poste la quatorzième, dans laquelle you peek into my brain and I pretend this is tumblr

Today I found this little gem, The Intimacies of the Urban, which basically captures my trains of thought every time I ride the Metro (aka I think about this general theme A LOT) and how I feel about Paris.

Bonus points if you noticed my pun!

Even moar if you liked it!

Clare the cuddle vaccuum

Poste la treizième, dans laquelle HAI I STILL EXIST AND I HAVE STORIES FOR YOUZ!

HELLO WORLD (<--recycled joke, that was completely unoriginal to begin with)

I AM STILL HERE! IN PARIS! I have lots of fairly valid reasons why I have not written lately, but the most suspense-inducing is that I have been out having adventures to write about on here. And write I shall! I have a midterm next week which will require a Herculean amount of effort to prepare for which means that I am in prime position to be productive on basically every other thing I can work on. So don't give up yet!

I will finally explain the mysterious hints I left a few posts ago, about HARRY POTTER and the APOCALYPSE. and CLIMBING! and PEOPLE, including one real French one of the male persuasion! :P I hope you have not been waiting with bated breath, because you would certainly be dead by now.

A toute a l'heure!
Clare

p.s. I am better at typing without looking at keys now! and this was on a French keyboard no less!!!!! WHEE.

poste la douzième, dans laquelle I HATE IRONY.

I don't like umbrellas.

I did not use them before I lived in Paris where only Americans wear Northface raincoats and everyone and their mother uses an umbrella. But when the forecast turned to Seattle weather but rainier for the foreseeable future, I followed the dripping French crowd to the nearest Monoprix and bought one. MISTAKE #1. Apparently Monoprix (a grocery/clothing/school supply/umbrella/makeup/etc store), which I assumed would be cheaper than someplace like H&M or another clothing/accessory brand store, likes to RIP OFF hapless individuals caught out in the rain. And it was NOT EVEN RAINING yet when I made this purchase. Anyway, the Monoprix brand umbrellas are certainly nothing special, but I could not find one for anything less than 14.90 Euro. Now, since I had never bought an umbrella before because I think they are worthless, I did not have anything concrete to compare this too, but I was pretty sure it was more than I wanted to pay. However, I was wearing a lot of leather (Baens, please forgive me, that is another story and I think it is called The Pearl (or something featuring a hypocrite)) and the weather looked threatening, so I decided to suck it up and buy it, because maybe umbreallas are worth it, I wouldn't know.

When I got to school (dry without help from the umbrella) I asked around for other umbrella-buying experiences, and discovered that the H&M around the corner from school was selling a virtually identical umbrella for the low low price of 6 Euro! Merde!

I ranted about this for a while, but not being familiar with the nuances of returning things in France, I didn't actually do anything about the situation. (Although this weekend I saw an umbrella for only 3 Euro. Damnit Monoprix!) But since then, I have been carrying around that umbrella in my bags, leather or not, so I can at least make use of it. And then today, the first day I forgot to transfer the umbrella between my bags (Mistake #2), IT RAINED. And I, in my soggy down jacket, carrying my mom's leather bag, got soaked. Comme mes enfants français m'ont dit, il pleurait des chats et des chiens.

Aside: Mommy, I would like to take this moment to mention that I sacrificed my left foot to keep your bag dry(ish). I was trying to keep it covered and not looking at my feet, and I stepped into a giant puddle that was really more like a lake. I love you!

And there you have it: irony for the win. I need to go wring out my socks again.

Clare

poste l'onzième: ree-JECK-shun. très impoli.

Bon soir.

Tonight I am here to tell you about the scarring* rejection I faced last week (was it just last week? Time passes so slowly when one is in despair*). As you may or may not be aware, the Stanford Center in Paris is located within an engingeering school, which, like many engineering schools, is full of guys. So when the program staff told us about the language partner program, in which we are each paired with a French student to practice our French and their English and go have delightful, cultural Parisian adventures, they warned us American girls that we would most likely get a boy and that they would most likely treat the necessary exchange of phone numbers as an invitation to call/text excessively, and the obligatory rendez-vous as a date (although with slightly more subtle phrasing). And that, my friends, is exactly what did happen. For MOST of us...

I went down to the "pot", a mixer kind of thing with tiny food, and began a nice if somewhat surfacey (but we just met, what do you expect) conversation with my partner. He was friendly and animated and seemed like a nice guy, but after talking for a few minutes he said he had to leave early to go have dinner with someone and could not go with the group to the Champs de Mars for less-supervised revelry. Ok, fine, we had already exchanged numbers and I wasn't planning to stay for long anyway. Before he excused himself, he had shown me a text from a friend of his who was also at the pot who had apparently been assigned to a "really cute" American girl. My partner got very excited, I assume because he had yet to see a "cute" American girl (RUDE). He then spent the next several minutes trying to get a look at her. We couldn't see who it was, but apparently my partner had not given up. He said goodbye to me and I found another partnerless person to chat with. Then, about 10 minutes later, I looked across the room and saw that my partner was still there, talking to this friend and the "cute girl"!!! * HOW RUDE. He has not called me since, and I do not think we shall be doing anything together. Hmph!

It's ok though, I have moved on. In fact, while passing by the Louvre (how casually Parisian of me) the other day, I fell in love at first sight:

And now I feel this is necessary:
DISCLAIMER: I was not interested in my language partner nor the idea of having someone text me obsessively (phones are expensive here, yo!) nor awkward obligatory rendez-vous. It was The Principle of the thing. (or for those of you twitter tweeties out there (I cringe on your behalf), #sarcasm throughout.)

Riding solo,
Clare

*It is not a real scar, just like my tattoo is not a real tattoo.
*I am not in despair.
*Clarification: she is cute actually, the quotes here are to indicate that I am quoting the text message.

Poste la dixième et demie, dans laquelle, we are still here to learn. Here as in on this website, apparently.

Rereading some recent posts, I learned a few things:

1. Counting is hard. Not only were there some issues (that phrasing indicates I do not take responsibility for these "issues") counting to 1 in the very beginning, but I also went from 10 to 11.5 earlier today (which I do take responsibility for). So to "fix" that (really to make up for it, because let's be real I could just go edit the posts and you would never know), this is 10.5, and shall be followed by 11. I am the queen of logic.

2. I did lie in that post where I said I didn't but then maybe that was a lie in itself (poste 10). I said the french never hug. In fact, there is a very high frequency of "the french hug" on the streets of Paris, which is easy to spot because it is always accompanied by a giant FRENCH KISS. Walking around this city, I see more PDAs per meter than in a high school hallway on Valentine's Day. And I am not just talking about a Holy Names hallway, people. And since it is hard to smoke and kiss simultaneously, although I have seen it done, most couples are not even obscured by a nice private cloud of carcinogens! Inappropriate.

3. This is just a happy tidbit of news. There is a little boulangerie across the street from my appartement d'accueil, and I am now a Regular. The ladies greet me and ask about my day, and they always know what I am going to order: pain au chocolat, and if it is almost lunch, a sandwich (this is a point of awkwardness however, since I do not know the proper name for the sandwich I always get and just discovered it as "the one without meat", which, based on their reactions when I ask for this sandwich, is not its real name.). I also realized that while it is ok to have a few days when you don't really feel like eating food other than chocolate croissants, when you start eating normally again, you should probably cut it down to one croissant a day.

Clare

poste l'onzième et demie, IT'S A PREVIEW PEOPLE.

This is what I have to say:

1. I have witnessed the apocalypse. Twice. And I think my neighbor is a carpenter.
2. I have the most beautiful rainbow-filled planner and lots of markers YAY!
3. I still have not had any wine since being here. I plan to amend this sad state of affairs this weekend in Normandie.
4. I know where Harry Potter really lived.
5. AND I have experienced rejection at the hands of a French boy when I was not even looking for acceptance (or whatever the opposite is) in the first place! I thought they didn't care about anything as long as you are American? RUDE.

Until tonight!

Love,
Clarebear the slow updater.

Poste la dixième, dans laquelle there exist(s?) cheating, lying, and KITTENS! (that were not inspired by KITTENS!), or, thank goodness I no longer have an expander because for a while there I couldn't make a long "ee" sound ("deee-zeee-ehm")

Here is the cheating:

I am too tired to tell you real things right now so I am giving you this: As I have mentioned at least once, the French do not hug. They prefer to kiss--not even each other, just the dirty dirty smoke-filled air around each other's faces. POUR QUOI?? Je n'ai aucune f***ing idée. I miss you all and I miss hugs. HUGZ and KUDDLEZ, especially aggressive Molly-cuddles when she wakes you up in the morning to pet her. So, in lieu of (#franglais, oh god I really hate hashtags, no seriously. what is the point? this is not twitter. I also hate twitter. Not even capital-T worthy, here in my blerg.)...what was I saying? OH, in lieu of tangible hugz and cuddlez, kitteh or otherwise, I give you this. Pretend you are one and I am one, and not only will we be the cutest things ever to exist, we will be CUDDLING!

And without further ado, KITTEHZ:

Smoke rings in the shape of hearts*,

Clare

* Just to clarify, I do not smoke. These are French people's smoke hearts I am offering. I spend my time filling my lungs with albuterol so I can then fill them with oxygen, which unfortunately is smoke-flavored and thus requires more inhaler timez. Albuterol-y exhales in the shape of hearts!

Also, I lied. There was no lying. (Are either of those statements true?)

poste le neuvième, starring SMALL CHILDREN!!! or, the children are the future. watch them and you will be able to open doors and find the communal toilet paper.

I LOVE KIDS. They make me so happy. Sometimes really annoyed/tired/exasperated, but mostly just full of love and sunshine and smiles. SO many smiles. (grown-up French people don't smile. unless they know you. but why would you want to get to know someone who doesn't smile? Je ne comprends pas les français, but what else is new?)

I was having a rough patch and missing people/Bae/kitties/music/HUGZ, but my day turned around today when I got to be a teacher! sort of. I am doing something called an internship (un stage) but it is basically just another Stanford student and I going into a French public school once a week after school to do an English workshop with a group of nine ten-year-olds. We can do pretty much anything, as long as it is in English, fun, and not illegal, etc. (dangit, no climbing the water tower!)

We got to the school a bit early, so we were hanging out in the schoolyard supervising the recess/snacktime before activities started, and I decided I would set a good example (or precedent, since I was the only one paying attention to myself) and do a GPP* before class. I went over to the little building with the bathrooms and the doors weren't marked but both bathrooms were empty so I picked the one that had been pointed out as the girls'. (First of all, there is not toilet paper in each stall, just one giant roll by the sinks...um, what? I definitely did not realize this until another girl came in while I was washing my hands. Oh well.) Anyway, while I was washing my hands, I gazed out at the blacktop, where a group of about five eight-year-old boys was staring at me and laughing. Perplexed, I made a confused face at them, which only made them laugh harder. Now, being laughed at by kids is not a new experience for me, but I usually know why they're laughing. Hurriedly emerging, worried I had gone into the boys' room (despite having seen a girl in there), I asked why they were laughing. As they shrieked and scattered, one stayed long enough to tell me: "We thought you were a boy!"

Oh.

Well, yay for realizing I wasn't? (this reminds me of picking up a prescription this summer at the QFC pharmacy on Broadway (in Seattle's queer neighborhood), when the pharmacist saw my dad's name on the insurance card and asked if I wanted him to change my name in the system to Paul. No thank you, but I appreciate your awareness/sensitivity.)

Clare

* General Principle Pee. Thank you Ro-Ro!

poste le huitième, in which i am here to learn, but where is here, exactly? and what am i supposed to be learning, again?

My week in arrears, Installment II:

The last post was rather lengthy so this time I will be brief(er...):

1. I just bought a little book called L'Indispensable Plan de Paris: the indispensable map of Paris. And thank goodness. I have become far too intimately acquainted with the streets surrounding all of the places I have gone this week, including my apartment, multiple metro stops, a phone store, and a grocery store I searched for for an HOUR. And when I finally got helpful directions and found it I realized I had passed it multiple times and just not known what I was looking for! Sigh. I feel like an animal marking my territory, making one large ring I know includes my destination and then spiraling toward the center where I hopefully find what I'm looking for.

2. Tuesday morning was the first day of class, and I jumped on the strugglebus on the way to school. I got up early to make it to class on time, because my first class, French, was at 10am and I wasn't quite sure the fastest way to get there (or how to get out of my building--this was the morning I gave up trying and waited for someone else to leave and open the doors for me). After circling the metro station as my instincts dictate, I hopped on the train and rode to class, ready to leap out and climb stairs like a madwoman because I was now running late (damn doors!). I raced up the stairs, practicing my apology to my professor for my tardiness, crossed the street, and dashed up to the 2nd (but really 3rd because there is a 0th) floor. I (gracefully and non-disruptively) burst in to the classroom at 10h10 and hastily found a seat, and then spent the next 30 seconds catching my breath. When I became aware of my surroundings, I realized that something was not quite right. The man talking at the front of the room was not my French professor...these students (though they were all from Stanford) were not the people in my French class...and I had no idea what the professor was talking about.

After a few minutes of actually listening, I realized I had stumbled into the intense content class on the French healthcare system, which I knew absolutely nothing about (not anymore!). I felt like I was in a dream when things move and change, because I was definitely in the right room and my phone said what time it was. I didn't have my schedule with me, and I felt bad for interrupting class by coming in late, so I just stayed put and laid low. Luckily (sort of), the class ended at 11, so I only sat there for an hour, but it turned out it had started at 9h30, so I had been not 10 but 40 minutes late! And my French class wasn't until 1, so I could have waited 3 more hours to come in. Hmph.

Clare

(sorry, not the briefest...)

I have gotten better at navigating by the sun and slope of the ground, and the location of the Eiffel Tower. This makes street names less critical and my wandering more focused. Progress? I feel like an ancient astronomer.

Poste le septième, dans lequel it becomes apparent that I am here to learn.

A lot has happened this week, and it is all super important and exciting and relevant to you, etc, so here is the first of several highlights.

My week in review (or in ARREARS, as my good friend Chris James quirkily likes to say), Installment I:

In which I learn to escape the walls that confine:

So, my little chickadees, [the second-to-] last [time] we talked I was sitting in my host apartment, happily indoors, about to go to bed and wake up to another day dans la vie Parisienne. My apartment is very nice, full of people who feed me and do my laundry and have a really great internet connection. Let's be real, that is pretty much all I need. And studies show that the laundry bit is even sort of optional. So why would I ever leave? Well, sometimes a sauna and a lungful of secondhand smoke does a body good. And my family is not required to give me lunch. And (this is a really bizarre idea to grasp) attending my tiny classes here is mandatory.

Ok, simple, you might say to yourself. She went inside, now she just needs to come out. Not so! First of all, you have to use the keys to open the apartment door, even from the inside! And, as you have hopefully never witnessed, for me using keys is sometimes really hard. So, after several silent curses, key jigglings and overall unsuccessful attempts, I finally get the door open and make it out into the hallway. But the real challenge is only beginning.

I manage to navigate the elevator just fine, avoiding the spit that has been drying on the wall by the buttons all week, now accompanied by a note asking the offender to clean up their fluids and the hypersalivating cretin's spitty response. Upon exiting the elevator on the rez de chaussée (0th floor. In France they 0-index their battiments), I approach the first (there are 2! I am safe in here.) set of glass doors separating me from my freedom, my trepidation growing as I realize that the transparent portals with their perfect view of the sunlit street are deceptively ephemeral and firmly locked.

Resourcefully, I check the nearby walls for the same mysterious key sensor devices you can use to enter the building, with no luck. Examining the door more closely, I notice a keyhole, and remember that there is a key on my ring whose purpose has not yet been revealed. I spend another several minutes attempting to fit my key to the lock, and by the time I am convinced it can't be forced, a little boy and his mom have come down the elevator.

While his mom is busy fussing with their mailbox, the little boy regards me like some kind of strange creature he has read about but never before seen. After solemnly observing my noble attempts to open the door, he comes over and indicates what should have been obvious (NOT!?!): you must push (OHHHHH I GET IT NOW! It is like the apartment's ****ing door. I just realized this.) the keyhole in like a button while using your key (or perhaps it works sans clé - I shall determine this tomorrow) to turn.

I thank the boy and proceed to carry out his directions, but to no avail. Finally he gets tired of watching me struggle, and takes matters into his own hands. It turns out that once you have worked your black magic with the key and keyhole (I tried to tell my French class this story later and at some point gave up on words and resorted to vaguely (I hope!) obscene hand gestures), you must forcefully yank the door towards you before pushing on it in order to open it. Counterintuitive, non?

He gives me a challenging look as I approach the outer door, but I am ready for it this time. I push the button on the wall like I saw my host sister do (and also the first time I failed to let myself out of the building and had to wait for someone else to leave, and then just followed them out I saw the man push the button. I wasn't going to tell you about that time. Oops.), yank and push like the boy showed me, and Voila! The scent of Paris fills my nostrils. Success, my friends, smells like cigarettes with a hint of urine and dog doo.

But hey! At least I'm learning.

Lise