Sunday, lazy Sunday

...I know, I know. My blogging has been seriously lagging. I'm well aware...

This week was good, nothing out of the Paris ordinary, busy with work, etc. Had lunch out with a fellow Quebecois and a few other work folk at this quaint little restaurant run by, you guessed it, a philosopher. I'm sensing more than a theme with Parisian philosophers...if I don't come home, it's because I've decided to join the ranks, live on bread, cheese and wine in a loft in Belleville, write my heart away on a typewriter. Doesn't sound too bad, actually!

This weekend had been just lovely. Went out on Friday night to a friend's birthday party in Montmartre - met the most hilarious, gorgeous, archetype of a Parisian girl who kept me highly entertained all night. I wish I could have just put her in my pocket to keep her and take her with me, pulling her out on the metro, at work...any time I need a little pick-me-up. Instant friends; another theme I'm sensing from Paris. I really don't know what people are talking about when they say Parisians are snobby or cold. I've never met such genuinely kind and real people before. Sure the island is full of open hearts, but there's something different about people here...still haven't put my finger on it. But siiigh. I love it.

Spent the day yesterday wandering around the Marais, ducking in and out of old vintage shops, caught in the hustle of a Saturday afternoon which is pretty nuts, I gotta say. The sidewalks are completely packed, vendors on the street shouting prices, fish markets spilling out from storefronts, kids weaving around the masses on their scooters, the occasional couple kissing in the middle of it all. I honestly feel like I'm walking on a movie set anytime I go to the right bank on a weekend.

Last night a fabulous friend from work (she's an interpreter, Dominican, lovely and definitely my closest confidant in Paris) invited me to ANOTHER birthday party. A loft party waaaay out in the outskirts of town - very strange area, industrial, but the party was good fun. Lame music, but I'm not complaining! Got to dance, met some pretty interesting people, some of whom I also managed to share a cab home with thankfully...that would have been a pricey one, and a dodgy one given the nature of the area! Got home, crashed with a huge grin on my face, exhausted but satisfied.

Today it's a lazy kind of Sunday. A Billie Holiday kind of Sunday. A loads of coffee and maybe a movie or 2 kind of Sunday.

paris - in my heart for keeps.

well, it's official. i'm in love. i'm in love with this big, dirty, crazy, manic, pricey, devastatingly charming city. i know you're probably thinking, geez melissa, aren't you two moving a little too fast? you've only been seeing each other since january - how well do you really even know each other? well, i'm throwing caution into the balmy parisian wind in this case. i'm just going to accept that the heart knows no logic. and i'm going to continue this love affair, possibly for the rest of my life. does this mean i'm staying in paris? not necessarily. but does it mean that it has stained my heart for keeps? definitely.

i'm also going to admit that i'm quite proud of myself. ha! i've been working on this policy paper about indigenous languages as keys to maintaining and understanding biodiversity. i've been pouring over documents/articles/conventions/etc. well, today i submitted another draft to my boss...and she was very pleased. i could tell she was impressed, and it helped that she actually told me how impressed she was, how useful this paper has the potential to be...i sat there slightly stunned (blame it on university-induced-insecurity-of-all-things-on-paper). a little over a month left at work and i'm ready to give it my all.

spent an amazing weekend, just...amazing. the dashing dr.rewilder made a second paris appearance, and i did my darndest to be a decent tour guide. this time around, we did less typical-tourist things, and more crazy-posh-fun-real paris things. great food, great company, great wine..some mayhem, but mostly yet another weekend for the record books of the melissa life series.

Fevers and galas, oh my.

Saturday 'morning' - a steaming cup of coffee, and the lovely Cecilia Bartoli's operatic genius helping me start the weekend. The sun has decided to make a rare cameo, and I'll soon head out for a bike ride and some exploring. I still cannot believe February is almost over...scary to think of how quickly time is starting to pass me by.

Uf! This week! Well, I managed to somehow come down with a feverish flu in the middle of Sunday night, and carried on the fever and general feeling crappiness for most of the week. Despite it, I went to a conference all day Tuesday, in celebration of Mother Language Day. Met a pretty interesting prof from Victoria! Spent the afternoon shmoozing, which I'm fairly certain is my niche. Was invited to a gala on Thursday celebrating the Dominican Republic's day of independence - going WITH a Dominican girl made it that much cooler.

Work and the city in general continue to impress and inspire me. I'm really starting to get a feel for how life would be here. Most importantly, I feel myself going through growing pains of sorts - letting go of old ways of thinking and doing. Dreaming hot frenetic dreams, as if my brain is trying to help illuminate the process. Intrigued as to what lies ahead for me...

Sunday scheming...

So, I know. I've once again been a bad blogger. But I it's because I've been too busy working hard and having a fabulous time, which are pretty great reasons! :)

The week at work was great, lots of new projects, helping out with a conference tomorrow and Tuesday, getting pretty tight with my boss. Would you believe, she's actually hired another intern to do the boring grunt work so that I can continue doing research and writing reports? Crazy!

I went out with a girl from work on Wednesday night, for a some wine and ended up spending hours chatting, drinking and eating, joined later on the in the evening by her lovely partner (ANOTHER philosophy professor, but who now works as a high end art dealer) The couples here are so interesting - the ones I've met are all power couples; both super successful, fascinating lives, lots of education between them. Or is that typically normal and I'm just meeting young professional couples for the first time? Hmm.

Spent Friday night in Belleville, which is fast becoming one of my favourite spots. It is honestly SUCH a different version of Paris than where I live and work. So incredibly diverse, a little grungy, still bohemian, still affordable, lots of charm but also not some place I'd feel completely comfortable roaming the streets alone at night. It's great!

Today I'm heading to the 13th, where there is a festival happening in China Town. Then, Marion and I are hopping on bikes, cruising around the Seine, checking out some of the old cemeteries, and finishing up with mint tea at the Mosque. Lovely!!

small waves, big city

it's hard to gauge when exactly you find a city's rhythm. when you stop needing a map to get around your own neighbourhood, or to know what direction you're travelling in; to know which bus stops are where; to know how the metro stations work and where they connect; to know which boulangier is the best for the cheapest. all these things accumulate over time, i guess. some faster than others. you live and learn, you explore and experience, and eventually things - no matter how huge and intimidating they first appeared - become...natural. it's slowly been happening to me and the process is just fascinating. how can we adapt so well? humans are just so intriguing, wouldn't you say? take me. i'm from a small town in Quebec - i didn't grow up in the hustle and bustle of a big city, but somehow i keep throwing myself into oncoming traffic and managing to keep up. i can work in a remote village of 50 people, but i can also keep up to this Paris pace, and in fact, i thrive in it. humans. so strange.

i'm continuing to make small waves at work...more potential consultant work lined up once the internship wraps up. and oh yes: i wrote a letter of recommendations to this task force at work about new ideas for partnerships and funding (i thought, what the heck. might as well try to get my voice heard while i'm here!); now i've been invited to join the task force and met with them this afternoon to go over our proposal....which we're going to present to the director-general next week. yes, i...lowly intern...am going to meet and greet with the D-G. my boss said that's usually unheard of...so. i'm stoked. and so is she. :)

Philosopher parties and Feist sightings

It's Sunday...and the sun is shining. I'm just finishing breakfast before I head out into the city, so unfamiliar in this bright light. This weekend has been fantastic. Saturday was a bit of a write off spent in bed, drinking coffee, eating food all day and watching a Woody Allen movie marathon. Pas mal!

Friday night's party with Parisian philosophers proved to be quite amusing, ridiculous, hilarious and generally just fun. Picture this: tearing through the evening streets on the back of a motorbike until we reach an apartment in the 13th. Enter the room, and there are stylish, interesting looking people milling around, books everywhere, an older man in a wheelchair (who was a pretty well known writer/philospher before suffering some kind of stroke and now cannot speak a word), champagne, wine, food everywhere, people smoking, laughing. It's someone's birthday, my roommate's niece, but I'm being grilled by his other niece. Within 3 minutes she knew my whole life, I don't even know her name. She eventually warms up to me, and keeps her eye on my champagne glass, making sure it was filled, mixing me drinks, offering me food, etc., the rest of the night. Great hostess.

I stand around as slowly but surely all the guests take their turns introducing, kissing cheeks, oh where's your accent from? Fast forward to late night, where a group of guests, honestly caricatures from some French film, each more hilarious and quirky than the next, surround me, having realized that I look remarkably like...Feist. Ohhh sing us a song! We have a celebrity in our midst! Etc etc. The drinks were flowing, the conversation was flowing, and eventually I had to call it a night...or early morning, and head home.

I have a souvenir from the night, or actually two: one, a book written by one the philosophers I met at the party titled "Dispositifs/Dislocations"; it's apparently impossible to understand - a mixture of poetry, the analysis famous works of art, literature, and music (the guy is apparently a complete genius)...but I'm going to take a stab at it. The other souvenir is the incessant phone calls I'm receiving from a French professor (also a hybrid shark/wolf, dangerous and sleazy) that I naively gave my number to earlier in the night, while trying to be nice. Sigh. Ah well, he'll get the picture.

auto vs moto

siiiigh. What a week!

I'm sitting at my desk, in my gorgeous Parisian room...Billie Holiday crooning me into a state of relaxation, aided and abetted by the glass of Côte du Rhône by my side, along with a platter of fresh baguette, two different types of extra stinky cheese, a few dolmades, hummus, and smoked almonds. A lovely little snack, if I do say so myself.

Funny commentary: auto vs. moto (to be said in a French accent, for optimal rhyming pleasure)
You know how in Canada, when people have road rage, it's typically tense, heated, irritated, occasionally violent, and brings with it a general sense of malaise? Well, here...and I'm saying this as a pedestrian, the way roadsters express rage is honestly...comical. They yell at each other alright, but with exaggerated bravado, complete with ridiculous gestures and pulls of the face. They follow each other tauntingly, but harmlessly, provoking each other slightly, and always with a sense of humour about it. I watched a fella on a moto argue with the drive of an auto well into the light change, both adament about their right of way, the other person's insolence, etc. They swirve, somehow not colliding, somehow not running people over as they rush thru red lights. Pedestrians yell, they yell back, drivers not even involved yell back. Needless to say, I'm just glad I stick to the sidewalks and metros; though these both come with their own complexities and nuances, which perhaps I've delve into some other day, some other post.

So, it's Friday. Another week gone, somehow. I've started a report on linguistic and biological diversity, which is extremely difficult to navigate given the direction it needs to go in - but I'm feeling pretty confident that it's going to be convincing, useful, and will hopefully rock the socks off the conference it's going to be presented at. *Fingers criss-crossed*.

Off to a party tonight, and hoping to weather cooperates (no snow today, and the SUN actually came out!) Planning a pretty low-key weekend. Hoping to go on a picture taking mission, so that I can start visually documenting some of my life here. For all you guys know, I could be in Paris, Texas working on a ranch!