Paris, Je T’aime Encore

Taylor Swift or Adele should write a song about my bi-polar relationship with Paris. So you know that September Essay I wrote…back in September? Well, pretend that never happened, or accept that I’m the most inconsistent person ever, because I love Paris. So much.

I think getting away and traveling for the weekend really helped. I highly recommend traveling to those of you others studying abroad and to people in general. I could go off on a sentimental rant about why traveling is so fantastic and necessary, but don’t worry, I’ll save that for later! (Ha! Thought you wouldn’t ever have to read it…)

Anyway, I just needed a breather. It was nice to be on the wide, clean streets of Munich, but as my host father so perfectly described it, the Germans lack “la poésie.” I still loved it there, but I already have noticed that I’m starting to melt into a pile of cheese and nutella, or in other words, I’m starting to really feel at home here in Paris.

Hey, also for those of you skeptics, I am, in fact, attending classes here. Here’s da lowdown:

• Atelier d’Ecriture: a French class which essentially fine tunes what I already know and is heavy-set on idiomatic phrases. Also, when my professor, whom I adore, speaks English, she sounds exactly like Marion Cotillard.
• Impressionsime et Post-Impressionisme: it is what it sounds like – a class on French Impressionist art. Most of our classes are at the Musée d’Orsay. I would be jealous too.
• Infocom: Langage et Techniques des Médias: It’s technically a literature class, but I would categorize it as more of a class on Contemporary French culture, because we analyze newspapers, journals, and other forms of media and focus on current events.
• LAST BUT NOT LEAST, a Studio Art class with a focus on Painting: I want to become best friends with everybody in that class because it was a few of us plus a bunch of the nicest old people in the world (Shout out to Whistle a Happy Tune-rs…it’s an awake version of our audience). They were super friendly to us, speaking to us and being patient with us in French. AND AND AND there was maybe five bottles of wine, a billion baguettes, and pâté. It doesn’t get much more French than that.

Back to loving Paris. Comfort levels have just plateaued and I think I’m definitely out of that mildly depressive stage. I’m so much more comfortable spending time alone, people-watching and eating a whole chicken and mozzarella panini in the Jardin du Luxembourg despite my attempts to save half of it for later. I’ve never been more comfortable being (and eating) by myself in my life, which is really quite relieving. In terms of comfort levels with the language, I don’t know if the quality of my French has necessarily improved, but I do know that I have no fear speaking it anymore. I can’t even describe it…I just feel like a happy Frasian blob.