late bloomer

okay, so I’ve been out of the circuit for a bit.  Faithful readers (mama) please forgive me.  There is of course a story here but in brief, I left my job in Strasbourg, hop scotched around Sweden, and returned on the 6th of Jan. to this sunny city in southern France.  I am extremely lucky.  I know this because in my two and a half months, I'd met a friend who offered me their summer flat until I could find something.  my friends always save me.  As soon as I got in, dropped my bags, I was SOOOO thankful for the grace of good friends.  


Exhausted from the emotional tour I'd been on (in a very good way) to then come into this tranquil modern flat all to myself felt like such a treat.  After months in a youth hostel and then as the house guest, to now have my own mini kitchen, laundry, balcony with an excellent view, ahhhh I felt I had won the lotto.  The very first thing I did was buy a beautiful bouquet and some groceries.  i then spent the next few days vegging out and panicking about my lack lustre for finding employment.  The longer I hesitated, the more daunting the task.  Finally I got the idea to make business cards (for restaurants and the like that wouldn't give a rats ass about my professional experience).

So now newly equipped, dressed, make-uped, and keen I set off on my first day at noon and quit promptly at 12:30. I slumped down by a curb and wanted to cry.  All I heard, place after place, was rejection. "non, merci"",  blank expressions and then "non, merci" or my personal favourite: "ont ne recruite jamais"  which to me sounds like "we NEVER hire".  Some wanted to see my CV, even after I'd told them my serving experience wasn't listed.  then finding out my age, marital status and nationality (all required elements in a French CV)  told me " on ne cherche pas en ce moment".  


Looking for a job is a humiliating experience.  if they think you're a customer, they're all smiles, but the instant you pull out your CV the tone changes and the roles reveres.  you now need to impress them, and they are not a happy customer.  you are now a worthless beggar to them.  this experience made me realize how much self-worth is attached to your job, and no matter what you do, it's important to feel productive, or you begin to believe the rejection is true.  you really have to put yourself out there, and keep buffing yourself up again after you have people telling you that you don't speak French, they never hire, and non, non, non.  you can't go in asking for work wareing the expression of rejection from the last place.  gotta brush yourself off again and again. 


I met a really nice manager at a seaside restaurant.  he didn't care about my CV, he wanted to chat, and so we did.  I thought things were going well and then he asked me something i didn't understand.  I asked him to repeat it, and he paused and rephrased but I think it was there, where on a calm day (I could hear him thinking) I didn't understand him, when he decided not to hire me, and really I couldn't blame him.  night after night I'd slouch home, feeling ever more like a royal looser.  I returned to this perfect little apartment, in a sunny French city and thought this is exactly what I thought I wanted, but I was feeling like a failure.  constant rejection  + loneliness + in the red and getting redder will do this to a person.  I wanted to laugh with someone about my mishaps, and how each day it seemed i was reaching new lows.  one day i'm not qualified for the cheese store and the next the grocery store turns me on heel because i needed a letter of motivation (covering letter).  i could just imagine how this would go:

to whom it may concern,

it has been my life vision to stack shelves on the midnight shift.  there's nothing more glorious than unpacking a fresh skid full of consumer goods!  i would of course attend to it in the most meticulousness manner.  you see, as a child i was fascinated with the movie 'sleeping with the enemy', and since this time it has become my personal belief (or OCD-  however you prefer to look at it) that labels should all be facing forward in exactly the same way...  

well it's now 2011.  being  that I will pass a milestone birthday: 30 (on the 30th of June) I started to reflect on where I am in my life.  lets see:  no job, no friends (in Marseille), no home, no money, no children and no significant relationship and not even a hound (I’ve wanted a dog for yeeeears).  if life is a race, I’m certainly loosing.  facebook can't help but make this more apparent for me.  but then I’ve always been a late bloomer.  I see all my friends, all people in my age range doing all the wonderful things in their lives, and though i'm truly happy for them, i can't help but feel a little stuck here in my own.  I’m not even getting better at French, which is why I came here in the first place.  I wanted to quit, but here again my friends saved me - offering encouragement, telling me how brave they thought i was (although stubborn might be more accurate)  I was ready to throw in the towel, and they'd chime in that i should think of structuring my day.  indeed this suggestion helped heaps.  all things considered, my job search was still fruitless.... so as a very last resort my next move was to go back to the accursed English teaching establishment and grovel for my job back and then something wonderful happened: I got a job working in an art gallery.  

bout de monde
 which is different than fin de monde.  "bout" in this sense only
means end as in a sausage has two ends.

well now I really couldn't believe my luck. the day before I was told that I was unqualified to sell shoes and in the next moment I found out that I’d get to spend my days in a building by the sea surrounded by beautiful art.  today I heard back from an apartment sublet - I got it, hurray!  things are looking up!  

Cafe Cannibal with Canucks

You know you live in the modern world when you get a call from back home asking:  “So what are you up to next weekend?”  and then before you can say “lickidy-splits” she’s booked her flight.  That’s how Nicole, a best friend since high school, and a women who has almost always gone out of her way to visit me on my little adventures, came to join me first here and then for a ro-tic (that’s romantic sans le “man” as her older sister famously quipped years ago) weekend in Paris.

"Can I get a coffee with milk... okay cafe latte, but it's really not the same thing"

We of course did the touristic things, that touristy people do, and by night we met up with Toronto friends and part-time Parisians in an urban suburb.  I felt extremely lucky to have my favourite people together.  We climbed up and around the park that although closed at this time, has the most magnificent city view of Paris I’d ever seen.  Stopped in for a glass of red and then descended for dinner at an elegant/edgy /cafe/ resto corner pub, with a live band on one side and long tables on the other.  The place was decorated with eerie chandeliers with warm dim lighting, scratched glass hangings and chipped paint.  The server pulled the table segment out to allow two of us to shimmy in behind along the wall bench and then she pushed the table back in again like an amusement park ride locking them in for the meal.  Our table now connected us back within the row of familiar strangers.    

I don’t mind telling you the food was French-tastic, the service was attentive and the atmosphere (I’ve already sort of mentioned) was warm and fun, and the company was superb!  It was a really good night!  The next morning came too quickly and poor Nicole, who had contact lens problems the day before and had been fighting a cold the entire time finally succumbed on her last day.  We were told that the pharmacies post names and location for on-call Sunday doctors, but when we arrived  the posted times were for Saturday, so we walked down the street to the next two pharmacies over, but to no avail.  We asked inside a hotel, where the women wanted to know first if we were guests before she offered a hospital location.  We lied.  To confirm the information we’d received at the hotel, we asked again at the subway info booth.  He told us that we were headed to a private hospital and offered another hospital instead.  We made our way over, found that there were several hospitals in this area, and picked one, which unsurprisingly was closed on a Sunday.  Fortunately, a friendly security guard directed us to another one across the way.  He detailed instructions then told us the short-cut version by passing through the bus terminal, and around the taxi stand etc.  After waiting in line there, we were told to get back on the subway line to another hospital to see a specialist.  We were a little annoyed.  Couldn’t she just see a GP, get some drugs and off we go,?? Nope.  


The third hospital was really beautiful in an old nunnery kind of way, long corridors, huge windows looking into the perfectly manicured courtyard, old pictures on the wall of past presidents, maps and portraits of presumably important people.  It also happened to be beside the famous Nortre Dame, bonus!  We navigated our way to the proper department and waited again in line before we were told to take a seat among the 50 odd people also waiting to see the one doctor on duty.  It took ages.  Nicole and I passed the time by playing elaborate games of MASH.  

Little Trooper

Finally Nicole went up to ask for an ETA, and the nurse told us we could step out for lunch.  We came back an hour later to find the women doctor had been replaced by a dreamy young man.  Nicole and I joked with glee at our luck.  Now Nicole’d have this hottie looking deeply into her eyes, and that all this waiting would be worth it!  Mid school-girl giggles of us dreaming up probable outcomes, Nicole’s name was called and what seemed like an hour passed before she returned.  It turns out dreamy doctor is an interning med student, and so the check up went like this:  He conducts a full eyes/ears/throat exam (inclusive of iodine drops),  comes up with a diagnosis and then the real doctor quickly examines.  She agreed with his diagnosis,  and then they talk about how they’d reached this conclusion, the treatment etc.  

Nicole is such a trooper!  Being sick in not fun, but in  a foreign country and being passed along several times over before finally arriving at the right place and waiting patiently (okay we’re Canadians, we’re familiar with the waiting game for medical service) but all in all she was good humoured and fun to hang with.  I really miss her now and her florescent kleenexes.  The best part of Paris was spending time with my friends.  Maybe this true no matter where in the world you are. 

A Touching Moment

So I’m looking at an apartment.  Thomas, my maybe future roommate, shows me the site of our future flat and where his friends, a cute couple, are currently living.  When we arrive, they are sitting hunched over boxes eating dinner – the regular moving-out scene.  They happily shuffle things around for my walk-through as we joke and converse. 

It’s sunny and spacious.  Equipped with laundry and gas stove, but oddly it does not include a fridge, nevermind Thomas will buy one.  It’s a walk-out -balcony -in- my -bedroom kind of apartment, it’s perfect!  More importantly, I decide these people are cool, and exactly the type of folks I wanna be friends with.  As we’re wrapping up I ask why they’re leaving.  The man, while casually standing over the sink cleaning the grit off the frying pan says they’re thinking of expanding their family.  I should tell you now that everything happens about 30 seconds later for me in French than in real time, so by the time realized the significance of what was said, the women has begin to tear up and flutter her hands around her face, and then Thomas, flipping his head, as though watching a tennis match, between the two of them says:

“ non, c’est pas vrais, oui?”

With an even brighter smile and tear buds now falling down her cheeks she nods and starts laughing.  We all laugh and make rounds hugging.  They are only two months in, so hadn’t told anyone yet. 


I think it’s strange that Thomas then congratulates them by making horns with his hands on his head – 'mocking a bull' he explains.... but then again 30 seconds later it occurs to me that he’s talking about the astrological sign Taurus, as in when the baby is due.  And just like that i was invited into my first tender moment, albeit accidently.  

Taxing

Day one on the job and I had very little time to prepare for my first lesson.  

The school offers boxed teaching plans, all laid out in perfectly organized binders with colour coded levels that correspond to the various sections, but following the British method, and having to use odd phrases like:  “we shall go to the cinema later.” etc... is a little dull, so i quickly searched for something under the same prescribed theme -  vacations -  and ripped a small paragraph from someone’s blog about a vacation gone wrong.  

I didn’t give the text too much thought and subsequently spent my first lesson explaining words like honeymooning, spontaneous, jaunt and shanties.  Basically every other word was an exercise in itself.  Finally at the end of the lesson, I asked them how they were feeling and a women looked down at the sheet, raised her head and with wide eyes said: “ummmmmm taxing”  - one of the many words we’d gone over earlier.  It did make us laugh though, and I was proud that she’d made that connection.  

Picnic

When you’re new in town, and don’t know folks yet, sometimes it’s just nice to take yourself on a picnic.  And on a perfect Sunday afternoon, that’s exactly what I did.  This is a beautiful park conveniently located, so off I went.

Although these swans look sweet and docile, it’s really better to keep your distance.  I witnessed them nearly clobber a kid, though in the swans defence, the little bugger did have it coming. 

Window Shopping

tiny black pucks

I picked this up mostly because I like the packaging.  turns out they pack a powerful liquorice taste into each tiny  black puck.