A Summary of Sorts

First I should set one thing straight, because apparently my venting in my last post was taken a different way than I meant it to. I am starting to dislike the fact that there seems to be bunches of children here 24/7, but it's in no way making me hate my homestay. I love the location, I love my room, and I love Beatrice. It's just the screaming babies, who scream for hours on end without anyone picking them up, that I hate. But I still love my homestay. Julia and I just like to complain about the children a lot, but they also provide us with a lot of entertaining stories to tell.

Something that I learned that I thought was interesting was that you're not supposed to bonjour the same person twice in one day. I think once it turns night you can get away from this rule by saying bon soir, but then you just smile at the person and maybe say cou-cou instead. I just found that really interesting, since I've been bonjour'ing Beatrice tons of times in one day (I'm constantly coming in and out of the apartment). I don't know, just a little fact I thought I'd share with you.

I've already told Amara this (sorry, Amara), but something that I thought was really interesting with trying to speak French as much as possible, and the ramifications of it, was that one night when I was over my friends Alena and Meaghan's apartment, Alena was saying something that I totally agreed with, so I wanted to say "me too" or something along those lines but I ended up saying some really awkward phrasing, like "me also" which is the literal translation of "moi aussi." The NYU in Paris staff sometimes do that, which I always thought was funny, but it's kind of cool because it means this French is actually sticking. I find myself speaking a lot more of it, and then around my friends we all try and speak "franglais," which now only means inserting a word or two of French, but will hopefully progress into more. And then when we go out on the weekends we speak French to each other and to the people we meet. I'm getting a ton more confortable speaking French, and I can even hold a conversation with Beatrice now! I still don't always say full sentences, but that's because by the time I'm halfway through the long sentence in French, she knows what I'm getting at.

Yesterday marked the last day of our Preliminary Courses and we were all too excited to celebrate. We had a god-awful final exam in Phonetics that was probably the most ridiculous thing ever. She would read out loud two sentences that had one slight difference (as in there was a singular or plural noun, but the only difference is the slight pronunciation of le and les). They all sounded the same to us. We had to give evaluations of the teachers and the courses, and one thing that I think we all complained about was the fact that in only two weeks, they expect us to speak perfect Parisian French. They throw all these terms at us and we spend only one day on each sound, only to be actually tested and graded on something that we're completely unprepared for. But oh well, it's over. I'm actually really interested in Phonetics and trying to achieve a better accent, so I'm auditing the semester-long Phonetics class, luckily taught by our other teacher that I really like.

This is kind of random, but I've been thinking about it a lot, and I don't think I like the term culture "shock" very much. Of course landing in a strange country for the first time is shocking, but I don't think I've experienced the "shock" part of it really. There are a lot of surprising and frustrating things about a different culture, but I think I'm just taking it one day at a time, and I'm loving the little surprises. Maybe it's because I'm slightly older, or at a better place in my life (after having an amazing two semesters at NYU), or because I actually know the language, but I'm experiencing a significantly less amount of frustrations than I did in Florence. Or maybe it's because I truly belong in the city. I don't know. But those frustrations and surprises never go away, no matter how long you stay in a different culture; some of the NYU in Paris staff who are Americans tell us they still are experiencing these things, and they've been here for years. Another example: I just met a girl last night who has been here for three years learning to become an interpreter (so cool, right?), and she still got stuck on the metro (the metro closes during the night, and no one really knows when the last train runs, so sometimes you transfer to a station and wait for the train for a while, realizing that it will never come until 5:30am). I can't exactly say I've assimilated yet, only because there's just too much to learn, and I've only been here for three weeks (and yet that feels like months). I don't want to be able to say I've assimilated, I still want to experience the surprises, like learning the bonjour thing. And I like keeping up this blog to share with you the differences in culture that I find so interesting, and this experience is so different from Florence (I feel as though I'm actually experiencing a new culture*) that I love sharing it. Sorry if some of the anecdotes in here are boring, or mundane, but I guess the writer in me is coming out (even though this blog shows zero writing capabilities), and I just want to write about anything and everything. It helps me experience it more--once again, the writer in me is dying to come out. But I'm just taking this time out of writing this blog to thank you guys for reading it, and I miss you all, but writing in here makes me feel closer to you guys.

*I just want to say that I'm not dissing the Florence program or the town of Florence or hating on my time in Florence--I absolutely loved it and I learned a hell of a lot. I'm just getting a totally different experience here, and trying to explain those differences.

On another note (sorry this is a long post again!): last night, as Julia and I were getting lost trying to walk from the closed metro station twenty minutes south of where we live (and like three metro stops away), we walked by this moped that smelled of smoke, and when we looked more closely, we could see a small fire actually inside it! So we decided to be good citizens of Paris and get someone to help, so we tried buzzing the "guardien" of the building behind the moped, but he wouldn't answer. Then we tried calling the France-equivalent to 911, but neither of us could remember the number! I remembered there being a 2 and a 1, so we just kept dialing 211, 212, etc, but nothing worked, and so we hailed a cab to ask him the number, but he was so apathetic. He gave us some random number for the police, but then it was hard explaining in French that the moped was now literally engulfed in flames. But Julia was able to get someone on the phone who spoke English, who told us that the fire department would come, but by that time the fire was pretty big and there were loud popping sounds, like the engine or something, I don't know what finally caught fire, and it felt like we were in some movie. The helpless taxi driver (he was really nice, not rudely apathetic, but kind of just sat there, not freaking out or anything) then just drove us away, even though we wished we could have stayed to make sure the fire was put out. I kind of feel guilty about that now, but at least we called and did something. It was just not how we expected our night to end!

(one more paragraph, I promise) I kind of just write these posts without realizing what people think of them afterwards (like not realizing my dad thought I hated my homestay and wanted to move out...or so what my mom then later thought as a result of what my dad told her...) and so maybe the generalization you get from these posts about my life here in Paris is that I'm not doing much in terms of exploring...I hope not! I haven't really been including all the exploring and workshops we do, etc, just because then there would be fifty of these long posts, and that wouldn't be fun. But anyways, long story short: I'll include some now. Today I'm going with my roommate Julia and my friend Emily to explore the Marais, which is a really cool neighborhood in Paris. After going to the "Eating in Paris" workshop yesterday that they gave, Emily and I are determined to have steak frites at a legit Parisian bistro or brasserie tonight. It's actually sunny out for once and not raining, so we're going to take advantage of that!