Oops!...I Did It Again

   "I'm not sure what I'll do, but- well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale."

               -F. Scott Fitzgerald

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     Well here I am again. Paris is as I remember, and in some ways I am, too. People are walking around in the 70 degree weather in scarves and what I’d consider winter jackets. I’m still the métro pro that I once was- I haven’t had to pull out my trusty Paris Plan even though I always have it on me and I’ve been riding it all over the place in the less than 24 hours that I’ve been here. The only things that have changed are that southbound on line four is now called ‘Montrouge’ instead of ‘Porte d’Orléans’ and Notre-Dame has what I can only describe as giant bleachers in its square (Maybe something to do with its 850^th anniversary?) Oh, and that my friends from Central aren’t here. And I also have no friends to speak of. Yet.

     I got into Paris at around 6 P.M. last night after my flights were delayed about three times, thus screwing me out of the €40 I spent on a pre-arranged shuttle and another €60 for the cab ride I had to take instead. The cab driver immediately started in on wanting to talk about the U.S. involvement in Syria and turned up the radio commentary he was listening to. I had no energy to give any input.

     I got to the FIAP Jean Monnet, where I’ll be staying temporarily until my housing is decided, dropped my things off in my room and went to Bir-Hakeim to see the Eiffel Tower. I don’t know what the hell kind of athlete I used to be, but that is a long walk compared to what I remembered. Alone, I found a patch of grass on the Champ de Mars and watched as it sparkled at dusk, then I bought a sandwich and sat up at Trocadéro. In Paris for mere hours, a woman sat down next to me and asked me when it sparkles because I guess I seem like I know my way around. (My cab driver had even asked me “Vous connaissez bien Paris?” Yes.) It was perfect, but lonely.

Pont de l'Archévêché

Park behind Notre-Dame. Paris is so empty!

Quai de la Tournelle

Bleachers. Am I right or am I right?

Place des Vosges

In Paris for an hour or two, and this is where I head.

Central's Office on rue Henri Barbusse

         I had to be out of my room for the night at the FIAP by 9:30 this morning so I left the building with no plans and métro-ed it from Glacière to Vavin and then spent all morning wandering on foot to familiar places since I don’t have any familiar faces- my internship placement agency’s office, Central College Abroad’s office, St-Michel, my internship office at French Travel Partners, Notre-Dame, the Pompidou, Place des Vosges and all the way to St-Sébastien-Froissart. I don’t know if it’s a morning thing, a Sunday thing, a basically-still-August thing or a hungover-from-Saturday thing, but the city felt empty to me. I also searched for the padlock I put on the Pont de l’Archévêché for Central. No luck. The search will continue.

     In the Place des Vosges, I sat on a bench, dropping crumbs on accident for the pigeons like old times, and I wondered if this is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. This is the part I hate about going abroad. The being alone part and the initial panic. I really don’t feel any culture stress other than feeling very, very alone. I think this is almost harder than last time, because this time, I was aware of how lonely it was going to be and it takes a lot of energy to not succumb to how sad it is.  I know it’s only been day one and orientation hasn’t even started, but I have doubts. Am I smart enough? Do I know French well enough to study translation? Will I have friends? Is this worth my time and money? Should I have just gone on a trip to Paris? I’m not sure. This is the biggest adult decision I’ve ever made and I don’t know if I should trust myself.

Sidenote: I have to remember to drop the habit of smiling as a means of being friendly. A woman came out of a door on the empty rue Chevreuse and I was standing nearby, so naturally, I smiled when we made eye contact. She looked at me as though I’d pulled a knife on her. 

Girl From the North Country

 

     "I've spent this morning looking up jobs, internships and graduate schools that could lead me back to Paris sooner rather than later, but I know I won't be able to return until this time next year at the earliest. It's exciting to throw around ideas and not know what career I'll have or where I'll live and it's especially exciting to imagine I could be back in France in the future. I know for a fact that I need to go back one day as a resident again, and not just as a tourist. I think four months gets to you deeper than a Paris Visite pass. Even though I already miss France, I know that it will always be there waiting for me, and above all else, I will miss the people I met there who really account for the bulk of what made this experience so special to me. This semester was absolutely the best time of my entire life and I'm grateful I was lucky and privileged enough to make my dreams come true." - I Left My Heart in Paris, France, June 6, 2012


    Well, I'm leaving (again) for Paris. I've been here before, at this point where the excitement of moving away takes a backseat to the shock and sadness of leaving my life in Minnesota. I wish I could have bypassed the whole moment at the airport in which I had to say goodbye and just be asleep in my temporary bed at the FIAP Jean Monnet in Paris. I wish I didn't have to care so much about leaving everyone and everything, but I do. I think it's been just enough time since my last Paris adventure for me to become reattached to my life here. Thinking back to last summer, I would've done anything to be in my shoes at this moment, but now that the moment is here, I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Confused, maybe.

     I know I owe this new adventure to myself because I made a promise last May that I would come back to Paris again as a resident. The thought of never again owning a Navigo card and schlepping through the métro or counting croissants as a key part of my daily diet was too depressing. I've spent too much time on fulfilling this promise to myself to not follow through on it. I studied for and took the GRE, worked with an advisor at Augsburg on writing a really good essay, somehow got all the application materials together, got accepted (miraculously), graduated from college with two degrees, went through the harrowing, soul-crushing experience of CampusFrance for the second time in my life and put myself through the Megabus shitshow to get my visa in Chicago. I spent my time at my summer job--which allowed a lot of time for reading-- putting together my Paris bucket list, which includes restaurants, museums, parks, churches and monuments, complete with their address and nearest métro stop. I was even dorky enough to, honest-to-God, put it all into a Moleskine journal with tabs by arrondissement. I am on another level when it comes to Paris. And those are only the things I can immediately remember that I did to make this whole Paris business happen.

     So off I go, leaving Minnesota once again for a period of time three times longer than I did before. I'm currently sitting at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport and I just said goodbye to my sister and my parents. The goodbye happened almost exactly the same as it did last time (awful) and I think I'm even at the same gate as before. I'm wearing a Twins baseball cap because I know that'll look stupid once I'm in Paris, so I'm getting my Minnesota pride out of my system now. It's hard seeing traces of home that I know will be gone once I land at Charles de Gaulle (But at this rate, after two delays, that might be in quite a while), like all the awful Minnesota t-shirts, a restaurant called 'Hot Dish' on the way to my gate and picking a cat hair or two off of my clothes. It's hard because, unlike last time, I know what's going to happen. This is going to be very hard for a while and and it takes a lot of energy, but somehow I did it last time. I think back on the girl I was last spring and I'm just hoping I can be her again and make this work.

Au revoir et on se verra très bientôt à Paris !

(Here's me in Paris. But not. I just really like this video.)

Rachel

Almost in Paris

I try my hand at video blogging....

Summertime Sadness

   

   

  The long-standing joke in my family is that I'm a cat lady, which is rooted back in my second or third year of life. The farm where my dad grew up was the place where I was first around animals and cats in particular. My sister and I rather creatively named several of the cats Lovey, Maddy and Scared-y, based on their temperaments. At that age, I was scared of dogs, but I ended up loving cats. In preschool, I came home with drawings I'd done of yellow cats with purple collars.

At the farm with Lovey, Emily and Maddy in 1993

     One day when I was five, my mom and I somehow ended up at the Animal Humane Society looking at cats. I was smitten with a tiny kitten, but Mom had her eyes on an almost full-grown cat with a "raccoon tail" who was said to be good with children. We went home that night to discuss getting this cat and by the next day, my infamously good convincing skills worked- we were getting a cat! Finally!

     The four of us brought her home the next night in a cardboard box. In the car, Emily and I dangled our hair in the air holes and giggled as the cat batted it around. Name suggestions ranged from Sassy (My suggestion since the only cat I could think of was Sassy from Homeward Bound.) to Tiger (Emily's suggestion). My dad quietly suggested 'Ribbons' since she had stripes like ribbons. We got our name.

The story of bringing her home "rittin"  in probably 1997

Her first full day at home after a bath.

Easter 2013

     Over the years, Ribby and I grew up together and I let her occupy a bigger piece of my heart than anyone else in the family did. She became my little shadow in the house, following me everywhere and waiting outside my bedroom door in the morning. Whenever I was sad, I think she understood because she always came to me, looked me in the eyes and stayed.

    I always felt that people who say they hate cats would have had a hard time hating Ribby. She was an anomaly to the hissing, attacking, reclusive archetype that gives them a bad reputation. She only hissed once in front of me and it was pretty pathetic (When getting her temperature taken at the vet). She was also a lap addict. Her favorite thing to do was to fall asleep on one of us. All she ever wanted to do was eat, purr and snuggle. She was my living, breathing stuffed animal.

     Unfortunately chronic kidney disease in cats isn't really something a cat can just live with forever; it will eventually kill them. She was diagnosed in June 2012 while I was in Italy and the vet told my dad that she had about two years left in her. Life went on and she was fine. On July 24, 2013, I found her with severe dehydration and diarrhea in the basement and we rushed her to the hospital. We opted to not euthanize her and instead get her treated and back home the next day. We weren't ready for goodbye and also, what about that two-year estimate? It had only been about a year. On August 9th, I realized that we'd been in denial about her health. I noticed she was walking funny and she eventually stopped walking altogether. She stopped eating. She stopped purring. She stopped looking at me in the eyes when I was sad. So I made the decision to let her go. On the night of August 13th, I tucked her in and told her the story of when we got her all those years ago. The next day, we wrapped my little girl in a towel and took her out of our house for the last time. I held her paw and her fur looked so soft and we kept saying through tears how cute she still was. "You all are making me cry," said the vet. The end was peaceful and it broke my heart. The last thing I said to her was "I'll love you forever" and I tucked her tail around her.

     Losing a pet is harder than a lot of people give you credit for because they probably haven't been lucky enough to have one of their own. They don't get it and that's fine. Though she wasn't conscious of it, Ribby taught me how to love and how to be responsible. She provided so much comfort from hard days in Kindergarten to the stresses of junior high to preparing this summer for graduate school in Paris. She was patient with me when my five-year-old self tried putting her in a dress. She stayed calm when Emily and I took her for joy rides in the car in high school. She constantly warmed our hearts and made us smile and laugh and forget about our problems.

     It's sad that I know that specific details about her will start to go soft in my mind over time and I can't do Ribby justice in all the ways that she impacted my life for the last seventeen years. I know she was just one out of millions of cats, but she mattered to me.

I'll love you forever.

Things I Will Miss About America

I've done it before. I've lived in Paris and it was great. Beautiful. Fun. The best experience of my life. And because it was great, beautiful, fun and the best experience of my life, I specifically picked it as my base for my graduate studies.

However, life in Paris is not perfect, contrary to how I rave about it.

With my days left in America entering the single digits, I've been taking note of the things in my daily life that I'll likely miss a whole lot, other than simply friends and family.

(I'm perfectly aware that these could all be classified as "first world problems," Mom.)

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT AMERICA (In no particular order)

1. Owning or having access to a printer. Last spring I had to print my internship report and three copies cost me a total of twenty euros at a local print shop. That seems excessive.

2. Proper chips and salsa. I'll have to manage with the meager offerings at Franprix.

3. Owning a washer and dryer that not only produce fully-dry and wonderful-smelling clothing, but are free to use, too. I'm already cringing thinking about all the hand-washing I'll end up doing because I won't want to deal with it.

4. Driving. Yes, the métro is easy to use and environmentally efficient, but I'll miss the selfish freedom that cars provide.

5. Peanut butter. Yes, they have tiny Skippy jars at Franprix, but they're expensive and elicit a lot of curious staring from non-Americans.

6. Air-conditioning. Again, it's better for the environment to go without, but climate-controlled buildings are a wonderful thing, my friends. And France just doesn't really do them.

7. Personal space. I'll have to once again readjust to having significantly less personal space in a city whose population is four times that of Minneapolis-St. Paul. No more freely swinging my arms while walking or being able to fit in cramped cafés. Or showers. I think I'm unusually tall in France, which is weird.

8. Being able to buy shoes if I want or need to. Sigh. I wear a women's European 43, which I think is just an urban legend in Paris. Let me know if you ever see a pair.

9. Ice-cold drinking water. Yeah, carafes d'eau (water carafes) don't have ice in them.

10. Dollars. The exchange rate is painfully tipped in Europeans' favor. Ouch. But thankfully it's not the British pound. Double ouch. 

Paris at 15

   
Back when I had braces and didn't know any French, I visited Paris for the first time. This was the moment when Paris started playing a huge role in my life. It was the summer of 2006- the summer after junior high- and it was the first time anyone in my family had been to Europe.

     We divided up two weeks into four country visits:
     1. Starting in Germany, we visited my grandfather's family (He was one hundred percent German and his parents immigrated to Minnesota) just outside of Hamburg in a little town of a few hundred people, Groß-Buchwald, and met a whole lot of relatives that look like my dad. Heino, my fourth cousin, would be his doppelgänger if not for being even taller than my dad, at 6'8". The large brick farmhouse where my great-grandfather, Ernst, grew up in the late 1800s is still on the main stretch of town with our last name engraved on the front façade.
     2. Two G-rated days in Amsterdam spent soaking up the historical scene of the city at the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House.
     3. Paris.
     4. Ending our trip in London, we were exhausted and tackled the city on foot instead of the Tube and just saw what we could. The notoriously cloudy and drizzling weather only served to emphasize that melancholy feeling you get when you know you're heading home from a great travel experience.

Now about Paris.
   
     I came to Paris with the typical ideas that well-meaning but badly-informed Americans bring: Everyone wears striped shirts with red berets (I've never seen it). No one showers or shaves (Not true). Everyone is rude and arrogant (Some people are). The Eiffel Tower can be seen from everywhere (Usually not). Accordion music is always playing (In the trains and stations, it's pretty common). Instead of affirming my preconceived notions, Paris mostly just made my jaw drop and in the best way possible.

     Paris and other parts of Europe were in the midst of an unusual heat wave. Staying in a quaint apartment in a quiet area on the rue du Temple in the Marais, it was a moment to really feel like Europeans outside of the hard shell that tourists hide behind in air-conditioned hotels. My mom and I stayed there again in May 2012 when she came to visit during another unusually hot few days and I really realized, by Parisian standards, the place was huge. And beautiful. (It has since been sold.)

     We mastered the métro and RER, even though we probably blocked quite a few black-suited Parisians' paths, scoffing at us tourists. I ate my first-ever croissant from a vendor in the Gare du Nord and it was buttery, flaky magic. I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time ever from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. We ate fruit and pastries from street vendors. We didn't wear any white tennis shoes. My sister, who was our only French speaker at the time with a few high school classes under her belt, did some impressive communicating (And gesturing). We were golden. I am proud.

Rachel

Under the Arc de Triomphe

Classic Montmartre tourist moment at La Mère Catherine in the Place du Tertre

Musée du Louvre

My, how I've changed from a freshman in high school! (Thank goodness)

This was a completely candid shot of my sister, Emily, in front of Notre-Dame

I had my eyes on Montmartre from the top of the Arc de Triomphe (This was also my first-ever sight of the Eiffel Tower)

Avenue des Champs-Elysées

I.M. Pei's pyramid at the Louvre

Smile, Dad! You're in Paris!

Those damn Montmartre stairs. Older and wiser, I know to take the funiculaire now.

Liberté, Égalité, Difficulté

   

     My dad seems to believe that I think everything about France is perfect or superior to America. Every time we get into a conversation about cultural differences between the two countries, I seemingly show preference towards France. France is better at making bread. French waiters don't try to hustle you out the door to make room for new customers. The French only work thirty-five hours a week and get much more paid time off per year. But one thing I can't stand about France is applying for a visa to live there.

     The process of acquiring a visa started back in mid-May with my CampusFrance application, as you're supposed to start at least three months before arrival in France. CampusFrance, without a doubt, is the most complicated, nonsensical, stress-inducing, backwards process I have ever experienced--because if you don't do it correctly (a difficult feat), you don't get to live in France. And I've now gone through it twice, miraculously. According to their website, CampusFrance is "the French national agency for the promotion of higher education, international student services, and international mobility" (Not sure what that means? Me neither.) and all students coming into France to study need to register with them to basically explain why you are going. First, I needed to navigate the poorly organized website to create an account and choose the application that best fit my situation. The English online application is worded in such a way that I'm pretty sure whoever designed it used a translation website, because when it's not busy being just plain confusing, they put various parts in French for the hell of it (Maybe it was too hard to translate properly into English?). It took all of ten seconds before I ran into problems. I watched their step-by-step video, emailed back and forth with my admissions counselor, sought advice from my parents and sent CampusFrance three or four direct messages to which I later found out they don't respond. After completing the application as best as I could, I sent in my supporting documents along with my money order of $100, from which point it's supposed to be three weeks until you receive your approval message that needs to be printed and brought to the visa appointment at the Consulate.
     I spent June trying to contact CampusFrance because I hadn't received my message and it had been well over three weeks. Did I mention they don't answer their messages and also have no contact phone number listed? After some crafty Googling, I found a phone number and it turned into a couple of weeks of trying to reach the French Consulates (I called every one in the country) and CampusFrance during their extremely restricted hours. It turns out I was missing documents I never knew were needed and I was eventually approved the first week of July after speaking on the phone with an actual human being.
     On July 8th, I hastily made the trip to my regional French Consulate in Chicago and got in touch with my midwesterner Paris friends for a spontaneous reunion. By 'hastily,' I mean the Megabus was scheduled to leave St. Paul at midnight and I was still making copies of my visa documents and throwing clothes into a backpack at eleven. As an alternative to what is a forty-five minute flight, I rode the bus for eight hours through pitch-black Wisconsin and repeatedly thinking I could have flown past Paris in that amount of time.
     I met Haley at Union Station and we walked to our hotel near the Hancock Tower in the rain before heading to my visa appointment, again in the rain. Twenty minutes later, I came out of the visa building and we were ready to boire. It's kind of incredible that I had to go to Chicago for a ten-minute meeting on the thirtysomething floor of an office building, which is something that's only recently become required. Just a few years back, no one had to do it. And all for a little sticker that goes in my passport, which I got back in the mail five days later.

The sticker that caused all the stress. I look tired from the Megabus.

     Haley and I met Stephanie at Millennium Park's Cloud Gate, better known as "The Bean" and it felt like no time had passed since we last saw each other over a year ago. We spent our afternoon eating chocolate at Ghirardelli and catching up over beers at Pippin's Tavern on Rush Street. We later met Lauren when she came in from Valparaiso, Indiana and the four of us got some deep dish at Giordano's, and later pints at Kitty O'Shea's on South Michigan Avenue. We filled each other in on where our lives are at and, as Lauren said, it felt normal for all of us to be together like it was just another day in Paris. I felt a little bittersweet that I'm going back to our city without all the people that made it the experience that it was, but I'm also excited for everyone's post-graduate lives.

Pippin's Tavern

Ghirardelli

Meeting Lauren

Goodbye!

     Our trip being spontaneous, Haley and I had come to Chicago with one-way Megabus tickets, hoping to just figure out our plans when we needed to since neither of us work full-time like real adults. Stephanie offered to house us for the night at her house in Oak Lawn so we could go to the Taste of Chicago with her the following day, leaving us with another full day to fill before heading to her place. With mimosas as our only requirement, Haley and I found a place to grab brunch, Rosebud on Rush, which put us across the street from The Peninsula, where Justin Bieber fangirls were waiting for him to step out (He didn't). Per tradition, we followed up with my favorite Chicago must-do--drinks at the Signature Lounge on the ninety-sixth floor of the Hancock. For less than the price of admission to the observatory deck, we had fantastic drinks--the Godiva Chocolate Martini is straight-up happiness--and, in my opinion, the best view of the city. We spent the rest of Tuesday shopping on Michigan Avenue and walking and drinking around Navy Pier. On the Pier, I insisted we speak only in French just like old times after class at the Catho in Paris. At one point, I realized we were about to get on the famous ferris wheel and that I am, in fact, moderately scared of heights. I spent our ride, palms sweating, shouting at Haley to stop moving so we wouldn't rock back and forth. I fared much better on the swings where we zipped through the sunset sky and had a beautiful view of the skyline.

Godiva Chocolate Martini at the Signature Lounge

Navy Pier

"Just don't look down!"

Navy Pier ferris wheel and swings

     We took the L out to Midway Airport, where Jim, Stephanie's friend whom we had met in Paris, picked us up for a late dinner. After dinner, we checked for tickets home and realized that our spontaneity made for poor planning because we ended up not being able to stay for the fun. concert at the Taste of Chicago. Due to the different bus schedules on Wednesday, I had four hours to kill in downtown after saying goodbye at Union Station, of which I spent the bulk walking. I hauled myself and my backpack to Millennium Park again to hear an orchestra warm up in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. While sitting there in the grass, my inner shopping addict realized that, if timed correctly, I had time to make it to Topshop to buy a dress that, according to Haley, I could "buy at Target." But as Topshop has only a few U.S. locations, none of which are near Minnesota, the importance of such a dress was lost on Haley. It was 1 PM, my bus was scheduled to leave Union Station at 3 PM, the store was right next to the Chicago Water Tower-- there was time. I paced myself according to my Google Maps app and ended up walking, which turned into desperate hobbling about four miles for my detour. Hands tucked in my backpack straps, I booked it southbound, nearly hitting cars along Wacker Drive as I thought to myself how fitting The English Beat's "March of the Swivel Heads" would've been as I started elbowing my way to Union Station. My feet still haven't recovered a full week later.

     During the nine hours of staring out at rural Illinois and Wisconsin during my ride back to Minnesota--a whole lot of time for thinking-- I realized how much I really love where I'm from. I've always loved Chicago, but I'm also always very aware how not-from-there I am. I belong in Minneapolis. And Paris.

Rachel

Shout out to my good friend and favorite temporary Bostonian, Ashley!