Parisian Apartment: My Parisian Apartment

Hello again!

Paris is an incredible city. It is vibrant and bustling. When I first came to Paris three years ago, I fell in love with the city and all of its historical and cultural wonders. When I first decided to study here for the year, I imagined living amongst all these amazing places and things. I imagined becoming very Parisian-- drinking wine all the time and embodying a graceful chicness.

However, I learned very quickly that Paris would be very different as soon as I stepped foot into my Parisian apartment. I live in a building that was once a cloisters, but is now several smaller buildings. After entering from the street you walk through a long outdoor pathway, though another door, until you stumble upon what appears to be a greenhouse. That is my apartment.

When you enter, my apartment has stairs that don't allow for two feet to step on them at once. You must step right, left, right, left until you reach the top. That would be bearable if there weren't an abundance of plant life growing everywhere. I have ivy on my ceiling in my bedroom and kitchen. On top of that, these plants tend to attract all sorts of wild life, like worms, which I tend to find crawling along my sink. When I spoke to my landlord about this, she said "Don't worry about it. Its good for the plants." WHAT ABOUT ME?

Living in a new city is inevitably an adjustment. I understood that before coming here. However, I was not prepared for living in quarters that I generally believed did not exist. Living in New York is a real luxury. There are laws which dictate against certain fire hazards (like the exposed wires in my room). These don't exist in France. After doing my research, its seems that indoor mold is good for the immune system and air conditioning is for the weak.

However, despite all these adjustments, I am madly in love with La Belle France. Maybe I am living in an illegally converted greenhouse, but that is a small price to pay to live this life. There is something really beautiful about being the outsider in a foreign place, especially when that foreign place is so rich with history and art. While I may have to adjust to a new idea of Paris, I'm gaining so much more in cultural experiences.

L'Amitié,

Sam

City View: Highlights are the Arno River and the Duomo di Firenze- Cattedrale di S. Maria del Fiore After an arduous journey over the Atlantic, as a lot of you also endured, and a nearly 6 hour layover in Switzerland, I was ready to arrive in Florence. (At least I can say now that I’ve slept in an airport with my purse tucked under my head and my bag under my legs. Such the accomplished traveler, I am.) I couldn’t even focus on the wonder of being in Europe; all I wanted was to get my house key and find my way to a bed. Arriving just an hour after the NYU shuttle service to campus shut down started a series of unfortunate events. First of all, with thirty to forty of us trying to track down a taxi, exchanging dollars to Euros was the last thing on my mind. Something I realized was a pretty important step to take before trying to catch a taxi… which only accepted cash…Fortunately my taxi mate offered to lend me some money though now I would have to keep in mind that in my first hour in Italy, I already owed somebody money. Never a good start.

By the time we arrived on campus, right on the outskirts of central Florence, it was already night and somewhat disorientating. My only comfort was imagining a nice Italian family waiting to take me to the bed I so desperately needed. While standing in line to receive our keys and directions to our new homes for the next four months, I realized no one else was doing a home stay. I knew that most students in Florence stayed in NYU residences/apartments, but I began to realize how different of an experience I might have from the general student body. Especially as I saw students connecting almost immediately with others they found to be in the same residence. By the time I reached the front of the line, I realized there was no Italian family in sight and I would be finding their home on my own. By now, I was a seasoned traveler and was confident I’d find their place easily. Then, I look at the address. And thus proceeded the following internal dialogue: “Wait a minute, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to have only one other roommate. But three??

Okay… study abroad’s all about new adventures, living on the edge…I can deal with this… But wait, why is this address not Via di Barbano. I’m pretty sure I’m on Via di Barbano. Is my Italian that terrible? Can’t be a good indication of the semester ahead especially if I’m with a family that speaks only Italian… Does this say apartment?? Now I know I signed up for a home stay. Should I complain? Or should I just go with it and accept this to be a new experience?” I’m making this a bit more dramatic than it really was. But I assure you, in the those moments, my world was beginning to unravel as I realized: 1. I am in Europe. 2. I have no money. 3. I don’t know any Italian. 4. I couldn’t even decipher street names. Eventually, I found out that when my roommate (just the one) arrived earlier that day, there was no one at the home stay. So without knowing where the family could possibly be, the staff dropped my roommate off at some obscure apartment and waited for me to arrive. Unfortunately by the time I arrived, they forgot about the other roommate who would need to be informed of such a change; thus, resulting in my slight moment of panic.

Still, the traveler in me kept cool and was smart enough to ask for some clarification. And off I went to the obscure apartment (which I eventually found out was near the famous Arno River). I could go on and on about how once I arrived, I had to climb nearly 9 flights of stairs with two heavy suitcases to find a non-Air Conditioned apartment and a very tired looking roommate. But I won’t bore you with such details. This story does have a happy ending. The following day we finally located the family; they had actually been traveling in New York City for most of August, their flight back had been cancelled and the host father had gotten sick. So my roommate and I finally made our way to their apartment (trekking up another 6 flights of stairs… why are there no elevators in this country?), exhausted but excited to finally start this study abroad experience. And hey, it made for a good conversation starter anytime anyone asked where I was living in Florence. (Basically, anything that has to do with where I live, I have a long story to tell you…)

the view from heavenThe moment I stepped foot on South American soil is but a distant memory, one that I attempt to recreate but seems unattainable in the mass amount of experiences I have enjoyed since that fateful moment. My journey has taken me from the city of Buenos Aires to the remote barren desert of Bolivia to the jungles of Ecuador and all the way back again. In what was only two months of travel, I became a walking art installation weaving my way through back roads, luscious forests, deadly highways and run down hostels. I was the “moving post card” so to say, a tall blond guy with a huge head of hair getting gawked out wherever I went and yet simultaneously feeling at home in the most foreign of places.

The more I lost myself on the road, the more I realized that losing yourself is the only way to find what you’ve been looking for (as cheesy as that may sound). An example of one of these moments was when I traveled by boat to Isla Del Sol in the middle of lake Titicaca. I met some random German people who were the most hardcore travelers I met on my journey. I’m talking cooking with a camp stove, sleeping in tents, carrying around pounds of rice and hiking for days on end with no destination in mind. Though I myself wasn’t exactly this type of traveler, and when I say not exactly I mean not at all, these nomads would keep me alive for what was to be a crazy journey to the Island of the Sun. We made our way to the Island in a shanty boat with a crazy driver who piled as many people and things onto the vessel as possible. I’m talking wooden toilets, cut up beef products, tools, chickens in cages, plungers, fruits, vegetables and a score of other random things in bags that I didn’t venture to look through. As the boat trudge along the water I made my way to the top part of the boat and peered out at the island that laid before us. It was at this moment that I finally felt like I had begun my travels. The stench of meat in the air, the random people who had become my new best friends, the dangerous waters that the boat battled against and me- one random American who had finally made his way to the lake who’s name he used to poke fun at in elementary school.

The Germans and I found ourselves homeless in an island with just a 100 families, most of whom had lived there for generations, dating back as far as the Incan civilization. We found a place to stay with the most beautiful view I had ever encountered in my life, and I hadn’t even seen it at night yet. We made our way to the hospedaje and were greeted by Pablo, one of 5 brothers who had lived on the island his whole life and whose toothless smile couldn’t help but make you want to stay in his home for a couple nights. I realized that I had arrived at the island with only 70 bolivianos in hand, about 10 US dollars and I immediately asked where an ATM or maquina de dinero was. I was responded to with a hand that pointed to the mainland, and right than and there I realized I was in for an experience. For three days and nights I ate food that I scrounged up from random tourists and locals I met on the island. I had no money to pay for the hospedaje so I did chores to help renovate the hostel. I slaved away moving rocks and cutting down trees. I painted buildings, removed disgusting bugs and did everything that a tourist with no money in the middle of lake Titicaca is forced to do, when they can’t pay for anything. Though it wasn’t the most typical experience one encounters on a vacation, it was a truly rewarding experience and one that wont soon be forgotten.

Packing is a nightmare. I wouldn’t fancy myself a fashionisto, but my clothes are important to me. So are my accessories. And shoes. Particularly my shoes. The problem with shoes is that they are heavy and when strict weight restrictions are being imposed upon me by airline staff clearly not acquainted with fashion and style, I am forced to edit my perhaps a little larger than average shoe collection. Let’s just say, Sophie’s Choice. After a massive struggle, and maybe a few tears, I managed to squeeze nine of my favorite pairs into my luggage. Looking at my bulging suitcase I worried that it might be over my 50 pound limit, but all of my nail-biting turned out to be wasted when the man checking my bags did not even glance at the scale. I did. The suitcase with the shoes was 75 pounds. Whoopsie. Let’s just say a little prayer for negligent airline workers. The flight was relatively uneventful. I picked at some low quality airplane food, and watched 10 minutes of the Nia Vardolos’ bomb My Life In Ruins, before turning to my Ipod and headphones. We actually arrived early which would have been wonderful, had we not arrived so early that the shuttle waiting to take us to our dorms would not be arriving for another hour and a half. Bummer. I hate the feeling of being mid-trip. I am not one who luxuriates in the charm of the journey. I like to be one place and then, suddenly, another. The in-between is almost unbearable, and sort of causes me anxiety. So, having to pause when I was so close to finally settling into my new home country was positively enraging. Eventually the shuttle did show up and I somehow managed to maneuver my many bags on to the bus with no injuries. The ride began, and, although I was exhausted, I was desperate for my first peek at London, and decided to skip the nap and, instead, gaze wide-eyed out of the window. The whole driving on the other side of the road thing was more difficult than I thought to get used to. Every 20 seconds or so I would gasp, thinking we were about to be hit head-on. Still adjusting to that. Anyway, after a few minutes of highway, we were suddenly in the metropolis. That’s when the oohing and ahhing began. I couldn’t help myself. Every road, every shop had a European charm that was irresistible. I swooned at the romantic vision of myself traipsing through these streets in the various outfit/shoe combinations I had pre-planned. Preferably on the arm of a rich and handsome Londoner. A boy can dream, right?Anyway, we eventually arrived at the dorm, and after two very kind staffers helped me with my bags, I found myself alone in my new room/closet. It’s tiny. After mildly panicking at the lack of closet space I began to unpack. Last was the shoes. I carefully arranged them as best I could at the bottom of closet. I looked at my favorite penny loafers, falling apart at the hell, my new Calvin Klein lace ups, my favorite black Frye boots, and smiled thinking of all the places they would soon be taking me.

xoxo

JGH

George Santayana, as quoted by Pico Iyer: “[We] need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what."

i. escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness

Being lost, and being lost for long stretches of time, is something I’ve gotten used to in Paris. With all the tiny streets zigzagging in a completely ungridlike pattern, changing names, and unexpectedly converging (and terminating) in squares and circles, it’s virtually impossible to keep a map in one’s head. This appears to be a problem for Parisians, as well as tourists: pick out a person confidently walking down the sidewalk, and nine times out of ten they still don’t know how to find the street you’re looking for. My (already feeble) sense of direction doesn’t even help, because the angle of the streets is inconsistent. Quite simply, you must get comfortable walking until some small saving grace—a large landmark you remember, or an intersection that gets you oriented, perhaps—presents itself to you. Ahh, but how sweet the thought of uptown, downtown, and numbered streets can feel sometimes!

ii. moral holiday of running some pure hazard

Before my departure, it was often hard to justify leaving for almost four months, at this point in my life. I had just happily moved in with my boyfriend. Several of my closest friends had just arrived home after their own semesters abroad. My first paychecks for freelance writing were still in the mail. And yet, even at my most torn, I knew I wasn’t going to change my plan. On some level, I just knew the life I had built, as precious and delicate as it felt, would be there when I returned. I knew leaving wouldn’t be any easier a few months later, or a few months after that. And I knew, although it seemed remote, that living in the utter “otherness” of a foreign country was essential to who I am becoming as a writer and a person. That element of “hazard,” that subjecting of one’s self to the less-than-comfortable and possibly painful, is an element of travel that impacts, ineffably, life at home. The sense of competence that comes from building an existence out of nothing—and out of an atmosphere that may not always feel hospitable—makes the struggles of one’s “real” life feel all the more manageable. I decided, this time, to choose hazard over safety, and to see what I got back in return.

iii. sharpen the edge of life

This phrase has been tossing around my head since I read Iyers’ essay. The words seem playful to me, and at the same time, challenging. How does one know if life, a trusty blade, needs sharpening? My life in New York, to be sure, did not feel dull. But a testing out—a visit to someone else’s kitchen?—may be the only way to judge such a fine thing as sharpness. I’m not sure yet if time abroad will lead me to see flaws in my own life. I do know that I’m open to the test.

iv. taste hardship

My first night in Paris. As I began to fill the (few) empty spaces of my tiny room with my own things, I came upon the linens left behind from the former roommate. “Crusty” was my first impression. “Atrocious” was my second, and “possibly diseased.” The towels, as I unfolded them, reeked of mildew: they must have been folded without hanging to dry, or else left in the dryer, wet, for days on end. The sheets, some folded and some still on the bed, had someone’s long black hairs strewn across them, and worn-in spots where a body had formerly slept. “Furnished apartment,” I thought, “complete with human hair and skin cells.” Later that night, utterly spent, I lay on the stripped mattress (plaid casing, dense foam interior, circa 1960). I searched myself for traces of that usual, post-arrival feeling, that delirious disbelief: “Can you believe you’re in Paris?!” For the time being, there was none. All I could hear was the frantic little voice saying, “You need to go buy sheets. As soon as possible.”

v. work desperately for a moment

The courtyard of the Louvre. 9pm on a Friday night. Practically empty (comparatively speaking). Lit facades creating a warm square in the cool night, the glass pyramids glowing an ethereal white. Tuning my ears to the delicate lapping of the fountain pools, I didn’t need to go inside. The art, the moment, was out here.

Charles de Gaulle

I finished packing up my bags the morning of the day that I was supposed to leave for Paris. Feeling confident that I had done a descent job pacing, or at least keeping my suitcases under the weight limit (a huge feat for me), I packed the bags into the car and headed to the airport with my family.

While many of the people who would be studying abroad in Paris this semester took the group flight from NYC, I had opted to book my own flight. I would be flying by myself on a non-stop, overnight flight from Atlanta, GA to Paris, France. “Perfect,” I had thought to myself, “I will be able to go to sleep on the plane at night and when I wake up in the morning I will be in Paris and it will hardly be jet-lagged.” There was also something about flying by myself to a place that I had never before visited that made me feel somewhat noble. I have always considered myself to be an independent person and to me this trip was just another opportunity to prove that I could do anything on my own.

I really don’t think that I could have been any more wrong. After a tearful goodbye with my mom and dad, I went to my gate and as I sat there, full of nervous excitement and with a million thoughts buzzing around in my head, I realized that I had absolutely no one to share this with. “You’re going to be fine,” I thought to myself, “just get on the plane and you’re going to go to sleep.” Wrong again. Not only did I not go right to sleep, I didn’t go to sleep at all.

After the nearly nine-hour flight and many, many in-flight movies, I landed in the Charles de Gaulle airport exhausted, but so excited that I was finally in Paris. Now all I would have to do is gather my luggage and get a cab to take me to the FIAP, where NYU was housing us for the next few days, until we moved into our apartments. This was also not as easy as I had anticipated, and as I sat in the taxi, not recognizing anything, I thought to myself, “oh my god, what have I done?”

At the FIAP, I still felt very much on edge, and as hard as it is for me to actually admit this, there was even a part of me that wanted nothing more than to get on the next plane back to the States. Over the next few days, I met more and more people and I began to start feeling at ease in my new “home.” Now, nearly two weeks later, I am having the most incredible time and those thoughts upon arrival are nothing more than a blip on my radar; however I have gained a new found respect for people who travel alone.

At the Peach Pit: Image courtesy of Molly Jo Gorevan.

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“If travel is about the meeting of realities, it is no less about the mating of illusions: You give me my dreamed-of vision of Tibet, and I'll give you your wished-for California.” ~ Pico Iyer’s “Why we travel”

On our very first night in Prague, we were taken out to dinner by the program. Where did we go? Not to a traditional Czech restaurant, not to a pivnice or a restaurace, but to a pizzeria. Clearly, they were trying to keep the stress of move in as little as possible by not shocking our systems. There is something to be said for the comforts of home abroad. On our way home from the pizzeria, we were accosted by the sight of a basement bar called “Peach Pit.” There were immediately screams scattered throughout the group, and we knew who our fellow 90210 fans were. We didn’t go that night (though some did), but the next night, when we were searching for a chill bar to have a beer or two in and relax into our orientation week, the Peach Pit immediately rose to my mind.

Going into the Peach Pit is an experience that’s hard to describe. Pictures of the stars of the popular drama from the 90’s surround you, their smiling faces almost creepily idolized. There is a jukebox stuffed with Czech and American pop music and a room with a mirrored ceiling and disco ball. Yet it is a low-slung, distinctly Czech place, with the unfriendly stares of the locals eyeing you on your way down the entrance stares. We went for a feeling of home, but they came for the dream of a shining California represented by the tan, smiling stars of a television show that we often ridicule as some of the most distorted soap opera prime time that has ever passed through the airwaves of American TV.

That night, we met two Czech men who were also in the Peach Pit. Honza was a half-Finnish tour guide who leads around Scandinavian tourists for a living, and Louie, well, we don’t really know what Louie does except be friends with the bartender, who has since come to recognize our enthusiastic faces. We were embarrassed to hear their English, so perfect compared to our hastily glanced-over Czech phrases, but somehow we made a connection and quickly realized exactly what Iyer talks about when he talks about finding a new personality that is both more true and more false than the way we see ourselves at home. We could tell these men anything and they would believe it, and they could do the same and at the end of the night we would all leave happily bonded, if only in the most ephemeral of ways. It was an exciting and liberating experience, and it has drawn us back to the Peach Pit whenever we need a bit of home and a bit of Prague together.

My neat little room: My neat little room in BerlinIt took a long time for it to sink in for my family and I that I was going away for three and a half months. It is still a work in progress, in fact – every day I wake up in awe and think, wow, I am in Berlin. In the two months leading up to my departure, I was working at a day camp. Every day, I kept telling myself, You’ll be gone pretty soon, Rebecca, don’t forget. Every day, I began taking small steps towards preparing for life abroad. I opened a new bank account, made sure I had the right suitcases, and began compartmentalizing my entire life into an airport-friendly-sized microcosm of everything that I had back home in New Jersey. People had warned me that packing to go abroad would be nothing less than nightmarish. There were horror stories of girls being unable to part with their beloved heels, despite having been warned of all the cobblestone streets; girls who had shipped out boxes of clothes and products prior to their departure; students who had shown up with three suitcases and found themselves heading back home with five. I swore to myself immediately that I would pack light and save space for whatever I bought here. As it turned out, packing was not the challenge at all – unpacking was. I arrived safe, sound and on time in Berlin. All of my suitcases arrived exactly on time, one after another, and I happened to meet up with another NYU in Berlin student at the airport whose German was good enough to communicate to a cabby where we wanted to go (if left to my own devices, my German directions would have undoubtedly taken me clear across the city). It was a rainy, miserable, chilly greeting to a new life in an unfamiliar country, but no matter. This ensured that I would take care of that tedious chore of unpacking immediately. As I began taking my clothes out and folding them cleanly and neatly onto my new shelves, hanging up my coats in a new closet, and decorating my dresser, it finally truly sank in. This was my life, removed from the airport-approved suitcases and duffel bags. These were my few books I had brought, my few key books. These were my keys to my – MY – apartment and mailbox. This was what I would depend on until December 21st, the day of my departure from Berlin. Now, it was official – I had arrived.

Sunset over LondonI fell asleep soon after the plane to took off. When I woke up, we were only 20 minutes away from landing at London-Heathrow. I tried to stay business like, making sure I had the landing card, but I couldn't ignore the fact that my stomach was doing flips. For the first time since I was about 5, I was nervous about getting off of an airplane. After I finally got off the plane, we headed to baggage claim, always my least favorite part of any travel experience. The fear of lost luggage has been with me ever since I can remember. It was a long walk from where we left the plane to where we picked up, in my eyes, 4 months of my life stuffed into bags.

On that long walk, my heart rate picked up. A maelstrom of thoughts went through my mind, ranging from "will my bags show up" to "what will my room look like" to "holy crap I'm in London and I"m here for 4 months." As I watched the bags go by, none of them being mine of course, it dawned on me that it was the first time I had to deal with baggage claim on my own. Usually when I travel, my sister and I are responsible for getting all of our luggage off the conveyor belt and onto carts. But I was alone now, trying to watch my hand luggage while hawkishly making sure my checked bags didn't pass me by. The comfort of knowing my family was right there behind me was gone; they were an ocean away from me, living their lives as they had always done so. I was the one whose life was about to turn upside down.

But that's why I decided to study abroad. I wanted to turn my world upside down; I wanted the challenge that it presented. I suppose I wanted to both lose and find myself, an idea that Pico Iyer opens his essay with. "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves." To find yourself, you have to lose yourself. And though written out, it seems like a paradox; I found it, oddly enough, to be true. In the time I spent from disembarking off the plane to the baggage claim, I managed to lose the comfort and security of my family and find faith in myself and what I was capable of. And that was only the beginning of what I now see as a process of losing and finding myself. I have no idea what this process will bring me throughout my time here, but I can only hope it gives me a way to tell family and friends at home why I really came to King's Cross, London in the first place. That's a question I could never answer in complete truth because I never knew the answer. Here's to hoping that will change.

sitting in mountain tops of the andesMy last day at home, I lay sprawled out on my bed with my cell phone open on my chest staring at me counting the seconds of my phone call. It was only five minutes in, and I had already heard everything that I needed to hear. “Wow, this is the best I have ever seen you. Your heart is beaming a golden light. You are healed,” my spiritual healer, Bill, told me. I already knew, but needed that reassurance. After a year and a half of brutal hardship, I felt the shift back into balance, into peacefulness, into my body. I was whole again. After tearful days, angry days, blank days, and fake days, I was finally living pure happy days. Before I left, everyone kept asking me if I was nervous. I always thought long and hard trying to find something I was nervous about, but I wasn’t. I’d say most people have a little ball of anxiety and fear before embarking on a huge adventure and change. But for me, the only thing giving me that ugly ball of weight in my stomach was thinking about life back in New York had I not decided to study abroad. I wasn’t ready to go back, and thank god I didn’t have to! Luckily, I only had excited butterflies swarming around my belly pre-departure.

Bill continued, “It’s as if everything wanted this to happen for you. It came at the perfect time, and everything is set up perfectly for you. It is as if this journey is like one big graduation party for you. Hey look everybody, I’m back, healed and ready to go!” Bill was right. The cards were dealt perfectly. I’ve worked my ass off the past eighteen months, and now I get a glorious reward. I didn’t shed a single tear during my departure. Instead I waved bye to my parents through security with a beaming smile and a wave (a completely opposite feeling of when I sobbed my way through on my way to Italy for a year). And that is all I have been doing every since, smiling. The only thing I hear from friends and family from home is how happy I look in all of my pictures. It’s true. I think it is impossible for me to be sad here. A weight lifted off of my shoulders the second I sat down on the plane. I was doing something for me, and only me. I am free. I am traveling, and learning, and going into the unexpected. And just as Pico Iyer says, I am discovering things that were hidden within me as I come across their counterparts in Argentina. I am traveling with a mind that is fully awake and ready to go. I am having a love affair with life at the moment, and nothing can disrupt that.