The Lucky Ones

   

     It's cloudy and crisp, the streets are a blur of black coats, near-white buildings and strings of blue lights. People kiss cheeks and duck out of cafes and kids are happily screaming in their school courtyards. Delivery trucks are unloading on the sidewalk. Parisians are dressed like it's colder than the five degrees Celsius that it is and rubbing their hands for warmth as they walk. Shoppers browse their way through high-end boutiques in this part of the sleepy seventh.

     It's Thanksgiving, but you'd never know it.

     Despite its American status, my school is open like any other day. I have class all day and papers to write. Instead of eating turkey and mashed potatoes all afternoon, I'm eating a sandwich and croissant. It's not weird to be skipping a traditional Thanksgiving, because don't forget: it doesn't exist here. It's just Thursday. It'd be much stranger to be away from home on Christmas since Paris has been in the holiday spirit for a month already and you can't avoid it (the Christmas lights here really are spectacular).

     Every year on Thanksgiving, my family and I sit down to our Thanksgiving meal--which is either enthusiastically home-cooked or ordered from a restaurant--and we start eating and talking around the table. I smile and everybody knows what I'm about to say: everyone go around and list what you're thankful for. Since I can't be at home, this is what I'd say this year:

I'm grateful, thankful, appreciative and glad to be living in my favorite city again, 
More and more everyday I'm realizing that it's always better to follow your heart than to do what you think people expect from you. Grad school isn't fun, but living abroad, meeting new people, staying out later than you should because you're too happy to just call it a night and feeling the accomplishment that you can make it not only on your own, but on your own on a whole different continent, in a different language and in a different culture is definitely fun. I've learned more by living in Paris than I ever have in a classroom. I'm thankful for all the help I've received along the way here because I know I'm one of a lucky few.

I'm thankful for the last seventeen years with my cat,
Here comes the cat shout-out. But honestly, most people don't get that many years with their favorite pet and I'll always be grateful that I was home in the summer with her when it was her time.

I'm thankful for airplanes,
I have four friends and family members coming to see me over the year, starting with my friend from high school, Ashley, next week. Plus, I get to go home for a month in mid-December. No matter how far away I am, I always think it's only a grossly overpriced ticket away. I'm so glad I'm able to spend the holidays at home, despite how much the cold is going to suck. I can't wait for bonfires, Minnesotan accents, real grocery stores and to party it up with everyone at home before another semester of doom (Okay, school's not that bad ).

and I'm thankful for you.
If you're reading this, I probably know you and therefore care about you. So thanks for existing. And reading.

Love,
Rachel

Jusqu'ici, tout va bien

 

     I don't really know how, but it's easy to forget how lucky I am to be living in Paris. Maybe it's because life here has become so routine that I forget that it's really the Eiffel Tower that I'm looking at from my desk when I'm typing out my papers and blog posts or that I forget if the conversation I just had was in French or English. When I'm falling asleep at night, the Eiffel Tower's search light lights up my room as it passes. Everything is just so normal, so quotidien, that I forget how far I am from home and that this, however comfortable it is, will never truly be my hometown. I cross the Seine like it's the Mississippi, but it's not. It takes looking at a map to really have it register in my brain that I'm over four thousand miles away from where I grew up. It's really humbling to constantly receive blank stares when you tell someone where you're from and they have no idea what it even is. I usually just agree with people when they think it's Indianapolis or that it's "the city with that car race." Basically my entire existence is lost on people here. Unless I tell them I was born in Texas.
     I haven't really blogged in a while because I'm such a perfectionist; if I can't write something perfectly, I lose interest. I just can't do it. This really applies to school. I feel like my brain is so muddled all the time and that I'm being pulled in so many directions that I can't be as productive as I need to be. My directed study adviser, after I was obviously struggling to stay awake during our one-on-one meeting, told me to eat more fruits and vegetables because "Il faut nourrir le cerveau comme les muscles." She's right. I can't realistically keep eating a baguette, a croissant and a ham-and-cheese sandwich for every meal (Yes, I ate all of those as one meal on Friday).
    This brings me to school. I have four or five weeks left until the semester is over and I have to write a twenty-page research paper, write a 5,000 word travel essay, write a travel feature article, prepare and teach a translation workshop, read two books and finish translating the article "La force des cultures" by Philippe d'Iribarne. Most of the time I feel like I'm treading water and my head keeps bobbing below the surface. And that is a horribly stressful simile because I'm terrible at treading water. I never passed all six levels at swimming lessons and had to retake level four three or four times. So this is how I feel about school, essentially--like I'm drowning.
     No matter how much I love Paris, I constantly think about how easy it would be if I didn't throw myself into this situation. What if I had just graduated from college, gotten a job and found an apartment? That definitely would've been easier than shelling out all the money to live in one of the most expensive arrondissements in one of the world's most expensive cities and less mentally taxing than having to say everything, however minor, in another language. I miss coming downstairs in the morning and people are happy to see me. But I was meant to be a drifter. I mean, the signs that I'd one day live abroad were already there when I was eight and writing travel journals.
     On Monday last week, I received an email that I would be having my OFII (Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration) medical appointment. This appointment is required for anyone staying in France longer than six months (correct me if I'm wrong) and is necessary for attaining your titre de séjour, which validates your visa. So if the whole CampusFrance and visa appointment process wasn't enough, I still had work to do. AUP's immigration services office continually reassured me that I had done everything correctly and that the OFII was swamped with an abnormal amount of applicants, so we all had to have patience. With one day's notice, I had to track down all the necessary documents (birth certificate, passport, take pictures in a Photomaton booth, buy 58 euros worth of timbres fiscaux, find my housing certification and pick up my convention from the immigration director), take off work and head to their office on the rue de la Roquette near Bastille for my medical appointment, which is just bullshit bureaucracy so the French government knows that I'm healthy and can stay in France and not infect their people. We were warned that if we missed this appointment, we would become "illegal citizens on the French territory" and thus be deported or fined or imprisoned if we were caught. Maybe all of the above. Unfortunately, with racial profiling as prevalent as it is in the U.S., the likelihood of me being asked for an ID by a police officer is relatively low, but nevertheless I didn't want to get my ass banned from France, so I made sure I was on time.

The required Photomaton photos for OFII

     The day was sunny and warm and I got to Bastille early. When I left the sortie, I started smiling--I really missed the place! My internship at French Travel Partners on the rue Amelot and the nightlife back in 2012 made Bastille a hub of memories for me. I don't spend a lot of time in the onzième anymore, so it's probably one of the few places in Paris that remains part of my study abroad experience and hasn't been changed by my current life here. I like that.
     The obvious thing for me to do with the awkward hour I had before my appointment was to head to my beloved Place des Vosges. I can't tell you how weird it is to realize that the last time I smelled the seafood coming from the Bar à Huitres on the boulevard Beaumarchais and turned the corner to see all the pigeons and kids and elderly people filling out the square--Paris's oldest--was more than a year and a half ago. It's some serious déjà vu and still a little sad for me that I'm the only one of my friends that came back. But again, I know I'm ridiculously lucky. The first time I ever came to the Place des Vosges, I was borderline map illiterate and constantly in fear of screwing up at my internship. I'd eat my croissant and ham-and-cheese sandwich, dropping about half my croissant on the ground accidentally for the pigeons and thinking I might not make it until the end of the semester. Sitting there now, on "my" bench (the third one in in the northeast corner) I was remembering how much I loved Paris then (despite my worries) and how I promised myself that I'd come back and do it all over again. I guess I'm pretty good at keeping promises.

Last lunch break in 2012 in Place des Vosges

I was such a professional at FTP

     The actual OFII appointment went just fine. It was my first experience with French doctors and overall they're really the same as American doctors; they're just a bit more nonchalant about privacy and tend to sit really close to you. I walked out less than an hour later with the sticker in my passport that basically says "Dude, it's alright. Rachel's with me." for anyone questioning why I'm here. I'm a resident of France now, kids!
     Other than work, school and residency appointments, I'm continuing to meet new people almost everyday, which is a beautiful part about living in a huge city. Thankfully, everyone we meet has been really enthusiastic about speaking both English and French with us and there's no shortage of good times. I miss everyone from home, but I'm doing my best to not let it be a crutch that prevents me from living out my dream of being here and meeting new people and learning about the world. I really wouldn't trade any of this for any other situation and someday I know I'll love helping people do what I've been fortunate enough to have done myself.

I miss you, you who's reading this, and if you're from Minnesota, see you in a month!

Love,
Rachel

Scroll down for my favorite pictures from the last few weeks. All my pictures are up on my Flickr.

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Raspail station

Promenade Plantée, one of the spots Céline takes Jesse in Before Sunset

Bois de Vincennes

Café de Flore

Jardin du Luxembourg

Pont Louis Philippe

Christmas decorations on the Ile St-Louis

Fun times with friends

Paris in the Rain

Paris is the world's most amazing city. It's full of world-class architecture, art, food, parks, monuments and shopping. There are constantly new people to be meeting and new things to be doing and new cafés in which to be watching new people doing new things. Every day is a like an adventure, right? It's almost enough to put a dance in your step every time you step outside.

Almost. 

If only Paris had consistently beautiful weather to match. I'm hard-pressed to remember a day in the last month where it hasn't rained. And the rain is all fine and dandy when it's summer and you have nowhere to be and the water serves as air-conditioning (Because there sure is none of that in this town), but when it's all day, every day, blowing, cold, your shoes are sopping and your umbrella is flipping inside out, it's really not so beautiful.

It's just not, Woody Allen, however right you are about most other things about Paris.

Rachel