My Aura is Blue and White

Bisous

I find that I am having a little trouble filling my many hours of down time with interesting things to do. I have no friends as of right now, you remember. So yesterday, to take a break from my usual routine of trying not to be intimidated by French teenagers, I decided to take a walk to the Eiffel Tower.  It's not far from me, after all. It's also basically impossible to get lost, because it is huge. 

On my way, I first passed the gentlemen pictured above, who implored me to add their photo to "le facebouk." Congratulations gents, you are now internet famous - to my friends and family who read this blog anyway. 

The next person I met was an older Sri Lankan gentleman, who began to tell me interesting facts about the Eiffel Tower and the universe in general. "I was in Himalaya, you know Himalaya? In the deepest part of the mountain, and I stayed there for (Three months? I think. Maybe it was a year...)"

"Wow." The only appropriate response, right?

"We ate the flowers and drank water. Well you know you get very good at meditating. I can read auras."

"Oh really?"

"Your aura is amazing." (Of course it is). "I don't talk this way with just anybody you know. It's blue and white. And blue, you know, means purity."

Le sigh. Why is pure always the first thing anyone thinks when they see me? I'm not saying I want to be Marilyn Monroe or anything, but the Virgin Mary thing does get a bit old. 

Well, the Sri Lankan guy then asked for my phone number so we could talk about God and love and fear and doubt some more, at which point it became time to skeedaddle. 

"Thanks man, but I don't actually have a phone number." (Not a lie. At the time.) I then departed to ponder the mysteries of the universe alone, the way I like it.

So, anyone who reads auras want to confirm or deny?

Chez Moi

As promised, here are some photos of my lovely abode. You see what I mean by small?

Voila! My building. Not very Parisian...

This is my room as seen from my balcony

And this is the same spot with the bed pushed up into a couch

When we were still emailing about me coming, V asked me what my favorite color was, so that she would know when buying furniture for my apartment. I thought that was so sweet, and reminded me of my mom. But I really didn't know what to respond. Do I have a favorite color? I told her green, so she got blue because she couldn't find nice looking pillows in green. I wasn't expecting throw pillows at all, never mind how attractive they are. We're also going shopping on Saturday for matching curtains and une petite table. I have no idea where that will go. 

So there it is, my pretty little closet under the stairs!

My First Wednesday

I still can't get pictures off my phone, so here is a google images find of the view I pass every day, that I've already started to ignore like a true Parisian.

Wednesdays, French children do not have school. It's a relic of institutionalized religion (kids used to have to go to Catechism these days) that once upon a time I would have advised America adopt post-haste. But I'm a nanny now, and that means that Wednesdays I spend all day with Le Petit. Yesterday was my first try.

Honestly, it wasn't that bad.

V left at around 10 for her important meeting. He didn't even cry. Then we played cars for an hour and a half. Followed by half an hour of books. Then lunch of peas, carrots and rice. Then a three hour nap. Apparently Le Petit was completely pooped (2 hours of cars is a lot of cars, I promise you) and fell asleep immediately. I have never met a kid who went down for a nap with so little struggle. Also, I should note that the 3 hour nap is scheduled. Then, having thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and his bedroom in about four minutes flat, I also took a three hour nap.

V. then returned home for bath, dinner, and some quality time with Tom and le iPad.

Really, the only bad part about the day was that I am too insecure in my French to order food anywhere. Consequently, I spent half an hour yesterday morning wandering around looking for a likely cafe, into which I could pop for a moment to grab a pastry and coffee and hide away with it somewhere without looking like an American bumpkin. I realize there's no help for it, and I might as well stamp the Star Spangled Banner on my forehead, but I'd like to at least be able to order breakfast without looking like an idiot.

Eventually, I of course ran out of time, and had to be at V's in like ten minutes. I sighed, braced myself, and went into the cafe closest to her apartment (after pulling when I should have pushed of course), and as confidently as I could said to the impossibly Parisian proprietor who was reading a newspaper, "Je voudrais un cafe s'il vous plait!"

"Un cafe, un cafe..." he repeated and wandered off to fill my order. Success! I drank the tiny cup standing up with two minutes to spare. For lunch I ate Tom's leftover rice, and for dinner the leftover pork chops, salad, and fries V made.

I'm going to lose so much weight.

Bonjour Paris!

So I just wrote a lovely blog post all about my first day and a half, but because my website was entirely in French, I accidentally deleted it. 

Merde!

Any way, suffice it to say that I am doing just peachy, aside from the fact that there is no internet in my apartment. Poor V, I really don't think she realized how desperately I needed it, hence her bewildered reaction when I almost cried. I didn't, thank God.

So I am writing this from Starbucks. God, I am the worst American in Paris ever. Don't worry friends, I'll find a nice neighborhood cafe to frequent as soon as I can. In fact, I am on my way there now, because this computer is almost out of charge, and there is no outlet in site. 

So my apartment is a closet (but a very cute closet) and the little boy and I are best friends already. He taught me how to say whale in French, which is balain. I think. Actually that's probably wrong...

Firsts and Lasts

I would have blogged last week, but I swear I have never had more friends or more plans. I tried to say goodbye one last time to everyone that I could but I still have a sort of panicked feeling that there are people I forgot. Like the coffee guy at Intelligentsia that I used to buy cookies from! If you're reading this, I'm sorry coffee guy. I meant to buy one last cookie from you but I was late for plans with someone else. So good luck with your future endeavors, coffee guy. I wish you nothing but the best. 

I wanted to get done all those things I'd been talking about doing for months or years but never got to. In this spirit, Carlo agreed to wake up early on Saturday to wait in line for 45 minutes with me at the famous Doughnut Vault. The doughnuts did not disappoint. 

I can't believe how many of these we ate

I also had plans to have a Star Wars movie marathon, because Carlo has never seen them. Anyone who knows me of course knows this already because I simply cannot let it go. But we couldn't find them on iTunes, and they weren't available on Netflix. So we went to Best Buy and for a moment we thought we'd succeeded. Carlo triumphantly presented me with a 3 disk set of Episodes IV, V, and VI which we then happily bought before realizing that they were BluRay and we do not have a BluRay player. Which is especially unlucky considering that Best Buy no longer stocks DVD versions of Star Wars at all. I think Carlo was actually considering spending $80 on a BluRay player for a moment, before he realized that he would be spending $100 to watch Star Wars. "I'm sorry, K," he told me sadly. "I just can't." 

In the end we were too busy packing, running errands, and making last minute visits for much else anyway. And now I'm in Detroit for the week, and trying not to think about how much I'm going to miss running errands with him.

Last Week at the Office

Today is the first day of my last week of work, and I feel... the same.

There's still a pile of paper on my desk. There are still a million tiny tasks that never seem to get finished. There's still no coffee table in reception. And nobody has started interviewing for my replacement.

I feel like I'm leaving a project halfway through. I helped, in a small way, to put this office together, and I won't be here to see it finished. The coffee table thing is really killing me. The reception area has been almost finished for months. It's almost put together. It almost looks great. The carpet and pictures I chose look nice. The furniture is sophisticated and tasteful. But it is arranged surrounding a big empty space of carpet so clearly, desperately, wanting a coffee table that it's making me a little crazy.

See what I mean?

I think I've mentioned this need about once a week for the past three months. I've been so obnoxious about it that now any mention of the missing coffee table comes with a smirk and a side-eye at me. But apparently construction on it has now been started and it will most likely be here some time next month. When I'm in France. And they say Americans don't do irony.

New Home

In several of my internet searches of what my life would be like as an au pair in Paris, many places indicated that I would most likely be living in a "chambre de bonne" which literally translates to "maid's room." They are tiny little garret rooms basically in the attic where the maids used to sleep back when people had live-in servants. (Would I qualify as a live-in servant?) They often don't have private bathrooms or kitchens or elevators.

Obviously, I gushed at that idea. 

I'll be like The Little Princess! My own little attic with a tiny window looking out onto other peoples' rooftop gardens, perhaps a glimmer of the Eiffel tower just within view. And I won't tell anyone, because they wouldn't believe me anyway, but I'll sense the presence of the long dead servant-girl who used to sleep where I'm sleeping now. Her name will be something like Sophie or Sylvie. And when I'm feeling really low about being someone else's hired help, I'll go to my chambre de bonne and know that Sylvie the ghost-maid is there, and she'll understand. It will look like this:

So when V sent me my address, I immediately got out of bed to do some Google maps research. Alas, instead of a charming "chambre de bonne," it appears that I shall be living in a patently unromantic concrete apartment building with what looks like plexiglass balconies above a limo rental shop.

So Hemingway probably never hung out there. It is, however, about a five minute walk from the Eiffel tower, and there's a doorman. So presumably I'll be somewhat more protected from sex traffickers and my packages won't get stolen. 

All in all, not bad. And who knows, maybe I'll make friends with 19th century ghosts in V's apartment.

Eighteen

Oh my God. It's November. How can it be November? I'm not ready for November. Logically, it cannot be later than September. It just can't.

But it is! It is November, which means that I will be in Paris in 18 days. And I have nothing left to do but pack. After weeks of anxiety I have my corrected passport, which no longer identifies me as male; I have my long stay visa with a picture in which I look hilariously distraught; I have disposed of my apartment to a nice-seeming young man; I have new boots (my extensive and frantic Google searching of "what do I wear in Paris" revealed to me that Parisians wear boots. I know); and most definitively of all, I have a plane ticket.

I can't decide whether I'm more thrilled or terrified that it's coming up so soon, so I think I'll just sit here and tremble quietly while analyzing to death my new address on Google maps.

Bisous (I hear Parisians end their emails this way)