obligatory post-vacation post

Here are some pictures of some things I saw on my trips to Barcelona and Marseille:

Gaudi house

National Museum of Catalonian Art

Beach!

Dali museum

Cliffs around Cassis (France)

Thibault, my host brother in Marseille

Sunset on the cliff

Famous Marseille carousel next to the Stock Exchange

If anyone is considering using a break to go to Barcelona, I can give you this advice:

- I can’t recommend highly enough the Albareda Youth Hostel. It was reasonably priced, centrally located, social without being out of control and the cleanest hostel I’ve ever stayed in – they changed the sheets every day and you could practically eat off the floors.

- Most of the Gaudi stuff is extortionately priced but the Battlo house was totally worth it, even if the audio guide was a little bit hyperbolic. “This is the MOST MODERN ROOM YOU HAVE EVER BEEN IN.” “This is the most BEAUTIFUL MODERN WINDOW YOU WILL EVER SEE.”

- Avoid the big clubs around the Barceloneta if you are a girl because Spanish men are even worse than French men about grabby hands and inappropriate comments and assuming you’re easy because you’re a tourist. Kama is a small Brazilian samba club I wandered into with some of the hostel people which was way more fun than the famous megaclubs.

- The train to Figueras takes two hours and there is nothing much in the town except the Dali museum, but if you have a good chunk of time to spend in Barcelona it’s really worth the trip.

On Marseille:

- Rabbit is actually really delicious but looks gross with eyes and no skin.

- Most people I know who love Paris hate Marseille and insist that it’s really dirty. I really like Marseille and generally try to counter the argument that it’s dirty, but when I was there this time the garbage men in the city had been on strike for six days, so there were huge mountains of trash everywhere on the sidewalks. I want to defend you, Marseille, but you’re killing me here.

- Staying with a host family I hadn’t seen for three and a half years was strange. They were just as friendly and hospitable as I had remembered, but my host brother who was thirteen when I last saw him is now almost seventeen, taller than me and has a real man’s voice now. Time marches on I suppose.

On not being in Paris:

I liked it more than I should have. Barcelona was almost like Olympia (the hippie town where I went to college) in that you can never feel too out of place because there is always someone to out-freak you. The difference was not as marked in the south of France but I was generally treated like a regular human being and not bombarded with the disdainful “why” questions I constantly get in Paris even from my closest friends here. (“Why are you eating that?” “Why are you wearing that?” “Why are you doing that?” “Why are you going there?” “Why are you like this, Yankee circus freak?”) It is slightly frustrating to have invested so much time and money and education in a language and a culture and a city that refuses to let me feel more than slightly integrated. I wonder if my life would be easier if I was like a Parisian girl with perfectly tailored black clothing on a lithe little body and I could puff clouds of cigarette smoke out of big, pouty lips and look down my little button nose at everyone from on top of my high horse and say bitchy little things like “T’es con ou quoi?” instead of the way I am now, which is an awkward girl with an American face who falls up and down the stairs in the metro.

French girls, in general

Me, in general

Alas, alack, forsooth, and merde alors. But I try not to take things to personally, because Parisians like looking down on fun people and considering Americans stupid. Yet whenever I leave I’m always anxious to come back. It’s a strange and masochistic relationship I have with this city.

Also, I went out with Katarina yesterday for a slightly-too-expensive-for-someone-who-just-got-back-from-vacation-and-still-hasn’t-payed-rent-or-gotten-a-paycheck drink and had a nice, satisfying rant about a slightly-juvenile-but-still-too-personal-for-this-blog issue that has been escalating in my life for the past couple of weeks and she knew exactly what I was talking about, which was very nice because I’ve spent so much time speaking my second language lately and worrying that whatever comes out of my mouth is just an approximation of what I actually want to say.

Eric is probably on a plane on his way here as we speak, which should mean less ranting and more photos in this blog in the near future.

automne tout à coup

1) On Monday Axel and I went on a trip around the Seine on the Bateaux Mouches.

He was significantly more interested in the other boats than in any of the monuments. (“There’s a purple one! Purple is my favorite color!” “That one has a car on it!”)

Also, there are narrations on the boat as you go past monuments in six or seven different languages, and the English version speaks with a British accent. Axel thought it was funny that he pronounced “Frahhhhnce” with a long “a” sound. It is nice that at least one French person thinks the British accent is more ridiculous than the American one.

Axel with his face full of cookie.

2) My old host brother has a band that he has secretly been in for a year and a half without telling me. They are called Noisy Anvil, which is hilarious. I watched them play yesterday with Kat and it was truly a sight to be seen. I wish more of my friends had secret hobbies for me to discover.*

3) Jezebel had a post recently about how Breast Cancer Awareness Month is all a big marketing ploy, and I realized that it doesn’t exist here. Which is nice because I’m already pretty aware of breast cancer. Also, there is probably no cause no matter how noble that could make Parisians buy a bunch of pink crap to put in their houses, except maybe a campaign to put George Clooney in every movie.

4) I have allowed a neighbor lady to hijack my weekend to babysit her albino baby. Apparently there are four albino people within three blocks of me. If David Lynch made movies in Paris instead of the suburbs he would make them in this neighborhood.

5) I have still not had to go my real job regularly and won’t have to until Monday. Also supposedly a few of the teachers that have requested hours for me won’t actually need me until after vacation. Which means I have sort of quasi-worked for three weeks before getting ten days’ paid vacation. God bless this country.

*That was probably an invitation for my Olympia friends to start telling me about drugs.

You see Corentin thinks he is funny because he is hitchhiking in the RER, but the RER is going to stop anyway! They are a hilarious, the French people. Haven't you seen the originial Three Men and a Baby?

I could probably use a haircut.

in which my roommate is the coolest person ever

Tonight my roommate told me she was leaving for a week on the 17th to go to Jordan. I told her I had two weeks of vacation when she got back but that I wasn’t sure I would have enough money to go anywhere – between the hit I took replacing my iPod and, due to what (I think) is a ridiculous bureaucratic mixup, I may not be getting paid for October until the end of November, (though that isn’t sure yet – the Spanish and Arabic assistants might stage a coup with me if that happens)  the pot is going to be a little dry this month to the point where I may have to dip into my CD account early. To which she responded “That’s ridiculous. You’re here to take advantage of opportunities in France and Europe. If you’re not here for 15 days you only pay half your rent.” I am still not sure I’m leaving but half my rent is probably how much I would spend traveling anyway and I’m pretty happy to be living with someone who feels that way about it.

My school is working out pretty well so far – all the English teachers are very nice (even though more than half of them speak with ridiculous French accents a la Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and they all seem like reasonable people, although it’s a little sad that they constantly talk about how dumb the students are. It’s not the worst suburb – not one with burning cars and gang violence that Fox News likes to talk about – but still a community of underachieving working class kids. Some of the mistakes they make are pretty funny (one teacher showed me a response to an analysis of a Captain America comic that said only “To be bad is sad”,) I’m not sure going into a classroom assuming the kids are going to fail is a good approach. (I know about these things because I watched Season 4 of the Wire.)

Improv classes have been going well – the teacher we’ve had for the past two weeks is German, and certain things he says are 130% more hilarious because he says them with a German accent (“I love hugging barrels,” “This bar is a meat factory.”) The teacher for the next two weeks is Danish, and I’m not sure there are as many hilarious things to be said with a Scandinavian accent, but it remains to be seen.

I went out for Nuit Blanche on Saturday, which is a night in which Paris is at least theoretically open all night and there are big artistic events in all the parks. I didn’t take my camera out of lingering paranoia from the iPod incident of going out with it amongst huge crowds, but my new and really awesome Australian friend Kat-sur-Seine was there (and will perhaps post pictures?) Mostly I saw multicolored lights in the pond at the Buttes Chaumont and a lot of red umbrellas at three in the morning and the whole thing felt like an acid trip, not like I would know what an acid trip feels like.

This post is incoherent but I have to get up early tomorrow for a full day of boring orientation in a town more than an hour away so this is the end.

creepsters and missing ipods and first days of school

Today was the first day of school and I woke up realizing my iPod was gone. I think it must have fallen out of my bag when I was walking home last night trying to walk fast to make sure a particularly aggressive French creep was at least 15 feet behind me at all times, because I know I had it last night and I can’t think of any other reason it could be missing, plus I remember opening my bag to look for my phone while he was behind me. So I went all the way to school on the verge of tears being mad at myself for being so flustered the night before that I managed to lose a $400 toy and now I have to listen to crying babies on public transportation indefinitely and I was sort of convinced that my experience at the school was going to be awful based on the lack of communication they have had with me thus far. So not a great morning.

When I got to the school I went to the office, which is actually a series of different offices in a circular room with no receptionist, I walked around in circles reading nameplates on doors trying to figure out who to talk to when two men in suits bumped into me and asked if they could help. I told them I was the English assistant and I had no idea where I was supposed to be, and they both looked super relieved and introduced themselves as the principals of the school and that they were worried I wasn’t coming because they hadn’t heard from me (despite the fact that I’ve called twice…) They were also super relieved that they didn’t have to help me find somewhere to live because apparently both the Arabic and Spanish assistants showed up at the school with suitcases and nowhere to go. The head English teacher who is in charge of my schedule is out until next Tuesday afternoon so I don’t have to go back until then. Apparently the school has eleven English teachers who are all fighting over my hours.

Everyone in the school seemed really shocked to hear that I was American and not English, which is particularly weird because apparently the assistant last year was also American. And one of the English teachers I met said, “I’m sorry, I don’t really speak American, I speak mostly British!” as if she may as well have been speaking Chinese. She was very nice though.

So the school thing looks like it will work out okay but the fact that my iPod is probably gone forever still makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry. Word to the wise: do not walk home on avenue St. Ouen at night or a man will follow you around yelling and you will lose something important. I guess it’s time to report my iPod stolen to Apple, and maybe buy some pepper spray. Gah.

EDIT: Apparently reporting stolen iPods to Apple is pretty useless and it’s illegal to carry pepper spray in France (but strangely, not illegal to buy it.) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh I hate my life.

“God, it’s so painful when something that’s so close is still so far out of reach…”

That is how I’ve been feeling the past couple of days.

No more cryptic melodramatic entries, I promise.

Less than one week until my (sort of) big kid job starts.

Also, when Axel is speaking English and uses a French word because he forgets it’s not English it’s pretty much the most adorable thing in the world. (“These cookies are not vraiment crushed.” “Can you put this in the poubelle?” “Anouk is my friend at my ecole and I love her.”) He also pronounces chocolate “choco-layte” which has nothing to do with the way it’s pronounced in English or French. (You could argue that it’s phonetic in English but he can’t read anything but his own name yet.)

If you’re reading this and you’re an assistant in the Paris area (or an assistant in any other area planning on coming through Paris) we should hang out. Leave me a comment.

(If you are on the other side of the world in the Seattle area, you should go to Sketchfest on Saturday to see some of my friends, because sometimes they are funny.)

I’m an old person.

I’ve been noticing that I’ve been getting a lot more “madame” than “mademoiselle” this time around. I’m not sure what has happened in the past two years to make me look so old, but it was particularly troublesome today when I was babysitting Axel in the the Parc des Batignolles, which is an area in my neighborhood that would have been used for the Olympics in 2012 if Paris had beaten London for the spot, but was turned into a series of playgrounds and skateparks when they lost. Axel at one point sped off on his bike past some boys who were about 12 or 13, and when they saw me running after him said “Attends ta maman!” (“Wait for your mommy!”)

What was worse was when Axel was playing on the half pipe with a girl who looked to be about 10 or 11, and some other teenaged kid in skateboard gear asked if they were my kids. It’s bad enough that someone would think I was Axel’s mother…he’s 4, so while me being his mother is both unlikely and impractical, it’s at least biologically possible. But do I really look old enough to have mothered a 10 or 11 year old? At 21?

What has happened to me in the past two years? Do I wear mom jeans? Is my haircut too matronly? Inquiring minds want to know.

Pitter pattering

I have started babysitting a four year old boy who lives in my neighborhood after school. His name is Axel, which is badass in a celebrity baby name sort of way. His family spent all of last year in New York City and he consequently speaks better English than a good portion of the adults I know in France. He says hello to all of the shopkeepers on the street as we pass by and he won’t let me leave to go home without giving him a hug. I don’t really know if I want babies but if I ever have them, between him and Capucine, I definitely want French babies.

Today I found out my friend Eric from Seattle and one of his friends from college are going to come stay here for two months starting in November. This is pretty good news because Eric is my photo buddy and I will hopefully be encouraged to take more pictures when he’s here. Also, I’ve met up with other assistants in the area three times now and have met two from Minnesota, one of whom is from Burnsville which is practically spitting distance from Chaska. So I pretty much went 5,000 miles across the planet to hang out with people from home. I’m pretty okay with that.

Today I realized I left all my favorite jewelry at home because I put it in a separate container to take it to Los Angeles a few months ago and forgot to put it back in my regular jewelry box. Some of it is also worth too much money for me to feel comfortable having it mailed. I am not okay with that.

This week was the Rentree du Cinema, which meant movie tickets were only four euros. I saw Inglorious Basterds and the conclusions I have drawn are: 1) No dairy farmer from northern France in the forties would speak such fluent English. This stuck out to me more than all of the other more glaring historical inaccuracies. 2) The French cannot translate southern jokes (i.e. Stonewall Jackson, moonshine) 3) French people think Brad Pitt speaking broken Italian with a southern accent is delightful. I have never heard the French laugh so hard in a movie without George Clooney in it.

Here is a picture of Sacre Coeur after I had to yell at sketchy bracelet maker guys to stay away from me, and before it started raining.

Il y a toujours de bordel partout.

1. I have been in France for 5 days and until about an hour ago my room looked like this:

but I cleaned it up, I promise, Mom and Dad.

2. This apartment has been in Catherine’s family since it was built in 1907, and our 92-year-old neighbor was her great-grandmother’s best friend. Also apparently the roof was used as a sniper station for the Germans during the war and everyone who lives here is too weirded out to go up there, even though most of them probably weren’t born yet. It’s a shame because the view from this apartment is so cool, but I might just be insensitive. Also, this is the kitchen floor:

3. There is in French administration, like in comedy, a rule of threes. You have to go to an office an average of three times before you will have all the paperwork you need to do whatever you are trying to accomplish. I finally got my bank account open after trying three times. Like the rule in comedy, more than three times is tedious and frustrating, but less than three is unnerving and suspicious. I only had to go twice to get my metro card, which makes me suspect that in the coming weeks something is going to go wrong with it.

4. The banker who opened my account who was probably not much older than me said, “You shouldn’t have come to Paris. You should have gone to the south or just stayed in the US. Everything here is expensive and no one knows how to have any fun.” Sorry, pal.

5. I tried to call my school today to figure out what my hours are going to be (my job doesn’t start until October 1st) and they HUNG UP ON ME. The fact that they never sent me their phone number (I had to dig it up online) and the fact that they have the ugliest amateur website in the history of the internet (seriously, watch the flash intro) makes me question whether this is actually a high school or a front for something else. Next week I am showing up in person whether they want me there or not.

6. My jetlag has turned into narcolepsy, because my sleeping pattern has come in two or three hour increments throughout the day. This means I have fallen asleep in noisy public parks three times.

7. There was a law passed in France last spring that would create a three strikes law for illegal downloading (they would send you two warning emails and then cut off your internet on the third one but still make you pay for it.) In June it was gutted by the constitutional committee (for a number of reasons, one of which was that the law said your internet provider could punish you without actually providing proof you committed a violation.) This is good for me because I would be pissed if I couldn’t keep up with Mad Men and the new season of Dexter starts at the end of the month.*

8. There are a lot of attractive men in France with really hideous haircuts. FG’s theory is that those guys are the single guys because the ones with girlfriends have changed their boyfriend’s hair to suit their fancy. I’m not so sure about this.

9. I live here.

That’s all.

*Illegal downloading is illegal and you shouldn’t do it. Okay.

Et voila.

I am starting a blog about living in Paris even though there are already too many blogs about living in Paris because I think I need to keep a better record of it this time than I did before, because my friends and family might be interested and because the Assistants in France forum suggests it might be good networking. 

I arrived an hour early yesterday at 6 AM and was dropped off at what will be my apartment, at least temporarily. It is 102 years old and the size of a shoebox but I can see this out the left side of my window:

and this out the right side:

I can also see the Arc de Triomphe and the Montparnasse tower from the kitchen (though I, like everyone else in Paris, avoid looking at the Montparnasse tower if possible.)

I drank tea with Catherine, the lady I live with (not good for jetlag) and then had the best nap of my life (also not good for jetlag.) When I got up I helped her moved some stuff to her sister’s place, watched her get in a fight over a parking spot (“Mais tu as un Mercedes, tu peux pas payer trois euros pour garer la voiture quoi?!”) and then hung out with some of her friends who live on a boat by Bastille.

I drank coffee (still not good for jetlag)

They repainted the roof,

and compared tans.

When we got back I had gotten an email from the other Catherine (my ex-host mother) telling me I was invited to dinner in 45 minutes, so I booked it to the 13th as fast as I could. She and FG (my ex host brother) are pretty much exactly the same as I left them, their dog hasn’t gotten any bigger, and there is a nice boy from California living in my old room. I drank (at their insistence) three glasses of wine and some sort of Croation liquor, which contributed to both my jet lag and me wandering around my neighborhood in circles for half an hour before figuring out where I lived again.

Other things:

1) Today I saw a girl who was probably ten or eleven with a t-shirt that said “Do you want my phone number?” This makes me feel like being someone who teaches the cultural implications of English is not only going to be interesting but philanthropic.

2) I have pretty much stopped caring entirely that French people think I’m fat.

3) Melatonin is a controlled substance in France, so it is a good thing I brought some with me, because I should probably be sleeping now.

A bientot!