of my dreams (or at least capture his attention)? Here’s what I came up with after my research:
1. Name things after him. Some ideas: school mascots, towns, prize-winning animals, memorials, children, or sex positions. Better yet, get Sierra Mist to endorse your Stephen Colbert product (or mammal).
2. Become a senator who is either incredibly boring, or who has superhuman legwrestling strength.
3. Challenge him to a dance-off, rap-off, or any off-off.
4. Be Jeff Goldblum
5. Write a book on one of the following topics: the Internet, sex with robots, Darwin, the demise of humanity, or how boobs evolved from fish teeth.
6. Work your way into a wacky news item. This is considerably easier for teens, gays, mormons, and Bristol Palin.
7. Break serious news on Twitter. And by serious news, I mean fake celebrity deaths and the like.
8. Send him a gift that he can’t ignore like a giant chocolate sculpture in the shape of his face, a bar of gold, an Emmy, or a Jane Fonda-Gloria Steinem threesome.
9. Become an expert on a relevant topic like global warming, food contamination, steroids, offshore drilling, or teenage sex. Or just fake the credentials with photoshop and a made up university located in an obscure country like Liechtenstein.
10. Ignore him. Or fake ignorance.
Missing you for 3 years - w4m - 21 (Saint Germain)
We met three years ago at a bar in Saint Germain, near the Odeon metro station. It was my eighteenth birthday and we spent two amazing nights together. I promised I would move back, but it never happened and it has been3 years since we met. I miss you and I still think about you from time to time. If we are meant to meet again, we will. I hope you see this.
Flying Macbook - an advert for the French Postal Service. I’m really glad mine is better behaved than this.
