Back Where I Belong

My French is very good. (Not really--see my comment on my last post, but I wanted to throw Ann off the trail of this new post.) Real topic: I'm in Paris! Specifically, I'm at Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris, and since I never went through immigration or showed anyone my passport, I suppose it could be argued from the standpoint of international law that I am not actually on French territory right now. But most people around me are speaking French; many things are not clean and perfect; and at 7:45 in the morning, someone's already been mean to me. I'm home, and all is well with the world again!

Unfortunately, this uncomfortable airport seat is as close as I'll get to Nirvana on this trip. I'm only in CDG for five hours, on a layover on my way back to West Africa for a week and a half for work. And my plans for a three-day stopover in Paris to see friends and stock up on staples, like fleur de sel, unavailable in the frontier wilderness where I now live, have been foiled by the West Africans changing the work schedule last week without telling me. Someday, I may forgive them.

Instead, I can only try to console myself with a decent croissant and perhaps some real yogurt.

If any of my French readers see this today, Wednesday, August 27, they can give me a call on my French cell phone until about 13h!

Context, Part 2

My French is very good. And it should be: I started studying French in high school; I majored in French in college; I have a master's degree in French Studies; and I have lived and studied and worked in France on four separate occasions for a total of about eight years, or one-fifth of my life. My French is not perfect--I have an accent, and I make grammatical mistakes, and there are words I don't know--but it is very good, and there are basically no life situations or conversations or reading material that I don't think I could handle just fine in French.

But I still often feel like I only understand a fraction of what's going on around me while I'm in France. Why? Because even after all my studies and all my time there, I still lack huge portions of French cultural context. Most of the background, the subtext, the soundtrack, the footnotes of conversation and posters and the daily noise that make up our interactions with the world around us get filtered out by my brain when I'm in France because they seem to be just noise, with no meaning or importance. I can't even tell you how much I miss, because there's absolutely no way for me to judge how much cultural information is around me that I'm simply unaware of. All I can say is that there are a lot of inside jokes that go right over my head.

When I first moved to France in 2002, I was over at some friends' one night while they were watching Qui veut gagner des millions ? (the French knock-off of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). There was a new contestant who was at the easiest level, and my friends were outraged at how easy the questions were: "Everyone knows that!" "Our five year-old could answer that one!" and so on. I finally told them, very quietly, that I had absolutely no idea what the answers were to any of the questions--that I'd never even heard of the topics. My friends stared at me like I was brain-damaged. They didn't realize how culturally specific the questions were, and how rooted in French history and pop culture. The challenge of living in a foreign country is how very often you feel stupid, just because you don't have the same knowledge, the same cultural context, as most people around you.

There are some examples of insider details that I did understand, but they're few and far between, and I'm inordinately proud of them. A couple that come to mind:

1) The chain of movie theaters that I went to regularly, UGC, had an ad that it ran before most movies. The screen showed a dark blue background, with bubbles floating up, as if it were filmed underwater. Words flashed rapidly across the screen (in French): "Anguish," "Stress," "Anger," "Rushed," "Long Lines," "Movie Sold Out." Then the words "UGC Prompto: The Anti-Stress of Cinema [phone number]" would come up, advertising the way to reserve your movie tickets ahead of time. Okay, fine. I'm guessing that most good French students would be able to understand all the text in the ad with no problem and would probably assume that the underwater bubbles were just some random background graphic chosen for no particular reason. But any native speaker would look at those bubbles and mentally identify them with the French word "bulles," bringing to mind the French expression "avoir les bulles," which literally means "to have bubbles" and figuratively means to be upset or angry about something. The bubble graphic was (subliminally?) underlining the angry, upset words flashing across the screen, and I was always very pleased to "get" that one.

2) One of my co-workers at the office was very plugged in to the French political scene because his mother was mayor of a small town in the South. One day last summer, he was telling me about the rumor that President Nicolas Sarkozy was actually separated from his wife Célia; that she was being paid some specific amount for each public appearance that she made with him; that their divorce would be announced in the coming year, once his presidency was more established; and that Célia was already in a relationship with a man named Marc Lévy. I responded, "Et si c'était vrai !" ("And if it were true!"), which made us both laugh. What was so funny about my seemingly banal expression of surprise/disbelief to all these stories? Well, Marc Lévy is a contemporary French author, and Et si c'était vrai is the title of one his most popular novels (made into the movie Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, in the U.S.), so my response was actually a mild little pun. I love verbal banter, but the opportunities for me to make even this kind of very weak pun were very, very rare in France, just because it was unusual for me to have the context, to recognize the names of all the people involved and rapidly be able to pull in a relevant comment about one of them.

So, after six years of feeling like I'm missing out on a lot of what's going on around me, what is it like for me to be re-immersed in my native context? Stay tuned for Part 3 . . .

Context, Part 1

A couple of years ago, I attended my high school class reunion. I had a great time, but it was a very strange experience for me. Why? Well, part of it was the normal class reunion experience of seeing people with whom you have a shared history, some of whom you haven't necessarily seen in many years. But for me, this was amplified by the unusual sensation of being surrounded by a group of people with whom I had not only a shared culture but also a personal history.

Three or four of my closest high school friends--people I still see once or twice a year--were there, but there was also the girl who was my reading partner, starting in first grade and all through elementary school. Another girl whose grandparents lived three doors down from me, with whom I spent many, many wonderful summer days playing with hula hoops and eating Pringles in her grandparents' RV parked in the back yard. Classmates who told me that they see my dad in Wal-Mart every week and remember that my ex-brother-in-law was in the Navy and know his brothers and sisters. Since he and my sister got divorced in 1986, most of my closest friends today don't even know my ex-brother-in-law's name, much less what he did for a living or anything about his family. But there I was, surrounded by people whom I hadn't seen for 10 years or more, who knew so much about my life's history. They knew my historical context.

This felt like a very strange juxtaposition to my daily life in Paris, where most of my friends knew very little about my life history. Oh, everyone knew that I was American, but their ideas of what that meant, of what my childhood and life might have been like, were based on what they'd seen on TV and in movies. Most of them would politely ask where I was from, and knowing that there was little chance that they would have heard of it, I had my stock reply of, "Minnesota, it's-in-the-center-of-the-country-on-the-border-of-Canada, where-the-Mississippi-River-starts" (sadly, that gave them a much clearer idea than it would to most Americans). Occasionally, I would be pressed for the name of my hometown, and it was always funny to see how many French people actually recognized the name "Mankato" from their years of watching La Petite maison sur la prairie as children. But there was no easy way for me to adjust their mental image of my history from that of the Ingalls family to my truth of a childhood of riding my bike to the swimming pool and eating Pringles in my friend's grandparents' RV in the backyard. Context is hard to communicate.

I think that's partly why immigrants tend to group together in a foreign country: shared cultural context is a powerful bond. It was comforting to hang out with other Americans who missed peanut butter and knew the same TV-comedy punch lines as I did. But even though we shared the same culture, a big chunk of personal history was always missing, because family and past friends were far away and rarely seen in person. And even though the other Americans probably understood about riding bike to the swimming pool in the summer, many of them seemed surprised to learn that it gets warm enough to swim in Minnesota (I couldn't believe how many of my American friends asked if I really needed to get an air conditioner for my apartment here in July)!

But even though a part of my historical context was always missing for everyone I knew in Paris, those were the people with whom I shared my day to day experiences: metro rides and strikes, office tasks and tales, dinners and movies and parties and fights and laughter and worries about loved ones thousands of miles away. They knew the name of my boss and what project I was working on that day, and when I was stressed out or happy and why. They shared my life, my present context.

Skip back to my class reunion, where I was surrounded by people who knew my history and couldn't begin to imagine my present-day life. When classmates asked where I was living, and I said, "Paris," the most frequent response was, "Wow . . . what's that like?" And I would just shrug and say, "Oh, it's really pretty normal. I mostly just go to work and plop down in front of the TV to eat my dinner at the end of the day." Which was true, except that I did it all in a context where I could buy fresh baguette and croissants and amazing cheese whenever I wanted, and see the Eiffel Tower on my way to church on Sunday morning, and wander through the courtyard of the Louvre on the way to meet a friend for a drink. A very normal daily life, in a very special context, which I somehow didn't think I'd be able to explain to my Pringles-eating playmate.

On either side of the ocean, it often feels like half of my context is missing.

First Incident of Being Seriously Annoyed by a Stupid American

Huge shock: it happened at the Post Office. I went in to buy stamps and mail a couple of letters. I asked for a roll of stamps and 20 international stamps and immediately peeled off one of each to put on my letters. When I removed the domestic stamp, I noticed that it was marked "42 cents", which means that it will no longer be sufficient the next time postage rates increase, so I asked, "Oh, the rolls aren't permanent validity stamps?" The postal worker burst out laughing and said, "Well, that's a new term!" I guess I looked confused, because she finally added, "No, they're not Forever Stamps." Yeah, "permanent validity stamp" is laughable, but "Forever Stamp" is a name we can all take seriously.

The postal worker continued to chuckle and asked what I had called them again (evidently so she could repeat the funny joke to all her vocabulary-impaired colleagues). I refrained from asking if the Forever Stamps come with a promise ring, and instead just said, "'Permanent validity Stamps," adding in an appropriately sneering tone, "I just moved here from France, and that's what they're called there." And where they've had them for years, and where you'd be hard-put to buy a domestic-postage stamp that isn't permanent validity, unlike the price-labelled domestic stamps still sold by the stupid U.S. Post Office, I thought to myself but did not say out loud.

I am a paragon of self-restraint.

When I got back to my apartment, my one piece of mail today was my "A Paris" magazine, the quarterly publication of the City of Paris, letting all us Parisians know what's going on in our hometown, promptly forwarded to me by the lovely Poste française. Very appropriate for Bastille Day. Take that! you stupid American postal worker woman.

Also, today I was shown an apartment by a real estate agent who was carrying a binder labelled "Inportant [something]" The label was printed, not hand-written, so someone had to look at it at least twice: once while typing and once while sticking it on the binder. Had I been able to see the rest of the label, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have seen at least one inappropriate apostrophe as well.

If someone doesn't take me out for ice cream soon, I'm moving back to Paris.

French Resolutions

If you've read the comments on my last post, you know that all 2.5 of my regular readers have been insistently demanding that I start blogging again, here in America. Well, actually, there were just a few half-hearted inquiries as to why I had stopped writing, and now my former readers seem more excited about Ann blogging about the porn she's writing in Iowa, or something like that. Also, one reader compared my writing to compost.

It's so nice to feel loved.

Anyway, wanted or not, I do eventually plan to write about what it's like to be back in the U.S.A., but like some blind and soft-fleshed little creature crawling out from its protective shell for the first time, I'm not feeling quite ready to tell you my impressions of this strange and frightening new world just yet. So for now, I'll just share a few of the resolutions I've made to maintain my own personal integrity, as well as that of my adopted other-homeland.

THINGS I WILL NOT DO, NOW THAT I AM BACK IN AMERICA:

1) Use the word "entrée" to refer to the main dish of a meal. Has anyone in America ever noticed the striking similarity between "entrée" and "entry"? As in "beginning", or "starter", or "appetizer"?! That's right, folks, "entrée" means "appetizer", and I can't even stand to think about the idiot who got the entrée=main dish mistranslation started and managed to spread it nationwide! Every time I open a menu here, I spend several moments trying to figure out why the restaurant doesn't have any main dishes, but two separate categories of appetizers. So while speaking English in restaurants here, I will do my best to protect la belle langue française and never let the word entrée cross my lips.

2) Say "I'm good," when I mean "No, thank you." (For P & A)

3) Pronounce words in English as if they were French (sorry, Ann). I don't care how many cool kids whom I've never heard of (Stacy and Clinton, Ina? Seriously, I have no clue.) are doing it; it's just pretentious. I don't want everyone around me to think that I'm trying to be better than them just because I've lived in France and can pronounce French words correctly. I much prefer to live in the silent certainty that I don't need to pronounce French words correctly in English, because I've lived in France and am therefore obviously superior to everyone else.

4) Say "ATM machine" and "PIN number." (Actually, these are long-standing resolutions of mine which have nothing to do with loyalty to France, but they're important enough to merit mention here.) If you don't know why it's evil to say these things, please take a moment to consider what the final letter in each abbreviation stands, and then leave my blog and never come back.

5) Anything else that comes to mind.

P.S. Thanks to Ann for the lovely, if unsolicited, guest blogging. Feel free to continue whenever you want.

BNT: Every New Beginning

BNT = Blog Not Titled

In one of my early posts, I mentioned that there are two lines I love in the Semisonic song "Closing Time." One is "Time for you to go out to the places you will be from." The other is "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I love this line because it acknowledges the bittersweet reality that having the opportunity to start something new often means leaving something else behind.

That's exactly what I'm experiencing as I leave Paris to make a new beginning in the Twin Cities, and so "Every New Beginning" was one of the original titles I considered for this blog. That name was already taken, so then I thought I'd use "Some Other Beginning." I registered that name and had even starting setting up the blog template, but then I realized what the obvious abbreviation for that name would be. Neither the word "sob" nor the common usage of "S.O.B." was pleasing to me for my blog, so I scratched it and went back to the drawing board.

.....

My last new beginning was on March 28, 2002, when I moved from Washington to Paris. Officially, my legal residency in France began on May 14, 2002, and ended today, June 30, 2008. At 5:20 p.m. CDT, I cleared U.S. Immigration Control at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, where I declared myself a U.S. resident for the first time in over six years. My profile in the sidebar has been updated accordingly.

Every new beginning.

My Last Post from Paris

I'm sitting at the boarding gate at Charles de Gaulle airport, waiting for my flight to Minneapolis, which has been delayed about 40 minutes. That's okay, because it gives me a few minutes for one last post as a resident of France.

Since Ann asked, I'll tell you about my last weekend in Paris:
- Saturday afternoon I went to the Marie-Antoinette exhibit at the Grand Palais, with my friend M. The exhibit was fantastic, but you can't see it, because it ends today. (I can only assume that all of life in France will come to a screeching halt immediately after my departure.)
- After the exhibit, M and I sat and chatted over drinks at a sidewalk cafe for a little while, then I bid her au revoir.
- I took a bus from the Champs-Elysées to Gare du Nord--I wanted to avoid the métro, because RER B wasn't running, due to a strike.
- I had a lovely dinner with P and A, including a gorgeous caprese salad the P served up sushi-style, to be eaten with chopsticks. And we lounged around and chatted until it was time for me to catch a train back into Paris. A and I agreed not to say good-bye, pretending that I would see them at church the next morning. But I cried a bit anyway.
- Sunday morning I went to the American Church to say good-bye to everyone there.
- I had to take a bus across the Left Bank, and I realized that I would be getting off right by the Jardin des Plantes, so I took a 15-minute detour to wander through these gardens, which have been on my "to-see" list for years. Now I can cross them off the list, but I definitely want to go back and explore them in more detail some other time!
- I met EJ & Isabelle and their boys, as well as friends N & G and Baby F for a lovely Sunday afternoon picnic in Parc de Choisy.
- I took a bus back to Montorgeuil, so that I would ride past Notre Dame and see the Eiffel Tower down the Seine, rather than being underground for my last tour through Paris.
- After spending the afternoon and early evening getting my many massive suitcases in order, I went out for a slice of pizza, which I took back to EJ & Isabelle's along with a carton of gelato to share. The kids were already in bed, so the three of us sat around chatting and laughing and eating ice cream. A perfect last evening with friends in Paris.
- This morning, I realized I had the choice of either ironing my very wrinkled pants or going out for fresh bread and pastries for my last breakfast in Paris. The pain au chocolat and the croissant were absolutely perfect, and I choose to believe that my pants look elegantly crumpled.
- EJ and Isabelle helped me haul my luggage to the curb, and we said good-bye as I climbed into the taxi to the airport.

I haven't cried (much) yet, but then . . . it was a lovely weekend, and it's been a great six years, and I know I'll be back soon to see everything and everyone in France that I love. Bon voyage to me!

My New Home

Upon careful reflection, I have realized that now is not the right time for me to leave Paris. I have therefore settled into a fabulous little apartment in the charming Montorgueil neighborhood, from whence I shall live happily ever after. I'll be calling my movers shortly to tell them to just dump all that unnecessary American furniture of mine in the Atlanti--

Wait! What's that? I think I hear screaming from two floors down! It must be EJ and Isabelle, trying to remind me that their generous going-away gift of allowing me to stay for free for a few days in the studio apartment they own in their building was not an invitation to move in permanently. So I guess I'm still going to have to take the plane to MSP on Monday, after all.

As of this afternoon, I no longer have my own address in Paris. The futon is sold; the apartment is cleaned; the keys have been handed in. If it weren't for this pesky consulting work, I would actually have a little bit of free time to enjoy my last few days in Paris. But if I have to work, at least I have a very comfortable place to work in: Le Haricot.

Several years ago, my friends EJ and Isabelle bought a little studio apartment in their building, with the idea of using it as a guest room or office. EJ invested a lot of time completely remodeling the place, and it turned out so nicely that not only do they use it as a guest room, they also rent it out on a short-term basis. It's completely self-contained, with a double bed, a double couch-bed, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. It's in the Montorgueil quarter, which is an adorable little pedestrian market street in the heart of Paris (a few blocks from the central Châtelet-Les Halles metro stop). And Le Haricot a lot cheaper than staying in even a very average hotel in Paris. There's simply no reason to stay anywhere else when you come to Paris! (The confidentiality clause in my contract prevents me from discussing the commission I will earn from your business.)

EJ and Isabelle's younger son started calling the apartment Le Haricot, and they're not quite sure why. My personal theory is that he heard them talking about all the work that EJ was doing to expose the ceiling beams, and not recognizing that word, substituted the closest word he knew. The French word for "bean" is haricot. In any case, the place is cute as a bean, and it's wonderful to have a spot to call my own, near friends, for my last few days in Paris.

French Seasons

My movers have come and gone, and the packing and loading went very well. This end of my little street was very crowded with moving trucks for the past two days, however: according to my building superintendent, the residents of six apartments (out of about 60 total in the building) were moving out this week! I guess we were all trying to beat the rush and higher cost of moving once summer vacation has started.

This got me thinking about the seasons of life in France, which generally revolve around the school year and vacation.

In order to give children regular breaks from their intensive studies, the French school year is broken up into cycles of roughly six weeks of classes, then two weeks off, six weeks of class, two weeks off, and so on, with two months off in the summer. The school vacations are Toussaint (All Saints' Day; time off in late October or early November), Christmas, winter break (late February), "Easter" (in April, so when Easter falls in March, the vacation and the holiday don't coincide!), and summer ("les grandes vacances").

This system may be good for the children, but it can be complicated for parents who have to find extended childcare at regular intervals throughout the year. Many parents end up taking at least a week off at each of the school vacation periods (the 35-hour workweek, which many companies have implemented by giving comp days off rather than actually shortening working hours, has facilitated this practice).

In addition, the French national school system divides the country into three zones, and all the public schools in that zone have an identical calendar. Vacation periods among the zones are staggered but usually overlap by at least a week. This means that in any given city, almost all the children and many of their parents are all on vacation at the same time. Which means that a lot of small "mom and pop" shops will also be closed, businesses slow down, etc.

So while it's not true that the entire country goes on vacation at the same time (not even in August, as legend would have it), the regular vacation periods are noticeable and affect everyone to some extent. I'm single with no kids, but the above link to the French school calendar is one that I've had bookmarked for a few years, because so many things in my own life are affected by the school vacations. For example, my regular committee meetings at church were often rescheduled to accommodate school holidays.

Part of me finds these mass departures a bit lemming-like. So many people leave for their "big" summer vacation on either July 1 or August 1 that those days are always "red" level traffic days nationwide, and all the news programs remind people to bring enough water, etc. in the cars, since they'll most likely be sitting motionless on the highways for hours! Why not just leave on August 2? And some people do that, but they generally seem to talk about it like it's some big radical idea. Single people vaunt the fact that they can go on vacation in June, when it's cheaper. Oh, the craziness!

But part of me also thinks that it's nice to have these noticeable seasons and rhythms to life. It's ironic: ever since I left the Midwest, I've claimed to miss having real changes of seasons, the ebb and flow from a hot, sunny summer, to a cold, snowy winter. Yet living in France, where both summer and winter are much milder, the seasons seem to affect my life in more ways: winter is time for soups and scarves (all the time, even indoors), and summer is time for salads and light cotton skirts (no need to carry a sweater in case of excessive air-conditioning!) and fewer people on the metro.

The American writer of Parler Paris newsletters (which I read more out of morbid fascination than anything else) often marvels that so many small businesses and restaurants in Paris simply close down for vacations, rather than the owners finding a way to keep them open and earning money. I understand her logic, but after six years here, I also understand why many French would be disdainful of this "commercial" attitude. What's the use of earning a better living if it doesn't give you a better life?

I'm looking forward to the change of Minnesota seasons, but I hope I'll be able to hold onto some of the pace of French seasons. Tonight I plan to spend some time wandering around listening to street musicians playing everywhere for the Fête de la Musique, celebrating the beginning of summer and the longest day of the year, when it will stay light until about 11 pm.

Do you like what I've done with the place?

Before and after shots of my living room and entry/office:

My new decorating concept is all about doing more with less. By multitasking with common household elements (e.g. don't just think "floor", think "floor and desk and chair!"), I now have a home free of all that pesky excess furniture!