In Paris!

Hey all, sorry it's taken me so long to put up my second post. Things have been busy around here, and when I'm not wondering around Paris looking for housing and learning what it feels like to get lost and find my way again, I'm either eating a piece of bread–I think I've eaten around 10 pieces since Monday morning–, chatting with people in the hostel and around the city who are also looking for housing, or sleeping. My housing search hadn't been very fruitful as of yesterday, when I spent most of the day looking in the wrong direction for the American Church in Paris, which has great listings, and looking for an anglo-parisien housing magazine called Fusac, which I found at one of the coolest English-language bookstores I've ever seen, Shakespeare and Company, on the Left Bank right near Notre Dame. I ran out of minutes on my cheap cellphone right in the middle of following my first lead, a French woman who bought my confidence by knowing all of the best areas in Houston and then comparing them to neighborhoods in Paris. When I got back in contact with her, I found out that the place she was renting was 1500 euros/month for two people–way too high for my budget. But, like I said, today was a lot better. I hung out with people from the hostel last night but managed to get up by sunrise, eat an early breakfast, charge up my cellphone again and start looking for places right away. I also met up with another English teacher named Slaven who is looking for a place in Montmartre, and we walked up to the Sacre Coeur, where I got an amazing view of Paris, of just how small it is, but also of how unified it is despite, or maybe because of, its stunning diversity.

At a café just down the street, Slaven and I had coffee and called housing places. I was able to see a room in an apartment in Belleville–some very Parisian mix of Brooklyn and Queens, great outdoor markets too–that is in my price limit (actually cheaper than a lot of places I've seen out of town), is furnished, and doesn't require a big deposit or a long-term contract. After I visited the place, I took the metro down to the train that goes strait out to where I teach, and took that train to the Champs-Élysées just to make sure that it didn't take too long to get to where I need to go, and it went just fine. If I do end up getting this place, I will have a pretty long commute, but it will be at most four days a week, and it will give me time to prepare my lessons! This weekend, I'm going to couch surf in Pontoise, a small old town near where I will teach. I may end up liking this area a lot, which I am still open to, but if the place in Paris is available tomorrow, I will have a really hard time turning it down. In any case, I plan on finding a place by the end of the weekend.

A little bit about the hostel I'm staying in: I've met six or seven other people here that are also looking for housing in Paris, and it has been nice teaming up with people. I've made friends with a German guy and a Brazilian girl who are both students, and I have also gotten to know two other English-teaching assistants. I've also met some interesting and strange people who are just traveling, like a guy from Taiwan whose English is barely passable (and he speaks no French), and I can't tell if he is here because he was laid off from his job or if he is on sabbatical. He seems to be in good spirits despite asking me questions like, 'where should I go?' and 'what is there to do?' I first noticed him on the train from Charles de Gaulle, and then in the giant metro station Gare du Nord, carrying a big cardboard box that seemed to be quite heavy. I then ran into him at the hostel, where I found out that they box contained all the parts that he needed to build a bicycle, and that he planned to ride the bike through France (or Paris, I couldn't quite understand what he was saying...). That's about all I've got for now. The next few days should see me settling in, probably writing in the blog more frequently if I find a permanent place to stay, so check back soon.

First post, introduction

Hello everyone,

Though I know that I don't have to make this inaugural post in letter form, I feel obligated, in a way, because this blog mostly takes the place of general emails to family and friends letting them know what I am doing, thinking, seeing, on my trip to France in...let's see, wow, about 4 hours.

As most of you probably know, I am moving to the Paris region to become an English teaching assistant in an école (elementary school) in a small town about 40km northwest of Paris called Menucourt, in a conglomeration of towns and cities called Cergy-Pontoise, in the Val d'Oise department (kind of like a county in the US). I have thought about adding little French lessons to my posts, more anecdote than pedagogy, and luckily I can double up and make this part of the introduction to Menucourt. In French, the word Menucourt could be read as a pun on the size of the town and as a kind of ironic redundancy. 'Menu', besides referring most commonly to the thing you point to to order at restaurants, means 'slight' or 'tiny'; and 'court' means short. So we have either 'short menu'–i.e. there's not a lot to choose from–or the redoubled 'tiny-short', which we might as well translate as 'little-bitty'.




In any case, the place I'm teaching is small and fairly lifeless. The French wiki says that it consists mostly of suburban-style houses with a population of 5,084. So that means that I won't be living there! Luckily it's not too far from a lot of great places. I'll either live in a bigger town northwest of Paris with good transport, or in Paris itself. I will know much more about this in the next few days, so stay tuned!

When I arrive in Paris, around midnight our time, around 8 am there, I will stay in a hostel in the northeast 19th arrondissement (sort of like 'district' or 'ward' in the U.S.), right near the big loop called the Boulevard Peripherique. My French professor used to sarcastically refer to Paris as 'le centre de l'universe', and the loop is a kind of Saturn's ring; so I will be at the edge of the force field, subject, of course, to the law of falling bodies. The hostel is famous for....bedbugs! I can deal, though; the area is supposed to be pretty cool, near a nice park with a big outdoor movie screen where they play 3D films. I have tossed around the idea of visiting several of the most touristy locations–maybe the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Élysées–tomorrow in the depths of jet lag delirium, both because they will be full of energetic people and endless stimulus and because I cynically lump them in with places people visit mostly in order to tell other people that they have been there. (My friend Chris gave me the perfect example of a place like this: at the Louvre, you don't so much look at the Mona Lisa as jockey with the crowd for elbow room to hold up your camera, snap a picture, and look at later.) And perhaps one can only truly seize they day in Baron Haussmann's modernized Paris in a body that should be in a dream. I will be meeting with someone who is doing the same job as me, but in a different school, and who apparently knows the area near the hostel. Although I don't know her, it will be nice to have someone to talk to and walk around with for the first few days, and I'm sure we will become friends, if for no other reason than for survival.



I'll check in soon with an update from Paris, and I might have some pictures and video too! I've considered filming my walk through the Gare du Nord (the busiest railway station in Europe), but I think I'll wait for a more leisurely occasion. Wish me luck!