Adieu Paris

Il a neigé à Paris! And it wasn’t piddily little snow either, it’s legit. We probably got about a half inch of thick, wet snow. Of course, it was beautiful when it was coming down and when it was fresh but it got pretty gross very quickly. The sidewalks were covered in slush and my shoes and socks were soaked by the time I got home but it was snow so it was completely worth it. Despite the weather, Parisians are still riding their vélos (bikes) and their motos (motorcycles). Ils sont foux!

Today is le 18 décembre, I’m going home in two days. I know I should be feeling sadder about leaving than I currently am but I’m really excited to be going home. Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet, that I’m actually leaving Paris. Still, I can’t say that I’m not ready to go home. I even had a going home dream last night. I dreamed that I was studying abroad but I was only across the street at my neighbor’s house. I could see my house, but I couldn’t go home. If that’s not a plea to send me home I don’t know what is.

Although all I’ve been thinking about home this last week, I’m trying to soak up as much of Paris as I can. I went for one last wandering stroll around the city today, even though it is only about 32 degrees and snowy outside. Today I found “81 Roo de Loo”, Julia and Paul Child’s apartment at 81 Rue de L’Université. I will definitely miss the luxury of being able to just wander through the streets of Paris, not sure where I’m going but not being too worried about it either. This was by far my favorite pastime in Paris, coupled with a nice afternoon in a café with my book. Sure, not everything was perfect about this experience. Academically, my classes were fairly disappointing and I never got to know my host family very well. Still, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. For me, this whole adventure really started seven months ago. In my mind, DC and Paris were always linked. After so many months of anticipation and imaging of what these experiences would be like, it is strange to know that they have come to an end. Right now it’s hard for me to judge the impact that all this has had on me. I know that these experiences have had a huge impact on my life but I’m still not quite sure how they will affect me when I get home. I know that this past year will probably be one of the most memorable of my life but I realize now that I’m just getting started. These past months have been great but they are really just a springboard for the rest of my life.

To all of you out there in blogger world, thank you for keeping tabs on me and allowing me to self-indulge for an hour or two every week. I hope you enjoyed reading the blog as much as I had writing it. Merci, mes amis.

I will very soon no longer be living in an old house in Paris so it is only fitting that I leave you all with one last phrase from Mr. Ludwig Bemelmans:

And she tuned out the light-
And closed the door-
And that’s all there is-
there isn’t any more.

Les Grèves

Well, I did it. I broke one of the cardinal rules of my program: I walked towards a grève (strike). Yup, I saw a blocked street, police presence, and smoke but I kept on walkin’ right towards la manifestation. More on this very vie parisienne experience in a minute….

Last night I hung out my rugby team as a final farewell get together. They played a tournoi without me yesterday afternoon (I had class, boo) and they lost both games. We were planning on going out to dinner but we ended up hanging out at their school’s bar/café place. For all the Hamiltonians, it’s kind of a mix between Opus and the VT, if you can imagine that. It was really fun to hangout with all the girls one last time and get to know them a bit better off the rugby field. I wish we could have done it more often during the season! One of my teammates is actually coming to Cambridge next summer for a stage (internship). Small world, eh?

The rugby farewell was the second in what will be a week of farewells in Paris. Besides homework (I’m almost done!) I am trying to soak up all the Paris I can in the next week. One of those things includes getting to see some of the famous French grèves. Like I mentioned at the beginning of my post, our program was on the more cautious side in telling us how to deal with grèves. Even though I knew I wasn’t in any danger whatsoever (and not the only person standing around watching the grève parade, as I like to call it) I still was coming up with crazy responses in my head in case someone came up to me, yelling at me for taking pictures and making a mockery of their serious fight protecting their retraite (retirement) or whatever they want. “Vive les ouvriers!” (Long live the workers!) was the best I could come up with. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it.

Unfortunately, Sarkozy was right when he said « Quand il y a une grève en France personne ne s'en aperçoit » “When there is a strike in France nobody notices anything.” There are so many little grèves here and there in Paris that they’re not really a big deal. Everybody knows when they are going to happen and the city knows how to deal with it accordingly. I would have been really mad though if this strike had been taking place when my family came to visit though. As it turns out, they left right in time. The Musée D’Orsay, le Louvre, and le Chateau de Versailles have all either closed entirely or closed partially due to the strike. The Centre Pompidou has all these little signs in the window that saw “En grève!” It reminds me of when Leah (ma soeur cadette) was little and used to tape a sign to a yardstick and march around the house on strike for some reason or another. The best part of the grève parade I watched this week: the food truck! Along with all the marchers and the van with the guy with the blow horn, there was a truck driving along with the crowd selling food and drinks (including alcohol, what a fantastic idea……). Hey, even les grévistes need refreshments, right?

The only way the grève is affecting me is that it makes the metro more crowded. Right now, the RER A line is on strike. That’s right, only one line. At least they’re nice about the strikes, and still operating during rush hour in the morning and evening. I took RER A to class the other day and I didn’t have to wait any longer than I normally wait for the train in the morning even though signs everywhere said that “Trafic très perturbé” (No, it’s a faux ami, traffic is just disrupted, not perturbed…...)

Nine days until I fly home!

Bon après-midi!

La Fin Approche!

The end is coming!

In proper French, the title of this post should be presque la fin du semestre or something like that. If I said “La fin approche” to a random person on the street they would think I was talking about the end of the world, like “2012 the world is going to self combust, join our cult.” I’m certainly not saying that, c’est ridicule.

Now that it’s December, my days in Paris are numbered. I have just over two weeks left in France. Unfortunately, I think will be spending most of them doing homework but that’s ok. The reason I haven’t done much work on these final projects during the semester is because I’ve been out and about seeing Paris and visiting museums and going on lovely flâneurs around the city(strolls,fancy new vocab I learned in class this week ;).Of course I haven’t done everything there is to do in Paris (that couldn’t even be accomplished if I stayed for a whole year) but I am really satisfied with the amount of stuff I’ve seen and done over the course of the semester. I am ready to go home.

Next Monday I have my last stage (internship) and my last entrainment de rugby. I don’t think I’ve talked about my stage yet. I’m not doing an internship but instead volunteering (most kids on my program are). On Monday evenings I tutor English at la Goutte d’Or, an afterschool learning center for kids in the 18ieme arrondissement. The center is supposed to help build study skills for kids in the quartier. The 18th is a heavily immigrant neighborhood, lots of Algerians and Africans. When I get off the metro, I don’t hear French on the street. It can be a little sketchy but I’ve never had a problem. I tutor one girl, Sarah (supposed to have two but Myriam hasn’t come in a while). We mostly work on verb conjugations or exercises that Sarah wants to work on in preparation for her English class at school. She hasn’t taken a lot of English and doesn’t understand a lot of what I say to her, even really simple questions. La dernier séance next week should be fun. We are going to listen to songs from High School Musical on my I-pod and fill in the blanks in the lyrics. She really liked Hannah Montana and HSM easy reader books that my mom brought from home so listening to the songs should be a fun last session. I am going to leave the books at the center because they don’t have any English books. I didn’t think that Sarah liked our sessions all that much but after I told her I was leaving soon she did seem a little sad and asked me for my email address so we can email each other.

As for rugby, after next Monday I’ll be hanging up my maillot. I don’t really have any desire to pick it up when I get back to Hamilton. I don’t really like the tackling all that much. My big annoyance is the fact that by the time I get my arms around a girl for the tackle, she other usually just passes the ball anyways and I end up out of the play. It seems pointless. We might be getting socks and shorts though next week so I can have a little souvenir of my time with les Gorettes (besides my many bruises). I am really happy I got to play this semester though. It was interesting to see how sports are organized over here and it was quite a different experience from any other team I have been on.

I’m going to track and knock of a couple last Parisian sites this weekend: La Grande Arche de la Défense and le Basilique Saint-Denis, where all the French kings and queens are buried. I’m not sure if they still thereare or not. I read that during the Revolution the place was ransacked and all the dead monarchs were thrown in a mass grave. Gross. These lovely little tidbits about the French Revolution never seem to end, do they?

Bonne soirée à tous!