Sunday, September 23
Def shouldn’t have stayed up until almost 3 am doing that
last blog entry. It’s just that once I start writing, I can’t stop sometimes,
so I wasn’t really paying attention to the clock. Plus I had really enjoyed my
day on Saturday and wanted to tell y’all (there’s my Southern side coming out)
about it right away even though it was late when I started writing. In
retrospect, if I was gonna do that, I should’ve gone ahead and made secure
plans for church + getting to the TAPIF lunch while I had a great Internet
connection in the wee hours of the morning and was very much awake and alert.
TAPIF is the Teaching Assistant Program in France. There are about 1500 people
here – or arriving very soon – to work as English teaching assistants all over
the country at all levels on a minimum-wage basis. I’m officially here through the Fulbright
program, which provides additional financial/administrative support to 6 people,
but we’re kind of grouped with the TAPIF folks as well. (There are also people
here teaching all sorts of other languages, but I’ll get to that in Monday or
Tuesday’s entry.) The lunch that I’m referring to was a casual event organized
through Facebook for teaching assistants to meet each other at a falafel place.
I had seen it advertised several times and had even RSVP’ed on FB a couple of
days before but had never actually written down any pertinent information.
So, as you can probably guess, this day did NOT go as
planned, but it was still “a day that the Lord had made,” and He reminded me
that I needed to “be glad and rejoice in it” (I’ll admit – I had to look up
this reference…Psalm 118:24). The plan was to get 5-5.5 hours of sleep – my
absolute minimum requirement in order to function – then get on my computer and
find a morning service to attend from the list of « Évangélique » churches
in Paris that I had generated from a quick Google search just before calling it
quits the night before. So I had put in a little bit of prep work, but not
enough. Oh, and shout-out to Tori for making my search much simpler by giving
me this “Evangelical” term as the type of church that I would be looking for. During
that same morning Internet session, I had planned to get all the details on the
TAPIF lunch and figure out the best route between the church and that
restaurant and what I could do to kill time if needed. That was my ideal plan.
In real life, I hit snooze all the way until 12:45 pm
because I was super tired. I told God that I was gonna have to find an evening
service to attend cuz wasn’t no way I was making it to nobody’s 10 or 11 am
service as I had imagined. (Does that ever happen to anyone else? Where you
have all of these grand plans for the next day as you’re going to sleep and
then somehow your need/desire to sleep outweighs them all the next morning?
That’s the story of my life…) So I was just banking on the 2:00 pm lunch
location being relatively close by and there being a good amount of trains
running even though it was a Sunday. Tried to log onto the Internet in my room
as I was getting dressed – no success. That wasn’t too surprising given the
in-and-out nature of the signal on the upper floors of the building, so I went
downstairs to the common room where I have typically found a very dependable
signal. Nothing. As I restarted my computer to see if the problem was on my
part, another girl in the room who was seated at a desktop computer asked if I
had succeeded in getting online. That was when I knew I was in trouble. The
restart didn’t achieve anything, and I was stuck.
I didn’t have an address, I didn’t have anyone’s phone
number (or a phone with which to call them since I’m waiting to take advantage
of a partnership between my new bank and a phone company once the account is
validated), and I only had a vague recollection of part of the name of the
restaurant where I was headed. Plus I was running late at this point.
Ggggrrrreeeaaaattt. I did know that it was in a section of town called Le
Marais and that was a one of those must-visit places that I would want to spend
time in at some point anyway. So I decided to head there, and if I saw the
restaurant, wonderful! If not, at least I could say I tried. (Of course, I
could’ve paid to eat or drink something at « Odette and Aimé »
– the restaurant near me with Internet or purchased online access at an
Internet café
to find out the addres, but this would’ve taken additional time that I did not
have, and I was kind of ready to go at this point.)
I asked the attendant at the Cadet métro station for the best stop
to access Le Marais before purchasing another youth day pass that is valid on
weekends and holidays. She sent me south to the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre stop
where I changed from line 7 to line 1 and got off at St. Paul a little after 2
pm. There were tons of restaurants and shops everywhere, so I just walked
around a bit in a couple of different directions. None of the streets really
called out to me, like, “Hey, this is
where you would find falafel!” I found a lot of traditional French eating places
and a bunch of fancy boutiques for shopping. I think part of the problem was
that I was on the outskirts of Le Marais when I got of the subway and could not
just head in any direction and still be in the right neighborhood. (I didn’t go
anywhere where there weren’t a lot of tourists, though, so don’t worry about
that.) I did see one place with a name that reminded me of the restaurant I was
supposed to be looking for, but it was a store.
At around 2:40, I passed by a museum and figured that I might as
well go there…after I got something to eat. I saw a Senegalese restaurant
nearby, which gave me hope that I might be getting close to some of the more
ethnically-oriented eateries (and in fact, it turns out that I was only a few
streets over from the TAPIF meeting place at this point) but it was only open
for dinner. So I grabbed a sandwich at a French place and went to a park across
the street where there were lots of families out and about for the afternoon. I
love hearing French kids talk because I feel like I’m at their level of
communication. I had to keep from laughing as I overheard some older
elementary-aged kids having a very serious discussion about exactly what had
happened in their soccer game and had resulted in one of the girls bursting
into tears. A future lawyer/cop was interrogating those involved: “Did she
touch the ball before you? I understand, but what happened exactly?” Don’t worry – I wasn’t too much of a creeper. During
these park lunches that I’ve had, I’ve always had a book with me and/or been very
occupied with my food and pretended not to be paying any attention to the other
people when I was actually acutely aware of all of their conversations and
interactions.
Afterwards, I went to the Musée Carnavalet, which is one of the
more obscure museums that covers the history of the city of Paris. It was
pretty busy, probably because of the free entry and the warmth that it offered
from the somewhat chilly day. I was happy that the woman at the desk offered me
a French booklet instead of an English one after I said “Bonjour,” but I was a
bit overwhelmed when I opened it and learned that there were 100 rooms inside
the museum! I browsed at my leisure and stopped at some of the signs just to
practice reading French. They had various items, ranging from the metal
hangings that predated street signs and indicated that “a baker works here” to
the bedroom furniture of writer Marcel Proust. I also saw a couple of
interesting depictions of Black folks from long ago, as would certainly be the
case if I were to visit a museum of Atlanta’s history as well.
Speaking of Black folks, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I’ve
seen a lot more White and non-White people together here than I do back home.
And I don’t just mean like in
romantic couples, though I do mean that. I am also referring to friends just
hanging out. Yes, there are still people cliquing off into their ethnic groups,
but I’ve noticed in my one week of being here that it seems to be a lot more
normal for a little Black boy and little White boy to be walking down the
street together than it would be in, say, Marietta or Roswell where I’m from. I
think Dr. King would be proud of the table of brotherhood that many people are
starting to sit around in Paris.
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| Bastille monument, taken from steps of nearby Opera |
Speaking of preachers, I still wanted to go to church, so while I
was at the park earlier, I had located some of the “Evangelical” churches on my
map. I went by two of them after spending a little bit of time at the museum
just to see if they had services in the early evening. The first was by the
famous Bastille monument, and they were having some kind of men’s group meeting
that I could see through the glass doors. They also had flyers and bulletin
boards in the entryway that I could access. One of the men came out and gave me
info about services and such and said that I should attend a youth group
meeting on Friday nights and that there’s an American there. We’ll have to see
because he said the youth meet “around 7:30 or 8 pm,” and I saw 2 people asking
for money in the middle of the day nearby, so I don’t know what the area would
be like that late at night. The other place was on the other side of the River in
a more family-friendly neighborhood (parents out pushing strollers) near Les
Gobelins métro stop. It had a sign on the door about Sunday morning service and
a Thursday night Bible study, but again it starts kind of late at night – 8:45
pm! So I’ll keep shopping for weekly involvement.
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| St. Medard in the 5th arrondissement |
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| Sorbet selections across the street |
I ended up attending an evening mass at St. Médard Catholic Church
down the street. (One good thing about the atlas I have is that most Catholic
churches and a lot of other ones are marked on the maps.) I had a little time
to kill, so I ate sorbet right across the street while waiting for service to
start because I was starting to develop a little bit of a sore throat. Even
though the Catholic style of worship isn’t really my style, I tried to grab
hold of a little piece of spiritual inspiration since that was the only church
I was going to get for the day. As I mentioned earlier, the Holy Spirit reminded
me of my need to “rejoice” during the opening song that commanded Jerusalem to
“dance for joy” before her King. Plus, as I reviewed the Scripture lesson (Mark
9:30-37) later that evening on my own, I was reminded of how central children
were to the ministry of Jesus and that I shouldn’t view the duty that I’m about
to undertake lightly: “Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name,
receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that
sent me” (Mark 9:37).
Monday,
September 24
Alas, my sore throat was a sign that I was coming down with a
little bit of a cold, probably from the dramatic change in temperature. I have
been dressing in layers, though, even when going to bed. I only regret not
wearing boots when it was raining the other day. (But even writing to you from
Tuesday’s perspective, I can tell you that it’s only a baby cold. Like, not a
cold that an infant would have, but a non-aggressive cold. There’s my old
pre-med self coming out!) So I slept in pretty late before taking a hot shower.
By the way, I’ve learned that you can just press the button before each
10-second interval ends if you want to have a continuous flow of water instead
of doing it military-style. This means that after living here for a while, I’m
going to be trained to press a button every 8-9 seconds while showering, which
might be a little odd, but whatever. So then I made scrambled eggs in the
kitchen, which was actually my first time using the stove because I’ve been in
the street so much and eating cereal, I guess. I had to crank it up a little
higher than I imagined, but I figured it out, eventually. Ate those with cereal
(Honey Pops from my variety pack) and OJ while listening to the radio (a custom
in our kitchen) and flipping through a coffee table book about Québec City’s
400th anniversary. It was about noon when I finished and was washing
dishes. A French hallmate whom I hadn’t met came in and started asking me basic
questions about myself. I was caught off-guard and felt my French skills failing
me a little, but she was happy to tell me that she had studied abroad in the
U.S. at the University of Nebraska. I was like, “Awesome! Never been there.”
But she admitted that I really didn’t have a reason to go anytime soon. Awkward
for Nebraskans…
Spent a while in the common room on administrative emails that
needed to be sent. Some of them took a long time because they were in French,
and I like to double and triple-check them. Another new resident showed up to
set up her Internet community access, and a staff member told her she should
ask me if she had any questions. Turns out she’s also working as a foreign
language teaching assistant, but for German instead of English since she’s
from, well, Germany. Found out later that she’s on my hall when she came into
the kitchen during the evening and asked if it was normal not to get Internet
in our rooms, to which everyone smiled. Also got the proof of residency form
from the office that I didn’t have when I was at the bank because I needed it
to get my métro card. The staff member thought that he had given it to me on my
first day, which is (I guess) why he hadn’t stopped me when I’d said I was
going to open a bank account right after we worked on my rent reimbursement paperwork
on Friday.
(Sidenote: Speaking of paperwork and such, I want to clarify that
the girl who was pickpocketed at Montmartre on Saturday and talked about her « carte
vitale » was referring to her health insurance info. I had a hunch that
this was it, but I told you that I wasn’t 100% sure about what this meant. I
gave you a bad impression of the word « vitale » when I off-handedly translated
it as “vital”; I think it’s actually more literal than that, like having to do
with your life (« vie »). Think about a doctor taking your vitals.
Just wanted to clear that up in case any of my former French teachers read this…)
Made a stop at the insurance agency across the street to update
them on my bank account situation since they had given me proof of insurance
right away without my paying anything. They are going to wait until the middle
of next month to deduct payment for September and October renter’s insurance,
thankfully, so everything should be all good. I was kind of afraid they would
come beating down my door if I didn’t show up soon and say anything, but the
agent was just like, “Are you enjoying Paris? Have you found your way around?”
So ha! There are friendly people here. I really wanted some hot tea at this
point for my throat and, as Antwon Fisher says in the movie of the same name, I
was also thinking “I can eat.” (I promise those emails took a long time; it had
been a while since breakfast.) So I stopped at an Asian place near Square
Montholon for something different.
The plan was to get a reloadable « passe Navigo » for the
métro at the Poissonière station then head to one of the bedding stores on my
list to look for comforters since I’ve been making do with blankets (1 from
home, 1 provided here) thus far. Passed by a high school with students out
front on my way and wondered what I’d gotten myself into. Ended up seeing another
location of one of the bedding store chains on my list near St. Vincent’s
Church before I could get on the subway. It looked a little fancy, but I went
inside anyway. I had typed in the word “comforter” in a trustworthy online
translator before heading out, so I told the clerk that I was looking for an « édredon ». He looked at me kind of funny and
said “You mean, like, ‘quilt’?” In order to clear up the misunderstanding, he
started pointing out different things around the boutique to see if we could
figure out what I wanted. I was like, “I’m just trying to stay warm when it
gets cold.” He said that people in France usually buy a « couette »
and then an « housse de couette » which is like white padding/filling
and then a removable, washable, decorative covering for that padding. He priced
these two items together at over 200 euros. He didn’t have an « édredon »
in the right size in his catalogue because he said they were not very common.
Basically, the only ones they sold were to cover your feet. The only other
suggestion he had was to buy a polar blanket for 49 euros, but even he admitted
that that wasn’t a hardy enough solution for the winter. So I told him I would
keep looking.
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| Inside St. Vincent-de-Paul in the 9th |
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| My store! |
From there, it was a short walk to Gare du Nord, where I planned
to get my métro pass at the ticket window really fast and maybe make it to one
of the other bedding stores before 6 pm. When I got to the huge station and
made my way to the section that handles the subway rather than the trains, I
waited in a line only to have the lady tell me that the office that handles the
free distribution of passes for residents of Paris was closed. She sent me down
the street to the Gare de l’Est (East Gate/Terminal) station, where the
corresponding office didn’t close until 7 pm. Of course, when I got to that
station, I had no idea where the office was, so I had to wait in the general métro
ticket line again in order to figure out what was up. The guy sent me upstairs
to a place where I had to buzz my way in then take a number and sit in a waiting
area with about 10-12 other people where only one attendant was behind the
desk. I got to that office at around 6:40 pm and definitely wasn’t helped until
an hour later – well after the alleged closing time. But I have to give props
to the clerk, who looked like he was ready to go home, but still made funny
faces at this little girl to make her laugh and tried to include her in the
process because she had been waiting with her mom for a long time. It’s people
like that who make the world a better place. After showing my proof of residency
and passport, I got my card complete with a plastic cover and my photo, so now
I can load a week or a month’s worth of métro rides onto it at a better rate
than single day tickets. Put one week on there to finish up September and
grabbed a little bite to eat at a bakery before getting on the train to go like
2 stops to where I live. I had fully intended to make dinner in the kitchen
after stopping at the store, but after sitting in that office for an hour, I
was starvin’ like Marvin. Oh, and I saw “my store” on the way out of Gare de l’Est!
When I was in France before, I kind of claimed Morgan de Toi, which is a
clothing chain. (The expression means “crazy about you.”)
I did, however, stop in the kitchen when I arrived at the
residence hall because I heard lots of voices there. Probably about 9 or 10 of
us ended up in there after a while. I learned that there are actually 13 rooms
on our wing, and now that we have another new resident, we are pretty close to
being full. We had a fun little conversation, especially comparing the college
entry process in our various countries of origin (U.S., Spain, China) and
France. I guess that doesn’t sound very fun, but I promise that it was. Interesting,
at least. Oh, did I mention that there was Halloween candy involved? Someone
had purchased it in London over the weekend. Apparently they celebrate
Halloween here a little bit, but “not like where [I’m] from” as one girl said.
There’s a trick-or-treater “every 5 hours,” she claimed. Another girl tried to
read the English descriptions of the types of candy included in the box and
asked for a translation. It said something like “ooey-gooey, scary ball of
chocolate with cherry filling.” She said she understood “chocolate” and “cherry”
and I was like, “That’s all you need to know. Don’t even worry about the rest
of it.” (Made you read until the end to find out about the Halloween candy,
didn’t I?)
Tuesday, September
25
More sleeping in/resting because of my slight head cold, but at
least I had a concrete event to look forward to: lunch at 1 with another teaching
assistant from Spain who will be working in the same suburb but lives nearby in
Paris. Actually, we had decided on FB to do lunch on our own to save money (I need
to learn from her) and then just meet up afterwards at a park that’s near a métro
stop that’s convenient for both of us. I ended up just doing the grab-an-apple
deal from my pantry because sleeping was waaaay more important to me than
eating. I also picked something up at a bakery on my way to our meeting point, which
was in front of a McDonald’s near the Cadet stop. I got there about 15 minutes
early because I don’t have a phone and it was crucial that I didn’t miss her. I
happened to be standing by a map associated with the subway station, so a
middle-aged woman who had been studying it for a while turned to me and asked
in very polite French if I knew where a particular street was. I told her no, and
she seemed very sad. But as I turned away something caught my eye. It was the
name of the street that she had just uttered. It was literally a stone’s throw
away from us, but behind her. I said, “Excuse me” and pointed out that fact to
her, which made her day. She was like, “Oh! I didn’t see it!” That was a
winning moment. A second later, someone else passed by and said something to
me. I was like, What is this? I’m trying
to be discreet! It was my insurance agent, as he identified himself. He was
meeting a friend for lunch. (A lot of places here close in the middle of the
day so that people can go eat at home etc.) He just said “Hello” then called
his friend to see where he/she was and waved goodbye as he headed off. I was
glad when I finally got to greet the person that I was actually there to meet!
We walked to the park about a block away. I was all bundled up
even though it wasn’t too cold (around 60°) just because I didn’t want to get
any more sick than I already am. We spoke in English, actually, which felt
strange at first for me. We talked about things to do in France, life in Spain,
life in the U.S. etc. She asked what my eating hours were because she is
accustomed to eating lunch at 3 pm and dinner at 10 pm. I told her that my
schedule was usually a little different, but that was because people’s work
schedules are different in our countries. She said her favorite Spanish work schedule
is from 8 am – 3 pm before going home for lunch and relaxation. I didn’t think
that this sounded like a long enough workday at first, but she quickly pointed
out that if Americans are working 8-5 with an hour off for lunch, then there’s
only an hour’s difference per day. Other people work for a few hours, go home
for a long lunch break, and then go back to work, which is the schedule that I’d
heard of. She found it hard to imagine not eating lunch with her parents. I was
like, “Yeah, that’s not really a ‘thing’ in America. Dinner, sure, but not
lunch.” We had a similar sort of interaction when she asked how far NYC was
from where I live, and I estimated that it would take 12 hours to drive there
in a car. She said that when she’s watching movies about America and people say
that they’re going from one city to another, she forgets that the U.S. is
comparable to the size of the European Union. I had to remind her that trains
aren’t really common where I live; it’s pretty much cars or planes. Again,
these are the sorts of conversations that I find interesting.
That’s pretty much all she wrote for this day, folks. I mean, I
ate again, I slept a lot more, and I shopped IKEA’s website for bed coverings.
But I know you’re tired of reading this, and I don’t know how to put an
exciting twist on it anymore. So I’ll just stop...riiiiiiiight…here :)
P.S. I’ll be posting this entry at around midnight, not 3 am. Go
team.
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