Bikes!

Guys!  How clever is this?
Do you know about the Velib system in Paris?  It's bike sharing - you sign up for a year or whatever and then you can take out bikes when you need them and return them, etc.... it's a great idea.
Well, now Boston is doing it!  I'm so excited! (Like you couldn't tell from the exclamation points)
They talk about it here.
I'm so proud of my city!
Yay!

(Velib photo from here)

The Beginning of the End

Today was my last day of classes at the Alliance, and the first day of the long and odious process of packing, made more so because I do not want to leave.  Walking home after class today, through the Jardin du Luxembourg and by the Panthéon to the river, it feels like the city has become part of me.  That is why I don't want to pack (though it may have something to do with the fact that I have six months of clothes to get into a suitcase or two).
One thing, though is for sure - it's going to be hard to get everything back to the states.  We have a couple of boxes of books (maybe three) and clothes for five people, not to mention breakable things found at flea markets or painstakingly crafted at home.  It should be interesting.
Boston friends, I'll see you in about three days!

The Burning House

The Burning House is a website in which the creator asks people (artists, students, anyone) what they would save when there house was burning down.  It's clever; the stuff that people save is incredible and sentimental and makes you think about what's really important.  People save their cats and their wedding dresses and their laptops and their favourite clothes.  They save presents from their loved ones and the things that hold memories for them.  It's pretty cool.
When I was a junior in high school the house next door to ours caught fire.  I woke up and saw out the window of my sister's room three stories of orange flame - that eventually caught on to our house, but that's a story for another time.  Seriously, I put on a skirt and a coat (it was November) and ran out of the house with my family.  We have three cats, but they weren't what I was thinking about.  I was thinking about how I wanted the people I love to be safe.
So I can answer this, as it's happened already.  When I left our burning house I didn't take anything with me.  It was three in the morning.  What I took was my family.  And that's all.
What about you?  What would you save in a fire?

Narnia

There were days when I would sit in the back of my mother's closet, tucked between the crates of scarves and winter hats, with the hems of special-occasion dresses brushing my head, wishing desperately to get to Narnia.  I would dig my heels into the floor and make sure the door was tightly closed, the lights off, pressing the back of my head against the too-solid wall, sure that at any moment it would give way to cold and prickly branches like in "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe."  I wanted to play chess with the ruby-eyed knights at Cair Paravel and sail out to the world's end in the Dawn Treader with Caspian, reaching the wall of water that stretches to the sky.  I didn't want to be there for the Last Battle, to see the destruction (though I still don't understand why poor Susan wasn't in Aslan's Land at the end), but how I longed to visit the Dancing Lawn or the high barren Ettinsmoor where the giants lived!
Did you ever want to visit an imaginary place?  Was it Narnia?

Paris Plage

Have we talked about how ridiculous the French sometimes are (I mean this nicely so please don't yell at me)?  Well, if not, we should now.  Sometimes they do silly things like build over-the-top ornate opera houses while their citizens are starving or have balls at fire stations (which admittedly sounds pretty cool).  But then they do this thing called the Paris Plage.
This is when the government decides that what the people of Paris really need in the summer months (the rainy and cold and perfect-for-running summer months) is a beach.  I am not kidding, they cart sand in and create a beach on the cobblestone shores of the Seine.  There are little striped changing huts like you might see in an E Nesbit book (the one about mermaids) and lounge chairs.  There is a sand castle made by the Disneyland Paris folks, and ice cream and bocce and all sorts of beach things.
I grew up in Boston, near enough to the water so that we would go to Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea every summer (at least once) and to Plum Island even in the winter when the beach was frozen (that's a story for another time).  I love the beach - bracing water and sand that burns your toes.  When we were in cloudy Finistère we rolled up our trousers and waded into the North Atlantic waves.  But for me at least, the beach doesn't make much sense without the water - or at least, without water you can run into.  And it seems to me that the idea of the Paris Plage is at least a little bit ridiculous.  What do you think?
(photo of a poster (by I think Sempé - it at least looks like his style) from here)

Moving, or Lack Thereof

We return to Boston in less than a week, and none of us are ready to leave.  It just seems like we haven't had enough time here, like it was only yesterday that I flew into Paris on my own and sat quietly in the apartment on Denfert-Rochereau with all the lights on, feeling small in a big city without my family around me.  How I have changed!  My French has improved hugely, and now this shining city feels like it's my own - I know the Métro now, and the girl behind the counter at the bakery, and the old man who watches soccer in the corner store.  There are parts of the city where the street names are strange to me, where I don't know the people and feel unsafe, or like a foreigner stopping to look at the maps in the bus stops, but in my Paris a waiter at a café cheers me on as I go running in the mornings and the benches and bridges are familiar friends.  In my Paris there are people who know what I will order before I say anything, and the boy who says "quel sourire!" when I walk by.  I won't ever know the whole city - I am not even familiar with all the quiet streets and personalities of Cambridge, where I grew up - and that's okay.  But I'm not ready to leave.
I am not ready to go running by the Charles yet, to reacquaint myself with supermarkets and the fewer bridges and subway stops.  I'm not ready for the surprise of everyone speaking English (will it be like an onslaught, where you can understand every word, every sentence, of conversations overheard in cafés?) and streets with no fountains built into the sides of stone buildings, where there are no statues on the street corners or submarine roofs soaring above the city.  I might even miss the cigarette smoke.
None of us are ready to leave, and the apartment in the Marais reflects this: there are no boxes of clothes marked for the US or books separated from the bookshelves.  My desk is its usual clutter of paper and Chapstick and contact solution.  My brother's fancy chef's apron hangs in the kitchen, and our toothpaste is in the bathroom.  None of us are ready to leave - emotionally or practically.  And I would say that perhaps we should wait a little longer - just a week or two more perhaps - but I miss my friends, and, as much as it doesn't sound like it, I miss my city.
When you have moved to a new place, or back home, was it hard?

Breton Stripes

Striped shirts.  They seem French, right?  And kind of super-chic?  My brother disagrees with me on this one, but I think that somehow those Breton stripes make a plain long-sleeved T-shirt seem a little more on-purpose, a little more put-together, no?
Those stripes come from Brittany, where fisherman used to wear them (and then yachtsmen borrowed the idea).  When we passed through the little town of Dinan, we picked up shirts for my darling sister and me, and I love it!
What do you think?  Do you think that the stripes are chic and French, or, like my brother, do you think they look like prison stripes?  Let me know in the comments!
(Also, Audrey Tautou wears them.  Photo from here)