I’m starting to see a pattern

Here’s what happened  when I left the United States for France last week:

and….

and here’s what happened the first week I left for France in 2005:

… not that I’m suggesting anything but. yikes.

On a lighter note, today the librarian, a kind, bespecled older woman whose name I presently forget, but who I harrass everyday to use the internet approached me and asked me to write an introduction for myself for the school newsletter. I even get to have my picture taken with the other assistants. I really AM going places.

Yesterday I also went to two classes at Pablo Neruda to introduce myself and answer questions (ALL in English, mind you). These French students are smart, although our discussion on music was reduced to a back and forth of “have you heard of this group?” “No. Have you heard of this group?” “No.” I did bond with one guy over Bob Dylan and the harmonica however, and apparently I have to check out this dude named “Cheese” (I am ALMOST positive that’s what he said) who apparently does covers of classic rock songs. classy. By the end of the class we were discussing the elcection and the intricacies of our health care system. They were absolutely horrified.

So Here’s the Deal…

I finally stopped hyperventilating for two minutes which turned out to be just long enough to realize that Dieppe is not a half bad little city.

Aside from my current apartment which resembles a juvenile detention center (complete with a locking gate that circles the building and bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceilings), more than a viable living space (pictures to follow)- Dieppe in itself seems to be a regular seaside town , with a requisite historic city center complete with the requisite church, and main pedestrian street which is closed to motorized traffic.

Until Saturday the only people I had met were teachers, but I somehow got in contact with another assistant named Alli, and although she’s American and two years younger, she’s nice, and i realized how oddly relieving it was to have someone around my age to talk to. After a quick breakfast in a café and a choppy explanation of our government system to the 19 year old son of the owner, accompanied with lots of hand gestures, we met Veronique, a teacher at Alli’s school, and her boyfriend Johannn and spent the day looking through apartments. Veronique could, in fact, be the identical twin of Feist, and sitting out in the sun on a café terrace, watching her smoke a pack in one hour and drink a Stella, I believe that all the stereotypes I had of France before I arrived that I had dispelled, were very quickly reinstated.

On the other hand, living on the outskirts of the city gave me time to think about why I had been so miserable the past few days. I mean, I miss things certainly- my bed, my bike, my coffee maker, and my friends, but these are not things with finite lifespans (well they are but they’re longer than 7 months. i hope). I realized sitting in my temporary bedroom, looking into the hallway that echos and blinds you with its sanitarian white floors and walls and ceilings, that possibly one of the things I miss the most about Columbus are the background noises of other peoples lives against my own- hearing Emily come home from work, or the blip of a text message from Brenda while she was running errands, or coming home and knowing that Andrew would probably be asleep with the lights off watching a movie—

and now that I know what exactly I’ve been missing, well I think that can be remedied with time. Everthing else I missed- well they’ll hopefully all be there when I get back.

Homesickness Abounds

Some recent thoughts on French grocery stores:

- They do not like regular bar soap

- Their cheese aisles could eat our cheese aisles for breakfast.

- If you could base a society on the food it eats (well you can but that’s another matter) France would be comprised of sausages, baguette, and chocolate biscuits.

I said yesterday that homesickess hadn’t hit yet. Well it did after I left Paris. In spades. After I was picked up from the train station by Dominique one of the teachers at Palo Neruda, I was driven to the school which was on the outskirts of town, and ushered into a very empty looking apartment/ dorm apartment that is sort of attached to the building where the students live. I can stay there as long as i want for practically nothing, or I can find an apartment in the city’s center and pay half my month’s salary. There is a gate in front that locks at certain hours of the day even though I’m allegedly supposed to have a key that opens it.

As soon as the door clicked I walked around and looked out the window at the gate and the high schoolers walking around, and the tears started to flow and I called my mom, which actually made me feel bad because the people at the school went to great lengths to find a refrigerator and a bed and even set out some tea packets and sugar for me. After talking to my mom for awhile I suddenly felt sick and ended our conversation with “I have to go mom I’m going to throw up”. And then I hung up. And then I did. And sitting in the bathroom (or the toilette) I realized I could sit there or I could do something, so I went on a walk and bought some dinner at the supermarchet- it’s called Mutant. Really?

Well, there’s more, but my head hurts. Dieppe is a funny, small town with not much going on. Not that I need a raging nightlife. But I’ve never lived in a town with 30,000 people. Holy crap what am i going to do for 9 months?

Frenchies and Dieppe

So I’ve had such a lack of homesickness since I’ve gotten here, which is surprising to me, because I usually meet significant change with equally volatile bouts of tears, etc. etc., but so far nothing.

Since Amanda and Olivier have been working everyday, I’ve spent my days walking miles and miles around the city by myself, watching people and having an afternoon espresso in various cafes. Yesterday I walked down the Seine from Passy to Notre Dame (essentially traversing the entire first zone of the city, which I don’t even know how many miles that is). I feel like whenever I find myself in situations in other countries by myself, I just end up walking around- it’s the easiest way to blend in because until you open your mouth you could be potentially anybody. The only time I ever get unsettled in when I see something I want to share with somebody, and I pick up my phone to call somebody, and then realize that I can’t.

We’ve made dinner at the apartment for the past couple of nights, settling around the coffee table on the floor, which has been nice, although sometimes I feel like staying with Amanda for the past couple of days has kind of been a fakeout arrival, and maybe I’ll feel the full impact of being here once I’m in Dieppe by myself.

On that note– I leave today for Dieppe, and will be picked up by Dominique, a teacher from the High School at the Gare. She offered me a place to stay at the High School (I’m curious as to what kind of situation this will turn out to be), and since the other teacher who offered me a temporary place to stay in her house is having a baby in a couple of days, I figured I would leave her with her own preoccupations, although I still may take her up on the dinner she offered to make me tomorrow. I guess I’ll be the only one staying at the school for a bit, although a German assistant might stay there- I figure it’s good at least temporarily and I won’t be homeless, and I’ll have a roof over my head while I look for a studio space in the center.

ANYWAYS. I mentioned earlier that there were no kites or valleys where I’m going. Turns out. I was wrong. Dieppe is the self-titled kite capital of the WORLD. AND they have an annual kite flying festival. I don’t know if they are in a valley, but close enough. I am indeed heading off into some sort of land of wayward kites. So. There you go.

I’m Here

SO I finally did what I have been talking about doing for the past three months and actually actively thinking about doing for the past month. I have a blog. I’m a blogger. There I said it. Yeah I know laraheintz isn’t the most creative of name domains, but I was running on exactly two hours of sleep, and a bagel that I’d eaten 8 hours prior for breakfast, and realized that I was in no position to name my blog something like “stuck in the hole” because a) this could be kind of gross, b) it’s depressing, and c) i might forget it (i would i forget a lot of things). So. Laraheintz it is. I can’t forget that. Hopefully. And neither can anybody else. Hopefully.

To start this blog that should officially be called “Dieppe I’m in France, Normandie I’d be in Columbus!” (Thanks to Libby and Shannon and Brenda and a two hour heated discussion via Chicago)- I arrived in Paris yesterday at about 9:30 Paris time (3:30 Ohio time) and fueled by copious amounts of caffine, lugged my 100+ pounds of luggage through the airport, and decided it would be a good idea to take the bus to Amanda’s apartment rather than a taxi. Turns out the bus that goes to Opera is also the stop for the Euro Disneyworld charter bus extravaganza, so I waited on the sidelines while hoards of excited kids and stressed out parents loaded bags into the lower compartments. My bus came eventually and I attempted to find a suitable place for my three bags (no convenient lower compartments for us non charter folks), and finally decided after I witnessed my suitcase roll down the entire length of the bus almost taking out a poor unsuspecting mother that maybe it would be best to take up an entire set block for myself, bags seated by the window, and me seated by the bags. A thin scottish woman who sat across the aisle commented that I had a lot of luggage and asked whether I needed help, and I responded that I don’t usually have this much stuff but that I was going to be gone for nine months and I had to carry medicine as well.

Sometimes things don’t really sink in until they’re verbalized and as soon as I said that it it me just how long I’m really going to be gone.

Amanda’s is a really nice small studio space by the Eiffel Tower in an area called Passy. The rest of the day was a blur of walking around the city, and sleeping, ended perfectly with a trip to a sushi restaurant down the street that had plates go by a la carte on a conveyor belt- perfect for people who like food, imperfect for people who are indecisive.

I still have no idea where I’ll live once I get to Dieppe, but I have a couple of options at least temporary, and a teacher said she could help me find a studio space. One other girl from the program e-mailed me to see if I wanted to room together, but we seem really different, so maybe I’d be better off having my own space if the rent was cheap enough? I dunno, I’m still to overwhelmed by everything going on to really decide.

Today I look for a sim card. So far there have been no wayward kites. And no valley (i don’t think?) Is Paris in a valley?

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