we are golden.

Le dimanche.

Sunday is my favorite day in Paris. It was this way when I lived here in 2007 and the trend continues now. It is a day without guilt, without responsibility, without the pressure to get out of bed or even the option of running most errands. Aside from a few pharmacies and local open air markets, things in Paris are closed. Forgot to buy a birthday present on Saturday? Too bad, it'll have to wait until Monday. Wanted to mail a letter? Sorry, it's not going to happen. Perhaps you thought you might finally remember to pick up that thing you've been wanting to buy but keep forgetting? Forget it again. You'll have to wait. Because on Sundays, everyone sleeps late and takes long walks and traffic slows down and even the trains run with less frequency. In America, I think this would drive me insane. In fact, I know that it does. WHY can't the post office be open on Sundays? Who do they think they are, those people at Staples, thinking that they can close early when I MUST have photocopies now? In America, there is the big expectation of NOW. Things must be done now. The deadline is now. In America, I am punctual to a fault. I've adopted my father's and my mother's senses of time: I am always on time, if not early. In Paris, I simply don't have the same sense of time, especially on Sundays. It doesn't mean that I won't make it to my appointments, that I won't make it to the places that I've said I'll be. But I do not need to stress about it the same way here and I am hoping that, in the coming weeks and dealing with more French bureaucracy to get my social security settled, I will let go more of my American sense of the immediate and give into the French sense of the "eventually."

I spent a lot of time this week, embarrassingly enough, being homesick. It is not something that I am proud to admit: I'm twenty-two years old and every time I get a cold all I want to do is be home. Clare and I finished up a fabulous vacation together here in Paris and, the moment she left, I was congested and miserable and wanted to spend the day in bed being some ridiculous version of Kate Fussner. This ridiculous Kate googled "chronic sinus problems" to see if I might have some foreign or rare disease that would allow me to fly home to America to be treated. Mind you, not by doctors, because I was not so homesick or actually sick that I wanted to see a doctor, but be treated to a bowl of matzoh ball soup by my parents who still spoil me and be welcomed to watch "The American President" over and over again until the VHS finally breaks. But the Kate Fussner crazy didn't end there. Finding no source for my chronic sinus hassles other than the fact that I had been sharing a small space with someone else who had a small cold and that I'd be babysitting a small child with a week-long cold (both of which are legitimate reasons to get sick), I succumbed to the emotional miseries of googling, "dealing with distance" and "missing home." Well, that does nothing for anyone with a third of a brain, and I realized this before the google search response had even had time to load. I know how to deal with distance. I know how to deal with missing home. And today my sister reminded me of this.

We were g-chatting and discussing my concerns with making the most of my time in Paris. I've been encouraged by many, and in some ways I feel almost expected, to travel around Europe while I'm in Paris. I have already come this far across the ocean. Shouldn't I see the sights? Shouldn't I be seeing all of Europe while I still can? I booked a plane ticket on Friday that decides when I will return to the US in the Spring and suddenly had second thoughts. Shouldn't I stay longer since I already have the visa? Shouldn't I be seeing Rome, Venice, Florence? Pop on over to Madrid and Barcelona? Head down to Marseille to enjoy warmer weather? Really take advantage of the time that I've got here? But the problem was that I didn't feel like these were my concerns at all. To me, these thoughts felt more like suggestions or expectations of others. No one specifically, but the general idea from those around me, and those crazy movies where everyone goes backpacking and couchsurfing and hostel-hopping, and those novels that jump from location to location as if that should be everyone's dream.

But being told that this should be what I want from my time here is not the same as it actually being what I want from my time here.

My sister said, in her wisest words,

"Don't do shit just because you think it's what gets done. It's your party, dude. Do whatever the fuck you want."

Perhaps not her most eloquent moment, but it was exactly what I needed.

I came to Paris to live in Paris.

That is exactly what I am doing.

And living means having bad days, it means blowing your nose over and over and over again, even though it is just as unattractive in Paris as it is in Narberth, it means having those insane moments where you google things just to see what happens (and I can only admit this here because I am certain that everyone else does this too...Except for those of you reading this who still only type with one finger at a time...you probably don't google things to try and solve your emotional/physical ailments, you probably read Sartre instead...), it means having those days where you're late for everything and you've once again misplaced your cellphone and you spent way too much time watching MTV Europe instead of writing a coherent story.

This forming of a post-college life abroad does not feel like an experiment in international living so much that it seems to be an experiment in living in general. What is this pressure to live everything right this moment, to see all of the sights now, to see everything, to take everything in all at once, to store store store as if I may never have the chance again to cross the ocean ever? It's not invited to my party. I think my party is going to take my time and live everything as it comes, stuffy nose and all, and to not applaud myself for googling my own miseries but to accept it and say: if I am truly trying to make this place my home for the year, I have to give myself days where I am just. living. Nothing more, nothing less.

Because without those pressures, without those worries that I am not doing every moment of this trip to Paris absolutely-perfectly-and-absolutely-on-time, I actually really like my life here.

(Photos below courtesy of Clare)

(where I live)

(female artist exhibit at the Centre Pompidou)

(post-picnic photo in the Luxembourg gardens)

(boat ride along the Seine)