réveille moi

"I like to think that 'goodbye' is just 'I love you,' played backwards on vinyl. Love and loss are two sides of the same toaster waffle. In this life, you’re either declaring one or tearfully saying the other."

il n’y a sûrement rien de mal

Following my moving out/moving in post, I'm going to write something as I sit here during my first week in my new flat. As fate would have it, the room where I feel the most comfortable is the kitchen, which I'm sure will prove to be a double edged sword (easy access to the refrigerator yet I surely I'll eat better meals now... right?). But I think that's due in part to the fact that there's nowhere to sit in my room besides on the bed and I haven't quite figured out out how to successfully build the couch in the living room without sitting down and falling through it. 

As this apartment is significantly larger than my last, there's a lot more to adjust to. For example, how am I supposed to maintain my quirky habits that I picked up when I first began living alone? The New York Times just wrote a really interesting article about how more and more people are living alone -- and the weird things they start to do as a result (I'm reluctant to admit which ones I share). But one of the things that I'll freely admit to is listening to music. 

Since the deeze-douze was essentially one room, I could turn on my music, do my thang and be able to hear it throughout my apartment. But wait, now I have to go from room to room.... Without music that follows me? (we can classify this under first-world problems). What about the bathroom? (yes, I leave the door open, like everyone else who has lived alone for any considerable period of time). WOE!!!

Another thing is how I'm clearly unable to keep track of anything. I now have several rooms in which to misplace things, bury stuff over and just utterly forget about. This is not good for me as I develop a routine when both entering and exiting the apartment, including talking myself through all the things I have in my bag. I'm quickly realizing this is far less efficient as I have to go from room to room to room and back again to get everything I need (because doing everything the first time around would just be too much).

Also, what the flip am I supposed to do with this?

stand? sit? crouch?

I can hardly complain, though. Sweet jesus, just look at this motherfucking view, nerds.

second fourth floor living without a yard. 

And now that I have internet and phone hooked up, I'm basically like a fully functioning human being! The French transformation is nearly complete! Except for not being French, which I guess is sort of a huge part of it.

bises nerdblergers. 

adieu, dix-douze.

As most of you know, I'm moving out. Yes yes, I know. After nearly two and half years living in my tiny little studio (a.k.a, the deeze-douze), it's time for a change.

Despite my studio's steadily increasing quirkiness (the legitimately crazy lady next door, the gremlin cat outside, the fact that the outlet in the kitchen hasn't worked in a year and sometimes the bathroom ceiling leaks water and ruins all my toilet paper), I'll miss little things about this apartment...

Well, ok, it's really the one thing which has kept me from going completely batty -- the balcony. The good times spent spying on Mr. Duchamps (a man whose name I made up, if you recall), the summer evenings when I took the air mattress outside to sleep under the stars and, of course, the view...

What's a French apartment without a fantastic view? Well, I've thoroughly enjoyed entertaining my various guests on that balcony with all of the wine bottles we seemed to destroy...

I only kept the ones I liked

I liked that it's tucked away in a little corner, the fact that I can actually sit at any given spot in my apartment and see everything and that for the most part, it served as my little hideaway when I was too scared to buy a baguette from the monster baker-woman down the street (now she smiles at me when I give her exact change -- hey, I know what the woman likes). 

But instead of listing all the things to be sad about, let's take a look at everything I'm getting out of my new apartment:

1. Ten minute walk to work
2. Three minute walk to a sweet market.
3. In between two metro stations
4. It's in the hyper center, meaning I can go out at night and walk back and not have to worry about getting groped by a racaille. 
5. Did I mention the kitchen? It's newly renovated and it's enorme. 
6. Two words: washing machine. 
7. An actual bed. Not a sofa bed -- a bed. 

At least one thing I won't be sacrificing is the view -- though there's no balcony, I can't deny that this view is anything less than kick ass. 

spectacular views

Adieu, Crampel. You've served me well.

je te dirai en anglais

I want to preface something straight away: I don't consider myself a particularly funny person. I think I have my moments of hilarity like most people, but I also know that it's not quite everyone's cup of tea. Either I make noises, I wiggle around or I say something crass and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. What I'm trying to say is, my sense of humor isn't something that I pride myself on.

However, one of my biggest obstacles in learning French has been to figure out how to be funny. It's a simple fact that French speakers and English speakers don't have the same sense of humor, which makes trying to crack a joke in a roomful of strangers that you met six minutes ago that much more challenging. A good indication of this would be going to the cinema to see an American movie in original version (with French subtitles) and being the only person in a crowded theatre enjoying a good hearty laugh at the jokes. Most of the time, my sarcasm doesn't translate or I've made a careless grammar mistake which often leads to the squinty-eyed head tilt followed by the all too familiar "....heu?" But I'll be damned if I don't at least try now and again.

Exasperated, I tell the other person, "I'm actually funny in English, you know. I swear." To which they nod and smile awkwardly before turning to the person next to them for human interaction above the level of basic miming.

On those rare occasions that I do cause an entire room to lol, it's been on account of a language faux-pas that I wasn't even aware of making. Case in point: the time I told everyone to correct me when I make mistakes, which translated to "spank me when I've been a naughty girl." I'm pretty sure that one actually caused tears to fall, people. Though they might've been my own...

It's something that, when I go back to being around English speakers, I'm so grateful for. Even if they're people I don't know very well, I find myself much more relaxed and willing to contribute to the conversation. At a soirée full of French people, I have enough trouble trying to say something at all, let alone something funny. It sounds like something you've seen in every high school plot-based movie that ever existed, but honestly, I get incredibly nervous and stressed before going to a soirée where I know I'm the only foreigner in a group of people who have known each other for years. Something I'm not proud of: I actually had a near anxiety attack last summer when a friend invited me to a gathering at his place -- I paced around outside his apartment building for fifteen minutes with my heart-racing before giving up and going home. I told you I wasn't proud.

As result of all of this, I have the distinct feeling that I'm actually a different person to French people -- I'm the sweaty, quiet, foreign girl in the corner who blames her bad grammar on alcohol and who will shock the pants off you now and again by saying something extraordinarily vulgar. I think my French friends see me in a very different way than my American ones, and this is something that has never sat well with me.

In conclusion (e.g., how most of my my blog posts end): I really need to improve my French. Merde.

xx