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!