robokob's blog

I enjoyed Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” much more than I did the first book I read for this class. Hemmingway talks about all the café’s he’s visited, the people he met up with – Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald – and gives an American perspective of Paris that is, in many ways, much more agreeable and relatable than the experience that Suzy Gershman described in her book “C’est La Vie.”

Though I’m not living in Paris with a group of expatriate writers and traveling Europe as an apprentice, the fact that Hemingway incorporates a lot of specific addresses, places, cafes, and bars makes it a much more relatable experience. By the time I read this book, I had been to some of the places he talks about and had my own experience and it was interesting to compare these experiences with the ones that he had. It’s interesting to see how an American living in Paris years ago had some overlapping experiences and overlapping themes when discussing Paris. I think Hemmingway experienced Paris more like my friends and I did because he really had to live in Paris, unlike Gershman who kind of just seemed to vacation here for a long time.

Part of what makes this book rally interesting and relatable is that it is based on notebooks he had kept while he lived in Paris and wasn’t written as a book. In that respect, the stories and memories are more real. This book made me realize that Americans have been coming to Paris and living here, having somewhat similar experiences, for years. And it’s comforting to know that while living here. The “Lost Generation” is often interesting to read about and although this book could be seen as a self-justification for Hemmingway, the Paris aspect of it is very relatable. 

I think deciding to go abroad was a really good decision, and one that I can see being really valuable. I needed to get out of New York for a minute in order to think about refocus and experience something new for a while. Living in New York, I’m always doing something, whether it’s school or interning, and it got boring. I needed to leave New York, in order to come back and appreciate it as much as I did when I first came to the city. I think the most valuable aspect of the experience was learning to be put in a completely foreign and new situation and being forced to reconcile with it. I think it’s an experience everyone should go through.

The biggest problems I faced were just because of language. I think if you do come to Paris, you should come with some basic skills in the language, especially if you only come for a semester. If you’re only here for four months, and come speaking not a single word in French, you’ll only really be able to somewhat converse with people after two months, and you’ll still be pretty bad.

When I go home, I hope have embraced some of the more relaxed attitude in France. Maybe I’ll start forcing myself to enjoy my evenings more on weekdays and have more relaxed, in the French way, Sundays. On the other hand, I think being in France will and have already opened my eyes to how convenient everything in New York is. Did you know that French cabs don’t take cards? Did you know that there are no standalone ATMs in Paris, only in banks? Did you know there are no bodegas? These are just some of the things that I assume as givens, and that in France suddenly seem like such a luxury.

I think NYU needs to do a lot to make this program the best it could be. For starters, I would make the program bigger. More people in the program would probably make it more enjoyable. There are weirdly a lot of freshman in Paris. I would also offer more classes, or at least more cultural classes or a film class in English. Also, I know other programs have dorms, and I think if NYU had some sort of dorm in Paris, a lot of people might benefit from it. I know some people who didn’t come to Paris because they would have needed to be in dorms.  

I would certainly recommend other students to study abroad here, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best choice or anything more than a good program. If someone really wants to come to Paris, I would study at the AUP or the Sorbonne, and convince NYU to let you transfer the credits. But, if NYU is your only option and you really want to come to Paris, NYU is as good as it gets.

I will say though that the actual NYU program, aka the classes offered, is really horrible. So much so, that, if you’re worried about completing major requirements then don’t come to Paris. It’s not that the classes are horrible, but between French class, Paris monuments, and French artists, the classes become a little mundane and a little too much. I wish there were more classes that didn’t have to do with France or maybe dealt with Europe as a whole. I mean I get it, we’re abroad in France, but we’re still in school and not all majoring in French. This is what I wish someone would have told me.

If you had to live anywhere in Paris, I would either say the Marais, St. Germaine, or Bastille. These are all really fun, cool places to live and are, more or less, always lively with good food and bars. I would say definitely not the 16th 17th or anything above that. The first two are really ritzy areas that are dead even during the day except for loud school children running to McDonalds for a little lunch.

The best the best tip I could offer about coming to Paris, or going anywhere really, is to not think about it too much. Avoid thinking too much about what it’s going to be like, the kinds of people you’ll meet, and the things you’ll do because, to be honest, you most likely won’t do them. Everyone I speak to who had these visions of what their experience abroad would be like, turned out to be disappointed and leaving on a kind of sour note. I remember not really thinking about the fact that I was going to Paris until, literally, on the flight over. And it freaked me out, but at that point it was too late. And by not over thinking it, I think I was able to enjoy it much more because I had no expectations so everything seemed really fun and new, even now.

This isn’t really a discovery, but Monoprix (French Wal-Mart) is the best place in the world. I go there every day to pick up a few things without fail. And, they have these amazing crackers, which are unreal and go great with Hummus. 

When I first arrived in Paris the first thing I thought was that everything here was inconvenient. There was nothing opened after 8pm, you could only buy cigarettes in Tabacs, the metro closed at night, and finding a cab is almost impossible and incredibly expensive. On top of that, nothing is open at all on Sundays, which is really annoying. It frustrated me that everything seemed so much more annoying to do or attain with ease here than in New York.

I’m used to being able to go to Duane Reade and buy everything I need in one place. Here, this isn’t an option. Still, I guess my realization is that slowing down a bit isn’t that bad, and, in fact, is probably a really good thing. It’s kind of nice to be kind of forced to relax since so much stuff is closed. It would be nice if more things were open, like supermarkets, but it also more about the mentality. I think there’s a general mentality that I have really learned to appreciate and admire in Paris.

It’s not that Paris is empty or dead after 8pm and that every street is deserted on Sundays. In fact, it’s the opposite. On almost any given day, even on weekdays, people are out doing stuff all hours of the day. So, I guess, its really more about the “stuff” that Parisians have taken the time to appreciate that related directly to the fact that businesses are closed quite early and that Sunday is basically a mandatory rest day. I’ve noticed, and been told, that Parisians enjoy downtime, but also have a more relaxed general mentality overall. Parisians have much longer lunch breaks, yet shorter hours. Dinners are more common as is sitting out for hours at restaurants.

The Parisians idea of the “weekend” is different than that of most Americans. For us, the weekend is like a shining beacon of hope at the end of a long stressful week when we can finally get good nights sleep and go out. Not so much here in Paris, because Parisians don’t need the weekend to enjoy themselves and go out, which is also why the weekend isn’t an excuse to get blackout. I’m never going to be as relaxed as some Parisians I’ve met, but I hope some of it has worn off on me. I think its really beneficial to do “stuff” all the time.

I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I don’t know many French people, even though I’m living in Paris. I never really made an effort because of the language barrier and because, obviously, it felt more comfortable to just surround myself with people who speak English. There is one person, though, who I’m able to practice my atrocious French with, sans judgment. Across the street from my building is the boulangerie that I go to almost every day after school to buy a baguette. Owned by an Asian family, I found it quite amusing that the woman who sells the baguettes in the back speaks French with an Asian accent. This was instantly comforting, seeing that even a local resident of Paris, spoke with an accent and in, what I might assume, imperfect French.  

At first, all I could say to the woman was “Baguette, s’il vous plait,” and she told me the price in English. But as the weeks went by, and my French slowly improved, I was able to order in more proper French, bid the woman a good day/night, and ask how much other things at the boulangerie cost. I guess the woman understood that I wasn’t just on vacation in France, that I was living here for some amount of time, because after about a week she started responding only in French. It was her subtle way of commending my efforts to speak French. While most French people I come across, especially those in restaurants and in stores, quickly become frustrated with my French or immediately speak English regardless of whether I speak French or not, this woman did not. Sometimes she repeats what I say, I guess to correct my pronunciation.

I don’t know anything about this woman who sells me baguettes. But, somehow, my daily encounter with her, however short, makes me feel somewhat at home. I guess it all goes back to the fact that when you feel like you are part of your neighborhood, you feel more at home. And having some sort of relationship with a local vendor makes you part of your neighborhood. Though we have no personal connection, the subtleties in our interactions make it clear that she understands where I’m coming from and makes me feel at home. 

As cliché as it may be, I think that wine is the genius loci of Paris. Wine is everywhere and is such an integrated part of Parisian life. It embodies the Parisian mindset, the attitude of the city, and the pace of life here.  Whereas at Costco you might be offered a free sample of microwavable Kung Pow chicken, in Paris you’re most likely going to be offered a free sample of wine at Monoprix. Wine is also extremely cheap. One could buy a good bottle of wine for no more than 3 or 4 euro’s, making it easy to drink wine with every meal. The French really do drink wine with every meal. Wine for breakfast, wine for lunch, wine for dinner, wine for brunch. Wine in the park, wine on the street, wine at a restaurant, wine whenever you eat. I could write a Dr. Seuss book about wine if I wanted to, but I wont. And I don’t think people actually drink wine for breakfast, that’s borderline alcoholism.

People don’t drink wine to get smashed. In fact, being one of those drunken people is frowned upon. The Parisians sincerely enjoy their wine. Some of them even smell it before they drink it. After a meal, people linger at a restaurant talking, laughing, and drinking wine. Wine goes hand in hand with the Parisian pace of life, which is, relatively, slow. At the end of the week, on Sunday, everything is closed because you’re meant to relax. Wine is like the Sunday of a meal.

Parisians are much more relaxed, generally, than New Yorkers. They like to enjoy life, and wine. To Americans, alcohol is seen as evil. We’re taught in school that alcohol is dangerous and causes death and we should never drink it. In France, kids have been drinking wine since they were very young. Here, drinking on the street is seen as casual and normal. I see people drinking on the street all the time. A quick mid-day bottle of wine on the hill in front of Pompidou, a little wine on the metro before going out, or a little wine along the Seine – these are all very common sights to see in Paris.

Walk into any given café anytime after 6, and guaranteed most tables will have a bottle of wine on them, and many times these places even smell like wine. I remember during orientation one of the professors was telling us how easy it was to get wine, but that we should be careful. Of course, one of the girls behind me whispered to her friend, “oh my god! We can get blackout on like 2 4 euros!” I haven’t seen this girl since, I think she was a freshman, but I hope she’s learned by now that that isn’t the point.

Paris is a free spirit, a romantic one, and one that promotes enjoying the little things in life. I think wine perfectly embodies this. Ordering a bottle of wine at a café with your friends, something Parisians often do, forces one to slow down and spend a few hours sitting around with good people. Parisians eat slower, enjoying wine and food equally as much. Much of French social life revolves around good conversation and wine, rather than getting blackout and hitting up the clubs.
 

One of the first weeks in Paris, my roommate’s French friend told us that we should find our “spot.” He told us that its very common for a group of Parisian friends to have one specific café that they spend most of their time together at, which isn’t that different from groups of friends in New York.  Of course, this usually happens organically and can’t be forces, so my friends and I didn’t try too hard to label any one place our “place.” A few weeks later, after leaving an Opera in the middle of the performance, we found ourselves hungry and wanting to drink, as usual. We walked to a lively area, which is right behind my building and which I shamefully haven’t explored as much as I should. We decided on a Café called Divan, which means couch in French, because my roommate said she’d walked by it a few times.

 It didn’t take long for us to unanimously decide that we would most certainly be coming back to this café. It was very French but simultaneously reminded me of New York. There’s nothing better than a café/bar/restaurant that, on any given night, might be playing the Jackson 5’s greatest hits or Muse and which serves burgers, bagels, and alcoholic hot chocolate. And there’s free Wi-Fi to boot. The interior is dark and intimate at night, but bright and sunny during the day because of the huge windows that run along the street facing exterior walls.  Little things like the fake manhole covers on the ground and the overwhelming smell of French fries remind me of new york, while the cheap and extensive wine list makes it very French.

Since that night, I found myself going to Divan all the time. Whether it is to do homework with my roommate, have a little lunch, or start off a night before going out. It’s almost right behind my street, making it extremely convenient, and at night the area is very lively and fun.  Though the bartender can sometimes be rude and irritable, most because he speaks no English and has no idea what we’re saying, and sometimes we have to wait a minute to get a table, I do love this place. I think the fact that it reminds me of New York is a large reason for why I like it so much. Finding this place has also made me feel more connected to the city. The idea of having a “place” where you and your friends can go and hang out as a default, makes you feel like a little tiny part of the city is yours. 

As a city, Paris is very proud of its devotion to the arts. A lot of funding goes into making the arts available to as many people as possible and new, often temporary, art works are constantly being commissioned and funded by the government. Any student, resident of the EU, or anyone under the age of 25 can get into almost any museum for free, which goes to show how important art and art education is to Parisians.

I recently woke up one Saturday morning and decided it was about time I visited a museum. So, I went to the Pompidou center, which is the museum of modern art of Paris. I was never one to casually go to museums alone, but I ended up spending four hours there without even realizing it because there was so much to see. The most interesting part of the museum was where pieces of modern furniture were presented as modern art. When explained from the perspective of the artists, a simple chair suddenly becomes art. The museum has pieces ranging from abstract and Dadaism all the way to very contemporary artists. Though not French, there is a Yayoi Kusama exhibit at Pompidou, which is really amazing.

The museum changes its permanent collection every two years, devoted especially to purchasing and showing art by contemporary French artists.  Pompidou represents the Parisians ideal of preserving the old while allowing the new and modern to flourish and grow. This can be seen simply by looking at the building itself, which looks like a huge offshore drilling unit in the middle of Paris among typical Haussmann architecture. Similarly, on the grounds of Versailles, there are huge modern iron circular statues, which were commissioned as temporary installations. These also show how the French appreciate the old as much as the new.

There are just as many people at Pompidou on any given day as there are at the Louvre, which houses classical pieces of art such as the Mona Lisa, which is very underwhelming in real life I must say. The Louvre is arguably the most famous museum in the world, and even so, it was free the one Sunday I went (I don’t know if it was a special occasion or if it’s always free on Sunday). But, again, this is a prime example of Parisian’s devotion to the arts. Even if they charged just one euro per person, the museum would have made thousands of euros that day, but it was free for everyone.  Being in Paris has really made me appreciate art much more than I ever had before. Its everywhere and can actually be very interesting. Parisians seem much more in touch with art and have a casual fundamental understanding of it.

I thought that “C’est La Vie” by Suzy Gershman represented a Parisian experience that was unique to her due to the circumstances under which she moved to Paris. Though authentic, in the sense that she wrote candidly about her experiences, I felt as though I couldn’t relate to much of the book, and would go as far as saying that neither would most people. Suzy moved to Paris after losing her husband, working in the travel shopping industry, and having visited Paris many times before. She moved to Paris with a list of people she knew, would be introduced to, or would come visit her, and therefore, was never really alone. Her complaints and struggles are trivial. Whether it be finding an apartment within her budget of $2,000, finding chic furniture, or not knowing what to wear to her chic dinner parties, “C’est La Vie” quickly started to sound like a middle-aged yenta (I can say that, I’m Jewish) widow complaining about everything. She sounds like my mother. I almost didn’t want to finish the book, because on each page I found myself rolling my eyes at the things she complained about.

In one passage, Gershman complains about how hard it is to find nice bedding for a reasonable price in Paris. This took up a whole chapter. She then enlists her good friend in Paris to drive her up to the designer outlets, where she miraculously finds Christian Lacroix sheets for a reasonable price.  I think what made it most difficult for me to relate to this book was probably the age difference, and passages like this. I never found myself struggling to look for designer sheets, or the perfect chicken to cook. She talks about how she spent her nights being taken out by friends and friends of friends to fancy restaurants, whereas I spend my nights eating anywhere that has cheap food and alcohol.

“In America,” says Gershman, “I did as little as possible on Sundays. That’s why football was invented, right? Life in America seemed all too hectic… I needed to give myself a day of rest each Sunday. But Sundays in Paris were different,” she recounts (Gershman, 58). She then goes on to give the reader a bullet-point list of her Sunday activities, which include walking to the market to find the most incredible roast chicken and potato’s. For me, Sundays in Paris are meant for rest even more so than they are in America, especially in New York. On top of the fact that after a week of school and a weekend of going to sleep late I’m simply tired on Sunday, everything is also closed. Literally, nothing is open on Sunday. So, even if I wanted to do something – anything – I don’t have that option. In Paris, I feel as though the day of rest is more forced. This is just another example of how I felt that my experience in Paris is nothing like Gershmans. The only person I would recommend this book to is my mom.

Only after living in Paris for a few months now, have I come to realize how much cities such as Paris, and New York City, are tailored, especially in certain areas, towards tourists. As New Yorkers, we learn to avoid as much as possible the theater district, midtown, and certain areas around central park because they are filled with tourists and, as New Yorkers, we are taught to hate tourists. Paris is no different. I quickly learned to avoid the Champs Elysee, the Notre Dame, and the Marais on Saturdays and Sundays. These areas are filled with “staged authenticities” that MacCannell talks about in his article. Things like the crepe stands sprinkled throughout or the Café’s that play up their “frenchness” with décor, yet have menus in English.

But at the same time, it seems that tourists don’t come to Paris to become more Parisian, or get into back regions, or even experience “real” French culture. France’s “national identity” has been its arts, fashion, and culture. Since the era or Napoleon III, who sought to make Paris the center of culture, this is the reason people come to Paris. The best example I have of seeing this is when my parents came to visit. They knew ahead of time that there were here to see the “secularized” Paris we all see.  Just like most tourists who come here, they planned their few days here around seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. It’s no coincidence that the areas around these attractions, as they have become, are sprinkled with guided tours and maps offering tourists a “real” glimpse at Paris. But even so, I think tourists are fully aware that what they are seeing is just the surface, it is a front region. Tourists don’t expect to have access to the back regions – “real” Paris – and are okay with that.

Another example I saw of this was when I visited Versailles. The Palace of Versailles, which is a staple of the French identity, is one of the main attractions for tourists. I saw a group of tourists there who, at the end of their trip there, exclaimed, “Wow, I can’t believe we saw Versailles – and got to go inside! It’s amazing.”  As amazing as it is, surely these tourists were aware that what they saw was catered to them. Marie Antoinette didn’t have plaques and iron bars in front of her bed, and she certainly didn’t have a gift shop in the foyer of her home. This secularized authenticity – a staged kings palace – is a prime example to the mindset of tourists and the people who create these places. I came to find out that, in fact, Versailles was one of the chicest suburbs of Paris to live in. On our tour, we saw people casually jogging through the grounds of Versailles the same way we jog through Central Park, not thinking twice about it.

Sometimes I tell myself I’ve been able to enter the “back regions” of Parisian living. I avoid the tourist areas, use the metro like a pro, and try to frequent bars and restaurants that aren’t known to be “Parisian”, in an attempt to be more Parisian. And still, I find myself constantly hearing people speak English, people who clearly aren’t natives, and it makes me second guess if I’ve really been able to see the “back regions” of Paris. 

Compared to daily life in New York, daily life here in Paris is fairly relaxed – at least for me. I only have two classes a day, and no classes on Friday, and my first class is at 10:45. My metro ride to class is about 25 minutes long, so I leave around 10 to give me time to get Starbucks. I hate that I have to get Starbucks in the morning, but it’s the only place that serves iced-coffee to go. Most coffee shops don’t even have coffee to go, which is very annoying. After class, I usually get some food and walk around for a little bit before heading home.

My apartment is great and is in a great, lively, young area of Paris. When we first got to Paris, we only had one set of keys. I didn’t think it would be a problem to get a second copy, something I can do quite casually and quickly back home. But because the key’s here are from the future, we were told that it would cost 150 euro, it would take three weeks, and that we’d have to give them the one copy of the key we had for them to make a mold of the key and copy it. We had another key shipped to us instead.

My roommate and I have separate rooms, and we have an awesome kitchen, which we use almost every night to cook. We usually stick to the basics - pastas and such – but my roommate did recently come home with a whole chicken, which she cooked quite well. Food is both more expensive and less expensive depending on what you buy and where you buy it. A baguette for example, costs less than one euro. But, sliced turkey costs around 5 euro for literally 5 slices in a plastic package. It’s actually cheaper to go to a boulangerie and buy a sandwich with turkey in it.

Something I’ve noticed about Paris, which highlights a big cultural difference between the French and Americans, is that the supermarkets here are much smaller, as is the selection. While in the US we have long aisles stacked with 3,000 different kinds of cereal, here they have about 15; a few healthy ones, and a few for kids. You won’t spend 15 minutes deciding which flavor of Honey Bunches of Oats to try, or whether you want Cocoa Puffs or Cocoa Pebbles because they only have one chocolate cereal. And when it comes to snacks (junk food), I really do feel bad for little French kids. From what I can tell, there are only potato chips, pretzels, and nuts in the snack aisle (which is actually a shelf). There were no Goldfish, Oreo’s, Cheeze-its, or Chips Ahoy to be found at the supermarket.

Luckily, our apartment came with a washer, but unfortunately it’s not a washer dryer combo. This wasn’t so much of an issue until I did my first huge load of laundry and had to dry my clothes on a drying rack, which left my clothes sort of dry and crusty when they finally dried after 3 days. I really do miss fabric softener.  

One of the first days of French class, our teacher was teaching us some words in a French song. One of the words we were learning was the word “Bonheur” which is pronounced exactly like the word Boner. “It means happiness,” said the teacher, but because of her heavy French accent it sounded like she said, “it means a penis.” Though I'd mentally check out of class around hour three of our four hour French class, like anyone else, when your French teacher is screaming the word penis you start paying attention. “Wait it means a penis?” I asked, and the teacher said, “oui, oui it means happiness,” with a huge smile on her face. Luckily, one of the girls in my class speaks a little french and quickly explained to both my teacher and I what was really trying to be said between the two of us. It made for an equally awkward and hilarious moment, as both my teacher and i turned bright red and laughed nervously. 

To put it simply, French is a very hard language to learn. There are few rules and too many exceptions. Small nuances in pronunciation can completely change the meaning of a word, and what you read is not always what you say. In Spanish, for example, the word “Cuando” is pronounced just like you read it. But, in French, the word “Quand” which also means “when” is pronounced something like “keh.” So you have five letters and pronounce about two and a half of them, it gets very confusing. This is one of the hardest things for me when learning French, knowing what letters to pronounce and how to pronounce them.

But, the most difficult part of learning French is probably the fact that every object has a gender, and there aren’t really rules. “You just have to memorize it,” says my French teacher. I thought a really good way to go about learning the genders would be using genders in English. I drove my roommate crazy for about a day saying things like, “Amy, have you seen my wallet? I can’t find him.” This wasn’t as effective as I’d hoped, being that on the day of the quiz I knew that "wallet" was male but had no idea how to say it in French.

Although a lot of Parisians speak English, many don’t. And so, I find myself flailing my arms around, pointing at things, and making random noises to try and convey things like, “I seem to have a cold, what would you recommend I take?” The word for cold is “Rhume” and the word for rum is “Rhum” and they are pronounced almost exactly the same. So, only after pointing at my throat and repeating the word “Rum” for five minutes, did the pharmacist finally understand that I was actually telling her I had a cold.

French really is a beautiful language, but its very difficult to learn and even harder to understand. And while I may not leave France being anywhere near fluent, I’ll always know the word “ça,” which means “that,” and has been extremely useful in telling people what I want in restaurants and stores. 

Navigating Paris has proven to be quite a challenge. As opposed to the grid layout that most of New York City follows, Paris feels more like a random jumble of streets that follow no logic at all. One street turns into another, some streets are only a few feet long, and street names are often long and difficult to remember. Other than the main ones, learning the street names quickly proved to be almost completely unhelpful any time I tried to find my way around. Primarily because I can’t pronounce most of them, but also because I’ve found that many Parisians don’t even know where streets other than the main ones are. In terms of navigating and learning my way around, it’s become all about the landmarks and familiar buildings. I found it much more useful to know what direction I need to walk in if I’m standing by the river than it is to know which streets I need to turn onto by name. 

Now that I’ve been here for a month and know my way to and from the places I go most, I like to give myself some leeway to get a little lost when I’m walking, just to see what I’ll find and get to know the area better. I might take the side streets parallel to the main ones or take a walk around the block, which is always nice because every street in Paris really does look like a movie set. I’ve found it kind of difficult to actually get lost here, as confusing as the city is. I always find that I’ll end up at a famous landmark, a metro station, or the river, all from which I can find my way home or where I need to go. That being said, my map of Paris was probably the most valuable thing I carried around with me my first few weeks here. Without it, I’d most likely have ended up walking around in circles only to realize I was a street away from where I needed to be on more than one occasion. Getting used to whipping out an actual map as opposed to a phone that finds you took some getting used to and was a bit awkward at first, I must say.

Traveling to school is quite simple, but takes a lot longer than it did back in New York. In theory it should only take about 25-30 minutes, but sometimes it takes longer. Luckily, the metro station it literally across the street from my house so I usually end up getting on the metro still half asleep. The metro here run quite differently than it does in New York. For starters, it closes at night, which is really annoying. Also, there is only one train per route, meaning there isn’t an express and local train that runs on the same line. And, though there is cellphone service on the metro, there is no AC so it can get a little toasty when the train is packed. 

Before leaving for Paris, I didn’t sit there looking at pictures of Parisian streets, watching romantic movies that take place in Paris, or reading about the beauty of the city. I rarely thought of my trip beyond boarding my flight in New York, and if I did, I only thought of what my apartment might look like and whether they sell cheese-itzs in France or not. The entire summer, Paris was thought of in terms of what needed to be done before leaving: making sure my visa went through, opening an HSBC account, buying a flight, finding an apartment, etc.

Obviously it’s hard to have no expectations at all, but the less you have the harder it is to be disappointed. I had some vague notions of what Paris might be like, mostly from my cautious mother or from friends who offered their opinions and thoughts on Paris without my asking. Really, the only vivid reference to Paris I had was “Moulin Rouge,” which I watched on the flight over. (And since this isn’t the 1900, nor was I planning on taking any hallucinogenic, I use the word “reference” loosely.) I tried to arrive in Paris almost as if I’d arrived at the wrong place – a place I’d never been to and knew nothing of – and decided to stay and feel it out, allowing everything to be unexpected.

The first time it really hit me that I was going to Paris, and stay there for four months, though, happened on my flight sometime between watching Moulin Rouge and not eating what was supposed to be chicken teriyaki, but really looked like a meal from Petco. All the anticipation and anxiety that most people feel over a period of months, hit me all at once. First came the anticipation. I pictured my apartment being very Parisian, which in my mind really just meant that there would be windows with wrought iron railings. Then I imagined myself doing Parisian things like riding on the back of a Vespa, sitting outside a café drinking wine smoking, and casually eating a baguette.

But after this, came a wave of anxiety. “Oh My God,” I thought, “I’m going to Paris for a semester. A semester.” For my entire life, any time I had gotten on a plane at JFK, I got off a plane at JFK no more than three weeks later, so four months seemed like an unnecessarily long time. And then I worried about not liking the food, getting lost, the weather, what my apartment will be like, and the fact that I spoke no French. The only full sentence I knew in French was “Je suis la jeune fille,” which translates to “I’m a little girl,” courtesy of Muzzy commercials. So, instead of having the poetic experience Botton describes on the train or plane, I nearly had an anxiety attack and had to take a sleeping pill to pass out.

Most of my fears were quickly allayed when I realized that most Parisians speak some level of English, there was a McDonalds on my street, and regardless of how much French you know, the moment a Parisian detects an American accent they will start speaking to you in English. Avoiding anticipation was a good thing. It prevented me from being disappointed, as Botton was on his vacation, or worse, ending up like des Esseintes and not going abroad at all. But on the other hand, my first few days in Paris were equally as exciting as they were frustrating. 

Bonjour, I’m Rom and I’m studying abroad in Paris, France. After delaying going abroad for two semesters, I felt that if I didn’t go this semester, I’d never go. I had already applied to London twice, and both times decided not to go last minute. It’s very easy to move to New York and never want to leave, fearing that if you do, you’ll miss out on too much. I realized that part of the reason I kept delaying going abroad was probably because I didn’t want to go to London. I speak Spanish pretty well, but felt no draw to spend a semester in Buenos Aires or in Madrid. And, though I speak no French, and have never been to France, I found myself delighted by the thought of being able to live in Paris.

Not only did I feel I needed to get out of New York, but I also felt it was about time I experienced a different culture and environment. I’ve lived in New York my whole life, growing up on Long Island and moving to the city for school, so as you can imagine, I was becoming one of those “Jaded New Yorkers.” I love New York, but we needed some time apart. I was getting bored. And as the saying goes, “distance makes the heart grow fonder.”

I’m in Gallatin, and right now my major is called “The Business of Culture and Entertainment Industries,” with a minor in Production.  I don’t know exactly what I want to do with that, but I know that I’m interested in “Culture” and “Entertainment” so, thus far, its been working out well. None of the classes here in Paris pertain to my concentration per say and the selection of classes here is pretty sparse. The one class I was excited to take, “French Culture and Cinema,” was cancelled. So, I’m taking Intensive French, Modern Art, and Paris Monuments. Don’t get me wrong though, the classes I am taking are very interesting, but it would have been nice to take a class that sort of addresses my interests through a foreign lens.  I really hope to learn French while I’m here. Obviously I can only learn so much in four months, but I hope to at least have a better feel for the language and the way it works.

I’m living in Bastille, off of Rue St. Antoine, which is sort of akin to living off of Broadway between Houston and Broome but with lower east side bars sprinkled throughout. It can be loud - loud during the day because of the stores, and loud at night because of the bars - but it's really fun. In fact, walking home on any given night on the weekends, I find myself walking in the middle of the street because of the huge crowds of smokers that form around bars. And yes, as far as I can tell thus far, the French people do love to smoke.