Discoveries

Last night I had one of those aha! moments that happen every so often when living in a new city. Every time I leave my apartment, I always turn left. My office is left, the shopping areas I knew were left, I always just walked left. Occasionally I would look right, but it didn't look too interesting, and I haven't taken the time to explore. Well. I was in for a treat last night.

I was heading to a friend's place in le Marais for dinner. Our apartments aren't that far apart, but it had been taking me forever to get there. I was intent on finding a new route. So I pulled out my trusty Paris Poche map, and found a new route to get there. One that involved me turning Right.

So I set off, not really expecting to see anything other than residential streets and voila! I stumble into Rue de Bretagne, which was buzzing with activity. There was an outdoor Christmas market going on, plus several great food stores (the patisserie, shown above, as well as a fromagerie, coffee bean shop and great meat store), and to top it off, an outdoor fruit & vegetable market!

All this time I've been trekking down to rue Montorgueil for a market, when there was one just a couple of blocks from my house. I just love moments like this - when I think I have everything figured out, and then I get a surprise. Ok, usually the surprises are bad ones (like, I didn't put the sticker on my mailbox right so of course I'm not getting any mail) - but little moments like this make it worthwhile.

Discovering this new street last night made me think about how quickly our lives naturally gravitate towards routines. I guess it's for a sense of normalcy and comfort, but within just a couple of months, I already have regular places to shop, regular lunch haunts, a regular route I walk to work, etc... I believe it's good to break your routine once in awhile to just expose yourself to something new, stay fresh, get inspired and maybe meet some new people. So perhaps for one of my New Years resolutions I'll try to avoid a routine for awhile, until I've really explored what my options are (although exploring options in Paris could probably go on forever...).

Progress

Progress! Today two big things happened:
1) I received my first piece of mail, addressed to me, at my apartment. This is very reassuring that the little sticker with my name on it on my mailbox is "official" enough for La Poste to deliver mail to me!
2) I had my immigration medical exam and got my carte de sejour (or at least the temporary one, the real one is coming in the mail).

Excellent. I finally feel like I live in France.

Now, a few interesting details. I have read on other moving to France blogs about major problems with La Poste. Specifically how a random name sticker on a mailbox isn't official enough to actually receive mail. Apparently it's official enough for my mailperson (although I was a bit concerned because I recently ordered a new mobile phone, and while the website said "delivered", it was actually delivered to the wrong zip code and a different town all together! Still battling with that one.).

BUT, apparently my name sticker is not "proper" enough for the other tenants in my building. I was in the elevator the other day with another tenant. We were going to the same floor, so she said (all in French, but I'll summarize): "Oh, are you Mme X, the new tenant?" To which I said yes, and I think she heard my charming American accent "And you're the one who put that sticker on the mailbox?" Yes. "Well, Madame, you may not know this but we just got new mailboxes so that they would look nice and not have stickers on them. Would you be so kind as to move your sticker to a different location on the mailbox?"

I'm sure she thought - Ah, an American! Of course she would do something so improper as putting her name on the front of the mailbox, not with a proper nameplate but with a (gasp!) sticker!!!

I think that was my first run-in with snooty neighbors. Everyone else has been quite friendly and even tries to speak a little English (not that they need to, but it's a nice gesture.)

Now, one point about the medical exam, and I'm sure I'll go into much more details the first time I have a real doctor's appointment. But there are no gowns... you just take off your shirt and your bra, and wait around in this little room for them to call you, and then you follow them around, naked from the waist up, while the xray tech is tinkering around and talking to you, and finally takes your xray. I'm not too weird about nudity, but I have never been just wandering around a medical office topless before. From what I've heard from other expats, it gets much worse than this, so I can't wait for my first physical!

Paris preparations

This post by La Belette Rouge about her own "baby step" preparations getting ready for a move to France, got me thinking about how I prepared myself.

I had about 6 months advance notice to get myself ready for the big move. Some things that I did:

- Took a french conversation & grammar class at L'alliance Francaise in Washington, DC.
- Joined French Meetup
- Subscribed to every francophile blog I could find. A few of which are listed in the links on the side of this blog.
- Filled my iPod with podcasts in french to work on my comprehension. Some of my favorites are "BFM Gouts de Luxe" and "RFI Journal Francais Facile", both of which you can find for free on the iTunes music store.
- Listened to all of the back episodes of the Katia & KylieMac podcast to get a bit of a feel for being an expat in France. (Listening to all of the episodes is a bit more of a challenge now that they've hit episode 100, congrats girls!)
- Read a big stack of books on France, the French, and being a young expat. Some were more helpful than others.
- Started reading French news sites daily like Le Monde and 20 Minutes.
- I looked weekly on online classified and apartment hunting sites to get familiar with what was available: Craigslist, FUSAC, Particular a Particular
- Answered a lot of my questions on banking, taxes, living in France etc by reading Expatica.com

In my own preparations I was most concerned about improving my level of French (since that is so key to being able to function in daily life here) and then some navel-gazing to make sure I was mentally ready for all of the changes ahead. (Really trying to get through my head the fact that I will feel foreign, frustrated, overwhelmed, and sometimes lonely, and that it is normal and okay!)

Oh, and speaking of working on your french, I recently came across MangoLanguages.com, and really enjoyed using their free online language course. This site is better for beginners, so I was using it for Spanish & Portuguese, but I did some of their French lessons just for kicks and they were good too.

Unwanted Roomates?

I am paranoid. Sitting in my apartment and writing, I keep seeing motion out of the corner of my eye. A dark spot on the floor - is it a spider? Something on the baseboard - a mouse? Or, my all time favorite, a camel cricket?? I just learned from Wikipedia that camel crickets are also known as "cave crickets", which is quite appropriate as my apartment in Washington DC was in the basement. (Well, I liked to think of it as a "garden apartment", but...). Anyway, my apartment was overrun with camel crickets. There would even be little camel cricket babies in the bathtub in the mornings every few weeks. Ick. I also had 2 infestations of mice, and an unfortunate run-in with a snake. (I'll share that story some other time.).

The building I lived in, in Washington, was built in the 1940s. My building here in Paris is significantly older. I live on the 5th floor now (ok, 5th FRENCH floor, which equates to the 6th American floor. Floor counting here starts with zero, not one.) But, I cannot believe that this very old apartment building is pest-free. And I know that pests are not deterred by having to travel through walls up to the higher floors. So I'm just biding my time, paranoid, waiting until I see what unwanted roomates are going to join me here in Paris...

A handful of keys...

I’m renting a short-term apartment for a few months until I decide where I want to live in Paris. After showing me the apartment upon arrival, the landlord handed me a fistful of keys.

There are 6 keys, just for the apartment:
* One front door electronic key
* One mailbox key
* One inner door key
* One key to the little hall leading to my apartment
* Two keys for my actual apartment door

To add to my amusement, one of them is a skeleton key, straight out of a museum.
I wonder how I’m going to fit these all into a small evening bag when going out at night…

Rule #1,352

The idea of moving to Paris was completely thrilling to me. But the reality of being in a new town, and not having any friends, is a bit more challenging. I had pretty much the same situation when I moved to Washington DC six years ago. In Paris there is the additional issue of the language barrier – but luckily, I’m older & wiser, and have the additional allure of a cute (ok maybe it’s not cute…) American accent.

One of my rules (apparently I have a lot of rules) that works well in this situation is “You’d better have a REALLY good reason for declining that invitation!”. For a certain period, say, three or six months, I make myself accept almost any social invitation that comes my way…even if it sounds dreadfully boring. You never know where you’ll meet your next friend (or date), so you just have to put yourself out there.

Of course, my coworkers and friends can exploit this rule ... they could invite me to do just about anything, say, helping them move, and I'd have to accept :) Shhhh...

Bittersweet'ish

I'm back in Washington, DC for a week. I'm also slightly delirious from all of the travel (spent 3 days in the Netherlands, got back to Paris at 10:30PM Friday night, then packed and flew out on Saturday morning. Whew!). And with my internal clock on Paris time, I woke up at 4AM this morning.

I'm in DC this week to clean out my apartment and Really Move. My apartment here suddenly feels empty and depressing. I've sold almost all of my furniture, so I'm sleeping on an aerobed and sitting on a folding chair. Not exactly relaxing to come home to. (Can I even call this home right now? Not sure anymore.)

I am 100% sure that moving to Paris is the right thing for me to do. In fact, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do right now, than move to Paris. That being said, it is still sad to leave a place where you've lived for many years. This apartment, this neighborhood, my routine, my friends, it was all great for years. Then suddenly, I make a big decision (to move to Paris), and suddenly this isn't my place or my routine anymore. It's very strange. I know I can come back and visit, but it will never be quite the same.

Anyway, I need to stop thinking and start packing!

Oh wait, now I'm that foreigner.

I’m realizing that every thing I do here reminds me that I am the Other, a Foreigner, the person who just arrived who speaks the language really badly. It’s an interesting position to be in for many reasons. I now have an appreciation for the challenge of moving into a new culture. But also, my awareness of everything is so heightened right now. Everything is a new experience. It makes me appreciate many little things about France and the French, but also, makes me appreciate some things that were so normal about the USA.

It is frustrating at times too. Even the most simple, routine activities become a challenge. For example, this weekend I was grocery shopping. In DC I had a nice grocery shopping routine where I could zip through the store and pick up the essentials, occasionally pausing to check out some new product. In France I am completely stymied when I get into the grocery store. I have to look at Every Single Product. First, I don’t know where anything is. Second, I don’t recognize any of the brand names! I wanted to buy some yogurt, and found myself staring at this huge wall of yogurt for a good 10 minutes, trying to discern the differences between yogurt nature, brassé, grec, demi-ecreme … Same thing with milk – does demi-ecreme mean 1% milk? Is there skim milk? Why is all of the milk in a box and not in a refridgerated case? And the eggs, they’re right on the shelf too! Does that mean they’re regular eggs, or were they specially treated? When I finally got to the checkout, all of my produce purchases were denied because I didn’t weigh and price them myself back in the produce section. I guess I’ll survive on frozen vegetables for a few days…