Arrival in Paris/Settling In (9/6-9/10)

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6-7, 2005

(N.B.: I apologize for the length and all of the mundane details here in the first few days – I’m still in culture-shock, “sponge” mode; I’ll try to stick to the good stuff once it starts happening.)

After a weekend during which I could have easily died on several occasions and a couple of excruciatingly long days of travel, I’ve finally made it to Paris. The big Miami-FSU football game was this weekend, and I spent the weekend in Tallahassee hanging out, floating down a river, jumping out of trees and generally going nuts with a lot of old and new college buddies in preparation for the game, and I met an unbelievable new person from Alabama named after a tree. This journal is about Paris, however, so I won’t go into details about my affairs in Tallahassee...however, I’ll post some pictures from the weekend (view at your own risk!) and remind everyone how sweet the taste of the Miami Hurricanes’ tears really are, and that hopefully they’ll keep flowing forever.

That said, onto bigger things. Following the gruesome, embarrassing and whimper-inducing defeat of the Miami Hurricanes at the hands of the Florida State Seminoles (ok, I’m done now), my dad and I woke up at 4 a.m. on the 6th to drive to Pensacola so that I could catch my connector to JFK, where I had a 10-hour layover. That gave me time to go into the city for a few hours, where I saw Ground Zero, bought shampoo and had some great pizza. I made phone calls until my phone’s battery died, then hopped on the plane to Frankfurt, Germany. I’m usually pretty good about sleeping on planes, but it didn’t work this time; I thought the flight would never end. I arrived in Frankfurt and rushed to catch my connector to Paris, which was about an hour late. Finally, at around 11 a.m. on the 7th, I jumped on my plane to Paris and passed out before takeoff.

After making it all the way here, I realized that I had no way of contacting my landlord, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to use the payphones here, so I stopped into a café/bar next to my new apartment called Le Mondrian and asked a waiter named Francois if I could use the phone if I paid him a euro or two. He promptly refused the money and let me use his phone; I then felt obliged to at least sit down and order something, so I checked out the menu. The first thing I saw was a $19 banana split and I nearly had a heart attack. It was then that I first experienced what I predict will be an unfortunate “theme” of my time here in Paris; everything is unconscionably, ridiculously expensive. Quickly losing my appetite, I ordered a beer and sipped it as slowly as I possibly could until my landlord, Cedric, arrived.

Cedric is a young guy, not much older than me, who recently got his MBA from NYU, lives a couple of floors below me, and has been very cool so far in the process of leasing me his studio. After walking up six flights of stairs (another unfortunate “theme” of the months to come), we got to my apartment at 146 Boulevard St. Germain. It is tiny, but it has everything I could possibly need; a bed, a toilet, a desk, a small stove, a sink, a closet, a shower, a small fridge, and a doormat. That’s about it. However, the view from my window is pretty amazing - a sea of rooftops and Sacre-Coeur in the distance. Other than the stairs, the place is perfect because it’s about a 5-7 minute walk from my school and surrounded by a huge outdoor market, tons of shopping and restaurants (which I can’t afford) and millions of gorgeous women who more than likely aren’t interested in an unshaven dork in shorts and flip flops. More to come on that point later, I’m sure – it might even become a “theme”!!!

After hauling my two suitcases and backpack up the stairs, I almost died, then decided that it would be a better idea to unpack first. As I stood there cleaning up, the thought dawned on me that I’ve never lived alone, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been in a place where I don’t know anyone. I took a long, cold shower to clean off my 5 layers of sweat and crashed at about 10 p.m., although I had no way of knowing because I don’t have a clock in my room.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005

I woke up wondering where I was, as usual these days, then got myself together to embark on the day’s scavenger hunt through Paris. I made myself a list of things that I needed for the studio and set out to find them – a cell phone, some sinus medication, a laundromat, an internet café (my internet should hopefully be up and running by this weekend), a French dictionary and a power outlet adapter for my computer. The first thing I found was an internet café a couple of blocks from my place, and after getting set up I noticed that the keyboards here are quite different from American QWERTY keyboards. Then I freaked out when I saw the time on my neighbor’s computer; it was 1:20, and I realized that I must have slept for well over 14 hours. My neighbor turned out to be very friendly and helpful; her name is Beatriz, and she just moved to Paris from Mexico City to learn French. She speaks wonderful English (which she says she learned from watching American TV), and we ended up hanging out, shopping for a phone, having lunch together and promising to share some friends with each other when we meet more people. My cell phone number here in Paris is +33 (0)6 85 74 59 71, and Cedric should be hooking me up with a free landline in the next few days.

After lunch, I walked non-stop until about 9 this evening, all over the city. As I slowly collected most of the things on my list, I found out that I really need to get my French together; saying hello, please/thank you, goodbye, and the few other catch-phrases I know are not going to get me nearly as far as I thought they would. Hopefully, with some practice and reading on my part, I’ll be able to hold my own here in a few weeks without having to revert to the embarrassing, obligatory “Excusez-moi, parlez-vous Anglais?” which is commonly followed by “The Look.” “The Look” honestly doesn’t upset me at all; I can’t blame someone for at least being a bit annoyed when they have a pharmacy full of people and I can’t say “Non-Drowsy Sinus Medication.” However, I’m ready to know at least enough French to be beyond it in as many situations as possible.

I stopped at all kinds of cool places today, and after picking up some groceries, I trudged back up the stairs, caught my breath and cooked pasta and dried sausage (really cheap and almost delicious!) for dinner. I scoured the grocery store for salt and pepper, but for some reason I couldn’t find it. If I’m ever in a McDonald’s (which I vow to avoid at all costs), I’ll steal theirs.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2005

Wow, long day. I couldn’t sleep at all last night, so I went out walking from about 2 a.m. until 8 a.m., then came back home to get ready for a pre-orientation class at school. I showed up and didn’t see the program director or anyone else who knew what I was talking about, so I left and set out to find a can opener. I walked down to Au Bon Marche, which is one of the big French department stores/malls (similar to Herrod’s in London) and has an unbelievable grocery section, probably almost an entire city block in size. Even though this doesn’t sound exceptionally big (think Sam’s or Publix), everything here is generally so much smaller – living and working quarters, streets, meal portions, cell phones, etc.

I walked back up to school after I found my can opener and bumped into my entire class getting lunch; I guess I had missed them during the morning orientation session, which I’ll have to make up sometime this weekend. I spent the rest of the day at school in class listening to some lectures about career planning and general information about the program, which seems like it’s going to be awesome, but lots of work.

After class, our program director took us out for drinks and we got to meet each other and hang out. The group is very diverse, although a majority are Americans. There are only about 20 people in the program, so we’ll all know each other pretty well by the end of the year, I can imagine. We set a time and place to meet up later for more drinks, but I ended up passing out accidentally for about 2 hours; I was lucky enough to get a wake-up call from one of my classmates, so I didn’t miss too much fun. We all met up at a streetside café, which is the standard setting for having drinks in Paris, and stayed there getting to know each other until everyone trickled away. A small group of us who had stayed until the end then found a tiny, dark bar in the Latin Quarter which had a rock band, but they lip-synched about half of their songs, which I thought was hilarious for a garage-style Metallica cover band. I ended up getting home around 4 a.m. and slept like a stone.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2005

Getting up this morning was rough, but I made myself do it so that I can finally get over my jet lag. I wandered around some more this morning through the outdoor food markets and picked up a few things, then headed to Pompidou Centre to meet up with my classmates. We spent about an hour checking out a modern art exhibit mostly focusing on environmental design and sustainable development, which turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had anticipated (especially with a hangover). Our program director then invited us all to have lunch on the university’s dime at the top of the Centre at a posh restaurant called Georges. I only got a few pictures, but the place looked like a modern art museum in itself, and the waiters, waitresses and a majority of the patrons looked like runway models. The best part, though, was the view; the walls were all glass, so we could see the entire city while eating smoked salmon and gazpacho and drooling over the waitstaff.

After I bummed McDonalds’ wireless internet for a little while (I had a coffee – that doesn’t count as eating there!), I ended up walking around in the Latin Quarter for a few more hours, watching some street break-dancers and grabbing some tripe noodle soup at a Cantonese hole-in-the-wall, then the class reassembled to go out on the town again for the evening. While wandering around, I’d passed by a few jazz clubs with relatively cheap beer in my neighborhood, so I suggested we try one of them out. We ended up getting a great cavern-like room to ourselves in the bottom of a bar called Tennessee, and spent most of the night there drinking Hoegaardens and griping about how there is actually a “school” part of this whole experience. I’m still really happy with the group so far; in situations like these, there is bound to be some in-fighting, and I’m sure we’ll be sick of each other after a while, but I look forward to seeing what everyone is like when we’re forced to get things done together.

I met some girls from the American University of Paris who had been studying in town for the past 3 years, and they had some good war stories about living and studying in Paris. Their university is throwing a party this coming Friday, so I think some of my classmates and I are going to go and crash it if there’s not too much work to do by then. At the end of the night, I talked to a bartender, who invited me to come sit in and play horns during the club’s open jam sessions. I’m probably going to go and watch it first to see if I have the chops to hang in there, but hopefully it will turn into something cool in the near future.