live from paris

hi livejournal. how are you? it's been quite a while.

although i haven't been writing, i have been reading. a lot of the folks i liked to read had stopped writing, but now they've come back (pete, erin, phrawzty,) so again i feel somewhat of an urge to be part of this strange little community.

i just returned from a week long roadtrip to the center of europe. here was our itinerary:

day 1: paris - strasbourg (nice stop for lunch and a stroll) - karlsruhe (where we spent the night with frank, a friend of one of our co-pilots.)

day 2: karlsruhe - cheimsee (a nice stop along a mountain lake for a stroll) - wilhelmsburg, austria (a tiny town amongst tiny towns)

day 3 and 4: austrian wedding! celebrating the matrimony of christoph and maria, friends séb met when he was interning at british telecom in england a few years ago.

day 5: wilhelmsburg - brno, czech republic, by way of tiny villages for things like wine tasting and castle visiting. did you know the ottomans made it all the way to czech? photos of the monastir to come.

day 6: brno - nuremberg, for another stroll and a sleepover in a hostel. had nuremberger sausages with michael, another british telecom contact, followed by drinks at the kontiki bar! (wow, who'd a thunk such a detailedly decorated tiki bar in nuremberg since 1978...)

day 7: 8 hour drive back to paris. lunch in metz, which is not surprisingly small, but cute.

photos on flickr soon.

i really want it to be november 5th already. all week i have felt all of the post-traumatic stress from election day 2004 come rolling back, and not only is it stressing me out but it's also having this weird homesick effect on me.

i miss halloween, candy corn, beautifully colored trees, and late night with david letterman.

let this just be over soon and pray to the dear agnostic lord that it all turns out OK.

my thoughts on a wednesday night at 11pm

is now really the time to buy? should we wait another 6 months to see what happens to the market? would i just tell myself the same thing if we did wait 6 months?
even though it is nice, do i really want to commit myself to living in a 7th floor walkup?
i wish maria had just found a new job in france, rather than gone back to boston for a ridiculous promotion in finance that she now regrets.
my apartment is a pigsty but i have no energy to clean it.
this apartment hunting is costing us a lot of money because we end up walking around in the neighborhoods afterwards and eating dinner in a restaurant.
democrats abroad. bof, quoi.
coup de coeur is a dangerous thing. but it has a balcony! and a nice view!


vivement le weekend.

the city is slowly rolling back to its normal pace. the horse-drawn carriage that turns into a pumpkin in august is back in action. the 5-speed bicycle of august has turned back into a 12-speed. the bears and bees are coming out of hibernation, and little by little my social calendar is filling back up again.

it's always a bit sad, paris in late august / early september. the naive calm of the city loses its virginity once again. the butcher, the baker, perhaps even the candlestick maker re-open up shop.

the feeling i have during my morning metro ride that i am slightly underdressed, surrounded by shiny suits and matching jewlery sets, is reborn.

the construction workers go back to wherever it is they came from. the students return with their noise and purposefully messy hair.

la rentrée in full force, and by the end of july next year, we'll have forgotten how peaceful this august calm has been. delightfully surprising once more it will be, all the more reason why it's so magical to begin with.

So, what are you doing in this country?
Do you like it here?
Don't you miss home? Your family and friends?
Wait, you're American? How'd you learn how to speak French so well?

Do you constantly get asked these same questions in your country of residence? Does it annoy the hell out of you? I'm wondering if it is just specific to the country I live in (France) and to the way they treat foreigners, or if this is a universal thing that expats all over the world go through.

I didn't mind answering them when I was a student. In fact, it seemed pretty normal to be asked that kind of stuff. But after three years of living here, I am so fed up with being asked these same questions everytime I meet someone new. In fact, whether or not a new person asks me these questions tends to have an effect on whether or not they make a good impression on me. I guess it's also the way they ask them - sometimes I get the vibe that my interlocutor thinks it's weird that an American would have chosen to live in their country, but other times it's out of sheer curiosity and desire to learn about other places.

Anyway, what do you think? Are there other questions that those of you in other countries get asked every single time you meet someone? How do you feel about it?

x-posted to francophiles, expats, and americansabroad

last weekend, i did this:



and had a great time in the countryside with 25 peers to celebrate the impending marriage of aurélie and greg.


this weekend, we are going here:



and i can't fucking wait to spend 4 days in my second favorite european country, basking in the sun and gobbling up the tapas.

hooray for the ponts! (for more information, see here)

i am celebrating may day by hanging around my apartment alone in my pajamas until as long as i can bear. séb brought a couple friends up to normandy last night, they will be returning tonight, but i elected to stay in paris so that i can attend my yoga class this evening. it is customary in france to offer people sprigs of lily of the valley on the 1st of may, thanks to king charles IX (according to wikipedia.) last night before leaving, my sweetheart picked up a sprig to leave for me and with it a short note wishing me a happy 1st of may :)

i am sort of getting things done though - i am uploading some pictures to flickr and trying to get up the courage to do some writing later. i also might go to the cinéma or to a museum... we'll see.

last weekend i went to lovely bruges with mariah, it was great. there are more pictures on my flickr page (click the photo):

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL:


MLLE JENNIFER LARSEN HAS A RENDEZ-VOUS AT THE PREFECTURE DE POLICE DE PARIS

LE LUNDI 7 JUILLET 14H30

IL FAUT QUE M. SEBASTIEN DECHAMPS SOIT PRESENT

BECAUSE THE CHANGEMENT DE CARTE DE SEJOUR IS DEPENDENT UPON THEIR HAPPY LOVING RELATIONSHIP TOGETHER.



i gonna be dancing in the métro today. my days at the status quo are now numbered.

two or three times over the last week i have opened up this page. opened up this "post an entry" page. i start writing something either fueled by boredom or by negative emotions. after a paragraph or so i realize that the words are uninteresting and meaningless and i close the window.

so lets try this again.

there are some fairly new interesting things going on, i have started my first real translation. it is for a friend, i probably won't be paid very much for it, but it is the first time that i'm really translating something. it seems to be good practice, i like doing it, and perhaps this will lead to real translation work in the future! the actual text is a report about the state of the archives at the Palais Benedicinte in Fécamp, the friend is a woman i gave a couple of private lessons to last year and then became friends with. she works as an art historian / archivist / professor, at various different places, and she's really cool.

another revolutionary addition to my life is my new herb garden. (i have wanted my own herb garden since i was, oh, fifteen?) séb and i bought two window boxes at castorama last week and i have filled one with the likes of parsley, cilantro/coriander, rosemary, and basil. (no, i did not start them from seed - i am way too impatient for that and bought ready-grown plants at monoprix :) we're probably going to put some flowers and a small tree in the other box, séb wants to try to plant a avocado pit and make a tree from it. we'll see what comes of that.

we are at the end of the second of three calm weekends that will be spent in paris. after next weekend, i will be going to: 1) lille and belgium with mariah, one of my bestest pals. 2) picardie, rural region north of paris, for a weekend-long bachelor/bachelorette party. 3)barcelona! with the love of my life <3 and 4)to lille for the wedding of the people we're having a party for in #2. should be alcoholic and fun.

heres to (still) trying to re-make lj more of a regular thing in my life.

happy uneventful saint patrick's day from france! the kind of day where i write 17/03/2008 and don't even realize right away that it is saint patrick's day.

(and hey wait a minute... i just realized right NOW that it is billy corgan's 41st birthday. i guess that goes to show how invested i am in him at the moment.)

this weekend i learned how to ski. the event was not short of tears, a bruise, and many thwarted crashes into the snow, but i escaped any major form of injury. the thing is - i don't think it was fun at all. maybe it's just because i didn't really know what i was doing, but the whole thing felt like a battle with speed - i didn't want to go too fast because it was scary. i tried to control my speed, but when i wasn't able to i'd purposely crash my body into the snow to avoid dangerous speeds + injury.

overall, though, it was a great alpine weekend including good times with séb's high school buddies, delicious tartiflette, and the lovely mountainous scenery.

other exciting things right now are that i have a new student who works at the sénat (as in, like, the french national senate who meet in this impressive building.) he's not actually a senator, but the assistant to one. annoying things about it are that i have to fill out a security clearance form everytime i go, and then i have to go under a tunnel across the street and up to the fifth floor, so if i want to get to the guy's office on time i need to arrive 5-10 minutes early. awesome things about it are that it's the senate and i feel so elite going there to teach a class.

also, i joined a writing group which meets on wednesday nights. i guess it is technically a "class" because there is a woman who runs/teaches and i did pay money to join, but it feels somewhere in-between a group and a class. we met for the first time last week, and it was the best feeling in the world to sit around with a bunch of people and discuss a text together. that probably sounds DUMB to most of you but i was in my hayday. i can't wait for wednesday night.

this weekend will be overeating and relaxing in normandy with family for a nonreligious easter celebration (basically, hanging out, playing boardgames, and eating.) should be a good time.