The Great Dilemmas of Life Abroad

Episode 1. What do you do when you're alone, living in someone else's apartment, and the one thing you've been fearing all along comes to pass? That is, a mouse scurries across the floor in front of your bed and dashes into some corner behind your backpack, God knows where, hiding its beady little mouse eyes and ugly little mouse tail and nasty little mouse poop somewhere you'll least expect to find it. It lies in wait, preparing, just as you have finally calmed down and prepared to go to sleep, metaphorical baseball bat in hand, waiting to deal the little varmint a final blow when it tries to scurry into bed with you, to dash out again and terrorize you. What if you scream pathetically and no one hears? What if you can't make it into the bathroom where the Souricide is waiting, right on top of the toilet, because that furry creep was last seen patrolling the door?

A day in the life of an exchange student in Paris. My host family warned me that there might be mice, but never ever in my room. Now, I don't think mice are usually too discriminating about which rooms they scurry to and which ones they leave alone, but I decided to believe this account for my own sanity. I can't deceive myself any longer. Apparently last time there was a souris in the apartment, my host dad picked it up by its tail and threw it out the window. I hope there was no one standing in the street below. I'm going to be putting in a request for another defenestration I think.

Since it's pretty hard to sleep knowing what critters will haunt my dreams, I might as well catch up on other news from the week. Mainly I've just been doing homework, going to class, eating good meals, settling into a routine. The weather has been beautiful, though, so I'm trying to spend a lot of time outside. Yesterday morning I met up with Isabella and Rachel and we did a little window-shopping in my neighborhood, then we parted ways and I treated myself to a free makeover at Sephora. I had an hour of classical Arabic literature in the afternoon, during which we talked about early medieval love poetry, and afterward I decided to walk home from the Sorbonne. I took my time, stopping to bond with a kindred spirit - a vendor of old postcards - on Blvd Saint-Michel. I bought one from 1909, which I still have to decipher, but has a French poem and tinted photo on the front and is from a man to his fiancee or something like that. I then walked past the bouquinistes along the Seine and crossed the Pont Neuf back to my home territory. It's strange that so many iconic places have become part of the everyday landscape. There are so many foreigners here, but most are here for a week or even a weekend, having a magical honeymoon or family vacation. It's not that anything has stopped being beautiful, but I do think the way you see the environment changes after awhile (and it has only been a month and a half!) There's much less a sense of urgency now - I don't feel like I need to stop and take pictures constantly to remember that something was especially nice, because I know I'll be back many more times and it will likely be just as beautiful again. Without the pressure to take pictures, I can appreciate the things themselves more, and not just for their value a few weeks or years from now when I'm trying to remember a whirlwind vacation in Paris.

In the evening, I went to my second fancy Parisian dinner party (other than those of my host family, which are very convivial and pretty fancy compared to what I have at home -- not a knock on our cuisine mom/dad, just that it's a little different from living room picnics!). It was at the apartment of the cousin of family friends, and they were nice enough to have 5 of us anglophones (American & British) and 7 or so of their own grandchildren, all about our age and students at the best business and engineering schools in France. It was a beautiful apartment, with formal bewigged portraits of French kings and things like that hanging on the walls. After the apéro hour, we all sat down together to a dinner of pork and a special salad called mâche, with raisins and pine nuts, and for dessert a clafoutis, which is a traditional pie-like French dessert made with cherries and a buttery batter. I happened to be sitting next to the patriarch of the household, who made his career building Paris's big parking garages. I am proud of how I managed to have an extensive conversation about parking garages in French, considering I have never been in a French parking garage. On our way out, one of the grandchildren pointed out that the resident of the 3rd floor (we were on the 4th) is the famous French actress Juliette Binoche -- so you get the idea of this neighborhood.

Anyway, this weekend I am working hard on my Berber anthropology exposé and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my next guests, Miss Jenna Devine and her sister Amanda.