Expectation and Anticipation

About a year ago, Jason and I started talking about our plans for the future. I was starting to get fed up with things at school and he was eager to finish up his PhD and move on to the next step in his career. The conditions were optimal for a big life change and when he mentioned that Europe was a possibility, I didn't even hear any of the other options. This is everyone's dream, isn't it? A year or two in another country, living a great, exotic adventure, discovering a new culture... How do you turn down an opportunity like that??

Moving abroad is not easy. Armed with this knowledge, I braced myself for the paperwork and the confusion and the frustration of the logistics of taking my life across an ocean. I readied myself emotionally for the fact that I was leaving everything and everyone that I have ever known behind. I even prepared to be unprepared: There will be unforeseen issues that I couldn't have guessed would come up and they will be a problem. I knew all of this going into it and I was ready to take on the challenge.

Even with all this preparation, it's still hard. Finding an apartment is hard. Finding a job is hard. Making friends is hard. Trying to communicate when you know you don't have all the right words to express what you need is hard. I had a very comfortable life in Baltimore. I was finally feeling confident about my skills in my career, and even though I wasn't thrilled with my school at the time, I was talented enough to work for a functioning school and make a real difference. I had lots of friends that I could call up any day of the week and we could go get a drink or watch a movie or just stay up late chatting about nothing. I had places that I liked to go. I had routines.

I have none of those things now.

And then I think I have only been here for 13 weeks. I have spent just over three months in this country and I have done it completely on my own. There was no group or agency or organization that brought me here. There was no one waiting at the airport when I arrived. There was no one specially prepared to make my life easier. And, although this is an adventure Jason and I are doing together, the actual "together" part doesn't start until March when he arrives.

I still stand by my decision to come first. I was stalled out in Baltimore and I needed to do something else or I was going to lose my mind. I know that it would have been frustrating for Jason and I to both be floundering around here together, especially because I'm supposed to be the language expert. I am only now feeling like I can function in any situation here. At the same time, though, I am so eager to have someone to come home to at the end of the day. I will look forward to weekends again because it will no longer mean sitting in my apartment alone, wishing I had someone to talk to. I will wake up in his arms again.

March 5th, 11:40am. It's a week away and I have so much left to do before he gets here. I have to finish the paperwork for the apartment I found for us so that we can spend as little time as possible in this desolate dorm room. I have to go to the bank and talk to my buddy about the advantages and disadvantages of getting a joint account. I have to transfer my rental insurance. I have to figure out what I'm going to do about internet/TV in the new place. I have to find some furniture for the living room. I have to make sure that the transition is as smooth as possible for Jason.

I feel like I have something to prove when he gets here. See? I told you I would get things set up for us. I told you I'd take care of it. I told you this was going to be fun. The truth is I don't know if it's going to come together like that. In his scramble to finish his PhD, he hasn't really had time to work on his French and he's embarrassed that he is coming to a country and knows none of the language. I don't have any cool places to take him to dinner because I haven't been anywhere. I don't have a favorite bar to take him to because I hate the two bars I've been to here. I don't even have a local boulangerie to take him to for his first real French baguette. Gah! What have I been doing here???

I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I have a week. I'm working on it.

Overqualified

Today, Ema, the three-year-old I take care of, pooped her pants. We were in the middle of a rousing game of Hide and Seek and I guess she was so committed to staying hidden that she wouldn't give up her spot, even to go to the bathroom. She told me where she was going to hide before I even started counting! It's not that serious!

As soon as I found her, she announced, "J'ai fait caca." I was hoping I had just misunderstood her or that she had incorrectly used the past tense. "Déjà?" I asked. "Oui." Upon further investigation, it was as I had feared. I big old load in her underpants. At least it was one solid mass and I could pop it right into the toilet. Unfortunately, I had to cross the hall to get from the salle de bain to the WC (curse you Europe and your separate rooms for everything!) and in trying to transfer this monstrous turd that would put most grown men to shame from culottes to toilette without soiling les mains, it plopped onto the floor. Awesome. Still warm!

To make things worse, I've got a half naked child with poop on her butt running around looking for baby wipes, which are in the shower room in parents' bedroom, which is locked. Thankfully, the key was still in the door and we got in and out real quick but there was a moment where I was legitimately afraid we were about to walk in on some crazy stuff in there. Why else would you lock your bedroom door in the middle of the day?

Why do kids hate baths? Rather than go through a million wet wipes, don't you think it would be easier to just hop in the tub real fast? But Ema, always wanting to do everything toute seule refused. Fine. Just get the poop off your butt. And then it was a battle to get her to wash her hands. You were just handling poop!!! I saw you! Yeah, it was dégoûtant and that's why you need to wash your hands.

It was in this moment that I remembered that I have a Master's degree in education from Johns Hopkins University. This time last year, I was teaching AP Psychology. Today, I am handling feces.

My, how my life has changed.

"I'm Bored" is a Useless Thing to Say

I know, Louis CK, I know. I guess more accurately I am an an impasse and I am mistaking my rut-induced frustration for boredom. Here's what's up:

I have been doing a pretty lamentable job of posting lately, in part due to being more busy than I was before the holidays, but mostly because things have just been pretty boring. It has been in the 40s and rainy pretty much every day for the last month and that puts a real cramp in my street-wandering exploration style. It's hard to get out of bed in the morning when you know you're going to be cold and wet all day. My little umbrella was simply no match for the torrential downpours that are common in the afternoons and it certainly was not meant to stand up to the gale force winds that struck last week. I finally caved and bought a legit parapluie that springs open with a push of a button. I'm fancy like that.

Jason got his PhD (YAYAYAYAY!) but now there's this awkward couple of weeks for revision, publishing, packing, and all the other little things that have to happen before you move out of the country. This was expected, but it doesn't make it any less annoying that he's done and he's still not going to get here for another month.

In my search for a new place to live, I am growing ever more anxious to get out of my current apartment. I am tired of these paper-thin walls that allow me to hear every thrust of the rogering the girl upstairs is getting, I am tired walking through the unpredictable but always overbearing stenches of the first floor, I am tired of paying 500€ a month for this one-room monochromatic existence. It's time to go.

I am frustrated with my social situation. Remember freshmen year of college when you befriended the first people you saw because you were just so desperate to not have to eat at the dining hall alone? You stayed up all night laughing at old movies, you probably had that "deep conversation" about how color doesn't actually exist and my perception of red might be different from yours, and you cried when summer break came around, knowing you wouldn't see each other for a whole 3 months. But then remember how you got back for sophomore year and you didn't talk to 90% of those people again because you realized they were crazy? That's what I feel like right now.

I feel like I went away for the holidays, spent time with people that I am actually good friends with, and realized that my relationships here are so... unfulfilling. Of the two and only two people I would consider my friends (not friends of friends or classmates or acquaintances), one of them loves to go out but kinda hulks out after a few drinks, and the other is a teetotaling powder keg of emotion that will up and leave in an angry huff at the drop of a hat. I am too old for the drama! And it is literally every week that we go through the song and dance of "Oh... was I being ridiculous? I'm really sorry. I promise I will never do it again." I know I am just enabling their poor behavior but the only other option is to spend every day alone. I keep talking about joining the damn rugby team and I keep coming up with a million excuses to not go and do it but it's starting to get to a point where I will literally go crazy if I don't find some new people to hang out with. Make the phone call, get on the bus and go.

I feel stuck in terms of my "place" here. I cannot stay at Campus Bissy and Babylangues for two years. I am trying to figure out some kind of more permanent employment but it's not going as smoothly as I had hoped. I just don't even know where to begin. Last weekend, I met a bunch of the people that Jason will be working with and while they are all super friendly, they are all married with multiple children. It made me feel really young but not exactly in a good way. I know Jason and I are not there yet but it was the first time I have been in a group of my "peers" and felt like a little kid.

Ugh. Time for wine.

Super Bowl Sunday

Quick ways to tell you're not in the US anymore:

1) You have to download a program to stream the Super Bowl because it's not technically legal for you to watch it online from where you are.
2) You have to explain the rules of football (No, not that football. Think rugby's strange cousin.)
3) Chips and guac were replaced with crêpes and galettes. Nutella is standing in for nachos. In the absence of potato skins, there's nothing but pain au chocolat.
4) Instead of drinking Boh, you're drinking Beaujolais

It's 3:00am, I have class and work tomorrow but SOMEONE has to represent Baltimore in Bordeaux and it looks like the charge has fallen to me. I won't let you down, Ravens.