Last Paris video...for now

I finally made myself sit down and create my last monthly video of my thirteen months in Paris. Normally I would have them finished and posted on the first of the month, but this time I just couldn't get myself to put it together knowing this was the last of my footage and the last memories I'll have of Paris...until next time.

Love,

Rachel

Lost in Translation

     In case it wasn't clear what I've been doing this summer other than traipsing around the Riviera and London, I've actually been working on my thesis, a translation of a book called Paris: Quinze promenades sociologiques (English: Paris: Fifteen Sociological Walks). The second reason I chose this master's program (the first being, well, Paris) was that, like most master's programs abroad, it was only one year in duration—two semesters of classes and one summer session where you write your 25,000-word-minimum thesis. Knowing what I know now, I am so glad that I went this route for grad school, because I don’t know if I had it in me to have done two years back at home. School has always come pretty naturally to me and I’ve always done pretty well when I’ve tried really hard, and okay when I haven’t.

     But grad school is different. 

     I had to work the hardest I’ve ever worked. There was no sliding by or cutting corners. The readings were chock-full of complex ideas by writers and translators who I’d never heard of but that my classmates seemed to have almost known on a personal level. I was the one who showed up to class, barely having been able to get through a dense, forty-page article on what it means to be a native informant in cultural translation, having extracted the most minute kernels of meaning out of it, and then spending the rest of the class period trying to keep my deer-in-the-headlights look under control because I actually didn't understand any of it. Nothing was easy. I don’t think there was ever a single moment of complete clarity where I confidently showed up to a class thinking I had the field of cultural theory figured out in any sort of way. I was constantly thinking to myself, why in the world did I choose this incredibly expensive year of torture over teaching English part-time?

     Almost the entire time, I would keep prefacing that I was new and very green to translation. But, underdog as I was, I am so glad that I did it. I proved to myself that I could get through a year among some truly brilliant classmates and professors who are entirely more passionate about translation than I ever care to be. I’ve always felt completely average in everything that I do and grad school confirmed that to me—but hey, I was able to roll with the best of them. It’s okay and, frankly, almost a relief to not be the absolute best at something. It reminds me of when I got to Augsburg, intending to be a music major and realizing I was no longer the best pianist of the bunch like I had been at home and that I was actually pretty terrible at music theory. If I had to go back and choose a master’s program, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would choose something different, but it is what it is. There was something very humbling and refreshing about learning a new art form (and translation really is an art form that Google Translate will never be able to replicate) from scratch and sitting back and just learning from other people who are dedicating their lives to transferring the experiences of one culture and language into another. It’s a rigorous field that is both underappreciated and taken for granted.

     Matt came to visit me for a little over a week in the beginning of August after his London program ended and then my friend Megan who I’ve been friends with since our freshman year at Augsburg was in Paris for a month-long program before heading off to Bologna, Italy for the year. Saying goodbye to the two of them—Matt goes to school in Indiana and Megan will be in Italy until next summer—was hard. I don’t like saying goodbye and I don’t like being left in Paris, my favorite place in the world, without anyone to share in it with me anymore.

     The latter half of August, I devoted myself to getting serious about my thesis and there were days where I wouldn’t leave my tiny chambre de bonne at all. I started with the goal of only translating about three chapters of the book, and the more time that has passed, the more I've added to it. While we were allotted just the summer to complete our theses, no one in the history of the program has ever finished by September. Even though I participated in commencement, I don’t officially graduate until I’ve turned in my thesis, so I hope to submit and defend it via Skype by December so I can graduate this semester.

     On top of translating from sunrise to sunset, I moved from my room with a view. I moved myself and my seventy-three bags of hell eight minutes away on foot to the rue Saint-Jacques in a studio twice the size of my former room. Let me just say that you can’t really complain about moving until you’ve singlehandedly carried a fifty-pound suitcase among other luggage down the world’s steepest spiral staircase. It gives me a whole new respect for the donkeys in Santorini that I once refused to ride up the 500 steps of the caldera. I feel you, donkeys. I feel you.

     So now it’s two weeks left in Paris to close up shop—cancel my phone plan and bank account, figure out what in the hell I’m going to do with all of my stuff and say goodbye once again to this city I’m so in love with. But somehow, someday, I'll be back. I promise.

Love, 

Rachel

A Room With A View

   

    Even though my rent could get me an apartment one hundred times bigger in Minneapolis, I've grown to love my little (emphasis on the 'little') spot above the gardens adjacent to the Luxembourg Gardens on the avenue de l'Observatoire. I know I'll never love my seven flights of stairs, but all of a sudden, I have all this gratitude for my view and my balcony, which are both rare. While enjoying the sun and a glass of wine out on my balcony, I can see the Montparnasse Tower, the Eiffel Tower, Saint-Sulpice, the Grand Palais, the Palais Garnier, the Sacré-Coeur, La Défense, the Louvre and the Palais du Luxembourg.

      

     I'm proud of my barely double-digit square meter-age- it's my first real apartment on my own! I'm a lucky girl, even if I don't have my own toilet or shower. Some of us get dishwashers and elevators, and some of us get glorified walk-in closets with gorgeous views. But hey, I can tolerate anything, especially in Paris. 

And a nice glass of wine always helps, too.

Love,

Rachel

My new forget-me-nots

 

My building

The City of Life

“…and everyone was drunk off Paris, high off ignorance, and hoping, praying, for indulgence to lead down a path of gold to the city of life.”

–anonymous Sharpie message on a bathroom tile in The Fifth Bar, rue Mouffetard

------

     My desk is covered in half-open, overturned books and baguette crumbs. My kitchen is coffee-stained from my erupting espresso maker. My refrigerator is bare, except for jars of salsa with no tortilla chip partners and milk that is almost certainly expired. It's so late that the Eiffel Tower is invisible in the night except for two red lights glowing faintly like eyes suspended a thousand feet in the air. I’m in the throes of a new semester. My last semester.

     I’ve been in school something like twenty straight years at this point and boy, can I feel the weight of each and every one of them. In my fourth week of the semester, I’m decidedly lost, confused, challenged and feeling like I did back in swimming lessons when they tried teaching me how to tread water and all I ended up being capable of was not drowning. So maybe that’s all that matters at this point in my master’s degree. I may not be doing extraordinarily well or understanding much at all (What is translation theory?), but hey, I’m not drowning. I’m getting just enough oxygen to not need CPR!

     The weather is being a tease here. One minute, it’s sunny and I can hear kids playing in the park, and by the time I get outside, it’s overcast, I can feel freckles of raindrops on my face and the wind shoves my hair onto my lipstick. Today I found myself agreeing with someone that it’s cold outside. It was 54 degrees. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I must be becoming Parisian.

     Instead of my usual weekend routine of waking up after lunch and getting dressed around sunset, I decided to get some cultural things done this weekend and put my titre de séjour to work. Being under 26 and a resident of the European Union, I can, in short, get into any museum for free. To be honest, I feel exceptionally cool whenever I skip the ticket counter and just flash my passport at the ticket-taker like I’m kind of a big deal.

    I spent Sunday at the Louvre. I was determined to ignore the signs that direct everyone to the Mona Lisa as if to say, Okay, this way to your f-ing painting that you just paid twelve euros to get a selfie in front of before you high-tail to the Orsay. I wanted to wander through the more than 35,000 pieces of art and do some marveling. Or pretend-marveling. Because let’s be honest, it sometimes just feels good to look at art and pretend to be ultra-cultured. There's an art exhibition featuring Lady Gaga right now that I avoided because I can't handle the pretentiousness after I read that she cried over it. I followed up my meandering with some Tuileries-meandering where I called my dad for a long chat in those wonderful green metal recliner chairs (They’re so comfortable, I swear!).

The Mona Lisa's paparazzi

Oh, hey! It's like a horrible bathroom pic.. in the Louvre.

'MERICA

     Monday, my unofficial third weekend day this semester, was spent staring at completely different art at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Let it be known that I have never, ever been inside the Pompidou. Ever. It’s essentially the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis’ bigger French cousin. As one of Paris’s most-visited and well-known museums—and certainly its ugliest on the outside—it’s really strange that I’d never set foot inside before. Maybe it’s because I’m a huge complainer when it comes to modern art. It really gets under my skin and makes me say things I don’t mean, like "It’s not even art!" It makes me feel something—annoyance, frustration and an overwhelming urge to slap someone who paints a canvas all one color—so that is probably proof in itself that it’s art. 

     I don’t really want to get into it, but I can say that after plucking up the energy and thankfully going solo to spare others of my ranting, I...I liked it. 

     I liked the view it has from the top floor. I liked the escalator ride on the outside of the building. I even liked some of the art. Some of it. Baby steps here, people.

     I walked all the way home that night. I watched ice-skaters zip around on the temporary rink in front of the sparkling Hôtel de Ville backdrop. I crossed the Seine to the Île de la Cité at dusk to the tune of a man playing the saxophone on a bench. I smirked at the tourists sitting on the benches next to the hedges on the Parvis du Notre-Dame that I know for a fact are riddled with hidden rats. I bought a ham-and-egg crêpe on the rue de la Harpe and veered behind the Musée de Cluny to stuff my face because I guess it’s not really the thing to do, eating while walking.  

     I read a quote by Hemingway recently that goes: “Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.” I don’t know what I’m hungry for in America—Art? Crêpes?—but I know that when I’m here, in Paris, it is so very beautiful and that I am satisfied.

Love,

Rachel

P.S. Here's part 2 of my January video.