Commencement du blog!

I wanted to start this blog six weeks ago when I first arrived in Paris, but I couldn't think of a clever enough title, so I didn't. Now that I've settled upon a simple, witless name, I'm ready to backtrack and fill you in on all the fun I've experienced since moving to France. "Moving."

Just to give you an idea of how my trip began, let's review the first 48 hours of my journey:

1. My flight from Hartford to Philly was delayed several hours.

2. Then I got to Philly and missed my connecting flight.

3. So I flew to the UK.

4. When I arrived in the UK and tried to get my boarding pass, they told me I was not in the system anywhere. No flight to Paris for Sarah.

5. I did somehow get a flight to Paris. Barely. And had to run to it on a bum knee and cut a whole line of Asians.

6. Arrived at CDG, went to the baggage claim. Pas de bag for Sarah. Quelle surprise.

7. I stood in line to finally tell someone I have no bag. They took my info and sent me away--with a sympathy cosmetic kit that included, among other things, maybe one day's worth (by American standards) of deodorant and a tee shirt I could swim in.

8. I went up the escalator to find a way to get internet. The escalator was broken. The escalator was a giant flight of painful stairs.

9. I bought a wifi card. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to use it, and by then my battery was running out and there was no plug in sight. When I did find a plug, I realized that my converter was IN MY SUITCASE.

10. Made it to hotel, found smoke-scented room, started crying, took off pants that had melded to my body.

And then I learned what rock bottom is: eating camembert out of the box with a fork because you can't remember when you last ate or slept. Also, it's worth mentioning that I was staying at 1 rue de bitche. I was so France's bitch, they weren't even subtle about it anymore!

During the week that followed, I spent my nights sleeping in five different hotels and my days desperately hunting for an apartment. I lived by the check-in and check-out times, and inbetween I bought coffee at McDonald's (which I do not recommend) just to use their internet as a legitimate customer. When I got tired of doing that I started bringing the same McDonald's water bottle to set next to my laptop so no one would give me a hard time. I also went for the occasional splurge and blew 10 euros at Starbucks for an hour of internet, a deliciously caffeinated beverage, and an atmosphere that feels like home--if home is a place where it's acceptable for guys to wear skin tight purple pants, for customers to be asked regularly by conniving passersby for the bathroom code on their receipts, and for people to sit practically on top of you without the slightest sense of discomfort.

Anyway, it was a sad time, but after several more low points, specifically the hour I spent walking from one hotel to another down the sex district dragging my 70 lb suitcase with a broken handle and carrying my backpack that is about half the size of me in the rain, I finally made my first friend here. We made a date via gmail to meet for coffee and commiseration. Because we were both homeless and because misery loves company, two days later we went to an agency, begged them for an apartment, and moved into a 10 day rental together that night.

The place was glorious. We had working internet, a bed AND a pullout couch, a microwave that functioned as an oven, and a clean shower with a door on it. The space heater and TV both worked, and we could call international landlines for free! Granted, the apartment was unmistakably French—the shower door only went 2/3 of the way across the tub, the toilet was in its own separate little vestibule with a door that didn’t completely shut, and the internet required CD software, magic words, and small animal sacrifices. The biggest mystery of all was the pullout couch, which was actually just a couch with 2/3 of a bed underneath it, in a drawer, to be pulled out and placed next to the couch; the mattress on the partial bed even came with 1/3 of a sheet sewn to the top so that when placed over the couch cushions, the two pieces might be indistinguishable.

Despite all these quirks and the apartment's super sketchy location in the 20th arrondissement, those 10 nights were the most comfortable I've spent in Paris in the three months, probably because I then moved into a log cabin fort icebox of an apartment--to be written about in the next post...