Oh La Lauren

The final hours

Nous n’avons plus rien à risqué…je t’aime un peu plus fort…

Ce qu’on ne pourra jamais plus toucher

This journal entry is being written on my Air France flight to Dulles. I want to talk about this morning but there is no clear definition of where it started, because I only took a nap for an hour and a half last night.

My séjour à Paris culminated in a phenomenon I’m familiar with: SNOW. It was pretty amazing to wake up to it Thursday morning. I took the metro over to St. Chapelle which was sadly closed! I then took photos of Notre Dame, which was gorgeous, but the snow was really coming down! I basically spent my day shopping for souvenirs: St. Michel, Montparnasse, Blanche, St. Michel, Rue de Rennes and the SBC office goodbye, Montparnasse again, home, then dinner with Julien.

I don’t know why I was stressing out so much about souvenirs/gifts…I guess I feel pressure to deliver? I’m usually good with this too, but this time I was just clueless. Paris is a city of known for luxury goods and, as much as I wish I had the money to bring back Ladurée macaroons and Chanel wallets, I’m far from it! However, I did buy something for myself, too. I found a très chic leather jacket/blazer at Pimkie, score! In fact Liza liked it so much that we went back to Montparnasse for her to buy one in a caramel color.

Being well-versed in foreign exchange student customs, I had brought some items from the Rock Hall to Paris with me, expecting to give them to host parents, new French friends, etc. Well, I ended up giving Liza and Charlie keychains to remember their favorite Clevelander by…and they loved them, which was really exciting to me. So much for French friends! Except for Ju…

We met at Opéra at 6:30 for dinner, and when I got out of the metro, I was thrilled. I somehow managed to walk into the middle of the Lubavitch Hanukah celebration. There were soufganyot, a huge menorah juxtaposed against the Opéra Garnier, and ethnic music blasting. It seemed at that moment like all signs were pointing to home for me. The snow, the Chanukah celebration…yet even writing about this right now feels like it was all a dream! And yesterday it was so real…

So Julien and I ate dinner at the Galeries Lafayette café and I gave him one of my Northwestern t-shirts, which I thought was a very American gift. We shopped around a little, went back to his apartment building briefly, then said goodbye. Though I haven’t yet said bye to my American friends, saying bye to Julien was pretty tough. I don’t mean I cried or anything—I wasn’t even close. But the fact of the matter (is that an English expression?) is that I know it’s entirely feasible to see Liza, Charlie, Biki, Alexa, Lexy, everyone again. However, the next time I see Julien…I don’t even know when that will be. Or IF that will be.

This returns to a sentiment that weighed really heavily on me in Tours. Actually, on Thursday night/Friday morning I chatted online with Jimena, which brought me back to Tours as well. The international students I met in Tours were my favorites. I had the best of both worlds: I was in France, speaking French (sometimes), with friendly people in warm weather with practically no responsibilities. There is such a huge difference between being situation among an international crowd and the Parisian crowd (case in point: all of my friends I made at Paris VII were Erasmus or American). But Jimena, Oscar, Rafael, they made me realize that sometimes life makes you lucky but sometimes that luck is a sad kind of luck too. I loved these kids so much yet only got to spend two weeks with them, and I had to wonder how that was fair. I hope that I’ll get to see them one day again.

Hmmm so anyways, I said bye to Julien and then somehow ran into Liza on the platform at Étoile to go to Christina’s apartment for the last time.  Christina’s boyfriend and a friend of hers from her world college thing were in town (this kid was SO hot—Parisian Australian, it was like a crime how good-looking he was), and we all made our final toasts over tequila shots. We eventually managed to get over to the Lion’s Head after Charlie was accosted by two teenagers in need of a light. It was just wonderful having everyone together, and we were the only people in the bar. I also realized it was the last bar I would legally go to before February 6.  We all enjoyed each others company, and then tried to go to Social Club…some people got in and some didn’t, and I was one of those who did not. Vitalie, Amadi and I waited for our Noctiliens to come, had some fun conversations and griped about how our feet were freezing, and then I eventually got home. I still had packing to do, then got tired and took a 1.5 hour nap, and then woke up at 6:30 to get to Charlie’s. By the way, one thing I’m not going to miss? Living on the fourth floor (that means fifth floor by American standards) of an apartment with a spiral staircase. Just TRY bringing one hundred pounds of luggage down that shit, it is not easy. I almost lost my suitcase and myself a couple of times.

Charlie’s host brother Matthieu so kindly drove us to CDG, which was sooo helpful. We reflected on our time in Paris and spoke our last bits of French. Did I mention the host brother was really cute? And had an Australian accent when speaking English? One thing I’m going to miss? Seeing extremely good-looking guys daily. It’s not every day that I see cute guys at Northwestern or in Solon or something. I mean REALLY cute guys.
CDG makes for QUITE a morning. We waited forever to check in, laughed at people like Sylvi and Andrew whose bags were sooo overweight, and then tried to figure out the bizarre (new English vocab trend) family in front of us. This line took forever! I was worried about suitcases being overweight but it only matters that the weight is not excess when the two bags are combined. However, I think I’m going to have to reshuffle for my next flight. We got through passport control and security with no problems. In the end, ,we conquered Charles de Gaulle, but ended up waiting on the runway for two hours due to snow. Also, apparently Kristin Leasia was breaking down in line—not surprising, but interesting.

Everyone is pretty excited to go home, it seems! Even I have been saying for the past few days things like “I love Amurica!” and “hey, guess what, we’re going to the wonderland land of the US of A!”.  However, I just watched a French film called “Le Petit Nicolas” and LOVED it. Now I’m gonna watch 500 days of summer in French.