un vrai bordel

Hi there, blog.

It’s been three weeks since the somewhat temperamental days of London. Dragging my slightly worn-out oxfords all over, way too tired to be touristy but still so hesitant to relinquish the last days of Europe and backpacking. Home, needless to say, was a long time coming.

I held off on blogging when I first got home because I didn’t quite know how to put everything into words, without leaving something out. Also, I really, really needed to veg out, the kind of peace and calm on 6-hour train rides through some German countryside is surprisingly hard to replicate. Also, I really needed to catch up with some important people in my life. Also, I really reaaally needed to find a job… instead I found an unpaid internship. Also, I really needed to bathe.

Some days, Paris feels so far away. Paris, being the conglomerate whole of exchange life, my wonderful-eclectic-energetic-alcoholic-intelligent friends and all our shenanigans, Sciences Po, the sound of French and the city itself – streets, shops, people, culture, food, wine and monuments. It’s remarkable how a word, or city that used to have such an insignificant meaning, can now embody so many different things, all at once. One day we’ll all be back at the Jardin du Luxembourg to recreate such a romanticized time in our lives.

Some days, home feels so irrevocably routine like, and as I slip back into routine it’s like my days carrying life in a 60L backpack didn’t even happen. Not that I’m complaining about the glorious Vancouver summer that we’ve been basking in lately. I’m welcoming all the leisure (read: unemployment). Lessons from exchange – if I’m not going to be spending my time sipping tiny cups of espresso on a sunny terrace, or drinking wine with friends by Monet’s house in outdoor gardens – I better at least be doing work that I love. So, goodbye workaholic days of mindless double shifts setting tables. Life’s too short.

At some point during exchange I realized that I had it all wrong. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. I think we often have this mentality of I want to figure out myself first, I want to see the world first, I want to know what I want, first. But traveling to “find yourself” is right up there with “roses are red, violets are blue” as an overused, sometimes nausea-inducing cliché. I mean, when does this learning end? When does one stop taking in everything and changing and growing and making mistakes? Is there really one day when I’ll wake up and finally be a wholesome, put together person, and what does that even mean? Change, learning, and growth are constant in life, aren’t they?

So anyway, what I’m trying to say, is that I’m actually pretty stoked to embrace fourth-year-UBC campus life come September. Exchange feels like a world away, but then there are these trucs that will arise in my day and remind me, like, oh yeah, there’s a reason that home feels slightly off-beat. Change is such a strange thing. I’m even excited to nerd it out and write a lot of papers when school rolls around…

… but in the mean time I’m perfectly content to spend all my time like this:

Or maybe with a bottle of red at the beach.

 

Hey, I put some new shoes on

Well, traveling shoes, to be exact.

It’s been nearly 20 days since i bid farewell to friends, Paris, and a permanent address. I’m currently on a train to Berlin and can’t help thinking how I’ve kind of gotten better at this backpacking thing.

As stupid as it sounds, I definitely didn’t think a whole lot about the backpack aspect of backpacking when I was trip planning. I took into account the trains, planes, and hostels. I looked into sightseeing, museums, eating and drinking. As for lugging around a 60 litre backpack (which is about the size of a fairly large child)? Yeah, it’s no big deal. I’ll manage.

I’m happy to report, however, that my backpack and I are on good terms now. We’ve reached happy medium: it now sits nicely on my back without killing me and I stop buying it books or kicking it around. We’ve come a long way since the days of “backpacking???? Whose brilliant idea was it!?!?”

This has been the longest that I’ve traveled without returning to some form of “home”.. I’m feeling quite nomadic. It’s exciting not knowing what the next destination is going to offer but also a little worrying not knowing how great the next shower will be. The pace of this trip has me accidentally saying gracias where I should be saying dankeshun… Not that I’m really proficient in either languages.

This train ride has been all red roofed little German towns nestled green hills. Train travel is really the most leisurely kind of travel. Between sightseeing, getting lost in markets, running from unexpected downpour, soaking in history, attempting to decipher art, quests (quite literally) for local cuisine, and nights fading effortlessly to morning, downtime has been lacking. Writing time, obviously, has been non existent.

I’ve London, Marseille and Aix En Provence, Barcelona, Madrid, Frankfurt and now Berlin under my belt and way too many mental notes of places to return to or at a later date, write about.

I’m Munich bound where I’m fairly sure I’ll spend the entire two and a half days with glass in hand catching up with C. One more month til home! So incredibly excited about my bed but can barely fathom the idea, at the same time!

#sentimentalpost

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

 

leaving Paris this morning — after staying up all night talking to C, a really cold shower, a few sips of tea and  a stressful check-in at Gare du Nord for the Eurostar — felt like heartbreak.

the waterworks really started Saturday night. It’s been a beyond busy month and the last couple of weeks have been thoroughly exhausting. From daytrips to parents to exams to late nights to Morocco to friends visiting, I can’t really remember the last time I slept properly or did nothing properly. But these last couple of weeks have also been filled with those moments, nothing short of incredible,  whether for their simplicity or their grandeur. Sitting on pedestrian streets, struggling to translate French menus and having two hours dinner with my parents. Nights sitting at windows with A, with friends celebrating inside, and Paris just outside. Waiting for stars on sand dunes with J, and then waking up to tea, bread, and 6am desert sunrise. And then Saturday night, celebrating twenty one with a few baguettes, a bit of cheese, a lot of wine and the most amazing, surreal sunset at Champ de Mars…

Everyone says exchange is amazing, exchange is the time of your life, exchange changes you, but even hearing it thousands of times doesn’t truly convey the experience. We take the everyday for granted when they’re routine, but having only four month and an entire city (the city of Paris, en fait), an entire continent, and an entire world of people to discover puts you in a completely different state of mind. Exchange forces you to live each day to the fullest, because there’s no time, because goodbyes are always looming. Exchange makes you appreciate the people who walk into your life, of the impressions their brief time can leave, because saying goodbye means letting people know just how much they mean to you.

That, or I’ve just been an incredibly lucky person to have experienced all this. Up until this week I had lived in Paris for four and a half months without seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, without going to Arc de Triomphe, without going to the top of the Notre Dame. In the end, despite the rush and the stress, it really didn’t even matter anymore.

It’s funny, whenever I leave Vancouver the first thing I do when I land and am able to get online is scramble to contact everyone from home. Now that I’ve left Paris I can’t help but rejoice at wifi and bbm all the Paris contacts, too. Vancouver is home, Dalian feels like home in a completely different way, and I am actually positive that I’ll return to Paris the next time I get a chance to come to Europe. Well actually, I do have two hours on Saturday that I’ll spend on a smelling metro from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon.

The idea of living out of a backpack for the next 50 days is every bit as exciting as it is daunting. I’m looking forward to the calm of train rides, and a little bit weary of the scorching sun. I’m looking forward to reunions and my back is already sore from the first leg of the trip. I am actually a little bit afraid of homesickness, Vancouver homesick and Paris withdrawals…

This post is beyond sappy and would probably generate pretty different reactions from a handful of people. I don’t know why but I don’t even remember the last time I cried so much. Goodbyes have never been so climatic, over and over again.

le plus important, c’est de vivre

la plupart des gens se contente d’exister.

April flew by.

I wouldn’t say April was a blur, because that doesn’t quite express just how quickly it went by. April was a whirlwind, a frenzy. April was rejoicing every weekend for the long weekends that they were, toasting on thursday nights and lying in the uncharacteristic hot hot sun on monday afternoons. April was a lot of sponteneity, owning the streets of Paris by night — Paris is, afterall, so different at night, and April was so, so many sunny mornings spent with C, laughing at incredulity and at each other and eating crudité poulets. In April, my grades may have suffered a little, but French became easier to roll off the tongue. April had an anthem.

It’s the last weekend of April and it’s kind of looking like a quiet one. It’s raining in Paris and a lot of my friends have packed their bags for the royal wedding in London — I seem to be the only one who could care less about it — or are en route to Queen’s day in Amsterdam.

The roomie and I were talking one night about exchange, about goals, and about living in the moment. Because according to my dented, veteran lululemon water bottle, living in the moment could be the meaning of life… but at the same time,  truly living in the moment means not reflecting on the past or thinking ahead — which, really, is not a sustainable kind of living. May is coming and I have a solid month until the next time I pack my bags, I think it’s probably time to read and reflect and write my postcards. I’m wondering if May will be more grounded, if it’s even my choice to be more grounded.

Also, I’m turning 21 soon (!!!!!!!). Time never seems to slow down, I remember May last year like it was yesterday — it’s only twenty or so posts ago on this blog. I’m not sure if I’ll realize how little or how much I’ve grown or changed until I’m back at the starting point of this whole “year off”… but knowing that I’ve at least made the most of my time is good enough for now!

“I’m not sure of anything in life, I’m not even sure if I’m alive”

(musée d’Orsay on a rainy sunday morning)

Saturday night at Pont des Arts, while the wind was blowing in our faces and I was noting the glittering seine between the cracks of the wooden bridge, G said something along the lines of, hey, this is pretty much the end of our semester…. Which of course, is not actually true. We still have about a month to go plus some finals, but it’s starting to feel like we’re approaching the end, with plane tickets being booked, and travel plans being finalized, and all.

The thing with traveling is that, as stupid and obvious as it sounds, it allows you to see “life” manifest itself in so many forms. Of course we all know that people live on the mediterranean lemon trails, the Aran Islands, or obviously overcrowded and polluted cities… but it’s something else altogether to see it I think. And it kind of takes you out of the little bubble of your own, veers off the straight, tunnel vision, achieve-achieve-achieve kind of path.

For the first month and a half I had trouble grasping the concept of “next year”. In an attempt to deal with and adapt to life in Paris it was pretty necessary to put Vancouver in another place in my mind altogether. Now that this exchange is, well, sort of approaching the end (or as I’d like to call it, a little past midway), I feel like I should start planning my life again or something. Write lists and submit applications and seek opportunities and all that so I’m not lagging behind when I get home, I suppose… But at the same time it feels so counter intuitive. Maybe I’m in that gap-year mode, or maybe I’m being lazy, but I am maybe more than usual, kind of uncertain about what I want to do… rethinking my somewhat planned out life, because my Vancouver-life bubble kind of disintegrated sometime this year.

Yeah, yeah, I know, join the club. Since we come from so many different places, soirées in Paris somehow, sometimes turn into late night conversations about life and culture and politics and just everything in all the countries we live, or have lived in. We definitely compared happiness one time. M told me on another occasion that some African village where people lived on a few dollars a day was where people were the happiest in the world. (I have no idea if this is true statistically, but hey, measuring happiness itself is a pretty subjective thing). In the end, we just want to be happy, right? Sometimes I think I would be perfectly content living the rest of my life just married to a French baker and living in his boulangerie with my macbook so I could write.

We plan and plan and plan but you know what they say about the best laid plans. (Even if you didn’t actually read Of Mice and Men, you should know this one). Or better yet, to quote V, when asked if she is sure: “I’m not sure of anything in life, I’m not even sure if I’m alive.”

And oh yeah, on a completely unrelated note, I’ll sign off with a few pictures from probably one of the best Paris-weekends thus far, until we got to the end and I crashed with fatigue!

we ended nuit blanche at trocadéro at sunrise

spring means strawberries. bought some and proceeded to eat them by the seine.

home for now!

Tout a commencé là, quand mon avion a décollé

It’s la semaine du cinéma at Sciences Po this week so L, A and I went to a conference after class — “Le cinéma français, dernier bastion européen face à l’hégémonie américaine?” On account of being too hungry (didn’t have a baguette sandwich today) I retained very little from the panel… except that something like over 300 different movies are played in Paris each week. (I could swear I heard 500+ but google tells me 300). The mere, what, 20? 50 maybe? that’s played in Vancouver makes me depressed. There are so many tiny little theatres in my area playing movies I am either not pop-culturally inclined enough to know or that are too obscure for anyone to know…

Anyway, the constant go-go-go-go-go that has been my life since spring break has finally slowed down a little. You don’t realize how stressed you are until you relax, you know? Even picnicking last week was more along the lines of yeah! let’s picnic! okay! done eating! have to write my paper! have to soak up the sun! okay! on to the vélib!

I finally watched L’Auberge Espagnol which I was told to watch before exchange started and now it’s making me prematurely depressed about it ending. Of course I would be nostalgic about something before it even ends… sometimes I forget that exchange life isn’t real and Paris life isn’t permanent and traveling isn’t the alternative to paper writing on weekends. It’s a feeling of enormous freedom.

So anyway. What I’m trying to say is that il faut vraiment profiter. I am thinking in half English and half French today which is weirding me out. I apologize in advance to friends reading this who will have to deal with my post-exchange withdrawal next year, especially R and J who will also have to come home and feed me regularly because I will be broke and starving otherwise. I’m going to miss this a lot… Even the way French people say “euhhh” and “ohh la la” and stare at you funny if you’re laughing too loud.

#CoolThingsAboutExchange

1. Having a discussion about the situation for muslims in India, talking about it as though we were actually knowledgeable about something. Then having a guy put up his hand and say, “hey, I’m from India, and that’s totally not the case at all.”

2. Finding out that despite living on opposite sides of the globe, I have remarkable similarities from personality to values to favorite bands with someone. And subsequently getting invited to stay in houses ranging from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Montreal Canada.

3. Deciding to walk places instead of taking the metro because spring has undeniably arrived in Paris. Go, go, going and then stumbling upon a photo exhibit outside Jardin du Luxembourg. Stop, look, and then finding myself in a chair inside the Jardin, pretending to read my book.

4. Making the Jardin des Tuileries our library, responding with “bonjour” when a waiter said “hello hello hello,” which resulted in him apologizing profusely. Then going into the Louvre to use the bathroom because it was the closest thing.

5. Talking about how St Patricks day reminded us of Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics in the bathroom of some random pub in Dublin. Having the Irish girl come out of the stall tell us that she’s always wanted to, and is finally going to move to Vancouver next year. Then giving her advice of where she should find a place.

6. Having that realization I have each year of “hey, spring is here,” while breaking safety rules for the sake of photos at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. Taking in the much needed green and blue skies. Then, getting way too excited about “cows”, “sheep”, and “horsies” on the ride back to Galway.

7. Picnicking all day, everyday, anywhere, everywhere.

8. Telling people that we go to Sciences Po and getting lots of really, really impressed responses. Little do they know that all we had to do was submit grades and a motivation essay. And having an excuse to be late for class because Kofi Annan, or the president of Palestine, or the President of Guinea was visiting and the entrance to the building was blocked off. (But then somehow never being able to sign up for those talk because they fill up in minutes, not so cool).

This week has definitely proven seriously how terrible I am at juggling Sciences Po work, traveling, and the city of Paris. I spent the last week semi-catching up with school work but trying, en meme temps, to enjoy every bit of the amazing weather. This was my attempt at dusting off my blog a little… I can’t believe I’m already mid-way through exchange! I’m so excited for the summer and traveling ahead but can’t believe that I’ll actually have to leave this place soon!

pizza, limone and the mediterranean

day one in Roma, trying to find lunch and navigate the narrow streets

There is something so fundamentally different between living somewhere new and traveling through it. My first taste of Italy consisted of sightseeing-on-speed, Amalfi coast town hopping, coastal train rides at dusk and very possibly permanently enlarging my stomach. Although the quantity-over-quality approach made it hard to know the depths of a city, being a tourist did justify hopping on a train to Napoli on a pizza eating whim, and running into the Mediterranean in the wee hours of the morning.

day one in Roma at the Castel St Angelo bridge

Day three atop Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompei

Italy was also the first country I’ve visited where I absolutely do not speak the language. I’ve come to realize that my exchange is just as much about living in Paris as it is living in the French language. Language is such an inseparable part of a place, its people, and its culture… I can’t even imagine studying somewhere for four months with zero knowledge of the language. How do you even begin to break into the place?

Day four, exploring the ruins of Pompei

Luckily, Italians are much warmer people than Parisians. Each day that we passed through Salerno, we got blood oranges and vocabulary lessons from the local fruit vendor. (We are now sending him a postcard from Paris). People inquired where we were from at bus stops, bars, and restaurants, and were slightly confused when we answered, “well, everywhere!” An old lady gave us sightseeing tips when we accidentally ended up on her balcony with the amazing view of the Mediterranean.

Day four in Napoli, taking a quick iPhone photo of my pizza margherita before devouring it in ten minutes... and you all know how long it takes for me to eat an apple!

I’m also glad that the amount traveling I did gave me a more varied picture of Italy in all its shapes, sizes, and forms. The magnificent architecture of Rome was so different from the run down town of Pompei and its quiet ruins; and the picturesque Amalfi coast towns from a bustling Napoli whose people can only be described as “baaaadassss” — it is a mafia town, after all. I always learned that Northern Italy was commercial, and the South is poor. But even still, when I think of Italy, it’s automatically connected to Europe, which equates to Developed Country, and brings to mind art, history, and “pretty buildings”. The run down train station at Pompei inhabited by stray dogs was definitely different from my former perceptions.

Day five on the Amalfi Coast, walking the lemon trail between Maiori and Minori

Day five on the Amalfi Coast, walking the lemon trail between Maiori and Minori

Despite my incredible week of warmth of the people, amazing amounts of history, and cheap food (3 euros for a whole pizza!!!) in Italy, I don’t think I could last very long in the country. Taking pride in the sweetness of doing nothing is great when you’re the one doing it, but not so great when you need something done. A guy studying in Rome was telling us how his electricity bill only comes every 6 months, and his stories about the Italian bureaucracy made France sound like administrative paradise! Not to mention, the entire country is pretty much controlled by Berlusconi who is somehow still in power despite the underage prostitute scandals…

We take so many things for granted in Canada, where people are diligent, and “things just work.” I’ll compromise the two-hour afternoon breaks any day!

last day in Roma at St Peters square!

la vie appartient à ceux qui se levent tot

This is the Bibliotheque Sainte-Geneviève. I would have taken a photo myself instead of finding one on flickr, but it really did not seem like the best place to whip out a camera.

Friday morning I dragged myself out of bed relatively early and walked about fifteen minutes from my apartment to this library which happens to be right across from the majestic Place du Pantheon. Of course my GPS gave me the more complicated way to walk, but I did finally pass by the mosque of Paris and the Jardin des Plantes.

I have a feeling I’ll be coming back here. Surrounded by four walls of books, under the high, double arching ceiling, you just can’t help but study. Going on Facebook and commenting on last weekend’s photos would just seem so blasphemous to the air of intellectual enlightenment hovering all around me.

And oh yeah, the fifth arrondissement is easily becoming my favorite place in Paris. The seine is lined with bouquinistes, which is just a fancy french word for stands that sell old books. The fountain St. Michel is surrounded by little streets of crepes, shawarmas, and donair shops. And sipping coffee at the Place de la Sorbonne (which in the summertime is apparently filled with musicians) just epitomizes the latin quarter student life for me. It’s like the French version of idyllic images of students reading by trees on university campuses…

But as we all know, studying is never as idyllic as it seems. I’m just a few days away from being finished a large chunk of this semester’s exposés, and then it’s off to Italy for spring break!! Four nights of our week long trip will be spent in a tiny town on the Amalfi coast… which means minimum English. I was just getting used to the French, and now I have to learn Italian words, whaaaat?

Maybe I’m Amazed

Thursday night, learning French slang and the nuances between “bonne soirée” and “bon nuit” from a friend at a sushi restaurant on Rue Mouffetard, and then rushing home to pay for skydiving online before midnight.

Tuesday night, sitting in C’s living room, sipping on Caipirinhas and comparing cultural differences, entertaining the thought of measuring happiness and laughter yoga. (Yes, I know, what absolutely frivolous subjects for a handful of Sciences Po students).

In the midst of all the black clothing donning, cigarette smoking, aloof Parisiens, I’m beyond grateful that I’ve managed to encounter down to earth individuals with contagious personalities and hysterical laughter to take on the narrow, windy, cobble stone streets.

It’s kind of hard to believe that our semi-spontaneous weekend to St Malo was two whole weeks ago. An hour or so before boarding our train home, the five of us sat at an empty Shawarma restaurant, feeling the fatigue in our bones and reminiscing, probably a tad prematurely, about how relaxing the trip was. We tried to pinpoint what it is about Paris that made us not-so-warm-and-fuzzy. Paris is, frustratingly enough, as fast paced as it is slow. It’s just as much people rushing through concrete underground metro tunnels as it is wasting away afternoons with espresso on terraces — aka, the reason why you haven’t gotten your bank account set up yet. A mere two weeks drained the energy and color from us before classes even begun. St Malo and our Mont St Michel day trip was the perfect amount of wine, cheese, sunshine and recharging.

By the way, everything closes here on Sundays. Well, everything except Chinatown and the Jewish areas in the Marais and the Champs Elysee, but quand meme. Families flock to museums or one of the amazing gardens to picnic. It’s a tad frustrating for us from North America (whether you’re anglo-saxon protestant or asian) because it’s like “what do you mean I can’t go to the mall on a sunday?” But a friend pointed out today that if all the stores stayed open, we wouldn’t see all the families out and about in the city because they’d all have to work! I’m determined to not spend my sundays sleeping in til the afternoon even if I finally manage to stay out the the metro opens one of these weekends. Sunny sunday afternoons are probably the best times to experience the quotidienne. There are eccentric puces (flea markets) and bustling marchés (produce markets) on sundays and I’m so conveniently located near old-Paris rue Mouffetard, so I’m definitely dragging myself out of bed to check out the latter this weekend!

This post is definitely on the schizophrenic side but it’s just been way too long since I’ve blogged, and definitely not due to a lack of things to say. School is mentally and physically consuming to say the least! What? I’m on exchange and I actually have to attend classes and legitimately think? Sciences Po is a whole other post in itself!

It’s been nearly a month since my arrival and I can finally say that I feel nice, settled and homey. I can already feel the time passing by so quickly! I don’t want to stop appreciating the ordinary or marveling at the extraordinary, I’m so determined to make this amazing city mine.