So it's been about a week since I've been in Paris and it's been an eventful one. To the left is a very blurry photo of the Eiffel Tower at night - I walked by it the other day, but it was raining so I couldn't get a better shot. This view is from the Pont des Arts, a popular late night picnic spot for students and tourists.
As some of you know, I'm having some housing
issues here. My host families got switched at the last minute so I stayed with the housing coordinator in the 10th arrondissement. This past week I moved into my homestay, which is in Levallois-Perret...not Paris. I share the apartment with the biggest cat I've ever seen outside the zoo. I'm not kidding, this cat must weigh 40 pounds. It's also her son's cat, but since I'm staying in her son's room, the cat sits outside all night crying to be let in. I can't touch it because I'll get sick, so Youffi and I have developed a very peculiar relationship. Basically, he sits in front of my door, the bathroom door, or the front door. He has an uncanny ability of choosing the door I'm about to use. Since I can't touch him, I've had to nudge him out of the way...emphatically...with my foot. Youffi and I are not getting along. Regardless, I've never been so happy to have an allergic reaction, because now I have a legitimate reason to move...for the third time. It takes me an hour to get to school by metro and it's the suburbs, so in a week or two I should be settled in somewhere closer to school.
I feel bad because my host "mom" is really nice, but I can't pretend I won't be happy to leave. She's very...enthusiastic. She went on and on about how she was so excited I liked food because she considers herself a great chef (not cook), and loves organic ingredients and so on. Let's just say...the food is interesting. And I'm trying not to eat dinners at home. There's another student staying there whom I was sure was a model. She's about six feet tall, Swedish, possibly the most beautiful human I've ever seen. She's sixteen, doing her gap year here, and speaks no French.
Next Monday we start our three week intensive french course that counts as an entire semester class. It's strange being a Yale student on a Columbia-Penn program. There are a few students in my position, but the interactions are strange - the Penn and Columbia girls don't talk to each other, and I feel like I'm being courted by two separate tables in a high school cafeteria or something. I'm just anxious to get started in classes and meet some French students on my own.
One of the most exciting things going on is that I'm going to start a creative writing workshop at Shakespeare and Company in October. The workshop is a seven-week series where professional writers in Paris come and join aspiring auteurs in a part-reading, part-workshop atmosphere. The coordinator really liked my portfolio so I get to start in a few weeks. Shakespeare and Company is a literary icon in Paris, so I'm really excited to get this kind of introduction into the writing scene here. The workshop will also keep me motivated to write as much as possible, which was one of my goals in coming here.
This past week was orientation, and I was put into a group called "Paris Communities." Our tour around the city was focused on cultural minorities in Paris, so we visited the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial and Jewish Museum, the Mosque of Paris, and the Museum of the 1931 Colonial Exhibition.
To the right is the Shoah, or Holocaust, memorial. It's a long wall with the names of the French residents who were deported to concentration camps and killed during the Shoah. "Shoah" is a Hebrew word for "the catastrophe," which is used in France because it encompasses both the political and religious aspects of the period. France definitely struggles with its Vichy history. Anti-semitism is definitely an issue, yet there is a huge thriving Jewish community in the Marais. The memorial is particularly moving because of how it's set up. The year of deportation, which is essentially the year of death since most French jews were sent to Auswitch, is on top, and next to each name is the year of birth. It's incredibly disturbing to see entire families next to each other, or a name with the birth year 1940 under the deportation year 1941.
Today I had my first stressful-disaster-dirty-metro event. I generally love the metro - it's super easy and goes within three blocks of most destinations. Today, however, someone decided to clip my heel as I was stepping out of the metro and my shoe fell underneath the train. I had to walk for 10 minutes underground with one shoe trying to find somewhere to get new shoes. While I was hobbling around one-shoed, I had my first extremely unpleasant interaction with a man in the metro. People definitely aren't ashamed of staring at you here, and people will tell you they think you're pretty as though they're letting you know it's a Tuesday, but this guy wouldn't leave me alone and kept following me and grabbing me. I yelled at him in French, so it was either that or the sight of my very dirty right foot that finally got him to go away. I bought shoes, and finally made it back to school. An eventful day, not of the best variety, but I'm crossing my fingers that this kind of this can only happen once. At least I wasn't wearing heels, at least it wasn't snowing, at least I got off at a stop with an underground mall...I might treat myself to a crepe later to make up for it.
Tomorrow if finally the weekend, and I'll get some time to myself to explore the city. Paris is truly a walking city and I still haven't been down along the Seine. I know this is one of those frustrating transition weeks, but I'm sure that once I finally move into a new place and settle into a daily routine, I'll have much more to report. More pictures are sure to come.
A lot of you have asked what the best way to get in touch is. PLEASE GET SKYPE!!! It's amazing, and so much cheaper than regular phones. My skype name is stephanie_richards, so just add me and we'll have ourselves a chat.
XO
Stephanie
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