Je suis arrivee

I am typing this from the fifth-floor guest room of a tiny apartment whose windows overlook one of the narrowest and most congested streets I have ever seen in my life, which can only mean one thing: I am in Paris.

Not that it was a breeze getting here. Charles de Gaulle is the first airport I have ever been in, for instance, that requires you to follow endless directives of signs through hallways and escalators before taking a train to an entirely different building just to retrieve your luggage. But that was a minor confusion compared to the comically impossible task of locating the shuttle that was supposed to take me to my host family. After circling the arrival floor for a good half hour in an increasing panic, I finally sidled up to another girl dragging two large suitcases and asked if she was, perchance, from UM. “Yes!” she said, obviously grateful to have found a fellow navigational idiot. The terminal we were looking for, 2a, turned out to be one floor up and several concourses away, mystifyingly far from our original meeting in 2c. After finding our supposed pick-up point and realizing there was no one there (we were half an hour later) we tried calling the pay-phone number in our orientation email, only to receive an error message. The driver did finally show up, as did three other girls from our program, who had apparently been wandering aimlessly as well. In the car I discovered that I was the only one who had never received a welcome email from my hosts—the other girls relayed information about their new families; one girl’s new mother even advised her to bring clothes appropriate for gardening and trips to the opera, both of which she hoped they would be able to do together. In my head I imagined my host family at their apartment, blinking incomprehensibly at my poorly-constructed introduction email and deciding that it would be best to pretend it had never happened.

Our shuttle wound its way through Paris, making death-defying U-turns in the middle of five-street intersections and casually cutting off other cars and mopeds. Finally the driver stopped in front of a large, ornate double-door in the midst of a line of shops and pronounced the first girl home. “Bon chance!” we said as she lugged her bags to the nondescript door. “It’s like the Leaky Cauldron,” I observed as the other girls laughed.

It turns out we are all living in Paris’s version of the Leaky Cauldron. The entrances to the apartment buildings are interspersed with shops, with unlabeled door fronts leading to several stories of housing above busy commercial streets. We drove through a seedy-looking area populated by more sex shops than I have ever seen in my life (one of them was called—I am not kidding—The Erotica Supermarket. I exchanged wide-eyed looks with the other girls and we agreed not to go there, ever.) The second passenger was dropped off a couple of blocks away, and a few minutes later it was my turn.

“That’s my door!” I exclaimed as the driver pulled up to 116 Rue de Rennes.
“It’s a nice door!” said the other girls, with unbridled enthusiasm.

After several unsuccessful attempts at the keypad code, I found myself in a small lobby, facing a locked door. With no phone number for my program director and no cell phone to call either him or my host family, I experienced a brief burst of panic. Then, to my relief, I spotted an intercom with a button bearing their name. I pressed it.

“Bonjour?” I said tentatively, into the speaker. Nothing happened. I pressed it again. “Hello?”

“Allo?” said a female voice from the intercom. I pressed the button to speak again.


“Bonjour,” I repeated as one of my bags toppled over onto my foot.

“Stop pressing the button!” said the voice.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

“We are the fifth floor, on the right. I opened the door.”

I tried the door. Still locked.

“I’m having trouble with the… never mind,” I mumbled apologetically as the door creaked open.

I located an elevator without any up or down buttons and pressed the glowing number 5. No one was going to come help me with my bags? Probably they were not amused by my repeated ringing of the doorbell. After a few minutes spent standing in front of the nonresponsive elevator, I gathered my burdens, eyed the winding staircase and sighed.

On the fourth flight of stairs, the voice from the intercom rang out again.

“Why have you not used the lift!”

“Oh… hello… I tried but it didn’t work.”

“Of course it works! It works very well!”

“Oh… okay.”

I rounded the corner of the staircase and was greeted by a middle-aged woman with bare feet, wrapped in a white bathrobe. “Excuse me,” she said. “I am sick.”

After a reproachful demonstration in the art of elevator operation (the entrance outside the apartment, incidentally, has a button) she ushered me inside. We had several minutes of awkward half-French, half-English communication before she gave me a glass of water and showed me my room, which overlooks the street. Then she showed me the kitchen and bathroom, advising me not to take very long showers. As we walked around the apartment, two other people slipped by us with brooms and vacuum cleaners. “Le mardi et le vendredi, ils font le ménage,” she explained, adding that the cleaners would be tidying my bedroom every Tuesday and Friday, as well. Then, after a brief and confusing exchange which I vaguely understood to mean that she was leaving me for awhile, I retreated into my room and unpacked. I listened until the cleaners were gone, then slipped into the bathroom for the world’s fastest shower before returning to my room for a nap. Several hours later, following restless dreams wherein French people complained to each other that I was an insufferable simpleton, I awoke in my darkened room. I poked open the door and peered down the hall. The place appeared empty. I decided to try to find a clock, but in the unlit hallway I nearly stepped on a shadowy, unmoving object in the middle of the floor. I squinted at it in the dark, wondering what it was, until it stretched out two slender legs and trotted toward me with a happy chortle.

A cat.

An all-black, long-tailed, real Parisian cat. It looked like Cole but less plump. A wave of relief washed over me as I realized I wouldn’t be deprived of feline company for the next four months.

I coaxed it back into my room, where it followed me onto the bed, situated itself in my lap and rewarded my petting with an instant purr. “Hi cutie,” I said, and began to cry. My first friend.

A little while later my French mother returned, followed within the hour by my French father and sister. The latter, Louisa, is 21. I don’t know my French parents’ names yet—my timid “Je m’appelle Sara” was met with smiling silence. The family also has at least two older siblings who no longer live at home. The black cat, I learned, was Tilo, who is apparently not very happy due to the fact that the family just acquired a second cat, who is hiding somewhere in the apartment. My French father is very nice—he offered to help me go shopping for a laptop converter plug tomorrow during lunch—and he and Louisa had a late dinner with me (my French mother was having dinner with a colleague, if I understood correctly) that consisted of sliced ham and salami, mustard, cheese and bread, leeks, and some sort of celery coleslaw that took them awhile to explain since the mixture in the bowl was stringy and beige and thus did not match my usual understanding of the vegetable. We had a pleasant and only mildly awkward dinner conversation, and I was able to understand most of the direct questions posed to me and respond somewhat appropriately. At some points Louisa and her dad would talk to each other, though, or the phone would ring and one of them would answer it, and then I was totally lost. I also made myself cringe by perpetuating the midwestern tradition of using one’s hand to point out the locations of towns in and around Michigan, even going so far as to indicate that Chicago was a little to the left of my wrist when my dad mentioned he had done a “stage” (internship) there many years ago. Louisa made un café for herself and me following dinner, which consisted of a few ounces of the strongest espresso I’ve ever had. Then, announcing that she was going to go work, she retreated to her room.

So that was my first day. I’m typing this from my (as yet battery-powered) laptop, with Tilo curled up on my legs. I wonder how the other girls are doing with their host families. We have orientation tomorrow at 2 at the Institut Catholique, which I hope will involve information on how to purchase cell phones, hair straighteners, and other necessities that we were told not to bring from the States. Updates on that to follow. Until then, as the French say, à demain.