félicitations à moi

So, I've been in France a year now and that's been making me feel sorta... Uneasy, amongst other things. I mean, wow. A whole year... I was planning on doing other stuff after a year here. Well, actually I don't really know what I was planning on doing. But the midnight coronaries are back (what I call waking up in the middle of the night out of breath and heart racing) because I'm still bugging about the whole, "oh my god, what am I doing with my life!"

But I talked to someone recently who really put things in perspective. A year ago, I was living at home, waiting tables at my neighbors restaurant, doing the same exact thing I was doing before and during college. And that the whole summer, I was thinking that it sucks being broke and unhappy and doing something that doesn't even require my degree -- I wish I could just go back to France and do something with more purpose. I want to really live there, I want to improve my French and I want to do something awesome!

And so, a year later, here I am. Albeit my bank accounts are a little bit lighter than when I left, but I'm still here. And really, despite the midnight heart attacks, the occasional spout of homesickness, the bad moments I sometimes have with French people and the constant longing for Mexican food, I realized something so embarrassing that I can't believe I didn't realize it before.

I totally reached my goal, nerds!

I'm sorry if this seems arrogant or too self-congratulatory, but I think everyone should feel good about the things they've accomplished, and there's no shame in being happy for oneself. So, here's to me and my backsliding bank account. Even though I'm far away from being anything that could resemble successful, I'm still here. And I have two great jobs and I can carry a rather interesting conversation in French, if I do say so myself :)

go me.

Now, back to the bitching and moaning 'cause that's always more interesting to read about.

bisous

le dimanche soir

The sun is setting in the corner of the house as sheaths of light streak through the window and shatter on the mirror into hundreds of pieces across the ceiling. I smell curry stirring in the orange crock pot and she's running around the kitchen, flicking poppadums in and out of the toaster oven. The cat darts around the floor, stopping only to wipe her greasy face against the side of the refrigerator in a plea for one more handful of her favorite kibble, leaving behind a dark smudge in the same corner of the fridge that has been accumulating her fur dirt for far too many years. 

My mother's heavy plastic bottom slippers scrape across the indian tiles as she goes back and forth from the oven, to cupboard, to stovetop and around again. "DER!" she yells. "Could ya gi'us a hand, please!" My dad, who is busy choosing music in the other room, closes a CD case, presses play and adjusts the volume on the large music system. Dire Straits' "So Far Away" starts over the speakers as he dances his way down the corridor, and says, for what is probably going to be the eleventy-billionth time, "What! But I'm not s'posed to hafta skivvy -- that's a woman's job! Evvvverybody knows that!" My mother has been ignoring this crusty and overused joke since I was about eleven and it shows -- the words drift by unnoticed and he begins to pour drinks on the countertop. A tall pint of his homebrew and a Strongbow for my mom. "One for me too, please!" I chime in. In the other room, my sister sits on the couch wearing an old high school soccer t-shirt and sweatpants. "Strongbow!" she suddenly shouts, throwing her book to one side, hurrying into the kitchen. I nod overenthusiastically with a big toothy smile at my sister, who returns the ugly grin and we watch as the cider fills the glasses. 

The table is set and my mother covers her hands in a dishtowel to carry the steaming pot of chicken curry to the table as I slap the knob on the wall to turn on the light above the table. The sun has almost disappeared behind the mountains leaving behind traces of the desert heat. "Mango chutney, cucumbers, a bit of tomato, poppadums and rice," she says, making sure everything is accounted for. "Serving spoons!" she chirps, to which my dad points his index finger toward the ceiling and turns back into the kitchen. The drawers in the kitchen pull open then shut again as we all take our places at the table. 

He returns and he raises his glass: "I propose a piece of grilled bread to us -- here's to us, and those like us: not many, and they're all dead!"

je suis etrangère

"The funny thing is, with the passage of time, something does happen to long-term foreigners which makes them more like real exiles, and they do not like it at all. The homeland which they left behind changes. The culture, the politics and their old friends all change, die, forget them. They come to feel that they are foreigners even when visiting “home”.

Beware, then: however well you carry it off, however much you enjoy it, there is a dangerous undertow to being a foreigner, even a genteel foreigner. Somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastasises over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia. And nostalgia has much in common with the Freudian idea of melancholia—a continuing, debilitating sense of loss, somewhere within which lies anger at the thing lost. It is not the possibility of returning home which feeds nostalgia, but the impossibility of it.

But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them."

From an article entitled "Being Foreign: The Others" published by The Economist

on verra

Despite being absolutely, painfully and pathetically (yet simultaneously, hilariously) broke, I decided I needed another holiday. I think maybe the French mentality of needing a holiday every few weeks has corrupted my American work ethic... In any case, one of the several things I initially set out to do once I arrived in Toulouse was to go to Barcelona. Well, nearly a year later, I was beyond excited to finally go!

I spent a full week there, which was very fun, very exhausting, and very financially unwise for me. Yet sooo worth it. Spain made me realize a lot of things about France. Namely, how unFUCKINGbelievably expensive my life is in France. It's seriously no wonder I'm broke, I pay so much for everything. I was practically crying tears of joy when every night I paid an average of about 9E for an amazing meal with starter and drink included and when coffee was about 1.20E and nectarines were 89¢ a kilo (compared to 2.89 in France).

I also began to realize how uptight the French can really be. I've spent the past seven months straight in France, not even leaving the country once so I suppose I got used to it. But the Spanish are much more expressive, they're loud and they're not afraid of making a scene or wearing bright vibrant colors. It was actually refreshing -- for the first time in a while, I didn't over-think every thing I wore or worry about being considered too silly in public (oh, how I miss dancing in public...). I came back here, and I actually kind of resented the French for being so old-fashioned (also paying an arm and a leg for fruit).

PAELLA YUMMY NOM NOMS!

Barcelone, je vous aime

let's plage it, shall we? "let's shall."

(side-note: the headwrap, aka the shirt I wore to the beach, was due to the terrible sunburn I got on my scalp from the sightseeing of the previous days)

Parc Güell

Anyway, while I was in Barcelona, I got an email a few days earlier than I expected and I didn't get the scholarship I needed in order to go to university in England. Which blows. Cause even though I tried my best not to get my hopes up about anything, I really did want to try a year in England and I simply cannot justify spending what it would cost for me to be an international student. I've decided to defer acceptance and make the decision in another year which may allow me to try to save up some money. We'll see.

I hate that: "we'll see." I'm tired of it. Gimme some direction already, universe! I don't wanna come up with my own!

In the meantime, I'm just gonna go back to paying for overpriced chocolatines and enjoying what's left of the summertime. 

bisous