One Week in Paris

Bonjour à tous!

I arrived in Paris a week ago today, and it actually feels like much more time has passed. It's amazing how much I've been able to see and accomplish in one week. I've now traversed a large amount of the city on foot and have a decent idea of the geography of different areas along the Seine on both sides of the river. I got a French phone number, opened a bank account (with far less difficulty than in the Netherlands last summer), bought a metro card, and did laundry! (Those of you familiar with my blog last summer may recall my hilarious/hilariously frustrating experiences with the washing machine that sat in my shower. The washing machine I have here not only washes effectively but is also a dryer!) In other words, I've been through the motions of most of the main things that I'll need in order to actually live here - and with a minimum of complications.

At this point, I think it's appropriate to share a few random thoughts and experiences.

1. Parisians are WAY nicer than the stereotype would have you believe. I have not had a single person be anything bordering on snobby or unkind to me. In fact, the vast majority of the people with whom I've interacted have been quite nice. I've always heard that Parisians in particular are very sensitive to the quality of one's French skills, but I think that's misunderstood. The sense that I get is that as long as you make an effort to speak the language, you won't upset or offend anyone. My French is still very much a work in progress (see below), but I've received many encouraging comments - which I think is a mark of people being nice rather than truthful! I've had multiple people actually say "welcome to France!" with genuine enthusiasm.

2. This not to say that none of the stereotypes about Paris/the French are true. I have seen a good number of bare breasts (in media and in person) in the last week, and my run through my neighborhood park yesterday evening took me past quite a few couples making out on the benches or lying in the grass. (In fact, last week I saw an abandoned bra on the Champs de Mars - I joked to my roommate that it must have been forgotten in the heat of the moment!)

3. A few observations on Parisian fashion after one week. I've identified a few ways to distinguish the French (or other Europeans) from everyone else. One, the footwear: flip-flops are not a thing here; I've only see a few women wearing them, and I got the sense that they were more like house shoes than something you'd actually wear all the time like we do in the States. Men wear loafers with shorts (though there aren't too many shorts out there on French men), and I continue to be in awe of the beautiful leather shoes that the men wear with their business suits. This is a great country for footwear. Two, I've seen a lot of mixing of colors in ways that I wouldn't ordinarily expect. I've seen women wearing navy shoes with black pants, grey with brown, etc - less coordination than I think I'm used to seeing in the States. I'd read that Parisian women tend to stick to black, navy, and grey in their outfits, but I'm not sure this is the case. I have seen quite a bit of color too. In fact, the most fashionable woman I've seen so far was wearing a reddish-orange dress with perfectly matching heels and accent jewelry. Three, people in general don't look that fancy. Yes, I've seen some women who fit the image of fashionable Parisians, but most of the people my age or younger are wearing pretty much what people our age wear everywhere else in the world... they just aren't wearing flip-flops.

4. French food is not necessarily that distinct from other regional cuisines. I have seen tomato and mozzarella (Italy) and gazpacho (Spain) on many a menu, and the grocery stores have plenty of pasta and Spanish chorizo. (I've now also seen at least six McDonald's in addition to KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks.) I'm not complaining - all Mediterranean food is wonderful! Also relating to food: in the grocery stores, you bag your vegetables the same way we do in the States, except that you then put them on a scale, push the button with the picture of what you've got, and immediately a price tag prints out for the cashier to scan. So easy!

5. Paris is a very pedestrian-oriented city, but I find it somewhat harrowing to cross the street here. I guess I got used to the walk signals in DC that give you the exact amount of time you have left to get to the other side. Here there's just green and red, without much warning on either end. The streets often have a concrete divider between the two directions of traffic, and sometimes you'll get a green for one half but not the other (at least not immediately). Even when you have a green light, cars will pull up right to the crosswalk... so sometimes it looks like you shouldn't be moving. I imagine that I'll get the hang of all of this before too much time passes...

6. I really haven't heard much English. I've heard a decent amount of Spanish though (apparently there's a big influx of people coming here from Spain).

On that note, let me take a moment to talk about my language skills. My French is progressing slowly. There are times when I understand almost everything I hear and times when I understand about half. Some of that depends on who's speaking and how fast. I managed to get through the 40-minute process of opening a bank account entirely in French, but watching "The Heat" in French ("Les Flingueses") on Sunday was not particularly successful. (In my defense, I think that movie has a lot of slang, and people talk VERY quickly.) My main concern is in speaking rather than understanding. Because I've used Spanish so much in the time since I stopped taking French, Spanish has firmly established itself in my brain as the dominant foreign language. EVERYTHING I want to say in French comes up in Spanish first, and often I can't remember the French word once I have the Spanish, or, just as badly, I will think that the Spanish word is the right one. I know that the French words are buried somewhere in my memory - that's why I understand so much better than I can speak - so it's a matter of bringing them all to the surface and keeping them there. I wish that I could have a ticker tape of my thoughts so that at the end of the day I could come home and review the words/phrases that I learned/remembered over the course of the day. Like I said above, people have been very encouraging. I had a conversation at the post office this morning that went something like this:

Me: I'd like to send these things to the United States, please.
Teller: Sure, no problem. Are you from the United States?
Me: Yes, but now I'm a student here.
Teller: Ah, that's great! [Pauses to look at a postcard showing an aerial view of the city and point out approximately where he lives.] So you speak French?
Me: Well... more or less. I understand a lot more than I can say.
Teller: That's okay. Your French must be pretty good if you can understand me; I'm from Marseilles!

(It's funny because I had a friend tell me just yesterday that despite being fluent in French she still has trouble understanding people from Marseilles.)

One thing that has been LESS difficult than expected is hearing the French and picturing the individual words. Spanish is easy because each word is pronounced exactly like it's spelled, so even if you don't know what a word means, you can immediately see it in your head. Because so many consonants aren't pronounced in French (and there are tons of dipthongs, where two letters combine into one sound), it's much harder to see the words when you hear them. This matters to me because I'm a VERY visual learner; I don't think I'd be able to learn a language at all just by listening. Fortunately, I haven't found it too difficult to figure out the form of what I heard, so that's encouraging.

Finally, I'd been wondering how people would react to my name. "Kendra" is definitely not a name one regularly encounters in the United States, let alone in France. (Pursuant to the discussion of Spanish spelling and pronunciation above, this is not much of a problem in the Spanish-speaking places I've been to; as long as I pronounce my name with the correct vowel sounds, people pick it up immediately.) It hasn't been quite as easy here, but still, I'm at least reassured that I don't need to make up an easier name! In fact, a few people seem quite fascinated/amused by name and have had fun saying it. There is a uniform pronunciation in the French accent; everyone places an emphasis on the A at the end, so it sounds "ken-drA!" I may even like the French pronunciation better...

I had international student orientation today for two hours, which went well; the people at my school seem to have a solid sense of humor in addition to being nice. (My favorite moment: one woman shared the origins of Sciences Po, saying that the man who founded it did so because he felt that the political and military leaders in France at that time weren't educated enough. "He was very affected by Prussia's defeat of France. As you may know, there are many defeats in our history...")

That's it for now! Questions and comments always welcome!