Moving

I'm not very good at moving.  I hate re-packing our things up in the huge duffel bags we took to Africa with us, I hate leaving places that were once home that we don't get to visit anymore.
Even though our apartment here in Paris is a little austere, it's been my home for the past five months.  I've sat in it alone for the first few days, cramming for the French exam and turning all the lights on at night so I wouldn't feel so small in a place that fits five people.  I'm sitting in it now, looking out the French doors onto the balcony and the sycamores that line Denfert-Rochereau.  I've cooked in its tiny kitchen and eaten in the dining room with friends and family; I have played the piano that Chopin apparently loved (not our piano, just this type of piano) and listened while people better than me (my brother and father and sister) played.
This little neighborhood, this slice of the fourteenth reaching into the sixth, has become my neighborhood.  I know the bakery girls at Thévenin on Rue Daguerre, I have taken my darling sister unicycling in the Jardin du Luxembourg and the little parks around our house.  I have walked up and down Raspail and Denfert-Rochereau a thousand times, to and from classes and lunches.  I have gone running in the Jardin du Luxembourg, feet splashing in puddles on wet days and kicking up gravel and dust on dry ones.  I know the 4 and 6 Métro lines and the RER.
Now we are moving all the way across town, to Jobic's house, and I have a whole new neighborhood to discover.  I will meet new bakery girls at the new bakery where we get our hot bread in the mornings and new running routes in new parks or along the river.  I will have a new Métro line and a new station, and a new bedroom looking out on a different view.  There are some places I kind-of know in the Marais: my darling brother Caleb adores the Café des Musées which is just down the street from the new house, and I love Le Loir Dans Le Théière on Rue des Rosiers.  I have not seen so many parks, but that just means longer runs to green places and better shape.  I am excited, but at the same time it's sad to leave this high-ceilinged apartment and the people we know.

How To Travel With Friends

Lonely Planet recently posted an article called "How To Travel With Friends (And Not Kill Them)".  Having recently finished my trip with the excellent Alexandra, I agreed on some things... and not on others.  Alexandra and I have similar personalities, but not the same interests - she did a lot more math and science, while I focused on the humanities, and we were excited about different places - I wanted to see Florence and she wanted to see Copenhagen.  But we travelled well together.  Spending every waking moment for a month with the same person isn't as suffocating as it sounds, I promise; we split up in Oxford a couple of times for a few hours and that was it.  Just getting from London to Paris by myself without a companion seemed suddenly lonely and long.  I wasn't ready to kill her by the time the trip was over - I wasn't even ready for it to be over!
Have you travelled with friends before?  What was your experience like?

Rive Gauche Girl?

I've always considered myself a Rive Gauche Girl.  The crazy writers (Joyce, I'm talking about you), the culture, the hats and students and cafés all seemed like they would become an extension of me when we moved here, a very real part of my life.  The two times I visited Paris before we came here to live, I stayed on the Left Bank in apartments or little hotels, and when by a crazy stroke of luck we snagged this apartment, it was also on the Left Bank - the fourteenth, to be exact.  But in a couple of days we have to move.
My brother's hero/piano teacher and my father's friend Jobic has generously rented his apartment to us for July while he lives elsewhere in the city, so for the last month of our Paris experience, we are living in the Marais.  The third, to be exact, on the other side of the bank.  From July the first until August first when we return to Boston, I will be a Rive Droite Girl.
So here's my question: is there really such a difference between the third and the fourteenth?  I mean, other than the proximity of the Jardin du Luxembourg and the little parks around our apartment, other than the fact that we currently live almost exactly at Place Denfert-Rochereau and the fact that the third is probably way chicer.  When you've been in Paris, which bank have you stayed on?

The Europe Trip Overview

Today a package came from the lovely Alexandra, with a USB of photos and music for me and eight presents for Ursula (we can't say what they are yet, as Urs is in Rome).  This means that I can share long-awaited photos from our trip!
Here are the bare-bones of the trip: we started in Budapest and officially ended in Paris, though we escaped for a week in the UK after Paris.  Our tools were a suitcase each, Alexandra's father's iPad (stocked with Season Five of Grey's Anatomy for train rides), and a 21-Day EuRail Global Pass.
I flew from Paris to Budapest on May nineteenth to meet Alexandra and her mother:

And then, on the seventh of June, we arrived in Paris.  This is us on the eighth: 

Not counting the UK, we visited ten countries and twelve cities.  We took four overnight trains and stayed in two hotels, but hostels everywhere else.  We survived on music and medical-drama television and mango gelato.  We talked for hours about ballet and skiing and families and boys.  On one train we stole a pear, and giggled over buying a drink in Amsterdam.  We visited twelve museums (not counting the UK) and climbed seven towers/Cathedral roofs.  We visited nine churches and took five boat rides.  All in all, it was a pretty incredible trip.

(The first photo was taken at the Fisherman's Bastion in Budapest by Alexandra's mother.  The second was taken in front of the fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg - the Jardin des Explorateurs, technically - by my sister)

Summer

I am not cut out for summer.  I wilt in warm weather, when the humidity is like a blanket and somehow the sun is still beating down on you through the humid haze.  I sunburn easily, and my friends know that the weather I like best is slightly chilly rain and overcast skies that make the trees look greener, or those crisp autumn days when the sky is so blue you can't look up and there's a chill that means snow in a couple months but apples now.
What I like about summertime is plunging into icy saltwater and hiking in shady forests before you reach the summit and the wind howls.  I like barbeques and ice cream and being outside in nature, but I am not a summer-in-the-city person.
Yesterday it hit 95 in Paris and I was unprepared.  For days it had been ever-so-slightly chilly, cold enough to wear stockings under a sundress, cold enough to not suffocate under the covers.  And then the heat hit.  I am ashamed to say that I basically went into lockdown and stayed inside.
How do you deal with the heat?

Growing Up

Today my darling baby sister got on a plane by herself (by herself!) and flew to Rome.  She returns on Thursday, I think; for now she is having the time of her life with an old babysitter of ours in a beautiful and vibrant city that I must admit I've never been to.
I am so proud of her; proud that she is going on a trip without the family at the age of twelve, proud that she is so resourceful and responsible, proud that she wasn't scared to fly all alone to a country where she doesn't speak the language.  I am proud that my baby sister, who was dark-haired and then practically hairless and then dark-haired again, who has learned to play the piano and the violin and to speak French, who got her ears pierced, is experiencing the world for herself.  But at the same time, under that pride is a hint of sadness.
Maybe more than a hint, really.  Because I am used to sleeping next to my little sister whose bear lies tight in her arms.  I am used to brushing my teeth next to her, smiling at her in the bathroom mirror.  I am used to getting into minor squabbles about who left what lying on the floor, and talking about Harry Potter (and Theodosia) at night, and pouring her the last of the mango-passionfruit juice.  She is growing up, and it's hard for me to look back on her twelve incredible years and see that she's been getting older and older, that she's turning into her own vibrant and intelligent person.  And it's not that I don't want her to be that, that I don't want her to come into her own and experience life, but she is growing up.
Sometimes that's scary.

Happy Birthday, Kuzu!

Dearest Kuzujuk,
Today is your birthday!  I'm sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you...
You're one of the smartest and kindest and most talented people I know, and I'm honored to call myself your friend.  I'm so glad that we sat next to each other on that fateful bus trip and hanging out with you - in chorus and outside, but mostly outside - is always incredible.  Thank you for Doctor Who and Invader Zim and everything else that you've shown to me over the years.
I miss you so much, but I'll see you in August.
Happy birthday, again!
Love,
Bronwyn