The First Five Weeks

In celebration of the 5 week anniversary of my life in Paris, I propose a blog.

At this very moment, a young hopeful on Channel 1's Star Academy (properly pronounced with a thick French accent) is performing a song entitled "Goodbye, Philadelphia" to an audience full of starry-eyed Avril Lavigne-loving adolescents. What could this French boy complete with fashion haircut and chin piercing possibly know about the supposed city of Sisterly and Brotherly Love that I call home? I'm guessing, just as much as he knows about the crosses broadcast across his white fashionista T-shirt.

More importantly, France is sort of home now and has been for the past 5 weeks. That statement is of course deceiving, considering that I've spent this time living out of travel bags and alternating between hostels and private homes while permanent housing continues to elude me. About 2 weeks ago and hundreds of euros in, I bid adieu to Absolute Paris Hostel and entered into a phase of relative stability living rentlessly in a friend's spacious suburban apartment an hour outside of Paris. Many thanks to Sarah Yoho without whom I am poor and homeless.

The town is Nemours, population 18,000, accessible by Transilien train to and from Paris 76 kilometers to the northwest. Recommended for fans of Far Out France, Small Town Suburb, and Nowhere To Go, the most recent installation in the acclaimed Nothing To Do series. Time moves a little slower here.

On October 1, I officially took up my post as an English language teaching assistant at Lycée Marie Laurencin in the commune of Mennecy. By October 26, I had already assumed the role of French vacationer with enough vacation time at hand to lead me to believe that Jesus had called to pronounce an early Christmas and November the start of a new year. But as it turns out, Jesus doesn't even have a phone, and November 1st is La Toussaint (All Saint's Day). For teachers, appropriate observation requires approximately 2 weeks off from work. Hell yea!

So I spent this past Tuesday and Wednesday night at Danielle's place in Paris. We went out for fancy dessert on rue de la Pompe, caught a movie at a cinema on the swanky Champs-Elysées, and dined on makeshift vegetarian sandwiches on the floor of her au pair room, sitting Indian-style, using tubberware lids as plates, and slicing tomatoes with silverware stolen from the Rutgers dining hall as though it had been christened long ago in a high-powered cafeteria dishwasher for just such a moment as this.

But Nemours was beckoning my return with the promise of a much-needed shower and a big blue futon with my name on it (spelled out in Jessi's nosebleed blood). After exploiting the free wireless Internet at Gare de Lyon and being accosted by an 18-year-old Romanian kid with a penchant for bisous, I heeded the call and took the 16:47 train into Nemours. In accordance with the holiday, there were no buses running. I was thence faced with the dreaded yet all too familiar 2 mile promenade from the station to Sarah's apartment. Seeing as how most boulangeries were closed or "fresh" out of baguettes, I stepped into a little grocer downtown to pick one up for dinner. The man seated behind the counter and I exchanged a customary "Bon soir." He snatched a hunk of bread from the basket to his left with his money-dealing hands to deposit it on the dirty counter between us. All of these health violations were perceived on my part with nothing more than mild fascination with the foreignness of it all. I collected the baguette into my equally dirty Metro hands and was out with a "Merci, au revoir." My enormous plaid totebag, this 2 foot long piece of bread, and a little Caramaieu bag carrying edible souvenirs lifted from a rich Parisian home proved even more problematic to manage when joined by the Milka bar that I nibbled at in an attempt to offset the brisk evening air with a little milk chocolate bliss.

I continued up the cobblestone sidewalk, scrambling to recuperate a fallen Milka wrapper before stepping down into the street. As I neared the local church, bells sounded from above. Although the resultant echo captured only a brief moment's worth of night sky, my brain was struck with a persistent signal encrypted with the message: "Hey, you're in France!" Medieval church, cobblestone streets, baguette bread, bells...it all made sense.

I rounded the corner that leads to the east side of the river. On the opposite bank behind the church stands an old château gleaming with the combination of artificial ground light and feudal history. This modestly sized castle features 12th century origins and all of the period architecture to show for it. It now serves as a museum and one of the most obvious Nemourian relics of the former medieval city. Travel back to 1100 something or another and the château would be there just as it is today. My mind melts into glue at mere contemplation.

So it's real. I'm in France.


The castle in Nemours.