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