There are some moments that can make up for a week’s worth of sweat, tears, and terrible french. This is one of them. I’m sitting in the last light of the day at the kitchen table of my apartment, listening to music and the oh-so-glorious hum of my “frigo” (fridge), with a window open behind me letting in a crisp fall breeze. I’m somewhat effectively ignoring the fact that my washing machine doesn’t work, my hot water lasts for five minute tops, and I have mountains of homework to do.
It’s these little “super-sympa” moments that I need to seize — this is something Paris is teaching me. There are so many times when I find myself wanting to scream with frustration at the inefficiency you can find everywhere here — in the bank, in the grocery store, in the university’s administration. The moments that are not spent waiting in an hour long line for some obscure paperwork, not walking around the library searching endlessly for a free table, not spent frustrated or struggling to speak about electricity voltages in french— these are my moments, when I can take a breath, look around me, and say “holy shit.”
I can feel myself slowly falling in love with this city. Yes - I love the macaroons, I love the cute french cafés, and I love how indulging in massive amounts of bread, cheese and wine is practically a requirement of living here. But these things I learned to love in week one, before I had even ventured into the “red tape” surrounding Paris. This long-overdue blog entry is about how I’m learning to love the real Paris, red tape and all.
To catch anyone up who maybe checks this ancient blog, I’ll summarize my situation:
Sciences Po helps exchange students find temporary housing at this dorm-like facility in the south of the city entitled, “Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris.” Then, these said exchange students have 5 weeks to secure further housing. I was forewarned by family, friends, and Sciences Po that finding affordable housing in Paris could be a nightmare. Therefore, I took the most logical path and decided to wait about 3.5 weeks until I seriously started looking... I was busy, you know, acclimating, making friends. The only weird thing is that the friends I made and myself ended up being, literally, the only people left without any housing at the end of our term in Cité. Inexplicable coincidence.
So zoom forward to me, four days before I lose my dorm housing - I’m in a panic, have sent out emails and called a number of people and agencies, and left messages in terrible french full of pauses and “uhh”s. Then, magically, I find an extremely cute apartment in the 5th quarter, only a 10 minute metro from my school. It’s perfect! I’ll take it! I tell the agency. Small problem - I need to get a “caution bancaire”, essentially have a chunk of money blocked or inaccessible in the bank for the duration of the time that I’m in the apartment just in case I decide to wreck the place and run away to India. It’s the proprietors precaution against foreign renters who can only find a foreign guarantor - as I think we all learned from DSK, there is certainly no extradition between France and the US, so having an American guarantor don’t really mean shit.
Ok, I tell myself, I will just get an appointment at the bank! No big. Turns out, the next available appointment was in a week and a half. I lost my housing that Friday. I beg, and plead, and try to make it look like I’m about to cry, and get an appointment for the following Wednesday. I’m going to stop here because there are too many unimportant details (not to mention unpleasant conversations with bank people that I don’t care to remember). In summary, I had to wait a week for a bank transfer to come through - thanks to a ridiculous 48 hour rule in France, and GWB’s beloved Patriot act on the American side, keeping me safe from terrorism as a homeless person on the streets of Paris. Numerous appointments at the bank were made and broken, tears were shed, hotels got involved, and finally, the following Wednesday after I lost housing, the money came through, and I moved in on Thursday. Phew.
While my electricity shut off on me yesterday so all my food went bad, while the owner didn’t leave any bowls and other necessary kitchen utensils, and while the washing machine doesn’t work, I LOVE my apartment. It’s cute, funky (ill try to post a picture of my dishwasher, or as I call her my roommate “Darling”), and it’s all mine. I’ve only ever lived in dorms before and it has never felt like this. I even have a color scheme picked out - purple and green (you have to see it to get it, but it really is working out quite nicely).
Right before I came home today to wait for the electricity guy, I was having lunch with a friend from class and I happened to mention that I spent a semester in India. He was dumbfounded, as is pretty much everyone else I tell here. First they'll pepper me with questions — how I could possibly survive in a homestay where no english was spoken, did I feel safe, did I learn the language, etc. — and then usually they start in with the compliments and awe — that’s so amazing, I could never do that, etc.
I can only laugh. You can tell me its always 20/20 in hindsight, but Paris is giving Varanasi a run for its money. Trying to set up a life here is about ten times more daunting to me than joining a group of study abroad students, with a planned, daily itinerary, anywhere in the world. Sometimes I resent having chosen an independent program like this one. I’ll find myself missing the comfort and freedom that a organized, small group program gives you. In India having train tickets handed to me, restaurants picked out, budgets set... only now can I truly see what a luxury that was. Despite all of this, and despite how most of this post has been me complaining about life here, I think I know why I’ve stuck it out this far and why I’ll continue to do so.
Because when I do get through all of the red tape: when I successfully navigate a bank transfer, when I get my electricity turned back on, when I argue about my phone bill in the Orange store — in french, all of this — the feeling of accomplishment is higher than anything I’ve ever experienced. When Colorado College doesn’t send me a nice layout of meal plans and housing options, and I have to strike out into a world foreign to me in more ways than one, and I figure it out? It’s fucking awesome.
Maybe this post should be titled - “Sheltered College Student Experiences Real Life for First Time.” And maybe if I sat down to write this entry at any other time, not right after the electricity guy walked out my door, I’d be thinking about some other challenge I have yet to mount and feeling low. But for right now, I feel great. I feel independent, I feel competent, and I feel like I’ll go turn Darling on and clean out my smelly fridge now. In closing, I think I’m starting to truly love Paris, for being the place where I started to figure it all out.
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