Two Months in Paris

Today is my two month anniversary with the city of light. I had no idea, when I first arrived here, eyes blazing and feasting on the romantic notion that I was going to be living here for a year, of the sheer range of emotions I would feel in the next two months.

Everyone, at some point in their lives, experiences homesickness. Most people my age leave home after high school to live on university campus or to share a flat with some high school friends a few kilometers from home. Always the dreamer, I took it a step further. As my first living away from home experience, I decided to move 7946 kilometers, or a nine hour, $1200 return flight, from Vancouver to Paris. I never did anything half way I guess. Which is a good thing. Unless you end up slightly in over your head in a cold, unknown city with a language barrier to boot.

So I showed up at my first job with one suitcase and expectations higher than the sparkling tower that first took my breath away when I arrived here, and I made friends (amazing ones at that) and tried to assimilate into this new life. I drank wine out of the bottle and bought bread and cheese on the way to visit the Pere Lachaise cemetery. I traipsed through Montmartre in my new vintage digs and I tried to memorize the bridges along the Seine.

And then I realized something that altered my experience infinitessimally. I decided to change jobs and move from my quiet suburb to my first apartment in the 8th arrondissement. This decision caused a lot of upheaval in the month of October, and it was fitting that this month would hold so much change, for the seasons and me alike. I won't deny there was a lot of fighting with myself, a lot of sleepless nights and dreading morning. But I got through it and I moved in thanks to my amazing friends and my new job is wonderful and I have three metro lines within an eight minute walk from my new place.

A week into my new job, I had a week-long trip planned to Edinburgh. I was worried, since this job change had costed me pretty much the rest of my savings, and my stress almost stopped me from going. But my flights and my hostel were booked so I hopped on that plane with no plan and very little money.

And I had the time of my life.

I fell in love with the way Edinburgh's old town charm and architecture met the sloping hills and golden trees that alluded to the enchantment of the highlands, the way old bookshops littered the streets along with cozy little apartment-style cafes where tea was less than 2 pounds (unless it came in a four-cup teapot, yes, I'm talking about you, Peter's Yard.) and the pies and cakes were mind blowing. Yes, I almost wanted to stay. I hiked in the Pentland Hills and saw highland cows and I feasted my eyes on the Royal Botanic Garden and Princes Street Gardens. I watched the sun set and rise and I read and I wrote. I saw The Elephant House where the lovely JK Rowling wrote the books that wrote my childhood, and I met amazing people in my hostel across from the castle that was decorated much like my favourite cafe back home. I ate chips and tea along the beach as the clouds rolled above the slate grey sky.

And then I had to come home. In a way, I dreaded the cold streets and my dark, damp hallway and the general feeling of aloneness in my attic apartment. But I remembered the people I'd met here and I remembered how my dad is coming to visit me in less than a week and how I'm going to London in ten days to see other lovely family members.

And when I got home, I noticed you can see a reflection of the sparkling Eiffel Tower from my window into another building. It may be a concrete jungle, but it has its moments of beauty.

And yes, I woke up this morning with a sinking homesickness, but the statement 'this too shall pass' has never been truer for me. All these moments will soon be memories.

So here's to (a tumultuous) two months in Paris.

Love always,
Coral

Edinburgh Arrival

I am sitting on a beaten old leather couch next to a real fireplace in the Castle Rock Hostel in Edinburgh, facing two huge windows overlooking what seems to be Edinburgh Castle. I have a chips food baby and hobnobs in my bag. I have internet and I arrived alive.
My only problem seems to be the fact that I may never want to leave.
It's grey and dark and rainy but it's so cozy in here and everyone has the most endearing accents and the scenery is stunning and the old buildings are similar to those of Montmartre.
I'm tired and a bit lost and confused but I have an overwhelming sense of comfort and happiness.
Let's start at the beginning.

After arriving at Porte Maillot and locating the coaches, I paid the 16 euro fee (gasp) and was shuttled to Paris (bu not really Paris at all) Beauvais airport. Upon arrival I weighed my (teensy tiny) duffel, and it was 11 KILOS. Yes, 1 kilo overweight. The friendly check in lady told me to just take out some clothes, so I lined up for security carrying two pajama pants and three tops. OKAY SO THE CLOTHES ARE NOT IN MY BAG I'M STILL TAKING THEM ON THE PLANE. I swear to god Ryan Air is so weird. Anyways no one ever actually weighed/measured my bag so it could have been 65 kilos and a regular suitcase and no one would have cared. But knowing my luck that would be the day they decide to enforce regular baggage measuring.

Anyways so I get on the plane and get off the plane and locate the bus and get off at the wrong stop, so I walk in a circle, go to Starbucks for tea and wifi, then locate my hostel. The front desk lady greets me with a beaming smile, tells me I am in the Snow White bed, and gives me a pamphlet with Scottish Highland Tours.

Upon arrival in my room (The Seven Dwarves that Failed their Screen Test or something of that comedic nature) I meet one of my roommates, who is from GUESS WHERE?! Oh yeah, Richmond, B.C. I felt even more at home and plunked my heavy bag down to go find food.

Food presented itself in the form of chips with brown sauce, a cup of tea, hobnobs, and water. Healthy balanced meal say what?

Anyways I am presently in the "Posh Lounge" with wifi and a real fireplace and comfy couches and everything is perfect. I might not go back.
(justkidding?)

Love always,

Coral

Cemeteries and Montmartre (Ft. Thunderstorms)

Hello lovely humans,

Today was a wonderfully accidental perfect day. It started with me rolling out of my extra comfy futon around 12:45 pm after a lovely night with two of my favourite people in Paris, making a very delicious bowl of muesli with kiwi, plum, and mango, and then heading to my host family's apartment to print off my Edinburgh boarding passes (!!!!). After, I headed over to Pere Lachaise to meet some friends and revel in the last few days of October in Paris (my new favourite thing). The cemetery is stunning in the fall, well probably all times of year, but there's something about the way the leaves swirl around the headstones and the way the branches arc against the grey sky. We strolled through the graves for a couple hours before heading to Montmartre.

At Montmartre, we strolled through windy cobbled streets and, yes, we caved and got pumpkin spice lattes.

Right before I headed home, the sky opened up to thundershowers. It was amazing, and so typically Parisian as the streets glimmered under sheets of rain. I couldn't help grinning like a crazy person.

The 6pm lighting gave the rain-drenched streets the prettiest, ethereal glow.

My neighbourhood!

My building. Note that my apartment is in the old servant's quarters, the fifth floor, which you can't actually see looking at the building. No, I don't live behind the sweeping curtains beckoning you inside with a warm ambient glow.

All in all, it was a really nice unexpectedly perfect day before I leave for Scotland tomorrow. I am presently freaking out over my decision to just take a carry on, and Ryan Air's cabin restrictions are not the nicest. I'm seriously considering leaving this beastly computer behind... could I live without internet and word processor for a week?

Love always,
Coral

Bonding Nights and Things Feeling Right

This morning was one of those mornings where I stayed in bed and ate oatmeal and lentils and drank copious amounts of tea and read.
But the general after-effect of staying in my apartment all day is me feeling generally deflated and terrible and missing home and wondering why I'm even in Paris.
So I hauled myself to the metro to pick up P from school and read some more of my book (Looking for Alaska by John Green) on the semi-sunny pavement on a narrow, winding street of the Marais/Bastille area by the Seine.
When P emerged from the big doors she asked if we could go to the park. The park in nanny language can mean one of two things: either the child runs manically around the playground tormenting other children, eating handfuls of dirt and other park materials, trying to escape out the fence into the road, or swinging by one ankle from the highest playground equipment. In another scanario, the child makes friends easily, has a generally content, happy time playing tag, climbing safely, and swinging only from the lower bars.
P is one of the latter children.
So I dreamily sat on a park bench reading John Green's beautiful prose by this park framed by the Seine, with little shops and cafes surrounding us. Even the teenagers were chic as they congregated in little nicotine-stained groups on the grass surrounding the playground.
We headed home with little fuss and made couscous, soup, and fish fingers for dinner. P announced she would help me cook, because she is a chef, and then she would shower and we could eat in front of Scooby Doo.
God I forgot how great Scooby Doo is.
Afterward we read stories, which included Love You Forever, during which I choked back tears for the entire story, which made it very hard so sing the refrain:
I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be
The story really hit home for me because of everything I've done over the past two and a half (!!!) months since I left Vancouver.
After story time she threw a minor I WANT MOMMY tantrum, which I successfully calmed by singing a mix of Baby Beluga, Gabrielle Aplin, and Sara Bareilles. I swear calming a small child by singing to them until they're reduced to a thumb-sucking sleepyhead is one of the most satisfying feelings in the whole world.

And now I sit in a chair by their huge window overlooking Boulevard Beaumarchais writing, skyping with my mum, and thinking about all the good things to come.

I feel like my Paris has finally arrived.

Oh Paris...

I think as long as you live in Paris, you will never fully become accustomed to the bipolar nature of this city. Days spent in awe of tiny snaking streets and sipping wine in an autumnal garden can give way to stormy nights filled with metro beggars and impersonal, cold buildings. Sometimes the hugeness and the pretentiousness of the city gets to me, as it does mostly everyone who has experienced the highs and lows of its mood swings.

Sometimes I step out of my apartment onto the street in the crisp autumn air and I look around and I fall in love with Paris.

Sometimes I climb the cobblestoned streets of Montmartre or sit in a park by Republique or sit in my apartment with wine and a good friend and I am happy here. I feel like I belong here.

Sometimes I think I could stay here forever, that this is where I was meant to be.

But sometimes I get lost in the areas of Paris where paint is peeling and facades are crumbling and poverty is prominent. Sometimes I see the people who tried to flee, the people who are stuck in the suburban limbo of the constant effort, the constant trying to achieve the beauty, the perfection of the city. A city that is far from perfect.

Sometimes I don't have enough money for a cup of tea and sometimes when I make tea at home my cup smashes on the cold stone floor and sometimes (every time) I climb the stairs to my apartment I am greeted by the cold, rotting smell of burning corpses and moldy walls. And my light switch doesn't work. And I feel very much alone and very much inferior and very much like I do not belong here.

And I think this year will be a lot of me being bounced around from emotion to emotion as I weather the storm and the tumult of city life, the profound loneliness and the moments of absolute joy.

Because really, what is a disgusting apartment hallway, a five euro cup of tea, or getting lost on the metro, when compared to the breathtaking hours of disbelief standing at the top of Sacre Coeur looking out on the city that tortures and pleases, day after day, the city I dreamed of, the city that birthed the dreams and the creations of so many others?

Insignificant.

And so worth it.

Oh, Paris, you're so worth it.

Checking in and Moving House

Hello everyone,

Sorry for my recent step away from the keyboard. I've been undergoing a lot of upheaval and chaos over the past week.
The root of this chaos was my decision to move jobs and homes. I left my suburb for my own studio in the centre of Paris, right next to Madeleine to be exact, and to work with a girl living where the crisp cream architectured buildings of the Marais meet the grunge bobo (bohemian bourgeois) of the Bastille.
This decision had a lot of repercussions: good and bad.
The Bad
I had to buy out my Navigo (375 euros) and my french lessons (355 eruos). Coupled with the fact that my old job paid me at the beginning of the month and my new job pays me at the end of the month, meaning I don't get paid until November 12th, I have $200 (yes, Canadian dollars) for my Scotland trip next Monday and $100 for October 27th, when I get back, to November 12. Manageable, as I've seen my friends do it, but annoying. And difficult. And a wee bit scary.
The Good
I now live in the centre of Paris, so anywhere is a 25 minute jaunt. I step outside to beautiful buildings and crisp air and my view is of rooftops and clouds.
I have my own place, which means cooking my own food, lazy mornings in bed with a bowl of weetabix, skype calls in the middle of the night, and having friends over to drink wine and gossip until the wee hours of the morning.
The girl I look after is an absolute dream, and the area she lives in is postcard worthy.

So basically it works out better in my favour in the long run, but october/november is going to be a lot of me spending money I shouldn't and going to pubs without buying any drinks.

And this is the part where I tell you my moving in story.

I agreed to meet my wonderful friend Isabelle at my suburban train station at 7:30pm Friday night. I had to walk from my old house to the train station, which is a 15 minute fast walk, with all my luggage. Being the optimist that I am, I thought I could surely carry a massive suitcase, a duffel bag, a smaller duffel bag, a garbage bag, a backpack, and a couple shopping bags, all my myself. I got about a fifth of the way there in 15 minutes, before a small car pulled up to the curb a couple meters ahead of me. The following dialogue was in French, but I will translate for the sake of my anglophone audience.

"Hey, do you want some help?" A friendly looking man hopped out of the car and headed towards me. Red flags popped up in my brain, thinking yes he could kidnap me and take all my stuff and sell me to human traffickers in Romania, but what were my options? My luggage contraption tumbled forwards whenever I hit a pothole, and cabs were few and far between in the desolation of the suburbs. Plus, I now had no phone and very little money.

"Um, yeah, sure, thanks." I handed over my luggage, which he stuffed partially in his trunk and which I partially crammed into the small passenger seat with me. We exchanged conversation all the way to the station, and he turned out to be a really nice guy, with family in Canada.

At the station, he carried all my stuff to the entrance and I stood, phoneless, surrounded by bags as the evening bled into the night and sketchy characters started infiltrating the station. My heart sank when at first Isabelle's train said cancelled, then I didn't see her as the second train docked and its passengers fled down the stairs and into the night. I began to panic as I pictured myself trying to get all my luggage into Paris to get the keys to my apartment from my employer, then to my new apartment itself.

And then like magic, Isabelle appeared from behind me. She had gotten off at the wrong station and gotten the next train. I was flooded with pure relief as we hobbled all my bags onto the train and then the metro. At my wonderful new employer's apartment, I was given breakfast food (english muffins and weetabix) and instructions on how to get to my apartment, as well as the key and the door code. Instructions???? You might ask, why would one need instructions to get into an apartment? My instructions were to take the elevator to the fifth floor, then walk up a small flight of stairs, down a hallway, turn left, and my door is the second to last on the right.

So we arrived at the apartment and got inside to find the elevator, one of those 20th century cage numbers that I mentioned in an earlier post. I was ecstatic to see it, until I realized the doors opened inwards and I had all my luggage and Isabelle. So I hobbled in with half my stuff and noticed there were only four floors in the elevator. I pressed the button for the fourth floor, and the elevator shot upwards with a groan. I had just began to exit the elevator when the lights turned off and the elevator shot downwards. I arrived at the ground floor where a confused Isabelle told me she had pressed the "appel" button to get the elevator back down. So I told her to wait a couple minutes next time, went back up, and waited for the elevator to announce her arrival with a depressing groan.

We located the staircase to the fifth floor through a little doorway, and climbed up. The sight I saw when I arrived in The Hallway was one I will never erase from my memory. The ceiling rose about a foot above my head, and the narrow walls were snaked with exposed pipes and peeling paint. To top it off, a horror-movie esque sink stood at the end of the hallway with a huge faucet looking like a hand was going to slide out of it at any moment. I braved The Hallway and entered my room, which is a lovely little attic studio, painted bright creams and newly renovated. At least it's one hell of a lot less scary than The Hallway, which I have to walk down whenever I need to use the toilet.

Isabelle, my other friend Megan, and I sat on my futon and drank wine while I sporadically unpacked. They were the reason why I didn't break down that night.

All in all, it was a very hectic weekend, with Fete des Vendages on Saturday and a lovely day out sipping (4.95 euro!!!!!!) pumpkin spice lattes. But I have nested, and I'm happy here.

Hopefully this will be the start of another great adventure.

Love and miss you always,
Coral

Settling In

If you don't already know, this girl has a flare for fresh flowers and burning candles.
Coupled with my pinterest addiction, this results in lots of inspiration and redecorating.
Here are some pretty images which I soon hope to translate into reality.

I have a thing for beds by bright windows.

Missing you always, love you always,

Coral