'cause there is no more new frontier

And the woman did eat,
and her eyes were opened,
through her tears she saw the beauty all around her,
at the end of a perfect day.

Nothing was different,
and nothing would ever be the same;
it was the end of a perfect day.

I don't recognize American money anymore, and saying 'euro' comes more automatically than 'dollar'. I cuss in French and tell time by a 24 hour clock. I'm used to the sun setting at 10 PM, and the high of the day usually reaching around 20 degrees celsius (and I now use and understand the celsius scale). Crossing a bridge on foot occurs at least once daily, and medieval towers are part of my skyline.

Time flies. Whether or not it's fun. This year has been an adventure; it had its ups, and it had its downs, and a lot of the time it pretty mundane. I've seen sides of myself I never knew existed. I'm still just as confused about life as I was before I left, and I still have no clue who I am or where I'm going or what I'll do, but I had fun. And I know myself better, now, warts and all (not that I have many—faults are few and far between but best to know them, yes?).

I've spent my whole life looking forward to and planning a study abroad experience. The destinations changed, but the idea of living abroad for a period of time has always been there and been a primary goal. Not only has that now been accomplished, it's also over. It's hard to swallow. I can't bring myself to stop checking the Paris weather, or remove the link from my toolbar. And I know that as miserable as I'll be, I want to be jetlagged. It reminds me that I've been somewhere, and now I'm somewhere else.

I never want to stop exploring.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
-T.S. Eliot

PS. I could do without the whole day spent in airports and on planes, though, and a direct flight from Paris CDG to Charlotte Douglas would be a blessing. Tomorrow I leave for London, wait three hours, fly to JFK, stay the night with my grouchy brother and his beautiful bride-to-be, then fly home to Charlotte in the morning. I anxiously await the Star Trek era of transportation.

Well, looks like you can break the rules and nothing happens as a result.

My roommate faced a sort of scolding from our host family and a "don't do it again" from AIFS.

I'm not impressed, but what can you do?

Today I got to spend the first two hours of my day in the French version of a DMV. Somehow the paperwork for all us long-year students to get a residency permit to allow us to live here legally for the year got messed up. As a result, the carte de séjour we were supposed to receive (and applied for back in November) month ago never arrived, and we are, more or less, here illegally. It turns out the government office in charge of this whole business lost our paperwork, including a translation of our birth certificates, copies of our host family's national identity cards, their electricity bill from the previous month, proof of financial guarantee, proof of inscription, proof of attendance, copies of our passports and visas (expired, now, at least 4 months back), a certificate signed by our host family's acknowledging that we're staying with them for the year, a packet of official forms, and 4 passport-sized photographs.

We had to get it all again. And we had to bring the "recipesse" which we received in the mail back in December, acknolwedging that we'd applied for the carte de séjour. As a group of 20-year-olds is apt to do, most of us didn't have half the paperwork we needed when we met this morning at the Prefecture at 9 am. I had more than most, but I didn't bring my actual passport, just copies of it.

It was a harrowing morning. We went through metal detectors, weaved through lines, got to sit in hard, hospital-style chairs for hours, and didn't have time to eat between the end of that and getting to class on time. On May 7, I have to go to a French doctor to get a check-up, and then once that's done, I can finally receive my carte de séjour, less than a month before I leave.

Did I mention that getting this carte costs me 55 euros?

Bureaucracy, I don't like.

 Two weekends ago, I went to the Loire Valley with AIFS. We visited Chambord, Blois, stayed the night in Tours, then saw Azay-le-Rideau and Chenanceau. The latter two are my favorite, being more delicate and smaller, not to mention prettier overall. Chambord has impressive stairways, though. Supposedly designed by Leonardo de Vinci.

While in Tours, on our way to dinner, a few friends and I stumbled upon a wine tasting that was winding down. For 2 euros, you buy a glass and get to go to whichever booth you want and have as many sample glasses of different kinds of wine you want. I think I had a total of 5 full glasses on an empty stomach before we decided to head off. And I got to keep the glass. It was a trick keeping it in tact throughout the rest of the trip, but I managed, and now have a nifty souvenir.

I'm ready for a break from school. The weather is getting warmer (tomorrow the high is 18!) and the sun is actually showing its face for long stretches and, as a result, spending the majority of the day locked in a classroom studying French is torture, as defined by the Geneva Conventions.

My parents arrive a week from tomorrow, and I head off to Venice to begin my Spring Break French Roadtrip! Mom and Dad are going to freeze, and I'm going to be wearing tank tops.

One of my roommates just returned home at 2 in the morning, stumbling along with the help of a friend who'd had to bring her home after she'd been kicked out of a club within 3 minutes of arriving. Said roommate, with my help, then tumbled her way through the hallways, knocking doors and limbs into walls, and generally making a racket. After I put her in bed, I went back out into the main part of the apartment to deal with our host parents who'd been awakened.

My roommate then proceeded to roll herself off of her bed and into the side table, knocking a half-empty coke can all over the wooden floors, and probably ruining her iPod. My host madame and I got paper towels, cleaned it up, and put a basin next to her bed in case she gets sick. Unfortunately, the other roommate has not yet returned to keep an eye on her, and may very well be in a similar state. What state is that, you ask? Not drunk, not trashed, no, she's not only completely wasted, she's drugged. I don't know what she's taken, but she's writhing around in bed, half-conscious, and most definitely on more than alcohol. What sucks for her? My host noticed. And will be talking to the AIFS people tomorrow.

Thankfully, my host madame was grateful for my help and said several times (when I apologized for the stupid American girls living in their home) that it certainly wasn't any fault of mine and I'm a reasonable, intelligent girl, unlike them.

They have only been here for two months, and yet these girls have managed to get themselves into so much trouble, so often. What does it take for a lesson to be learned?

EDITED LATER TO ADD:

She has definitely taken Ecstasy or something similar. She is . . . wow. Out of it doesn't begin to describe her adequately. Can't even stay on the bed, takes the whole mattress to the floor with her, stumbles around the room and passes out in the closet, which is where the host family stores some of their personal belongings, and is not a place we are supposed to go.

I. Do Not. Understand. These. People.

In all her squirming, the mattresses have slid entirely off the beds and she is somewhere in the room, crawling on the floor beneath the beds and I can't even find her. Good grief.

I had better get paid by AIFS or by this roommate's parents for babysitting. Seriously people? Film this girl right now and show it to all the elementary school and middle school kids in the world. Don't do drugs, and here's why.

EDITED EVEN LATER TO ADD:

Somehow, someway, this girl managed to break the bed, knock everything in the room over, and pull the curtains out of the wall. My other roommate returned in a sober state, was horrified, and pissed because a lot of her things were trashed. My host mother has seen the state of the room and is calling AIFS to get the roommates removed, and the sober roommate wants my help to sort of testify that she wasn't part of the whole mess. She'd been out with friends, and I called her to come home when the one roommate started getting out of control. There's a lot of drama involved with why the drugged rooomie came home with a different friend. See, she wasn't there when the other roommate broke her nose, and so as a sort of revenge, or an attempt to show her what it's lilke, she refused to leave the club with the drugged roomie. That's why a different friend had to bring her home, and I had to call the other roommate to have her come home.

It's just . . . half of me is like "Hello? You're reckless and you drink way too much, what did you think would happen? Eventually something bad. You need to start actually thinking." But then the other half of me is the one that both roommates come to talk to for advice and to vent, and I know that while incredibly dumb, they're human. They have parents, they have worries, they have fears, they don't mean for these things to happen, they just can't seem to make the connection between their actions and the consequences. So instead of scorning them as part of me would like to, I end up helping them get new phones when they break theirs and I listen as they tell me their problems (and even their issues with each other), and silently, I pity them.

When the roommate this morning asked me if I honestly thought she'd gotten into trouble and was going to be kicked out, I answered honestly, "Yes". I'm not going to lie to them and tell them their actions are all right, but I'm also not going to ignore them and be a bitch about things.

I miss writing.

And by that I don't mean writing papers or updates for this or journal entries or emails to advisers, I miss writing stories. Or better yet, I miss having stories to write. Now whenever an idea sort of brushes by my mind, I can't help but think 'Eh, I'll never finish it anyway, and if I did, no one would read it. The idea is only interesting to you.' Which really doesn't inspire me to put in the work of writing these ideas that are flimsy and insubstantial at birth. I want a story to distract me during class, I want to have my notebook out and be scribbling scenes when I should be taking notes. I miss doing that, and I can't seem to anymore.

I want my big, coffee-table sized book on Ancient Egypt. Then I could do some decent research and write a story set there, but with only the internet, well, I hate having to research on the internet.

Yesterday I saw a 20ft palm tree in a giant green house near Bois de Boulogne in the far end of the 16th.

Final episode of Battlestar this week, and what am I going to do once it's over?

No, seriously. What am I gonna do?

Chaotic week, this has been.

Other than my host parents being out of town, I thought it'd be relatively normal, or as normal as a week in Paris can be. That was until I came home Wednesday night to my host brother throwing a party of around 15 French, mid-twenties-and-up males who were all sitting in my living room dressed from work and drinking wine. When I walked passed, they invited me to join them, and I made my excuses that I had to drop my stuff in my room first. You have to understand that in the six plus months I've been living in this house, the host brother and I have spoken all of twice, and both times, all we said was 'Hi'. So in the mere act of inviting me in the sitting room for a drink, his friends managed to speak to me more than he has.

I hid in my room until one of his friends came looking for me, inviting me to eat dinner with them. Although I'd eaten earlier, after class, at Breakfast of America, I decided why not? Food's food, and free food is even better. Apparently, according to his friends, my host brother was the one to do the cooking, and he's pretty good at it. Curry chicken, and better than most meals his mother has made for me. I did find it extremely odd, however, that throwing a party in your parents' absence for this group is getting together, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes for a few hours, eating a fancy dinner with actual courses that was prepared by the host (a mid-twenties male), then listening to American music from the 80s and 90s while drinking expensive champagne.

Most of the guests left at or before midnight, as I assume they had work the next day. Me, my host brother, and two of his friends were the only ones left, cleaning up (I think there were around 12 empty wine bottles at the end of the night). The two friends suggested going to a club, where they know the DJ and can get in easily, for free. Of course they wanted me to come along, being the only female, and I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to ride on the back of a moto (the motorbikes/vespas that are so popular over here) through Paris at night. After a brief argument about which helmet would fit me best and who was going to ride with who, I found myself holding on for dear life as we rode across the bridge of the Seine and down the Champs Elysee.

The club was a typical club; on a Wednesday night, relatively deserted, but still populated enough for me to have plenty of entertainment from the girls shimmying drunkenly on the dance floor. Tensions arose after one of the friends bought me a drink, and the two had a bit of a hard time deciding which one of them would get to spend time with me. The issue settled itself when the one who bought me the drink repeatedly reminded the other one that he had a girlfriend, a fact he didn't seem to keen on remembering at this point. I found the whole thing ridiculously amusing, in a detached, no-way-is-this-really-happening way. I got free champagne out of it, though.

When I got home that night at somewhere around 5 in the morning, even facing the knowledge that I had class at 10:30 that morning wasn't enough to make me regret going. The moto rides alone were worth it all, and I got practice using practical, everyday French. The whole night was spent talking in a complete mix of French and English, and lots of French given my host brother doesn't speak a word of English.

I fell asleep around 7, woke up again at 9 and was forced to get up, and go through the day of classes on two hours of sleep. Amazingly, I think I participated more in my French class that day than ever before, as I actually spoke up in class when not called on specifically. And I stayed awake during Film with the help of a second can of coke (the first was consumed in my first class of the day, French).

Thursday night, after a full day on little sleep, I couldn't manage to shut my brain off enough to go to bed, so when my roommates rolled in from a club at midnight, drunk and loud, I was awake. Thank goodness, too. They decided the middle of the night was a good time to confront our host brother about the issues they have with him (he goes to the bathroom with the door open, for one), and managed to wake him up, piss him off, and make him think they'd brought guests home, which is strictly against the rules. I went in and played peacemaker, reassuring host brother with our newfound actual-talking capabilities, that they were just drunk, they hadn't brought anyone home, and I'd make sure they left him alone to sleep.

I was happy to see the weekend arrive, even if it was on a Friday the 13th. Turns out, however, I should've been more wary. Just—not for me.

Friday was a quiet night of catching up on my TV shows, and getting to sleep at a decent hour of 00:30. It was Saturday morning, at 9, when one of my roommates came into my room asking to borrow my phone. I pointed to where it was laying on the floor, and she had a really hard time finding it despite being out in the open and perfectly visible, but I didn't think too much of it, as I was half asleep.

Then she came back into my room, and I sat up, because even my sleep-induced stupor wasn't thick enough not to notice something was wrong. She explained that she didn't know where our other roommate was, and she'd just spent the past five hours alone in a French emergency room.

She'd broken her nose. After leaving the club, somehow she and the other roommate had gotten separated, and she was sitting outside of our apartment (not knowing she had her keys in her pocket) when she somehow managed to fall over and slam her head into—something. Not clear on what. The wall or the ground. And she broke her nose. There is still a pool of dried blood on our stoop.

A couple passing by were nice enough to stop, realizing she wasn't okay, and called an ambulance, sitting with her until it arrived and trying to get her to calm down.

Did I mention she lost her cell phone in the club somewhere? And our other roommate's phone was broken, so we had no way of getting in contact with her. We hoped she'd gone home with another girl who'd been with them, but we called her cell phone (thank you, Facebook) and she hadn't seen our roommate either.

I'm the only calm one in the situation at this point. My roommate is nearing hysterics and on Skype with a friend from home, telling her how much she wanted to go home and how horrible her life was and how this was the worst night of her life, and getting herself nice and worked up.

I'm sure sobbing with a broken nose wasn't the best idea, add no sleep and a hangover on top of it, and she was a complete wreck. I had her take an ambien and go to sleep, and laid down in bed to wait and see if our other roommate came home.

At 13:00, I started thinking maybe I should figure out how to contact the police or hospitals in case something happened to her, when she shows up. She'd gone home with a French guy, and when I informed her of the night's events, got pretty freaked out as well. I couldn't say with a straight face that she had no reason for feeling guilty, because I think that one of the major rules about drinking is that you never, ever, leave your friends alone even when they tell you they're fine. And a girl doesn't let another girl find her way home in the middle of the night while drunk. Still, she couldn't have known something would happen, and having her feeling guilty on top of everything wasn't going to help out the situation. Thankfully, I'm good at side-stepping questions, and we managed to figure out a plan for how to handle this whole mess. The day has been spent dealing with the fall out from last night. Let's just hope the Ides of March passes by more gently.

I'm kind of amused by the fact that my roommates are still going to Dublin tomorrow for St. Patrick's Day.

And on top of everything, there's some details I never divulged from a month ago. My iPhone went missing one night, when I went out with a friend. The next morning, it was simply not in my purse and I had no idea if it had been stolen or if it had fallen out, or if I'd accidently left it somewhere or what. The fact was my $400 phone that I paid for with my own earned money was gone. Prospects of replacing it are non-existent, and the most I was hoping for was buying a refurb when I get home this summer. It sucked, and was my own fault for not being more careful, but I'd gotten my head around the fact that my precious, pretty, new, awesome phone was gone for good.

Except maybe it isn't.

On Friday, my dad got a text message from my iPhone saying that someone had found it, and that they didn't speak English, but I could get in touch with them. I texted them from my French phone, and it turns out these people found my phone in the Japanese restaurant where I'd eaten dinner that night, and I'm in the process of setting up a meeting with them on Monday to get my phone back. Obviously, I'm taking a tall, male friend with me.

But what are the chances that I would ever see my phone again? And I might?

This is certainly a year to remember.

Being young, and being in Paris, it's got its risks, but it's definitely changed me, and I'd like to think for the better.

Now if only I could figure out this l'imparfait de subjonctif thing.

Some people really piss me off. People who don't turn the lights off in their room when they leave the house, even when they've been told repeatedly that electricity in France is almost twice as expensive and to please not leave things on when they're not being used. Or people who spend an hour on Skype in the middle of the night with thin walls arguing with their parents about why they can't travel more when they're not traveling nearly as much as some of the other kids here, and why are they being punished? Let's see, when your parents tell you they have no money and can't pay for it, do you honestly think whining about it to them will help? Getting mad at them? Begging them and promising to cut down on the hundreds of euros you spend on make-up and the 50 euros you spend a night on drinks, every night of the week? What part of "don't have any money" doesn't compute?

Then there's the Skype argument with parents about Facebook. Apparently when parents don't approve of what you're putting on Facebook, you get to yell (in an apartment where every little sound is transmitted through the walls, and some people do like to sleep sometime around one in the morning) about how you're 20 years old, and how dare they question what you're doing? How dare they bring up how what you put on Facebook gets viewed by potential employers in the future?

And then there are the people who just make me smile. Like the French. Thursday, March 19th, there will be a national strike in France. My classes may get cancelled, although I have to check with the individual teachers to be certain, because some of them arrange to have their classes in cafés on days when there are strikes (yes, this is a common occurrence). The trains, buses, and metro will all be affected, not to mention post offices and other public services.

I understand the importance of strikes, I do. It's a way for the little guys to band together against a big, powerful guy and show that they might be little but there are a lot of 'em. It's necessary. Going on strike because you aren't getting paid enough, or aren't being treated fairly, or don't get proper benefits, or what-have-you. That I get.

But the French workers are going on strike against the economic crisis. They're protesting the economy.

What do they think that's going to do, exactly? Going on striking isn't going to show the economic crisis who's boss. It isn't going to convince the economy to straighten itself out. It's like having a war on terror, only more fun and less work. But it's just as futile.

Still, given a choice between a war on terror and a strike on an economic crisis, I'm not sure which wall banging my head against seems more appealing. I think I'll spend the day in a café watching the gendarmes walking through the streets with their enormous guns over their shoulders.

Speaking of guns, I did mention, of course, that this week my school is, in the words of my professor, "occupied", right? Yeah, seems that last week there was a break-in by a bunch of students in the middle of the night at the Sorbonne and they trashed the place, breaking things at random. That means this week, all along rue Saint-Jaques and Saint-Michel are police vehicles and armed guards. Ah, the French. They're very good at making their displeasure known.

Sounds like someone you know, right? Wonder who that could be.

And people wonder why I like this place. Good food, good wine, a curmudgeonly nature, and lots of history? What else could I possibly need? Guys that aren't complete creepers? Well, there are alway planes. And trains.

Somedays are just good days. And today was one of them. I'm pretty much awesome. And I like my life.

Everyday, when I get ready in the morning, I watch the previous night's Countdown with Keith Olberman. Then every night, after I've finished classes for the day and settled in my pajamas, I watch the Rachel Maddow Show, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report from the night before. It's a nice routine. I get my news, my humor, and I get to oogle John Stewart for 30 minutes.

Seriously. Do I have to go back to South Carolina?

This semester, instead of phonetiques in the afternoon, I have it in the morning, from 10:30 to 11:30 every day, every other week. Last week was a phonetiques week. I arose each morning, more or less, at 9, got a shower, checked the weather, and got made-up for the day. I aimed to leave the house at 10 and usually got out around 10:10, which is pretty impressive.

There's a boulangerie/patisserie on the corner of my street on the way to the metro where I pop in to buy a croissant, baked fresh each morning, for only 90 cents. Sometimes I eat it on the metro, other times I eat it while waiting for class to start. My classroom is on the other side of a small garden courtyard, and when I get there early, I sit in a gazebo and watch other students walk by, nibbling my croissant.

Phonetiques this time around is less about the pronunciation of individual words, and more about the rhythm of the language and the melody of each phrase. French is very different from English when spoken. In English, words have emphasised and unemphasised syllables whereas in French, all syllables are equal. How you say the words depends on its place in the entire sentence. It's a lot like choral work, really, with phrasing.

After phonetiques, I either take the bus or the metro over to Luxembourg, where my cours pratique is located this semester. I'm now in the Superieur level, wherein we learn obscure, out-dated verb tenses (l'imparfait du subjoncif, anyone?) and talk about French literature. We're expected to read a French novel every month, and learn around 40 new vocabulary words a week. This would all be made significantly easier if my teacher weren't a bald, older man who is far too familiar with his female students, and likes to wear tight leather pants. The two hours of class pass quickly enough if I daydream and drink my daily coke.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm taking a course on French cinema. We watch a film then discuss it, if only to the extent that other students are willing to speak up. Sadly, most people are proud to contribute "I liked it; it had a happy ending!" I'd have said more last week, except I lost my voice and couldn't form many sounds beyond crackling and croaking. So far we've watched two films by Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter, and two by Jean Vigo. The latter's cinematography I prefer, even if his plotline was non-existent and trivial. He'd have made an excellent photographer, and his short film (a compilation of videos from Nice, all set to music and not having a story at all) was much more entertaining. My favorite that we've watched is Partie de Campagne by Renoir. It was filmed in the 1930s, but if you can find a copy (subtitled in English), I'd recommend it.

I know I've been absent since January, and there's far too much to say to really be able to catch you up properly, but I've been preoccupied with other things, namely, living. I spend a lot of time sitting in cafés, people watching, reading, writing, and even drawing. I've started a sketchbook again for the first time since high school. The weather has gradually been getting more bearable, even if it is always cloudy. My only real complaint would be the fact that I can't seem to go anywhere without a creepy older man propositioning me. Why can't it ever be a young, intelligent, attractive guy near my age but also near my maturity?

Yeah, I'll keep dreaming.

I haven't been spending much time with the new spring semester students, even the girls who now live on the other side of my bedroom wall. They're not annoying, per se, nor mean, but they simply aren't the type of people whose company I would actively seek out, so I prefer to do things on my own. If I can't hang out with people I like, I'd rather hang out with me. That's one thing I've learned for certain this year. I like my own company, and because it annoys me when people hang out with me even though they don't want to, I try to give other people the same courtesy of not being a passively-aggressive dipshit.

Don't know how much sense that makes to those outside my head. Well, and so.

Friday after cours pratique, I went out with a friend to find a decent sushi restaurant in Paris. We didn't succeed, but we ate sushi anyway. (I miss properly spicy tuna.) It turned into one of those days where you go from place to place to place to place to place and before you know it, it's two AM and you're catching the last metro home. I'd intended to go home after sushi but got invited to go to said friend's friend's apartment. Maybe it was a pity-invite, but even if it was, I went, because I don't care much either way.


We sat around in the apartment for a few hours, listening to music and talking, and smoking in everyone else's case (I appear to be one of the only people in the city who doesn't smoke). Again, my plan afterward was to go home, but the same friend invited me along to go meet one of his other friends for a drink across the river. His friend was late arriving, so we went to another friend of his' apartment for a quick cup of tea. The entire apartment would've fit inside the bathroom of my apartment in Columbia last year. In fact, my bathroom might've been bigger.

Finally, the friend we were supposed to meet up with showed, and took us to a bar where pints of beer are 3,50 euro, a deal of which we partook. I ended up chatting with a 30-year-old Frenchman with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He was watching a rugby match on TV, where the French were losing from what I could tell, and seemed very interested in talking to me. I ordered a glass of red wine to follow the beer (I can only stand so much beer—I know, where did I come from, right? Certainly not my family) and brushed him off after a few minutes.

Seeing as I'd never really had dinner and it was getting to be around 8, with a beer and glass of wine down, I decided on dinner. We walked to a falafel stand, and ate our dinner on the way to another bar—which turned out to be closed. Fortunately, Paris is never lacking in bars or places to drink, so we went down the street to another one and had a glass of wine there. It was 11 by the time we left. Instead of being satisfied on one side of the river, we crossed over to the left bank and walked around not-entirely-aimlessly, to yet another bar, this one small and cozy, tucked away on a back-side street in the 5th. Another glass of red wine ordered, and we sat in the back with another American girl and two Italians, who only spoke Italian and French.

I nursed my one glass for however long we ended up sitting there, til at least 1 in the morning. We discussed any number of things, from relationships to French cinema, and walked back to the metro before it closed for the night. I came  home to an empty apartment, because my host family is out of town for the weekend, as are my new roommates. I have the place to myself, which is novel and wonderful.

Saturday was one of the warmest days since September, without a cloud in the sky and reaching into the fifties, which I assure you is rare in Paris this time of year. A friend of mine was babysitting a little girl and had taken her to a park, so I joined them. The park is over on the other side of the Champs Elysee, and filled with rich young parents and their children, interspersed with rich young hoodlums who think they're tough. The 8th is an expensive part of town. An hour or so of watching the little girl play herself into exhaustion passed in blissful warmth and sunlight. Then we dropped her off at her parents', fast asleep in her stroller, and went walking down the Champs in search of food for a picnic we were going to have in the Tuileries gardens. I chose a proscuitto sandwich from Paul's with a coke for my lunch, and we found the only two vacant seats left in the garden to sit and enjoy the afternoon.

At sunset, we headed home. My plans were to dance around in my pajamas, singing showtunes and celebrating the fact that the house was mine by eating pizza in my room (against the rules!). Unfortunately, the oven and I had a disagreement. It wanted to burn my pizza, and then lock so I couldn't get it open no matter how hard I tugged and no matter what I used to try and pry it open with. So there was my charred remains of a pizza stuck inside an oven I couldn't open, and my host family was going to kill me because I'm really not supposed to use the appliances for the exact fear that I might not know how to work them. Funny thing, that.

I scoured the house in search of a screw-driver, intending on unplugging the darn thing and taking it apart just to get rid of the evidence that I'd attempted to use it and in the process broken it.

There was no screwdriver. Screws, yes, but nothing to screw them in with. In hindsight, that's probably a good thing. I know nothing about putting machines back together again.

I spent the next twelve hours in panic, even in my sleep I was haunted by the possibility of not being able to open the oven before my host family came home (and I had no idea when they were supposed to come back. Morning, afternoon, evening; I had no clue). My pride hates when I look stupid, and this would've been horrifying to explain. I woke up earlier than normal, just in case, and went to the kitchen to see if maybe it miraculously unlocked overnight.

It hadn't.

By this point, I'd developed a script of how I would explain the situation without coming off as a total ignoramus who can't even manage to work an oven (that has no instructions or directions whatsoever, only a dial with strange symbols that don't tell you at all what the function is supposed to be). In desperation and with hope fleeing on winged feet, I googled troubleshooting information on the brandname of the oven.

There was a frequently asked question about a childproof lock, and it instructed how to undo it once activated. Heart already pretty much sunk in my stomach and absolutely certain that this wasn't going to do any good, I set off toward the kitchen, intent on trying my one last hope.

Turn the nob counter-clockwise three times in rapid succession.

It worked.

I literally danced back to my end of the apartment, laughing in hysterical relief. Crisis averted.

It was time to set off for tea. And studying obscure verb conjugations that are only ever used in 18th and 19th century literature and most native French speakers don't even recognize.

I mentioned my professor wears leather pants, right?

In conclusion, I am really sick of not knowing where I stand with people, and I will be terribly sad to leave behind all these lovely cafes.

My host family has returned.

The second semester of my freshman year of college, when I first transferred to USC, I was in a history class whose objective was to research and create historical markers for African-American history in Columbia, SC. We focused on the Civil Rights Era, specifically a neighborhood that was home to many influential blacks and a powerfully unified community. For my historical site, I chose the childhood lot (the house was destroyed a few years ago) of Judge Matthew J. Perry Jr., one of the first black federal judges in the South. He was a lawyer who argued the case which ended segregation at Clemson University, and was important in many of the key civil rights battles in South Carolina. The new courthouse in Columbia is named for him.

I interviewed him there, in a library in his private offices on the top floor of the courthouse. An eighteen-year-old, middle-class, white girl who has never had to face true hardships and who has been, to this point, incredibly lucky in life. It was difficult to sit there and ask questions about things I didn't understand of a man who'd lived through real strife and had a cross burned in his yard by the KKK. How do you possibly pose questions to understand what it was like without coming across as completely disrespectful of the magnitude of the experiences? I actually bothered asking if there was one specific instance he could recount that stuck out in his mind as a prime example of racism and segregation. It was a stupid question, and I cringe when I think back on how unprepared I was for the interview. I honestly hadn't expected to actually get the opportunity, but that hardly excuses it.

He told me that there was no answer to the question. No one experience that sticks out more than any other, no one thing that defines the period of time or gives a proper perspective because it was all-encompassing. Racism and segregation wasn't a series of events, of incidents where he was mistreated or disrespected. It was every moment of a lifetime. It was coming home from World War II in Europe, dressed in uniform and turned away from a restaurant because of his skin tone while Italian prisoners of war dined comfortably inside. It's being turned away from a local store because even though your skin is pale enough to pass as white, your address gives you away as living in a black neighborhood. It's paying a $5,000 fine or 3 months in jail for setting foot in a public park that's only for whites. It's every time someone glances at you and sees you as different, every time parents pull their children away from yours because they aren't the same color. It's looking in the mirror every day and seeing a person so many people hate for no reason at all, for something you couldn't control if you wanted to.

The culmination of the semester was a walking tour of the neighborhood and a small gathering of local politicians and the people still around from that time, the people we interviewed and recorded down as part of our history. I got in there and was told I'd have to make a speech, which I hadn't known about in advance, on heroics and what I'd learned from the experience. I don't remember what I said. I know that standing there in front of Judge Perry, the City Council and Mayor, a handful of people over 80 who only in the last decades of their lives got to enjoy the freedom we're all born with, I felt like a fraud. Little spoiled white girl trying to explain personal heroics in a time of trials. Two years later and I still don't have a clue what it's like to have the world stacked against you from birth.

What I do know is that I'm ridiculously proud to have Barack Obama sworn in as our 44th president today. It's not the panacea for our problems; racism is alive and well from all directions and there will always be bigots in the world. But it's a step forward. And maybe with hope at the helm instead of doom, we as a nation can learn to walk.

Obama's daughters stood up there with their dad as he took his oath, wearing their adorablely coordinated coats, scarves, and gloves. The world they're growing up in, the world they'll inherit, is a far cry from the one left to their parents. And I can't wait. 

Tonight with dinner, I drank a wine older than I am. 1981. My host 'dad' bought it (a huge bottle) at an auction and tonight at dinner let me have a glass. It was good, but I guess there's a reason I'm no wine connaisseur: I honestly can't see anything different or better about it than other wines I've had for much cheaper.

Tomorrow my mom hops on a plane to come over here and I go to pick up the key for our apartment that we've rented out for the week. Then my mom'll be here early (really early) Wednesday morning, and I get to spend time being taken to nice little bistros and having someone else pay. I also have a nice excuse to go be tourist-y in a city where I live. And let's be honest, living somewhere is different from visiting. When you live there, you don't end up seeing all the monuments except for in passing or in your first few weeks in town, and you don't go to all the cool shops except when you need to, and you don't eat out at all the cool places you see because you either have class, or laundry, or studying, or grocery shopping, or some other real-life thing to get done. I rarely ever leave my two areas of Paris: the 5th and the 15th.

That's not a complaint. It's just a fact. There are parts of Paris I've never seen or only seen once because I just don't have time to go over there, and why would I when everything I need is right around? With my mom, I'll be staying in the 4th, the Marais, over by the Hotel de Ville, and I'll get to explore an all new section of Paris.

Battlestar Galactica is back on. It makes me happy even if the show just gets more and more frakking sad. It's much better than Smallville, anyway, that seems determined to keep Clark Kent from taking back his balls from Lana Lang.

Okay, yes, my TV shows are important to me. Even when said TV show is horrible. It's like a trashy romance novel. Not really worth the time but entertaining none the less, and once you start you can't stop til you see it through.

And in other news . . .

In 25 hours, we'll have a new president. President Barack Hussein Obama. I like feeling hopeful for the future instead of dreading the next four years.

I wish Ann Coulter's jaw was still sewn shut.