erste

FINALLY:


[Preface: All of my experiences were doubtless enhanced by my massive amounts of jet lag. So I am not overdramatizing my relative situations, merely ascribing the actual impact of each moment.]


I can't sleep on the plane. Tina Fey mostly drowns out the crying baby on board, in the film the french chose to call Crazy Night (date night) of which I give a B+ and didn't get to finish.
I arrive in the airport. Pick up my bags. Can I find the right terminal? I'm supposed to meet the group flight when they land. The airport offers no solution. All of the signs point me to leave. Luckily, a lovely man at JFK casually scribbled some directions on how to get into Paris when he checked my tickets. Thank you, Alexander, I think his name tag read. So sweet.


So I follow the little signs to the RER, whatever that is. My shiny new red backpack pulls at my back, and I avoid thinking about the months to come. I wind up, many minutes later, in a downstairs terminal, filled with bustling foreigners and ticket stands. right.


I check my iTouch. I left the address of my dorms when it from the night before, when I eagerly looked up what my residence was to look like on Google Maps. So I have the address of my dorms, and I am forced to play it by ear, luckily for me the man at the ticket stand speaks fluent english, and takes the time to write out what to do at every stop. He even smirks and scribbles the translation for Sorry, at my request. (it's desole.)


So I take this RER train. At the first stop, I am a little confused, the metro (Parisian subway) underground looks somewhat sketch, and a friendly Canadian couple pops out of nowhere and helps me out. I know they're Canadian because they congratulate me with "Happy independence day!" as opposed to "happy 4th!" I think it's cute.


I leave the RER, and wander the gorgeous little streets around my dorm. It says PARSONS, but it is obviously still closed. I assume that the leaders from the group flight will come by eventually and open the doors.

So I find various benches to sit on and read A Clockwork Orange, (I hated it at first, and being obsessed with linguistics, fell into a ravenous literary consumption. finished it over the following 3 days.) and an old man approached me. He appeared relatively harmless and french.
He didn't speak English, so we managed a conversation based on garbled German and French. He shocked me by asking for my phone number at the end, and then insisting on giving me his address. With growing dread I realized he lived on the same street as my dorms. I got out of there fast.


I stop in a cute little store for cherries (my favorite fruit, mein lieblingsessen). The man speaks no English, that's fine, I am aware of feeling slightly fatigued, but that's all for the best because they have to start registration sooner or later, and i'll be able to nap in my room. The cherries are little buds of heaven. In America, if i wanted to find fruit equal in quality, I would either have to sleep with someone high up in Whole Foods, or live on a remote fruit farm in california.


So now I'm dying over this food. I suppose I haven't eaten much at this point. I heft my bags down another cute street, and someone leans into the street, opening their windowshades and grinning into the sweet morning air, exactly like they do in those disney movies. Dying.

I spot the cutest boy in the world, soo My Type (an older version of Alex Ko if you must know) and quite gay. He is asking for cigerrettes in English, so we meet, he goes to parsons too, he takes me to the hotel, where i discover My dorms are actually located in another neighborhood. The hotel is reserved for adults in the college program. The lovely lady lump redirects me and I manage to find my real dorms. Naturally, the address left in google maps was for our school.


More subways, and voila, I arrive at the real dorms.


However


My name is not on the list. the greeters look at eachother nervously. I don't want to cause any type of fuss, in fact I just want to set my bags down. they allow me to leave them with someone, and try their hardest to use reassuring tones. Go find lunch, they say. A parsons director will come by in an hour, she'll know what to do.


I buy more cherries. the neighborhood is too good for words. I want to read in a park. Sleepily, I arrange myself in a nook, some step or platform, and lose myself in the pages. not 2 minutes go by until I am ushered inside by a friendly Frenchie, who tells me if I am going to be reading, might as well do it in the courtyard.


I settle down by a grand tree, and I think I squeeze a good 20 minutes of reading in before the same man leans out of his window and asks where I am from. America, I respond, bemused. His brother in law used to live in chicago. Before I know, I am being served salad and wine and raspberries and cream amongst a french man, his sister, and her nerdy american husband. I like them all quite a lot. The woman paints, the room is scattered with her work. we discuss art and family and astrology.


They are most generous and eccentric, they give me their number before I leave. I must stay in touch, they insist. I thank them over and over again. The woman is a scorpio, her brother a raging Cancer, and the husband reminds me acutely of my german uncle Richard. The day is stretching, the shadows buffer the trees from the impending heat.


I meander home. I find a room. Meet my roommate. She is wonderful, all legs and long Californian hair. Foreign boys pop in to greet us, we quickly adapt to the thick accents and cluttered speech.



First Day. Bonjour