A Long-Expected Journey

Welcome to my blog, "An American Graduate Student in Paris."  I started this a a sort of journal that would help me to remember all the amazing stuff I'm going to see and do and help keep those interested appraised of my development as a world traveler.  Note that this first blog entry is longer than my typical entries in the future will be.  Also, my phone had some sort of error, and so some of the pictures I took today got lost.  I'll replace what I can in the future.

First, the basic details.  I am spending about 6 months in Paris, France to study at l'Universite du Paris 7 Diderot.  I will be taking one graduate-level abstract algebra class in "abelian varieties" and will be doing some "research" with one of the professors there.  I enquote "research" because the correspondence I've received suggests that it will consist primarily of reading and understading a methamtical article, which while interesting is not research in the truest sense.

Now, I look back on the last day and a half (or so...more on that later) and it's amazing how much has happened.

01/08/13, 08h00, Fayetteville, AR:  This is where it starts.  I get up and spend the next two hours or so doing some last minute cleaning for my subtenants who will be there any moment and finishing my packing.  In fact, I do most of my packing that morning rahter than the previous night as a probably should have.

01/08/13, 10h20, Fayetteville, AR:  I leave the house and drive to the apartment of my friend who is giving me a ride to the airport.  I transfer all of my stuff into his car, which includes a large suitcase to be checked, a small carry-on bag, and my laptop satchel, which also has some books stuffed in it.  All told, my must weigh at least 75 lbs.  On the ride up to the airport, I suggest to my friend that perhaps I should have paid the extra $60 to check another bag so I could have brought more of the things I wanted to, like books.  Later on, I will repent of this thought completely.

01/08/13, 11h15, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport:  As we're arriving at the airport, I get a call from a part-time english tutoring/babysitting company based in Paris that I had casually applied for.  It turns out I wasn't qualified enough for them.  Oh well.  C'est la vie.  I check my bag and, for the first time ever, use my passport as my ID when entering the secure area.  I get a lot fewer weird looks using that picture from a few months ago rather than my three-year old driver's licence from Nevada.

Getting through security is no problem, and soon after I leave, I find three friends of mine from the math department!  In a blessed turn of events, I am able to talk with them for a while before we board the plane and in the conversation I find out that they are all going to the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego this week.  Those are a lot of fun, and I'm sorry I'm missing it this year, but I think I made the right choice.

01/08/13, 13h40, American Eagle Airplane:  The plane is delayed half an hour, and so it is not until this time that everyone is in their seats and we're preparing to take off.  The flight is not crowded, and I have no-one sitting next to me.  Nevertheless, and despite the fact that I had less than four hours sleep the night before, I find it very hard to sleep.  The flight, which takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes, is otherwise uneventful.

01/08/13, 15h00, Dallas/Forth Worth Airport:  One of my friends has to run to catch his flight, but the other two have a flight even later than mine (which was at 5 PM), so we decide to get a bite to eat.  We go to a seafood, steak, and burger cafe in the airport.  The food is average, and the service slower than normal, but we three have a good time talking about what the next semester will look like for each of us.  At 4:20 PM, I walk over to my boarding area right as they start calling the first-classers.  I am soon seated on the largest plane I have ever been on, with seven seats to a row in coach.  I am next to two young asian people, a man and a woman.  Behind me is a family that includes a very young child, and I'm glad I've got noise-cancelling headphones with me.

01/08/13, 17h30, American Airlines Intercontinental Jet:  We finally depart, this time delayed by weather rather than scheduling problems.  The sky is full of clouds that reach down towards the ground.  Almost as soon as the plane starts moving, the baby behind me cries, though it doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother some others around me.  All the announcements are coming in French and English, and there's no consistency as to which one comes first.  All of the flight crew are obviously bilingual, and it seems like most of the people on the plane are speaking French.

Several things make an impression on me during this flight.  First, there is no Dr Pepper.   I am surprised by this, but apparently Dr Pepper isn't as popular outside the United States.  The second thing that surprised me was what they had instead: you can ask for white or red wine as additional options when the stewards came around with the drinks, and at no additional cost.  I gather from this that wine is just slightly more important to French culture than it is for us.  The third is that no matter how tired you are, once you get to the point that you've been sitting so long your butt starts to hurt, it's very difficult to find rest.  I don't think I actually slept at any point during the nine hour flight.  Instead, I read through the first third or so of French for Dummies, a Christmas gift from my brother.  I am simultaneously thankful and a little insulted by this gift, so I think he hit it right on the spot.

01/09/13, 09h45, Charles de Gaulle Airport: I am in another country, standing on soil not goverened by the United States for the first time in my life.  I am nearly overcome.  God's provision in bringing me here is truly amazing.  I have my first exchange in French with the border policeman who examined my passport.  It goes something like this:

Border Police: Bonjour
Me: Bonjour <I hand him my passport>
Border Police: <Looks at my ID page and my long-stay student visa, then stamps my passport and hands it back to me>
Me: Merci.

Not a terribly deep or long conversation, but something rings through my mind: "I didn;t use English!"  That little exchange gives me hope that maybe I can make it in a country full of people who speak a different language.

After getting past the border police, I collect my bags and head out to the public area of the airport.  First task:  find a bathroom.  Done:  there's a sign that says "Les toilettes"!  (It also had "Toilets" printed underneath that, but I'm counting that as a win for me)  Second task:  Find a map or something for Paris so that I can find my way around this city designed long before the advent of the automobile by people who obviously had no particular love of straight lines.  Now this is my first real conversation opportunity, and I'm not going to let is slip past.  I spot a tourist information booth and head over to it.  I browse the brochures and don't see what I'm looking for, so I approach the Brochure Guy.

Me: Escusez-moi...
BG: Oui?
Me: Vous avez des cartes du Paris? (Do you have maps of Paris?)
BG:  Oui! <he moves over to the other side of his kiosk, where some maps are displayed.  He picks one that has a british flag in the corner> Ca bien? (Is this good?)
Me: Oui, c'est tres bien.  Merci beaucoup! (Yes, that's very good.  Thank you very much!)

And my first real conversation entirely in French is over.  I'm starting to get the hang of the language and listening to the mish-mash of sounds that naturally occurs whenever someone speaks their first language.  I follow the signs that indicate the trains to Paris.

01/09/13, 10h30, The Charles de Gaulle Airport train station:  I run into a problem that's going to shape the rest of the day.  My debit card isn't working.  This is very bad.  Most of my available funds are tied to that card, I didn't get a lot of cash because I was told by my bank that I would be able to use it wherever MasterCard is accepted (and that's basically all of Europe).  I can't get the machines to accept either my debit card or the credit card I keep with me in case of emergencies.  I have to go to the human ticketeers.  Here my French fails me a little bit, but she manavges to get the question "do you want a one-way or two-way ticket" acress to me after doing the natural hand movements more times than should have been necessary for me to get the point.  I hand her my debit card, and it doesn't work.  I hand her my credit card, and thankfully this one works.  However, I know that there's a problem:  This card never had a very high credit limit and I'm not sure how much it has on it.  It may very well not have enough to get a hotel for tonight, and I would rather not sleep outside.  I take the ticket and head to the train station.  Eventually I board one heading into Paris and off I go.

01/09/13, 11h00, South Paris: I get off the train station at a stop called "Cite Universitaire" (literally, "City University") becuase it seemed the most logical place to go and I had neglected to get an exact answer from my previous ticket saleswoman.  I come out onto the street and don't see what I'm looking for.  I go into a nearby building and as for "Rue du Thomas Mann", because that's the street my university is on.  He doesn't know and eventually has to revert to English (le sigh) to tell me to go back and ask the people at the train station (whom I had missed when I came out).  I go back and eventually manage to communicate my quest to the woman behind the counter, and she looks up the street in her book.  It turns out I'm in completely the wrong place, and need to go back on the subway and transfer to a different line.  This time I finally get my credit card to work in the machine, so I purchase the ticket and head over there.

01/09/13, 14h10, University of Paris 7:  I finally make it to the Beareau of International Relations at the university.  By this point I am well and truly tired of lugging my two bags plus satchel around and am looking forward to finding a hotel.  But I need to solve my debit card problem first.  Fortunately, after I receive all the information from the International Relations office, they allow me to use their phone to call my bank and get my card unlocked.  I also find out at this point that I am not on the list of people participating in the Intensive French Language and Culture program I though I signed up for.  It turns out I did not complete the application process.  Oh well, this just means that I have free time for the next couple weeks.  I go to a cafe across the street and use their Wi-Fi to find a hotel.  I find one with a good price, and so I makea reservation and get ready to head over there.  I am going to have to take the subway again.  However, each trip only costs 1.70 euros, so it's not too bad.

My Parisian Hotel Room

01/09/13, 17h30, South Paris: It turns out the stop I need is "Cite Universitaire" again.  Perhaps I should have worked all of this out aheard of time, as my arms are starting to ache from carrying my stuff around.  I get onto the street and head in what turns outto be the wrong direction.  I walk perhaps half a mile before I realize this, then turn around and start walking again.  Eventually I reach my hotel and manage to, almost entirely in French, ask for my reservation.  I get in to the room and finally am able to put down my bags.  I take a shower and prepare to go to bed, as I am quite tired.  I watch some French TV for a while and write most of this blog entry.  I go to bed around 9 PM.

So, this day started on January 8 at 8:00 AM and ended January 9 at 9:00 PM.  That would be 35 hours, hoever I did lose seven hours on the plane over here, so that's "only" 28 hours.  It's ben a long day.  However, I'm now in Paris, I have a place to stay for the next few nights, and I'm ready to begin my adventure! Who knows what the next six months will bring?

The View From My Hotel Room