The Paris-ite In Me.

100 Days of Reflection

Yesterday marked 100 days since the end of my semester abroad in Paris.  One hundred very long, reflective days.  I’ve had time to [try to] re-integrate into my surroundings and the time away has given me a great opportunity to really come to understand the trials and tribulations of my voyage.

I suppose that, overall, there are three things to discuss: two big lessons that I’ve learned from this whole thing, and one issue that I need to come to terms with personally.

The first of these lessons is that, sometimes, people need to be pushed.  I’m not talking about pushing ourselves, but rather, those around us.  Individuals have needs, and sometimes those needs have to come through other people.  We know what we want, but other people either fail to recognize this or don’t really care.  The world isn’t going to wait for us to make a move - we have to be assertive.  If your happiness is going to come through the actions of someone else (and given the intricate details of human interaction, it does), then realize your own happiness through that person.  Don’t wait on others.  Stop playing games with yourself and with those around you.  If you need something to happen in order to be happy, then do it.  And keep doing it until you have to stop, either by your own accord or by someone else.  People don’t know what they want, and if you do, then don’t let that stand in your way.  It’s okay to push people - just stop pushing when your heart tells you to stop or the other person tells you to stop.  In life, I hear a lot of people say things like, “I want to do [blank], but instead I’m waiting for [person].”  Well, stop waiting.  Be proactive.  There’s a fine line between being assertive and being obsessed.  My advice is to ride that line for as long as you can.  You live for yourself, and as long as you don’t lose your dignity in the process, then there’s no harm done.

The second lesson here is that sometimes, it’s okay to live with reckless abandon.  I’m not saying that it’s okay to be stupid.  Actually, I take that back - be stupid.  But not in the sense of engaging in risky behavior, but rather, sometimes it’s okay to ignore your head and listen to your heart.  I’m a worrier.  I over-analyze situations all the time and end up psyching myself out because I don’t know what the future is going to bring.  But for once in my life, I made adecision by throwing caution to the wind.  And I don’t regret it.  Sure, there’s been moments where I wonder what would have happened had I taken the other fork in the road.  But the bottom line is, I had an experience that I never would’ve had.  That most people will never had.  This situation, over it’s duration, became (and is still becoming) more and more complicated.  And I’m not a pro when it comes to these issues.  I’ve spoken to a few people about this, and the general consensus is, “Wow, you sure got yourself in deep on your first try.”  But that’s okay.  I don’t know what’s going to become of it, but there’s some thrill in knowing that whatever happens, I have lived a real experience.  I’m not talking about some sort of high school drama, but instead, I have come head-on to an enormously complex situation.  And as of now, I’m doing the best to make it work.

The third thing here is something that an issue that I’ve always had: learning to let go.  I don’t like to lose people.  It pains me to know that I will never again see some of the amazing people that I met during my six months in Paris.  I was once walking through Tuileries with a friend, and she commented and said, “A few years ago, I was sitting right there drinking a coffee with a good friend.  And that makes me happy.”  For me, however, memories like that don’t make me happy - they make me sad.  I get sad knowing that those memories are in the past and will never happen again.  My other friend commented that, if we retain every person in our lives, we’d be too burdened.  Our lives have chapters, and the chapters have ends in order to give us a sense of freedom from the past.  The memories are what we hold on to and make events and places special in our lives.  But to me, it’s these memories that keep me craving for more.  I don’t just want to have to live on to the past - I want to have more of those experiences.  Yeah, we can recall these memories, but they’ll never be relived again.  And that - the nostalgia, the remembering - kills me.  I know that living with regret does nothing to advance us, and I render my life way too hard by constantly having regret in my heart.  Somehow, I’m going to have to find a way to get over this.

My trip was great.  In all honest, I would have never forseen the experiences and opportunities that I had in such a short time.  It’s cliche to say, but Paris made me come to terms with myself a little.  I have a better sense of who I was, who I am, and who I want to be.  I will forever be greatful for those who played a part of it.

Lastly, I have no immediate plans to continue this blog.  My life in Paris has come to a [temporary] end, and there’s not a whole lot to write about.  I’m doing my best to return next year, but who knows how that will work out.  If it does, then expect more in the future.  But for now, I bid you adieu.  If you’d like to head over to my other, permanent blog, however, I’d be more than delighted:

http://boredintheburbs.tumblr.com

Last Day in Paris.

I leave tomorrow.  My flight is at 16h10, which leaves me a little time to do some random things - namely, moping around - but my last full day in Paris is today.  And, um, I’m not at all ready to go home.

My experience studying abroad here has been unique, for multiple reasons.  The program that I selected is not like most programs.  A lot of my friends have studied abroad, and they find themselves grouped together with other Americans, isolated from the actual university life.  Their studies aren’t very rigorous, leaving them plenty of time to get boozed up on any and every day of the week.  They travel around from country to country, filling up their passports and seeing city upon city.  But not me.

My program was, to be brief, different.  That’s not to say that it was better, though it was certainly better for me.  I was forced to integrate into the school.  My friends and I weren’t held off to the side, stuck in some remote classroom reserved for foreigners.  Instead, we sat right next to fellow French students, taking courses in English and French, and being graded with the exact same curriculum.  (Also, you have no idea how intimidating it is to give an oral presentation in your non-native language in a room filled with native speakers.  Going for drinks before and after is not such a bad idea.)  Our schoolwork was deeply involved, leaving us very little time to travel around.  And I made the best of it.

In these past five months, I have worked to make Paris my home.  And I’ve suceeded.  I have cultivated a life in this city in the exact same sense that I have in Kansas City.  And it’s going to be really, really hard to leave.  Coming to Paris, I thought to myself, yeah, things will be different when I come back, but I’ll be able to pick my life right back up where I left it.  And I still feel that way.  But once I leave Paris, I’m leaving a life behind.  And that sucks.  Yes, I can always come back, but my friends will be gone, my opportunities will be different, and the city will never be the same.  Of course, new opportunities and friendships will be had, but it will never be the same.  And that’s the hardest part.  I am attached to this city, and yet, I’m forced to leave it all behind.

Today I plan to have a pretty busy day.  I first need to get a move on with packing, because that’s going to be pretty pain-staking.  At noon, I’m getting coffee with a friend, and then I’m going to head to my favorite area of Paris, La Défense.  At some point, I need to run a few errands and get some things to take back home, and after that, I’ll just hang out at a cafe at a while and think of the great life I’ve had.  Tonight, I’m having dinner with friends, and then meeting up with someone to go see a movie.  Then, at some point, it will be time to crawl back into bed and just pray that tomorrow, the day that takes me away, never comes.

It’s incredible: I miss Paris already, and I haven’t even left.

I just bought my ticket home.

I leave Paris on July 17th and return home some fourteen hours later.

Without a doubt, this is the saddest day of my life in a long time.

I don’t want to leave.

You know what makes for a really fun test?

• The exam in  English, written by a non-English speaker that clearly didn’t ask anyone to check for typos.
• An absent professor, so that you have no one to whom you can ask questions.
• A proctor that doesn’t speak a single word of English.
• Multiple choice questions with penalties for responding incorrectly.  The real kicker, however, is that YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU’LL GET PENALIZED!

It's really hot.

Apparently French people don’t believe in air conditioning in their houses.

On another note, my mom would fit in just swell in France!

One of the required experiences of being a French student?

Getting one or all of the following on your keyboard while writing a paper: baguette, Nutella, cheese.

Only in France.

Seriously, in what other country would your teacher bring you champagne during class?

I love this place.

Pictures from Turkey!

Okay, so this post has been about a month in the making.  In advance, I apologize for any delays, because as I very well know, your lives have been put on hold, just waiting for this very special moment.  Anyway, so I now present to you some pictures!

This picture is from the very first night that I arrived in Instanbul.  I came on a plane alone, with my friends coming in about six hours later.  So I had some time to spare.  Interestingly enough, a few weeks before I went to Turkey, I found out that I had a long-time friend, Jacob (who is studying abroad in Cairo right now), who was going to be there at the same time.  So we were talking a little, and, well, he was staying at the hostel right next to me!  Whatever fate had wrought, we spent the evening tooling around the city, exchanging stories about our lives abroad.  And then we had a beer.  Or three.  Unfortunately, Jacob left the next day in order to venture further into Istanbul, so I didn’t get to hang out with him too much.  But still!  How random is it that we were there at the same time!

This is Topkapi Palace.  It’s, uh, really old and I think it used to be, well, a palace for Ottoman kings or something.  If you’re really interested, well, look it up.  Someone told us that the price was well worth it, so we didn’t hesitate to spend 20 YTL (about $13) to get in.  Haha, well, the joke was on us, because it kind of sucked.  Then again, well, we’re young twenty-somethings, so stuff like this just doesn’t hold our attention long.

This is the Grand Bazaar, which is really massive.  There are just tons and tons and tons of shows selling useless junk.  Needless to say, I came home with a lot of junk in my luggage.  They don’t have specific pricepoints, which is all sorts of fun when you’ve never dealt with that before, so I really enjoyed spending time here.  A guy tried to sell me a scarf for 45 YTL, and I said no, so then he said, “Okay, 18 lira, which is wholesale cost!”  And I said I’d think about it.  Then he said, “Okay, well, 15 lira is my final offer!”  And I bought the scarf.  I asked a Turkish guy later about it and he seemed to think that 15 lira was a good deal, so I was proud.

This is Ayasofya, which is one of the billions of mosques in Istanbul.  From my understanding (so don’t hurt me if I’m wrong!), it was at first a Christian church, and was then abandoned and/or taken over by Islam and made into a mosque.  It was only until recently that they discovered this, when they noticed Christian symbols underneath the Islamic paintings.  There’s also construction going on right now inside, which kind of sucked and ruined the ambiance.

This here is the Spice Market, also known as the Egyptian Market!  It’s kind of like the Grand Bazaar, but it focuses more on, well, spices and food.  This here is Turkish Delight!  Tons and tons of Turkish Delight!  (Sidenote: Turkish Delight in French is called lokoum.)  I ended up buying, uh, over 1.5kg.  Also, if you’ll notice, they actually have prices here.  You can still haggle a little, but the prices are a little more set.  The best part about the Spice Market is that Turks believe in free product samples!

This here is just funny.  We walked into a stall and they had a perfume called “Naomi Campbell.”  I wondered what it smelled like and asked the guy to smell it, and then took a picture. He then kicked us out. So much for my shenanigans.

After two days in Istanbul, we went to a region of Turkey called Cappadocia, which is in the very middle.  It’s also a twelve-hour busride to and from, which was the bane of my whole trip.  The first day we took a tour, and our first stop was this: Uçhisar Castle.  Yes, that’s a castle formed underneath the rocks.

Pictured here is Rose Valley, stop two of our tour.  I’m not really sure what all to say about it, except that there was a lot of hiking.  Nothing painful, but we were running on a meager breakfast and weren’t well prepared to walk in mud.  Gillian, a friend, actually fell pretty early on and got mud all over her shoes and dress and bag.  But she was a trooper about it!  They also had messenger pigeon post offices here, which was interesting to see (though not interesting enough to post a picture about it.)

These are fairy chimneys!  And people lived inside of them!  I was kind of reminded of some sort of ant farm or something, which kind of freaked me out because I can’t stand ants.  But we were able to climb inside of them and I kind of got stuck once and also left my bag behind and freaked out about it because I thought I lost it forever.  But I found it, no worries!

This is our group: Cara (Australian), me, Stephanie (Australian), Chris (Australian), Song-My (pronounced Song-Me, California), and Gillian (Australian).  We all go to Sciences-Po, and we’re all pretty awesome.  We had dinner the first night at some random restaurant that had been suggested to us.  I forgot what I had, so needless to say it wasn’t all that awesome.  I think that the best way to come to understand a culture is through the food (or at least that’s what I tell myself, since I like to eat), so eating out was always fun.  And is always fun!

Here’s our hostel for our trip to Cappadocia.  Our room was in a cave!  And it wasn’t all that cold, either.  Actually, it was probably the right temperature.  But the hostel was really awesome.  I can’t remember the name, but if you ever get a chance, well, I suggest you go there!

After our trip to Cappadocia, we returned to Istanbul for Friday and then headed out on Saturday.  On Friday night, we decided to go to a Turkish bath.  And let me tell you, if you’re ever in Turkey, well, go, because it’s an interesting experience.  Women and men have separate baths, so Chris and I braved it all alone.  We had absolutely no idea, and these old Turkish brutes of men just kind of laughed at us the whole time.  After we were done, we sat and waited because we had no idea when the girls would show up.  Lucky for them, they showed up just in time to see us in our towels and towel-cum-turbans.

And that’s about it.  If you’re really interested, well, more can be read here and here.

Guessing Games!

So, over the past few months, I’ve come to find all sorts of new ways to entertain myself in this new, French culture.  I was reminded of one of them last night:

I was talking with a friend, Thomas, who works as a personal fitness coach.  I asked him if he had ever ran into any celebrities, and he said yes.  He named of Nicole Kidman, which I understood without trouble, and then another person that I forgot, and then someone whose name sounded like “Ew-Dee Aw-Leen.”  I asked him to repeat, and he said the same thing.  Repeat again please, and again, same thing.  I sat there for a few seconds, and then, it hit me: Woody Allen!

Another time, I was speaking with the host daughter of my family, Marie-Ange, and we were talking about movies.  I asked her what her favorite movie was and she said something that’s really hard to phonetically type out.  But after she repeated herself about five times, I finally realized that she was saying “Pearl Harbor.”

This little game of mine has happened much more than just two times, and it’s always hilarous.  Of course, I don’t expect perfect pronounciation when French people pronounce things in English, but nonetheless, there’s just so much pleasure in that AHA! moment when I figure it all out.  And then I pat myself on the back.