So long, farewell…

It has been two weeks and still I can’t decide how to write a final blog post for my trip.  What could possibly be enough?  What could do justice to this experience? 

I’ve decided to go back to this collection of thoughts I spilled out in the airport.  Describing how I felt then is as honest as I can be, and honesty has been one of my biggest goals for this blog.  I was a bundle of emotions.  I always am when I know I’m in the midst of a big change.  For me, those are the moments I have to write. 

Here I am in the Warsaw airport.  And it’s hitting me.  It’s hitting me like I knew it would, but in a way I couldn’t anticipate.

I have no right to be sad.  I get to spend the next nine days traveling with my boyfriend and his sister.  And God, I am so excited to see them in a few hours.  It adds so much to this mess of emotions.

But then I see the photos my host mom tagged me in on Facebook.  And I realize that is how I will be seeing my roommate, friends, and host family from now on.  Through a little screen.

I go to order my food and my instinct is to say “bonjour,” but I cut myself short and say hello instead.  My French is useless here.

I realize with a pang that my French is only going to get worse until the next time, if and when, I live in France.  I want to write this whole blog in French, I want to hear the bubbling vowels come out of mouths all around me.

I pick Paul’s for lunch out of some sad nostalgia.  I only ever eat it in airports, and I almost never ate it when I was actually in France.

I sort of want to cry, partially out of relief that I finally made it here.  It was a hairy travel morning to say the least.  But it’s not sadness or stress that gives me that feeling, it’s just feeling so many emotions at once.  I bet I’ll cry when I see Sam.

I have to cling onto and breathe into the one emotion that’s the most important.  The one that I feel the most deep, deep down; gratitude.

I hold onto it like a life raft and it pulls me up like a balloon.

I’m grateful for the chance to spend four months in Paris.  Finances, safety, college credit all come into play and could’ve ruined my plans.  In a different situation, time period, with a different major, it might not have been possible.

I’m thankful for parents who were excited for me since the idea arose.  Come to think of it I don’t remember ever really asking, because I knew what the answer would be.

I’m thankful for host parents and siblings who made me feel at home in the simplest and most meaningful ways: calling us “mes filles” (my girls), assuring us no matter what happens “il y a toujours une solution” (there is always a solution), and never missing a chance to joke around with us.

I’m thankful to have a roommate who not only did I get along with, but who after four months I consider one of my closest friends.  Simple as that.

I’m thankful for every friend I made in my program, for staff who helped us endlessly, for kind professors, and for smiling classmates.

I’m thankful that I get to go home to so many people I love.  People who shared in my excitement, even though coming here meant I’d be away from them.

I’m thankful home, both in Columbus and Pittsburgh, is a place I look forward to going back to.

I’m thankful for the challenges, the lessons, and the joys that France brought me.  I may have opted out of getting a tattoo, but Paris will have its name stamped on my heart.

I could go on and on, but for me gratefulness is kind of like a prayer or meditation, and sometimes when you pray it’s better to just be quiet.  Because otherwise my brain and my heart may burst.  And I need those to carry me through my next journey.

What ARE the odds?

Spring break forever, oh how I wish.  It may have killed my blog game, and it didn’t do much for my french, but I just enjoyed a lovely two-and-a-half week long spring break.

My family came to visit me in Paris, then we we went to the Côte d’Azur in the south of France and the Cinque Terre in Italy.  I was almost sad to leave Paris, but all it took was two minutes in the sun, one glance at the ocean, and that feeling faded.

It was truly wonderful.  I got to show them Paris through my eyes, they were able to meet my (amazing) host family, and we got to explore some new places together too.

After Italy, I came back to Paris for a quick break before departing on the ultimate bucket list trip, Greece.

We had been planning this voyage for months.

We being my friend Jessica and I.  If you’ve read my other posts you probably realize, I’m sort of obsessed with the word serendipitous.  But this is yet another instance where life feels accidentally and happily aligned.

Maybe I’ve been trying too hard to reflect on this entire trip, but I can’t help but smile or laugh at how life works out sometimes.

Back in August, Jess and I decided to get coffee and catch up together after saying we’d do so forever.  Just two days before I went back to school, we both had a free afternoon and decided to go to Coffee Buddha.

We discussed returning to school for the fall and how our past semesters had gone, all the usual stuff, when we discovered that we would both be studying abroad in France this spring!  What are the odds?  We had settled on different cities me, Paris and Angers, but with France’s TGV (high-speed train) they are only an hour and a half apart.

It was a relief to know there would be a friend in the same country as me, and I was also excited to have someone to discuss all my excitement and fears with.

Even better, I now had a travel companion.

Where this all starts to feel a bit serendipitous and not just coincidental is when we meet people here and they ask how we know each other.

Where to start?

There’s the fact that we were in the same first grade class.  I swear we never had a class together after that.  In addition to being friends since elementary school, our neighborhoods practically touch.  Then we worked at the same garden center for three years after Jess got me a job there.  There’s also all the years we spent in the same French classes and in French club.  And then there was that one time we decided to both do the fall play senior year.

We always give the simplest answer, that we’ve been friends since we were little.  Which is absolutely true, but when you break up all the little instances it seems like one thing after another has stuck us together by chance.  It has made for some pretty great memories.

During winter break we met up at Starbucks (sorry Coffee Buddha) to talk about our upcoming trip and to plan some weekend trips together.

Jess had told me she really wanted to go to Greece in early May for her 21^st birthday.  I said that would be awesome and I was in, but truthfully I put it in the pile with all of our other trips and plans.  Hopefully it would happen, but we would have to work around our schedules and budgets.

Then one day at another coffee shop she brought it up yet again, “I’m definitely going to Greece for my 21^st birthday.  I’ll go alone. I don’t care. I’m going.  I will be in Santorini May 1^st.”

And that is how we ended up going to Greece.  It doesn’t seem at all remarkable. I hadn’t thought much about it until someone we met there asked why we came to Santorini.

And here we were, two girls from Pittsburgh, Ross Township, both recently turned 21, enjoying four days on a Greek island.  We couldn’t help, but laugh at how matter of fact our decision seemed.  Like it was always in the plan since we were both put in Mrs. Rava’s first grade class.

Or maybe it’s not all as serendipitous as it seems.  Maybe sometimes you just need someone to make a damn decision.  Either way, I’m sure glad we went.

** For more of the story, check out Jess’s blog Clair de Lune here.  Her frankness will make you laugh, and I’m so happy to have shared this whole study abroad experience with her. **

F*ck you, Joni Mitchell

One night in February or March, I was lying in bed when decided I needed some new music to listen to.

I had not downloaded any new songs since I got to Paris, and after some long metro rides with headphones in, all my music was starting to sound like a broken record.

I needed music I didn’t know at all, a new-to-me artist to dive into and explore.  But I felt tired and was lazy and started perusing Netflix instead.

I was delighted to see that Love Actually is on Netflix here. It’s the best, worst movie in the world.  Ever since I read in an interview that Taylor Swift watches it every Christmas, I too watch it at least once per year, because in my heart I am very much still a thirteen-year-old girl who wants to be connected to T. Swift through our rom com choices.

I debated starting it, but it was already pretty late.  My mind started to wander, replaying scenes from the film when the quote hit me,

“Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel.”

Then Alan Rickman’s coy reply, “Did she? Oh, that’s good. I must write her sometime and say thanks.”

I should listen to some Joni Mitchell.  Emma Thompson’s character is arguably the best in the movie, so I should trust her, plus I wanted to listen to something older.  I hated all of Spotify’s current top 50.

I decided, inspired by an article I had recently read, that it would be best to listen to pick an album and listen to the entire thing.

I chose Blue and hit shuffle.  A few seconds later Joni Mitchell’s voice chirped in my ear,

“Sitting in a park in Paris, France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won’t give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn’t want to stay here
It’s too old and cold and settled in its ways here
Oh but California, California I’m coming home”

I almost laughed in disbelief.  Was the universe playing a joke on me?  I actually couldn’t bear to listen to the rest of it and skipped to the next song.

I loved Paris, but it was like being in the honeymoon phase of a relationship, I didn’t want to acknowledge any of the city’s flaws for fear the whole façade would fall apart.

At the same time, it was something that I needed to hear.  Deep down, it felt like a breath of fresh air to hear a fellow North American long for home from a bench in Paris.  All while being frightened of the news, a feeling I can relate to every time someone here brings up our president.

Sometimes it is old and cold and stuck in its ways here.  Forty degrees can feel like 20, and sometimes it baffles me that there isn’t any sort of convenient store or even a supermarket that’s open late at night, and very few that are open on Sundays.

Stuck in its ways.

But I love Paris in a way that almost scares me, because I know my time here is limited, but also because I don’t want to be blind to its imperfections.

For some in may be too big, or too touristy.  Others think that the people are rude.  They are more reserved, but I really can’t blame them.  A city like this requires self-preservation.  Once this was explained to me at our orientation, all the blank metro stares seemed a bit more comforting than off putting.

I’ve really learned, and tried to remember, the difference between reservation and rudeness.  To us Americans smiling and small talk are expected, and I do miss that a bit, but it’s also a relief to sit on the metro after a long day and it not be expected that you smile.  I can glower in peace.

But nearly every time someone bumps into you they say excuse me.  And someone always stops to help the mom at the top of the metro stairs carry her stroller down.

Plus, I have the fortune to receive all the warmth I need from my friends and host family. There’s no shortage of smiling faces when I’m with people I know.

When I listen to that song now I smile.  And I know for the rest of my life that line will conjure warm memories like being bewildered by Paris in the snow or overwhelmed taking the metro that first week.  Or even how tangled my hair was from wearing scarves all the time this winter, partly because of the cold and partly in a vain attempt to fit in with the scarf-loving French.

I’ll remember the elaborate beauty of the buildings on every corner and the excitement of wandering through a city cloaked in the history I just learned about in class.

It may have its issues, but all cities do, and like loving anyone else it’s necessary to look past a few flaws.  After all, wouldn’t sunny California grow tiring after a while?

Plus, there’s nothing like a dreary Parisian winter day to make you appreciate a good cappuccino and a good book.

 

 

 

The bitter sweetness of living

There is a quote from The Office (a show that to be honest I’ve never watched all of) that really tugs at my heartstrings.  I’ve come across it a few times on Twitter and Facebook.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days, before you’ve actually left them.”

I spent a lot of high school dragging through the everyday.  I had friends, and I was happy; I made lots of wonderful memories.  But as life goes on you’re tired and you complain, and the months just sort of run into each other.

I think it’s easy to forget how grueling high school can be once you’re out of it, but you really are under a lot of stress, at least I was.

Then suddenly, I became a junior and I had some senior friends.  And even though I was closest with the people in my own grade, I became very aware that these other, older people were soon leaving.

I had heard people cry before their last senior musical, but there is a point where it really sort of hits you.  All this is temporary.

There are still lots of days when I thought “fuck this” and “I can’t wait to graduate and go to college.”  But at some point, time was split from waiting for it to be over to dreading it being over.

The same thing happened in college, except I’ve been aware of it from the start. Everyone tells you to make the most of these four years.

But that’s the thing, even when you’re aware of time passing, you can’t stop it.

My first semester freshman year I was homesick and not loving college.  It’s funny that even now I can only admit that it was “not loving.”  Did I flat out dislike it?

I felt like I had to force myself to love it, because it’s only four years and is supposed to be the best time of your life.  But I counted down the days until breaks.

But I am thankful for that first semester specifically freshman year.  I cried a lot, but I also laughed a lot.  I met people who I love with my whole heart.

I was forced out into this new Ohio world alone and little by little it all worked out.  My homesickness faded, I joined a sorority, things sort of fell into place.

After that, I had a great sophomore year and an amazing first half of my junior year.  It makes me nervous and sad to think about being a senior next year.

But even being aware that college is a fleeting opportunity didn’t make the bad days any better, and it didn’t make the fun days any greater.  If anything, it just helped me justify going out and watching more tv with my roommates than I should.

This might seem contradictory to my earlier post, but I truly believe you can’t force yourself to make the most of every moment.

You can choose to be present and to observe, but that doesn’t equate instant happiness.  You have to bask in the bad to bask in the good.

Being positive has its benefits, but you can’t always force it.

As I’m almost exactly halfway through this trip, I feel my anxiety start to mount.  While the first month was an adjustment, the second month was fabulous.  I never doubted that it would be.

I knew that homesickness and cultural adjustment is something you have to wait out.  But just as soon as one negative emotions dissolves, another moves in.

And now I feel that “ugh,” that I regret spending any moment here not overwhelmed with joy.  That anxiety that tells me there are only sixty days left.  That I’m halfway done.

Why is it that just as soon as you start to really love something and enjoy it, you’re plagued by its ending?  I finally get used to a change, then I instantly have to dread its changing back.

Can I make myself “live in the moment” and enjoy every single second?

Maybe I should delete social media?  Truly take in the last two months.  But would that honestly help? I like blogging, and I wouldn’t want to delete Facebook.

Maybe I should meditate? Journal four times a day?  Sleep for only five hours a night?

Is there any right answer?

I truly don’t think so.  There is truly no answer to not having enough time.  It’s the only thing that motivates us to live.

The best I can do right now is look at it as a luxury.  I’m young.  As a matter of fact, I just turned 21.  I get to have the liberty of living in three different places in the last four years.  Of making different friends, of trying out whatever I want.

I didn’t know how to sum up this post, but then while reading The Word for Woman is Wilderness by Abi Andrews, I came across this quote.

There is acute love for the thing then realizing that one day one way or another it will leave you or you will leave it or the light will change, but the magnitude of this hurt is itself something that adds to the beauty… Perhaps then the feeling is more accurately the love of sad beauty.  Or nostalgia that has not happened yet.

All I can say now is I’m happy.  And sorry this blog has been more about me than about Paris or France.  But is anyone really surprised?  I was warned I would learn more about myself than anything else.

This feels like home.  I know it’s a temporary home, but it’s another home that I will miss.

Alone (but not) in the City of Love

First of all, I hate that name, the City of Love.  But that’s a post for another day.

A big goal for me, for this blog, is to be honest.  So I am going to be honest with you about being in a long-distance relationship while studying abroad.

Don’t get too excited, it’s not going to be as juicy as you would hope.

When I mention Sam to my friends here, inevitably the next questions are, “Oh how long have you guys been dating?” and something along the lines of, “Is it hard doing the distance thing?”

Both are fair.

Normally, they’re surprised when I tell them Sam and I have been dating for six years which still feels funny to say, even though I can’t imagine life any other way.

The distance question I always sort of stumble through.  Not because it’s an issue or that I don’t want to be honest, but because I can’t really sum it up quickly.

If I say it’s wonderful it sounds like I don’t care enough to miss him.  If I say it’s hard it sounds like our relationship isn’t strong enough to get through this.

The truth is that most of the time it’s pretty…chill for lack of a better word.

There are pangs when I really miss him. It really sucks that we can only really talk between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. my time when we’re both awake.  There are days where missing Sam just sort of hits me out of nowhere.  Suddenly, I’m in class and think about him sleeping peacefully in Morgantown.

There are also many days when I feel very content, of course I’m happy to text or call him, but I feel comfortable.

It’s no secret that Carrie Bradshaw is a questionable role model, but a. I worship Sex and the City and b. she was on to some good stuff when she said, “Don’t forget to fall in love with yourself first.”

It’s more than just liking who you are.  I’ve learned to enjoy my own company, to laugh to myself and to take pleasure in my own company.  Even when I hang out with friends, , I still have those moments of silence.  I’ll be going home alone on the metro afterwards, and I feel like I am all I need in that moment.  Complete in my own company.

It’s true that I have the ease of knowing that in a few months I’ll be back in Pittsburgh and that Sam will still be there.

The stability of our relationship gives me the freedom to pursue my dream of living abroad without feeling guilty or anxious about my relationship.

As Sam’s sister Emily reminded me before I left, “Just think, before you know it you’ll be 30 and married and boring.  Go everywhere. Taste everything.  Have the best time ever.”

I think about that a lot, and it reminds me that this experience is fleeting (more on that soon), and I have to enjoy it.

That being said, nothing can replace missing someone, sometimes you have to just wallow in it.  But those feelings don’t have to spiral.  Some days I really miss Sam, and some days I’m really happy exactly where I am.  Often, I feel both at the same time.

There’s also the fact at play that we are no strangers to long distance.  This is much longer than usual, but for nine months a year Sam and I live entirely separate lives.

And then there’s an entirely different feeling of missing him that just sort of floats or sprinkles itself in like dust.  It’s the feeling of wishing he was here not just to be with me, but to share the things I’m doing and seeing.

I think it’s best summed up in this quote I found on Pinterest once upon a time when I was feeling sappy.  It’s from the book The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

“That’s how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can’t experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.”

It’s bittersweet to do something like seeing a great concert or walking around Paris at night, and then this tiny little voice says, “Don’t you wish Sam was here.”

And I do.

This experience will always be just mine to cherish.  But his absence still puts a mark on it.

We’re in a space where we’re never completely together or completely alone.  But that’s okay, right now being in a relationship is embracing both.

I haven’t had to sacrifice on either front, and for that I am very grateful.

Serendipity…?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got here.

It feels like I’ve known forever that I wanted to study abroad in France.  It’s been a long time coming, ever since high school language teachers told me about their study abroad experiences.

But I think the moment, or moments, that sealed the deal, without me even knowing it, was visiting Spain and Portugal when I was sixteen.

The trip was planned through my high school.  There were around twenty students, three of whom were and still are my best friends.  I still don’t know how we were lucky enough to do that at sixteen.

That was the first time I went to Europe, and thinking back on how I felt every morning of that trip makes my chest feel tight.  It’s the swell of happiness, thankfulness, and also a twinge of sadness that the experience will always be in the past.

I’m sure we looked naïve and were endlessly obnoxious, but I felt like I was in a whole new world, living out the Cheetah Girls 2 (queue “Strut”).

I was way more excited to go to Spain before we left.  To be completely honest, I thought of Portugal as just a few stops on the way to Spain.

I could not have been more mistaken.

Portugal has to be one of the most underrated countries in Europe.  It is breathtaking, but modest.  The people are extremely friendly.  It doesn’t feel as modernized or maybe Americanized is a better word.  It feels more “old world.”

Maybe I just have a bias because it was the first European country I visited, and for that it will always have a special place in my heart.

While we were there, we visited a town called Algarve.  I could write pages and pages about how beautiful it is, but because you are a busy individual so here are some photos for reference:

In Algarve, we visited an area called Cape Saint Vincent.  This cape is protected by ragged cliffs that jut out of the sea.  Despite centuries of visitors, it feels untouched except for its guardian lighthouse.  You are enveloped by stone, sea, and sky.

Our guide told us that in the time before Portugal’s beloved Magellan and da Gama, and the world’s beloved Columbus, no one knew what was beyond these cliffs.  They feared what lived beyond in the unknown sea.

This was the Western most point of the known world.  This was the edge of the world.

To us youths who had just a few days before stepped foot on a new continent, that felt magical.  We were not just on top of the world, but at its precipice.

Wind whipping, sea sparkling, cloaked by blue sky.  I felt so tiny, but so free.

We scrambled to take pictures, running and shouting over the wind.  (If you know my friends you know we aren’t quiet.)

The world was quite literally our oyster.

It was a moment that should live inside a snow globe, a perfect scene suspended forever.  But that’s the thing about moments like that, no matter what you can’t make them last.  You can’t bottle them up.

That night we stayed at a beautiful 4-star hotel that was nestled into the yellow cliffs and faced the ocean.  Our tour guide swore it had to be a mistake that we were staying in a place this nice.

We hiked up the hills and stood overlooking the sea.

I love the ocean in a way that is hard to describe.

There’s something so comforting about putting your toes in the water and knowing you’re connected to every coast by that sprawling body.  Even high above it on the cliffs, I felt that connection.

I never really understood the term serendipitous, but thinking of it now that’s how I would define that word, being next to the ocean and feeling its presence.

Chrissy and I climbed back up the cliffs as the sky turned gold.  Mesmerized, we stayed watching the sun set for so long that we forgot dinner.

Drunk with excitement, we stumbled into the empty dining room laughing and scavenged what was left of the buffet.

It had been, to put it blandly, a wonderful day.

For this part of our journey, our rooms were in triples, so I was not rooming with Chrissy, Bridget, and Alexis.

We weren’t allowed to leave our rooms after bed check, but I had joked I was going to climb up into their room. The balconies of the building were staggered like stairs from one floor to the next.

It was a balmy, starry night.  Bed check came and went.  My roommate had fallen asleep.  I was freezing in our air conditioned room.

I went to sit outside in the warm air and saw just how many stars there were.

Suddenly, I could hear the faint giggling of my friends a few balconies above me.  This was a night I didn’t want to take in alone.

Why the hell not?

It was too dark to see their faces very clearly when I popped my head up over their railing, but from their shouts I could tell they were shocked.

It seems so innocent now, but at the time I felt like the ultimate rebel, sneaking out past curfew and scaling balconies.

We pulled out blankets to snuggle under and stared up at the stars.  We talked and talked while the night wore on.

I think that very well may have been one of the best days of my life.

It’s a feeling that will stay with me forever, pure excitement.  I felt it every morning on my second trip to Europe too.  What are we going to do and see today?

Sometimes when I’m at school and walk around on an unusually cool summer morning, it reminds me of our cool mornings in Germany, our first destination of the second trip.

Before my brain can process what the air reminds me of, I get a little buzz of excitement.  In the two short weeks I was there, the feeling of cool summer mornings and the anticipation of adventure became intertwined.

That’s the feeling that brought me here.

No doubt, living here is different than just traveling.  The excitement has to wear off at some point.  You have a routine, (a few) responsibilities, etc.

But then I’m on the metro towards the end of line six, and the Eiffel Tower makes its grand appearance, brooding over the Seine.  I can’t help but look.

Or I finally feel the sun on my skin while wandering around Montmartre, and I get that jolt.  Of being completely present and completely intoxicated with that moment.

That feeling that made me want to keep learning French, to declare a minor, to declare a major, to come here.  To do whatever it takes to keep exploring, to have a purpose to traveling.

I don’t know exactly how I’ll spend the rest of my life or what my true calling is.

But I hope to keep finding perspectives that make me realize how big the world is and how tiny I am.

Because that feeling is more of a calling than I could ever need.

 

 

Did you say male GAZE or male GAYS?

I know you probably came here for cute travel pictures, but sooner or later I had to force my feminist agenda onto you.

One of the best parts about Paris, and France, is there are literally SO many museums.  There physically isn’t time for them all.  Of the three I’ve visited so far, I had to go back to each a second time to finish seeing everything.  I haven’t even started working my way through the Louvre.

It’s inspiring to be surrounded by so much art.  Most museums here offer great descriptions as well, so if you are like me and don’t know a ton about art; different styles, movements, etc., everything is neatly explained for you in English and French.  AND if you’re a student with a visa admission is free!

But there is also something that has been sort of unsettling to me.  It’s a concept that I had heard of, but it took me until this trip to really understand, the male gaze.

It first hit me when I looked at this painting.

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_98=AUTR&VALUE_98=HARRISON%20Thomas%20Alexander&DOM=All&REL_SPECIFIC=3

It’s beautiful.  The young girl looks serene, pure.  She is comfortable in nature, in her nudity, and in her solitude.  But she’s turned away, does she know that she is being watched?  The majority of the Musée d’Orsay contains art by male artists.  So who is watching her?  Would the girl look so peaceful if she knew a man had popped in on her moment of peace?

I realize this may seem ridiculous.  Who cares when she probably wasn’t even a real person? There are countless female nudes; lying on the bed, brushing one’s hair by the window, naked Venus frolicking with cherubs.  Many argue that these are celebrations of the female form, holding women in the highest regard of beauty.

But it still makes me uncomfortable.

As comedian Hannah Gadsby said, “Stop watching women having baths. Go away.”

The issue with the male gaze is that it frames women as objects in a way that is aimed at male pleasure and male pleasure only.  It is present in books, art, and talked about a ton in film.  If you want to learn about it from someone who is actually qualified to tell you, check out one of those hyperlinks or get academic here.

You could argue that canoe girl or Venus aren’t being sexualized… or can you?  Yes, these women are often in their “natural” state, but what about the picture do you really like? It’s the soft curves of the body, the porcelain skin.

If what we strived to portray was women in their natural state, in nature, wouldn’t she have matted hair, tanned and weatherworn skin, and muscles instead of soft pillow-y features?

But no the soft, blond images invoke not nature, but purity and virginity.  An object that no one has obtained, an object that you want.  And even if it is your most prized possession, she is a possession nonetheless.

So what am I supposed to do?  Stop going to museums?  Only look at the work by female artists?  Ignore 90% of historical art?  A lot of these paintings of naked women I also really like!

I’ve decided I just have to take it with a grain of salt.  The paintings can be beautiful and sexualized.  They don’t have to be absolutely perfect or absolutely discredited.

I will appreciate them with their pros and cons.

In the meantime, for my French literature class I will choose to read the book by the female author.

I will visit the Louvre and the Pompidou and everything in between to see art made by men and women.

I will read about all types of famous French women from Kiki de Montparnasse to Simone Weil.

I will try to celebrate all types of women their beauty brains and bravery, not just the boobs men love to paint.

I will strive to learn about women through their own eyes, not just men’s, even if those images seem to be far more frequent.  I will celebrate women writing their own narratives.

When it comes to the male gaze, I will be the one staring back.

Petites Surprises

One of my favorite quotes is “leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photos, kill nothing but time.”  It’s a beautiful sentiment, but us humans long to leave our mark,  to be known where we go, and to connect ourselves to others.

That’s one of the greatest parts about Paris/France, the art people leave isn’t just in the museums.  It’s in the iron terrace grates, the metro signs, and even the graffiti.

I wanted to share some of the cool things I’ve found with you.

They remind me that I’m just one of millions to walk these streets, and yet they feel like little messages left behind for just me to discover.

I’ve left them unedited because a. I’m lazy and b. I want you to stumble upon them in their natural state too.  Enjoy!

Yogurt with a side of tears

If there is one thing I learned in college, it’s that sometimes you can’t always control your emotions, especially homesickness.  It tends to hit you like a wave you didn’t expect.

You have to just ride it.

Last weekend, it hit me.  One second I’m sitting at the table eating a yogurt, the next minute I’m tearing up.

It seems silly to be sad for even one day when you’re spending four months living in Paris.  At the same time, I’m trying to tell myself that my feelings are valid no matter what.

There I was in the laundromat, then wandering through Uniqlo, then in a café, feeling a lump in my throat every time I thought of calling my parents or how I’ll miss spending my 21^st birthday with my friends.

They say that around your third or fourth week abroad you hit an emotional low.  I don’t like to think I’m that predictable, but sometimes the experts know best.

It’s disheartening when you try to speak to waiters or store clerks in French, and they respond in English.

It’s disheartening when your card gets declined AGAIN, even though you’ve called your bank twice.

It’s disheartening watching two people make out on the metro, or on a bench, or in a café; don’t they know that you miss your boyfriend?

I miss wearing leggings and eating Kraft mac n cheese.  I miss smiling at strangers.

My host family told me be careful, because I don’t look French with my blond curly hair and almond shaped eyes.  I love those things about me.

And it’s strange to miss the US after feeling so disdainful towards it for so long.  But I find myself excited to talk about our way of life to my host family, and I feel a little pride when an American song comes on in a restaurant or a professor talks about how efficient American workers are.

It is a weird feeling, wanting so badly to fit into this culture, but still not wanting to give up parts of my own.

It has given me a new respect for people who permanently leave their home countries and have a lot more to handle than I do; renting or buying a house, raising kids, working, etc.  I know that nothing can quite fill that gap of missing home, but I hope that when I return home and someone else is the foreigner, I am as compassionate and understanding as possible.

Sunday morning, I couldn’t imagine putting on jeans or slacks, so I put on leggings and my jean jacket and I jammed to Lady Gaga the whole way to the laundromat.  It didn’t make me feel better exactly, but it made me feel more…comfortable.

I realized it’s ok to embrace the role of the American in Paris.

The rest of the day I continued to walk around, got coffee, and enjoyed a delicious dinner alone. I finally took a moment to just focus on the food and wine and to just be.

The next morning, I felt like myself again.  I rode the wave, and now I could come up for air.  I spent part of the week planning a trip, then this weekend I got to enjoy Dijon.

I remembered that the things I love about home will still be there when I return in four months.  For now I’ll keep facing the challenges, practicing French, and tasting the pastries.

In a year, those will be the memories that make me homesick.

Petite Histoire #1

Friday we went to Versailles.  It was golden and beautiful and everything you would expect.  It was lovely.  But you can find pictures of that online.  Truthfully, after a week of jet lag, a few hours of walking left us tired and hungry.  I was ready to sit and eat.

I’ve taken pride in eating a crêpe (yes I’m going to be obnoxious and put the accents) every day thus far, and Friday was not going to be an exception.  I did a quick google search, and we chose a spot.  Before we could even find the correct street in the crowded Montparnasse circle, Cindy spotted a different restaurant.  There is no such thing as a bad crêpe, so we headed in.

We stood awkwardly in the middle of the crowded restaurant waiting for a table.  We probably looked like lost sheep, and also obvious tourists.

Our little table literally touched the one next to us.  The French don’t care about personal space like Americans do.  I’m also just not used to the crowding of a major city.  Thankfully, the people next to us were friendly.  The snowy-haired gentleman I sat next to said bonjour and a slew of other things I didn’t understand.

It has become a familiar, but still embarrassing dance.

A local says bonjour/bonsoir, I reciprocate and then he/she says something to me so fast I can barely recognize a word.  I blush, apologize and explain to the best of my abilities that I don’t speak French well.  They slow down a bit so I can understand better. They ask where I am from, I explain I’m an American student studying here, so on and so forth.

With the usual difficulty, we made small talk with the man and his friend.  I could tell right away he wasn’t Parisian, his accent was different and he smiled more.  His Burberry print scarf also stuck out which seems funny now, but the Parisian men are loyal to their uniform of neutrals.

We learned he was from Brittany, but has children that live in the United States.

His companion was a friendly, smiling woman from Belgium.  He did most of the talking, whether because of her accent or his own instinct I do not know.

I asked about their trip, he asked us Americans about Donald Trump.  Somewhere in the midst of all this, I half understood that he mentioned the woman was there to keep him company.

Our food came rather quickly and the man and his date finished their coffee and bid us au revoir.

Later, when reflecting on the situation with my roommate, Emma, I learned that we had shared some afternoon crêpes with an old man from Brittany and his escort.

No judgement here, I wouldn’t want to be alone in the City of Love either.

Happy Valentine’s Day.