Tuesday, 15 July 2008

• An American Intern in Paris

  BEFORE I BEGIN: I would like to give a quick shout-out to those of you who emailed me in response to my last blog post. IT MADE ME REALLY HAPPY! I love you...both. Yes, there were only TWO PEOPLE WHO RESPONDED DIRECTLY TO THE POST. I am beginning to feel distinctly unloved and underappreciated. No, seriously though, if nobody is going to read this then there’s really not much point in me keeping it up; I might as well just email those two people directly. So, if you’re reading this, and you have something to say about it or really anything to say to me at all, PLEASE EMAIL ME!!! CileeRox12@aol.com. Do it do it do it do it now!! Or maybe just after you read this blog post. Which, again, is really long. Sorry about that. So, now…LET’S BEGIN!!!!

   

  Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!

   

  This last week (or two) since I last wrote has been ridiculous. A veritable epic Odyssey of Parisian ridiculousness and getting lost.

   

  Sing, O Muse, of the cobblestoned streets of Paris!

  Sing of the myriad clothing stores, the historic bridges

  Along its tree-lined boulevards, designed by Haussmann during the Second Empire!

  Sing of its snooty hostesses in the office buildings,

  Its modern architecture, its infestation of pigeons!

  Through me, O Muse, tell the story of one girl’s attempts,

  Her successes, her myriad failures,

  To navigate its mazelike streets.

   

  See? I told you it was an Odyssey!

   

  But I have had enough of epic poetry.

   

  A few more observations, then, since I tend to do better with lists than with dactylic hexameter. (HA! Ms. Gordon’s AP English Lit review sessions were not wasted on me!)

   

  1.      There is nobody in Paris who is my age. I have literally met not ONE SINGLE eighteen-year-old. It is actually really depressing, because I’ll start talking to somebody and suddenly I’ll find out that he is twenty-five years old, and there goes the conversation. This is a typical encounter…

  Random guy: “So, where are you from?”

  Me: “Guess.”

  Random guy: “England?”

  Me: “Nope.”

  Random guy (hereafter referred to as RG) “America?”

  Me: “Got it.”

  RG: “So, are you here on vacation?”

  Me: “Nope. I’m working here as an intern.”

  RG: “Doing what?”

  Me: “Teaching English, actually.”

  RG: “Whoa, nice! (now he switches to English) My Eenglisch…erm…not good…I not study Eenglisch after school and when I am een school I not listen my teescher very good…”

  Me: “That’s okay. I speak French.” (I mean, it’s not like I’ve already been talking to you for the past five minutes in French or anything…)

  RG: “Right. What’s your name?”

  Me: “Okay, it’s a really weird name, even in English, and nobody is ever able to pronounce it, so don’t feel bad when you fail at it…”

  RG: “Okay.”

  Me: “Ailea.”

  RG: “Ayy-liah.”

  Me: “No. Ailea.”

  RG: “Aiy-layah”

  Me: “Ai…le…a…”

  RG: “Haie…lay…aahhh…”

  Me: “You know what? You can just call me Lili.”

  RG: “Haha, okay, good.”

  RG: “So, what’s your origin?”

  Me: “I just told you…American.”

  RG: “No, I mean, like, your…” *motions around face and hair* “your actual origins.”

  Me: “American.” 

  RG: “No, you don’t look American.”

  Me: “Well, I’m biracial. My mom is African-American and my dad is white.”

  RG: “Oh, so what’s your mom’s origin?”

  Me: “AMERICAN.”

  RG: “No, I mean originally.”

  Me: “Well, maybe hundreds and hundreds of years ago her family came over from West Africa or something, but they’ve been in America for hundreds of years and nobody really knows which country in Africa they’re from…”

  (Now, depending on their historical knowledge, I might have to explain to them the whole slavery/Civil War thing. Usually, though, they understand after the third time I explain it to them…)

  RG: “So, how old are you?”

  Me: “Guess.”

  RG: “Uhh, twenty or twenty-one?”

  Me: “Nope. Younger.”

  RG: “Nineteen?”

  Me: “Nope.”

  RG: “EIGHTEEN???”

  Me: “Yeah.” (This is where the conversation begins to go WAY downhill, as if it hasn’t already.)

  RG: “You’re only eighteen? Oh my God, you’re just a baby!”

  Me: (thinking to myself: you’re the one trying to pick up an eighteen year old, you dirty old man!) “How old are you? No, wait, let me guess. Twenty-four.”

  RG: “That’s right! How’d you do that?”

  Me: “Everybody that I meet here is twenty-four.” (And it’s TRUE. Freakishly so. And if they aren’t twenty four, they are no older than twenty-seven and no younger than twenty-two. That is a steadfast rule.)

  RG: “So, can I have your number?” (Once again proving that he is a dirty old man trying to pick up an eighteen year old…)

  Me: “I don’t have a cell phone here in Paris.” (That’s a lie. I do. But I don’t know the number by heart, so really, it’s not a complete lie.)

  RG: “Well, do you want to take down my number?”

  Me: “No thanks. See ya! Have a nice evening!” (And I make my escape.)  

   

  And that’s the end of the conversation. Seriously, though Parisian guys have NO IMAGINATION. That’s pretty much word-perfect, right there. However, I’d like to call your attention to a few things:

  1.      Parisian guys cannot pronounce my name, no matter how hard they try.

  2.      It is hard for them to believe that there are nonwhite people in America who consider themselves American, and not Senegalese-American or Algerian-American or whatever. It takes a lot of explaining and historical reference to make them understand.

  3.      THERE ARE NO GUYS MY AGE IN PARIS AND THE ONES THAT I TALK TO ARE, FOR THE MOST PART, REALLY CREEPY.

  4.      Okay, they’re not ALL creepy. I have made some actual FRIENDS here, which I didn’t really think would happen.

  5.      Notice during all of the above commentary, I have been talking about Parisian guys. This was deliberate. Because I have met NO PARISIAN GIRLS except for the ones at the office. Why, you ask? Well, I guess they’re just not interested in making friends. In any case, it’s only the guys who will actually have any kind of real conversation with me. (Also, you have to remember where I live: a neighborhood filled with young gay men. MEN. Not women. I guess the lesbian quarter is elsewhere. Honestly, I have no urge whatsoever to go find it.)

  6.      …that’s pretty much it. There is no #6.

   

  As for my job, well, it pretty much rocks. Plus, now I have something to put on my resumé under work experience! It shall be thus:

   

  Place of Work: Paris, France

  Company: ICB Europe

  Duration: June 22-July 31, 2008

  Job Title: Lowly Peon Substitute English Teacher, General Office Drone

  Main Responsibilities: I do the work that nobody else wants to do or cannot do because they are on vacation.

   

  No, seriously though, even at the bottom of the totem pole, my job rocks. There are fun people in the office to work with, my days are filled with taking the metro to random businesses in Paris to talk in my native language for an hour, making phone calls to grumpy businessmen and women (which is sometimes hilarious, let me tell you!) and generally joking and messing around with my co-workers. I rarely see any of the other teachers, because when they are not teaching they are normally at home doing whatever it is they want to do; they don’t spend much time in the office unless they are turning in papers or making copies or something, so I hang out with the office staff during lunch and breaks and stuff. (WHOA that was a super long sentence!)

   

  In other news: I am currently working on a photo journal of my route to work and will be posting it here either Tuesday or Wednesday, so GET EXCITED! I walk to work every morning (it takes about fifteen or twenty minutes.) (Once I made it in nine minutes because I woke up twenty minutes before I was supposed to be there and so I had to sprint to make it to a class on time. I was impressed with myself, actually.) Anyway, I pass some pretty weird shops on the way to work. So you all should be seriously CHECKING YOUR COMPUTERS EVERY FIVE MINUTES next Tuesday and Wednesday because, well, it will be pretty cool.

   

  Anyway, what with all of this walking to work every day and climbing flights of stairs to the apartment (the building has no elevator) and of course, hiking around Paris every day of the weekend, my legs are going to be SUPER TONED and fit when I get back. (Wishful thinking. Maybe if I say it enough times, it’ll come true!)

   

  Ohh, here’s another one of those cultural difference things, though! You know how in America, when we say the first floor, it’s the one that you walk into, and the second floor is the one right above it, etc., etc? Well, apparently in the rest of the world, the first floor is actually the GROUND FLOOR, and the one above that, the one that we call the second floor, is called the first floor. You might not think that this is so big of a difference, but AU CONTRAIRE, my friends! There are two areas in which this makes a very big difference, and they are the following:

   

  1.      When you are trying to locate somebody’s office. I’ll let you guess at the number of times I’ve screwed that one up.

  2.      When you are walking up to your apartment on the “third” (BUT ACTUALLY THE FOURTH) floor after a difficult and very tiring day of work. That extra flight of stairs can really get to you.

  3.      When you are arriving at your apartment for the first time and have to drag two massive suitcases up the flights of stairs. Again, that extra flight makes a huge difference!!!

   

  Ahh, my friends, never fear. It is good for my quads.

   

  So, what else is there to talk about? There is some WICKED shopping to be done here at the moment because, true to their leftist tendencies, the French only have sales TWICE A YEAR, and EVERY RETAIL STORE MUST PARTICIPATE. And guess when the sales are? Oh, that’s right. June 23 to August 2. What is that? Are those almost the EXACT dates that I’m here? I think so!!!

   

  Anyway, even though many things are ridiculously overpriced, I still manage to find some SWEEET stuff on sale. No, I won’t elaborate further. Why? Well, dear reader, because then various members of my family may or may not figure out what I have bought for them as gifts (no gifts for anybody outside the immediate family unless you specifically asked me for something before I left, sorry!)

   

  Well, dear readers, I have many many more things to say to you, but I feel that it is best if I cut this update here, give you a few days to digest it, and post the next installment (ALONG WITH MY PHOTO JOURNAL SOON SOON KEEP SENDING EMAILS AND REMINDING ME AND BUGGING ME ABOUT IT SO THAT I ACTUALLY DO IT!!!)

   

  Again, if you read this post and/or appreciated it/have some comment to make...PLEASE EMAIL ME AND TELL ME SO!

   

  Thanks,

  I miss you all!

   

  Ailea

  • 8:28 AM
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