In the Afterglobe

I have to keep writing because it keeps my heart from breaking. However stupid and sappy that...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:17:24 -0500

I have to keep writing because it keeps my heart from breaking. However stupid and sappy that sounds.

Honestly, this whole thing might be stupid and sappy because I’m someone who, at this point, hasn’t the slightest idea of who I am or what I’m doing. At twenty years old, you’re still just a kid. And I’m someone made up of two very different cultures… which is something the extent of which I never really noticed until I became submerged in a third.

I’ve learned more than I could ever hope to know about the world and about myself in these past few months, but more than anything, I learned that I don’t know a single thing about anything. In the best way possible, I guess. But right now I want to know that I can come back to the places and the people that I love. I’m scared to leave Lyon, because this isn’t like leaving America or Russia. I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back, and when I do, I know it won’t be the same.

I didn’t really write about the human aspect of things in my last blog. How Paul’s eighty year old grandmother cried when I left her house for the last time. How his mom casually gave me a sweater “she doesn’t wear anymore” and it turned out to be the one she met his dad in. I’d be weirded out- I am- but I’ve talked to his family honestly about the fact that at twenty years old, I’m not ready for an overseas relationship and they’ve all assured me that they understand and they’re just happy for the chance to get to know me.

Paul told me today that I changed his relationship with his mother and that I convinced his father to be more understanding. Not so sure that that’s reasonable but in these past few months, I’ve been able to see the incredible growth of many individuals, from all ages and all walks of life. My American friends that I’ve made here have gone through their own struggles, apart from learning the language. People have seen theft, have helped friends through sexual abuse, have struggled in class like they never have before and never have again… There have been numerous romances and even more break ups, people have found themselves homeless, and hey. We all made it. Some of these friends have been my backbone during my own struggles and failures. Others have changed me in a way that is indescribable and amazing. My French friends and my homestay family have let me into their lives and into their hearts in a way that made France my third home. I’ve heard so many amazing stories and I’ve been blessed to meet so many incredible people…

My religion has been shaky to say the least. France is a country where only 8 percent of people actively practice a religion… in America 40 percent do so. I have met people who are Christian, but their attitudes on drinking, sex, drugs, and all of the things that I have always seen as forbidden are totally different. It’s been difficult and sometimes not very possible to stay on track with my faith. But now that I’m coming out of this experience, I somehow feel stronger because I know that despite all of my wandering and stupidity, God’s managed to stay with me. And I’m so excited to go back to a church where I can worship Him without any culture or language barrier.

Anyway. Pelmeni are ready.

Saturday, January 5, 2013 I haven’t written lately because I’ve been insanely busy and...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 05:14:57 -0500

Saturday, January 5, 2013

I haven’t written lately because I’ve been insanely busy and honestly right now I have maybe ten minutes to try to spit out everything I’ve learned in the past three weeks.

First of all, I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.

Crazy.

France has become a third home. I need to seriously stop aquiring homes all over the world because soon enough my heart’s going to be pretty much ripped apart between all of them. Yesterday when I went out I realized I knew Lyon like the back of my hand. It was the first time that someone asked for directions without adding on: “Where’s your accent from, by the way?”

Second, I’ve seen the insane human potential for change. Things with Paul have literally turned around to the point where I don’t recognize him. Ever since our conversation, he’s been making efforts to figure himself out and to stop acting in a way that’s destructive. Which has gotten me to look at myself and see how I’m not so perfect either. So the past three weeks have been a time of huge growth (not completely without setbacks, but with no major ones) for both of us. I think it’s safe to say that no matter what happens now, we’re both coming out of the experience of knowing each other as stronger, more responsible people. I think part of being an adult is when you stop protecting yourself more than you protect someone else- it’s becoming responsible for another person, in a way, and we both got to experience that by trusting each other to change. Except for now I’m genuinely going to be sorry to leave.

I spent the last week in Grenoble because I didn’t want to spend Christmas and New Year’s alone and it was probably the best decision ever. I went hiking in the snow with Paul’s parents on the first day (we lost his dad, which was an adventure). Then we spent Christmas with his whole extended family, which was WEIRD but they were really nice. His grandmother told me she never wanted to let me go, which was cute but again WEIRD. Then I fell asleep upstairs and his cousins gave me blankets. I went to a yoga class with Paul’s dad, which was taught by his dad’s uncle. Again. WEIRD. But you know, an experience. Paul and I explored some ancient grottos, which were super cool, and hiked to a waterfall. We also visited an ancient castle. I’d write about it all, but no time. Oh well.

New Year’s Eve was awesome. I was scared it would suck because it was with Paul’s group of best friends whom he’s known LITERALLY for the past twenty years. So I figured it’d be inside jokes and too much wine and more videos of hedgehogs having sex #thingsfrenchpeopledoforfun.

It was awesome. I, surprisingly, knew most of the people there. I’d seen them all at least once or twice, knew some of their stories, knew two of them pretty well. I spent most of my evening talking to Anne France’s twin brother about the six years he lived in Moscow as a baby before the jager bombs did him in, dancing with pretty much all of Paul’s friends (he got over the being jealous thing, which is cool), listening to everybody’s life stories (which was fascinating), talking to a world-famous surfer (forgot his name), watching some crazy girl in orange run around the house for hours with Stan, and getting seriously creeped on by a parisian named Louis who followed me literally everywhere with the exception of the bathroom (he just waited outside) until Anne France and I locked the door of one of the bedrooms so that he couldn’t get in.

“He’s weird,” she told me. “Brilliant, but weird.”

When I asked Paul why he didn’t do anything, he said that he wanted to prove he wasn’t jealous. Good timing. But hey I guess I can’t complain.

Anyway. Now I’m back in Lyon. There’s good chocolate on the table that I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t eat, Russian candy and pelmeni in the fridge, I’m supposed to be out of the house but I’m still in pj’s…

Whatever.

I love this city. It’s weird when you go barhopping for the last time and they don’t even ask for your ID because they know you. It’s weird when you’re talking to a French friend and you know a place they don’t. It’s weird when you feel so completely at home and you know that in two days you’ll be on a plane home, only to leave another home behind just to see it again (maybe) next summer. The only thing that’s comforting me is that if anyone can deal with having the people and the places they love in another country, it’s me. I’ve learned. But the truth is… it never gets easier.

Gonna miss you, Lyon.

Je t’aime.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 So I made the other two blogs private because, as much as this is an...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:13:58 -0500

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

So I made the other two blogs private because, as much as this is an honest blog about my France experience, that doesn’t mean I need to have every single bit of my dirty laundry hanging out for the web to see.

Nonetheless, like I said, the responces were amazing. First of all, I didn’t even know that so many people read my blog. Gonna have to be more careful from now on ;). Just kidding. No, but seriously, after an experience that made me feel so worthless and unhappy, the things you guys said were really encouraging and helpful.

Which is why I don’t think anyone’s going to be happy with what I did next, but trust me on this… I think.

The day after I left, I woke up with only one missed phone call. Not ten, not six, just one. I didn’t respond. I got just one text. “If you don’t pick up, I just have to tell you I’m really sorry.” I didn’t respond. So when I logged on to facebook, I had just one message that told me he didn’t want to annoy me with phone calls or texts, but he’d really like to talk to me. I didn’t respond but I guess he could see I’d read it or something, because soon I had another message:

“I’ve looked into what you said about my behavior possibly being abusive… I never thought about it that way. That’s the way my ex and I treated each other and if I’m honest, I didn’t like how it made me feel. I’ve done a lot of research into emotional abuse over the past few days and you don’t have to give me a chance to change, but I really, really want to try.”

So the not knowing that he was hurting me stuff sounded like a load of bull but I’m kind of a sucker for giving people second chances when they ask nicely so I told him I’d be over after my class the next day and went to sleep that night, not quite sure if this was a good idea.

And then the next day I got sick. Not like… death sick, but the “it’s finals, you’re not sleeping” sick. So not sick enough to not go over, but sick enough to consider it.

I seriously saw a different person. And okay, I’m not jumping to the “it’s a miracle, the beast has turned into a prince!” conclusion, BUT it wasn’t even the “pause on being abusive” guy that I’d been seeing on and off for the past few months. I didn’t really believe his whole wanting to change speech until then. Basically, we had a talk about how if anything ever happened again, I’d leave and he wouldn’t stop me, about how my friends were just as important as his, about how my work was just as important as his… For the rest of the evening, he made sure I had a quiet place to study, brought me food and medicine, and was basically just awesome.

So. Long story short, I’m making sure I keep my distance emotionally just in case this is another loop in the cycle. But I genuinely believe that people can change if they really, really want to and if I get to be a part of someone learning to change, well maybe I can learn from it, too.

As for now, I’ve just finished another final (four hour in-class essay… ugh), for which I completely forgot a dictionary and had to borrow one that was all in French, with definitions only, so I ended up not really looking in it anyways. And now I have two more exams to study for, both of which are for the two hardest classes I have and one of which I’m almost certain to fail so miserably that even the grade conversion might not help me. Which, of course, is why I’m updating my blog before studying.

I also ate too many lychees because they’re supposed to be good for you when you’re sick. Now my stomach hurts.

Final note: I fell on the escalator in the metro for (literally, I’ve been counting) the tenth time since I’ve gotten to Lyon. This time I split my left hand open. I can’t decide what I hate more in Francde, the escalators or the dog poop.

But to be honest, I don’t really want to leave.

Just 28 more hours and I’m free.

My computer is back and so am I!

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:24:55 -0500

So after a month of not having a computer, I’m finally back to being a part of the modern world.

Basically, my charger broke. After eight hours of searching for a basic Toshiba charger around Guillotiere (the shadiest neighborhood in Lyon) and finding nothing but stolen iphones, ordering a charger online and having it not fit, I finally met a very amazing human being who also happened to be very amazing at fixing computers. He can have my first born child if he really wants it…

…because after a month of not sleeping to spend my evenings being unfaithful to my computer with many, many others, I am back with my one and only dinosaur of the ninties.

I won’t write about the whole month because screw it, I’m going to class in an hour and quite frankly I don’t have the time or the desire to dwelve into what has been one of the most roller coaster months of my life. I’ve had my highest highs and my lowest lows, I’ve been built up and I’ve been destroyed, and I don’t think I’ve ever studied so much in my life while managing to go out every weekend (sleep has become an option, not so much a necessity).

Instead, I’m gonna sum up November in a pretentions “what have I learned” blog that will probably look like a college admissions essay but I don’t care.

I learned that France gets freaking cold. I’ve also learned that I LOVE the cold. Not when I’m inside. But when I’m outside, all bundled up with the freezing air turning my cheeks pink and the sky all blue and clear (or stormy, whatever, I wanted a positive image), I really don’t mind being just a bit cold. I’m Russian :)

I also learned that I’m not really Russian. Or American. Or anything, really. Someone told me to stop trying to figure myself out. “You’re a global citizen. The world is your home. You don’t fit in anywhere because you try to force yourself to fit just in one place, but you’re more than that.”

You can’t cram a bulldog into a fishbowl.

I’ve also learned to stop being so damn independant. Why do we want to be so independant in the US? Is it pride? Is it liberty? What the hell is up with wanting to do everything better than everyone else, wanting to do everything alone, wanting to do anything it takes to be alone but better than everybody else?

Why are we so scared to fall in love? To trust strangers? To open up?

I say fall in love as many times as you can. The only thing that can happen to you is your heart might break, but whatever, it’s worth it. Being in France has taught me that the most genuinely happy individuals fall in love every single day. Not just with people. They fall in love with their city, with the rain, with the metro, with the weather. I don’t know where that stupid concept came from, that love gets dilluted from being shared with many people. Love isn’t your body. Love is an endless resevoir and giving it away to everyone you can only creates more of it.

I learned to pray for strangers because it’s my way of loving them. An hour on the metro passes by way faster when I chose someone who looks like they need God to intervene and pray for them. Sometimes I pray for alcoholics. Sometimes I pray for mothers. Often, I see students cramming for tests. And then you walk away from the bus feeling like maybe you helped someone out that day.

I love Lyon in the morning. I love seeing the leaves fall. I love the city when it rains and the light from the buildings is scattered all across the wet cobblestones. I love how the trees shimmer after the rain. I love smiling at people in the metro. (Only old men smile back, but whatever). I love greeting people in the morning. (Again, only old men respond, but whatever). Most of all, I love being annonymous. I love having the freedom to trip and fall on my face going down the escalator only to say: “Oh well, these people will never see me again”.

I feel like a dust speck in the universe, but every day I grow bigger and more significant.

Anyway. This month, I’ve had some of the most traumatising experiences. I’ve felt completely alone. I’ve been stranded by myself at three in the morning, with ex-prison convicts trying to give me relationship advice. I’ve lived on less than a euro a day (granted, not that hard when my food is prepaid). I’ve bitten off way more than I can chew with class and I’ve been kidnapped by the hippies who live downstairs to save a dying yucca plant…

But at the same time, I’ve made lasting connections with the most amazing people. I’ve learned to never compromise myself. I’ve learned to balance my self respect with forgiveness, and that is probably the greatest gift that France has given me. I’ve learned to go to church just to listen to what God might say to me and mostly, He’s told me that He loves me. And then He showed me every single day how much this is true.

I’ve learned who my real friends are. Some are the people I expected. Others aren’t at all.

I’ve learned that my family is the greatest gift that God has given me and that I can never hope to be one tenth of what my dad is and one millionth of what my mom is. My parents are heros and it took distance for me to understand that.

Mostly, I’ve learned that I want to spend my life living it with others. Connecting. Discovering the world- my home.

And guess what? Two and a half years is enough to learn a language almost fluently and to live abroad speaking nothing but this language. To get decent grades. To read your first difficult book without a dictionary.

Basically, that’s what the past month taught me. I’ve got hundreds of stories but for now, they’ll remain my own.

Anyway.

I’m back now. :)

A bientot <3

Back in Lyon!

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 12:25:24 -0500

Monday, November 5

Today I had my first Societe Francaise class, which means now I have class five times at week :( Boo. But at least it seems easy, even though we’ve learned pretty much nothing. The professor seems super knowledgeable though so it’ll probably get better.

I spent two hours trying to change my student status. So much for being productive.

And I spent the rest of the day working and reading up on election stuff.

But hey. It feels good to be home.

Tuesday, November 6

Spent most of the day working, but a fair amount of time sleeping, too, since I knew that I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight. The French took American election night pretty seriously so I’d be volunteering at an event at the Hilton that was being put on by America House and the American Consulate here in Lyon. I had to play fairy godmother on myself a bit, with my one bobby pin, fake pearls, my one dress that could be considered formal, and beat up heels, but in the end I didn’t look too broke. I went to class all dressed up, understood absolutely nothing that the professor said, and then went all the way over to the Hilton. I was a greeter, which meant that I met a lot of really important people and had no clue who they were. I spent most of the evening talking to Kyle, the guy running the event and one of the women who works at the consulate. She bought us hamburgers and I felt very American and very happy.

The French absolutely love Obama, so it was kind of a joke as far as debates and round tables went. The French news were all there, trying to find people to interview for both sides, but they couldn’t find anyone who supported the Republicans. The closest they got was someone whose parents were Republican. There was a fair amount of people who were wearing elephant pins, only because the donkey pins had run out and they wanted to wear something. At the mock election, Romney got 26 votes. Obama got over 260. And at around 3 am, everyone was watching the big screen as poll results came in, “putain”ing as the southern states went red.

I spent most of my time with other Americans, talking English (which felt good). I met some really interesting people but unfortunately we couldn’t stay until the results were announced. I tried to stay awake but ended up falling asleep as soon as I got home only to wake up to the wonderful news that Obama was still our president and I wouldn’t have to see Romney’s face for the next four years :)

Wednesday, November 7

Thanks to class at 8 in the morning, I spent the day running on 2 hours of sleep. Whatever. YOLO.

Class sucked. I absolutely hate SLM. Our teacher looks like an electrocuted cat lady, teaches us absolutely nothing, makes fun of us for all of our mistakes, and has crazy mood swings. I can never predict what I will get on my essays, because sometimes I’ll get 16’s back (which is like an A++) and other times I’ll get 7’s (I’m afraid to ask what that is) but I’ll have changed nothing.

Anyway. I don’t get her.

Still, it was a beautiful morning.

I spent the rest of the day working, had dinner by myself (Sylvie was gone) and went to bed at midnight. I want to have less work so that I can see more of Lyon :(

Thursday, November 8

I finally caught up again!

Today was a good day. I got a 16.5 on my Spanish midterm. A 10 in France is like a C and anything above 13/14 is like an A… and the girl sitting next to me got a 14.5 so I was pretty happy. Even though all of my mistakes were super stupid.

Class was awesome. For some reason, I’m weirdly enjoying learning all of the little details about how to form a sentence. I feel in control of it. I understand everything in class as much as anyone else and that’s a good feeling. Besides, the teacher likes me because I don’t have any friends in that class so I’m the only person who doesn’t talk all the time.

Anyway. It wasn’t too exciting of a day. I talked to an old lady on the tram, ate a lot of bread since there’s nothing else at our house, finished all my blogs and now I have to write a four page essay on multiculturalism.

It’s only been four days and I’m already dying to explore again.

Toussiant Chronicles (cont)

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:50:26 -0500

Thursday, November 1

This bright, beautiful morning we set out for Nice. By the time we left the Formulaire, it was twenty degrees out and the sun was shining over the beautiful azure coast. We stopped by a little village called Cagnes-sur-la-mer on the way to Nice. It was very touristy, but very sweet, with winding narrows streets and flowers tumbling out of every window. Renoir had chosen Cagnes as his home when he got arthritis and spent the rest of his life there until he died.

The village was up on a hill so we could see the sea pretty much anywhere we looked.

Exploring the town:

It was one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen and not crowded at all. I think most people just miss it on their way to Nice. Which is unfortunate.

We had lunch in a rose garden and set off for Nice. It was maybe a five minute drive, but we ended up in a completely different world. Nice is a beautiful city, but very touristy and VERY rich. We drove through a maze of ornate apartment buildings and fancy five star resorts to find parking and then walked around the centre ville and the seaside promenade.

It was warm enough for some really desperate tourists to swim. The city itself was a bit bizarre because everyone was gone for Touissant and it was absolutely silent in the residential areas and bustling by the seashore. Also, I saw the fattest pigeons ever.

Our next stop was Monaco. The drive was absolutely gorgeous:

I guess Monaco is technically a different country. It’s a principality of France, or an independant city state… whatever that means. In any case, I was all excited to use my passport to get in but they didn’t even check. It was just like driving into any other city… but the culture was completely different. One could honestly call it anti-french.

We spent the first two hours navigating through traffic jams to find parking. There were at least ten parking garages with 1000 spots each, and some of them were completely full. We finally parked between Monte Carlo and Monaco in a parking garage that cost almost as much as a night of camping and walked through the (apparently famous) tunnel over to the port of Monaco.

I felt as if I had been plunged into a really weird world of people who had way too much money. If anyone’s seen “In Time” (I know, I’m referencing a Justin Timberlake film, awful), it was honestly JUST like New Greenwich. It was world of millionaires, driving around in cars that would probably send most of my American guy friends into convulsions, walking around in suits and designer dresses, planning their evenings at insanely expensive restaurants before retiring to their flats, which cost more than a villa by the sea.

It was everything that the French hated. Paul wanted to leave as soon as we got there. Monaco was showy, fast, untraditional, artificial. Paul said it was like a city of HLM’s destroying a beautiful natural environment. There wasn’t a French flag to be seen anywhere, but American flags were everywhere. I heard more Russian and English than French.

Still, I thought it was interesting. Eventually Paul and I compromised and agreed to go see the palace. We climbed the hill to the historic region. It was beautiful (even Paul liked it).

They had a gorgeous aquarium:

I didn’t get any amazing pictures of the palace, but it was a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a Disneyland castle, but oh well, this will have to do.

The other buildings were much more Disneyland-y :)

There were also a bunch of Russian tourists and I tagged along on their tour. The tourguide was really knowledgeable. She described the history of the city, the architecture of the beautiful buildings, and the legend behind a statue over to the left of the palace that claimed that anyone who rubbed the statue would get rich.

The Russian tourists didn’t care at all about the city or the buildings. Within five seconds there was a flood of Russians rubbing a statue.

The sun was just setting as we were leaving and Monaco was gorgeous.

We drove away as the sun went down. I was wishing we could stay in Monte Carlo for the evening, but I could tell Paul absolutely hated the place and besides, it was expensive even just to park. Anyway, we got a beautiful view of Monte Carlo driving up toward Menton.

We weren’t actually going to stop in Menton though and now we were barely half an hour away from Italy at seven PM with nothing to do.

“Want to just go across the border now?” Paul asked me.

“Sure.”

Again, I was super excited to use my passport. Surely they’d check by the border, right?

Nope. We just passed a slightly larger sign than the ones used for the cities that welcomed us to Italy. Here, all of the streetlights were turned off.

“They’re too deep in debt to pay for light by the smaller villages,” Paul explained.

We found camping almost immediately. The greeter spoke perfect French, but with a thick Italian accent. Immediately, we got a taste of Italian hospitality. He left the desk to personally show us around the campground to make sure that we’d find everything okay, which was quite different from the French greeters, who couldn’t even crack a smile or tell us that two out of the three “sanitaires” where the showers were located were out of service to save us the cold search in the morning.

We set up our tent (again, we were the only people camping, but whatever) and drove over to Ventimiglia, ridiculously happy to be in Italy. Paul almost ran over two pedestrians. They smiled at us and wished us a “buona sera”.

Ventimiglia is the first real town near the border. There wasn’t too much to do in the evening, but just the atmosphere of being in a different culture was exciting. The streets weren’t exactly bustling, but there were plenty of people out. Unlike the French, who interacted with each other only within restaurants or in a private sphere, the Italians were more than happy to stand outside of stores and churches in giant groups, talking and laughing loudly in a language that sounded like a song. As much as I appreciate French culture, I loved the Italian warmth after two months of French rigidity.

Paul was happy because it was completely different from Monaco.

Food was super cheap so we decided to celebrate getting as far as Italy by trying some Italian spaghetti. We stopped by a little restaurant which was completely empty.

The owner sat us down and went over to the little window at the back of the restaurant to announce our arrival to the cook, a little ancient woman who looked like she might be his mother. He came back to take our orders. Paul talked to him in French, he replied in Italian, which I could understand thanks to my Spanish and French experience, so I translated back to Paul. It worked well enough because within twenty minutes we had two giant plates of steaming pasta and a basket of fresh bread.

It was a wonderful evening.

Friday, November 2

Today we drove to Sanremo, the largest city closest to the border. Paul was kind of driving me crazy now that the thrill of being in Italy had worn off and I was starting to realize that spending 24 hours a day for literally a week straight with someone could make you put the Italians to shame with your bickering.

Not that I’d ever seen any Italians argue. They were very, very nice people.

For the past three days, Paul and I had been getting into small arguments non-stop though, and it was driving me crazy, especially since it was about the stupidest things ever like which bread we should get or what music we should listen to. Still, we made it over to Sanremo without ripping each others’ heads off. He found a small Russian church to try and make peace with me and sat there patiently while I pretty much died of happiness out of being in a place that felt like home.

Then we walked around the streets of San Remo, which was like a bigger version of Vieux Lyon, but still very pretty. People kept trying to sell us fake gucci bags and both Paul and I made the really dumb mistake of answering their Italian with our French and American-tainted English. They pretty much ran after us, expecting us to be the rich children of foreign millionaires.

Still, it was a beautiful city.

Unfortunately, it was dark pretty much everywhere and my camera sucks so pictures didn’t really happen.

We stopped by a gellato place where we got two cones of real Italian ice cream, which was SO much better than anything else I’d ever had. I got tiramisu and mint :) Basically I was in heaven, even though it was a bit cold for gelato.

The sea was absolutely gorgeous in Sanremo, but then again it’s been beautiful everywhere.

After that, we stopped by a little park with a gorgeous fountain because our conversation in the car was getting a bit tense. Paul wanted to find an internship in Irvine to come and visit me in spring, which was freaking the living shit out of me. I was enjoying my time with him in France but I wasn’t exactly ready to commit to a relationship that involved him flying across the Atlantic to be with me and he didn’t understand why I wasn’t excited about the possibility of him ending up breaking the boundary between the two worlds I was now living in.

Here, we managed to get into an almost literal battle (I was tempted to hit him) on the question of women’s rights. Yup. Not even kidding. What started out as a political argument ended up pissing me off more than I think anyone has in the past two months at least. I won’t go into the details, but our argument literally exploded into a three hour attack on each others’ cultures. Finally, we were saying things we didn’t even mean and I couldn’t stand being in the same space with him (we’d gotten back into the car). I told him to pull over and let me out. Something told me it wouldn’t be smart to strangle the driver.

He misinterpreted my need to breathe as me telling him I didn’t want him near me, got hurt, and told me that if I got out, I might as well just fuck off and explore Italy by myself, he didn’t need me anyway. And me being ridiculously proud and unrelenting when it comes to fights, this was pretty much the worst thing to say to me because in response, I slammed the door and followed his advice.

As immature as we both were, as soon as I was gone long enough to calm down, I was glad we were apart. We hadn’t gotten a second away from each other for the past 168 hours (literally- the guys and girls showers at every campsite were in the same room, so even when we were showering in the morning we were virtually in the same space). It was driving me insane and simply being alone felt like a breath of fresh air.

Besides, I had been really lucky. Paul had pulled over right next a small town called Imperia, which was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. There was a tiny village on the top of a hill, overlooking a gorgeous sunny beach. I walked around the beach for a while, still fuming and continuing the argument in my head… and realizing that there were some things that I’d said that were completely unfair and untrue. French culture had been driving me crazy lately- I didn’t exactly take the time to get dressed classy in the morning just to have guys whistle at me in the metro or turn their heads to stare at my butt when I walked by. And Paul constantly giving me orders on what I should do (even though he was just trying to make sure I was eating something besides frozen dinners, taking care of myself when I was sick, etc) wasn’t exactly helping me feel like an adult, independant woman. I almost murdered him earlier this week when he forced a scarf around my neck. Basically I was being completely immature and stupid. I’d known that I was going to be a part of a different culture and now I was growing frustrated with it and taking it out on someone who didn’t understand what he was doing wrong.

Anyway, it felt good to be alone in and in a different cultural environment. Everyone smiled at me as I walked by. The guys stepped aside politely when I walked by and wished me “buon giorno”. I said hello to a little old woman whom I saw on the street and she responded with a “buon giorno, bella,” which was a nice change from drunk guys shouting “vous etes magnifique” from bars.

Besides, how could I be unhappy in a place like this?

I walked up into the hills, determined to spend some time on my own to rethink everything and to give Paul some time to cool off and relax. I was pretty sure he needed to be without me for a bit, too. The city only got more and more beautiful as I climbed up. I passed the theater:

climbed up another lovely street, and found a giant, beautiful building next to a large parking lot. It had a cross on it, but I figured it was some administrative building, since it was so large.

I was curious as to what it was, but didn’t really want to go in. If I got kicked out, I wouldn’t even be able to apologize. Just then, a couple with a giant camera walked up ahead of me and opened the door to go in. I decided to follow them since if anyone kicked them out I just wouldn’t go in.

“Wow,” breathed the girl as she walked through the doors.

I didn’t know how she could even get that word out. As soon as I walked inside, I was struck speechless. I’d never seen anything like it before.

It was a church, but it could put temples to shame. Giant pillars of marble supported high arc ceilings, which were completely illuminated with natural golden light. The floors were also marble.

There were giant, beautiful paintings and statues of Biblical events. On one wall Abraham was looking up to God, with awe clearly depicted on his terrified face as he dropped the knife with which he was about to slaughter beautiful, young Issac. On another, David was sleeping sweetly among his sheep. Moses, holding up the commandments triumphantly. And finally, the ascension of Christ, depicted in such incredible and lifelike glory that shivers ran down my spine just from looking at the painting.

There were four giant statues of the apostles in the middle of the church that captured completely their personalities and differences. It all made God feel so immediate, so present, and yet so incredibly awesome…

I walked around the church, open-mouthed, for a good half hour. As much as I still wanted to be alone, I HAD to show Paul. I couldn’t keep this miracle to myself. Still, I wanted to explore a bit more before I went back. I wasn’t angry anymore, but what if he still was?

I left the church and went down another small street, intending to descend the hill. Every five seconds, I’d discover some beautiful little street or a gorgeous view of the ocean.

Finally, I came to see this:

It was a beautiful, long tunnel, with a view of the bright blue ocean. From here, one could see the entire village down below. It was absolutely incredible.

After this, I absolutely had to get back to Paul to show him everything before the sun went down. Except for I got ridiculously lost and ended up running around the town, trying to get back to the car. I was in total tunnel vision, running down the street in the direction of the ocean when I felt someone catch me from behind and hold me. Obviously, I completely freaked out and started fighting whoever was holding me until I realized it was Paul and he was basically trying to keep himself from crying.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he told me. “You’re been gone for two hours… I thought you might have been hurt or something might have happened to you… I’m so sorry, I was a total idiot. And I promise this will never happen again, because you are more valuable than my pride and I don’t want to push you away.”

I showed him all of the places that I’d found. He was just as awed by the church and even suggested that we go to mass at six, which was really cool since he’s usually pretty anti everything religion. I made him close his eyes and led him around the city, surprising him with all of the amazing places I’d found. We both agreed that Imperia was the most beautiful place we’d visited.

At six, we went to mass in the gorgeous church. Despite understanding virtually nothing, it was one of the best experiences I’d ever had. And afterwards, we went to a pizzeria by the sea. It was a wonderful ending to a crazy day and somehow this experience made it so much easier for me to be honest about needing time and about not being comfortable with how commited this was becoming. Which was really what we needed to talk about in the first place.

After that, we turned around and started back for France. But we camped one last time in Italy- at a campground where the owners never came so we didn’t even have to pay!

Saturday, November 3

We spent most of the day driving but before we left we stopped at a tiny, completely non-touristy village up in the hills. I think it was called Torizzo but there weren’t really any signs. It was absolutely lovely.

After that, we stopped by Ventimiglia to get some pasta and chocolate for that evening and drove for almost ten hours to get back to Saillans, which is a few hours away from Grenoble. It’s a tiny village in the Die region (no joke) where Paul’s parents have a country home. Paul took the wrong turn so the drive ended up being way longer than we expected and by the time we got to his house, we were both exhausted. We cracked open a bottle of sparkling wine (it had been a VERY sober vacation), cooked our pasta, watched half of Hugo and passed out from sheer exhaustion. It felt so nice to finally sleep in a bed, but being in a house felt like a real luxury.

Sunday, November 4

We spent the morning on the balcony, watching the horses and eating chocolate.

The landscape was absolutely beautiful. It was about to rain, so the sky was gray and dramatic, rising up behind the Trois Becs (Three Beaks) mountain

Finally, we got hungry and went over to the Saillans village to get some food. It was a lovely little village. We got some pains au chocolate for breakfast and went over to the market for fresh vegetables.

Saillans made it worth it to come back to France, that’s for sure.

After that, we came back to the house for amazing food.

And we played with the horses.

It started raining and I was happy, so I sang, because that’s typically what I do when I’m happy… and the horses stopped what they were doing, perked up their ears, and walked over. It was the coolest thing ever. Paul was inside packing up his stuff and he walked outside to see me singing to the horses.

Obviously he almost died of laughter and made fun of me for the rest of the day, but it was still an awesome experience. I’m officially a Disney princess. I draw animals to me with song.

After that, we drove over to our final destination (no pun intended): the city of Die. I pretty much drove Paul crazy with morbid jokes (ex:”we’re going to Die). It was a pretty boring town, but they had a really cool 17th century church, which gave out each of the sections of the new testaments by apostle in tiny booklets. Paul took all four, which made me happy, because it meant that he was interested in supporting something that was really important to me. I’d dated plenty of athiests and agnostics before, but few had made an effort to understand my faith.

Die was pretty cool, but nothing too special.

After that, we were off to Grenoble. The ride was long and exhausting but we made it back pretty much right before we had to jump on the train to come back.

I was basically passing out, so the fact that my metro card decided to not recognize that I was a student any more wasn’t helping. I felt like I hadn’t been back in Lyon in forever and all I wanted was my bed. I wanted to be home. But when I tried to recharge my card, it just told me to see someone tomorrow to confirm my student status.

Paul convinced me to stop kicking the machine, bought me a ticket and convinced me that I could see my bed tomorrow and it’d be smarter for me to crash at his place for the night in case anything else happened. Which was good since I almost fell asleep on the metro on the way there. So much for a relaxing break… but hey, it was still pretty freaking awesome.

Toussiant Chronicles

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 10:07:21 -0500

Saturday, October 27

Spent the entire day packing and trying to plan out this trip. It’s ridiculous how expensive a week roadtripping can be. Paul and I agreed already to rough it out- sleeping in a tent every night, eating nothing but bread, ham, and cheese, no excessive purchases, no toll roads, etc…

It was still coming out to way more than we could afford. On top of that, the weather forecasts were horrifying. Rain almost every single day, with subzero temperatures at night. Not ideal for camping. Then we found out there was no way to avoid toll roads in Italy if we EVER wanted to get to Venice or Florence or really any place worth getting.

We called up a bunch of camping places. They all told us we were crazy and that they were closed for the season. The cheapest hostels were almost 20 euro a person… for a week, that’d be over 140 euro each. Not an option.

Finally, we just got on the train to Grenoble without really deciding anything. We’d figure it out tomorrow and leave that evening.

Sunday, October 28

That morning proved the fact that you can never plan for anything in France.

We woke up to this:

And this is what happened to the cars in the city:

Basically, leaving wasn’t an option. Trees were falling everywhere, the roads were slippery, and we still had no clue where we were going… and sleeping in the snow just didn’t seem too appealing.

Instead, we had a long, wonderful lunch with Paul’s parents and all of their friends. Jean-Claude, the actor whose house we visited a week ago (was it really only a week?) and his wife, Andre, came over, as well as Paul’s dad’s uncle, Simon, and another couple- the husband designs surfwear, chocolate packages, and T-shirts and the wife is a professional cook.

Basically people here have the coolest jobs and I’m jealous.

We had an amazing meal, good wine, and plenty of debate about the merits of smoking. I was seated between Jean-Claude and Simon, which was cool because they were both super interesting to talk to.

After that everyone tried to convice us to come watch James Bond but I’d had enough wine to stop worrying about being polite and declined. I hadn’t seen snow for a year so instead of sitting in a dark theater watching a film that was initially made to bash my pays de naissance, I dragged Paul outside to play in the snow.

That evening, we almost murdered each other trying to figure out what we were going to do for Toussaint. Finally, completely exasperated, Paul told me that if I thought I could figure everything out on my own, I could plan the trip.

So I did.

I’m scared.

Monday, October 29

This morning was a lot more travel friendly.

We got on the road. It was an absolutely beautiful drive. I’d decided that we’d spend the day driving to Aix-en-Provence, a small town on the way to the French coast where Paul had found a campsite. Granted it was supposed to drop down to 4 degrees that night but at least it wouldn’t be below zero.

The drive was absolutely magical, even through Paul took the wrong route and missed all of the cities I had planned for us to stop at. So instead we winged it and it was awesome.

Our first stop was Sisteron, a medieval village that has been inhabited for over 4000 years. Of course when we drove by it we knew none of that. Paul saw the city citadel on the mountain, pulled over and told me that he wouldn’t keep driving until we explored the city.

Which was completely fine by me because this was the view from the city:

The place was a tiny village of narrow streets and history. Apparently this town has been attacked by every agressor in history from the barbarians to the Nazis. Somehow, it survived and remains standing, which is really nothing short of a miracle. I guess they DO have a citadel, though, that might help…

I spent the entire time running around singing the Lord of the Rings theme song and insisting that we were taking the hobbits to Isengard.

But aside from the Citadel (which we couldn’t go into because it was freaking EXPENSIVE), the city was absolutely gorgeous. There was an ancient, beautiful church:

Tons of statues:

And it was just pretty:

So basically if Lord of the Rings and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast had a baby, it’d be Sisteron.

Our next stop was Aix-en-Provence, which is also older than the dinosaurs and has been beaten up by every single person in history. It’s been nicknamed the City of a Thousand fountains because there are literally like a bagillion fountains everywhere. It’s a really pretty little town, which explains why Paul Cezanne, who was born there, was absolutely in love with it and why everyone from Emile Zole to Bradley Cooper has lived there.

There wasn’t much to do at night, but we walked around the tiny streets. It was a town untouched by modernity and everyone was gone for Toussaint, so the city was empty and quaint. I could almost believe that if we turned down the right street, we might bump into Cezanne. Or maybe I’ve just seen Midnight in Paris one too many times.

La Rotonde:

I took a billion pictures of all of the fountains but my camera sucks.

That evening we camped at a site called Chanteclar, where the owner literally looked at us like we were crazy when we asked if we could pitch a tent.

“It’ll drop down to four degrees and possibly less,” he could have informed us, but being French he just shrugged and took our money.

Also, he could have told us that the one other person who was camping there was an escaped maniac who’d pitch his tent right next to ours and watch slasher horror movies all night. Either that or he was actually killing someone to really intense music. I’d prefer not to know.

Tuesday, October 30

Today we drove all the way down to Marseilles! It’s the second largest city in France after Paris… or maybe the third after Lyon. Everyone always argues about that and I really haven’t figured it out but I really don’t care much.

Unlike all of the other cities we’ve seen so far, Marseilles has NOT been beaten up by every nation in the world, which is cool. It’s been inhabited for over 30,000 years and used to be a Greek port. It was also super active in the French revolution: hence the name of the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, which was sung at first by volunteer fighters from Marseilles. There are a bunch of statues of Marianne, the symbol of French liberty, fraternity, and equality. It’s also one of the most diverse French cities, with heavy North African influence, a booming drug trade, neighborhoods full of HLM’s, racism, and high crime.

But we don’t talk about that, right?

Anyway, avoiding political rants, check out this cute cat:

It really was a beautiful city, though. A bit more gritty than the ones I’d seen so far, but I liked it. The food was super cheep- we could even afford a couple of kebabs for lunch, which was a nice change from bread and stinky French cheese.

You could see the Notre Dame de la Garde basillica from pretty much anywhere in the city:

I really wanted to see it, since it’s not the most typical of basillicas (the architecture is something called neo-byzantine, which means absolutely nothing to me, but it’s cool). It was far away though and being in Marseilles was a bit exhausting.

There were plenty of other buildings to keep me entrained:

^ This church was particularly gorgeous. Especially inside:

That evening, we drove past Heyers down to a tiny village called Gianes. Everything looked like California, which was a bit disappointing. We stopped at Camping Eurosurf, talked to the least friendly welcome desk person I’d ever met in my life, and pitched our tent a three minute walk away from the sea.

It was strange walking on the pitch-black beach with Paul… it was like being in California, a weird collision of the two worlds I’m living in now. It scared me. Paul was convinced he loved me. I was convinced we had very different definitions of the word, that these months would be a wonderful connection between two very different people, that it would never work after. Partially because I didn’t really want it to. Just walking along the water, looking out on the lights in the distance that could either be St. Tropez or Laguna Beach, I felt torn.

We drove to Gianes for dinner. The tiny village was asleep and lovely.

We sat on a bench overlooking the sea, under a giant statue of a rooster (“The big, brave cock is the symbol of France,” Paul explained) eating the strawberry tarts that we bought at Auchon. I’d sat in mine earlier so it was a bit crushed but still wonderful. I couldn’t tell if I really cared about him the way he cared about me or if he was just the only person I was close to here, the only person I could rely on. In any case, being with him for 24 hours a day for the past few days made me realize that we never ran out of things to talk about, that we would always be interesting to each other, but that was partially because we never agreed on anything. He didn’t believe in religion, had a totally casual attitude toward drugs, had lived a life of complete priviledge, hated to work, respected me but never quite understood why I stood so strongly for my principles. Still, he thought that loving me could erase our differences, not understanding that I couldn’t let myself even get close to him because we had absolutely nothing in common aside from our mutual interest in each other.

In any case, it was nice to look out at the sea with someone I cared about and trusted.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Yesterday was super windy. Our tent almost blew away and I didn’t get much sleep. Today was rainy. We drove down to St. Tropez, which is supposed to be a sunny tourist destination frequented by the likes of Briggite Bardot.

Emphasis on the sunny.

It wasn’t raining, but it was pretty much the wettest place on earth. The winds were at 120 kmph and at times it was literally impossible to walk without getting blown over.

Still, it was beautiful.

Our next stop was Cannes, home of the famous French film festival. It was basically a French Hollywood, but not half as dirty and maybe twice as “bling bling”, as Paul called it. Everyone there is super rich- its twin city is Beverly Hills. But it was absolutely beautiful in the rain, especially since the downpour scared away most of the tourists.

That evening, when we tried to camp at a nearby site, the owner told us that as much as he’d like to rob us of our twenty euro, he didn’t want anyone getting crushed by the falling trees. No, but really, he was a very nice little old man who directed us to two very “cheap” hotels by the coast. The cheaper of the two was a Formulaire, which basically is French for “shittiest place you will ever stay in, ever”. Except since ours was so close to Nice it wasn’t too shitty or too cheap- 40 euro for the both of us. Still, this meant we had electricity, an internet connection, and a roof over our heads for the first night in what felt like forever, even if we had to share four toilets and two showers with everyone in the two story hotel.

We even watched a movie before going to bed. Ahh, luxury.

Catching up (pre-Toussaint)

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:13:12 -0500

Thursday, October 25

So exhausted. Woke up super early to study for my Spanish midterm. It ended up being difficult- only because I couldn’t understand the directions written in French. Fml.

Spent the evening working on my presentation for tomorrow. I can’t wait for break.

Friday, October 26

It’s the last push before break! I made myself pay attention in my first class today, even though I was so ready to just be done. Not to mention I was ridiculously nervous for my 30 minute presentation for my youth literature class. All in French. In front of a native French audience. For a grade. Alone.

Scariest experience of my life.

Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I got a few French students stopping me to ask me to speak slower. But most of them knew the authors that I was speaking about and were really curious about my topic (the development of Russian children’s literature over the past three centuries) so it was almost fun. In any case, I felt pretty proud of myself when it was over.

And I had a long, glorious week of vacation ahead of me.

After a really awkward tram ride with my professor (apparently I live one street away from her) I was finally home. Now I had to plan a week in Italy for two people and keep it under 200 euros for food, transportation, lodging, toll roads (all highways in Europe are toll roads), and anything else that we could possibly need.

Instead I skyped with everyone I’ve been too busy to talk to this week.

It was raining that evening. Lyon is absolutely incredible in the rain so even through we should have been planning our road trip, Paul and I went exploring instead. It was magical.

Basically I love autumn.

Still, today was kind of sad because I had to admit to Christine that I couldn’t afford to stay in Lyon for the year and finalize my position as a semester student. No more pretending that this place can be home for longer than two more months.

Oh well. Here’s to making the best of it!

Tuesday, October 23 Worked all day. Felt like I got nothing done anyway. Class was...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:22:32 -0400

Tuesday, October 23

Worked all day. Felt like I got nothing done anyway.

Class was incomprehensible.

Went over to Paul’s that evening. We made sushi and sat on his roof to eat. It was a beautiful, chilly evening.

I never want to forget the view from his apartment. It’s beautiful- a painter’s dream come true, if only because of all of the different levels. You can see the narrow street wind its way through the Italian-style buildings down below the staircase, which leads up to the street… Behind that is the hill, hidden behind trees with red and orange leaves. Behind that hill is another hill, with buildings winding their way up toward Fourviere. It’s beautiful.

That night we could even see stars.

Wednesday, October 24

I woke up at four am today to write an essay that ended up not even being due.

At least now it’s done.

My crazy SLM professor was in a weirdly happy mood today. I fell asleep in her class and she just asked me twice if I was feeling okay. Which is quite different than how she was treating us last week.

I have to decide whether or not I’m going to stay in France by this Friday so today I talked to my parents. They were really supportive, but told me that it was something that we most likely would not be able to do financially. It was the answer I expected to hear, but for some reason it hit me harder than I expected. I’m angry that everything in this world revolves around money. I know it’s a childish anger, but I’m tired of being torn between countries and people. I want to find a place that feels like home and stay there. And this has been starting to feel like home.

I just want to see it snow in Lyon. I want to go skiing for the first time. I want to see the snow melt and the city come back to life. I want to see spring. I want it to be okay that I’m falling for someone. I want to make my aquaintances my friends. I want to visit Europe. I want to walk to class every morning and be in love with the sunrise.

I love California. I love America. But seriously, people weren’t meant to live like this. We’re supposed to be a part of a community, a society. But obviously nobody gave me the memo because I’m living this nomadic life without any real connection. What’s the point of getting close to someone if you’re just going to pick up and leave? What’s the point of making something home if home is just where you’re going to leave your heart?

Maybe I’m just stupid for trying to make Lyon home, though.

Tuesday, October 16 (cont) I had my meeting with the program coordinators today. It was a typical...

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:00:58 -0400

Tuesday, October 16 (cont)

I had my meeting with the program coordinators today. It was a typical “you need to sign your name and write the date before the month” conversation until Christine pulled out a paper I’d almost forgotten about.

“You have indicated here that you were interested in the possibility to extend your stay,” she told me, stabbing the paper with a long red nail for emphasis. “What is your decision?”

I didn’t know what to say. Did they just expect me to say “yes” or “no” now?

“Can I still think about it?” I asked. I knew that I couldn’t stay. It wasn’t an option. But I didn’t want to cut myself off.

“You have ten days. But for now, let’s fill out the paperwork as if you’re going to stay. And then, if you can’t, we just cancel it. Deal?”

I walked out of the office with this weird floating sensation of someone who has been given a few extra days of life. I looked around the city, enjoying the beauty of the Rhone, the sparkling golden angel of Fourviere, the fresh autumn air… This could be home. Not logically, but I had ten days to cancel. Ten days to pretend.

I stopped by the giant mall in Part Dieu on the way home for Paul’s birthday present. It was absolutely gorgeous, as far as malls go, with giant fountains (one had a spout of water reaching from the first to the fourth floor, which maybe isn’t that impressive, but it looked pretty cool). I stumbled around open-mouthed, staring at everything that was so similar to everything in the United States and yet so incredibly different. It smelled like a mix of fresh bread and perfume.

That evening, Paul took me out for dinner (which made perfect sense, considering it was HIS birthday). We went to a really old, elegant Brasserie by Perrache, which is called Brasserie Georges and which nearly gave me a heart attack when I looked at the prices.

That’s because I accidentally flipped to steaks and seafood, but it was still pretty fancy. We split two three course meals so that we could try everything. Paul made me taste everything before he’d tell me what it was, which was probably for the best because one of the dishes was made with pig’s blood. It tasted pretty good, but as soon as I learned the ingredients I couldn’t exactly stomach any more.

We walked back arguing about the function of the playright in the final product. It was very French, very stupid, and pretty fun.

So. Not the most typical 21st birthday I’ve ever celebrated with someone, but whatever.

Wednesday, October 17

I’d started feeling a bit of an earache yesterday and today I woke up with swollen glands. Hopefully this will go away. Fingers crossed.

Today was exhausting. Lots of work. My methodology teacher decided to whip our class into shape today, by being a total bitch, to put it nicely. First, she locked out everyone who came to class 15 minutes late (ironic, since she was 40 minutes late in getting class started last time). Then she went on an hour-long rant about how none of us could write for beans. She picked up a random essay to tear apart. It happened to be mine. I actually didn’t really mind, I appreciated the criticism, but it would have been nice if she weren’t quite so evil about it.

I went over to Paul’s after my diplomacy class. I really didn’t want to- I wasn’t feeling my best and I wanted to spend more time with Sylvie, but he’d texted me at least five times that day and I didn’t really have much of an excuse to be antisocial that evening. It wasn’t the best decision. I didn’t realize how desperately I was starting to need space until I was actually there, surrounded by people, stressed about everything I needed to get done, and feeling worse by the second.

The only thing that cheered me up was a facebook conversation with my best friend. I hadn’t talked to him in probably a month and it felt great. Except for I was talking with him instead of eating dinner with the guys and I could see Paul shooting me daggers for breaking the magical “everyone eats dinner together” code. Even if dinner is at ten pm and everyone is talking about something you don’t understand.

“Well, I’m glad you don’t want to be part of the group,” Paul told me later.

“I haven’t talked to my best friend in over a month. I eat dinner with you guys every night.”

“Yeah, but this is your home; it’s normal.”

“Um. If anything is home in France, it’s Sylvie’s house.”

“You spend more time here.”

“You have a strange definition of home. All my things are there-“

“-which is stupid, bring them here.”

“No! I sleep there-“

“Sleep here.”

“-I pay to be there-“

“Just consider it as if I pay for you here.”

“Oh my God, NO!”

He looked like I slapped him.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean, no, I don’t live with you! This isn’t home. I mean, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I need to fucking breathe. I need to be alone sometimes.”

“You can be alone. Just tell me when you need to be alone, and I won’t talk to you. I can even leave the room.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Look, Paul,” I tried again. “Sylvie makes me dinner. And then I’m not even there to eat it. That’s not exactly polite.”

“I pay for you to eat here, though.”

“You do WHAT?”

“I pay Sebastian to buy extra groceries. So that we can make enough food for five.”

I wanted to scream.

“Don’t. I don’t need to eat here.”

“Do you want me to stop cooking with Sebastian?”

“What? No, of course not. I just-“

What the hell was even happening?!

“Don’t you want this to be our home?” he asked me.

“NO!”

“That really hurts.”

My head was spinning. I was freaking out. I wasn’t being asked to move in. I was being moved in. I hadn’t noticed it, but I was already being transported into this new world of FIFA and living with four boys. I felt chained.

“I thought you’d try to stay in France. With me.”

This was not happening.

I’m not going to go into the details of the exhausting conversation that followed and made me want to run away not only from this country but quite possibly from this planet. Somehow, we resolved it without actually agreeing on it. It was too late for me to take the metro at this point so we came up with a weird compromise between me promising to think about it and him promising to stop freaking me out and went to sleep.

Thursday, October 18

Paul’s alarm clock woke me up in the morning. I tried to stand up for a drink of water and immediately fell down. Too dizzy. Weird. I tried again. My vision went black. My body was shaking, my teeth were chattering. I felt incredibly cold but my cheeks were burning. My ears felt like they had knives cutting into them. My heart was pounding.

“Are you okay?” Paul asked.

“I’m fine… just feeling kind of weird.”

He leaned in to kiss my forehead, but as soon as his lips touched my head, he jumped back, as if burned and looked at me with panic.

“You are literally BURNING,” he told me. “Are you feeling sick?”

“Yeah… I guess, a little.”

He brought me a fever reducer. “Stay home,” he told me sternly.

“You mean go to Sylvie’s?” I asked with feeble rebellion.

“No, stay here. You can’t go to class.”

“I have to. I have a test next week.”

“Dasha. You’ve got at least 100 degrees, but honestly I think it’s way worse. I’m tempted to call a doctor.”

“Nooooo. No doctors.”

“Fine. Then stay here. Promise?”

“No.”

“I can’t do this. Fend for yourself then,” he said, exasperated, and walked out, slamming the bedroom door. He came back a few seconds later with medicine and threats to call a doctor if I tried to leave. Finally, he had to go to class. Of course, I didn’t listen and went to Spanish. It was okay until the very end, when the medicine wore off and my fever came back. Besides, I had a terrible stomachache. I was nauseous. But the people on the tram were nice for the first time ever and someone offered me a seat after I collapsed on the way back from class. I went back to Paul’s to make it look as if I didn’t go to class but he was already back.

“You’re impossible,” he told me. “I’m going to take care of you tonight and you better stop being so stubborn.”

I was not looking forward to this.

After an hour of him sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me to make sure that I didn’t stop breathing and trying to force feed me pain killers I wasn’t sure what was worse- the mounting fever (despite the fever reducers), the stomachache, or Paul. He was driving me crazy. Finally I told him that the light was hurting my head and that I wanted to lie down in the dark. As soon as he left I watched Jenna Marbles videos on Youtube and daydreamed about locking Paul out of his own room so that I could breathe.

But before I could do anything, I passed out.

Friday, October 19

Fever. Stomach feels like there’s a flock of piranhas in my intestines. Ears are exploding.

What do I do?

Go to class.

I recorded my first class and slept through most of it and asked a friend to record the second one. Stumbled blindly home, thanks to random strangers who literally helped me walk. Paul came over when he realized I was gone and not answering text messages (passed out on my bed). I found him downstairs talking to Sylvie. He told me he was taking me home with him to Grenoble this weekend to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid. We got into a huge fight about it because I tried to assert my independence and told him I didn’t need him babying me. He told me that I was unbearable and that my choice was to come with him or to for him to call emergency on me. I thought he was overreacting but finally just gave in and packed my bags.

Saturday, October 20

Paul and his mom decided that I needed to go see a doctor anyway. His dad told them they were overreacting, but since his mom is a nurse, they won. Still, Paul and I spent the entire morning fighting. It didn’t help that I self-diagnosed via internet and was having bouts of hypochondria. I was super scared of going to the doctor… visits were fifty euros, which I couldn’t spare, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to afford medication. Finally, Paul forced me into the car and drove me to a clinic in Grenoble, trying to make me feel better by telling me that “only the best doctors work here” and we could only go because of his parents’ “connections”. Which only made me think of how expensive this place could be.

The doctor spent maybe fifteen minutes looking at me before telling me that I should have come in immediately and that I had pretty much three different things at once. He talked to Paul while I sat on the bed and felt like a five year old child, watching the adults talk. I felt kind of depressed on top of everything. I was tired of fighting with Paul but I hated how he treated me like some sick, homeless but pretty kitten that he picked up on the street. Still, I was really grateful for everything that he was doing for me. Luckily the doctor took his “green card”, which meant that I didn’t have to pay for the visit or for medicine. But it made me feel even less independent.

I felt way better after my medicine kicked in a bit. Paul and his dad left for a while, entrusting me to the care of his mother. This was a welcome change. She let me sit barefoot on the balcony to drink tea with her and didn’t tell me that I was going to feel worse if I didn’t wear a jacket.

“I’m sorry Paul is being such a mother hen,” she told me. “He just really, really cares about you… I think more than he’s cared about anyone. He gets a bit overbearing though, huh?”

Yup. You could say that.

“I’m afraid that might be my fault. He’s my only son… I might have done the same thing to him. He’ll learn though, I’m sure. Just stand up for yourself and he’ll learn that he can’t make all of your decisions for you.”

Couldn’t he just know that in the first place…

That evening, Paul’s mom convinced him that I was well enough to join them to see a modern dance concert. It was by choreographer Lucinda Childs and preformed apparently by one of the best dance groups in the world.

It was basically an hour of across-the-floors, in perfect technique but without any variation, performed to literally the most annoying music I’ve ever heard in my life. The only cool thing was that the dancers were dancing with images of other dancers superimposed over them in film. If that makes any sense. Basically, the film is from the 60’s, and combined with real-time dance, it gives this cool impression of art transcending time.

Still, it didn’t need to go on for an hour.

Everyone else was absolutely amazed by it, though. Paul and his parents wouldn’t stop talking about the enchanting hypnotism of the piece, the body lines of the dancers, the lighting… I almost wished I was back in bed with a fever.

After the concert, we went over to his parents’ friends’ house for dinner. This part of my evening was super cool. His parents’ friends were a retired main-stage French actor and a painter. Their son was visiting. He was a businessman who worked for the airline company in Marseilles and had seen most of the world well before he turned thirty. He could also speak almost any language with almost any accent. Oh. And they had a cat named “Gris Chat”, which literally means “Gray Cat.” The cat knows how to roll over.

Dinner was actually great. I hadn’t eaten virtually anything in five days, so I was starving. The conversation was interesting and easy to understand. The food was immaculate- really good French cheese and some crazy wine that I will never understand, with some mushroom-pasta combination that put most restaraunts to shame. The cat rolled over. After a few hours, Paul stopped glancing over at me with his doe-eyed “please don’t die at dinner, dear,” expression. After taking shots with the other guys, he stopped checking my pulse under the table. Just kidding. Sort of.

My fever came back at around midnight so we had to walk back.

“I’ll carry you,” he kept telling me.

“No.”

“Here, then I’ll talk so that you stay conscious.”

I wasn’t exactly planning to pass out and his yammering was making my head hurt. But he wouldn’t listen when I asked him to be quiet.

“What am I going to do if you pass out?”

I tried to remind him that he wanted to carry me back anyway, but that didn’t work too well. As I was going to sleep, I couldn’t decide if I was lucky that I had someone who cared so much about me or if I wanted to stifle him with a pillow.

Sunday, October 21

This morning, I woke up to Paul running around his room like crazy, looking for his car keys.

“Whassgoinonnnn,” I moaned with my pillow on my face.

“Nana and Papa are coming over, get dressed.”

“The dog from Peter Pan is coming over? Cool.”

“Nana is my grandma, Dasha. Come on, she called to say she’s almost here.”

His grandmother was a beautiful, perfect woman with cheekbones that could make anyone jealous, a smile that made her look almost young, and a stern resting expression of “I want to kill everyone in the world”. I liked his grandfather immediately, though. He wasn’t handsome- maybe he had been a long time ago, I don’t know. But he was hillarious and he made fun of Paul every time that he tried to do the whole “I’m your boyfriend but also your mother” thing.

“I want to go to Russia someday,” he told me. “But with a thirty-year-old bride. I can wait,” he winked, gesturing to his wife. She laughed.

“I’ll outlive you,” she threatened.

Paul’s dad made an amazing lunch. Apparently this was Paul’s family birthday celebration and they put the restaurant to shame. His dad made mushrooms in pie crust for appetizers and busted out a fancy bottle of incredible champagne. Then we had rabbit pate for the first course (I had a hard time eating it because I couldn’t stop imagining the poor little rabbit that we were munching on), chicken in citrus sauce with some strangely intricate eggplant/mashed potato deal for the main course, and three different desserts, including a raspberry-meringue cake that Paul’s mom apparently always makes for his birthday.

If there was one thing I couldn’t complain about, it was the food.

The day went downhill from there. The drugs weren’t keeping my fever completely down and I was in pain. Then, I managed to get myself permanently locked out of my ipad thanks to the fact that I decided that my password wasn’t secure enough and I needed to change it to a real word. So I lost all of my notes for the past few weeks and was convinced that I was going to fail my classes. I was emotionally and physically exhausted from the past few weeks, which meant another fight with Paul, who was driving me crazy by bringing up the “we should live together” conversation. I finally snapped and told him that was never going to happen. He got hurt and asked me why I was dating him if I was planning to just leave him in January anyway and I decided to rub salt in the wounds and told him that he could leave now if he didn’t like the fact that it would be impossible for us to stay together longer.

It was at that moment that I found a video that my brother and I would always watch together. I had been turning off my computer and I accidentally clicked on bookmarks. Without even thinking, I clicked on it. It was a child version of the Lord’s Prayer, which I found accidentally when Maksim got tired of the “C is for Cookie” song.

“Oh, poutan,” Paul growled. “I’ll come back at another time if you want to watch that.”

Another giant boulder in our relationship, one that I never thought (never think) we can overcome. God.

“I’m not watching it,” I said angrily, slamming my computer shut. “I can’t wait to go home.”

He froze.

“To Lyon?”

“California.”

He glanced at me, his eyes full of hurt, started to say something, stopped and left the room, slamming the door.

By the evening, I felt like hell. I was in pain physically. Emotionally, I was a wreck. I wanted to comfort Paul, to tell him that everything was going to be okay, to just pack up my shit and bring it to his flat if it would make him feel better… But I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Which made me think… maybe we should just stop. This was starting to get too real, in a way that was freaking me out. We were sitting facing each other on the train back to Lyon. He was trying to talk to me. I had nothing left to say. I sketched instead, which is usually a mindless activity but anyone who knows me really well knows that’s what I do when I’m too depressed to understand my feelings- I draw them.

“You can go to your house if you want,” he told me finally, in a hollow voice admitting defeat. “I understand you’re sick of me.”

I felt awful. So this guy didn’t understand the meaning of space. But he’d been nothing but kind. He just had this fairytale notion that he’d be together forever with some girl he met in a bar that I was too jaded to accept. He didn’t see the limitations that were obvious to me. I thought he was naive. But maybe he’s the one that had it right. He was the one that had the balls to love me when I was getting defensive every second and running away. He was the first one, always, to say that he was sorry. He was the one constantly getting hurt because he was doing the one thing that I’d always wanted someone to do: he was fighting for me.

I moved our stuff so that I could sit next to him and hugged him tight. He wrapped his arms around me and held me. We didn’t say anything, but I felt safe. For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t hold back the tears. Luckily the train was almost empty. Paul stroked my hair and the train plunged us into the darkness, into the unknown, but we were together and we were safe.

Monday, October 22

Today I was supposed to work. A lot. Instead I sent a lot of emails and wrote. A lot. And restarted my ipad.

I feel lost but it’s almost cathardic. I told Paul that I was going to eat dinner at Sylvie’s tonight and he was very calm about it.

“I’ll make sure that I get home by seven to say bye before you leave,” he promised me. And I promised myself I’d stop being such a wild, untamable little animal.

But that didn’t mean that I would ever let a guy make my decisions for me.

Oh and progress: it’s my first day without a fever and without (much) pain. Meds are kicking in! Time to get back into the groove of things.

Sunday, October 7 Things seemed much bit better after a night of sleep. Still, we were totally...

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 05:43:22 -0400

Sunday, October 7

Things seemed much bit better after a night of sleep. Still, we were totally exhausted from hiking the day before. It was cloudy outside so we spent most of the day watching episodes of Tin Tin. How French.

We did go outside for a bit, but since it was Sunday everything was closed. The view was gorgeous though:

Aaaand I had my first French kebab ever. To date, it’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten and I dream about kebabs in my sleep now.

Finally, we made our way over to a small park with a rose garden and a couple of trees that had decided it was finally time for autumn.

Paul made me read Arthur Rimbaud’s biography in French. He’s my pronounciation teacher and he’s seriously stricter than anyone I’ve ever (and I mean EVER) had to deal with. Finally I got frustrated and told him to roll his r’s.

I found my favorite flower in the garden. It’s called the macartney rose.

It doesn’t look that special, but it smells AMAZING. I plucked a petal and smelled it until I was dizzy and getting into philosophical debates about why Prevert is art and Rimbaud is drug-induced talent. I’m not sure I made any sense, but Paul stopped me when I started trying to compose odes to the cloud-shrouded mountains.

His parents came back early so the four of us spent that evening drinking wine on the balcony and looking out at gorgeous, sleepy Grenoble.

His dad brought out his ipad so that they could see my hometown, which I thought was really touching. His mom noticed the cross on my neck and asked if I was religious. Paul told me that both of his parents were brought up Catholic but they weren’t so into it, so it was nice that she was so polite and curious about it. His parents definitely freaked me out (Paul said that I made more mistakes than ever talking to his father) but I felt accepted.

As we were leaving, his mom picked up a beautiful rosary that was hanging in the hallway and handed it to me.

“This belonged to my great-aunt,” she told me. “You should have it.”

My jaw dropped. I glanced at Paul, who gestured for me to take it. I wished I could google the policy on accepting family heirlooms in France, but that wasn’t really an option. I walked out of the apartment, weighed down by the rosary and my shock.

“Are you okay?” Paul laughed.

“Yes… no… what the hell was that?”

“She really likes you.”

Freaking. Out.

When we got to the train station, we found out that the train was going to be an hour late. An hour later, we found out that the train wasn’t coming. Apparently there would be a taxi in twenty minutes to take us to Lyon. We waited. The taxi didn’t come either. They promised us a bus. We waited. And waited. And waited. Paul argued with some “mec” named Guy in French that was too quick for me to follow. Finally he turned to me, exasperated.

“Do you have class tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Let’s go. We should spent the night at the apartment. I don’t think they’re getting a bus.”

“Is this normal?” I asked him as we made our way back to the flat.

“Yeah. Welcome to France. The people who work for SNCF are literally the laziest idiots on the planet. It’s unbearable… well, them and the people who work at the post office.”

“What’s wrong with the post office?”

“They went on strike because they weren’t getting paid for the two minutes it took them to put on their uniform. The SNCF isn’t much better. They used to get paid extra because their job was considered dangerous back when trains used coal. Now that there isn’t a health risk, that extra pay was reduced… and they went on strike to get it back. Oh, and if you ever go to Paris, don’t bother using the metro. The staff will probably be on strike.”

Yup. Welcome to France.

Monday, October 8

The ride back to Lyon was amazing. Unfortunately my camera died so I couldn’t get any pictures of the incredible view from the train. Paul was asleep with his head on my shoulder. I guess he’d seen this a billion times, but I couldn’t imagine how someone could give up looking out of the window as we made our way out of the valley and the mountains became blue giants in the distance. As I watched the sun rise from behind the Alps, I couldn’t help but feel ridiculously lucky to be on that train in that particular moment with that one particular person.

He stirred in his sleep. “Je t’aime,” he murmured sleepily. For the first time, I wasn’t going to start a debate with him on the impossibility of his statement after two weeks of us knowing each other, as I usually did. Instead I just kissed his forehead and told him to go back to sleep.

I spent most of that day running around Lyon, getting my registration papers in. They were late, but I was used enough to being in France to know that no one cared and I shouldn’t either. At around 8, I went to Cecile’s new studio for dinner (she’d moved out this past week to live closer to work). Mylene was there, which was nice since I hadn’t seen her since the weekend that I moved in. Sylvie made us food and explained why there was a random Indian guy sleeping on the couch when I came home this morning (which was nice, I was kind of confused).

October 9, 2012

Today, I was looking forward to sleeping in. At nine AM, my phone rang.

“Champignoooooonnnsss,” Paul sang. He was way too chipper for how early it was.

“Why would you wake me up to talk about mushrooms…” I growled.

“Are you sleeping? Get up! It’s perfect weather to go mushroom picking. Besides, Evariste just broke up with his girlfriend, this is just what he needs!”

It had rained yesterday night and a quick glance outside showed a sky that didn’t seem sure about whether or not it wanted to repeat. Also, I wasn’t quite sure that third-wheeling on a miserably cold trip to pick mushrooms would cheer Evariste up, but whatever. Paul promised I could sleep in the car.

We drove to Bois D’Oignon, about an hour away from Lyon. Weirdly enough, it was perfect weather to pick mushrooms and we all had our spirits lifted from running around the forest. Evariste and I bonded over trying to keep track of Paul every time he’d run off in search of mushrooms.

I did find a few. Unfortunately they were all poisonous.

Paul and I went to Ecole Centrale, his university, for lunch. It was a bizarre place. Basically, it’s one of the Grands Ecoles, kind of like Science Po (where I go) but way more prestigious. You literally can’t get in unless you’ve had a year at one of the best prep schools. But Paul explained that it’s not really a question of merit, but of money. You’ve got to work hard, but your parents also have to be pretty loaded. Basically, his school made me super nervous. I don’t do well in crowds of guys in polos and designer shoes (especially since this morning, Paul and Evariste decided that my ballet flats were not going to cut it in the forest and I was eating lunch wearing Sebastian’s shoes. I felt like a hobbit).

My evening class was canceled- gotta love 4 day weekends! The boys had a party at their place. Evariste was there, looking more depressed than ever, as the two girls that came to see the jazz concert with us a few weeks ago tried to chat him up. I was so tired that I almost fell asleep at the table, to the sound of French kareoke.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

My day didn’t become interesting until about 7:55 pm, when I found myself running from Science Po to Theatre Celestin with 5 minutes to get to the 8 pm showing of “Death of a Salesman”- in French, of course.

Note to self: running through the rain in ballet flats, jumping over cars and buses, knocking over pedestrians, and darting across busy streets to cover a 5 minute mile and a half doesn’t work.

I was pretty proud of myself though- I was only five minutes late. And drenched. The guys were waiting for me at the entrance. A smug usher guided us to our seats on the balcony, commenting on how we were late and how the play had already started. He looked at me like I was a wet dog. I probably looked like one.

As we sat down, I quietly thanked Wikipedia for the brief synopsis of the play that I’d read before coming there.

“I don’t understand a single thing,” said one of the girls that came with our group.

Ha!

I spent the longer scenes (and the scene where Willy’s lover was running around the stage naked… how French…) staring at the beautiful, ancient theater. It was literally a FULL house… and it was gorgeous.

Hearing the French students try to discuss Miller after the play was probably one of my most amusing experiences in France to date.

“I understood nothing,” said the same girl.

“She usually understands nothing,” Paul told me.

The guys were having another party at the house that evening, with a bunch of Seb’s med school friends. Paul and I sat on his windowsill, sipping wine and looking out on the rain-refreshed city.

“How come you never let people in?” he asked me so suddenly that I almost fell out of the window.

“Not true,” I lied. I hated these conversations.

“I just feel like you can be here one second and disappear the next. Promise you’ll give me fair warning before you run off?”

“Promise. In January, I intend to run off.”

He laughed. “That’s going to disappoint my mom. I think she likes you more than she likes me- she called to say I don’t deserve you.”

This was getting weird.

Whatever. Arthur Miller in French was weird too, but hey, the play was an enjoyable experience.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Today was another exploring day. The weather was amazing and Lyon was more beautiful than ever:

Paul and I went over to Croix Rousse to listen to gypsy jazz guitarists jamming and to search for a present for my baby brother. We didn’t find anything, but it was a lovely evening.

Friday, October 12, 2012

I spent the morning bonding with Seb over washing dishes. Another week of classes down and I finally feel like I’m getting this lecture in French thing (kind of) down.

I’d been getting a bit stressed over how much time Paul and I spend together. We’d fallen into a sort of daily pattern- go to class, get dinner together, stay up until the metro was about to close or have me crash at his place if I had class the next morning close to his apartment. In the end, I spent every day with him. At first, I told myself that it was fine, I’d be gone in a few months so I should just enjoy the time we had together, but the lack of alone time was driving me crazy.

So I was pretty happy that one of my American friends was having a 90’s party that evening to celebrate her 21st birthday. Paul called me to invite me to hang out with his highschool friends but I asserted my independence, which he, being French, didn’t understand at all. Finally we compromised and I promised to meet him later.

The party was really fun, but I noticed that I was having issues communicating with people in English. There would be French phrases I’d want to say and I found myself having to stop and translate.

I went over to the St. James pub to see Paul and his friends after. I was pretty glad I went over there- his friends are awesome. Still, I was excited for Saturday, when I knew I’d get a day all to myself.

Saturday October 13

Today was Sylvie’s 50th birthday celebration, which is a huge deal in France. We drove over to a tiny village called Montseveroux, which sounds like Mon Cerveau to me, which means My Brain, which is literally what I thought it was called.

It was freezing and I forgot a jacket. Luckily, Charles, Sylvie’s boyfriend, offered me his. Unfortunately, I looked like a total dork.

We spent the morning setting up the 13th century chateau that Sylvie rented for the occasion. The building closest to us literally had arrow slots.

We spent the whole day eating. Everyone else combined that with socializing. I couldn’t keep the relations straight so I just ate.

It was probably the most awkward day of my life. Some people thought that I was one of Sylvie’s daughters and probably found me stupid since I didn’t speak perfect French. Others heard her introduce me as her adopted daughter from Russia and actually thought that this was true. Most of them didn’t really care and I floated around like an invisible, deaf, but very hungry ghost.

I also went exploring. A lot.

12th century church:

I did try to be social for a while to play a game called petanque, which is kind of the love child of croquet and bowling. So I was busy being half terrible and half missing bumpers.

Finally I ran away to look at sheep and to get chased by dogs

I also almost got poisoned when I tried to drink orange juice back at the chateau and accidentally chugged a glass of rum mixed with guava that someone poured into an OJ bottle.

I decided to sleep that off and only went out again at sunset.

Finally, we all got back together for a family picture, where I think people were still trying to figure out who the hell I was:

I spent the evening talking to the random Indian guy whom I found sleeping on our couch. Turns out he’s actually Sri Lankan and he comes from some tiny village.

I went to sleep at midnight because I couldn’t take any more of the awkward.

Sunday, October 14

Spent the day catching up on homework. It’s getting cold.

Monday, October 15

Catching up on homework. It was 2 degrees Celcius this morning.

Tuesday, October 16

It’s really frustrating when it takes you four hours to listen to half an hour of your recorded lecture and you still do NOT understand certain things that the professor says. But today is a good day. I agreed to come work at Paul’s place since it’s his 21st birthday. Not that he’s home or anything, but his apartment is actually super good for concentrating. Plus, it’s warm.

I’ve been thinking all day about how much I don’t want this all to end. I’m actually really happy here. Sure, sometimes I get fed up or frustrated, but I really like Paul. And I’ve found some friends here who are freaking amazing. My homestay family makes me feel like I belong. It’s just all so (almost) perfect.

Do I really only have a bit over two months left here…

Ugh. I don’t want to think about it.

October 5 (cont) It’s amazing how different cities have absolutely different characters. As...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 07:55:05 -0400

October 5 (cont)

It’s amazing how different cities have absolutely different characters. As soon as I stepped off the train, I could literally feel the difference between Grenoble and Lyon, which is strange since they’re in the same region, barely an hour away from each other.

Okay, maybe it’s not so strange. Lyon’s got over two million residents, a bustling business-city culture, and is the 3rd biggest city in France. Grenoble’s population hits 159 thousand and the massive mountain ranges surrounding the town give it a timeless, wild character.

Not that you could see the mountain ranges in the dark, but whatever.

Paul’s parents have a flat in the middle of the city, barely a ten minute walk away from the train station. I was so nervous to meet them that I was tempted to run back to the station and just stay there until I could catch the next train back home.

They were in the dining room when Paul let us in, sipping on Cote-de-Rhone wine. Both of them gave me forced little smiles and kissed me on each cheek.

“Do-you-speak-any-French?” his father asked me, announciating every syllable. Paul snorted from stifling his laughter.

“Um. Yeah, a little,” I responded.

We stood in the hallway and stared awkwardly at each other.

“Okay!” said Paul’s mom, obviously trying to break the silence. “Paul’s room is this way,” she gestured toward a closed door to my right. She opened the door. “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

Inside was a very typical college student room, with a desk and a bed and a not-so-typical whiteboard with physics and chemistry equations written all over it.

I smiled at her and waited for her to show me where I was going to sleep. She smiled back. This was getting really awkward.

“Do you want to put your stuff down?” she asked me.

Oh. She was encouraging this whole sleeping in the same bed as her son business. Call me a prude, but I’d have been so much more comfortable crashing on the couch. They had really nice couches, too.

Just as I was thinking that I couldn’t get much more uncomfortable, another family member came over to examine me.

“Oh hey there, Enza,” Paul crooned, picking his cat up. She purred happily and snuggled against his chest. I reached over to let her sniff my hand before petting her. Her eyes bolted open. She hissed like a snake and lunged toward my hand with her claws.

Great. So the cat hates me. Apparently she hates everyone, but that didn’t make me feel much better.

We sat down to dinner. His mom made everything I dislike, but she kept complimenting herself and piling her masterpiece beef on my plate so I smiled and forced chunks of meat down my throat. Both of his parents were talking to me as if I was a very small, very stupid child.

“You can talk to her normally, you know,” Paul told them. They both laughed awkwardly. His dad kept pouring me more wine, which didn’t exactly make my French much better.

His mom was talking about their recent vacation to Nepal, which was strinkingly different than Cambodia and Thailand, apparently. Paul told me that they belonged to a social class that was called “bobo,” which I guess is a weird mix of bourgeois and bohemian (according to the New York Times. I had to google it). Basically it means that his mom does a lot of yoga, his dad earns a ridiculous amount of money, and they travel to a lot of underdeveloped nations.

I tried to comment on the yoga thing and let his mom know that I thought it was “interesting” that she did that. I accidentally told her it was weird.

Way to make a good first impression, Dasha.

We’d drained the bottle of wine, thank God. His mom served us dessert, which looked like it came from a bakery that sold its cupcakes for the price of a small house in the Mediterranean. His dad narrowed his eyes and stared at me for a few seconds.

“Do you like vodka?” he asked me.

“Um. It’s not my drink of choice, but I guess it’s alright,” I answered, going for what I thought was a safe response. It wasn’t safe. His dad got up and came back with a handle of expensive-looking alcohol and three shot glasses.

“You’re Russian. You’ll like this.”

He poured me a shot, then poured a couple for himself and for Paul. The two of them knocked their shots back and stared at me. I drained my shotglass. His dad smiled at me approvingly.

“He likes you,” Paul told me later. “I’m not sure about my mom. But my dad really likes you.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d done to earn his approval, but whatever. I was just glad I wasn’t dying of alcohol poisoning. And that his parents were leaving tomorrow.

October 6

I woke up to this:

Paul’s parents had left and we had the flat to ourselves. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and I spent the morning dancing in the living room and taking pictures out of every window in the apartment.

Enza was watching me the whole morning, her green eyes filled with hatred. She peed on the bed yesterday to try and mark her territory. Now she was following me around the apartment, hissing and swatting her claws at me whenever Paul walked away for a second.

I don’t think I’ve ever hated an animal quite so much.

After breakfast on the balcony, we spent the morning exploring the city.

I couldn’t get over how beautiful it was, in a way completely different from Lyon. Grenoble was much sleepier, without the busy streets and bustling rivers. Autumn had come early here and many of the trees were painted gold and auburn. The Alps towered above the town, bringing the horizon closer.

We walked over to the trail that would lead us up toward the Bastille. There were some people taking the air tram, but Paul said it’d be more interesting to climb the mountain.

Air tram:

I was pretty okay with walking further, especially because we kept stumbling upon views like this one:

Finally, we got to the foot of the fortress:

It was a pretty easy climb, which wove between the crumbling halls of the ancient fortress and the alpine wilderness. Every now and again, we could glimpse the city down below:

Or something like this:

It took us probably an hour to climb halfway up the mountain, to the point where the air tram let the tourists off. We stopped for lunch.

I tried to teach Paul to smile because apparently the French don’t really smile that often in their pictures.

It kind of worked.

We climbed the rest of the mountain and came upon a World War II monument.

I nearly gave Paul a heart attack because I have absolutely no fear of heights so I climbed onto the edge of the cliff to take pictures like this:

It was liberating.

On the way back, we found an entrance to the grottos that people used for shelter in various wars. We explored the dark tunnels.

The climb up and down the Alps completely wore us out so we spent the rest of the day making a ridiculous amount of chocolate mousse (well, Paul made it, I stole bits of chocolate and started a couple of food fights).

That evening, we took the car up into the Chartreuse mountains and hiked out past the dark canyon to see this incredible view:

I was ridiculously happy. I sat on the edge of the cliff and sang the old Russian melodies that my grandmother had taught me. I honestly didn’t think that the warm, glowy feeling that had been growing all day could ever go away.

We were on the way back, listening to Spanish music and talking about our dreams, when I realized it could.

“I can’t wait for Spain!” I told Paul happily.

“I know, it’s going to be awesome.”

“No… I mean next year.”

“What?”

“I want to go study abroad there. If it’s an option.”

He gripped the streering wheel and stared straight ahead.

“What?” I asked him.

“I thought you said you couldn’t study abroad more than a quarter.”

“I can’t… I’d be losing two quarters if I stayed for spring.”

“But you can go to Spain?”

“For fall quarter, yeah.”

“You wouldn’t want to come back here?”

“I like Lyon… but I want to see something new.”

He didn’t say anything. I could tell he was mustering up the nerve to respond. Then- “What about us?”

I wasn’t expecting that question.

“What about us?” I repeated.

“So you’re just going to leave and that’ll be it?”

I didn’t know what to say. Yes? That didn’t seem to be the answer he was looking for.

“I don’t know?” I guessed.

He pulled into a parking space and stared at me, exasperated.

“Stay here,” he said.

“Not an option,” I answered. I was getting frustrated. This was difficult enough without him getting all serious about us. It made me confused about my own emotions and I didn’t want to face them.

He sighed and got out of the car. We walked to the apartment in silence. We made dinner in silence and ate without saying anything. Enza was running laps around the apartment.

“She can tell you’re upset,” Paul told me cooly. “She’s happy about that.”

“Bitch,” I hissed at her. Paul nearly choked on his pasta laughing.

“Way to take your anger out on the poor cat,” he said.

“I hate your cat. She’s evil. She doesn’t want me here.”

“She’s the only one who doesn’t,” he told me, taking hold of my hand.

“I can’t promise you anything,” I responded.

“It’s fine. I’m not asking you to. Everything’s perfect.”

Then why did I feel like I was walking headfirst into a complete and total disaster?

October 4 continued Sometimes you just need an evening of girltime, ridiculously expensive and not...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:31:48 -0400

October 4 continued

Sometimes you just need an evening of girltime, ridiculously expensive and not so good tourist candy (note to self: if there’s a giant Jack Sparrow statue in front of the store, don’t go in), beer, and getting hit on by creepy guys. Although I’m pretty sure we could have done without the creepy guys. We did meet an American though, a guy named Kyle who interned for the American consulate in Lyon and who I’d actually emailed back and forth with a few times. Which resulted in that awkward moment when you go to a bar and the guy that comes over to speak to you and your friends already knows to only your first but also your last name. Actually, that doesn’t happen to me so often but whatever. After getting offers to trade an unknown something (which turned out to be our company) for free drinks from random French guys and getting stared at by a bald muscular dude, I was pretty much ready to run from the creep factor of midnight in a bar. All in all, it was a good night.

October 5, 2012

I woke up way before my alarm rang because my homestay sister was having a dance party in the shower. Which is fair, since I’ve got my late-night Skype sessions with random people from all over the world.

I should have gotten up earlier.

Basically, over the past few weeks I have picked up intense procrastination, aka the art of being French. The French do EVERYTHING at the very last second. I waited until I had literally no time to finish my class registration. Or rather, to start it.

I spent the morning running around like a crazy person. Everything was closed. I basically spent the whole morning being told that the deadline wasn’t REALLY a deadline and I should come back on Monday.

Welcome to France.

I also got completely confused on when my classes would end. Paul and I are going to Grenoble tonight (I already said that, I think) and the train leaves at 20:14. trust me to read that as 6:14 since I can’t do math and run around like a madwoman, knocking people over on the metro, to get home and pack on time (obviously I left packing undone, also).

I’ve decided that despite my promise to be honest in my blog, I think everyone is sick of me ranting about my conundrum with my ex. I’m going to feel crappy about it for a while, but hey, whatever. That topic is closed.

Besides, I’m a bit too worried about meet-the-parents French style to worry about American problems.

Life is definitely doing the whole getting way better thing, though. I’ve been working on the not-loosing-God thing and I can feel the joy literally flooding back into my life.

SoexcitedforGrenooobllleeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

October 2 (continued) I should probably get pictures from my walk up. It was definitely a gorgeous...

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:52:58 -0400

October 2 (continued)

I should probably get pictures from my walk up.

It was definitely a gorgeous day.

Coming down Fourviere Hill:

I am just so in love with this little church:

Loved this. Not sure why though.

One of the many statues that can be found on street corners in Presque-Ile

Have I mentioned that I love this city?

Tiny courtyards

Another church:

Up the Saone

Lyon’s so bright!

Random cave with random monument in the middle of town

I found a castle :)

Gorgeous view

You can see the fortress from here!

Flowers :)

Anyway, I love Tuesdays, because they give me a chance to explore.

Also, I have my favorite class in the morning- Islam and Politics. Although this time around I understood virtually nothing and looking back at my notes doesn’t exactly help:

“In ancient Arabia, people collected shamus. More shamus= more wealth. Razzia!”

I guess the word for cammel in french is “chameau.” Figures.

It was also one of those beautiful evenings that makes you hate the world for giving you an 8 AM class the next day.

The boys went mushroom picking earlier that day, so they spent the evening making amazing pasta with fresh mushrooms. Seb asked me to record the cooking experience, so here it is, although this does their culinary skills absolutely no justice:

Mushrooms:

Candid?

Anyway, dinner was pretty much the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

#happinessinfrance

October 3, 2012

When we went to the study abroad meetings spring quarter, they told us that we’d have a few weeks when we’d be completely elated to be in a new place, exploring a new city, etc.

And then they said we’d miss home, that we’d get sick of the foreign culture, that we’d want to go back and we’d have what they called a “fall” into a short span of depression.

They only half-predicted what would happen with me.

I didn’t miss home. I wasn’t sick of the foreign culture. I’d only stepped in shit once. I’d figured out how to get onto the metro, how to score a seat, how to avoid getting hit on by old men, how to not get hit by a car even when NOT wearing a skirt… Basically, I’d gotten Lyon down.

The depression came from realizing that, in three months, I’d have to go back. And I’m not gonna lie, it was a full blown (if somewhat short) FALL.

I spent most of the day walking around the city, thinking: “what’s the point” about everything.

It started out with “what’s the point of trying to create meaningful relationships with people if I’m going to go back in a few months?”, progressed into “what’s the point of trying to maintain relationships with people who have shown me they don’t really care that much about me,” to “what’s the point of ever getting close to anyone” to “what’s the point of life.”

Luckily I don’t actually live close to any bridges.

Also, the bravado I had going from telling my ex off yesterday faded into a sort of deep-seated hurt, which wasn’t quite like anything I’d ever felt before. I’d had moments when I was hurt by people, sure, but I wasn’t just hurt at him. I was weirdly hurt at myself. I felt stupid. I must have done something wrong to make somebody who was basically my other half for so long hate me so much. I couldn’t decide if I felt more guilty or relieved to have logged into his facebook and found out what he was saying. But the sinking feeling in my stomach kind of answered that question for me.

Mostly the question was: “what’s the point of loving someone if you end up acting like you hate each other in the end?”

I just wanted to lie in bed and do nothing.

I’d talked about this with some friends, who told me that I was opening a new chapter in my life and to forget the old. I was happy to do so, but I didn’t want a new chapter. I wanted the pre-preceding chapter, where it was freshman year and it felt like nothing could ever go wrong.

But I told myself to man up, to realize that we’d both changed to the point where we were literally poison to each other, and to accept this new chapter. I just couldn’t understand how a person that I had cared about so much could do something to hurt me so badly. I’d always thought we were on the same team. And I couldn’t understand myself- I felt like a traitor. Like one of my friends told me, two wrongs didn’t make a right.

I made myself be productive to forget the hurt. I typed out my diplomacy lecture from last week and talked to my cousin, who had been in the hospital. Except for I got carried away, because when I looked at the time, I realized I’d definitely be late for my next class.

I ran to the tram, just to see it pull away as I got there. That, by the way, is the worst feeling ever.

After I finally caught the next tram, I ran all the way to class. I was fifteen minutes late, but that shouldn’t be too bad, right?

I tried to sneak in quietly. Semi-big lecture hall, no one should notice.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the professor asked. Everyone turned around to look at me. I stared at her with my best deer-in-the-headlights expression.

“You’re a quarter of an hour late,” she told me. “What makes you think you can attend my class?”

I stared. I was getting really good at this staring thing.

“You can come back after an hour,” she told me. “Get out.”

I barely made it to the bathroom before I burst into tears. I considered calling Paul, telling him that my class got canceled, that I was free to hang out if he wanted to see me… but I was sick of feeling like shit. Maybe I could actually do that. Come back at break. Explain that I lost track of time talking to my cousin. That’s stupid. What would she care.

I couldn’t stop crying. I don’t think I’ve really cried in a long while and emotions that I didn’t even realize I had were overwhelming me. I finally got myself to stop, walked outside and sat on the bench outside of the lecture hall for an hour, completely numb.

When I walked up to my professor, she glared at me with a pair of raven eyes behind strict square glasses.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t realize I’d be so late. I was talking to my cousin… she’s sick…”

She smiled suddenly.

“I’m not mad,” she told me. “It’s just a matter of principle. If you’re going to be fifteen minutes late, I’d rather you come back after the break. Did you want to follow my class?”

Seriously? She was acting like I was her favorite student all of a sudden. This was too weird, but I felt a strange sense of accomplishment from our interaction. It was the tiny push that started prodding me out of my week-long fall. I just hoped I could keep going.

After class, I hurried over to Paul’s apartment. The boys had promised to take me out to a cafe theater in Croix Rousse that evening. We ended up being late because they were too busy making the most amazing rice-sushi thing that I had ever tasted. Instead, we all went to a small bar in Vieux Lyon. It was a beautiful evening.

The bar was pretty cool, too:

Paul and I ended up leaving early to explore night-time Lyon.

It was magical. What the hell was I doing, thinking about the past every minute that I wasn’t thinking about January?

“You should find a way to stay here. At least a bit longer,” Paul told me, hugging me.

“You’d get sick of me,” I laughed.

He let go and looked at me sternly. “Not funny,” he told me.

“Let’s not think about me leaving,” I said. And meant it.

Here’s to starting the climb back up from the fall.

October 4, 2012

Climb back up is definitely in action! I had Spanish this morning, which is probably my favorite class. I know it’s petty, but I just love how lost the French students are in a subject where I have absolutely no problems.

Granted we’re just going over sentence structure, which should be the most boring thing in the world, but I’m loving it.

I caught the bus back with a few girls that I don’t usually get to talk much to and had a really good time getting to know some “new” people.

Paul tried to get me to come to a concert with him tonight, but I can’t really do the whole “seeing the same person each night thing.” So he came over and we did homework together. It was pretty embarassing when he finished his advanced chemistry before I got through reviewing half of my “literature for children” lecture, but having him around was pretty helpful.

I was hoping to avoid the whole introducing him to my homestay family thing, but Sylvie came home just as he was about to leave.

“Oh, so you’re Dasha’s boyfriend,” she greeted him. I don’t think I could have blushed a deeper red.

“Yeah, that’d be me,” he responded calmly. Um. What. Boyfriend? Since WHEN? I kind of missed the American way of things, where a guy is supposed to ask you first.

But when I got over the shock I found that, strangely enough, I didn’t quite mind.

I still wouldn’t let him kiss me goodbye in front of her, though, and as soon as he left, I ran up the stairs and hid in my room.

I still got interrogated at dinner, but hey, it wasn’t too bad.

I have to meet his parents tomorrow.

If this was scary back home, it’s a hundred times scarier in a country where you’re sure you’re gonna be bisouing some French woman while her son who doesn’t understand why PDA is a problem is trying to explain why his girlfriend speaks their language like a five year old.

This should be interesting.

September 30, 2012 I accidentally deleted this entry. Winner. That’s okay because not much...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:11:48 -0400

September 30, 2012

I accidentally deleted this entry.

Winner.

That’s okay because not much happened this day.

I did get to go to church with Paul’s friends, which was an amazing experience because it’s in moments like that you realize that God is God no matter where you go. It wasn’t exactly an easy experience because I had to face myself and I realized that I wasn’t sure I liked who I had become. I felt lost in my religion, with my friends, with my family… even in my relationships. The stupid thing was that, even though Paul was absolutely awesome, I’d been thinking way too much about the past and it was getting in the way of my present.

I was done. It was time to let go of the past. I had to let go.

October 1, 2012

I did pretty well with the whole restructuring my life thing… until I decided to go exploring that evening.

So much for letting go of the past and moving on.

I went exploring all right. And in discovering a new place, I couldn’t stop searching for elements of the old.

Paul and I decided that it was ridiculous that we’d spent almost every evening on Fourviere Hill without actually ever seeing it, so we decided to go look around and see if there was anything to do at night.

There wasn’t much- Fourviere turns into a sleepy little neighborhood almost as soon as the sun sets and people retreat into their tiny Italian-style homes.

But there were amazing views of night-time Lyon:

It would have been perfect. Strolling through the dimly lit narrow streets, stumbling upon empty parks, searching for stars in the cloudy sky…

Only I couldn’t really buy into the cliche because I still felt guilty. “You’re not supposed to be doing this with any other boys,” my conscience was telling me. “You already care about someone.”

Everything turned into “this was our thing”. Looking out at the city from a viewpoint. Our thing. Planning to make sushi. Our thing. Joking about koalas. Our thing.

I felt like I was going crazy. We were done. I was happy. Why was I still completely torn?

I went to sleep completely confused.

On the bright side, I got a picture of a cloud that looks like an angel:

October 2, 2012

I woke up early to a text.

“We should get our tickets for Spain tonight.”

Again, that awful feeling of being torn. On one hand, I was excited. On the other, this was another our thing. We’d always planned how I’d study abroad in Spain, how we’d keep in touch, how this would be a sort of shared experience…

I had to stop this once and for all.

I logged on to facebook, hoping my ex would be online. I had to talk to him. I didn’t know how the conversation would go, but if I still had real feelings for him, I had to stop whatever I was doing in France. And if I didn’t, I had to REALLY let go.

He was online.

I wrote him a message, forcing myself to be completely vulnerable.

He saw it, no reply.

I waited. My heart was pounding. I just wanted it to be over, really over, not just another phase in this crazy cycle that seemed to never end.

I wrote to him again: “Can we talk?”

He saw it. No reply.

I was beginning to hate technology. Also I was starting to freak out. It didn’t help that one of the stupid nightmares I had a few nights ago involved him getting hurt and me not being able to do anything about it (honestly I think that’s what started this inability to let go). Maybe something really was wrong. I remembered suddenly that I used to know his password, back when we still trusted each other.

This part is ridiculously hard to admit, but I promised I’d be honest on my blog. I don’t even know what possessed me. It was a legitimate moment of crazy ex-girlfriend, to the point where as soon as I logged on to his page, I instinctively wanted to log out. This was so wrong…

But something caught my eye. It was a conversation with one of his friends. And it was definitely about me.

I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t… I kept thinking, but my hands were working against my conscience.

It was the meanest thing I’d ever seen in my life. The entire thing was a thread of cruel words and mockery that reduced me to tears within seconds. They were just taking blows at me. And then, like a glaring red flag in the middle of the screen:

“I’m just glad I’m better than all of those guys she’s sleeping around with in France. Karma.”

My mouth fell open in horror. I couldn’t believe that someone who’d helped me through the death of a friend, someone who had been one of my best friends for these past two years, someone who basically housed me for a quarter when I was having problems with my family, would ever say that. I reread the message, almost hoping it would disappear. No. Still there. I felt heartbroken. He knew me better than anyone. We’d been together for two years and we’d never had sex. I’d basically lived with him. So suddenly I was supposed to be free in France and prancing from bed to bed? Damn, why not give me credit where credit is due? I went to Russia, too, couldn’t I find someone to bang there?

I navigated to his facebook page and deleted him from my friends, then hit the “block” button for good measure. Then I wrote him a text letting him know I’d seen the message and knew what he was saying. I couldn’t exactly let myself get away with reading his stuff and saying nothing.

I spent the rest of the day walking around Lyon. Surprisingly, I felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my chest. I obviously didn’t know this guy anymore. This was the final straw. After a year of mistrust, of fights, of misunderstandings and break-ups, I was finally free.

I got another message from Paul and for the first time since I’d met him, I was free to be happy to hear from him.

I walked all the way to Croix Rousse. It was a wonderful, 5 hour long walk where I thought about everything and realized that from here on, life would be a blank slate. It probably helped a bit that Beyonce’s “Best Thing I Never Had” kept playing in my head.

I love this city and now there’s nothing dragging me back from enjoying it to the fullest.

When I came home, I’d gotten a response text from him, which was basically just him expressing his anger that I snooped on his facebook. Guilty. But I was glad I did it. “I don’t know you anymore,” he told me, which honestly made me want to laugh out loud. He wrote about about being conflicted, wanting to make sure I was okay, but if that was true, I’m pretty sure he’d have just talked to me. Spreading rumours about me being a whore doesn’t exactly translate to: “I care about you” in my book. Unless, of course, he was concerned about the high risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Thank you, sweetheart.

I responded with a flood of words that had been bottled up inside of me for the past few months and told him to leave me alone because I was too busy fucking France.

I was pretty sure that the next few days would consist of plenty of conversations between him and his friends, where they’d call me a crazy ex-girlfriend and tell him: “Man, you did the right thing. Jesus has a way for you!” but I still feel kind of like Olive from Easy A when she gets one over Marianne.

Not exactly relevant. Oh well.

I’m not sure if I’m an idiot or a strong independent woman, but at least I’m forever free from Glee references.

I was gonna reference Beyonce but I’m done being petty.

Here’s to REALLY starting fresh in France.

September 26, 2012 I never thought I’d be excited for a methodology class, but walking into a...

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 09:58:06 -0400

September 26, 2012

I never thought I’d be excited for a methodology class, but walking into a room of twenty other foreign students felt amazing. (Granted there were still only four Americans, but that’s still an improvement).

My day was pretty ordinary. It’s raining like crazy. I got my student ID at an administrative building that looks like a dungeon and spent the afternoon attempting to navigate the French education system. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s virtually impossible to understand, and the fact that my councilors at UCI aren’t responding to emails doesn’t help much either.

Maybe I should just drop out of school and work as a bartender.

I did have a really awesome class this evening, though. It was on different tactics in diplomacy, taught by an enigmatic little woman with silver hair and perfect skin. Seriously, it’s kind of ridiculous- I don’t think French women age. Ever.

I ate dinner with my homestay family. Cecile brought up Paul and asked me why I was being so hesitant to actually admit that I’d been seeing him. Which was true. The whole situation was freaking me out a bit.

“He’s very handsome,” she told me.

“I know. But I leave in three months, what’s the point-“

“He studies at Central,” Cecile turned to her mother. Sylvie nodded approvingly. “He’s going to be rich,” Cecile explained.

Ah, well that solves everything.

I made him get sorted on Pottermore today, just because I had to know if this could really work. He got Slytherin. I’m pretty sure a Gryffindor can’t date a Slytherin. I told him that. He said we should spent our one-week vacation in Italy. I retorted that a Gryffindor could only go to Spain.

I guess I’m going to Spain with a Slytherin. Time to murder the little voice of logic in my head.

September 27, 2012

Lyon mornings are enoguh to make a girl want to stay here forever. I’ve decided that Lyon is actually Disneyland.

Vieux Lyon is Fairytale Land. There’s even a castle. Well, cathedral, but whatever.

Confluence is Tommorrowland. It’s super modern and looks best at night.

Croix Rousse is Toon-town. Super colorful, everyone who’s actually from Lyon lives there, and you don’t really actually ever know what you’re supposed to do there.

Bron is Frontierland.

Presque-Ile and the Center area are Main Street.

Villeurbanne is too freaking far to be anything. I think we might be the parking lot. Or maybe Downtown Disney. That actually works pretty well.

But anyway, Lyon in the morning is magical no matter where you go. The sunlight is intensely bright, making the buildings glow with a fresh, magical light. The air is nippy, but in a refreshing, wonderful way. It’s incredible.

I had three classes today, which doesn’t sound like much but it’s an exhausting workload when you don’t really speak the language. I ended up sleeping through one of them. Oops.

I also accidentally found a Spanish class. I walked into a small lecture hall, sat down, and found myself weirdly capable of understanding everything that came out of the professor’s mouth.

“She must articulate really well,” I thought to myself. I didn’t really get that she was speaking Spanish until one of the French students tried to ask a question and fumbled the words badly enough to grab my attention.

I spent the rest of the class in a weird state of sadistic enjoyment, looking around at the lost expressions on the faces of the students around me. Oh France, what are you doing to me…

I met up with Paul in Bellecour after class. It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

We spent the afternoon sitting in the courtyard in front of the old theater, debating about whether or not zoos are good for animals.

That evening, Sebastian, Paul, two of their girlfriends and I went to the tiny Hot Club in Lyon, which is an underground jazz bar. I’m not exactly sure if you’d call it a bar, though- it’s set up like a small theater.

The three musicians were ridiculously drunk and ridiculously good. The room was almost empty, so they were constantly interacting with the limited audience. The two French girls that we came with seemed very unimpressed. They were sitting in the back of the room, so two of the musicans came over and serenaded them to get them to loosen up a bit.

It didn’t work. The girls left after a few minutes.

I thought it was absolutely amazing. It was just like watching three music-lovers having a jam session. They’d improvise, they’d play songs that one of them didn’t know… It was all just really fun and relaxed.

Besides, you could see they loved what they were doing.

September 28, 2012

Too many hours of class today. But I did pretty well with staying awake this time around, especially since I was so tired from the night before.

That evening, the guys and I were all going to a party at Lydia’s. We made dinner beforehand, except we might have gone overboard with how much wine we had with dinner. Paul told me off for not drinking wine correctly- apparently I’m supposed to spent half an hour smelling it before I actually drink it.

After a brief dance party we were on our way. The guys were all singing something in French. It sounded like a funeral dirge.

I spent most of the party talking to Sebastian, who was trying to convince both Lydia and me that he was not “a drunk people”. Paul found his long-lost semi step sister. The French have really complicated family relations.

It was a very typical American Friday night in France.

September 27, 2012

I had to get up super early this morning for an excursion to beautiful Beaujolais- French wine country. It was absolutely incredible to get out of the city, to drive past sleepy French towns into the country. We visited a family-owned wine cellar, where we got a chance to taste the amazing wine. They also made a three-course meal for the fourty or so of us.

After lunch, we explored the gorgeous countryside.

I was honestly a bit upset when we had to leave. Lyon is beautiful, but I could have enjoyed nature a bit more before being swallowed up by a big, rushing city.

This evening was a bit weird. I feel deflated. I had some time to think about everything on the way back from the bus… In the end I ended up realizing that I don’t really have anything to come back to. I’ve been keeping in touch with maybe three people. My family is there. But the thought of being back in Irvine has made me legitimately depressed. There’s so much baggage there, so many things I’m able to leave behind just because I’m here. But I feel trapped there. It’s like being in a giant jail cell, where you can’t even meet a new person that you don’t already have forty mutual friends with. I’ve been there for ten years. Too long. I’ve been ready to get out and I don’t particularly want to go back.

And then there’s Paul. What the hell am I doing. I had some time to think about this logically… everyone is telling me to just have fun and go for it, but I’m already terrified of being in a relationship because of the crap that I’ve been through with my ex for the past two years. I don’t see this ending in a good way.

Anyway. I just feel spent. I want to find a place where I can stay, where I can be okay with staying. I want to find people who want to be a part of my life and who realistically CAN be. There’s nothing to come home to but I can’t stay here. I’m trying to get myself out of this weird funk… But I went out tonight and was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I ended up being lost on public transport for two hours and could only go out for half an hour before the metro stopped running.

I genuinely feel depressed. I feel lost in my religion, in my relationships, and honestly, in the world.

But I’m trying to get myself to roll with it. To ignore these feelings of anxiety and to just appreciate the moment that I’m living in.

Besides, the world might end before I get to go back to California anyway.

And we're back to playing catch-up...

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 09:01:04 -0400

September 22 (cont)

So of course the best thing to do when you’re completely unsure about someone and think that it might be best to avoid them at all costs is to see them again as soon as possible.

Surprisingly, I’m not being sarcastic.

Paul and I spent the evening exploring the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater.

It was probably not the best day to wear heels but I was tired of feeling like a hobbit around him.

We bumped into a group of Russian tourists. It’s fascinating- when we’re on the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg, we spend the day glaring at each other on the metro. When we travel, we become a nation of brothers and sisters, who greet each other like family as soon as we spot those familiar Slavic features.

So of course the random guys from Chilabensk and I spent a good five minutes ranting at each other while Paul stood politely to the side and smiled at us in a very lost, French manner.

I think he was scared that the Russians would come back, so right after they left, Paul led me over to the gardens by Fourviere. We tried to find a bench to sit on, but they were all occupied by couples who had somehow glued their tongues together and had to sit down to try and wrestle them apart. Or so it seemed. It was the most French evening of my life, walking around a rose garden as the sun was setting over the city below us, talking about literature and philosophy.

He and his roommates had invited my friends and me over for dinner that night so Paul and I went to his place so that I could crack eggs while the rest of them turned the place into a restaurant. Paul and I made a chocolate tart (I opened packages, he cooked). It looked pretty amazing, which means that I played a marginal part in its creation, but I was pretty freaking impressed with what a good cook he was. The other guys weren’t any worse. GIPS (whose name also turned out to be Paul, but that’s awkward, so he’s going to be GIPS from now on) had some potato dish going that would make any Irish peasant die of jealousy. Charles made enough dinner tarts to satisfy a village of starving elephants. Sebastian didn’t seem to be doing much, but since he’s the king of alcohol at the apartment, I’m guessing he donated the wine and hard liquor supply that magically appeared later that evening.

By the time that the girls were supposed to arrive, Paul and I had finished our tart and were sitting on his windowsill, sipping red wine and watching the flickering lights of the city. It was super romantic, and him whispering things like “je t’adore” wasn’t half-bad either. How am I ever going to date in America ever again…

Anyway, the evening was awesome. The guys were all ridiculously sweet. They all tried to speak English to make us comfortable and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had a meal like that before. How do French girls stay so skinny?

After dinner, the boys took us clubbing. It wasn’t the best night for it- all of the clubs were flooded with people. Finally we settled on going to Flannigan’s and dancing there, despite the judgemental looks of French pub-goers and the fact that they were playing Grease.

“So what do you think about Paul?” Sebastian kept slurring in my ear. Then, without giving me a second to respond: “He really likes you. We really like you, too. We are very happy he found you. Because we like you. So what do you think about Paul?”

Sebastian called us later that night to let us know that we shouldn’t wait up for him; he’d be sleeping on the Red Bridge if we needed anything.

Paul also drank quite a bit so I ended up spending most of that evening having bonding time with Charles, who’s pretty much the nicest guy ever.

September 23

Paul woke me up with apologizes for “drinking too much”. I thought maybe I didn’t understand his French, because the way he was apologizing, you’d have thought he went on a binge or something. I tried to explain to him that it was okay and that one of my friends had vomited in my hand before (he didn’t understand despite the awkward pantomime). Nonetheless, he decided he had to make it up to me, which is why I was catching a train to Vieux Lyon at an hour when I should have still been cozily sleeping in my bed.

He definitely made up for waking me up, though. We got tea at the Musee des Beaux Arts, which must have been laced with gold, judging by the price.

Anyway, it was super good. Paul listened politely while I rambled about how much it pissed me off when people got on the metro without waiting for others to get off and how I didn’t think that Americans respected their elders. Then he said that we should go spend the weekend with his aunt in the country sometime.

That made me nervous, considering we’d just been talking about old people and I could only imagine little ancient men in polos playing croquet in the country side. But whatever.

After that, we went to the museum itself, which was incredible. The bottom floor was awash with gorgeous classical statues, all of which were somehow related to Greek mythology. Paul was once again very polite in letting me ramble on and on while I told him enough mythology facts to gain a position as a curator at the museum if someone had actually been listening. I figured he’d think I was annoying. Instead, he kissed my hand and praised my intelligence (weird obsession with mythology).

I like this.

It was his turn to ramble when we got to the floor with the paintings. He literally knew everything.

“Do you know why Van Gough painted so many irises?” he asked me.

“He liked them?”

“No. He painted them to deal with his depression.”

“Oh.”

He even noticed tiny details that I would have definitely missed.

“Isn’t that painting amazing?” he asked, sitting down to observe at a scene that I had found completely boring and skipped over.

“I guess it’s not bad,” I answered.

“It’s just really original. It really captures a moment.”

“Um. Isn’t that the point?”

“Well, yeah, but what he did is just really cool. Who really stops on a rainy day to notice how people look, how they walk, how they act? Look at all of the different expressions, the details… There’s even a little dog leaping around in the corner. Who notices that? This painting really takes you in.”

Woah. I felt like I was looking at it from a completely different lens. The painting was amazing. And the little leaping dog was super cute.

We explored the museum for a little while longer…

Suddenly, my phone rang. A few angry-looking French people glared at my gleefully-singing Nokia.

“Well, that’s discreet,” Paul laughed.

It was Sylvia. We were supposed to see a dance show later that night and she was calling me to let me know that she’d forgotten to tell me the time, but if I could run to the metro, change trains fifteen times and then catch a tram that barely ran on the weekends, I could maybe have a chance of finding Maison de la Danse for a production that would start in twenty minutes.

Bring it.

Paul walked me over to the metro, where I used my best city-girl skills to cut in front of everyone who was leaving to not miss a single train. Karma got me back- though I got to the tram stop in time, I went the wrong direction and by the time that I ran into the Maison de la Danse, the show had already started and I was guided by a cute usher (how come we only get retirees in the US) over to a seat on the balcony.

It was the most magical, captivating performance I had ever seen. I used to be impressed by the dance shows that I’d seen in Irvine and I was blown away the two times that I saw recordings of So You Think You Can Dance.

Compared to this, everything I’d ever seen before was akin to a five year old dancing with a toothbrush. This wasn’t even dance. I don’t know what it was. It was enchantment incarnate. The lilting, mystical music carried the bodies of the dancers. They were like leaves in the wind- somber, wild, unbelievably beautiful. I was transported into an incredible world that I wished I’d never have to leave. The show ended way too quickly and a rushing crowd spat me out into the real world in front of the Maison de la Danse.

Sylvie and I had an amazing conversation on the ride back. We talked about the Second World War as a part of both France’s and Russia’s national memory, which sounds like a really weird thing to discuss, but it was really interesting.

“So you’re liking France?” she asked me.

“I’m in love with it.”

“It’s a nice compromise between Russia and the US, non?”

Yup. That was exactly it. A country with functional politics and social services and PEOPLE. What more could you want? For it to be ridiculously, incredibly beautiful? Check. To date an awesome guy? Check. To have really cool friends and to live with people who feed you and give you anything you could ever want? Check. Endless macaroons and French bread? Check, check, check!

Only apparently Sylvie decided that I wasn’t done because she gave me a pair of earrings from the organization that she works with, which helps women in developing countries sell jewelry in order to compete with firms.

“I just saw the color and thought of you because you wear a lot of blue. I figured you’d like these.”

Yup, my life is awesome.

Only after that it decided to get significantly less awesome. I was just getting ready for a calm “me”-night in, which I definitely needed after 48 hours of almost non-stop hand-holding, cuddling, and French. I was just about ready to turn off Skype when one of my closest friends called me, completely drunk.

“I’ve been waiting to talk to you all weekend,” he told me. “I’m in love with you.”

I don’t understand boys. They might as well say: “You’re finally unavailable, I’m finally able to complicate your life so I’m gonna try my best. Down?”

Um, no.

It was an awful conversation that ended with me burrowing my head into a pillow to scream and promising to cut myself off from the world of people not living in France. I’d already lost so many people this summer, I was not willing to lose another friend. My ex had been one of my best friends and I was still honestly reeling from the pain of losing him, to the point where I felt almost guilty for spending time with Paul. I decided to force myself to sleep when my phone rang.

“I just talked to my ex,” read a text from Paul. “I told her it was over and she told me that she hated me. I feel awful… I know you’re busy, but if you can come over, I’d really appreciate that.”

Obviously I wasn’t going to say no, so I pulled on my boots and my “the world is not falling apart” face and metro-ed it over.

Paul was grilling a steak. Definitely a level up from my depression mac-and-cheese. It was very French, especially since he was wearing a scarf. The boys were all watching football and listening to classical music. I was relieved that the football was not American and I could actually enjoy it with them. The guys were all absolutely in love with me for loving football as much as they did, although I don’t think they understood that my appeciation for soccer stemmed mostly from my hatred of American football.

It turned out to be a super calm evening that dragged on too late for me to catch the metro home. Paul said that me being around that evening would help him not think about losing a friend, and since I’d just lived through the same exact situation, it was easy for me to find the right words to comfort him.

I guess I was still pretty anxious when I went to sleep, though, because I kept having the worst nightmares ever. They started with a dream about being locked in a room for what felt like eternity. I tried to scream but had no voice. I tried to ask for help, but no one could see me. I woke up hyperventilating. The nightmares continued, with me waking up every half hour or so, remembering something worse and worse until I finally had a dream that my brother ran out into the street. I tried to run after him, but my legs felt like they were wading through water. I tried to scream his name, but no words came out. I could tears streaming down my cheeks. People were everywhere, cars were dodging him but no one was stopping. I watched as a giant red truck with a bed that was raised too high to see him knocked him off his feet and his body disappeared under the wheels.

When I woke up, I realized I was crying, uncontrollably. I grabbed my phone and called my parents to make sure everything was okay, which woke Paul up. He hugged me, confused, and waited for me to finish talking to my parents.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

I explained, feeling stupider by the minute. Great, he was dealing with real problems and here I was crying like a freaking two year old because of some stupid dream. But he was incredibly nice about it.

“It was just a dream. Your brother is okay,” he told me. I felt embarassed but at least I knew I was safe. He stayed up with me until I finally agreed to go to sleep. When I finally stopped freaking out, I realized how lucky I was. Maybe people were coming in and out of my life, but I definitely had someone who cared about me.

September 24, 2012

Paul woke me up with a giant bowl of coffee (they drink it here in bowls, weird) and a Nutella sandwich. Since I didn’t have any warm clothes, he gave me one of his scarves and directions to get to school. I was still super shaken up from my sleepless night of nightmares, so I made a pit stop to get a Chupa Chups to comfort myself through two hours of twenty-first century literature.

The professor was tall and thin, with a fondness for raccoon eyes and being a bitch.

“That’s cute,” she said sarcastically when she saw me sucking on my Chupa Chups. “I’m glad they’re letting elementary school children into college classrooms.”

The lesson was unbearably boring. I had no clue as to what she was saying. Mostly she asked us in a condescending tone if we knew who Earl Waddlewarf the Fourteenth was and how he was related to the school of postretrohydroreductionism and when we responded with blank looks, she’d let out an exasperated sigh that smelled like a tobacco factory and complain about the education system in France.

I spent most of the lesson drawing, until she paused her drawling rant and stared at me. I looked up in response to her silence and she raised a careful penciled eyebrow.

“Are you finished, artiste?” she demanded.

The girl sleeping next to me snored in response.

I looked blankly back at her.

“If you want to draw, I suggest you do it at home. This is a literature class, for those who want to learn.”

I kept staring at her. Usually that works well when you want to get people to leave you alone.

“Do you speak French?” she demanded.

“Um. I’m foreign?” I suggested.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she smirked in disgust as if “foreign” in her world meant “pile of dog shit”. After that she moved on, which was nice. I reached over to my ipad to stop the recording. No way in hell was I coming back to that class. She stopped again.

“Seriously, mademoiselle?”

“I’m recording the class so that I can listen later,” I lied in protest.

She glared at me but seemed flattered that someone would record her course and went on drawling after a disgusted scoff. A few minutes later, she tried to assign me an oral presentation and seemed ready to cut off my head for not having bought the book. I decided that it was time to play “who has the best death glare” and spent the rest of the class glaring at her raccoon eyes and fantasizing about hiding her cigarettes.

Luckily I had dinner at Paul’s to look forward to. It was a super chill evening with Paul, his roommates and best friend, who spoke French in a way that actually made sense. After a not-so great day, I was happy to have a welcoming environment to come back to.

September 25, 2012

I had class in the morning that I tried my best not to sleep through. I thought 8 am in Irvine was tough… try doing it at a college that’s a good 40 minute tram ride and a collective 20 minute walk away. Bah.

Paul and I met up that afternoon because he wanted to take me to the Museum of Modern Art. Luckily he invited me over the phone and couldn’t see me cringe when I thought of Duchamp’s fountain. We made our way over to the building, which looked modern enough to inspire me to ask Paul how one would say “UFO” in French. That led to a conversation about illegal aliens in France and human rights.

How French of us.

Anyway, luckily the museum thought that it’d be too mainstream to be open at normal hours on a Tuesday so we walked away. I tried my best to look defeated, when Paul said suddenly:

“I don’t really like modern art anyway. I just figured you’d think it was interesting.”

Like Sebastian always says… Can I keep him?

We spent the afternoon exploring Tete D’Or instead. He got all jealous when I told him about walking around the rose garden with Fabien. It was cute. He took me over to the island that Fabien said you can’t go to (he suggested we steal some boats to make it happen). The island was a giant World War II memorial and Paul showed me the names of four of his family members who died in the war. It wasn’t exactly “cool”, but I was kind of… excited (wordchoice?) to see that someone else had that same connection to history since my family was super effected by the war, which is something that I feel is more rare in the United States.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day exploring the zoo. He put up with me running around everywhere, screaming excitedly enough to scare off most of the tourists but not really that many of the animals.

“I feel like I’m here with a five-year old child,” he teased me.

I told him I’d feed him to the lions but I don’t think my statement came through in French.

I had my favorite class that evening, which only made things better. How can a girl not be happy when she’d just come back from an awesome date with an awesome guy to an awesome class on how much the modern world sucks in regard to the misrepresentation of religion?

France, you are too good to me.

Random Lyon Exploration Photos

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:00:59 -0400

Croix Rousse

Pont Rouge, with my favorite church, St. George’s

Inside St. George’s

Birdy Kids Graffiti (this stuff is all over Lyon, it’s kind of cool)

Fourviere

September 21, 2012 (continued) I barely had time to make a quick snack and take a nap when I got a...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 07:49:12 -0400

September 21, 2012 (continued)

I barely had time to make a quick snack and take a nap when I got a text from Paul.

“I know you were going to go out with your friends tonight, but if you want to stop by my place for dinner, I’d love to see you.”

Free food. I’m a college student.

Okay.

His roommates were all home. Everyone was downstairs, watching TV. They turned it to an English channel, which was very considerate, but I could literally feel my brain splitting whenever anyone tried to talk to me in French. Which they all did. I felt like I was in the hot seat. Paul was over by the stove, making risotto, and his roommates were pretty much trying to discover my life story.

“Do you have siblings?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“One.”

“Gender?”

“Um. Son?”

His roommates exchanged worried looks.

“Brother. Sorry.”

We sat down to eat dinner. They turned off the TV, which made conversation a lot easier. Sebastian had a couple of friends over- a guy and girl, and they were pregaming their Friday evening so he’d come and steal risotto out of the pan, but Charles and Guy-In-Pink-Shirt (he knows my life story and I don’t even know his name) sat down with us. The risotto was amazing, and we polished off a bottle of wine. Sebastian told me that I had to try one of the shots that he had poured for his friends.

“She won’t like it,” Paul told him.

“She can decide for herself,” Sebastian protested.

“Try it and if you don’t like it, I’ll finish it,” Charles winked at me. But it was too late- I’d already downed it. The guys stared at me. Great, now they’re going to think I’m an alcoholic. Then they all burst out laughing.

“She really is Russian!” said GIPS.

“I like her!” Charles told Paul.

“Yeah, can we keep her?”

Paul smiled proudly at me.

Dinner was really fun. Paul was quiet most of the time, but Charles was cracking jokes about the homeless millionaire who lived down their street and never used his money because he didn’t believe in society.

When Sebastian left with his friends, Charles and GIPS started yelling excitedly and laughing. Paul shook his head.

“Do you know football?” Charles asked me.

“Yeah of course.”

“You know… red card?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what we say when a guy leaves with a girl who’s… how do I say this without being mean? Not exactly up to par?”

“She gets a red card,” GIPS explained, pointing to the door.

“But you get a green card. Of course.”

“I don’t think she even GETS a card.”

“They’re stupid,” Paul apologized.

I thought they were awesome.

“Yeah, and I’m sorry the house is a total mess,” Charles told me, gesturing to their spotless apartment. “We just weren’t expecting Paul to get obsessed with you so soon. But I promise we’ll clean.”

“Okay, that’s it, we’re going upstairs,” Paul told them.

“Thanks for dinner,” GIPS winked.

We were sitting on his windowsill, our feet resting on the terracotta roof. It was a beautiful evening- warm, but with the occasional sprinkle of rain. The cathedral of Fourviere was aglow in the distance, with the golden angel shining brighter than the moon. I could even see a few stars. Paul had his arm around me. I felt warm and happy. Nothing could go wrong.

“J’ai une petite amie,” Paul said suddenly.

A little friend? I guess Sebastian was kind of short, but that’s random and he wasn’t a girl… oh wait. Petite amie. That meant-

Oh MERDE!

I stared at him, open-mouthed.

“No, no, not like that,” he explained hurriedly. “I mean. I had a girlfriend. But we’ve been breaking up… Just. She can’t know about us, okay?”

I was dumbfounded. So basically things are going badly with your girlfriend, you’re cheating on her with me, and she obviously can’t know. Got it, I wanted to tell him but I couldn’t find the words in English or in French. I could hear the sound of my fairytale bubble shattering into tiny little pieces. I dropped his hand.

“Got it,” I told him cooly.

“Are you mad?”

“No,” I lied.

He tried to kiss me. I moved.

“Do you want to take a walk?” he asked.

“Sure.” That would give me an excuse to leave without making things awkward for his roommates. Ugh. And I’d liked them so much. Of course. Of course it was too perfect. How could I have been so stupid?

We walked over to Fourviere, where you could see the entire city. He teased me, saying that I probably couldn’t point out the landmarks.

“That’s the Opera, that’s Tete D’Or, that’s Universite 2, there’s the Saone with the red bridge over it and the Rhone is behind the Presque Ile. The train station is by the skycraper, my house is behind that. And Ayer’s Boat is strait ahead,” I recited calmly, but I had to admit I was pretty happy with myself for being able to recognize everything in the city even late at night. Paul laughed and hugged me. I stepped away.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

“Paul, I don’t know if I should ask this, but what exactly is going on?”

He sighed.

“Yeah I probably should explain… We were together for a really long time and we lived together for the past year…”

Red card, red card! my head screamed. Bail, bail, bail!

I didn’t listen.

“…and she’s studying in England. I didn’t see her for two months. I missed her like crazy, but when I saw her, I realized that the time apart put things in perspective for me. She wants us to get married. I care about her, but I don’t love her. I don’t know why. You must think I’m a complete asshole.”

He looked at me, as if asking for absolution from his statement. I stared blankly back.

“It’s just that… she went anorexic when the last guy she loved broke up with her. And I don’t know how to tell her that after all those years, I don’t love her anymore. She didn’t do anything wrong. I held on to her for the longest time just because I was scared of losing her from my life. I thought that was as good as it was going to get. Do you understand?”

Yeah, I understood only too well. Welcome to my life for the past year, I wanted to tell him. He let out a frustrated sigh and ran his hand through his hair. I could tell he was being sincere. Still. I didn’t ask for something complicated, and all of my instincts were telling me to bail.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked him.

“I want to finish the break up. But I don’t want her thinking that I left her for you. I would have left her regardless, but if she sees that I’m with you, she’ll feel awful.”

“Then why are you doing this? Wouldn’t it just be better to not see me?”

He looked at me as if I had just slapped him.

“You don’t want to see me?” he asked.

“It’s not that. I just feel really bad for her. And if you guys haven’t wrapped things up, I can’t do this. I can’t help you basically cheat on her with me.”

“Yeah I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. This is absolutely crazy. But honestly I’d be more upset to let you go… that puts things in perspective for me, too.”

“I just hate secrets. And I’m not so sure I’m looking for a relationship.” If anything, I was going to guard my heart. I wouldn’t let him in close.

“It’s not a secret. All of my friends know I’m crazy about you. I just don’t want her to know,” he looked at me and smiled nervously. “And that’s okay, we can take things at your pace.” He wrapped his arms around me.

“Please trust me? I know I’ve made it really hard but I will do everything I can to prove that I deserve it. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you this, but I just don’t want to be dishonest with you.”

Run, run, run! screamed my head.

“Okay, I trust you,” I said.

We went to Lydia’s party after. It was my turn to have my friends swarming around Paul, asking him questions, telling me loudly how gorgeous he was and how awesome it was that he didn’t speak any English and couldn’t understand that they were rambling about him.

I glanced at Paul, who was trying his hardest not to laugh. He spoke English pretty well, but I wasn’t going to correct anyone.

The evening was really fun. We started a dance party in the middle of the apartment and I taught everyone the Waka Waka dance. (typical). I didn’t even notice the time go by and when I checked my phone, I saw that I not only missed a call but also the metro. I’d been sleeping at Lydia’s almost every weekend so I didn’t want to ask her to stay at her place again. I complained about this to Paul.

“Stay at my place,” he suggested. “You can sleep there.”

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously.

“Just sleep,” he laughed. “I promise.”

I was pretty tired, so I didn’t argue.

Everyone went clubbing and we went back to his apartment. I was way too tired to stay out much longer. He let me ramble about my brother and Russia, and actually seemed interested, so I was happy. Back at his place, we climbed back out onto the windowsill and somehow ended up talking about absolutely everything. I could feel the language barrier and my mistrust melting away.

“You’re incredibly strong,” he told me. “I don’t know how you can be so level-headed.”

“My strength doesn’t really come from me,” I explained. “I just believe that God has a plan for me and that everything that I’ve gone through makes me better in the end.”

“I wish I believed in God,” he said. “I believe that there’s something. I’ve studied too much science and it doesn’t add up. But I went to Catholic school for way too long and they just made it very difficult for me to believe.”

“It’s difficult for me not to. With each prayer, I get an answer. Every time I’m in church, I feel liberated. To me, God is everywhere.”

“But why Christianity? God is in other religions, too.”

“I respect other religions completely. I believe that if someone is a good person, they have a relationship with God whether they want it or not, in a way. But Christianity is the only religion where God so loved the world that He came down into the world and became like us, just so that when we pray to Him, he can say: ‘I’ve been there, I made it through and now I can help you. Jesus’s life was the ultimate sacrifice. Christianity is all about the love that God had for man… people just misinterpret it a lot.”

“I respect that.” He stared at the golden angel on the Cathedral. “The one time I prayed, I prayed to know that God is real,” he told me.

“Do you think I’m crazy for believing in God?” I asked him.

He laughed. “No. I think you’re beautiful.”

So much for guarding my heart.

September 22, 2012

Paul tried to convince me to stay in the morning but I wasn’t exactly ready for the coffee in bed, toothbrush on his sink relationship. (He brought be coffee and bought me a toothbrush anyway. Merde.)

It’s funny. In the States, if something like this were happening, I’d totally bail. But here, it wasn’t as scary. If I didn’t like something, I could just never see him again. It’d be easy enough. So I brushed my teeth with my toothbrush, drank his coffee and even responded to his good-bye kiss before running out the door to collect my thoughts.

I had breakfast with my homestay mom, who was all smiles and questions about this boy that I’d met. (How the hell did she KNOW?)

“You really like him, huh?” she asked.

Was it really that obvious?

“You’re in France,” she smiled. “Being rational isn’t going to work- which is a pity. I can tell you’re usually really good at it.”

I tried to argue, but I was too busy thinking about how much I couldn’t wait to see him this evening. Sylvie winked at me and left me sitting alone at the table, thoughts completely uncollected.

September 21, 2012 First week is done! Wow I can’t believe it. I feel like my French has...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:05:10 -0400

September 21, 2012
First week is done! Wow I can’t believe it. I feel like my French has gotten ridiculously better just from trying to figure out what the hell people are saying.
I’ve also come up with a ridiculous amount of comfort food ideas to relieve the stress of being lectured in a language I barely understand.
Crepes are a given, but the salty ones are the best with hot sauce. Chocolate cookies are amazing with red wine. And everyday after school snack- coffee ice cream in coca cola.
I might be feeding my homestay family’s understanding that Americans lead an unhealthy life style in the kitchen but my spirit and my tummy are happy.
Also, walking back from class I realized that all of last night, whenever I talked about religion with either of the guys, I was saying that my fairy is very important to me. Way to get “fe” and “fois” mixed up, Dasha. I’m sure they’re glad to know that I feel like having a fairy can be lifesaving.
What I DO want to know is how they avoided laughing at me. They didn’t even look perplexed when I said that I respect other people’s fairies and I especially appreciate the fairy of Islam.
All for now. It’s bedtime so that I can be awake to have more adventures later tonight. Oh how I love Fridays!