The three phases of Paris

A couple of things to start. I’ve gotten a few requests about things to write about. While I may go in that direction at some point, this is basically to update people on how my life is going because I hate writing the super long emails. The problem is that given my propensity to ramble, the emails become incredibly time consuming because I want to include everything. With this, I can tackle one subject at a time and explore it more in depth. The other thing is, as sad as this makes me, I can’t promise that all of, or even the majority of my entries will be amusing. For the most part that’s not their purpose, they are just to update on my life. However, I’ll try not to be completely dull and boring.

So I initially wrote a long and fairly depressing blog entry about how Paris/any other interesting big city seems mystical and amazing from afar but once you spent a little time there you realized it was just like any other city in the world, only with pretty buildings. A lot of this crankiness was exacerbated by what could best be described as shit weather, which Paris seems to have in abundance. But then, the sun came out for three-four days straight, which I believe MUST be some kind of record, and I started writing another one which was absurdly happy in a boy do I love Paris kind of way! Then today it snowed and rained the entire day. So it took a little edge off the happiness. Anywho, because I don’t feel like just tossing all this lovely material, here comes my three part entry on the evolution of the mindset of your average American living in Paris. This, of course, assumes that I am an average American living in Paris. Utter crap, of course, but whatever, it’s a necessary conceit.

Phase One: The Arrival: Oh my God, I’m in Paris! I’m giddy and such!

This phase, pour moi, lasted from when I arrived in mid-September until roughly mid to late November. When I arrived, it was still the end of summer, and the weather was surprisingly decent. I didn’t have to teach yet, and I’d been reasonably successful at finding and making new friends with the other assistants. Sure, I didn’t have an apartment yet, and finding one would turn out to be an epic pain in my ass, but it started off very well. In fact, there were numerous problems the first couple of weeks that I managed to shrug off relatively easily. I mean, I was homesick and sad, but it didn’t really change the fact that I was in Paris, and all that jazz.

If there was any real problem, it was my lack of language, and my beginning attempts to deal with the mind-numbing bureaucracy that pervades every aspect of French life. This is another entry in it of itself, as is the one on my follies of the first few weeks (I may have mentioned them already in my one email, frankly I can’t remember), which I’ll have to pump out soon. What I learned about French is strictly for survival, you don’t need to know that much. You can buy food with minimum conversation, once you have your major situations taken care of, apartment, things like that, you can get by with maybe a 10-20 word vocabulary. Obviously if you want to, you know, INTERACT with people, that becomes a problem, but the other nice thing about arriving is that it feels like you have all the time in the world to do silly things like learn the language, and see the sights.

The best part about the beginning was I didn’t have to teach, and even when I did it was criminally easy. All assistants are supposed to have one week of strictly observation time, where they sit in the back on the class and watch the teacher do their thing. I took a few notes as to exactly the teacher did (remember, I have no freaking clue how to teach at this point) but in general, there isn’t a whole lot you have to prepare when you’re sitting in the back of the class. The second week, the kids had to prepare questions to ask me. They hit most of the main ones, name, age, location, family, etc. but they occasionally threw a few screwballs my way. One kid asked me where I was when the towers fell in New York. One kid wanted to talk about the Boston Celtics being champions. One kid wanted me to explain the economic crisis to them. Think about this, these kids are like, third year English students, and want me to explain the economic crisis in a way they understand? Yeah right stupid French kid. So I said something like, banks gave money to people who didn’t give it back. I don’t even know if that’s right, but whatever, they don’t care or remember. After a rough two weeks of 1) observing and 2) answering questions about what my name was, I got a well-deserved two weeks off at the end of October. After another two or three weeks of fairly simple stuff talking about Halloween and the Election, I took another week off to go home for Thanksgiving. Yes sir, this teaching life was the way for me. Then I came back from the US after Thanksgiving, and things started to change.

Phase Two: The Reckoning: Why in God’s name am I here?

Paris certainly has an aura and mystique about it from afar. Fashion capital, city of lights and love, and the most Eiffel tower I’ve ever seen. Very few monuments can claim to be even a little bit Eiffel*, let alone at the levels of this particular tower. When I visited in 2001, I was taken in by the whole Paris vibe, and certainly in the beginning of this trip. For some reason, I thought it would be amazingly fun to get drunk and then on my way home stumble past these world famous monuments. The first few weeks played into this feeling.


* Obviously named after it’s designer, Gustav Eiffel. For some reason this joke, while being incredibly unfunny (using Eiffel as an adjective) always makes me giggle. Which brings me to something I read in one of my many guidebooks I have lying around. The guillotine is named after the guy who designed it. His name was Dr. Guillotin. Seriously. He was apparently horrified that it was given his name, and had promoted it as a humane means of execution, saying that the executed would feel only a little tickle on the back of their neck. That’d be super weird to have something like that named after you. Oh, did you see that dude get Taylored? Yeah, that damn Taylor cut his head right off. The nation’s razor they called it. Clever.


Sadly, I learned that mystique and aura are just strippers in a nightclub*. One of the most interesting changes about living here is realizing that Paris is basically just another city. I think part of the reason for this is that the obvious symbol of France is the Eiffel Tower, and it’s basically down the street from me. I walk by it every time I got to the grocery store. And don’t get me wrong, it’s still quite impressive, but at the same time I’m getting used to it. Over time, I’ve realized that Paris is basically just like any other city, only the random things you see in the background are slightly cooler, and more famous.

* Curt Schilling reference. Curt Schilling is the tits. And by that I mean he’s soft and squishy and I’d love to squeeze him but would probably get in trouble.

A couple of things led to this general malaise and unhappiness that I (and many of my teaching brethren) felt. One big change was the weather. Paris is the greyest city, probably in the history of humanity. It rains, and it’s grey. It snows and it’s grey. It’s grey and it’s grey. Somehow it’s sunny, yet still grey. Yes, the city is so incredibly blah that it sucks up excess sunlight so that even when it’s sunny, it’s still grey. What makes it even worse is that every single building here is white, grey, or beige. Every one. My particular building is beige. So when you leave your warm bed early in the morning to go out to a job you don’t particularly care for, and all you see is blah. It’s a veritable canvas of melancholy. So that certainly doesn’t help.

What was also annoying was the job started getting more annoying. First of all, teaching is freaking HARD, and I have a lot more respect for those who do it. Secondly, the teachers, foolishly thinking me competent, became more hands off to the point where I had to figure things out for myself a lot more, which given that the program offers you little to no training, was not the easiest thing in the world. Also, when I first got there, the students were great because they were like oh my god, an American! Lets ask him if he likes Britney Spears! The kids loved me for a while. They still do mind you, I’m excessively lovable, but at the same time its still school, and they still don’t care. It’s very frustratingly hard to go to a job where maybe 10% of the people appreciate what you’re doing, and the other 90% are actively trying to sabotage you from being effective at what you do.

Finally, certain things were not coming along the way I’d like. I’d practice trumpet, but with nothing to practice for, being disciplined was hard. French was going, but again the progress just wasn’t where I wanted it to be (which was an unrealistic expectation anyway) and when nothing is really going the way you want, the whole situation becomes hard. So that’s how I felt until about a week ago when…

Phase Three: The Reawakening: If you ignore all the bad stuff, this place isn’t so bad

The sun started shining! Hooray! I hadn’t seen the sun in about a month, it was amazing to behold. I felt so much better. My French still sucks, but I’m working on improving it. I now have a small jazz group to play with; our first meeting is in a couple of days. The kids are still terrible, but I no longer care! Apathy to the rescue! So for the past few days, things are certainly looking up. Hopefully it will continue, though today the weather was terrible, but I was still ok. So we’ll see where it goes from here.