Year of the Dragon

It’s funny, the way we travel now. Most of the time, we go to places we have seen in movies and pictures, or at the very least read all about in a travel guide. There are, in theory, not many surprises, and few places are more predictable than Paris. I knew exactly what monuments I would see in this city, the names of the neighborhoods were familiar, and I could already imagine the smell of fresh baked baguette coming out of the ‘boulangeries’. I had this idea, coming to Paris, that it would be a little bit of a disappointment,  a sorry copy of its own cliche. 

I was so wrong. Paris has really managed to surprise me. It is bigger, more beautiful, and a little grungier than I expected. Primed by the disappointment of seeing things like the Statue of Liberty or the Disney World castle for the first time, a shrunken version of their own built-up image, I was prepared to feel the same here. Contrary to expectation, the Eiffel Tower was gigantic, and stunning when it sparkles at night, every hour on the dot. The galleries of the Louvre seemed positively infinite, and Versailles made my brain hurt with its unthinkable oppulence (I would have revolted too). 

I only had one week to explore Paris, but, in part because I was lucky to have friends that had already carved their place out in the city, and in part because I speak enough French to get over the big invisible barrier, I felt like I a got a much better crack at the soul of the city than I would have expected with just a week. 

I did not eat at any world-famous restaurants, and most of the great French food I had came in €0.85 still-warm baguette form. I did not wait in line to climb on top of the Eiffel Tower. And in fact, I may have been too cheap to hang out in the famous Montmartre cafes. But I had a midnight picnic and wine at the Channel St. Martin and tipsily rode public bikes at 2am with little hairy French guys yelling “Putain!”. I had coffee in tiny cups in the apartment of a gay vet that makes beautiful oil paintings at night and lives in a building with the smallest elevator I have ever seen. I had a little Asian girl tell me in impeccable French to ignore her little brother, who was just a baby speaking “gibberish,” when he tried to speak to me in what I presume to be some sort of Chinese. I walked past the open door of the apartment of an African immigrant family, where I saw at least 5 small children and their completely topless and very large mom yelling at them. I saw Indian women with bowls of fire on their heads. And most importantly, I had time to sit and stare in whatever garden or river bank I chose, for as many hours as I wanted, until I got sick of it. 

I like Paris. I like the deliberate aesthetic intention in everything she does. I like her creative vandalism. I like her wonderful postcards, and I like her interracial couples holding hands. 

But… on we go. Barcelona!

(Sorry for the long and pointless post. One gets bored in a 15 hour bus ride with weird men staring the whole way.)

I am staying at a friend’s apartment in the 18eme Arrondisement, one of the areas of Paris with the greatest concentration of immigrants. Today, the Hindu community celebrated the festival of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of prosperity and good fortune.  

I had a dot drawn on my forehead with an orange unguent held in a coconut shell, I bought a garland of jasmine buds for my hair, and I had what seemed to me like some sort of Indian crepe for lunch. 

Check out some of the pictures. Hard to believe that was in Paris, right?

I especially like this one because the second woman looks like she is cooking a blonde baby in her fiery bowl. 

This dancer is not so happy at this point. He only has like 4 more hours to go. 

One of the traditions is the smashing of hundreds of coconuts in the street as an offering to Ganesha. I loved the sound of the smashing coconuts (also, perhaps a good name for a tropical cover band)

And this is what trying to take a look at the Mona Lisa looks like:

I was, of course, one of the hundreds of people using elbows and teeth to try to take a closer look. Yet 99% of us would not have glance twice if she weren’t the famous Mona Lisa. But why is she famous to begin with? Who decided this?

I honestly had more fun looking at the people trying to look at— no, take a picture of— her. I think she was pretty amused too. 

I had this idea that traveling to faraway lands would open me up to the exotic customs of other people. Well, so far, it seems to have made me accept things a little closer to home: I now love McDonalds. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved hating on the golden arches as much as your average North-Eastern-private-school-educated, liberal-until-I-make-money snob. You’d think that would get worse in Paris, land of the charming cafes and world famous cuisine. Wrong. That only happens until the minute you discover that “Mc Do,” as the French call it, is the only place with reliable, free Internet you’ll find around here. And when you spend all day alone and incommunicado, that’s really gold. 

Add to the glory of WiFi an affordable cup of coffee, way nicer stores than you’d find in the States, and a gorgeous array of multi-colored macarrons as a slap in the face to the Franch traditionalists, and Voilà! And the best part is, since you already expect attitude with your fries when you go to McDonalds, it won’t piss you off nearly as much as it does when you go to the adorable little restaurant. 

So, there. Long live the glowing yellow M! Beacon of freedom ruining beautiful historical facades all over the world!

PS. Starbucks… not so great. I couldn’t even connect to their WiFi. Shame on them. 

Isn’t McDo so much prettier and more desirable looking here? It also has a decidedly less obese clientele. Maybe they haven’t been here long enough to reverse that silly French paradox thing. 

This is me angrily trying to get a connection at Quick, the inferior French equivalent (disclaimer: I haven’t tried their food. As I said, that’s not the point at all). Photo by Emma Problemma. 

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (like Oscar Wilde, he seems to write in little quotable snippets.)

The next year or two are going to be a lot of new things for me, and since I am absolutely horrible at keeping in touch with the people I love, and I have always had a secret dream of keeping a blog, this will be my way of letting people know what I am up to.  I suspect more of the time I will just post pictures or short comments on things that catch my interest, but we’ll see what shape this takes. How could I be a credible expat without a blog?

I graduated Harvard in May, hid my brand new diploma in a spare closet at my sister’s house in Florida, and packed everything I would keep with me in a single red suitcase I got as a graduation gift. The previous November, after a couple of months of intense senior year anxiety in trying to decide what to do with my future,  I was selected as one of the recipients of the Michael Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship. In one of those amazing “is-this-real-life” moments that sometimes happen to me, I was given the complete freedom (and funds!) to travel to another country for one year and develop a personally meaningful project. Real life was postponed, and I was set to go to France in mid August. 

But of course, it couldn’t possibly be so easy. I applied for the requisite long-term visa, and even now, well over four months later, I don’t have a response. In July, I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, where I was working with the Harvard Idea Translation Lab developing a project to connect day laborers with employers. I then got a short stay Schengen visa that let me come to France for a one week conference also with the Harvard ITL, and decided to stay a couple of extra weeks in Europe.

Right now I am in Paris, and will be traveling to Spain at the end of the week. I have to return to Colombia in September 15th, when my visa runs out. I will then have to decide on a new plan of action, whether to keep begging the French for a new visa, or, most likely, to completely re-think the next year. For now, I am living day-to-day. I am choosing my travel destinations based solely on where I have couches I can crash on. I eat mostly baguettes and try to resist the urge to drink coffee so I don’t have to pay for it. I walk around all day staring in awe at this magnificent city, take hundreds of bad pictures, and pick books for my Kindle old enough that I can get them for free (as you can see, Walden is the current choice).

I seem to have completely lost the ability to plan much more than two days in advance, and though I often whine about it (ask my poor boyfriend Robb), it is kind of nice. We’ll see where this goes, and for random updates from the road, keep reading this blog.