The Long and Winding Road

    A woman stands at baggage claim ripping into a new Marlboro carton, waiting for her suitcase. A couple stands kissing on the moving sidewalk, oblivious to the rest of the travelers and, to be perfectly honest, lucky they didn't get an elbowing from me as I scraped by them. I'm back in Paris, if it weren't obvious enough.

     

     I spent just under a month back at home in Minnesota and it was as glorious as I predicted. After arriving home sans luggage (Lost at Schiphol Airport) and sans 40-euro bottle of duty-free wine I specially bought for our Christmas dinner (Confiscated at Schiphol Airport), I spent my days: sleeping till the afternoon, nourishing myself with Nordeast, frosting, root beer, oreos, bagels and peanut butter, driving cars, researching my family ancestry, watching Netflix until 3 AM every night (New Girl, Blackfish, The Shining and a feeble attempt at The Hunger Games before I lost interest), reading non-school material (On the Map: Why the World Looks the Way it Does by Simon Garfield), going to concerts, playing the piano, shopping, gambling, trying out new restaurants, getting a new phone to replace my stolen iPhone, skiing for the first time in ten years with my sister and realizing my lessons served me well from back in the day and spending lots of time with my favorite Minnesotans. But, alas, there are only so many days a person can go without putting on real clothes and not feel like they're at the Overlook Hotel. I walked around the house shouting "REDRUM!" whenever my mom had her back turned.

     

     Goodbyes are hard, especially because I won't be home again until at least September. But it was time to finish up this master's degree and continue living my Paris dreams or whatever, so I left. I have a long road ahead of me.

Part One of my January video

     For someone who loves traveling, I sort of hate it. I mean, the act of traveling...well, it sucks. No matter what, I can guarantee at least several of these will happen: I won't sleep more than twenty minutes on any flight, I'll get stuck next to the baby that cries louder than it normally would just to punish the rest of us for not having kids, I'll have no room overhead for my carry-on, so under my legs it goes, my flight will be delayed, airport security will dig through my meticulously-packed bags despite complying with all the rules (Especially at Shithole Schiphol Airport) or my ears won't pop and I'll start whimpering in agony to myself for the last fifteen minutes. Or if none of the above happen, I'll have a unique situation like on Sunday when I got to my apartment and my landlady locked me out (long story) and I was so jetlagged that I tried sleeping in my hallway against my door until she got home three hours later.

     But I made it. I'm in Paris. Everything is fine and I'm not flying again for over a month. 

     To backtrack quite a bit, December was a blur. My friend Ashley from high school managed to fly out from Boston to visit for a weekend and I had a great time introducing her to Paris and to Europe in-between my classes that I couldn't skip and conference calls she had to make because she technically didn't take any time off from work. I made her walk till her feet were borderline sprained and barked at her to get off my futon, stop being jetlagged and go out, because you don't waste your three days in Paris being tired. (You just don't, Ashley.) Being cold-weather natives at heart, we sat outside with a blanket for dinner in the Place du Tertre and drank wine on the Quai des Grands Augustins, as well as hitting the obvious spots like the Louvre, the top of Notre-Dame, the Champs-Elysées and the Eiffel Tower (though she wouldn't climb it). It's a great thing to have an old friend in this big city.

Ashley & I in the Place des Vosges

     The rest of the month was devoted to school. I had an awful cold for a week or two that had me going through a box of tissues a day and coughing so badly my ribs hurt. Basically I kissed any and every social invitation goodbye and hunkered down in my chambre de bonne until everything that I had procrastinated on got unprocrastinated. In the process of writing close to forty pages in a week, I was missing the simpler days of the low-stress classes of my study abroad semester and the driving passion I had for my French degree that I don't have for translation. If any college students are reading this, you need to realize your finals could be a lot worse. You could be a graduate student.

    Today, the official start of my last semester of school ever (I will not be doing a Ph.D. Do not let me think that's a good idea. It's not.) and I woke up early as I always do at the beginning. I felt daunted by the work ahead of me listed on my syllabi and doubted whether I can do this as I always do at the beginning. The RER B was bursting at the seams during the morning rush hour. I drank copious amounts of coffee and admired the beautifully overcast sky sheathing the Eiffel Tower in fog. I bought a book for class, Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau, from Brian at The Abbey Bookshop, my favorite bookstore in Paris because he always gives me free coffee, sometimes with maple syrup (He's Canadian), and genuinely loves helping me find what I need. I imagine The Abbey is what Shakespeare & Co. once was before the tourists found it. 

     I took a long way home to avoid the RER B, taking the boulevard Saint-Michel to rue Monsieur le Prince and the Place de l'Odéon and winding through the nearly-empty Jardin du Luxembourg. The green metal chairs were all empty, a rare sight in the warmer months. January is a wonderful time in Paris because you feel like it's yours. It's not even very cold, despite all the complaining Californians and Parisians with very limited cold tolerances.

My last first day of school picture ever.

Foggy day in the Luxembourg Gardens

The pruned trees in winter always remind me of the vines in Sleeping Beauty.

rue Herschel

rue Michelet

     So as I start the new year, what did 2013 mean for me? It was probably my biggest year yet. I worked my ass off applying for graduate school, got in and spent months working on paperwork which included a visit to Chicago, somehow graduated from college with Latin honors, said goodbye to my little companion Ribby, and moved back to the city that makes me so, so happy. Moving here is the hardest thing I've ever done (so much more so than my semester in college) but I've somehow gotten this far. I try to view it like this: if you're going to do something hard, you might as well do it where you want to. I don't want to have regrets of what could have been.

What Grad School in France Has Taught Me

1. You can't get everywhere in thirty minutes or less. In fact, you can't get most places in thirty minutes or less, even though Mary-Kate and Ashley taught me I could travel 9,000 miles to Transylvania in "about twenty minutes."

2. You can't procrastinate like you did back in college. I'm finally learning that starting a research paper two days before it's due is really, really stupid.

3. The Eiffel Tower is really distracting. So is people-watching from my window, Deezer, Pinterest and old Britney Spears videos on YouTube circa 2001.

4. When a professor assigns you five books to read for the semester, you read them ASAP. You shouldn't read other books for fun.

5. You absolutely cannot skip class. Period. I think back on the days when I could Ferris Bueller-it in Montmartre during my study abroad semester and no one cared. That was such sweet freedom.

5. Google Calendar is sometimes the only thing keeping my life intact. I'm holding on for dear life.

6. Sleep can be the most fun part of the day. 

7. Saturdays, and even Fridays, are legitimate study days. For the first time in my life, any weekend day is now fair game to get things done.

8. Chocolate and wine is sometimes a meal. After spending most of my life with a certain nonchalance toward chocolate, I've recently realized that everyone's right. It's pretty good. And it sometimes replaces meals when I don't want to go get real groceries.

9. Doing your master's in France before you're 26 is really smart. In a word, discounts. I can get into any national museum for free and get reduced prices on a lot of things.

10. Doing your master's in France before you're 26 makes you the youngest. Everyone else has time to figure out their lives for a bit longer than me. When people ask what I was doing before this               career-wise, I have nothing to say. I'm the eternal underdog.

11. Wine and croissants will never let you down, but the RER will. My frown has been turned upside down so many times thanks to them.

12. Coffee is everything. 

13. Grad school in one year instead of two means everything is overly intense. Good luck trying to hold down a job on top of it.

14. Grad school in one year instead of two is a relief. I probably wouldn't be doing this at all if it were two.

15. Be really passionate about what you choose to study. It's so much harder if you're not.


     But the main thing I've learned from Paris is that you don't have to do what everyone else is doing. Let everyone else live up to those underlying expectations for what your twenties are supposed to be. I'm having a great time doing what I truly want to do.

Love,
Rachel

When September Ends

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

Two of my favorite things: boulangeries and cats

Before Sunset

"Can I learn to look at things with clear, fresh eyes? How much can I take in at a single glance? Can the grooves of old mental habits be effaced? This is what I'm trying to discover. The fact that I have to look after myself keeps me mentally alert all the time and I find that I am developing a new elasticity of mind. I have become accustomed to only having to think, will, give orders and dictate, but now I have to occupy myself with the rate of exchange, changing money, paying bills, taking notes and writing with my own hand." 

-Goethe, 11 September 1786

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     When I leave a week in-between posts, it feels like there's too much to say. In Minnesota, I can go weeks without anything notable happening, but even a day in Paris is so saturated that when my head hits the pillow I can't even remember waking up that morning. I can't commit to anything with anyone without first consulting my Google Calendar. I feel scattered.

     I know I'm definitely learning how to be independent much more this time than last time, even though last time really kicked my ass (in a good way). I've had to get my whole life set up (phone, bank account, rent, internet, etc.) without anyone helping me and usually not in English, either. This is the first time I've ever lived completely alone before. It's no longer, "Hey, whose turn is it to buy toilet paper?" but instead, "Okay, how am I going to tell my landlord that my pipe burst in the kitchen?"(Luckily for me, water started leaking through my landlord's ceiling, so she knew about it and thus I didn't have to figure that one out.)

     Maybe I've been so busy because the weather's so nice and I don't want to spend any time inside. Last week, I was convinced that summer was over and we were already doomed for a seven-month stretch of cold, continuous rain. But then the sun came out and the scarves came off. Well, off anyone non-French, anyway. In my observations, I've come to the conclusion that Parisians only experience one season: cold. It can be seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and they still refuse to remove their wool scarves and fur-lined coats. I've been wearing jeans just to be polite, but I'd be much more comfortable in shorts like any reasonable Minnesotan would. When I don't wear a jacket, they look at me like funny. Same goes for when I smile in public. Anyway, it's so beautiful that I was struck by how gorgeous the light was streaming through the windows at McDonald's on boulevard St-Michel at sunset today. And then I felt stupid because it was McDonald's. 

     One night last week, I sat in the empty square in front of Saint-Sulpice, my favorite Parisian church, staring at its golden façade and I realized I want to start doing sketches again. It makes me so happy to just sit and observe and listen to the fountains. It's nice to not be in a constant state of mild anger over things like people who think it's okay to flâner in the métro or cough in your face and instead do something that doesn't require any thinking.

      On Saturday, I spent time sitting in one of the green metal chairs in the Jardin du Luxembourg watching, listening and sketching with my watercolor markers. A French girl approached me, asking "Qu'est-ce que vous faites ? Est-ce que je peux regarder ?" She told me she came to draw, too, and that my drawing of the palais was beautiful. She left and I sat there for a long time with the sun warming my face and I thought if I had to live in the Jardin du Luxembourg for the rest of my life, I could be happy. I'm not sure why that would ever be a legitimate situation, though. (Sidenote: I can make watercolor postcards. If you want me to make you one, send me your address.)

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

The Medici Fountain, Jardin du Luxembourg

     One of my favorite leisure activities is to browse the bouquinistes, which almost always takes me to the Pont des Arts. Even though Romantic Paris is starting to really annoy me, I still like reading the locks to see where they came from. On late Saturday afternoon just before sunset, there was a brother duo playing a set of their own music and a few American covers (Watch it here) and you wouldn't have guessed from a distance that they were actually good since a swarming group of girls usually doesn't hint at greatness. They mentioned an upcoming show of theirs, but I could only hear "October" and "frères." I actually Googled "Octobre concert Paris frères musique" but that didn't direct me to anything. I still have one of their songs in my head.

Pont des Arts

Pont des Arts

Pont des Arts

     I covered most of the sixth on foot, which I never would've done last year since I was such a métro enthusiast. I really couldn't see the forest for the trees. I had no concept of how the city is connected. For example, I had no idea that the Montparnasse Cemetery is right next to Raspail or how close I used to live to avenue du Maine. None. On Sunday, I went down to the fourteenth to find a Monoprix or Franprix that would be open in the morning and I ended up walking all over my old stomping grounds. Simply put, the fourteenth is my jam. For real. I literally walked down the street with a huge smile on my face before realizing I was in Paris and shouldn't do that. I love how real it feels when I'm there and I feel like I fit in. My new neighborhood in the sixth is mainly upper-class and the traffic on the boulevard St-Michel is a constant roar in the background. In the fourteenth, I can actually hear my feet hit the ground and it's beautiful.

     

One of my goals this year is to find someone to take me for a ride.

Cour du Commerce Saint-André

Institut Hongrois on rue Bonaparte

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

View of the Tour Montparnasse near home

      I went with my new friend Rebecca to a French-English "meet-up" at Café du Châtelet in the first, where a big group of French speakers and English speakers hang out, have a beer and do trivia. Each time it was a new round we had to speak only in one language. It's really, really strange and absurd to hear French people struggle to speak in English to each other. My team was three Parisians, a grad student from UW-Madison, an Indian man who lives in Spain (and spoke no English or French) and a Swedish man. We ended up winning the whole game and got free shots. We stayed long after it was over, analyzing life to death as they do in Paris. This is part of why I came here; where would I be able to meet so many different people at home? It puts your life into perspective when you realize the world is so much bigger than the United States. That's the cross-cultural studies degree talking.This wasn't the only time, either: On Friday, Rebecca and I hung out with people from Israel, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain and France (And their eighteen-year-old tabby cat and I fell in love), and last night I talked about my favorite books at Shakespeare and Company with a guy my age from Luxembourg and an older, seriously snobby man from Boston who was quoting entire passages of Gatsby to me just because he could and acting like he personally knew Henry James and James Joyce.

     Here are more pictures of the past week. I realize I almost never talk about school, which is why I'm here in the first place, I guess. Another time.

Rachel

RER at Port-Royal

Picnicking on my balcony/terrace

Musée de l'Orangerie

Braved the lines for their famed hot chocolate, which outshined their terrible service.

I finally got down to the quai to drink wine. There is really not much better than that.

The staircase in an art studio we wandered into in the first. Some of the craziest stuff I've ever seen.

Pub Quiz Night at the Highlander and trying to reform a winning team.

Careless People

  

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

-The Great Gatsby, 1925

____________

I need to share something.

     I just had a real geek moment, so let me indulge. A few days ago, during my flâner-ing about Paris, I came across this sign outside Shakespeare and Company:

     Well, as The Great Gatsby is my favorite book- my iPhone case is even the cover art- I got a little excited. Excited enough that I hurried home from my first day of class, blow-dried my hair from the heavy rain today that made me swear under my breath every other second, and walked from my apartment over to the rue de la Bûcherie. I've read Gatsby probably four times and written a few high school and college papers about it, so I was thrilled to join in. Plus, they promised free cocktails and I'm not one to pass on that.

     Sarah Churchwell, author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, came from London to read excerpts and talk about her book. I think Gatsby is a book that is open to so much interpretation, so I was interested to hear what she had to say. I stood outside on the sidewalk among the enormous group that gathered and listened to her speak from inside the bookstore.

     According to Churchwell, the novel, set in 1922, actually predates the images of flappers dancing the Charleston. Women didn't start wearing knee-length dresses until later in the 1920s and the Charleston was a phenomenon that swept the nation in 1925. Daisy and Jordan probably would've worn lightweight, white dresses down to their ankles. 

     An audience member asked Churchwell why Daisy doesn't stay with Gatsby at the end of the novel, and I've always been grappling with the same idea. Her interpretation is that when Daisy comes to one of Gatsby's parties, she's repulsed by the overtly gaudy display and his lack of true friends and from this point on, she begins to draw away from him. She wants nothing to do with the lifestyle of West Egg and it makes her uncomfortable. "She cares for Gatsby, but she's a careless person," Churchwell explains.

     The films are problematic due in part to their casting. "What I can't understand is why would Daisy leave Robert Redford, who's rich, good-looking and Robert Redford, for Bruce Dern? It doesn't make sense," Churchwell says with a laugh. She says that Leonardo DiCaprio is the best Gatsby because he can play both criminal and earnest, but that Carey Mulligan was miscast completely. In regards to the film versions, Churchwell thinks they still can't be filmed properly, because Gatsby has already been told in its most perfect version: literature. What makes the book so beautiful is its commitment to ambiguity and "Gatsby is a book that grows with you. You can read it at 16 and again at 27." I agree. 

    

      The Shakespeare staff then served us French 75s--Champagne, lemon and gin--while a jazz band played and Churchwell signed books. I went over to her corner and handed her my copy. After telling her my name and that I really enjoyed her talk, I added that I was from St. Paul, Fitzgerald's birthplace. "Oh, I'm so glad to have met someone from St. Paul," she smiled. "Fitzgerald would've loved that." 

Rachel

I Know Places

"How I wish my friends could be with me for a moment to enjoy the view which lies before me."

          -Goethe, 12 September 1786

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    "I'm going to push you to have more confidence in knowing what you want," my advisor said to me this week during our meeting. He's right. I probably should, in a lot of areas. What he was getting at is that I need to figure out what I want to work on for my directed study this semester and ultimately, my thesis. It's hard for me to grasp that I'm at the academic level of having to do a thesis or that I could even be capable of it. I have the mindset of the underdog and to be really successful at this, I'll need to drop that. My school has a lot of Ivy League-ers and once again, I've been thrown down among the youngest and least accomplished. I have a lot to prove, but I still don't know what I want, in my program or in my life.

     Orientation week is now over and I'm looking forward to classes starting tomorrow. I'm taking five classes: Communications and the Global Public Sphere, What is Cultural Translation?, Translation Workshop, Historical Systems of Cultural Translation and a directed study. I'm also going to try and audit a French course, if possible since it's free for grad students. I felt like it'd be weird to be in Paris and not be taking a French course. I've been continuously enrolled in French courses since I was fifteen. I think it'd be good for me, since my classes are all in English and everyone at school speaks English. I'm actually surprised to find I'm a rare breed in that I speak French pretty well. I can't imagine coming here to live and not knowing a lick of French, but there are plenty of people in that boat. They'll learn.

      On Friday, the cultural translation (CT) program had an eight-hour meeting to introduce ourselves and for the faculty to introduce themselves. I tried with every speck of energy in me to not fall asleep. I haven't had coffee yet in Paris and oh boy, do I need it. To top it off, we sat in a circle, so I'm sure all my new, impressive and distinguished professors thought I was narcoleptic or hungover.

My campus

      That night, we had a cocktail hour and Bateaux-Mouches night for the graduates, which was awesome considering we got free dinner, wine and a ride on the Seine (Not technically free, since our orientation fee was five hundred euros). For the rest of the weekend, when I wasn't attending optional orientation activities or trying to clean my slightly dirty apartment (I opened the fridge today and almost gagged. The American dollar doesn't take you far in terms of getting a spacious, clean place to live, let me tell you.), I've been reacquainting myself with my favorite Paris haunts. Yesterday, I spent my day on the Ile Saint-Louis and in the Latin Quarter, eating Berthillon sorbet, browsing the bouquinistes and sitting in the sun with my eyes closed in parks. This week has been so hard, so it was nice to walk around by myself and not have report to anyone or have any sense of time. I don't yet have a phone and I didn't bring a map, either. That is freedom if I've ever known it.

Bateaux-Mouches- it wasn't freezing like last time in January 2012!

In the park behind Notre-Dame, creeping on children and enjoying the sunshine

Berthillon sorbet. I dare you to find better sorbet/ice cream.

     I joined a few other grad students on a tour of the Latin Quarter and we passed so many memories, particularly the steps at St-Etienne-du-Mont, which were featured in Midnight in Paris and where I last spent time with my favorite Paris friends. If you're reading this, I miss you and think of you guys all the time. Come back to me!

     If I had to say one really great thing about my new school, it's how diverse its population is. I made a friend who's from Athens and her and I had a great dinner and conversation outside on the rue de Buci on Saturday night. These are the kinds of people I probably would never encounter at home and what an awesome experience it is to have.

Dinner on the rue de Buci

    Today, I put on my photographer cap and ventured into the Jardin du Luxembourg to take photos. Just as I was settled against a tree, basking in the sun, listening to a jazz band play in one of the pavilions, and thinking, This truly is the most beautiful city on Earth, a bird took a shit on my pants. That's Paris for you. You can never be too content for too long, or it shits on you.

I forgot that I'm a GIANT in France and always need to bend down for mirrors

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Bird merde right on my new pants

My street

St-Sulpice, my favorite church in Paris

The Highlander. I need to recruit new team members for pub quiz night.

Jared & Taylor's lock

Enjoying the sunset from home

   
     I walked to the Institut Catholique de Paris and The Highlander, two of my past hangouts and then on to the Pont des Arts to affix Taylor and Jared's lock that I gave them at their wedding in prime real estate on the bridge, which has gotten so much fuller since the last time I saw it. I then spoiled myself with speculoos gelato from Amorino on rue de la Huchette. In Shakespeare & Co., I found the screenplay for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the latter of which starts in the bookshop. I got into the Before series this summer and I'm completely hooked. The other day, a few people were telling me I remind them of Julie Delpy and that they'll need to find me a Jesse in Paris. I thought that was funny and cute to say. But I hope I'm not that neurotic.

Extremely excited about this.

     Anyway, the Eiffel Tower is sparkling for four more minutes, so I think I'll go and enjoy that on my balcony before I have to be professional and go to sleep at a reasonable time. Bonne nuit, mes chéries.

Rachel