getting lost.
Je me suis perdu encore.
On the nights that I eat with my new host family in my new apartment in my new living quarters in Paris (that’s right, goodbye youth hostel, hello real Parisian lifestyle), they ask me about my day and the sites that I’ve seen or the classes I’ve gone to and the ways I’ve been getting around the city. They are very kind people, and extremely intelligent, in ways that surprise me not because I expected them to be stupid but because I never expected them to open up so readily, so quickly, when I’ve only been living here for five days.
A lot has happened in these past five days though, and that means I should probably back up for a moment and ground myself once more in my new living quarters. I left the youth hostel on Saturday, and was thankfully picked up in a car by my host father. It seems weird to call him that because this living situation is different from Bordeaux; it’s a real contract with a certain number of dinners per week, real rent, a security deposit. It’s more like I’m becoming a real person but have a wonderful family who has taken me in to be a half-daughter/half-tenant. For the purposes of privacy and so that I don’t end up getting sued for something I write, I will refer to my host family only by the initials HF (as in host father) and HM (host mother). I think that will keep things private enough, at least for now. Besides, maybe I can come up with witty things that the acronyms can stand for. But that’s for another day.
I’m living in a beautiful apartment in the 16th arrondissement. It’s a really lovely area, with shops that I cannot afford to go into but also with little streets of cobblestone that house smaller shops, smaller surprises, little parks and places, and a lovely farmer’s market (or what we in the states call a farmer’s market but here is simply the norm) right down the street. I’m less than a block away from a Metro stop and a 15 minute walk from the Metro stop that takes me directly to school (only 20-25 minutes on the Metro takes me right to school). My room is simply furnished with furniture mostly from Ikea (why is it that I am always with the Ikea families?). I have a balcony, my own little Parisian balcony, and beautiful old shutters that I close each night and open each morning to keep out the noise of the street and the eyes of the neighbors. It’s fantastic.
My HF is a chef (who teaches the courses for Vassar and Wesleyan students and workshops for the public as well) and an interior designer. He refinishes apartments and makes them look beautiful with bright colors and spiffy looking contraptions. He very much likes making small spaces into great spaces by hanging hooks on the walls to hang colorful folding chairs, tables that fold into smaller and smaller tables, hidden washing machines, things like that. He tells me that he likes people most of all. When we first meet, he asks me the things that I like and the things that I dislike. I answer fairly quickly that I like writing and traveling and swimming and reading, and I dislike music that is too loud and mushrooms (although I am starting to find that I do like them after all). He says that he likes people, watching them and learning about them and just standing out on the balcony and thinking about what their lives must be like. He dislikes aggressive people; he says that they scare him and he prefers to live a more quiet and peaceful like. I like my HF very much.
My HM is an editor, who dresses in clothes often made of linen and reminds me a lot of someone I’ve met before but cannot ever seem to remember who or where. She is very precise in all of her speech and mannerisms, very direct in all of her questions, and fires the questions at me in such a way that might seem a little intense but in fact mostly seems like genuine curiosity. My HF and HM are definitely….members of the 16th arrondissement. While they break the traditional stereotypes of this area by knowing all of the people in the markets by name and striking up conversations with complete strangers just to amuse their curiosity (waving to tourists on tour boats on the Seine), they also attend monthly Philosophy dinners at a local restaurant and enjoy yoga sessions privately in the apartment with a woman who comes to work with them. It’s a different world I am living in, but no doubt one filled with curiosity.
At the dinner table at night, I tell them that I got lost again today for the third day in a row. The thing I am having a hard time explaining though is that I am actually allowing myself to get lost. I carry with me three different maps of the city at all times, each one with various levels of precision and discretion – one masked as a journal with just the basics and the metro, one clearly a tourist map filled with great information for the museums, and one that is blatantly street maps for all the city but at least that one is one even Parisians often have to carry. It’s not that I’m unprepared. It’s that I want to get lost. I want to wander the streets because I have the time right now and I want to see what this city has to offer. And each time I get lost, not only do I find something useful like a new Metro stop I didn’t know or a sacred spot I didn’t know I should visit, I find something a little greater, a little less tangible, something I really did not know I was looking for.
Today I found fall. I wanted to post a picture but I cannot seem to get the program to work well enough tonight so I will tell you this. I got lost and ended up at the Cemetery of Montmartre, and walking through it I looked up and just above the enormous tombs I realized I had forgotten entirely that the shifting of the seasons would begin so soon. The side of an apartment building was covered in leaves and as they moved up along the building they went from bright greens to lesser greens to yellows to brilliant, brilliant reds, the leaves clinging to the building and clinging to each other as the days get darker a little sooner one-by-one. Classes have begun, I’ve moved into my place for the semester, and I’m finding myself more settled than I expected, more ready to get lost than ever before, just to see, just to see what questions will be asked and what little trucs I might find along the way.
On the nights that I eat with my new host family in my new apartment in my new living quarters in Paris (that’s right, goodbye youth hostel, hello real Parisian lifestyle), they ask me about my day and the sites that I’ve seen or the classes I’ve gone to and the ways I’ve been getting around the city. They are very kind people, and extremely intelligent, in ways that surprise me not because I expected them to be stupid but because I never expected them to open up so readily, so quickly, when I’ve only been living here for five days.
A lot has happened in these past five days though, and that means I should probably back up for a moment and ground myself once more in my new living quarters. I left the youth hostel on Saturday, and was thankfully picked up in a car by my host father. It seems weird to call him that because this living situation is different from Bordeaux; it’s a real contract with a certain number of dinners per week, real rent, a security deposit. It’s more like I’m becoming a real person but have a wonderful family who has taken me in to be a half-daughter/half-tenant. For the purposes of privacy and so that I don’t end up getting sued for something I write, I will refer to my host family only by the initials HF (as in host father) and HM (host mother). I think that will keep things private enough, at least for now. Besides, maybe I can come up with witty things that the acronyms can stand for. But that’s for another day.
I’m living in a beautiful apartment in the 16th arrondissement. It’s a really lovely area, with shops that I cannot afford to go into but also with little streets of cobblestone that house smaller shops, smaller surprises, little parks and places, and a lovely farmer’s market (or what we in the states call a farmer’s market but here is simply the norm) right down the street. I’m less than a block away from a Metro stop and a 15 minute walk from the Metro stop that takes me directly to school (only 20-25 minutes on the Metro takes me right to school). My room is simply furnished with furniture mostly from Ikea (why is it that I am always with the Ikea families?). I have a balcony, my own little Parisian balcony, and beautiful old shutters that I close each night and open each morning to keep out the noise of the street and the eyes of the neighbors. It’s fantastic.
My HF is a chef (who teaches the courses for Vassar and Wesleyan students and workshops for the public as well) and an interior designer. He refinishes apartments and makes them look beautiful with bright colors and spiffy looking contraptions. He very much likes making small spaces into great spaces by hanging hooks on the walls to hang colorful folding chairs, tables that fold into smaller and smaller tables, hidden washing machines, things like that. He tells me that he likes people most of all. When we first meet, he asks me the things that I like and the things that I dislike. I answer fairly quickly that I like writing and traveling and swimming and reading, and I dislike music that is too loud and mushrooms (although I am starting to find that I do like them after all). He says that he likes people, watching them and learning about them and just standing out on the balcony and thinking about what their lives must be like. He dislikes aggressive people; he says that they scare him and he prefers to live a more quiet and peaceful like. I like my HF very much.
My HM is an editor, who dresses in clothes often made of linen and reminds me a lot of someone I’ve met before but cannot ever seem to remember who or where. She is very precise in all of her speech and mannerisms, very direct in all of her questions, and fires the questions at me in such a way that might seem a little intense but in fact mostly seems like genuine curiosity. My HF and HM are definitely….members of the 16th arrondissement. While they break the traditional stereotypes of this area by knowing all of the people in the markets by name and striking up conversations with complete strangers just to amuse their curiosity (waving to tourists on tour boats on the Seine), they also attend monthly Philosophy dinners at a local restaurant and enjoy yoga sessions privately in the apartment with a woman who comes to work with them. It’s a different world I am living in, but no doubt one filled with curiosity.
At the dinner table at night, I tell them that I got lost again today for the third day in a row. The thing I am having a hard time explaining though is that I am actually allowing myself to get lost. I carry with me three different maps of the city at all times, each one with various levels of precision and discretion – one masked as a journal with just the basics and the metro, one clearly a tourist map filled with great information for the museums, and one that is blatantly street maps for all the city but at least that one is one even Parisians often have to carry. It’s not that I’m unprepared. It’s that I want to get lost. I want to wander the streets because I have the time right now and I want to see what this city has to offer. And each time I get lost, not only do I find something useful like a new Metro stop I didn’t know or a sacred spot I didn’t know I should visit, I find something a little greater, a little less tangible, something I really did not know I was looking for.
Today I found fall. I wanted to post a picture but I cannot seem to get the program to work well enough tonight so I will tell you this. I got lost and ended up at the Cemetery of Montmartre, and walking through it I looked up and just above the enormous tombs I realized I had forgotten entirely that the shifting of the seasons would begin so soon. The side of an apartment building was covered in leaves and as they moved up along the building they went from bright greens to lesser greens to yellows to brilliant, brilliant reds, the leaves clinging to the building and clinging to each other as the days get darker a little sooner one-by-one. Classes have begun, I’ve moved into my place for the semester, and I’m finding myself more settled than I expected, more ready to get lost than ever before, just to see, just to see what questions will be asked and what little trucs I might find along the way.
posted by Kate at
8:24 PM
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