I owe everyone at home an update.
My adventure starts in New York City.
I figured if I had to be going east - (further east than I've been in my life) - then I had a ready made excuse to visit those east coast things that had always seemed so distant - until I had even farther to go.
Top of my list - NYC.
To me, New York was always a city too important not to be acquainted with.
That's why I went.
I wanted to put a face to the name.
To understand the neighbourhoods talked about in some of my favourite films and litterature; and in the life stories of celebrated poets, writers, designers, actors who were once struggling.
I spent my five day stopover exploring Manhattan in pieces.
Just walking the streets.
Popping into shops.
Tracking down the best pizza and sandwiches...
The sandwich: a happy accident. Rueben on Rye from Katz Deli in East Village.They give you a piece of the corned beef to try while you're waiting in line - it was love at first taste.
The pizza: I spent a morning in a Starbucks off Union Square doing my research.
Decided on Artichoke Basille's on East 14th St. Their artichoke/spinach pizza was heavenly. The salty cream sauce was balanced perfectly against the sweet green taste of artichoke and spinach. The crust rivaled the best baguette that I've tasted here in France.
The buildings:
Skyscrapers like palaces of an empire long since disbanded.
They are huge and fascinating and stubbornly difficult to do justice to in writing or even photographs.
I found that these semi-autobiographical words from my secret soulmate, Leonard Cohen, on his first encounter with NYC, resonated with my experience:
He was relieved that it wasn't his city and he didn't have to record its ugly magnificence. He walked on whatever streets he wanted and he didn't have to put their names in stories. New York had already be sung. And by great voices. This freed him to stare and taste at will.
My ambition now is to find a good book on how these colossal monuments came to be.
I could read many stories about them.
New York is wonderful because you can feel totally alone, at peace, yet disguised as part of the purposeful crowd muscling their way down streets so fast, they create some kind of air current.
I could see myself living here.
People who love travelling love New York for the same reasons.
Anonymity. Uncertainty. Constant change.
A place for people who don't want to settle.
With the convenience of being technically stationary.
In the same geographic place.
Only the world moves around you.
From New York it was a flight to Dublin, an hour layover, a flight to Paris, a four hour wait in CDG, a TGV to my little town - Arras.
I don't want to calculate how long that took. I left at 9:40 at night and arrived at 7pm the next day.
I was nervous once - just before I boarded the train to my final destination.
The nerves vanished the moment I realised I was on a train through the French countryside and that this was all I had ever wanted in my whole life...
Since that moment, my life in France has been remarkably smooth sailing.
An english prof from the school was there at the station to meet me with bearing a sack of groceries and amenities.
Laurence has taken on the role of my French mother. This is fortunate because with the language skills of a six year old, I often find myself just as capable...
Laurence took me to my "appartment" which is actually in the high school itself. This makes me feel a bit like a gargoyle, or at best, a poltergeist - inexorably part of the school building itself. I like it.
My room: is always cold, has old linoleum (or possibly asbestos?) floors, peeling paint over cracking walls, and sometimes smells chokingly of drywall dust.
But it's fully furnished - with a kitchen and everything - and is becoming more and more homey the more i rearrange my things.
It also costs me next to nothing - so I'm not complaining (no matter how cold and dirty the shared bathrooms and showers are...).
Also living on the seventh floor of the Lycee are the school's other language assistants. I live with Lili - the german, Antoine - the spaniard, and Marina - the russian. We speak french to eachother and mostly discuss eachother's languages and home countries. We compare pop-cultures and idiomatic expressions in our native tongues.
My city is adorable. It's all windy narrow cobblestone streets, patisseries, boulangeries, and cafes - everything I could have wanted a a french town to be.
The buildings make me so happy to look at with their adorable (apparently Flemish) facades.
Every Saturday there is a huge market in the two big squares in the centre of town. You can buy everything from fresh produce and meats to suspiciously inexpensive consumer electronics. It seems like the whole town turns out for this market and the people are incredibly friendly.
My grammar and pronunciation have earned me the odd curled lip, flared nostril, or raised eyebrow of disgust - but for the most part people are content to smile generously as one smiles and bends down to help a small child with his arm caught in his coat sleve...
My french can only improve...
The people here are so chic. Even moreso than my Canadian mind allowed me to imagine. At least half my students dress unquestionably better than I do. I've never seen so many children running around in fitted black leather jackets. I often feel conspicuously sloppy in comparison. Especially dressed in colour.
The "colours" people wear here are black, gray, brown and sometimes navy or aubergine. The pressure to fit in already has me renouncing my former vibrant-tone wearing glory. I've been to Lille, the nearest big city - and usually feel appropriate there. There are plenty of immigrants and students from all over - variety exists. But ethnic french monoculture dominates my town which has been described by more than one inhabitant as uniquely "bourgeois" in the chiefly industrial, working-class North.
For the moment this town is too cool for me. But i will acclimatise. And when I do... I fear may be too chic to ever return to Ugg-Boot-and-Lululemon-wearing Vancouver... dommage...
And, of course, the food - everything tastes so much better here: milk, butter, of course bread and cheese.
I didn't think it would happen so soon - but there is already another sandwich in my life. This one - freshly grilled beef, bacon and melting slabs of chevre on a baguette. From the friendly sandwich man down the street, whose life story I learned while waiting for my sandwich to grill up.
He's owned the sandwich stand for seven years.
He was in the military posted in Berlin.
Oh and it's socially acceptable to drink beer or wine at lunch. The school cafeteria serves it. Included with the 1.90 euro you pay for your meal.
Seriously, you should come here.
P.S. - [I realize this is far too long for a traditional blog post - my intention is that updates will be more regular and shorter in the future :)]
