Check out my video collage of September, most of which is shaky iPhone footage. YAY.
I don't think it really hits you how fast time goes by until you routinely scan your Navigo métro card in the morning over the reader on the turnstile and it unexpectedly flashes a red 'X' with a loud blaring sound. It means another month has gone by and you need to shell out the€65 to pay for a new monthly pass. It's October, y'all.
I realize I don't ever write about school, which is funny because didn't I come here for that? My daily routine involves me waking up, extremely tired to the point of absolute dread of getting out of my bed, wasting time around my apartment and realizing that I haven't left early enough for my thirty-five minute commute to school. I rush out the door, never completely satisfied with my outfit (Everyone's more stylish than me) or my homework (Everyone's more studious than me) and just hoping that I didn't forget anything up in my room because going back up my stairs is just not in the cards. Once I walk down the boulevard Saint-Michel to the Luxembourg station, I take the crowded, stinking RER B train one stop to Saint-Michel, where I catch the RER C train for three peaceful stops to Pont de l'Alma.
I'm always late for class. Always. My "campus" (Which doesn't exist in the American sense) is a group of buildings relatively spread out throughout the seventh, and I spend the whole time walking to each one formulating excuses as to why I'm late. I always blame the RER for having issues if I'm asked.
Then I have classes and work (In the writing lab as a tutor) until about 5 or 6 PM each day, with the exception of Wednesdays, when I have class until 8. During any and all breaks, I'm usually curating my Google Calendar and email, eating croissants, madeleines and sandwichs jambon-fromage and drinking vending machine coffee.
When I'm done with everything for the day, I always feel like Wow, I live in Paris. I can go do anything I want to! and then pull out my map to go somewhere, but I usually just end up heading home. I tell myself I'll go running in the Jardin du Luxembourg, too, but then I go buy a baguette and a bottle of wine and forget about it.
As for my actual classes, they're all pretty fantastic, but hard. I can't tell you how nice it is to be taking classes you want to take instead of generals in college. For the most part, I take too many notes, which is weird. It's weird to like what you're studying because you spend so much of your education complaining about it all. I'm realizing that translation isn't really just looking up words and writing them down. It's actually a really tedious and grueling process. Today, I met with Anne-Marie, my official directed study advisor, to go over my first translation of Philippe d'Iribarne's sociological article La force des cultures. I thought I did a pretty good job on the first few pages and that translating was coming so naturally and quickly for me. No. Everything was wrong.
On a different note, Paris is really expensive. Like really expensive. I reluctantly spent a bit of time at Franprix and Monoprix today and was astounded when I started really looking at prices of random things, like €13 for nail polish and €18 for a basic towel. A pint of Guinness at a bar runs at upwards of €9. It's painful. And remember, you need to multiply by at least 1.3 to get dollars. Everyone seems to manage just fine because they're all out at cafés and brasseries all day long, while I drink my instant coffee and one-euro wine with a side of baguette. I don't even know how people can afford their cigarettes, but they sure do somehow because Paris is essentially just one really big, beautiful ashtray. I, on the other hand, feel like I'm about one Navigo away from pulling up a chunk of sidewalk next to a homeless man with an Amsterdam beer in one hand and a J'ai faim SVP cardboard sign in the other (Which isn't really all that different than what the bouquinistes do, if you think about it.). I guess Paris is not really designed for the American dollar or young adult.
On to October!
Rachel
Montparnasse-Bienvenüe station
Home
Meeting up with Amelia, another Central alum, at Le Pure Café near Charonne in the 11th
Shakespeare & Company
Canadian expat bookstore, The Abbey Bookshop, in the Latin Quarter. It's a hot mess, but that's how I like my bookstores.
Musée du Louvre
Versailles
Versailles
Versailles
Tartelette aux fraises at the Eiffel Tower in between classes
"You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, like you’ll not only miss the people you love, but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again." -Azar Nafisi
Joyeux Poisson d'Avril ! I feel like the joke's on me when I really look at what date it is, which I usually avoid as much as possible. How can it already be April? I've never felt a year go by so fast. Sometimes I even catch myself saying to people that I just got back to the U.S.
I also can't believe that my time at Augsburg is almost up. I've spent the last few days running errands downtown and it made me a little melancholy that I won't be living in Minneapolis for at least the next few years. I read the above quote by Azar Nafisi around the time I was leaving Paris in June and reading it now, just a few weeks before leaving Augsburg, it makes a lot of sense again. I'm a pretty sentimental person when it comes to places (and especially people), so I'm sure leaving Minneapolis for the next foreseeable few years will be rough, especially considering I've called this city "home" for the last four. The video below, "Why We're Here" from Seven and Sixty Productions, really gets me going, too. I'm proud of our little hidden gem community that we have, despite our godawful winters that I will never get used to (I say it's because I was born in Texas). I'll be thinking about our friendly Minnesotan smiles at places like the grocery store when I'm standing in line at Franprix and customers are getting increasingly pissed when I don't have exact change or, God forbid, I have to use une carte.
Late March downtown sights
Lately I've also been watching a lot of creative Paris videos, which makes me more excited about this fall. My aunt sent me the above video, "A Day in Paris" by Darren Fisher and I found this other one on Vimeo by House of Nod. Both of them remind me so much of my life there last spring that I might as well make an appearance. But I suppose anyone who has spent any time in Paris would feel like that, too. And I never thought I'd be missing the métro quite like I do! Rachel
