Sick and the City
Well where shall I begin? If my audience is wondering what I have been doing to occupy myself in the last few weeks, my friends you are not alone. I as well have also wondered where exactly my month of February went. Going from having nothing to do but wonder the city to having little time to do anything, has been a rapid change that has some how considered itself February. So the ninth I actually started classes. Classes are very dur. (french for hard). I understand everything the teacher says, but the reading vocabulary and when I actually have to produce something are a very different story. In order to get a head of this before I drowned, I first off registered in the library. After being turned away from the actual Sorbonne library, because apparently exchange students are not considered real student, I know how welcoming. Like what was I going to do, steal the books that would set off the alarm, or burn the place down? All I wanted to do was study! Anyway, I soon registered myself at the foreigner friendly Pantheon library. The Patheon library is equally if not more beautiful than the Sorbonne anyway. It looks like an old train station turned into a library. The book collection is actually rather minimal in comparison to Robarts or anything of the like in Toronto, but there is a huge room of desks upon desks and rows of little lights and students. The way you sign in is actually really neat too. You must run your card through and then they give you a number at which you are designated to sit. It is so gorgeous that I find it almost anti-productive as I catch myself doing more imagining than verb conjugating.
I have also joined a gym in the Latin quarter, which although the equipment is very archaic, is still a cute place and will be a nice way to let out steam after class. The pool is equally interesting with two levels of individual change cabins, it looks like something out of a musical. www.clubquartierlatin.com
Other than that my time has been spent doing student things with my student friends. Buying books, having lunch, going for coffee, going for beers, and going for crepes. They quite like it when I offer to cook dinner for them so that has been happening too. I've nicely found myself in a expat niche consisting of mostly Danish girls, a few Australians, a Mexican girl and an Irish bloke. It is wonderful to feel so comfortable with them. When I was sick last week they were more than willing to take me in and care for me, which I appreciated dearly. It really is like having a little family. We are all here, alone, making what we want of Paris, very far away from our family and friends, and always up for doing something new. They truly have made a huge difference in making my Paris, and now it feels less that I am a tourist, but that I actually have woven myself into the society.
However, the worst part of the month has been the days that have been wasted in my room. Last Friday I was not feeling very well at all and stayed home from school. 6 am wake ups are no good for anyone. After a long wait and a short visit to the doctor, I was told I had bronchitis. "Fabulous" I though to myself. So I spent the weekend in bed, in my room. Finally when Monday came I bolted out my door convincing myself I was better and damn sure I knew what solitary confinement felt like. My 4 by 4 foot room felt like 4 by 4 inches by Saturday, so you can imagine my feelings by Monday. So that week came and went rather uneventfully and this Friday came. By Sunday I knew I was still not better, though this time not coughing my lungs out, my thoat had me convinced that sometime during the weekend I had swallowed a package of razors. So back to the doctor's, who after once again, a very long wait and a very short glimps down my throat, told me that I very likely had strep throat, and that I was obliged to take peniciline. She asked me if I knew what it looked like inside my mouth and politely told me in broken English "it is not beautiful in your throat". I know, I can imagine so. So here I am again, missing school and in my closest. I am so frustrated about missing school, because I find it hard enough when I am actually there, let alone having to catch up.
But there is a word to be said about the doctor. The first time I was there I was feverish and it made for a very unpleseant wait, but still I appreciated the beauty of her office. She has an office just down the street from my place so it was only a short walk. It was painted in the colours of Provence (soft yellows and blues) and very cozy. The doctor herself is also very lovely. She is about 60 ish and was wearing her white coat and pearls. She was so comforting to talk to that, in my 'I'm sick and feel like a baby' mood, I almost wanted to ask her for a hug.
Anyway, I wish I could have been sick in January where it wouldn't have impeded any learning, but I am glad to be sick while the weather is not so pleseant.
In other news as I breifly mentioned before, I've been reading Paris in Mind, fabulous book. One of the authors, Irwin Shaw, who writes rather cynically had some good words to say on Paris. So where I can't claim them as my own, I would like to share them, it is from a piece called Paris in Winter:
Weeks on end the sun is only a pale rumor beyond the slowly moving clouds, and the soft gray sky above the rooftops seems to be about to break into a low musical sobbing, ready to commiserate with the criminals in flight from the police, with the middleweights who have been knocked out in the first round.
Paris in the winder is made to be a background for small disasters and piercing personal dissapointments...
Paris is constantly being compared to a beautiful woman, and if the comparison is just, in the wintertime Paris is a beautiful woman who has come back two weeks before from a holiday in the sun and who has lost her tan and is now in that unhealthy yellow state that makes the aftermath of vacations look like the onset of jaundice. If Paris is beautiful and feminine in the spring and summer, when the city's two hundred and ninety-five thoughs and tress put out their leaves, it is the beauty of a fine-boned old lady, with a bright green scarf cunningly thrown around her, making you forget the wrinkles. Winter lays the bones of the city bare, and the old lady shows her age.
This particulary strikes a note with me:
In Paris in the winter you notice that there are fewer children on the streets and more ambulances, fewer women and more men [note from editor: this I don't complain about], and always too many pigeons [this I STRONGLY agree with] being fed yesterday's bread by insane, antisocial old ladies who give no thought of the damage their feathered clients inflict on the statues of the capital or the millions of hours of sleep they cost the inhabitants of the city with their maddening ealy-morning cooing and gurgling and throbbing and burbling. It ever a city could use a race of mute and continent birds, it is Paris, and you are led to wonder, if trees and men die in breathing in the air of the city, and if there is something in the atmosphere that keeps the human birth rate down, why it is that pigeons can thrive so nosily and propagate with such abandon?
The gayest of cities has the farthest to fall in its descent to sorrow. The wittiest of cities, the more noticeable it is there when the joke is flat.
The most hospitable of cities, it is the loneliest when the doors are shut.
The most openly loving of cities, it is the coldest when the lovers are driven indoors. Here it is impossible to overlook the unheroic fact that not enough people kiss in the rain or at five degrees below.
All said and done, though the snow that does not stay on the ground is falling today, Saturday while in the park, it did bring a warm smile to my face to see that amongst the grey and gloom of the city and against the bitter air, crocuses were slowly pushing their way out of the cold Paris terre. I patiently await the spring and the end of cold season.
I have also joined a gym in the Latin quarter, which although the equipment is very archaic, is still a cute place and will be a nice way to let out steam after class. The pool is equally interesting with two levels of individual change cabins, it looks like something out of a musical. www.clubquartierlatin.com
Other than that my time has been spent doing student things with my student friends. Buying books, having lunch, going for coffee, going for beers, and going for crepes. They quite like it when I offer to cook dinner for them so that has been happening too. I've nicely found myself in a expat niche consisting of mostly Danish girls, a few Australians, a Mexican girl and an Irish bloke. It is wonderful to feel so comfortable with them. When I was sick last week they were more than willing to take me in and care for me, which I appreciated dearly. It really is like having a little family. We are all here, alone, making what we want of Paris, very far away from our family and friends, and always up for doing something new. They truly have made a huge difference in making my Paris, and now it feels less that I am a tourist, but that I actually have woven myself into the society.
However, the worst part of the month has been the days that have been wasted in my room. Last Friday I was not feeling very well at all and stayed home from school. 6 am wake ups are no good for anyone. After a long wait and a short visit to the doctor, I was told I had bronchitis. "Fabulous" I though to myself. So I spent the weekend in bed, in my room. Finally when Monday came I bolted out my door convincing myself I was better and damn sure I knew what solitary confinement felt like. My 4 by 4 foot room felt like 4 by 4 inches by Saturday, so you can imagine my feelings by Monday. So that week came and went rather uneventfully and this Friday came. By Sunday I knew I was still not better, though this time not coughing my lungs out, my thoat had me convinced that sometime during the weekend I had swallowed a package of razors. So back to the doctor's, who after once again, a very long wait and a very short glimps down my throat, told me that I very likely had strep throat, and that I was obliged to take peniciline. She asked me if I knew what it looked like inside my mouth and politely told me in broken English "it is not beautiful in your throat". I know, I can imagine so. So here I am again, missing school and in my closest. I am so frustrated about missing school, because I find it hard enough when I am actually there, let alone having to catch up.
But there is a word to be said about the doctor. The first time I was there I was feverish and it made for a very unpleseant wait, but still I appreciated the beauty of her office. She has an office just down the street from my place so it was only a short walk. It was painted in the colours of Provence (soft yellows and blues) and very cozy. The doctor herself is also very lovely. She is about 60 ish and was wearing her white coat and pearls. She was so comforting to talk to that, in my 'I'm sick and feel like a baby' mood, I almost wanted to ask her for a hug.
Anyway, I wish I could have been sick in January where it wouldn't have impeded any learning, but I am glad to be sick while the weather is not so pleseant.
In other news as I breifly mentioned before, I've been reading Paris in Mind, fabulous book. One of the authors, Irwin Shaw, who writes rather cynically had some good words to say on Paris. So where I can't claim them as my own, I would like to share them, it is from a piece called Paris in Winter:
Weeks on end the sun is only a pale rumor beyond the slowly moving clouds, and the soft gray sky above the rooftops seems to be about to break into a low musical sobbing, ready to commiserate with the criminals in flight from the police, with the middleweights who have been knocked out in the first round.
Paris in the winder is made to be a background for small disasters and piercing personal dissapointments...
Paris is constantly being compared to a beautiful woman, and if the comparison is just, in the wintertime Paris is a beautiful woman who has come back two weeks before from a holiday in the sun and who has lost her tan and is now in that unhealthy yellow state that makes the aftermath of vacations look like the onset of jaundice. If Paris is beautiful and feminine in the spring and summer, when the city's two hundred and ninety-five thoughs and tress put out their leaves, it is the beauty of a fine-boned old lady, with a bright green scarf cunningly thrown around her, making you forget the wrinkles. Winter lays the bones of the city bare, and the old lady shows her age.
This particulary strikes a note with me:
In Paris in the winter you notice that there are fewer children on the streets and more ambulances, fewer women and more men [note from editor: this I don't complain about], and always too many pigeons [this I STRONGLY agree with] being fed yesterday's bread by insane, antisocial old ladies who give no thought of the damage their feathered clients inflict on the statues of the capital or the millions of hours of sleep they cost the inhabitants of the city with their maddening ealy-morning cooing and gurgling and throbbing and burbling. It ever a city could use a race of mute and continent birds, it is Paris, and you are led to wonder, if trees and men die in breathing in the air of the city, and if there is something in the atmosphere that keeps the human birth rate down, why it is that pigeons can thrive so nosily and propagate with such abandon?
The gayest of cities has the farthest to fall in its descent to sorrow. The wittiest of cities, the more noticeable it is there when the joke is flat.
The most hospitable of cities, it is the loneliest when the doors are shut.
The most openly loving of cities, it is the coldest when the lovers are driven indoors. Here it is impossible to overlook the unheroic fact that not enough people kiss in the rain or at five degrees below.
All said and done, though the snow that does not stay on the ground is falling today, Saturday while in the park, it did bring a warm smile to my face to see that amongst the grey and gloom of the city and against the bitter air, crocuses were slowly pushing their way out of the cold Paris terre. I patiently await the spring and the end of cold season.