Someone Else is Living Your Parisian Dream

…..and there are plenty.  Based on my experiences here thus far - the emotional cycle of personal expat experiences (who move to be with their spouse/mate) that seem to attack mental and emotional senses - I’ve been biased against Paris in many ways. 

It’s extremely difficult, but not horrible; just another challenge that I need to learn to navigate through. It’s not easy for me to wander through this fast city with minimal understanding of the goings on around me; and that’s just the very tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

François reminded me 3 minutes ago to remember to write some nice things. I realized that this is valuable to my psyche because it’s so easy to focus on the bad that I find myself only giving a nod to the good; and they really are pretty good.

• Being here with François for walks, talks, discovery, building a home and a life together, movies, cooking together and quiet time.  He even sat down with me to do learn some SQL one evening - and that just isn’t his world by any stretch of the imagination.
• A night time boat ride on The Seine sounds touristy and like a romantic cliche, but it’s an absolute must. I plan to do it again and again each time friends or family come to town and I imagine that the love of art that was poured into these buildings is part of the romance here.  It’s a great tour that’s conducted in 4,873 different languages, alternating after each comment (because France is fair like that). The lighting against the old buildings, in the backdrop of the night, colors each historic work of structural art, majestic. 
• Despite a reputation of slow administrations, bureaucratic obstacles and many trees-worth of papers to overcome, it’s been surprisingly easy to get legal and I am now ready to put in a full 36 hour work week (with a daily 2 hour lunch break and about 20 “cigarette” breaks [a full pack’s worth]) anytime someone wants to hire me.  Down with Silicon Valley and 75 hour work weeks (though you can’t really knock a company that allows you to show up in sweatpants and flip-flops) - I should’ve moved to the EU ages ago.
• The architecture blows me away. I’m not very technically articulate when it comes to the arts, but I love the old buildings.
• Cobblestone streets exist in some places and they’re quaint.
• The people (who draw air hearts) at the crepe hut at Gare Montparnasse  are super, super nice and they smile a lot. Our conversations are sometimes confusing and amusing, but they don’t judge me when I respond to them with something entirely off topic or irrelevant and their non-judgment makes me feel not so stupid.
• There’s enough English in Paris to buy necessities, so I don’t need to learn French anymore.  
• The public transportation (the Metro) is SO GOOD here that while I miss, miss, miss my old cars  (the convertible in sunny Hermosa Beach specifically, and a station wagoin in SF because it allowed me to drive my entire world around) -  I don’t necessarily miss driving everyday, or the steep cost of insurance, maintenance and gas associated with driving.  I can usually get anywhere within Paris in about 20-25 minutes on the Metro and there are stops everywhere (including at the corner outside of home).
• Mindnumbing Hollywood blockbusters don’t make up mainstream entertainment here(though I definitely enjoy silly romance comedies from time to time). More thought provoking movies (we recently saw the Constant Gardener and Syriana and liked both a lot) maintain a strong foothold in the cinematic mainstream, and best of all, we pay 20 euros per month/per person for a pass that allows us to see all the movies we want at the theater.
• There’s a great free art/photography exhibit of photos from around the world at the beautiful Jardin du Luxemborg where the grass remains tidy because no one plays ball on it.
• I (not-so-secretly-now) love the way La Tour Eiffel shimmers and shimmies stardust into the night sky - all big, bright and gold like those Solid Gold Dancers used to way back when.
• Smiles don’t come cheap here, so when someone smiles at me, I basically want to run up to them and cover their face with kisses - men and women alike.

I squeezed through the door past the matronly Gatekeeper to enter the French language school, sponsored by the Mairie du Paris, or the city hall. I call it Mary Perry.

Already late and in a hurry to get to my interview to be admitted to this session, I slid sideways through the remaining 7 inches of unguarded doorway, ignoring her as she spewed Rapid French at me. She stopped François, who was right behind me, because he didn’t have an appointment card. No appointment, no admission. A big, round, soft barrier between us, she flutter-shoo’d one hand in my direction as she used the other to stop him from entering, “Blah, blah, blah, la ba, la ba, blah, blah.” La ba: Over there. That was the last I saw of him at the school.

She continued to flutter her hands and “Blah, blah, blah” at me, until I finally shouted at her in frustration,

“LOOK! I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU!”

My first time losing it toward a stranger.

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When we’re caught chattering in class, or text-messaging our husbands newly learned French words in complete sentences “Je suis une ‘femme au foyer’,” (I am a housewife), Claudine raises her voice slightly to get our attention and sings, “Cuckoooo.”  It makes me chuckle everytime.  Claudine. She’s no one’s femme au foyer. Claudine is a real life old maid.

My first impressions of the school were disdain for it’s white walls, flourescent lighting and old, matronly teachers.  To be fair though, I was also PMSing and in a foul mood.  3 sessions later, I still hate the uninspiring, sterile building but I like Claudine and her class and am sorry that I yelled at her in English, a language which she allegedly knows how to speak but never does, by the way. 

The courses are taught at a much slower pace than they were at Alliance Française, a school buzzing with energy, and I suspect that’s because this is a 3 month session as opposed to a 2 or 4 week rolling session at a time. Whereas the Alliance taught much more accelerated courses with a few minutes on listening comprehesion and almost no special focus on basic grammar, we’re doing quite a bit of listening and pronounciation work at the Mairie and I’m being forced to pay more attention to the way I sound when I speak, rather than just uttering sounds that are “close enough.”  For instance, “Je” (I) sounds more like jher than jhay.  The difference sounds subtle, but there’s already a word that sounds like jhay, (J’ai) that means “I have” so basically, I sound like an imbecile everytime I open my mouth and leak words that are “close enough.”

My Australian friend Sam (who’s since moved back to Australia) tried to correct my “au revoir” with her heavy, heavy Australian accent on one of our shopping days as we exited a store politely with a “Merci. Au revoir.“  In Paris, you enter and exit stores with the appropriate greetings. No matter how curmudgeonly the sales people may be, they’ll greet you too. Try it. With one hand on the doorknob and one foot out of the door, I stopped for a moment to process her advice, hesitating for a moment to decide whether she needed to be backhanded a couple of times. I’d only been in Paris for 1.5 months in and had never-ever spoken French previously except for the basics; french fries, french maids outfits, and the punch line to that really clever snail joke from the 5th grade, “See the S-Car-Go!”  I took my time deciding how to handle her and finally just brushed her off with a  ”I’m lucky that the words even come to my head.” And that’s really how I feel on most days, so if I’m able to throw out 10 individual unconjugated words that get my point across, I’m usually pretty satisfied that the conversation has gone well.

I’ve slept California hours every day since I’ve been back from San Francisco. This means 9:00am til 3:30pm – most of my Parisian day. Since my Internet access also happens to be down, I’ve spent the last few waking nights hitting the blue “Access IBM” button, recovering and restoring from old system checkpoints – each and every one of them – hoping that it may work one night. It never does but it does make the night go by faster. I’m still without Internet, so I’m typing this in good, ol’ Notepad.

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The city basically shuts down on Sundays, not because it’s the Sabbath; but because the French just don’t seem to want to over-exert themselves. To the Unions, working on Sunday sets a precedence for….work. Mon dieu! Donc [therefore], Supermarches are closed (go unions) so shopping for groceries on Saturday is like battening down the hatches for Apocolypse Tomorrow. Shopping carts quasi-driven simultaneously by little Marie and her brother Jean-Marie (like a Betty-Jo kind of name), throwing out their bony elbows for control, are loaded to the push-bars with Perrier, fromage, chips, fresh fruit, hormoneless fresh meat, lots of lots of yogurt (and cellulite cream for the woman behind me in line), for fear that famine, fire, plague or fatty thighs will strike on Sunday. The 10 item or less line is basically a wasted concept and one cashier just stared at the chaos with his elbows on the counter, sitting in his chair. Yes, they sit. Now, here’s a union that works for you.

One shopper wore a “Cisco Systems 2005” windbreaker and my heart went pitter-pat. I wanted to stop her and tell her that my old company used to sell her company’s routers. I would’ve settled for some really low level geek speak, though that would’ve been a really short conversation.  But it’d be nice to know something for once that not too many common people around here would know about because I spend each and everyday knowing nothing of what anyone says (except for My Husband who speaks American, but uses the words like “knackered.” Knackered? You mean your dawgs are tired?) But I digress. Back to Cisco. I also would’ve settled for, “Where you from and why do you know English? Wanna be friends?” because who really wants to talk about routers and dslams when you can say anything you want, however quickly you want in Rapidfire English and colloquialisms? They were loud, proud and laughing as they spoke, and I rarely encounter that on any given day. I wanted some of what they having because it’s rare these days; a good laugh and witty banter.

There’s a small “Produits le Monde” aisle; that’s Aisle 1. Amongst the Produits le Monde are exotic imports from foreign countries like India, Thailand, Russia, Japan, and the U.S of A….. Jarred curries, coconut milk, ramen, naan, and Jolly Time microwave popcorn. At the Thanksgiving Store, a store that imports only exotic American products, I found Skippy Chunk Peanut Butter for the outrageous sum of approximately 7 euro. It is also rumoured that graham crackers are 12 euro.  I’m considering a career in the black market to peddle exotic American goods in the dark, cobblestoned back alleys of Paris.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     * 

The Husband and I had an appointment at the prefecture yesterday to for my residence paperwork. I sat quietly by him as he handled the paperwork and dealt with the unsmiling woman in French. I watched it all go by, throwing out a nosey “What was that?” every now and then, but mostly, looking up at the ceiling, and behind me to see if the woman who had smiled so brightly at me as I walked by was still in the office. I deduced that she must’ve been American or Middle Eastern, but Middle Easterns don’t smile much either. I knew that she wasn’t the French part of the couple because

1) She smiled and had a certain light in her eyes that hasn’t been beaten out of her yet that most Parisians seem to be missing, winter time or not and in the subway, or not.

2) She smiled first and seemed genuinely happy that I reciprocated rather than engaging her in a Subway Stare Down.

On a different note, this particular office of the prefecture handled only American and Middle Eastern citizens. Is this a French funny?

I made my way through the Gare Montparnasse area with a bag of groceries in hand. I’d forgotten to bring the canvas (grocery) bag from my volunteer days at the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, so I stuffed all of dinner into one surprisingly strong plastic bag, including eggs and crisps, aka Chips. Paris doesn’t recycle too well yet that I know of, so every plastic bag I take is stuffed with cholesterol and guilt.

I notice as I walk past the ice-skating rink that the only people skating not so skillfully round and round are young boys and men. It’s charming. I wonder whether this is a “Boys Only” circuit; same as there was at the Sunset Skating Rink back in the day at the end of the N Judah line by Ocean Beach. There, after “Boys Only” came “Girls Only”, followed by Everyone trying to hold their slippery spot in a circle to do the “Hokie Pokie.” I’m nostalgic for anything familiar and am able to find a likeness of anything Paris to a San Francisco memory - or a stark contrast to my 20 steps from the beach-living in sunny Hermosa Beach – or Palo Alto. Anywhere in Les Etats Unis.

Right past the skating rink is a small hut where I indulge my crepe-a-day habit.

“Une banana et gnutella crepe, sil vous plait.” I have no idea whether a crepe is feminine or masculine; there is grammatical difference and only heathens say it wrong. Aurelie, whom I only know as my crepe maker isn’t there to intercept my order today, but the new girl is very nice too. I wait patiently and smile to the young man who is spreading the crepe batter on the round crepe cooker. His face is alive and he smiles as he says Something French. I smile back apologetically. “Desolee. Je ne parle pas Francais.” I’m sorry, I don’t speak French. I’ve got this one down pretty good.

Very much unlike any of the French I encounter on the streets on any given day, he wears a perpetual dimpled smile and keeps talking, not in the least bit discouraged that I Don’t Understand a Word. I’m so happy to see a friendly face that I’m not even discouraged that I don’t understand a word! My crepe maker intervenes and explains what he is telling me slowly – in more French. I think to myself that if she just spoke L-O-U-D-E-R that all the French Words That I Don’t Know will suddenly come to me………

And finally, I do understand.

“Ohhh,” I laugh. Duh!

“J’habite en Paris.” I predict and process the next question. “Trois moins.” I’ve lived in Paris for 3 months.

Then I’m able to make out that they’re asking where I’m from.

“Je suis Americaine - au San Francisco.”

They conspire amongst themselves for a second and she begins to ask another question.
“Aujourdhui……” they begin as a team, staring at me expectantly.

And he draws a big heart in the air.

She continues, “Femme…. homme…. lo-vairs….. aujourdui….

All the while, she’s banging the tips of her two index fingers together – a man and a woman banging - hoping that I’ll get it?  They want me??

And he’s still standing next to her, drawing big air hearts…..

“OH! Aujourdui c’est Valentine’s Day!” And I pronounce it all Californian. “YES! OUI!” I almost jump up and down because this really is a charades success. “Terrible” she spat and went on a broken English and French tirade about the commercial evils of aujourdui. “Woman says man not love her if no dinner, flowers…..” she explains disgustedly. “Je ne celebrate pas”, I reassure her quickly, not knowing the French word for celebrate.  She’s she’s making my crepe and getting angrier by the second; I want her to quit spatting because it’s cold season, and she’s spreading my gnutella now.

The boy has stopped drawing air hearts, finally satisfied that we were having the same conversation (that had nothing at all to do with how long I’ve lived in Paris). The girl commenced with the crepe making, leaving me feeling ridiculous but relieved, accomplished, and missing the ease and nonsense of small talk for once in my entire life.

Valentine’s Day? Pshaw. He should’ve just drawn the hearts in the first place.