c'est l'enfer.

I walked towards a stout red-brick building with my heart already racing. "Hôtel des Impôts" the sign on the door says as it mechanically swings forward to let me in. I side-step a big white dog sitting outside who looks up at me longingly. "I know how you feel, man. I hate this place too."

"Hotel of taxes," I think to myself as I take my place behind a line of people waiting to approach the welcome desk. As I stand behind a mother with her fussy child in a pram, I occupy my thoughts with this absurd translation. Of course, it translates to "office of taxes" or "tax bureau" or something to that effect, but I would rather pass the time imagining what exactly a tax hotel would look like -- I suppose it would be a really unhappy place to visit, where the nightly rate is extortionate and nobody actually wants to be there. Ratty old bedsheets, gloomy housekeepers wandering around, and I bet the breakfast is probably really shitty too. Wait, they probably don't even have breakfast...

Suddenly, the woman behind the desk is looking up at me behind thick bifocals and waves me forward with an aloof and impatient "bonjour." My pulse quickens again and I start to panic.

"Bonjour..." I begin. I place my folder on the counter and take a deep breath. I start rambling something in French which I'm sure sounded like nonsense to her: "I'm here for to obtaining a certify for the exoneration on habitation of the taxes..." I'm not even listening to the words I'm saying, they just scramble out of my mouth and I hope that together they form something resembling coherence. She looks at me with a piteous smile and says "d'accord," as a ticket from the machine prints and she points toward the rows of chairs. "Vous attendez." Number 724, my ticket says, and I look for an empty chair amongst a group of bleary eyed people.

I sit down feeling defeated. Sometimes the French language hangs like smoke in my mind, and grasping the words that I need feels like trying to grab a handful of it. What was the word that that guy on the métro said yesterday, the guy with big mole on his chin? He was talking about social security... Décaisser, démarrer, déclencher... D-something... What was that verb....

I try thinking about how I'm going to explain my situation to the person who I'm about to meet. My thoughts quickly begin to trail off to the many times I've been in this situation before. At the URSSAF, the RSI, the CPAM, the list goes on and I don't like dealing with these government workers because they make you feel like you've gravely offended them simply with your existence. I decide wholeheartedly that I hate doing this and I would rather be warm in my bed or anywhere else, but I've got a bill from the French government asking me for an extravagant sum of money which I don't have, to pay a tax that I know I'm exempt from. And there's a really sweet coat that I would rather spend my money on instead...

I pick up my phone and start texting a friend who I knew was dealing with French bureaucracy at this very moment as well. "I hate doing this," I wrote. "Why do I always fall into these legal loopholes where nobody knows what to do with me?" He responded: "Because we're gringo feo and fajita loca and we never learn." I chuckle quietly to myself feeling a little bit better, but if I can't get this problem sorted, I won't be able to afford rent next month, let alone that coat or even Christmas presents for my friends. That thought quickly jolts me back to reality

Finally my number appears on the screen. I slip by and climb over people slouched over in their chairs, heavy heads pressed into tired hands, all staring vacantly at the blue screen flashing 724. I walk into the room and a petite woman is sitting behind a desk wearily. I offer her a different and hopefully better version of the same story I told earlier. This woman, though speaking to me as if I were a very slow child, at least is accommodating to the obvious fact that I'm foreign. She prints out a paper saying that due to my arrival in France in late 2009, I was exempt from the residency tax -- but next year, she warned, it won't be the case.

That's it? I can go? It was hardly five minutes later that I was out the door, feeling positively buoyant knowing I wasn't going to have to live on baguettes and pasta for the next month. I called my friend, who had just received his official status as a French student. "Congratulations on becoming a french student!" I told him. "and you, congratulations on evading the tax system!" he replied. Oh you know, just another day in the life. Now if only I could figure out a way of avoiding these situations entirely.

Bises.

je t'aime... mais... je choisis la france.

i'm the dorky looking one.

I was going through old photos on my external hard drive the other day and I happened upon a very old picture from a winter formal in high school, I believe from 2002. I chuckled at my stupid dress and looked at the happy faces of the group of people I stood with. In thinking about how old this photo was, I realized one, two, three of these people were married, one of whom already has a kid, and another was recently engaged. I slapped my forehead in dismay.

I haven't been able to decide how I feel when I think about this sort of thing. On one hand, if I were to put myself into the shoes of the people that I went to high school/college with, I'd say that there's no way I could handle the possibility of marriage and/or having a child at my age. I'm far too irresponsible and I have problems enough taking care of myself. Secondly, I consider the fact that I could very well end up being the Van Wilder of the group of people that I grew up around. That is to say, I'll be the one who never really comes to grips with the fact that it's no longer appropriate to get rip roaring drunk in a foreign country with people I've just met and wake up in a strange girl's apartment missing a shoe. Fortunately for me, 23 is a good buffer age... But what about ::gulp::... 24? 25? 26?!! Bla! What if I'm still bumming around France well into my late twenties?

I started thinking during a walk around the city this weekend... While I of course think people are entitled to do whatever they want with their lives and I have absolutely no place to pass judgement, I have a hard time understanding it. How can they make such permanent and life changing decisions at this age? What's the rush, after all? 

Then suddenly, something hit me like a cold slap on the face. Lindsay, you're such a monster. What about what you did? Did you not make a decision that, while seemingly well-planned, was incredibly risky and would ultimately affect the course of your life? Move to a foreign country alone for a year with no job, no apartment, no friends... Sure yeah, because that's what normal people do! I bet if you asked your married friends, they'd tell you you were deranged for doing something so absurdly mental. I thought to myself, "but I was just pursuing something that I wanted, something that I knew I loved, something that I was so sure of that I could--oh, wait..."

I'm sure you can imagine the next thought that crossed my mind.

the tripod

I have a very dear friend who will be getting married in May next year and while I've ultimately come around to the fact that she can do what she wants with her life and despite not being 100% thrilled about it at first, I feel like I can finally embrace the decision she's making. Goodness knows she supported me when I told her about my borderline psychotic plan to move abroad -- she told me I was crazy (which, let's be real...), but she was still there for me when I told her about the nightmares and how scared I was to leave. I guess it's kind of two sides of the same coin. For me, I've always thought that it was because I couldn't imagine being so in love with another person that I would so easily commit to the permanency and obligations of a marriage at this point in my life. But in hindsight, I think that "person" already exists: my love-bitch,* France. I did after all give up everything I had back home and chose to live here. And it's clear that sometimes it isn't the healthiest of relationships. 

Bises. 

*I stole this term from A.Kolpak because it summarizes the sentiment nicely -- she's such a wise one. 

vie de merde, pt. deux

I'm going to write a book called "Everything I Know About Being Inconsiderate, I Learnt from My French Neighbors."

Here's a sneak-peek.

Chapter one: How not to own a dog.

First and foremost, remember that a dog is still an animal, despite how domesticated he may be. That is to say, even though he follows orders and understands words like, "walk" and "no" and "out", he still has no inherent concept of logic. For example, leave an excitable dog outside and it will bark. And bark. And bark. And bark and bark and bark and bark. You see, it doesn't need a reason to bark. It doesn't even need a reason to stop barking. It will continue to make noise until fatigue has set in and he becomes distracted by the idea of scratching himself. This rules applies regardless of the sleeping patterns of you or your foreign neighbor upstairs who thinks that 4:30 am is actually a really good time to be asleep.

Chapter two: Seeking medical help.

A cough can be pretty annoying, especially if you have to share a room with someone else -- you feel bad every time a coughing spurt creeps up and try to make as little noise as possible, even sometimes leaving the room so you can hack up the full extent of your throat's tickle. But hey, if you live alone, don't even worry about it. Seriously. Even though your nearest neighbor is just below you, they probably can't hear you. And since they probably don't even hear it, you don't need to worry if your cough persists for weeks. Months, even. Heck, you might as well just integrate it into your personality so you can be known around town as "that fun guy who's had the same persistent, hacking and upchuck-inducing cough for the last eleven months." Actually, on second thought, you should probably see a doctor. Please, for the love of god, see a doctor.

Chapter three: Being [legitimately] Crazy

Let's say you really, really want to piss people off. And not just get them angry, but you want an instant livid and irate rise out of them. Well, let me tell you -- nothing enrages people quite like being woken up at ungodly hour... on the weekend! So here's what you do: around 2:00 am on a Friday night/Saturday morning, stand outside an apartment building and buzz every single resident until someone lets you in (note: the older the building, the better. This is because the noise they hear when a person buzzes to come in will sound like someone gave a mosquito a megaphone and turned the volume up to "bleeding ears"). Next, take a heavy metal object (it doesn't really matter what sort), and choose an empty apartment. Now, start banging said object on the door, really have at it and chip away at the wood as best you can. Once people are awake, they'll leave their apartment in their pajamas and start shouting at you, shouting at each other, then dogs will bark and children will cry; these are all signs that your plan is working! At some point, they'll call the cops and have you removed but remember: be persistent! It helps if you come back and restart the whole process around 4:00-ish, because it'll really drive those suckers batshit crazy. Careful though, at this point you risk arrest and possible jail time. But it's totally worth it, cause nothing infuriates people as effectively as psychotic and illogical displays of violence and noise when they should be sound asleep in their beds. 

Actually, I don't think I could make this stuff up. 

this is not a two-way road.

Recently, one of my students sent me an email, something that I originally thought was a cute joke but ended up causing more grief than I'd like to admit.

He wrote to me "il faut que tu travailles un peu ton français, moi aussi je te donne des textes à lire" (you should work on your French a little so I'm giving you some reading materials too). He included a short article from a French newspaper and I laughed to myself because I sometimes send him articles in English that we discuss later. I shot him back a response, a short one-sentence email where I said (or thought I had said) "wow, how considerate! Should I summarize the text and send you my reaction? :P" to show him I thought his joke was funny. It was a joke, right?

In his response back, he corrected what I had written in red font and added "regarding your sentence, I hope you didn't learn me english with as many mistakes!" 

My jaw dropped. What the fuck! I thought it was really cheeky of him not only to correct what I had written but acknowledge my mistakes again in reference to my ability to teach him English. I was genuinely offended so I wrote him back "no, I don't teach you incorrect English but I also don't correct every small mistake because if I did, you wouldn't be very motivated to speak it with me." I continued to be more than a little peeved with him over the next few hours but in the back of my mind, I really hoped that I didn't come to regret my response to him later on.

I got another response: "1- 1 ok I'm going to work on Rrrrr... [he has problems with the "r" sound in English] I joke, nevertheless, I believe you have the opportunity to be in France, so, it's gonna be a real pity if you won't speak french fluently."

At this point, I was thinking, Ok. Here's a student of mine, someone who hired me to teach him English. We don't speak French together because he's an English student and that's, after all, what I'm getting paid to do -- and I don't remember asking for help with my French. Why is he even bothered? 

Over the last year, one of the biggest things I've learnt about teaching is the importance of positive reinforcement. A lot of people (myself included) don't generally like having their faults acknowledged without some kind of encouragement as well -- if you don't have a balance of both, you'll have a skewed view of where you really are. While this guy's level in English really shouldn't affect my reaction to his emails, he often makes mistakes speaking English and that's natural for any non-native speaker. As I said to him, if I were to point them all out, he would quickly lose confidence and feel inadequate and that's simply useless to everyone.

I began to feel so stupid. It's taken a seriously unfortunate amount of time for me to get over my irrational fear of making mistakes publicly and I suddenly felt like I had been pushed back a few steps. I considered writing him back: "well ASSHOLE, I didn't ask for your goddamn help, you fat turd!" but that had a pretty much instant guarantee of regret, so I didn't. I didn't actually write anything back, deciding instead to ignore it. I have no obligations to this guy, he's not my friend and he's not someone I will continue to talk to when I leave France. 

Was I wrong to react the way I did? It's pretty stupid really, if I were to try to put myself outside of the situation. But I maintain that it was still cheeky of him. And frankly, I'm a little tired of excusing behavior that I can't rationalize as simply "french" and therefore, beyond my understanding. Because there are shitty ways of behaving, no matter what your language or age or culture or gender.

C'est tout. bisou.

my general attitude towards jerks.