Metro-Boulot-Dodo

The other day, I was in the Metro, waiting for a train with about 10 other people. It was pretty quiet, so everyone’s attention was attracted when suddenly, a McDonald’s bag skittered across the quai and dropped on the tracks, due to a momentary gust of wind. It was like a metaphor for our two cultures: American culture, with its fatty fast food, Converse sneakers, and music, traverses French culture daily. Occasionally, the French indulge in it. That McDonald’s bag was almost like a warning sign: Beware, this harmless bag of leftovers just might change the way you live, French people. :)

On another note, yesterday I had an interesting experience. It had just rained the first rain since we had been here, the first rain of the season. Everything was crisp and cool, and I was walking home in the twilight after a calm night out with a couple of new friends. Gazing up at the typically quaint Parisian architecture surrounding me, it hit me: I live in Paris. For the next three and a half months, I get to be a European, as much as I can be, and live a completely new life doing completely different things. A smile snuck up on me so genuine that I didn’t recognize it until I realized it was the first whole, genuine smile I had smiled in all the three weeks I had been here. What a relief.

So things have started to feel a little more familiar, which I love. But I know that the safe feeling of routine will never completely surround me here, as I will always be the outsider, always the one with things to learn and places to see. I will never be entirely a part of the routine that the French indifferently refer to as "Metro--Boulot--Dodo." But, I’m starting to be okay with that. I’m very slowly, one step at a time, grasping this strange culture, half-hiding behind my newly purchased Parisian-flea-market sunglasses to subdue its glare of differences.