Oh La Lauren

Voici la fin de l’année

Well, here it is, December 31. This is the last day of 2009…I’m sitting in Barnes and Noble in Evanston, sipping on tea that cost less than $2 (and if I had ordered coffee, it would come in a cup, not a tout petit tasse that you can’t take away). The music on the store speakers is in French, and I saw a “Paris” calendar directly across from my table. I picked it up, and looked at the photos on the back. I didn’t know what to feel when looking at them. If anything, I felt a sense of familiarity. I hardly even feel sentimental, because i feel like live images of the Eiffel Tower, the ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde, and the Louvre pyramid are still in my head.

This is the first time I’ve been able to focus enough to write a piece for this blog—a piece that should be the last. Though I have to acknowledge right now that it is impossible to summarize an experience in one entry, and that the meaning of my experience will constantly be evolving as I grow. There is really no way to make this entry cohesive, because it is so dense with spontaneous thoughts. The length of this one entry may equate with a small novel or something. I’m just gonna keep writing until it feels like I’ve said it all.

I remember the first day of the year, when the year in front of me was “the year I go to Paris!” I felt like I knew what was going to happen in 2009. With 2010 in front of me, I have no idea what it will bring. It will be a year far different from the past, though.

Go to Paris, I did. Winter and Spring are a blur, and the Summer is worth forgetting, but all is well that ends well. 2009 was my year of study abroad in Tours and in Paris. It was the longest vacation of my life, I say. Why? I went out on weeknights (I got to buy alcohol!), I explored the city on weekdays (I spent warm days just wondering through the Marais until I found a metro stop), and for the love of G-d, I only had class three days a week! Not to say that there were no problems along the way, but I got over them.

Now I’m back in the land where I can purchase large photo frames for $5 at Wal-Mart, and when I declare how happy that makes me, the black man decked out in Browns paraphernalia in front of me turns around and smiles. This is the land where people who weigh more than 250 pounds exist. It’s the land of spacious “toilettes”, and the land where my cell phone isn’t a piece of archaic technology (especially now that I got a pretty new white and red phone!). For the first time in months, I turned my computer back into English from French (just for the sake of installing my new printer), but Facebook remains in French. In this country, it just seems like the dogs and kids are not nearly as cute. Did I mention that the cheese selection in the American grocery stores just makes my heart sink? Oh, Comté, how I miss you. I’m in the happy place where stores accept debit cards for purchases under 10 euros, where sandwiches come on bread other than baguette (although I’m hesistant about re-adjusting to packaged sandwich bread), and where the currently trendy song “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus is the most ideal homecoming song I could wish for.

So I spent a wonderful week at home after thankfully making it out of DC to Akron with no problems. And to celebrate my return, we had a “fakesgiving” dinner on Saturday night, with the turkey, wild rice, cranberry sauce, and squash soup that I had missed at the end of November. I have never wanted to stay in Solon for more time than necessary, but this time, I wish I could have. I have never seen myself as a home-body. I’ve always thought that the people who could leave their home with no emotional attachement were admirably strong. But man, I wish I could have been home for longer. None the less, I saw much of my family and then packed my stuff to more to Evanston on Sunday the 27. I hung out with Kelly a couple of times, and we hung out with Grant once. We ate peppermint ice cream sundaes and then went to Wendys, and spoke with ghetto accents most of the night. It was like the black-southern accent with which the man at Customs in Dulles airport spoke: music to my ears. And the efficiency of the Customs screeners at the airport that afternoon really made me feel I was home. Just little things like those will do it…

It was hard packing to go to school because I was just becoming re-acquainted with all of my belongings that I hadn’t touched in the last four months. (namely my clothes and my expansive collection of beauty products). I packed them all, knowing that I didn’t really need them because I had just lived without them and I survived. For example, I found my flat iron and curling iron in my room. They suddenly seemed like luxuries instead of necessities to me.

It’s all over. The trip is done. Which is hard to believe, because it was something that took so much preparation mentally and financially and logistically. Those four months required a lot of effort. Last Spring, I was at the point where I wasn’t sure if the effort was worth it (that, and I had second thoughts about going to France because of Mme Pavlovich’s business French class). But now I know it was. And though it’s technically “over”, I still have thousands of photos to sort through and print, to put into sleeves or just throw into a box. I still have to plead for credit. And I have yet to see all of my friends from Northwestern. It’s going to feel weird seeing them, I think. When Steph came to Paris, and hugged me at first sight, she said how she’d missed me, how it’d been so long. But to me, it didn’t feel that way—it felt like I’d just seen her. Same with seeing Colleen on Sunday to pick up my keys. I’m back in the States, in normal life, where Steph and Colleen, for example, are commonplace. But they’ve been here, in normal life, with me gone—so it was obvious that someone was missing. I ran into Jules on the way over here, and she was wondering why she hadn’t seen me in a while, which was funny!

At the end of the year I always think about the friends I’ve made and the friends I’ll be spending the next year with. At the beginning of the Sweet Briar program, I remember telling some Northwestern friends that I didn’t feel like I’d made any life-long friends. Now, I think that statement was false. First of all, there were the international students i met in Tours. They showed me how to have fun, how to live the summer up, and how important it is to look beyond your own culture. I just enjoyed hanging out with them so much—Oscar, Rafael, Mauro, Micol. And of course Jimena, my housemate from Tours who I realistically know I will see again. Somehow, we just click.

Then there are the Americans I spent all of my time in Paris with. My SBAA. I just felt like the whole Sweet Briar group had a good dynamic—everyone was pretty friendly to everyone. In the end, we’re all nerds, so everyone jived.

I saw a quote in someone’s status on facebook the other day that really rang true to me:

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.  ~Henry David Thoreau

As I head into the new year, the world definitely feels more spacious.

I have been thinking, how can I respond to the question I am going to encounter incessantly during the quarter: How was abroad? How was France/Paris? I just don’t know how you can sum up 4 months; how you can sum up an entire experience. Somehow, it’s just not the same as when people ask How do you like Northwestern? Because the response to that question is always “I love it, I’m happy there.” But in Paris, there were ups and downs, adoration and frustration. It was a learning experience. I mean, it was fantastic, but how can I boil it down to just that? Right now, it really feels like a dream time, though my new friends, the magazine clippings, the photos, and the ID cards prove that it was real. It’s just hard to believe that I did that—I passed the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, the Seine, and Saint Sulpice on every trip to Sweet Briar. I put on the Paris face. I went clubbing. I became friends with people who were so different from the typical Northwestern student.

Other questions i anticipate hearing:

Are you in France withdrawal? (as my aunt just asked me on Facebook). To tell the truth, not yet. Though I am sure that “the grass is greener” phenomena will kick in as soon as Northwestern life becomes monotonous. Since returning to the US, things have been coming at me so quickly that I have had to focus on re-adjusting to those things (to being in the States, to moving to Evanston, to seeing friends, to starting classes, etc). Really, right now, it’s all so fresh in my head that I can’t miss it. I was JUST there. And knowing that all of my friends are back in the states, and remembering how only half of my classes were interesting, makes it easier to be content with la fin de mon séjour.

Do you want to go back? Do you want to live in Paris? Absolutely, I want to go back. It’s an amazing city. At the moment, I’m not sure that I could live there. Maybe if I went with a different mindset, lived in a different arrondissement, had a job lined up. But Paris is the New York of France, and I’ve always prefered Chicago to New York. If I could choose a Francophone country or city to live in, I think it would be Brussels. Or perhaps Lyon. But I could also see myslef living in London. There were often times while in Paris that I didn’t think the European lifestyle was for me. But now, in reflection, I think I could handle it.

Are you like, fluent in French? I feel like this is a tricky question. Have I learned every single idiomatic expression? No. Do I still use anglicismes? Yes. Do I have a French accent? Not at all. Though I can use a great French accent when I speak English, the only time I sound truly French when I’m speaking French is when I’m mocking the Parisian way of speaking. “Bah, ouihhhhh,” “franchement,” “putain,” those kinds of things. Can I use slang? Kinda. Have I received a lot of compliments about how good my French is? Actually, yes. Can I understand the content of TV shows and academic articles? Yes. Can I get around? Absolutely. So…more or less…yes, I suppose! However, I will always continue to learn French. I wish it were easier to gain exposure to French media here. But I have faith that my skills will not wane. When my friend Alex, who did the program two years ago, came to Paris to visit (Oh, how I will never forget that Nuit Blanche), Mme Parnet told her it seemed like her French had even improved! And that keeps me optimistic that I can retain what I’ve learned and keep adding to it. I do miss speaking and hearing it daily, though.

In the end, I am so glad that I kept this blog. I think I did a pretty good job of updating it. Of course, I didn’t write about a couple major things—some trips to Madrid and Brussels, and I don’t think I wrote about Lyon or Marseille…so I will just have to keep those souvenirs in my mind. It would feel wrong to write about them now, when I am not in the moment. I don’t think I can forget the frustration I felt with my travel companions in Madrid; I can’t forget going out to the club and eating delicious but unhealthy foods in Brussels, or my allergic reactions in Marseille. How can I forget my epic weekend spent clubbing, the latke party at my house, Alan saying “hey babe” to me, or how ridiculous it was to get my suitcase down the spiral stairs on my final descent from my apartment? How can I forget how nice Charlie’s host brother was for driving us to the airport, how cute he was, how he spoke English with an Australian accent? How can I forget drinking champagne with Liza in Parc Monceau one day, and being pelted by snow in front of Notre Dame the next?

So how was France? Man, it was great. I think my life changed for the better.