At-home haircuts, bleach and cheap champagne

Happy Tuesday!

I’m drinking coffee mixed with Nesquik and trying to figure out how twitter works (why is everything so hard?). I couldn’t find one single spoon in my kitchen so I had to stir my coffee with a fork. I feel like that’s a metaphor in my life but I can’t figure out how to word it. I should be studying Spanish but Rosetta Stone has been patronizing lately and I’m not in the mood to be sassed about sports and renting skies (trust me Rosetta Stone, that vocab is falling on deaf ears, so just RELAX). I got an ugly (but free!) bike last week from an eccentric friend looking to absolve some karmic debt before hopping a train to Austin. It’s the sort of bike a teen in the suburbs would ride to high school; I even bought a matching helmet because I have an over-developed sense of self-preservation. San Francisco definitely has a pervasive biking culture, so I do feel like a dick next to all these hill-bombing courier-foxes on fixed gears, but I like to think my lack of finesse is enchanting (I fell off the bike trying to dismount yesterday. It wasn’t even moving).

And this is what that looks like.

I’ve been trying to get out of the apartment more lately, so this bike is greatly appreciated. Especially on Mondays when some of my housemates and many other unapologetic dorkwads within a 10 block radius come over to play D and D. To each his own, but the common area is indisposed, not available for more mundane purposes which don’t include 20-sided die, bards, mages, and about 8 late-20s programer dudes with loosened ties and ipads full of dungeon spreadsheets.

So this particular Monday I grabbed the bike, struggled down the stairs, knocking over houseplants trying to balance the thing out the impossibly small and awkward in-between-front-door-and-front-gate area and rode to SOMA for a DIY beauty day with my ride-or-die homegirl Elyse (I’ve been going through some love-life stuff lately, and what better to boost your mood than dramatic changes to your physical appearance, eh? Seriously, tell me because I’m open to it).

In my constant struggle to find a flattering no-maintenance haircut that complements my “disheveled-chic” aesthetic, whilst giving shape to hair thicker than you can believe, I decided to let her try her untrained-but-capable hands at chopping off my hair. And if that wasn’t enough, I also procured one of those at-home L’oreal ombre kits from the local drugstore and a bottle of Cooks to tie it all together.

$10? It’s practically paying ME!

I used to be weirdly attached to my hair, living in fear of a bad haircut, putting off getting trims, making due with a shapeless torrent of long straight hair that rarely does me any favors. But hair grows, and mine grows quickly. I’d rather always be in between bad haircuts because at least that aesthetic is dynamic; having stagnant puff-hair for years would be a sad alternative. I am also toying with the idea of some vivid color (blue has been my favorite color since I knew what blue was) but with hair as dark as mine that could go tragically awry, and there’s not much worse than dead, fried, piss-yellow/green suburb-punk hair on a 28 year-old soon-to-be kindergarten teacher. So I wait, letting that idea simmer til the next time I’m feeling overly emotional and sassy.

Mid-cut/pre-bleach/champagne

Elyse and I have been friends for 20 years now (jesus) and she is known in our circle for her insane attention to detail. This combined perfectly with my new “I couldn’t give two shits” attitude to equal a convincingly decent haircut with some quality ombre accents that make me feel like a slightly new woman. I generally look good with shorter hair, and get bored with my mug so often that any change tickles me pink for a few weeks. And man, this bleach stuff was ridiculously easy to use, just squeeze bleach onto a brush applicator and go nuts. I mean hell, we had both drank a bottle of champagne each and hadn’t managed to eff it up. Idiot-proof.

The result: subtle $10 ombre color POP

And of course as a form of payment and to round out the beauty day I in turn slathered Elyse’s head with henna (the color is called “caca”, how deliciously tongue-in-cheek, those crafty hippies!). Henna is apprently a good way to give one’s hair a non-permanent, non-damaging boost of color, and Elyse is obstinately dedicated to that sort of organic/paraben-free/gluten-free/vegan/paleo/raw/no fun (joking) lifestyle.

It has the consistency of mud and got EVERYWHERE (we used to make mud pies together when we were 8, so we had FUN)

Since she started off brunette with ombre, the result was a fiery red at the ends, and a dark black/burgundy at the top. I don’t yet have an “after” photo of her because she left that stuff on for hours and some of us have work in the morning. But it looks good!

 

Side-view. Not doing a “duck face” just have an awkward mouth.

Here’s to 9 months of teaching Spanish kindergarten (in a death metal muscle shirt)

Several steps closer

I’ve been gone man, out in the world handling business left, right and center. I haven’t been able to keep up with this thing do in equal parts to my pwning the Spanish immigration gauntlet and some distressing love life issues (which I also handled with panache and runny eyeliner). But I’m back with all the necessary updates of the past several weeks in very brief and convenient numbered points:

1) All the visa hoop-jumping is completed, except for the actual visa, but compared to all the prep work, that should be ez pz (and I even managed a decent-ish passport photo, so I’m gonna ride that high for quite awhile).

2) I got my work placement, and it will be around a 40 minute commuter train ride’s away from the city center, where I will

3) Teach kindergarten!

Ok now I’ll elaborate and spin some yarns about these exciting events. So the visa stuff has been a real handful, I’ve had to make ever so many phone calls, which is something I’ve hated doing since I was a small child: the phone is scary and people on the phone are never helpful because there is no physical presence to hold them accountable to give correct information. They are arbiters of knowledge just floating in the ether, waiting to make my life more challenging. And my phone voice is weird. But everything has been handled, all steps being completed yesterday upon my super-dodgy cash-up-front medical exam (NO, a drug test isn’t necessary, that is outside your purview doc) so now I only have to worry about having my visa rejected due to some bureaucratic abnormality (Spain’s bureaucracy is already so much worse than France’s, hadn’t thought that was possible, seems ominous).

My placement has put me in a village (I guess pueblo is the preferred nomenclature) 40 minutes north of Madrid at a school that is easily accessible by metro and commuter train. This extra time will be convenient for doing lesson planning, which I always did in the morning anyway, letting a few buckets of coffee inspire me. I am still going to live in the city center because I’ve paid my dues with village life, they can’t make me do it again I NEED  PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND KEBABERIES OPEN PASSED 10pm. Those aren’t crazy requirements, I just want to be treated with a little humanity. I also want to live with some hip young Madrileños, but that is for another post; the apartment search will produce tons of blog fodder, so stay tuned for that debacle.

Lots of coffee and shirts with bad words on them; half of this will change for the children’s sake.

Finally, a return to glue-eating and fart accusations in the realm of the very tiny people who will be learning some west coast American English under my careful and exuberant guidance. The good news is kindergarteners love me because I’m female and dress decently, and that seems to be the only rubric needed to be named a “beautiful princess” and I am so down to be called a beautiful princess in my day to day. I also have an expressive face and tend towards slapstick, which probably makes me not unlike a birthday clown. I am also vaguely cool because I wear a lot of black (and sometimes a metal tank or two) and coolness gives one universal cultural capital, so in this way I get a simulacrum of respect from a bevy of 5-year olds (to recap, I am a beautiful princess goth-clown, and the kids dig it).

This photo illustrates the “goth clown” look well. And probably the reason I’m sometimes taken for a post-operative trans-gendered person (true story).

I’m actually not terribly worried about my wardrobe. The biggest problem will be crouching down in too-tight pants over and over again throughout the day, but currently I dig through barrels of mothballed vintage in these very same bondage pants, and haven’t suffered a stroke, so it should be fine.

Tight-panted physical comedy in my homegirl’s kitchen. I have a mouth made for guffawing.

 

Multilingual/multiple personalities (why I’m not interesting in a foreign language)

My favorite of our shop displays/HAPPY THURSDAY Y’ALL!

Several hundos later and I’ve made a serious dent in the unpleasant paperwork I’ve had to do in order to get my student visa (even though I won’t be studying, the Spanish government considers this experience “educational”, which suits me fine). Got my high tech fingerprints, mailed off a handful of background checks and have decided to attempt to take my own passport photos (I can’t keep getting bad drug store photos from apathetic teenagers, it’s depressing and I don’t see why I have to pay that much for a shitty photo when anyone can and will take a shitty photo of me it’s not like I’m paying for SKILL for Godsake).

But anyway, now I’m back at pound vintage land riffling ambivalently through a delivery of Hawaiian shirts and 80s sequins. Somebody left some Oreos here and I’m trying to decide if it would be bad form to eat them. Less a matter of germs and more a matter of ethics (like what if they come back for them, I imagine that would be off color probably). As I dive headfirst into one of these huge drums to dig out what looks to be one solitary broken Birkenstock, whilst trying not to breathe in the mothballs too deeply (which smell exactly like sweaty maxipads) I hear the voices of 3 or 4 French girls who sound a bit distressed. As I remove my upper half from the barrel to check the situation out I glean that these girls don’t have a hostel for the night. Well hell I love an opportunity to show boat, and these distraught young ladies clearly needed assistance. As I began the process of asking them if I could help, and calling a bunch of hostels with surly receptionists I became aware of something that I started to notice when I lived in France: my francophone persona is sorta bitchy.

I own a fair few of these aforementioned 80s sequins myself, and look like I belong on a cruise ship probably not in a flattering way

And upon reflection I have realized just how different my personality is in the three languages I speak (at varying levels of success). For instance like I said I’m sort of a jerk in French, and yet a big mook in Spanish. I think the reason I come off like a jerk in French is because the French are a frank people and their language reflects that, and all the little place-holding words I know are kind of blunt and a little rude. So I pepper sentences with words and phrases like “frankly/I’m not bothered/It’s not my thing/that’s stupid/useless/crazy/vaguely irritated moaning” along with that funny quasi-farting sound french people make when they are nonplussed. I know far fewer polite phrases, and really they just aren’t that believable. I feel way chic-er not using them. My “street French” has overtaken my University French because I didn’t study the language long in comparison to the amount of time I’ve spent living abroad. And there is a big rupture between spoken French and written French that almost makes it seem like two different dialects, and you don’t learn that until perhaps you’re at a bar in France and after 4 semesters of French you still can’t understand a damn thing anyone is saying and you’re using the formal conjugation for everyone cos damnit that’s how you were taught to interact with strangers, when really it’s the social equivalent of calling your peers “Ma’am” and “Sir”. I’m fine with my “less refined French”, the academic French made me sound like a narc anyway.

My French “bitch-face”

Whereas in Spanish the opposite is true. All I know is what I’ve learned in junior college (5 years ago), and I have yet to have experienced too much “real world Spanish”. Obviously I hear a ton of it in the Mission where I live, but I don’t understand it so it hardly counts (other than a few rude words). So in Spanish I am goofily polite and innocuous, and probably look like a deer in the headlights as I struggle to catch nuances I know I’ve missed. I’m still saying words awkwardly out loud which I have only ever seen written. I sound like I have a speech impediment. It’s a good job I dress well or I’d have no hope for making Spanish fwiends.

Anyway about the anecdote with the French girls at the shop; it is in this sort of scenario that these different personas are most obvious, when I “code switch” between my native tongue and a secondary one, my whole demeanor changes, and my coworkers don’t hesitate to point that out. And I have definitely seen this in a few Italian studies phd’s that I know: goobers in English, Don Juans in Italiano. It took me almost 3 semesters of French to develop a sense of humor in the language, which is traditionally my most disarming attribute, so for the first 2 semesters it was literally like I wasn’t myself within my interactions. I learned how to hit on people before I learned how to be interesting. That can be a problem.

And I can tell the same will be true in Spanish for at least 3 months into this 9 month sejour. I won’t be clever or funny, but maybe just talking about music and things I like with some quality hand gestures will make me enough of a curio amongst the local youth to harvest me some friendships.

These gestures indicate: Friendship.

That, or all hope lies in the loquacious powers of sangria…

An era of positivity (I’m moving to Madrid)

This morning in a complete stupor I got the email I’d been waiting for: my placement in Spain/what the hell I’m going to be doing with the next year of my life. And lo and behold, I got Madrid. Exactly what I wanted. How ’bout that.

I’d like to preface this for a moment by admitting that work/my personal life has turned me into ever so slightly the sourpuss. Slowly but surely I’ve been becoming more and more unpleasant to be around (mostly in a funny way, but tinged with a real-world bitterness around the edges). I don’t actually know a lot of people my age who say they are “happy” (the modern condition), and that commiseration over low quality table wine has no doubt affected me. The common denominator seems to be a sense of one’s life slipping away, and the inability to do anything about it (the usual), and I get that. But the time for miserably romantic self-reflection is at an end. I’ve examined all that junk to the fullest extent that I can anyway at this point, given where I am in my life, and now that phase is over and it’s time for a little self-destructive merry-making and wreckless joie de vivre (before the frown lines set in, ew)

Well this is all barring the fact that my humor is based on a certain degree of jaded ennui and self deprecation, but I think that’s the mark of wit versus slapstick, so I’m sticking with that. But in general I’ve always been pretty positive which is a good balance because being nice but making bitchy jokes is easy enough to deal with for most people, and very appealing to some (those with refined tastes and a mind for repartee). Somewhere along the line though I got crabby and grouchy and then just became a sallow curmudgeon in high-waisted jeans. Moving on.

I think this photo illustrates that last sentence well. Ménilmontant, Paris.

But hey now I’m moving to Spain which proves that life is grand and has rehabilitated my faith in the cosmos or maybe it’s that the crystal that I wear ironically has finally dumped some good mojo on me.

I’m feeling so good in fact that it’s almost enough to distract from the tension headache threatening to form at the base of my skull upon  reviewing the Ministry (how exotic) of Education’s manual detailing the insane amount of paperwork I’ll have to do within the next 12 weeks.

And as I’ve said before, paperwork is a strength of mine; I get shit done. But in this case paperwork would be a bit of a misnomer. The actual forms are easy enough to fill out and I’ve already downloaded them. Really the problem with the paperwork in this case is what I will need from other people (I hate counting on other people, that goes against my bootstrapping nature). All of the really important forms that will eventually be presented to the Spanish Consulate in order to get my visa are dependent on the myriad competencies of anonymous pencil-pushers (bureaucrats) best known for their abilities to get the job done quickly and efficiently, I’m sure. Where’s some good old fashioned nepotism when I need it?

Here is the hateful list of the things I need to do:

1) Get a bunch o’ passport photos (which sucks even though it’s easy because I take terrible photos and my “neutral face” is catatonic).

2) Renew my passport (Fine. This is because it expires right after I would be leaving Spain, and though I haven’t gotten a clear indication on whether or not that’s okay because the ministry and consulate say two contradictory things, I’m going to err on the side of caution. Easy, but obnoxiously pricey, plus I don’t trust the mail situation at my apartment. Problematic).

3) Get fingerprinted. (I emailed the Sheriff’s Office about this because word is they do it for free. They have not gotten back to me [fat lot of good they continue to be] so now I’m going to an accredited mailing/printing center down the way. $25 UGH).

4) Send said fingerprints to the FBI for a background check (which will be blank=good and also a fair few USDs; and I’m not sure whether I should go with the State Department or the FBI because it all remains unclear what the respective benefits for each choice would be. So I’m going big).

5) Get the FBI to send that background check to DC to get a special seal affixed to it called the Apostille for the Hague convention (or maybe I have to send it in myself, who knows, but that seal is fucking important and there’s only one or two ways to get it which both have a several-weeks turnaround and no clear instructions, so I’m sure that will go off without a hitch).

6) Get a FRENCH background check because I lived there (This can happily be done by mail but obviously it will not be in Spanish so I imagine I will need a notarized Spanish translation. GOD).

7) Get a medical check-up including a letter on official letterhead signed by an MD stating that I have no contagious diseases (appointments appear to be backed up and somewhat costly and I hate the doctor’s office, so that’ll be a hoot).

8) Make visa appointment at my consulate in SF (but I will need an accompanying letter of placement from the Ministry of Education in Spain that is “EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND MUST BE THE ORIGINAL EMAIL ATTACHMENT NO PHOTOCOPIES ACCEPTED”, and there’s no indication of when I should expect its arrival. And how the hell would they know if I photocopied an email attachment?).

I’ll bet almost no one kept reading to the last numeral because even I am bored shitless typing that. Also I traditionally hate making appointments to go places to get a form filled out; it’s expensive and doing important things on other people’s schedules who couldn’t care less about my hopes and dreams is annoying. Also after all these crazy background checks in all likelyhood I’ll probably get robbed in Spain at least once. They swear.

So now on my day off I am going to attempt to do at least 2 of those 8 things. And that’s being generous because my time management skills have suffered lately, likely due to vintage-induced mental atrophy. Luckily I still have time for one more cup of coffee.

This is what sleep deprivation looks like.

I’d rather be doing this. The light at the end of the paper-work tunnel.

I don’t do well in the heat

Two weeks of summer then it’s back to the wind and fog (Bernal Hill, SF).

I grew up in the vast suburban sprawl in between Los Angeles and Riverside, California, right on the edge of the Inland Empire. The summers were unforgiving, filled with sweltering black asphalt and steering wheels that’ll burn your hand when you forget that your car’s been parked in the baking sun for hours while you’re trying to hunt down a Cinnabon at the mall.

I also grew up without benefit of any type of air conditioning, and that shit’s hard. We’d go to the grocery store or air conditioned public buildings as our only respite from the 4 months of over-90 degree heat. My people are of the mountains but I was the first generation to grow up in a desert; my genetics haven’t caught up to optimum survival tactics in this type of environment.

As such my blood is very thin, but I hate the heat. Nothing is more unpleasant than sitting in a miserable sluggish pool of your own sweat and anger. I’m very sensitive to extreme temperatures, and not one to tan easily. Even the cats would just lie on the floor angrily, until I’d give them ice cubes to lick, which blew their cat minds.

Heatwave cat

That’s part of the reason I left LA, a childhood of burning myself everytime I fell down at the playground. And the smog days, but they don’t seem to have those anymore. This week we’re having a heat wave in San Francisco, with today’s temperature reaching 90 degrees with not a lick of wind. That ish is unheard of round these parts. People lose their minds in this town whenever the sun shows itself, let alone when something approaching a warm summer day materializes for an all-too brief period (indian summer) before the perma-fog settles back in. Street urchins go shirt-(or pant-)less, our tasteless booty short collection/denim underwear  flies off the shelves at the shop. People also day-drink something fierce. Dolores Park was over-flowing with bare skin and misdemeanors, and the beer gardens were cheek-by-jowl with sweaty bearded dudes, PBRs, and metal tank tops.

Now I’m sitting in a bra and bike shorts in front of a very loud fan annoyed by how hot the laptop is on my lap. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight. I have a pathelogical need to sleep with a blanket over me; the feeling of air across my person makes me feel like I’m in the wild on the Serengeti and my brain jerks me awake every 45 mins for fear of an imminent cheetah attack (this is true).

I am enjoying it though because I know it won’t last through 3 seasons like it does back home. I guess my only real issue here is that I don’t know how to dress in these temperatures. When I wear shorts and sandals I feel like I’m lying to myself (I have a penchant for black, but don’t want to come off like a sad goth at the beach, so I put my Doc Martens away). When I wear a summer dress I feel (and look) like I’m in drag. I’m sure this is all just something in my own head but it doesn’t make it any less problematic for me. I mean, when I wear short shorts it really feels like I’m making a bold statement. I’m not sure what the difference is between me and every other be-shorted person on the street who comes off as cute and whimsical; maybe it’s something about my proportions, but dang I feel just a little bit too tarty and awkward, like a baby giraffe learning how to walk, and that aint fair.

See the likeness below. Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/ucumari

 

The long dark road to trilingualism

When the weather’s this nice, I’m not Rosetta Stone-ing.

I’m not very good at any one thing, but I am passably good at many things. This has long been the crux by which I have organized my education (Inderdisciplinary Studies on the back of about a million credits-worth of community college class happy-fun-time). But one of the few pursuits that I have managed to remain engaged in on a significant level throughout my education is my fascination with language.

Learning a foreign language in my adult years has been no easy thing. It took me what felt like forever to learn French, which I began studying at 22, and that with a terrible accent and fairly childish vocabulary. At this age those phonemes aint ever gonna come. And that’s quite the problem when around the French (and I love the French) because as a people they will not hesitate to correct your grammar/accent/word choice mid-sentence. Which in a sense is nice because you want to improve rather than making the same mistakes again and again, but on the other hand it makes you feel like an idiot baby, and afraid to talk all together. Which is lame, and my problem, I know.

Anglophones (for the most part, but with some exceptions) don’t really give two shits about their language. And I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, I just mean that we have a very relaxed attitude towards the English language. We make up and abuse words all the time (which is how “googling” turned into a verb). I do think this is an asset which leaves exciting room for creativity and spontaneity. Our language really moves. We invent new words as we need them, we screw up our own grammar constantly (farther vs. further, etc.), and though there are a few out there who fanatically pontificate on correct punctuation (I’m perhaps one of these, and also have an enthusiasm for good grammar, but I can’t spell to save my life), we really don’t give two hoots in Hades if a non-native speaker gets things a bit wrong. Rarely would we ever correct them (would you like to take a coffee?) unless we had a familiar relationship with them, and even then only very politely.

But now that I’m embarking on relearning Spanish via this new-fangled Rosetta Stone system, I’m having a hell of a time. I mean I get it on a fundamental level (structure, grammar), I’m just having a lot of trouble working my mouth around those once-so-familiar words and phrases. I sound Finnish, or something close, and I don’t think that’s hot with my tone of voice. As I struggle through pathetically-simple Spanish language transactions at the work place, trying my darndest to use the basic vocabulary I’ve been repeating for the last few weeks, I’ve noticed with pleasure that the Spanish speakers seem far more laid back about their language than what I’ve experienced with the French (even though, like the French, they do have a governing body regulating the language). This courtesy is particularly extended to foreigners and Spanish novices like me, and for that I am thankful. If I mistake the gender or don’t roll an “r” properly, so far they haven’t really cared enough to tell me to knock it off, and that’ll be a delightful change when I’m traipsing through Spain talking about things I like and things I do, and other worthless pleasantries. I am very much looking forward to unlearning the fear.

At this point though I just cant imagine how people can hold more than two languages in their head at the same time. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person with all the normal faculties, but it’s been a wee bit difficult. Granted, French and Spanish are both related and based on Latin, so there is more to mix up. But for some reason I was under the impression that it would be much easier because the two languages are so close. For instance I finally get subjunctive and gender and preterite versus imperfect, but keeping them separated into two languages in my head is a whole other thing.

So far it’s like my brain says “oh, we’re doing Spanish now? So we don’t need French anymore for communications obviously, so let’s file that away into the deep annals of your subconscious, fuck off months of immersion”. It’s incredible. Words I’ve known so well in French have become difficult to recall, as if there is some genuine mental block preventing them from getting through. My brain is actually preferencing the third language over the second. So how does one hold on to both?

I’ve read that when learning a third language one must also do a review of the second almost simultaneously just to make sure it doesn’t slip away, so that’s sort of what I’ve been doing. On my 20 minute walk to work I listen to Spanish-language news radio for about 15 minutes, then French for the last five just so it stays somewhat fresh, and that makes me feel smart and sassy. Whether or not that will work remains to be seen.

To keep in line with this theme, here are two bitchin’ songs that keep me pumped in both languages!

Liasons Dangereuses “Los ninos del parque”

Dani “La Machine”

Most people who travel in groups are boring and awful, but that doesn’t have to be your problem*

This message is uplifting! (Berlin).

It’s 9am and I’m on some website trying to figure out how to obtain a state background check (a requirement for my potential Spanish visa). I haven’t had an appropriate amount of coffee at this point so I feel a bit unequalled to the task. Maybe I should put on a bra  (the traditional signal that I have started my day). This is all very confusing and exactly the sort of hoop that I am not so savvy in the jumping through.

I could ask one of the myriad helpful people on the Facebook page dedicated to exactly this purpose, and I probably will. They are all very optimistic and informative. But this puts me in mind of the fact that in general I don’t care for the type of person who goes on organized trips abroad. This is not bitchy, this is real. I became acutely aware of this fact the last time I did a teaching program and wound up alienating 80% of the other assistants because my humor was too abrasive (?). This creates some amount of cognitive dissonance in my mind to be sure; I love to travel (mostly alone) and have studied abroad probably the maximum number of times that one can do it (because study abroad is class in another country, and what the hell’s not to love about that?) barring only arbitrarily going on to more advanced degrees in order to continue the funding.

But study abroad, and later teaching abroad, definitely comes with a major caveat. It’s hard in general to find kindred spirits in the day to day. I get along with most people, but I wouldn’t choose to continue those interactions beyond the strictly necessary (coworkers, that weird friend of a friend that your homegirl keeps inviting around even though she is polarizing and obstinately boring). But this trend is only magnified in the microcosm of study/teach abroad (or anything abroad where a small group of people are thrown together with the only unifying element being that we all wanted to go to this place at the same time). I wouldn’t mind any of that, it’s the same general principle as with most of life: we all have to be in this room because we’re taking this class/paid to do work in this particular space at the same time, so let’s make the best of it. But just because we’re all here does not mean that I want to share my entire very personal experience abroad in your company (if any of it).

I admire adventurous people. People who take risks and challenge themselves when the opportunity calls for it. People who are introspective, engaging and curious.

I remember complaining to a friend that a lot of the people who studied abroad with me seemed disingenuous, vapid and dull (many were trust-fund braggarts). He responded “Well you have to take into account the kind of person who chooses to go to Paris for study abroad, not going to be of the highest calibre”. Of course I took offense to that (hey man, I’m tryna learn French so I’m going with the linguistic standard and it’s effing PARIS don’t play me like that) but maybe he had a point in a way, because it is Paris, you don’t need much in the way of an adventurous spirit to want to get over there, it’s kind of a no-brainer. (He himself went to Africa, which is like the holy grail for affluent white kid bragging rights).

Each time I moved abroad I have had the fortune of meeting someone who has remained a best friend for years. There has always been at least one incredible person who has had the same style of joie de vivre, the same moodiness and alluring rancor, and complementary goals for their sejour that I did. Namely, live like the locals, obsess over learning the language and meet as many genuine inhabitants of the place as possible. We would go out together all the time, just 2 or 3 of us, would have some amazing adventures because we felt the same way about what we wanted. We weren’t hindered by an uncontrolled throng party-democracy. We weren’t a spectacle, we didn’t even come off as particularly foreign. This isn’t so hard to do. But when you’re in a horde 20-screaming-Americans-deep everywhere you go, well that is hard.

Me making-merry day 2 of living in Paris with a bunch of people I have nothing in common with but who are all perfectly nice. I don’t remember most of these people’s names, nor they mine. After this outing (which was “fine”) we all went our separate ways forever (except during class hours).

There is a mentality to these sort of occasions which though I get on a very general level, I have never shared. It’s scary to go somewhere foreign to live for the first time clearly, obviously I know that, I did it when I was 19 through my junior college having not even moved out of my parents place yet. But travel is about being uncomfortable, intimidated, being pushed and pulled in a variety of directions that you weren’t prepared for. I just don’t understand why when people are adventurous enough to do this sort of thing, to decide to throw themselves into another culture for many months, away from everything they know, they don’t have the chutzpah to fully embrace and benefit from all that that entails. Don’t dilute the experience by filtering everything through endless organized outings akin to the kind of authenticity you could expect from Carnival Cruises. How can you find yourself (which is indisputably the main goal of young travelers) if you surround yourself with a bunch of people who are generally coming from the same cultural experience that you are? Why did you travel thousands of miles to party with a slew of American frat girls/boys? This will only limit you, you could do this at home. They are stopping you from gaining an authentic experience because you have made yourselves a sideshow. You aren’t challenging yourself if you carry around a personified permanent buffer zone to absorb any culture shock that comes your way. (I have nothing wrong with frat girls/guys, I just don’t want to travel with a bunch of them, or a bunch of anyone).

I noticed each time I went abroad that people fanatically sought each other out in large groups to go here, do this, eat that, consult the guidebook. Which is fine within reason; find a few like-minded people to share your experiences, that’s important. But there is really never any discriminating in the choosing of these activity partners. This is why there are always massive groups of 26 Americans drunk and screaming on the metro/tube/bus/tram about the club (always the worst and most tourist-ridden place) they are slovenly on their way to. These are the same people who take staged photos of themselves eating baguettes in front of the Eiffel Tower, don’t be one of these people. They travel in packs, this has become a stereotype, and we indulge it.

The truth is in any group of 30 people, you’re not necessarily going to see eye-to-eye with 22 of them (that’s being generous, most people are boring and awful, and that’s not okay, but you don’t need to make it your problem). Which works out fine if we are all at work or in class, but that’s where it stops. For the rest it is far better to choose 2-3 people with whom you really resonate, to truly enrich your experience abroad, and for the rest you should be spending a lot of time alone (which can be scary as hell, but that’s the point). Go for a beer now and again with everyone, but stop planning massive bar/museum/cafe crawls where you become such a spectacle of cackling Americana that no one will ever approach you (except with the basest of intentions). You will never blend in, you will never discover crazy new adventures to tell your grandchildren about because you are saddled to a horde (and where’s the fun in that?).

Homegirls for life:

Paris 2009, indispensable she-wolf who is still my closest confidant.

Orléans 2011, the only person who kept me (mostly) sane.

* maybe this could have been better executed but somehow everything got erased as I was about to publish and once the blind rage subsided I didn’t have much time before work to finish this thing. Grumble grumble.