It has been FOREVER since I've written a post. But I've been busy (and boring). So shoot me.
I can't go on pretending that my life is more interesting than yours. Yes, I am in Paris, and therefore it will always have a romantic sheen, and it's a lot easier to do exciting things at the weekends, but for the most part life just continues: I work, I go to school, I see friends, I eat (infinitely more than I should. My friend coined the term "Frenchman fifteen" to describe the ubiquitous and almost mandatory weight gain), and sometimes I do cool stuff in the city I call home.
C'est la vie. But life here isn't crammed to the rafters with enough adventures and escapades to fill a weekly blog post on my social life alone. And what's more, this blog runs the risk of turning from a cynical albeit unoriginal gap year chronicle to a treadmill of my terrible photos of Paris. I write, I do not photograph. There are lots of tourists here with swanky DSLR cameras and tripods, and I can assure you, their photos of Paris are much better than mine. So my intention for the future is to write more about the city itself, what it's really like to live and breathe here (answer: cramped and polluted, but awesome
neanmoins), rather than giving my few readers a rundown of my uneventful social life.
Ca a l'air bien?
...Next time. This is the obligatory "what I've been doing with my life in the past month" post (my mum would be very disappointed otherwise). So here is:
Some Cool Stuff I Did (But Can't Be Bothered To Write About At Length)
Went for a ramble with a friend from my old neighbourhood. We rambled so far that we ended up on the outskirts of Paris and had to rapidly ramble back in again. We also ate omelettes and whinged about French men, but I think you had to be there, really.
Spent an extremely touristy day. We started off by going up Notre Dame (correction: we started off by queuing up for an hour for the privilege of going up Notre Dame), which was completely worth the wait for the view and the architecture. I got to show off as we all pointed out where we lived to each other, and I live a 5 minute walk from the cathedral. We then walked along the Right Bank to Jardin des Tuileries before finishing our day at the Christmas market on the Champs-Élysées, which I can only describe as hell on earth. Enforced cheerfulness, no! I'm English, for Pete's sake!
Experienced my first Thanksgiving. And it was an experience. Pumpkin pie = delicious. Old and new friends = another reason to be thankful. Eating sweet potatoes cooked in butter and sugar topped with marshmallow as part of a savoury meal = this is why you can't have nice things, America. I've also been told to refer to it as "Turkey Day" rather than Thanksgiving, because conscientious Yanks are no longer so thankful about that time they committed genocide. Weird.
Felt like an actual Parisian for a whole ten minutes. Walking to meet un jeune homme at Place Saint-Michel in my most "mais, c'est trop simple!" Parisian outfit, I was asked for directions, in French (and could actually give them!) on two occasions. One of the people called me Madame rather than Mademoiselle, which was simultaneously awesome and horrifying.
One day, I'll be able to write insightful and witty social commentary. But for now, enjoy my crap photo of pie.
