You see, that's not really how it is. I mean, it is -- and it isn't.
Pros
- The food. Oh, the food. Everything is just better here.
- I think the chocolate may deserve its own bullet point.
- Ditto the pastries.
- The beautiful city, just waiting to be explored. Beauty everywhere I look.
- The architecture.
- The fun of seeing how another culture works.
- So many photo opportunities.
- So many wonderful museums.
- Opportunities to practice speaking French (I was so very very rusty).
- People are nicer here than I remembered.
- No need for a car -- the public transportation gets us wherever we want to go.
- Seeing the Eiffel Tower out of our windows, especially when it glitters at night.
- Riding the bus allows us to see the city and avoid the stairs in the Metro.
- Living on the first floor so we have minimal stairs to our apartment.
- Our apartment is in a great neighborhood, and we have easy access to several small grocery stores, bakeries, produce markets, the Metro, and the park at the Champ de Mars.
- Grocery stores that deliver!
- Practically free internet phone.
- Having Marc's laptop and fast internet service for blogging.
- Such great shopping.
- Being able to leave the boys home occasionally during quick jaunts.
- It doesn't feel like real life.
Cons
- I have one child who wants to walk everywhere but has to stay in the stroller most of the time, one child who is happy to stay in the apartment most of the time, and one child who always wants to go on excursions -- but not necessarily the same ones I want to go on.
- Being limited still more by having to be home for Eva's nap.
- Wrangling the stroller everywhere we go.
- My knees and feet are still bothering me quite a bit.
- The easy-bake oven.
- The fresh food is wonderful, but it also goes bad very quickly.
- The frustration of seeing how another culture works.
- Sometimes I miss driving.
- I can't call people as often as I'd like, because of the time difference. The only time I can call is after 4:00 p.m., when the witching hour is starting, or after about 10:00 p.m., when I'm wiped out.
- The fierce competition to use Marc's laptop, which greatly inhibits my blogging capabilities.
- I don't enjoy going to church all that much in France.
- The crazy weather -- rain almost every day at some point. People are still wearing coats and boots here.
- The exchange rate. Everything is SO expensive.
- The frustration of being here, but not being free to do all the things I'd like to do.
- No Creative Fridays.
- I'm lonely.
- It doesn't feel like real life.
Yet I love it here! I vowed I would follow Kristi's example and really make the most of our adopted city. I'm trying, but I don't know how well I'm living up to that promise I made to myself. I really had very low expectations, so I guess most of the time I'm pleasantly surprised.
Probably most telling of all is that today is June 1st, and I can't believe we will be going home on June 20th. Where did the time go? Now the pressure is mounting to do all the things we want to do before returning to the States. (So many things to eat! So many photos to take!) Marc actually has nightmares, with some regularity, about being in Paris and not having enough time to do everything he needs/wants to do.
To sum up, I guess my life is pretty dreamy right now, for good and for ill. And I guess that's what adventure is all about. The challenge is to make the fun, exciting things outweigh the frustrations -- something I am working hard to accomplish!
11 comments:
I'm glad you wrote this post and articulated all these mixed feelings of yours, it's definitely complicated.
It's amazing you have gotten to live in Paris multiple times, and that you're there now. But I think all the cons you mentioned are substantial, especially the complications with the kids. There's a lot being asked of you (damn smotherhood!) so it's not like you're in Paris on your own terms, reading, writing, exploring etc. I guess it's just fortunate that you get to go at all and that your kids get to have such amazing experiences.
It will be over so quickly and then you'll probably come home and think of all the things you wished you had done or eaten or taken pictures of (like me only not quite so bad I hope).
Maybe you should post about your daily routine there and the effort involved in that, document your apartment, the computer set-up, etc.
I too am glad you wrote this post. I think that moving away from 2 months sounds so dreamy (especially to Paris), but after that brief thought.. the practicality of it all would set in. Sure it is great and an adventure that should be embraced, but your old life was probably pretty dreamy too and you had a routine that helped with your 3 very different kiddos.
I hope your loneliness subsides. I also hope your kids become more cooperative- they might be too young, but when I lived in NYC I cried the day I left. I realized how much I had missed out and how I really should have taken advantage of the great opportunity.
I hope you leave Paris with no regrets.
Paris is dreamy. Book club in Paris was unreal!!
Being the mom, packing for long but short term, lugging a stroller in a town where kids are unseen, the cost... and missing book club- "FRANCE!"
Totally missing you Michelle!
The pros and cons list was a good idea. I can think of a couple of examples on my own blog when the post turned out better than the actual experience!
It sounds like daily-not-regular-life combined with trying-to-take-advantage-of-the-situation could be an awkward experience. By July you'll probably look back on Springtime in Paris with rose colored glasses. This post will serve as a little dose of reality, n'es pas?
What an articulate and insightful post, Michelle.
I'll be glad when the loneliness ends (either there or when you're back home)...that's a tough one to deal with.
Your life does seem so dreamy right now, like an eight week vacation, but we are only seeing what you choose to share. The highlights of what I am sure are some very long days and nights. The lonliness would be the hardest thing for me- that and feeling so smothered while on 'vacation'. I think it is so cool that so many people have been able to come out there and ease the two month lonliness. I hope when you get back you have no regrets- no pastries you wish you would have had time for.
oh michelle- wonderful post, as usual. thank you for writing the good and the "not as good" of living another life for 8 weeks. your words today have made me stop and think about what it would truly be like...
having said that-- i love your writings and pics. you will have a wonderful journal of your days there once you return to "real life" and it is good that you will have this reality post, as well.
Bless you, Michelle. So many thoughts seem to be going through your head. I hope you're sleeping okay!
It's a weird link, but your feelings for France and home in the US reminds me of John Donne's poem, 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning'. A 17th Century poet, in this poem, he's talking to his lover who is upset that he has to leave her to go travelling. One section of the poem talks about their link not being actually 'broken' but - 'like gold to airy thinness beat'. And then he talks of the two of them being like the legs of a compass. I'm absolutely craaaazy about John Donne poetry!
The section reads:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
You just remind me of that poem because you seem to be consumed by an equal love for France and the US, and I can see you 'leaning' between each one and hearkening for the other, back and forth, back and forth.
A bout de souffle!
I love the way you gave us an overview of your life there in an objective way. It's nice to see the real side of things.
I feel like I relate to a lot of your cons, except for the public transport and dragging the stroller around. But the chocolate and the good pastries has got to make up for some of that right?
I actually feel jealousy PAINS when I look at the photos of the amazing places you are going and the fact that your kids get to have this wonderful international/cultural experience. It will all be worth it and years from now the aching feet and the stroller memories will fade.
I for one am shocked that the 20th is 'almost here' - you did a great job writing this. I get frustrated with the blog world sometimes because we can all over-emphasize on aspect of our life. I hate to only write the good but if I let the uncensored feelings flow it could get scary. I think this was the perfect post to write for a journal perspective.
Oh, Michelle, I loved reading this. I am sad that you are lonely, and really - life is so complicated. I learned SO much from a quick comment a friend made to me years ago. She had waited something like 7 years to have a baby, then when she adopted, she was over the moon, but she also admitted to feeling trapped in her home with the newborn, and to difficulty going through all of those crazy emotional adjustments motherhood brings. It was just a real comment, not ungrateful, just life. She wouldn't change her status for the world, but... life is complicated.
And SO SO fun!
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