Au revoir, Bonjour

Another summer come and gone, and I found myself at the airport on the morning of September 26^th giving a heartfelt au revoir (oh ray-vwa: goodbye) to those I love at the San Francisco airport. As far as goodbyes go, I'm not a huge fan, and each time I have to say goodbye seems harder than the last. So, true to fashion, this past particular time also particularly sucked. Watching my family wave crude sexual gestures to me from the waiting area at the security line, I found myself thinking fondly about the amazing family and friends I have in the States, and all the inconnues (in con ew: unknowns) waiting for me in Paris.

Luckily, as I stepped onto solid ground and said bonjour (bone jewr: hello) to France once again, it wasn't long before the City of Lights decided to offer me some charity by providing me with a pretty sweet housing situation. After a day of frantically emailing every housing offer I came across online while sitting in the dimly-lit and smelly common rooms of a hostel in Montmartre, I managed to set-up a meeting with a family in the 16^th arrondissement (arrow dees mont: neighborhood) of Paris searching for an English speaking babysitter for their three enfants (on fant: young children) in exchange for housing. Three days later, I was lugging my 60-pound valise (val eez: suitcase) up seven flights of stairs to my chambre de bonne (sham-bruh duh bone: converted maid's quarters) overlooking the top of le tour eiffel (luh toor ay-fel: the Eiffel Tower) and hundreds of other quaint stone Parisian apartment buildings similar to mine, rent free for the “simple” task of spending ten hours a week looking after a 2 year-old boy and his 3 year-old and 5 year-old sisters. I'll probably have a mental break-down and reconsider motherhood completely by the end of this year, but for the moment I'm content at least at having a place in Paris to call my very own.

In the meantime, I'm spending most of my days running back and forth between Paris fashion week tents to see if I can stalk any celebrities of Paris Vogue fame, opening French comptes bancaires (kompt ban-kair: bank accounts), and going to primary school orientations. Then, at night, I sit in my room alone listening to the traffic go bye rocking back and forth hoping for some copains (ko-pan: friends) to share the city with. Yes, un peu pathetique (un pu pa-tet-iq: a bit pathetic). I'm just hoping Paris hasn't given up on me as a complete charity case at the moment and still has some amazing, funny, witty French friends in store for me not too far down the road before I end up turning out like some really pathetic hermit Parisian stereotype, like Quasimodo or something.  The sad part is, I already have the scoliosis so a life of freakishness probably isn't far behind...sigh.

Au revoir

As I type this I'm sitting at Parc Paul Mistral, watching French hippies stand in a circle with their shirts off, rhythmically banging away on drums and quietly chanting while their friends in dreadlocks juggle nearby. I'd almost think I was back in Arcata or Santa Cruz again, except for the fact that 100 feet away are three disapproving French ladies in their troisième âge (twa-zee-ehm ahj: senior citizens) with perfectly coiffed hair and bundled in sweaters (keep in mind it's practically 90 degrees out today), shooting these hippies judgmental glances and gossiping behind cupped hands, while an equally old-aged Frenchman in dress shirt and khakis tries to dance to the music. And on the bench next to them is a girl no less than six months pregnant,simultaneously rubbing her belly with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other while she giggles with her husband and watches three labs run around the grass, chasing after a toddler. Oh, only in France...

This is what my life in Grenoble has come down to: watching hippie ladies, old ladies, and pregnant ladies sit together in the park while they gossip, smoke, and giggle. And it's all about to come to an end. Tomorrow is Monday, which marks the first day of my last week of work. This week will be full of au revoirs (ohr vwa: goodbyes), but it won't be melancholy. I'm ready to move on. In fact, in French there are many ways to say goodbye, but most of them all mean “until the next time”, which sort of takes the sting out of the sentiment. Au revoir directly translated really just means “until the next sighting”. A bientot (ah bee-en-toe), another casual way of saying goodbye, really translates to “see you very soon”, and a tout a l'heure (ah toot ah loor) implies “until the next hour we see each other again”. So what do the French say if they never intend on seeing someone again? Adieu (ah-deeu), which means “to God”. This very formal word for goodbye is best reserved for a French person if they think they're about to die, or secretly hope that the person they're saying goodbye to is about to die and be sent up “to God”.

A bit like the French, I like to think of goodbyes not so much as a parting forever, but the chance to say bonjour (hello) to someone else. Sure, I'll be saying my goodbyes to my students this week, but I'll be saying hello to Andrew on Friday for the first time in months. I might be saying goodbye to my apartment at the end of May, but I'll be saying hello to my home in Boulder Creek for the first time since September, where my family and animals will be waiting for me. And I might be saying goodbye to Grenoble and all the friends I've met here, but I'll be saying hello to a new region of France in October.

That's right: on April 7^th, 2010, I received an email from the English Teaching Assistantship program in France informing me that I'd been offered a teaching assistantship position in the region of Versailles—a suburb of Paris. Knowing that I have a place in France waiting for me--giving me another year of trying hopelessly to seem French--means leaving Grenoble is not sad but just a necessary step towards more adventure, and I couldn't be more ready. Even though I've been spoiled with six weeks of vacation in the past seven months, I'm exhausted. Nothing about Grenoble has been easy, but rather one long lesson that has taught me that chasing after my rêves (rehv: dreams) is a whole lot of hard work, mixed in with a few sunny days in a park listening to hippies butcher the drum...and a lot of other nice moments too.