Tags
Erasmus, history, Homesickness, Jane Austen, Left Bank, London, Paris, Persuasion, Shakespeare and Company, Year Abroad
A brief summary…
- I am alive and well in Paris, living en colocation in the 18th arrondissement (nearest station: Château Rouge. Lonely Planet generally warns against it). But, for reasons too complicated to explain, it’s only temporary… so I’m still on the hunt for something new.
- Classes have started this week – but apparently there are no seminars this week, only lectures, so I’m going to be in uni for a grand total of three hours. So far I can understand about 70% of what is going on.
- I have eaten far more croissants than can be deemed reasonable.
My level of French, I have to say, is pretty good. I haven’t been incomprehensible yet (as far as I know) and, as I said, I can follow most of my lectures. But something weird has happened. I’ve been in the City of Light for ten days, and all I want to do is to speak English.
I knew something was up last Thursday, when I took an extremely long walk around the Left Bank and my first pit stop was the English language bookshop Shakespeare and Company. I’d heard about it for so long – and all I intended to do was step inside and pretend I belonged with the transatlantic, transcontinental intelligentsia.
It can be hard to navigate the shop’s slightly cramped aisles. Unsure where to begin, I went and stood by the A section – and my eyes fell immediately upon a Penguin Classics edition of Persuasion, my favourite Jane Austen book, kindly introduced to me by my flatmate Bryony. The edition before me was a thing of beauty – the classic orange striped design that I’d long coveted. (Yes, I do judge books by their covers, fnar.) So I bought it, although I already have a lovely copy at home. I haven’t even read it yet. I just keep picking it up and creepily stroking the cover.
Since then, little bits of English have been bursting out of me. “Trois, yeah,” I nodded at the boulangerie when asked how many croissants I wanted (I told you it was far too many). “Il est, like, très grand,” I explained to my bemused flatmate. “Sorry! Pardon!” I cringed as I accidentally hit an innocent bystander in the face on the Metro (don’t ask how).
That’s not the worst of it. I keep staring beadily at anyone I see on the Metro speaking English, be they British, Australian or American. I send long, rambling emails to my family entirely in English. I’m daydreaming about London. And all the while the corners of my mouth are doggedly dragging themselves down. I no longer take pride in my natural Bitchy Resting Face because all signs point to one answer. I’m homesick.