but before you jump up and down singing the praises of cea and/or aepp (my building), you should know that this is NOT because i have received the fabled special cea internet. it is because i am stealing the reception desk's internet in a more effective way than usual. and sometimes it is because i have acquired a fake password for neuf wifi, which im pretty sure i should be paying for. at any rate, i have built my own internet-based tower of babel, and am awaiting the wrath of the spiteful cea gods in return for my insolence. until then, my screenname on aim is singwithmejenny.
at this point, i have a massive word document filled with stories, thoughts, and rants from the past month, but it seems silly to put them all up here (you know you wouldn't read them anyway, come on). so i think instead of copying them all into here in a massive marathon of lauralife, ill highlight some key points, and in the next little while ill slip some stories in when appropriate. it'll be like a pre-episode recap on tv. sound good? great.
so over the past month, a lot has happened. which is to be expected, really; it wouldnt matter if nothing happened. im in paris. even if all i did on a saturday afternoon was step in cat pee, you could ask me what i did that day and it would still be a cool story. observe:
"what did you do today, laura?"
"oh not much. i stepped in cat pee... in paris."
see? amazing, right? i've automatically made my life 15times more interesting just by living here. way to go, me :D.
but back to this month. there have been a lot of really amazing experiences; it's strange living through experiences you KNOW are amazing beforehand and during, you know? like i've never known before i did something that it would change me. but that's how this is. at this point, im almost adjusted to living in paris. im overadjusted, actually, i think, because i keep forgetting that im not in america, and answering questions in french to people who dont speak french... sigh. it's really weird. i feel like... you know when you're falling asleep in front of the tv, and you're kind of halfway dozing, and kind of halfway dreaming, and then you have this half-dream that you trip over a tree root or something and you jolt awake, physically reacting to the dream? that's how i feel here, as if im constantly almost dozing off to comfortable adjustedness, and every so often im jolted back to the realization that i live in a country where i cant understand most of what people on the street are saying. it's very strange.
i've spent the month going to classes (for those of you who go to school with me, you will fall over when you hear that i've missed a total of 2 classes this month. a week ago, i would have been able to say ZERO classes, but i hurt my back randomly and missed french and fashion) and generally exploring the city.
so now it is time for the pre-episode recap of the last month. this includes several small chapters, and a few large and nonsensical paragraphs packed with everything im trying to say but dont have space for. get ready.
i have discovered hot chocolate that tastes like melted chocolate bars somehow in a constant liquid state. and i have ceased to understand why anyone buys anything from hershey's chocolate. because it is NOT GOOD. it is my opinion that americans buy disgusting food just because it's put in front of us. like, bread? baguettes here are 80 cents. and they're good. why do we eat sandwich-white bread? bad chocolate? even mcDonalds here is better, like legitimately BETTER, because people here will not eat it if it's bad. coke is the same way. things taste more real here, because they're made of real things, because people dont WANT to eat packaged, processed, semi-cheese and pretend raspberry flavoring and flavorless powdered hot chocolate. it's going to annoy me, i think, when i go home.
speaking of chocolate, one of the things i'll miss most about france is the ability to go to ANY street, ANYWHERE, and find an eclair. and a damn good one, too. it's really unreasonable. if there was somewhere on earth where i would go to try and make myself fat, it would be here.
there is NOTHING more beautiful in the world than the eiffel tower at night. ok this is maybe an exaggeration, but it is still so breathtakingly beautiful, i cant handle it. you dont understand unless you've seen. i love it love it love love love it.
starbucks costs $8 here. i mean, it's 5euros, which is circa 8 dollars. ridiculous, no? even more ridiculous? thats also the only place in town to get coffee to go (other than mcdonalds black coffee). AND, i have become addicted to coffee in the past 3 weeks. i dont know how it happened, maybe it's the espresso. but those two things together are really making my life unhappy. in fact, living here at all is SO expensive. i didnt really understand before i came here, but a coke is 4 euros. it's kind of terrifying, and im a little worried about my budget at this point.
im pretty sure i live in a movie, life is so strange. i guess my life always was like a movie, but it's never been this... cute before, haha. i go to the louvre every week to draw the winged victory. actually, i go to draw all the sculptures, but the winged victory is the light of my life. i cant stay away. i miss good chinese food and nachos more than i miss most things (that doesnt include you mom, dont worry :)). and nutella +banana crepes are all i need to be happy in life.
and the adventures here never cease. we break into children's parks in the middle of the night and just hang out on the octagon. im becoming a poet; i dont write that often but when i do it pours out in waves. i am becoming a ninja with the way i can sneak (myself and other people) in and out of houses (dont worry about it). i live in a room with no furniture where we can see into all the windows across the street like a doll house. i found a flower shop and bought seeds so i can plant them everywhere. (the secret life of flowers... get it yet?) i walk on the seine river a lot; im really going to miss it. i live next to the bastille, NEXT TO THE BASTILLE NOT A JOKE OH MY GOD. its amazing. every day here is just... amazing. because im never going to get over the fact that im in paris.
speaking of which, let's talk about paris. paris and i are over the honeymoon stage, and we still love each other, but i think we're beginning to see the places where we dont quite match up. and, much as im in love with this city, there are things i dislike. and there are certainly things paris dislikes about me. i would live here for years i think, but not more than 6 at a time. and i would probably never consider myself parisian. i wouldnt raise my kids here. and i've been thinking about that a lot lately, and why that is.
im too different for paris. and worse, im too stubborn about it. its a very stereotypical american thing, but i am fiercely individual, and when the CEA people tell me i have to dress like everyone else and act like everyone else in order to avoid being harassed, it makes me angry. and sure, ill do it to a reasonable extent, like ill stomp around as if im having the worst day of my life (this is, im told, apparently the standard traveling mood of parisians), but im not going to change my clothes. im not going to wear black sweaters and black coats and gray pants and tan scarves, and im not going to glare at everyone i see as if they're not worth making my photoreceptors break a sweat. it's not that i dont like parisian culture, i LOVE it. it's beautiful. but there is a certain inherent worth granted to conformity that i cant deal with. which, incidentally, is why i wouldn't ever raise my kids here. because, assuming that my children inherit even 1/4 of the potential (and probably inevitable) strangeness that would come with being my offspring, and assuming that they end up- through biology and proximity- with even 1/4 of the odd traits, habits, and happenstances that i seem to have acquired, they would be MISERABLE here. earlier on, before i had developed the understanding that for me, the exception is the rule, that its ok that the other kids dont think what i think, that crazy sock gloves are cool JUST BECAUSE I LIKE THEM AND THATS ALL THAT MATTERS, i would have been MISERABLE here. and i want to teach my kids that their lives aren't supposed to be a performance, and that they're beautiful, even if they want to wear crazy colored boots and smile at homeless people and sing out loud walking down the sidewalk. and i hope they do! i hope i can teach them to smile at EVERYONE, not just pretty and clean-shaven people, and to sing and dance and run and enjoy life, even on busy streets. and i dont think that i could teach them those things here. it would be very hard. because paris is like a historically significant hollywood; it's glamorous and giant and full and beautiful and cutthroat and ancient and proud and magical and it will judge you- either you're in or you're not. and if you're not, no one will even give you a second look.
paris and i are lovers. we could love each other very much for a long time, but we wouldn't get married, and if we did it would be a disaster. so we'd be one of those couples that is on-and-off for their entire lives, where they're attracted to one another so much when they're together that they just gravitate closer and closer together, like zombie flies floating closer and closer to the light. but then, they get close enough to the light that it shocks them a little, and they get angry, and they fight, and they leave and don't see each other again for years, when the same process will inevitably take place again. this is how i feel about paris. we're like a sine wave and a cosine wave- we can chase each other around forever 3 inches away from each other, in love and angry and miserable because of those 3 inches, but we'll never in a million years totally match up.
so that's paris, and me.
p.s. i was planning to add a couple chapters to this, about bigger events that happened, like trips to versailles, the american movie festival, and our adventure to belgium and holland. but this post is becoming gimongous, and it's a little overwhelming. so another post should be coming with those stories in the next 2 weeks sometime. until then, content yourselves with lots of pretty pictures of beautiful paris. they should be up in the next 2 days. enjoy :)
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