Where are the hardships?

There are good ships and there are wood ships and there are ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships and may they ever be.
Best toast ever. Toast is great but don't let it get too hard. Now hardships, those are something else.I am rereading the PDFs the Peace Corps sent me because I have to check a box that says I did that.

There are a lot of half-contemptible things in these documents. Apparently, for example--I may not drive in my host country, or while traveling to any other country where the peace corps currently has volunteers. I may ride a bike, but I may be discharged from my service if I operate one without a helmet.A lot of the documents want to prepare us for disappointment and loneliness and existential questions about not being able to communicate. It's going to be interesting experiencing those tribulations for a second time.

When we moved to France, Sebastien did not have the same linguistic handicaps that I did. He had been visiting France since his early childhood and his greatest problem with speaking is that he's too creative with words. So I'm going to do my best to be compassionate towards him and that newness even as I struggle myself. In some ways, being in a couple for Peace Corps service makes us lucky--we will have each others hard won companionship  after all. In other ways it will be more difficult, as it has been in France, as it could only be in a country with which neither party has any cultural ties.
But we will have dim sum, that's something.
I wanted to share with you a few quotes from the manual that I found particularly amusing.

"Your host families have probably even been warned that you’ll be unintentionally boorish now and then and that they shouldn’t take it personally."

So that's cool. Anytime I fly off the handle, throw the baby out with the bathwater or cry over spilt milk I can just look at my host family levelly and remind them in English, they had been warned.
Better still, there is an entire section of one manual titled: Where is the hardship?
That had these two gems:

"Doing without is part of the image and mythology of the Peace Corps, and some Volunteers associate it with success. In truth, there is no such equivalency. Even if you do have hot running water, you can still cover yourself in glory just as easily as a Volunteer who sleeps under a date palm and takes sponge baths."

TIL that some people in the Peace Corps get to sleep under date palms, and this fact apparently renders me jealous. But it's an interesting point to make. Just look at all the stuff I won't be taking into industrialized China:

Lol, just kidding. Of course I'll bring duct-tape. 

And I admit that I do find myself a bit wrapped up in the mystique of hardship (and camping.) Nobody's culture should be treated as an opportunity to camp, I actually know this but there is something excited in me that just loves to pack and be prepared and takes great pride in having expected outcomes and then encountering them. I actually prefer those things to pitching my tent in the rain or playing with magnesium and steal, trying to get a fire lit.
...but if I'm being completely honest, playing with magnesium is actually kind of worth it.
Even still, I know that China is going to be a changing experience. It would be limiting to imagine just how. But I might actually feel guilty -guilty, I say!- for not suffering enough. Graciously, the manual urges me to rest assured that I will suffer. Existentially. Possibly to the point of depression induced sickness.

"So in the meantime, don’t worry: It’s still noble work even if the shop on the corner does carry M&Ms. They’re probably stale anyway."

Talk about injustice!
I take it back, please don't.

I've been walking around realizing that I actually enjoy Spring. And it turns out I'm also really going to miss Paris.
 I feel kinda silly for saying that. But there are a million things to celebrate right on my block. How many times  in my life will I ever live near a coffee roaster again? The lady behind the counter knows how I like my beans ground. moulee pour un cafetier italien. Pas de sac. Comme d'habitude. She always says warmly before she wishes us a good sunday.

One time, I was in the mood for a burger but didn't have the dinero for Chez Jeanette so I walked into a bucher shop about two doors down  and asked them if they had any ground beef left. The butcher furrowed his brow  at me and picked up what I considered to be a good cut of meat. Feeling certain that I had mispronounced steak hachee, I tried again, very polity to say it more slowly. He just rolled his eyes and dropped the meat in the grinder.
Just like that.

There is a Pankistani man who sells ripped DVDs from on top of a box every night, right across from where all the free degustations are hosted. He's always so cordial when we talk that I actually look forward to our small intereactions.
I hope he never gets caught.

Feth, I love it here! No decent brunch places but hella good, Indian food four businesses at a time.  I can't even bring down the trash without smelling fresh mint or apples from the fruit stand below our flat. Not to mention the roasted chickens and pigs each time I step on to the balcony, in winter. A short stroll on Saturday gets you to la fontaine Saint Michel where you can manage to find kebab for 50 centimes cheeper than on my street. Or closer even, les forum des Halles if you want to spend an afternoon in the FNAC pretending you can afford a two euro pocket edition.
I have so many good memories of the canal Saint Martin. Drinking cheep german beer along the quai with Clement while he plays his guitar. By bike past the banlieue Saint Denis onward and further till the sidewalks end and the fields begin.

The Fete de la Musique. June 21st, you'll always be there. That was my main reason for coming to France that first summer in 2009--even if I was still in Madrid at the time.
I'll miss you, Summers nights taken by storm and by foot. Hearing accordion players playing non ironically from my bed.
Amazing falafel in the Marais. The best kurdish food I've ever had. A hotdog stand that juices fruits and sells bagles. Ti-punch. Seeing whole skinned rabbits along side the chickens in shop windows.
Coming back from class by velib.
And walking back to my flat with a hot baguette against my side on a crisp Autumn's eve. It's memories like these that keep me so addicted to adventuring.

Our weekend was pretty full. 
On n'a pas fait que la fête, mais comme meme.
We went to my favorite bar, Le Mauri7, on Friday night. Sebastien and I kept it light. The rest of the gang got back around 6 AM. I had to teach Saturday morning and so I wasn't trying to over do it. I'm glad I didn't either, because Saturday was beautiful and Seb and I walked all around the 12th arrondissement along the Promenade Plantee. The city has converted an old raised train line into a garden. We did the whole length, back tracked and then walked home through Bastille  and in through the Marais and back along the Seine. 
Went to a great house party last night not far from here and really enjoyed ourselves. Today I have  to update the FTP server for my class but I plan to do that from bed. It's cloudy and I just want to read. I think I borrowed a book from someone last night called Charly 9. It smells like cigarettes and rhum so I don't want to touch it today. But last night I was very exicited to start reading it.
Makes me wonder what tomorrow will bring. Likely more hardship and peace corps paperwork. But I feel existentially prepared for such an onslaught. I will face it with his hand in mine and by the grit of my teeth. I will likely also have coffee. Ground. For an Italian coffee maker. No plastic bag. Like usual.
Bonne Dimanche.

You have read this article Adventure time GIF / Bastille / Bonne Dimanche / China / France / Le Mauri7 / Marais / Paris / Peace Corps / Promenade Plantee / The Post Modern Talk-o with the title Adventure time GIF. You can bookmark this page URL https://trendcelebrity2014.blogspot.com/2013/03/where-are-hardships.html. Thanks!

Adventure time (Erin goes gorillas)

On December 2nd, two-thousand-and-ten Sebastien and I landed in Paris, at Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to write a new chapter in our lives...

As happy and sappy as it sounds--the lead up was a particular version of hard that we of the first world are permitted to call hell.
Let's take it back to the last day in November when Sebastien and I, with the help of our very best friend Brad, played a game of Tetris verse the back of a U-haul moving van. 

Brad and banana boxes, really couldn't have done it without ya.

The three of us went to sleep on the floor of our apartment once the game was over around 5 Am. Brad left for work around 8, we said our final good byes to him and Seba and I went to unload the van in a storage facility. That was really fun because everything on our bodies hurt! Once our 5 by 15 space was fuller than the Lestrange vault, we decided it was time to go to the airport. Auspiciously, there was a parking lot full of taxi cabs at our disposal.  We found an on-duty dude who spoke French--a small something I interoperated it as a good sign. Predictably, we encountered park-and-walk traffic, but that clean cab smell had me relaxed.  Or perhaps it was the reoccurring muscle spasms that were simply keeping me immobile. On either account, I stared fixedly out the window at the Beltway and focused on important things, like why I never feel obligated to fasten my seatbelt in a cab...

Well, anyway--we got to the airport and I dumped out my water bottle in the trash,  put everything I planned to own for awhile on a conveyer belt and walked slowly through a gate so that someone coud look at me all naked-like over some scanner and I could simultaneously prove I didn't put bomb parts up my bum. At least that's why I think they make us do that. Whatevs, I was through security, we were good.
Have you ever been sitting on your plane waiting to leave when the attendent says something like, "Is Person Mc Lastname and Other Macotherson on the plane?"
Or, "Will Donner party of five please check in at your gate, the plane is waiting."
When I hear this I'm either outraged or curious--it really depends how tired I am. Anyway, when we got to our gate to get on the plane they had apparently been doing that for us. We were five minutes away from missing our nonrefundable, one way, trans-Atlantic, international flight!
If you know me yet, you know I'm a bit of a spaz when it comes to traveling. Being on time is hardly adequate; having four hours with nothing to do, safely on the other side of security is how I like to roll. So, I'm really glad I read the tickets wrong and had no idea we were cutting it so close, because I would have been forced to murder one of us and I really didn't have the energy.

Other fun things happened. For instance, we met the weight allowances for Lufthansa, the german air carrier we purchased our ticket from, but not Delta, their american partner who would actually be providing our flight. So when we landed in Roissy,  we had  5 bags to navigate with instead of the 4 we had planned on, and I ripped my silk stockings.
That was basically the most fun ever.

But really that's where the horror stories stop.
We made it to our hotel and luxuriated in a hot tub, soothing our aches and scrapes and blocking out the Frenchness of the outside world. We walked around that night in a snow encrusted town with all the holiday lights poking through and cheering up the streets. We found a creperie and had  galette crepe with eggs and ham, sweet cider and desert crepe with whipped cream and chestnut butter. It's funny because a year ago, on that night, I would have been afraid to make crepe at home, now it's just something I whip together if we're hungry enough.
We spent the next two weeks with the best friend of Sebastien's father and his family while we looked for an apartment in Paris. I saw the seventh Harry Potter film with French subtitles.--which amused me to no end.

Harry left his backpack at the Burrow, giving Ginny full reign to rifle through it and sniff its contents: deleted scenes, disk five.

I learned so much about French cooking and table service. I tried fine wines and new foods and I got to meet David Sederis at a book signing he was doing at a small book shop. All in the first week!

We found a flat shortly after that with a a balcony, in a cute neighborhood.   And then I don't know, here we are, encore !
It's been quite a year. My level of French has jumped from non-verbal, non-comprehending infant to that of a fully formed toddler--one who's cute accent is sometimes intelligible by those who interact with me most. Sebastien and I have developed a sense of humor about our arguing that has helped mitigate or resolve conflicts more quickly. I've learned a lot about the strength of my partner's resolve and have found inspiration in his dedication to making our lives better--e.g getting up for work at seven, even if we've been partying till 5.  It's not that I'm not capable of that level of duty and responsibility, it's just that I would be crying the whole time.
Turn your judgey face right off!
That's a job for Judy.
OK?

I'm not joking when I say he sets a good example for the sort of  adult I want to be. I love Sebastien and value the time we've put aside in our marriage to explore commitment, the universe and everything else. It's also cool that I can use this blog as a tool to track the progress and watch the way we've both grown and changed. Sure we could be parents and home owners by now--if we had stayed in jobs we weren't happy in just for the money, doing what society expected of us. But instead we've seen more of the world together. We've eaten millions of new chips, experimented with common French meats and animal products in our kitchen here that would be luxury items priced way out of our  range back in the States. (And one time, last week, we even cooked Kangaroo steaks.)

So, to commemorate our one year anniversary with France, I hung out on tumblr and Sebastien played a russian remake of the 90's video game, Fantasy General. But that's just because we're humble people. 

After lunch we went for a long walk dans la bois de Boulogne, pictured above at sunset, and from there we walked to The Avenue des Champs-Élysées and took our first stroll around the Village de Noel, sharing a cup of mulled red wine and returning just in time to play a great board game with friends in the kitchen.  Milestone unlocked.
I tell ya, the internets, I've tried a bunch of stuff to get happy and stay happy and to be perfectly honest with you, all I've ever really been cut out for  [so far] is adventuring. I am grateful that I have partner who is skeptical of all my best ideas enough to help me make them even better. He's also good with map reading, exchange rates and other languages. Bref, without him, team awesome would only really be, team Erin...and that wouldn't be awesome at all. #foreveralone

I guess what I'm saying is, I love someone. He's the Jake to my Finn and it's totally Rhombus.

You have read this article #foreveralone / Adventure time GIF / bois de Boulogne / Champs-Élysées / Fantasy General / Harry Potter / Jake and Finn. GIF / Tetris / true story / tumblr / U-haul / Тетрис with the title Adventure time GIF. You can bookmark this page URL https://trendcelebrity2014.blogspot.com/2011/11/adventure-time-erin-goes-gorillas.html. Thanks!