transitions.

So…I haven’t put up a blog post since the middle of november OCTOBER.
Oops?
I’m back in the states now, by the way.
Not that I didn’t do anything between then and december…

Quite the opposite.

I helped a friend through a difficult break-up (if such a thing is possible,
that is; does one ever really “get over” someone?), went to some museums, had a
brief scary incident with a nicely-dressed but tempermental frenchman, had more
awkward/unwilling sex/dating talks with the french fam, saw movies with good
friends, did christmas shopping, ate churros, went ice skating, saw a play, took
some intense exams, rode on a giant elephant machine thing that runs on
hydraulics, performed in a play (in french, yes), read books (french and
english)…in short, life happened.

And that was BEFORE I went to paris.
Whew.
My aunt monique lives a little ways outside the city limits, and most of the
week I was there I took the train into the city and did whatever I wanted to do.
By myself. It was great. With the loads of snow that arrived on day 2 (rare for
paris) that was a bit limited, but hey, Paris!
I did museums, mainly. Music, the arab world, modern art…I’m a nerd, and it
was awesome. I also explored the majority of the ginormous Pere Lachaise
cemetery, making a friend in the process, and finally got to the inside of the
palace at Versailles (last year, I only saw part of the gardens outside).

And then, suddenly, I was on a plane headed home. Strange. I’m still getting
used to this country that speaks english and depends so heavily on both the car
and fast-food (I’m now convinced that the new burger king cupholder-shaped fry
cartons are both ingenious and deadly), and I suspect it will take perhaps as
long to readjust as it did to adjust to france…which I never fully did in the
first place. I think I’m “doomed” to forever be between 2 cultures, and honestly
I’m okay with this. It’s who I am. I’d already explored this concept in a poem I
wrote for a class last year, and now I believe in it more strongly than ever.
I also suspect that not all the effects/consequences/repercussions of this
semester abroad will be immediately evident, and that it will be one of those
life events I’ll look back on when I’m older as being something formative. I’d
like to know what my other friends who’ve done study abroad think about this.
Right now, most of the changes in me feel superficial. For example, a meal
without bread and then cheese following the entree is missing two crucial
elements. I have now fully embraced both straight-leg and skinny jeans. And I
resent the car-centric nature of transportation here (with the exception of new
york and to an extent chicago, DC, yes, I know).

But I am so ready to see my t-town people again. I expect shrieking from certain
people, and hugs from all. Having a good phone again has been a lifesaver this
nearly 2 weeks, but I’ve always been “quality time” focused, and texts can only
fill so much of that 4-month long hole I had.

So, with that, the “rachel went to france” blog has come to a close. By no means
will it end–france will always be in my heart–but where my life takes me is
the next journey. Before I get too existential, I bid those who have followed my
wee adventure a sort of farewell and hello. I’ll see some of you very soon.

P.S.: i totally typed this whole thing out on my blackberry while i was on the road. my thumbs were a bit sore afterwards.

Rachel

never stick your knife in the jam.

hellooooooooooo readers!

this week, my blog is coming straight from my journal. i had a four-page spurt on saturday that i think is actually fit for public consumption. well, that sounds presumptuous, but whatevs.

since it’s coming from a place that is usually just for my eyes, i rambled…about a few different subjects. france is in there too, i promise, but i’m going to try and edit as little as possible. in this aspect, i hope to preserve the stream-of-consciousness style that i somehow did without trying. i will italicize things that didn’t add up to complete thoughts, or things that sound like the first draft of a poem.

[end of explanation. start of rachel-thought.]

sometimes, like now, i feel like english words will erupt from me like a foul foreign vomit, and that i must do something, anything, to get them out or get them to fade. it’s strange.

i do like it here, but at the house i feel like every move is nearly calculated, but never quite reaching a whole number. i am a remainder of something, a .”33 repeating,” much messier than the deceiving simplicity of “one-thirds.” i take to some french things easily, adding some white to my violet to lessen the effect of rachel. other times it is not enough and i’m still washed-out and country-less.

i feel like i have utterly changed from holding french like a sort of gift to that part of my brain, precious pearls i will wear with my heels to make a delicious roast in my kitchen, to an anglophile once more, staunch, c.s. lewis the ghostly high king and epperson his willing prime minister. i do not know how to fix this and feel infinitely lucky to be here, especially with all the issues with paperwork, money, long-stay visa…i will only fully appreciate it when i am far away, when i have left behind two more pointless crushes in this country and attempt to carry only experiences in my heart, not any boys.

i am moving and still, on an airport sidewalk that takes me past different people but to the same place each time…

why am i not happier? rare are the times when i wake and praise God for being in this country that i do not love any less than i did before, but differently, and with a certain power that’s overcome the initial charm. i feel the weight of centuries. each rock looks ancient, and anything related to my true personality, spontaneous, free, young, happy, silly, feels misplaced somehow.

i am less french and more so. unexplainable in the slightest. i reach for big familiars since i must change small particulars into big unfamiliars.

measured, as if each step will make bread, and one extra will burn down the kitchen.

i feel like i’ve kept procrastinating something i don’t know how to do. i need a class to write with inspiration, while i never pledge such a thing while actually taking such a class. i pride myself on a few select pieces and reject the rest as evidence of youth and the lack of talent i surely have. evidence of something inevident. i have too many thoughts to do anything else, but i must learn, put off, surely i am mediocre at best…

and boys. to admit anything on paper feels like a defeat, and yet without some sort of XY-chromosome related problem i wouldn’t fully be rachel…again.

maybe this is what is called an existential crisis. i don’t know how much of myself is american, how much is young, how much is evidently/constantly battling some sort of shallow love, and how much is the lovable rachel that i can keep. i’ve thought that i know myself, and this is why i know certain things would be “bad for me.” but this? i do not know the answer. i’m supposed to grow up, become serious, learn wife things like cooking and house chores, get a job and be productive…but i find the state of my heart and soul more important than a lot of other things. really. i don’t know why i just realized this, or why it feels so important. feels. everything feels. i’m not bipolar, or at least not dangerously so, but this world is such an onslaught on the heart and soul, i am sure. and at once delightfully fulfilling.

push and pull, push and pull…

i’m twenty years old. most everyone’s parents, mine included, had kids in their twenties. the idea that i will leave this decade with a husband and at least one half-rachel, half-unknown child…hell, even five years from now…it feels as impossible as the simple fact that a sun lightyears away gives this earth life and light, thanks to a God who prearranged everything with His perfect, delicate hands.

how has it occurred that this little heart of mine has felt emotions so strong as a young girl?
how is it that i am content and not content at all to be alone/not alone (well, not really in the true sense of the word, i know) and cry at songs because of past associations and people and a ltitle heart that just wants to be loved?
how is it that i find it much more dangerous to fall for (boy 1) and (boy 2) with this little heart of mine than to engage in “worldly” activities?

love: true. something true. literary and magnificent. a love musical, not of the perfectly harmonized, but messy, always in progress, never finished, nevertheless the most beautiful sound that exists. yes. delicate bare-bones piano melodies. sweeping grandiose symphonies. simplistic intimate guitar. oceanic sound of rock with the undercurrent of passion.

[so there it is. raw rachel. comment if you will.]

oh, by the way: never stick your knife in the jam. only a spoon. if you dare to put a knife in, this is a near-capital offense and you will feel stupid for ever being nonchalant in your selection of utensils to use for your half-awake morning toast.

j’ecueute les haricots verts.

*(see note at the bottom for the title explanation)

hello, faithful (i hope) readers, and welcome to week 4 of rachel’s france updates!
in this installment, i will simply relay anything interesting i did this week.

ready?
you suuuuuuure?
okay let’s go!

last sunday, i had my second week at l’Eglise Amour Foi Esperance. apparently i missed the memo that it was baptismal sunday? two twenty-somethings got baptized, but not until they told their conversion stories and there was much applause and love from the church. for a tiny church, they (we?) sure are a “full of the joy of the Lord” bunch! it’s amazing. after each one was baptized, we sang a song, and there was a line of people to hug the soaking-wet girl/guy. oh, and i may have forgotten to mention that we take communion every week. and it’s still grape juice, lol.

monday, i went on a little shopping excursion to a huge CD/video games/DVD/bookstore called Fnac (pronounced, well, like fuh-nack. who knew?). i spent my money wisely, even though, in typical rachel fashion, i was going gaga over the fiction section and the books-in-english section of the bookstore section, and running to the little “listen to the CD before you buy it” station every 10 minutes in the music section. i ended up with a 100 song compilation of piano music, a tiny french dictionary of my own (because a) the one i’m borrowing from patrick and zabeth is HUGE, and b) it’s nearly impossible to buy one in the u.s. that isn’t french-english/english-french), and a french translation of pablo’s (neruda, in case you, um, don’t know me that well) 100 love sonnets. all was well until i waited to get home to check my receipt. turns out i’d been charged twice for that CD compilation. oops. how was i supposed to prove that i only bought ONE?
now, i know it’s generally a good shopping practice to check the receipt before you leave the store, but it’s one that i’d forgotten until then.

tuesday, i had my theater class. it’s probably my favorite class, as i usually lol enough for the entire week in those four hours (2 on tuesday, 2 on friday), due to hilarious exercises in which we, for example, express a strong emotion without speaking, repeat tongue-twisters together, or walk like an animal of our choosing. this week, a french boy participated in our class.
“rachel,” you say, “you’re in france. of COURSE there are french boys in your classes!” well, you’d be wrong. my program is just for “foreigners” learning french, so the presence of a native french speaker is, yes, unusual. i’m not gonna lie, he was GORGEOUS. i wanted to do a stereotypical “oh la la!”…but i restrained myself.
i also went back to Fnac and successfully got back my 10 euros i was overcharged without a problem. i always run into the nicest people .

wednesday, i had a rather humbling lesson on french politeness. the previous day, a friend of zabeth’s had come over with a child she was babysitting (perhaps her grandson), and they were talking when i came back from class. i neglected to say hello, and just plopped down and started making faces at the adorable baby. this was addressed at dinner, along with the fact that i’d been neglecting to ask how patrick and zabeth’s day had gone while i was at class/out having adventures. oops. i keep forgetting that the french place a bigger emphasis on politeness, and that it really matters if you neglect the subtle rules that govern it. oy. since then, this has been rectified. i realized i’d been having difficulties before because of my own inherent awkwardness of just being looked at when i come home, and THEN i realized they were looking at me because i WASN’T saying anything. oops.

thursday, besides being the longest day ever (well, it’s that way every week), was perked up in the middle by a nice lunch downtown. my new friend from church, liz, is an american who moved here 30 years ago from seattle for “a number of reasons” and has been here every since. she helps lead worship every few weeks. we had lunch, along with her friend (whose name i’ve forgotten) at a tiny cafe run by an american woman. you can (and are in fact supposed to) order in english! yay! (if you’re ever in the area, it’s called The Black and White Cafe) i had a chicken-and-fresh-mozzarella sandwich and APPLE PIE. like, the way americans make it HOMEMADE. ahhhhh. i’m going back just for pie. srsly.

friday was uneventful and nice. after my morning class (theater again), i came back for lunch, etc. fridays are also grocery-shopping days. today i went searching for another interesting magazine, which i found in Rock & Folk. apparently it’s a standard for music here and has been around since at least the 60′s! not gonna lie, the biggest selling point is that it included a music compilation (dead weather, yeah yeah yeahs, passion pit, wilco, the love me nots, and many other good tunes). i also finished my second Jonathan Safron Foer book, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close…and wow. i almost cried. it was moving and hilarious, i highly recommend it. this was a good and bad decision. good because i can’t think of anything i’d rather do on a nice friday afternoon than read. bad because i didn’t/don’t have another book to read afterwards. my aunt has a veritable library, but they’re all in french, and i’m not quite brave enough to attempt one of those yet. tomorrow i’ll hit the library before class, they have a good collection of novels in english.

annnnnnnd yesterday i had my first “night outing.” my new friend brigit and i saw District 9 (in english with french subtitles) and then hit mcdonalds. we had our own little america, briefly, until i looked down at my sprite-without-ice, out the window at the half-dozen kebab places nearby, and over my shoulder at the tight-knit little groups of french teens eating. but the music was kelly clarkson/eric hutchinson/etc, so it was a bit surreal.

today i had church (which was WOW, a guy from ethiopia spoke, really made me think), and went apple-picking with the fam (in my skinny jeans, because that’s how cool i am). i managed to convince them to buy pears too. yay!

*title: “ecueuter” [uh-kuh-tay] is a french verb specifically used for taking the ends off of fresh green beans (les haricots verts [layz-harry-coh-vair]). there is no equivalent in english that is just one word and not general like “remove” and i spent upwards of half an hour confirming this to the fam, because they were convinced that there was an english equivalent. no, there is not. “j’ecueute les haricots verts” is a lot simpler than saying “i’m removing the end stalk thingys from the green beans.” alas, english quasi-fails in this case.

oh la vache!

salut, all.

today i went to my first church service in france.

first of all, let me explain how i went about finding a church to go to. my grandma sent me some sort of list she found of churches near here (by france’s version of the ZIP code). i looked at this list, and, i’m not kidding, picked one because it had the best name. most of them are just “eglise” (church) + denomination + location of some kind. i picked one called Eglise Amour Foi Esperance, or, roughly, Church Faith Hope and Love (well, technically “love, faith, and hope,” but the other way sounds better in english). forget that whole “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” thing.

so, after a few emails back and forth with the pastor’s wife and a few phone calls to a young man who goes to figure out how to get there (ligne 2 direction Marcel Paul, arret Longchamp, if you’re ever in nantes), i set off this morning for Eglise Amour Foi Esperance. aside from the fact that on sunday there are a lot fewer trams and busses going various places, getting there went off without a hitch. i arrived at the proper stop, took a look around at the addresses around me, and walked in the correct direction until i ran into the same young man who helped me figure out how to get there, Nicolas, who prevented me from getting lost. see, the church is so small it’s in a back building with no sign.

the church itself takes place in a room of inauspicious size, and there can’t have been more than 30 people there total. BUT a church’s size is no indication of how present God is. the worship leader is a woman who moved here from the united states around 30 years ago from Seattle, and the worship is happy and ALIVE. i haven’t yet figured out if the woman who spoke today is the pastor’s wife or the regular pastor, but whatevs. the message was good, the worship was good (started out with a french translation of “blessed be your name”) and i’ll definitely be going back.

only problem:
nicolas is VERY attractive in a number of ways. i don’t know how old he is, but 1) he’s really nice. 2) he’s good with his mom, 3) this is gonna sound corny, but i can see that, like most or all of this church, he has the joy of the Lord, 4) he ran the soundboard, therefore he is at least a wee bit nerdy, and 5) OMG he’s PHYSICALLY attractive. face, eyes, oh la la.
this is bad. i am not here to get a “petit ami” (boyfriend), nor do i want to continue my bad crush habit (see: almost any other old post on here) while in france. i’m here for STUDYING, learning the little things about french culture, being french, and gaining some new friends along the way. plus, i promised everyone back home that i wouldn’t come back married…because i’ve heard stories of those who get married in france, they don’t ever leave again. and i’ve got 1.5 years after this semester of schooling (at least, if i don’t continue with a master’s program) before i will allow myself some ridiculous thought like that. plus, you know, he might already have a girlfriend. there’s always that.

i’ve had odd instances of a very tangible loneliness while here. it’s usually for a specific person who shall remain nameless, but it’s also me going into withdrawal for lack of hugs. the french are a bit odd in this respect. they seem to have no personal bubble, there’s that cheek kiss thing (“la bise”) and i’ve often observed young couples making out and practically (or actually) groping each other at tram or bus stops…but there is a distinct lack in hugs. cultural difference, i’m sure, but one of my love languages is definitely physical touch, and right now i really want hugs all the time. and cuddling. when i go to bed, all i want to do is cuddle someone, and this is a weird and new feeling. not that i’ve cuddled much ever, but now i want to. meh.

classes have started. i’ll be logging the most hours in my written french course (it’s 7 credit hours, oh la vache), but school will be weird otherwise as well. i have only 1 morning class on mondays and fridays (but they’re each 1.5 and 2 hours respectively) and get to go home for the rest of the day after that. i start at a different time each day. i’m a commuter. the school is ginormous (like, the size of a state school. for those of you that are unaware, my school at home has a little over 5K currently). there are 4 different places to eat lunch on campus…and so on.

well, i’m done rambling for this week. direct any pertinent questions to the comments.

[by the way, "oh la vache" techically means "oh the cow!" but it's used as a kind of expression for "Wow!"]