being home
i don't know if i've ever felt more loved. first, on monday, neel and mary-ann were sad i was leaving. not the best way to feel loved, but there nonetheless. and then sue kept her rental car an extra day and came and picked me up at the airport. mary left work early to meet me. the kids were so happy to see me they screamed my name (and i've heard a rumor julian even likes the boring tshirt i gave him and slept in it). and lee missed game 6 of some basketball finals to meet up with me. but the prize must go to my parents. they were amazing. first, they went to the grocery and bought all the foods i loved and missed. then my mom prepared my favorite dinner the day Before i got home and she made two kinds of brownies for dessert (which i've been eating for breakfast). and THEN, so that the whole family could come over for dinner the night i got home (which i didn't know they were planning), my mom and dad helped my sis and her boyfriend finish moving. so when i get home, there's an amazing dinner, A BANNER!, my bed made, the air conditioner already on in my room, just everything to make my homecoming perfect!
so just in general, my homecoming has been wonderful. it feels amazing to be back in the states. back in the familiar places with the familiar things. like i ate off the same plates i've been eating off since i was 9. and i bought grape jelly and had a peanut butter sandwhich just like i must have when i just started eating solid foods. and i'm sitting on the couch watching country music videos (one of my favorite ways to relax). and i have a week in pittsburgh to fill with family and my oldest friends. then i go back to brooklyn and get to catch up with my new old friends. life is lovely. ps. i still miss paris.
leaving
things i will miss about paris:
first and foremost, my friends. i've met amazing people here that i hope to keep in contact for the rest of my life. neel and maryann, i can't wait to meet again in paris, when we each have a million children and probably husbands that speak different languages. there are others i will miss, but too many to name.
i'll miss crepes, the food of the gods. crepes with strawberry jam. crepes with nutella. crepes with cinammon.
i'll miss baguettes rustiques from gerard mulot.
i'll miss my little tiny cozy room with the shower at the end of the bed.
i'll miss the jardin du luxumbourg and the beautiful paths lined with parisians in the magic chairs that don't get stolen.
i'll miss the seine, particularly walking along it at night when the city is all lit up and i am walking to a bar with a large group of laughing people and also sitting along its edge, eating with friends.
i'll miss paris's amazing ability to be beautiful ALL THE TIME.
i'll miss pretending like i'm not american (in my head, whenever people asked me i told the truth).
i'll miss the roses. i've never seen more beautiful rose bushes than the ones in the gardin at the musee rodin and outside notre dame.
i'll miss the cafes and the ability to sit there for hours and hours when i only spent 2 euro.
i'll miss panini the way they do it here (though it might be the same in new york, i don't know).
i'll miss bad american tv poorly dubbed over in french.
i'll miss the weather.
i'll miss the tiny cute little metro system.
i'll miss the grocery stores i shopped in here, with their huge cheese and yogurt sections and extensive wine isles.
i hate to admit it, but i'll miss french. i'll miss having the ability to communicate in another language.
i'll miss my neighborhood: place st. sulpice, eglise st. germain de pres, rue de buci, the museum of middle age and its garden with the free internet, st michel, and all the bars.
i'll miss jussieu and charles 5, though not the french education system.
i'll miss the people in my maitrisse course.
i'll miss feeling the romance this city exudes.
i'll miss the history inherent in a city where the romans once lived.
i'll miss condom dispensers in the subway.
i'll miss my very relaxed life here.
i'll miss living alone.
i'll miss the beautiful men.
i'll miss who i was here.
but i'm coming home tomorrow and you have no idea how good that feels.
my very own babysitter's club
so i've been thinking about jobs a lot recently. probably because i only have enough money in the bank to cover one month's rent. but i've been wondering what kind of job i should get. what i'm looking for is one that makes me lots and lots of money and is the least stressful and the least time consuming. dream job: someone pays me to read books (anyone now wondering why i want to become a professor of literature?) but since i'm not going to find any sort of dream job this summer, i must find a real one. and i mean like a serious one, maybe some 9-5 thing or something. jeez that sounds horrible. but my credit card balance is disturbingly high, so for once in my life i'm going to suck it up and do any job that will pay the bills. but i do seem to have options. there's restaurant work, becoming someone's personal assitant, a receptionist, or even finding more babysitting work. anything to make money (no, not anything, prostitution is not really an option). but so anyway, i've been thinking a lot about babysitting recently. it's a job i really do love and often find amazingly rewarding. but beyond that it's also amazingly annoying at times. its an odd thing. you sometimes become like some weird appendage to the family. sometimes you're with the family for years and then it becomes natural to like be at the private family gift giving. but sometimes you're standing there singing joyeux anniversaire thinking "i should not be here, i am not a member of this family." also, the annoying thing about babysitting is having to act grown up in front of the kids. like not licking the yogurt top (which i sooo wanted to do today). and not belching. and having correct grammar. and just in general acting like a grown up which is such a lie cause i almost Never act like a grown up. if only they knew. they'd rightfully beseech me for being a hypocrite. oh, and madame today pointed out that i eat like a kid. like that i only like simple kid foods like pasta and stuff. it made me laugh so fucking hard because she's right. i think i'm in a "i don't wanna grow up" mood. woohoo.
curious
does anyone still read this thing?
laundry day
it’s one of those amazingly beautiful paris days and it's somehow made better by the fact that I’m doing something as mundane as laundry. of course the best part is that during the hour I wait for my wash I’m sitting in my favorite café, making use of their nearly free internet. it also helps that I have plans for later on, so my whole day wont’ be quite as banal as this afternoon. I really am a lazy bum here. though I woke up before noon it wasn’t until three pm that I finally made it out of my house. but hey, that’s the great thing about the end of a semester. fuck, I’ve been doing it all semester because it’s the great thing about studying abroad. with things wrapping up I’m trying to fit in those last million things, some sightseeing as well as the homework I’ve ignored all semester. here’s a halfhearted “damn” to procrastination.
so here's a story:
last night was the first time i got really pissed off at french people. like the nation as a whole (slight exaggeration here). so i am not (really) embarressed to admit that i went to a Maroon 5 concert last night. it rocked my world. but what pissed me off is that in the audience the people in the fucking seats were SITTING DOWN through the whole show. you do NOT FUCKING SIT DOWN THROUGH A ROCK SHOW! ok, maybe it's pop rock, but still. it made my friends and i so annoyed we went and danced in the pit. actually i think we were just intimidated about being the only people standing in a crowd of thousands. plus, we were in the front row and would have pissed A LOT of people off. the concert itself was awesome. i'm such a sucker for cute boys singing love songs onstage. i got to hear them play "she will be loved", which is the reason i coughed up the money for the tickets. if anyone wants a clue into my psyche, i identify with that song more than pretty much anything else. it gives me hope.
so anyway, the only other thign that's occupying my mind right now that i'm going to put here is that i'm nervous abotu tomorrow. i'm meeting with this guy i've been "friends" with here. and i say friends like that not because there's anything going on there, but just because i have no idea how we're friends since we don't share a common language. technically we should be able to communicate in french, except for the fact that i Really can't understand him when he talks ( i think it's a speech impediment). so basically we just smile and nod to each other and have other people there to carry on the "conversation" between us. sigh, seeing him stresses me out.
