I keep thinking of Paris in the sun and its cafés and boutiques down the tree-lined boulevards, and the haughtily aloof Haussmann buildings and women in heels and scarves and men in suits and long coats, and I wish I could see all of that here.

I’m itching to have the sense of purposefulness and busyness back, when it took going down five flights of winding apartment stairs, a fifteen-minute walk down the Ave de la Bourdonnais, four stops down the Ligne 8, a correspondance at Madeleine, a stop down Ligne 14 ending at Pyramides, and finally a fast walk down the Ave de l’Opéra just to get to my stage on time (and this I often missed by ten minutes).

I miss the late-night endings at Hillsong, when I’d have to make my way back home from Rambuteau on the Ligne 11, wait for dozens of minutes for a metro train to arrive at Les Halles, and then finally make it through Ligne 14 or 1. I miss the surprising sense of relief every time I saw the sign marking “8 Balard,” my direction home.

I miss the hustle of nonstop activity and hassle that I complained about. I even miss the strong sense of struggle it took to live in a city like Paris as a lost foreigner. The very difficulty it took to live daily life in France brought with it a feeling of growing independence that was more rewarding than I had ever expected.

I miss the silly and often exasperating snootiness of some Parisians. That snobbiness marked with a sort of dignity, at once annoying and endearing, and just so Parisian that the only appropriate response is often a wry smile at it all.

I miss, too, the old, strange, and sometimes-inconvenient doors, windows, elevators in Paris, the multiple layers of security to get through one single apartment building.

And I also want the other side of Paris back, too: the sitting for hours outside café terraces with a porcelain cup filled with incomparably delicious café viennois, feeling the warm sun on your skin, chatting with friends in cozy dimly-lit restaurants around St. Michel, strolling down the Axe Historique – past the Louvre and Palais Royal, through the hieroglyped Obélisque and Place de la Concorde (imagining Marie-Antoinette beheaded there), down the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe and back, just for fun.

I miss French vinaigrette and compote and their strangely better-tasting tomatoes and their too-hard baguettes, their over-priced pastries and tartes, the inestimably amazing pain au chocolat that not even Panera in the States can ever hope to rival.

I want to speak French again, French as an everyday, current language, so I can run through my perfected “Avez-vous une mobicarte orange?” query at tabacs and métro kiosks, attempt to explain myself to RATP officers and storekeepers, say things like “Je vous remercie,” and “Pardon,” just because it’s normal…to hear it and read it and dream it because it’s everywhere. Just to be surrounded with the language without having to hunt down a French movie in the small ‘Foreign Films’ sections of rental stores, special-order French music, or go to particular Francophone events.

But I don’t want Paris’s loneliness and its coldness. The impermeable greyness of everything when it drizzles in the winter and everyone walks past in long black coats and severe black umbrellas, hardly acknowledging your existence. I don’t want the feeling in the pit of my stomach that I have to be constantly on my toes to make sure that everything would be okay – the pressure to fit in and blend myself in Parisian society, never to be marked ‘foreign.’

I like the easy familiarity here with people and places. Somehow it gives me more liberty to be more of myself, with less reserve. And I appreciate the warmth that Americans emanate. And American 2% milk, the kind that always has to be refrigerated. And the spacious openness, cleanliness and modernity of places is nice, too, sometimes.

It’ll just take me a while to readjust.

And if I never do, well, I’ll just have to move back to France.

 

I miss Paris.

Sort of a lot. Is that weird? It’s a bit unexpected, in some ways. But I want to cry.

Because I can’t see those streets anymore. See beautiful people and hear their beautiful language and rush down beautiful avenues seeing beautiful things to get somewhere else just as beautiful.

Seeing how huge everything is in the States. KFC mega-jugs and king-size Twix and gigantic SUVs and…

Wow.

It’s around noon at Charles de Gaulle, and I have just discovered that I cannot get a wifi connection because it costs 0,34 euros per minute. This will have to be posted when I get a real internet connection – after I cross the Atlantic. But at the moment, people are lining up for a Chicago flight. I’m in Satellite 5, nearest 57, waiting for the plane to board at 13h.

This morning, I got up at 7.20 to pack the last of everything. In the background, Dora the Explorer was on the television. In France, she speaks French and teaches peculiarly accented English, and she was helping a bébé crabe find its maman and then a baby fox find its maman with the help of Schiffer (Swiper). Dora is not as cool as she is in English/Spanish, but as always, she was quite therapeutic. Sort of distracted me from thinking that I was really leaving.

I did everything rather mechanically without much thought, helped with the fact that I didn’t have the time to do all that I had to. I went downstairs, déposé-d a stack of sheets and towels, and then went back upstairs to take down my first my (very heavy) carry-on, then my (24-kg) green Polo suitcase, and then finally my (32-kg) blue suitcase. They are all exceedingly heavy, resulting in my having had to pay a fine earlier (though I think the fee was cut when I interrupted them and switched into French), and truthfully I am rather proud of having successfully navigated the narrow winding steps downstairs and depositing my suitcases near the commode beside the front doors.

With all my stuff descendu, I vaccuumed and cleaned the room with eau de javel, very effective cleaning stuff.

My phone rang not long after, with the Paris Shuttle driver leaving me a message: “Euh, mademoiselle Kay? Je suis devant chez vous, la…,” and so I called back and said I was descendre-ing my valises and would be out front in “a peu pres trois minutes.”

My host parents came out of the apartment with me to see me off. The driver, hefting my suitcases in the trunk of the shuttle, was maybe one form of what the stereotyped Parisian man is: tall, dark, sort of long disheveled hair, a five o’clock shadow, dressed all in black with a suit. He was brisk, and full of witticisms and smart comments, sort of funny bordering on offensive. He asked me why I had so much to bring with me, talking fast and not articulating well, saying that all his passengers going to de Gaulle that day had “des valises des fous.” I defended myself in saying that I had been there for half a year and was therefore entitled to have that much luggage. It was a nice marker of my ease and progress in French after spending months there.

I exchanged bises with both my host parents and said goodbye, watching them wait and wave as the shuttle drove me away. It didn’t feel like I was really leaving as the ride crossed to the other side of the Seine, the Trocadéro and the Eiffel, through roads I didn’t recognise at first, but by degrees it began to hit me, and I did cry, for having to leave what had been my Parisian home for the past half-year and the very lovely family that lived there and had been mine during my stay. I absorbed as much as I could from the window, unsure when I’d see it again, uncertain that I’d ever stay in the city for that long of a time again, knowing a phase of my life was really coming to an end.

The feeling was something like leaving someone you had gotten to know very well, someone you loved and hated at the same time – because Paris had become nearly like a person to me, so leaving was something complicated and not very easily articulated. 

My only consolations was that the shuttle drove around the Etoile, the 12-lane roundabout circling the Arc de Triomphe, a driving experience I had always wanted to have before I left Paris but had never got around to. There was indeed the fabled honking and cutting of lanes, along with the nearly-crashing-into-other-cars phenomenon that is strangely matched with an assuredness that there would be no accidents (and there were none). The other consolation was seeing the Moulin Rouge down Rue Blanche, after having driven around the Jardin du Luxembourg and down Rue de Bruxelles. I hadn’t seen the Moulin Rouge during my entire stay in Paris (made me wonder what much else I had missed), and though it was much smaller and less striking than its reputation (I thought it was only an imitation of the real thing), it was nice to have seen it anyway.

In the shuttle with me were an Indian family and an Italian-Australian couple; the wife told me that she and her husband had been on a month-long cruise of twelve cities, with Paris as their end-point. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, and my reaction was immediately, “of course – of course it is.”

* * *

A woman in brown slingback heels, a brown skirt polka-dotted in white, and ivory suit with auburn hair is talking on her cell and saying things so French like “j’arrive.” Another woman earlier said something with a shrug of one shoulder with a palm uplifted, a trademark French gesture. “Y’a plus personne?” a girl has just asked behind me. I’m trying to soak in as much French as I can, because I know it’s not going to last much longer. It’s hard to imagine what it’ll be like around American English all the time again.

A Frenchman just asked me very courteously in French if I could move down one seat so he and his friend could sit next to each other in the same row. It makes me sad to think that that will be the last French addressal to me by a French person in France for who knows how long.

I can tell, in this sitting area, who the French and the non-French are. The stylish American girls waiting for their flights are stylish in a clean, simple, American way, in dark denim, polo shirts, and brushed long hair, and the French girls are the ones with the windblown hair, careless layering of shirts, and long skinny jeans, much more of an urban chic.

There are repeated announcements calling for a Monsieur William Noble to pick up his luggage, but they’re reading his name with a French pronunciation (“Noh-bluh” as oposed to “Noe-buhl”), so I wonder if he just isn’t recognising his own name…

Behind me is a French university student chatting with an American couple. She studies biomedical engineering, building models on cancer at Johns Hopkins University, and said she’s getting attached to the US since she’s been there seven years now, but she still has a French accent. It’s funny to think that everyone wants to go to Paris but she wants to go back to the relatively less famed destination of Maryland.

All I know is that it’ll be a veeery strange couple of days coming up…

it’s a hazy, rainy day outside, the kind that stains the cuffs of your jeans wet and leaves your face with a cool phantom mist. the slate-grey roofs of the haussman-style buildings, marked with red-brick chimneys and prickly antennas, are several shades darker from the rain. it’s so much more amusing to look out, from the 6th floor (7th, really) of another haussman-style building, at the avenue de l’opéra…than to be doing what i’m supposed to be doing. that is, research mécénats d’entreprises (businesses with sponsorships) to see which ones could potentially yield a fruitful partnership with the world food programme of the UN. i can see through all the windows in the buildings across me, and each one has a different décor, a different person - in one room, a woman with her dark hair in a bun is jotting down notes and looking every now and then on her computer screen; another room has a table with a green tablecloth, and a third is minimalist in interior design, with white walls and a single uncluttered table in blond wood. in fact, watching the wisps of smoky clouds drift over this portion of parisian sky is more fascinating than doing my work. i never knew clouds moved so fast.

tomorrow, thursday, is a jour férié, a holiday, in france. and in sénégal too, as i’ve discovered by reading my email (with subject line “FYI: thursday is a public holiday in sénégal and the WFP office will be closed”). cruelly enough, tomorrow is normally only a 2-hour internship day for me, whereas today, the non-holiday, is a 10 to 5 deal. all the jours fériés have always fallen on days when i only had a few hours of work. this deserves a great harrumph.

but i only have 16 (sixteen) days left in this city. i think it quite justified to note every detail of this 1st arrondissement road to keep in my mind for posterity. after all, years later, i prefer to remember the design of a black, wrought-iron railing on a parisian building rather than the name of an obscure NGO’s délégué général…

since spring break, the following weeks have gradually improved to the point that i like paris more than i liked it before i left for break. when i had 34 days left in the city, i was looking forward to leaving. but settled back in, with 18 days left, now i wish i could postpone my departure. study abroad is a very up-and-down experience. after liking, not liking, liking again, then hating, then back to liking paris again, i’m more or less beginning to get really adjusted here. and attached. isn’t that why they say being in paris is like having a love affair? you hate it and you love it. it’s up and it’s down, give and take. paris is more like a person than a city – a person with a very strong, complex personality - indifferent, engaging, and very difficult to swallow, but still utterly breathtaking in the end. and just when i’ve gotten to know it well enough to love it, i have to leave. i will still be happy to see my family again and to be home. but i want that without having to leave paris. as they say, you can’t have the best of both worlds. but mine is an even more complicated affair: i love jakarta too. if not the best of two worlds, how about the best of three?

with a 34-euro ticket on a thursday evening, i abandoned all work on my 30+ page rapport de stage (internship report) and took the 42 bus straight to opéra garnier to catch a performance of cendrillon, a ballet choreographed by the amazingly talented rudolf noureev. and adapted to a 1930s hollywood setting.

my ticket got me to the premiers lodges, the lodges on the 1st floor (or 2nd, however you look at it), the doors of which have to be opened with keys. once unlocked, it’s all red velvet inside with dim yellow lamps, a narrow passageway with a low sofa and coat hanger, then three rows of two chairs each. i had a seat on the left in the second row. a father and his daughter were in front of me, and two ladies were seated behind me. it’s impossible to see the stage from the third row in these lodges, which is why the women behind me stood up for most of the ballet with modern-day lorgnettes.

the choreography was stunning; rows of dancers in fabulous costumes – layered dresses, frilled shirts, black maids’ dresses – would weave in and out of each other in synchronized lines or complicated patterns, and every solo or pas de deux was executed beautifully. i can’t imagine planning out such a ballet step by step as noureev must have. it was intricate but cohesive, and made even more powerful because the music was profokiev.

the two stepsisters were dressed in ruffled, bright turquoise and magenta dresses – they were my favorite because they were successful in appearing clumsy and slightly comical, but with a certain grace and perfect timing, pirouetting en pointe. a man danced the role of the stepmother (something i learnt from the ballet programme my host dad lent to me, buyable at the opéra for 10 euros). the scenery changed from settings with a giant king kong, betty gable, and a host of other 1930s stars i don’t know. sadly, i probably missed a lot of references.

there were three acts and breaks between each. i took advantage of that by taking pictures. and by buying an exorbitantly priced (4-euro) square of brownie, no bigger than four inches wide, only because i was famished, and because the pleasant man selling it assured me it was “fait maison” (made in the house) and would guarantee me “une excellente soirée” after eating it.

the applause lasted a minimum of three minutes, as is usual in the opéra performances i have gone to, and it was highly deserved applause!

i walked out into the bright parisian night to catch the 42 back, with a view of the opera to my right and the galeries lafayette to my left. an elegant middle-aged lady actually conversed with me at the bus stop, and we commiserated over the fact that we had “raté” (missed) the bus, and then together we checked the arrival time of the next bus. this is sort of strange in paris for me – nice stranger chitchat has seldom taken place.

galeries lafayette is nicely illuminated at night, but not as nice as it is on the inside, architecturally beautiful with a domed stained glass ceiling and gold-gilt balconies (not to mention designer goodies everywhere). no wonder it’s a big tourist attraction (i heard mandarin and english much more than french in there), and that paris has no more shopping malls than it does – galeries lafayette suffices.

I’ve 34 days left in Paris, and then I’m leaving!! Back on United Air nonstop to Dulles International.

It’s terrible that I should be happy about leaving, but I am.

Paris is extremely beautiful, and I am extremely lucky to be here, but there comes a point when you realise that it’s not home, and it’s hard to not have seen friends and especially family from home for this long.

I’ve had the feeling that I’ve had enough of Paris for a while now, and honestly it’s probably not because of Paris itself that I want to leave, but more because I’ve been away from home too long already. It’s like that Michael Buble song -

another summer day

has come and gone away

in paris and rome,

but i wanna go home.

maybe surrounded by

a million people

i still feel all alone

oh i miss you, you know.

 

When I go back, I’ll be in the States. And then on 19 June I’ll leave for “home home,” which is Jakarta, Indonesia: third-world country poverty, pollution, corruption. It’ll be quite a shift. I can’t wait. 

 

 

 

 

 

kelapa gading, jakarta (left) and quartier latin, paris (right)

 

 

Oops! I was gone for an inordinately long time because – I wasn’t in France! I had spring vacation from 7-22 April, which made it an excellent time to travel around Europe, though all of us students did it with the knowledge that the upon our return, we’d have to immediately face the final exams scheduled by the French universities for the 23rd of April and the following days…

I went first to Rome, then Venice, Dublin, and finally London all thanks to RyanAir, an Ireland-based budget airline that’s actually quite dependable and of good quality, except that they do not feed you free food, which was rather disappointing to me (I do enjoy food on airlines…). I found travelling around Europe extremely easy, even with a U.S. passport that made me line up under the “All Other Passports” signs in airports (a nice way to single out the non-Europeans). I won’t write too much about these four cities, which would sort of deviate from the purpose of this blog, but I did love them. Especially London because – well, I have to admit, largely because they spoke English, but of course that wasn’t the only reason.

Having left Paris and then returned, I actually feel a bit differently about it. I was already feeling run down in the weeks before spring break, maybe because I was continually running between my internship and classes and metro stations all day, a hectic schedule that got old very fast…For days, all I wanted was to escape the elegant grey façades of the city and find a big wide open space to breathe in. Though Rome, Venice, Dublin, and London aren’t exactly big wide open spaces, leaving Paris was still a relief. And as I travelled, I couldn’t help but make (probably superficial and biased) comparisons between Paris and whatever city I was in:

1. The people in Italy, Ireland and England tend to be considerably more accommodating and warm to (English-speaking) tourists/strangers than Parisians. Italians in both Rome and Venice speak excellent English and don’t mind doing so to help others; a woman in a store thoroughly explained the bus system to me in English, for example. In contrast, I don’t dare try to speak English in France. Even speaking to Parisians in French backfires sometimes…

2. There was a greater volume of SMILES in Italy, Ireland, and England. Take England: strangers smiled more to other strangers on streets, two British women talked to me while I was in line (the queue, sorry) at Primark (newly opened enormous clothing store on Oxford), two elderly ladies befriended me on the way to the Hillsong church conference, a middle-aged British man spoke to me as I stood beside him in one of London’s underground tubes (there were little mice scurrying under the rails, and I was looking at them in mixed horror and amusement, and he looked at me, laughed, and said, “lunch?” I replied with a “not quite.”).

3. I realized how amazing it was to be back in an Anglophone country once I arrived in Ireland. The immigration officer’s friendly “on holidays, are you?” as he stamped my passport was like music to my ears, and I immediately felt as though I had some strange and unspoken link to the Irish just because we spoke the same language. Hearing English made me feel more at ease and at home. The downside was that I forgot that people understood me, and so I regularly spoke out whatever I wanted in English to Melissa – odd phrases like, “Oh, look at that! I want that dog!!” Of course people stared at me rather oddly.

I felt more of a warmth and an acceptance – I’d go even as far as to say a sense of belonging – in these 3 countries more than I’ve felt in Paris, even though I was in each city only a few days each and barely speak Italian (I can say ‘per favore,’ ‘grazie,’ ‘un tavolo per due,’ ‘prego,’ and the numbers 1-5, 30, 40, and 50, but that’s about it). Perhaps it’s an invented sense of belonging, because I felt released from the pressure of “fitting in” in Paris and speaking only French, but I still think that there is a real difference in attitudes towards tourists.

Regardless, coming back to Paris was necessary, though I was cranky about it (I sulked inwardly a good way of the 40-minute British Airways flight back because I didn’t want to come back to Paris yet and was still fully in love with London). I hadn’t missed it while I was gone and didn’t really want to return. But what was unexpected was that when the plane began its descent to land, I saw the city at night. I saw the Eiffel Tower and lights and lights and lights. For the first time I understood why Paris is called the City of Light. Before then, I had thought that that was a quite inappropriate name for a city that I don’t see as being very well-lit even when I was on the 1st level on the Eiffel Tower. But from the plane Paris was incredible and had millions of yellow lights. I had to admit to myeslf that it was, despite everything, still very beautiful, and my sulkiness wore off a little. [What I never thought of is interpreting the City of Light as being not only bright with visible light, but as also being bright with intellectual knowledge or cultural savoir-faire...]

Then there was the odd feeling of familiarity that was a bit comforting. Going back on the RER into central Paris and then navigating the metro, I felt like I had never left, and the feeling of familiarity in a city that I knew wasn’t my home city was odd but reassuring. I realized to my relief that I had not forgotten any French but in fact found it a lot easier to speak. And I also realized that I had probably exaggerated the unfriendliness of Parisians in my mind while I was gone, because those I asked for help at Charles de Gaulle were very pleasant, all three of them (I had trouble finding the RER station…)

Today I discovered that in my absence, spring has absolutely FLOURISHED everywhere around the city into light green leafy trees. 2 weeks ago, the leaves were just beginning to grow. The city looks like it got a makeover or a new haircut while I was gone. Also, it is HOT in Paris right now – I would say 25 degrees or even more. It’s like summer! I find a lot of joy in wearing flip-flops, and I even saw flip flops on the metro today. Call it another one of my biased misconceptions, but I didn’t really know that Parisians actually wore flip-flops (of course they do). I bought a pair at H&M in London, so I’m going to take advantage of that (except that I can’t wear those to my internship, can I??) Finally, it’s good to be back in Paris with my own room and free internet access, and to see my host family again, and to know where to go and what metro and bus to take…

 

Yeah, I guess Paris is good, and perhaps I’ve unfairly judged it.
Not that I wouldn’t fly back to London in a heartbeat

 

 

 

 

Skipping my internship and class on Friday, I went with my host parents to head off to their chalet in the Alps. Ah, yes, envy me, because there’s a lot to be jealous about. First of all, being in a car in Paris is a marvelous and rare experience for me, as I usually make my way on public transportation or by foot. Although it took over an hour to get out of the city limits (I believe the whole world was leaving Paris for vacation because it was Easter weekend, and in France there are 3 days off for that), being in a car was more agreeable and less tiresome than being in the metro or the bus where you have to first of all wait, then are often obliged to stand, brace yourself against all sudden stops or swerves, be caught in between strangers, etc. Parisian traffic, too, was great. Lots of huge trucks, vans, and tourist buses blocking little roads and dozens of cars who shut off their engines when the wait became too long. It’s city driving, but nothing compared to Jakarta traffic, which is preposterous to the point of amusement. We went through the 12th and 13th arrondissements, paralleling the périphérique (huge highway just encircling Paris), and then hop! (haha I’m using a French expression, which is like…oh, I can’t find the English equivalent), we were off onto the A6 highway.
The drive was a lot of fun. I saw the Massif Central mountain range and the Ain and Saône rivers (which, of course, I wouldn’t have recognized without my host parents pointing them out to me), Bourgogne (er, Burgundy, home to the famous boeuf bourguignon?) and vineyards…and in a while I was seeing signs for Lyon, Geneva, and then even Milan. It only takes a couple hours to get from Paris to a completely different side of France: the paysage (I mean landscape) was completely different from Paris and from that of the South (Aix area), and if we had kept on driving we would have arrived in Italy! The smallness of France and of Europe in general, in comparison to the States, struck me then as being wonderful and convenient - it only takes several hours by car to arrive at a completely different landscape or even country, while in the States you could drive on for hours and hours and see the same thing – i.e. the same type of farmland for ever and ever. It was surreal seeing the Jura mountains, a mountain range I had only seen in atlases. I caught a glimpse of Geneva’s really high fountain, too, so we came very close to the Swiss border. But we continued on to Chamonix/Les Contamines Mont Jolie, basically at the foot of Mont Blanc. The Alps are truly magnificent; you may see them from pictures or the television or movies, but it’s really not even a fraction of what it’s like to see them in real life. They were so majestic, blue, tall and simply…enormous. Needless to say, I took lots of pictures through the car windows.
We drove through St. Gervais les Bains, an old city with thermal springs known to treat skin diseases, and then into our destination, Les Contamines, a village that started thriving around the 1900s (my host mother wrote a book on this!), though it was founded centuries earlier: the church there was built either in 16 or 18-something (sorry for being about 2 centuries unsure). The village’s architecture was, I realized, the authentic version of what Busch Gardens tries to create in its “European village” theme park.
The chalet itself is gorgeous, with a balcony, big windows, and an amazing view of Mont Jolie. I find myself so fortunate, and am very much in awe of the fact that my host family has a terribly wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower in their Parisian apartment and a gorgeous view of the Alps in their chalet.                                                                                                                                                     I’ve seen the skiing scene (unfortunately, I really can’t take the risk of trying to ski right now because if I break a leg the timing would be incredibly bad, being the beginning of my spring break), gotten nearly lost walking back down Mont Jolie to the chalet (I ended up following a river and then wandering around the complexes of chalets that began to look identical), walked to the end of the valley that Les Contamines is in, breathed fresh mountain air and drank pure mountain water. I’ve also decided that the region’s cheese is the best: mild and rich at the same time! And today, after I went to Easter mass in the old church, I carried back a baguette in my hand, one of the stereotypically French things to do. I was so proud of it, I took pictures for the occasion.
Really good also for my French skills has been the presence of three of my host parent’s grandchildren, who are 8, 5, and 3. I don’t know why, but it made me actually think of how fluent kids are in their native languages. It strikes me that they already possess all the elements of fluent French speech, and I am certain that if I spent all my time with them, I’d be fluent – and I’d know children’s French, too! I’ve conversed and read lots of French children’s books to the kids (including ‘Totally Spies’ the cartoon comics, Astérix comics, and other things), and today, Easter, I hid the eggs for them in the garden.
Tomorrow morning I have to take back the TGV to Paris at 8h30. I’m rather sad about it, because it’s been nice to be away from Paris. Being away makes me realize how draining Paris is to live in. I realize now why so many Parisians leave their city every other week or so, and that most families have homes in the “country.” It’s been a relief to go away and have some open space and fresh air, having no obligation to run around frenetically in rows and rows of grey, albeit gorgeous, buildings. I like these mountains a lot! You know, perhaps I was meant for Geneva. After all, Geneva is at the foot of the Alps, is a good-sized city with lots of international organizations, and is Francophone, too. I’ll look into that for the future. For now, I should probably get to bed so I can wake up tomorrow and go back to Paris *sniffle*.

I have always known that I was meant to live in a palace (châteaus (châteaux) count). This was reconfirmed when, on a marvellously sunny Sunday, Middlebury took a group of students on a free trip to the Château de Fontainebleau, about a 20-30 minute train ride from Paris. It’s southeast about 60 km from Paris, and the city of Fontainebleau is on its borders, the way it was hundreds of years ago.

I found the city of Fontainebleau charming, with narrow ‘townhomes’ or stores standing side by side – almost at an angle, it seemed. We came onto château grounds via the Jardin de Diane, created under François I (1515-47). Diane was the king’s mistress, and her garden in its present condition is a really lovely one, especially when the sun is shining as it was that day and the paons blancs (white peacocks) are strolling about leisurely on green manicured grounds. There was also a fountain, stained dark green with age, of Diane chasseresse (goddess of hunting).

After lunch in the garden, we made our way to two winding, imposingly grand stone staircases set in the center of a wide open court all paved in stone – we had arrived at La Cour du Cheval blanc (Court of the White Horse), or La Cour des Adieux (Court of Goodbyes…Farewell Court?), where Napoleon bid his adieux in 1814. Immaculately trimmed green lawns with manicured trees symmetrically adorned the stone court on both sides.

We took a rapid tour through the palace, seeing the sunlit ballroom, its wooden floors reflecting light, the wooden panels carved with kings’ seals, and arched windows revealing beautifully royal views of the château’s other wings. I could imagine lords and ladies dressed in all their noble finery dancing in the ballroom, or sitting on one of the benches built into the recessed windows.

We went through the Eglise de la Trinité (Trinity Chapel), where Louis XV was married and the future Napoelon III was baptised; the library, with the very musty smell of very old books; the grand cabinet, boudoir, and chambers of the queen, designed for Marie-Antoinette; the throne room, with a much smaller and more humble royal blue throne than I’d imagined; the council room, bathroom…

Behind the castle was a park and long canal, many times over the length of Washington DC’s Reflecting Pool. It was even, flat ground all around, positioning the lake and castle building in a straight axis the way Versailles is also designed (okay, perhaps I’m making this up, beacuse I’m not sure. But it looked that way, sort of, to me). At least, the gardener André Le Nôtre was the same one who worked on Versaille’s parterres. Before we walked down the length of the canal, we watched a crowd of runners and their audience near the gates of the castle grounds. Apparently it was the day of La Foulée Impériale (or, literally translated, The Imperial Stride), some sort of race…

And finally, the glorious Forêt de Fontainebleau, known as “la plus belle forêt de France” (the most beautiful forest in France), and to me, I think it really must be. The afternoon sun glittered off the canal, so that it looked like a long deep sapphire ribbon with millions of blinding diamonds, and we ate a picnic lunch on its shores. The grass was soft and dry, the sun the perfect degree of warm for a late winter day. We picked daisies and did the French version of “he loves me, he loves me not”:  “Je t’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout!” (i love you a little bit, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all!) – “There are nuances in French.” Lying on our backs on royal park grounds, under the sun, on wide stretches of warm green, away from grey Haussmannien Paris, was simply therapeutic.