An American Teenager in Paris
One of the greatest opportunities I ever had was to go to school for a year in Paris. Parsons School of Design where I went to college has a campus there and I was lucky enough to get accepted to study in it. It was my first time living out of the house as I was a commuter student in New York. The school had no dorms so it was up to us to find our own apartment. Being the mama’s girl I am, my mom came with me and did a lot of the negotiating. Her being fluent in French didn’t hurt either.
What a time. I’m just feeling a little sentimental about it, maybe because I am coming up on a big change in my life and moving on to a new town, New Paltz, leaving Queens, my hometown, again. Maybe because I have never been a big picture taker and I feel a need to record these memories as they pop up for fear I will lose them as time goes on. Maybe because I feel under the weather today and just want to remember those days.
The fashion department there was one room. All classes were held in it other than our liberal studies (of which there was one per semester). I guess it looks exactly the same because the picture on the current website looks exactly like how it did when I was there (10 years ago!!) We would be like little hermits up there hearing the fine art students playing hackey sack through the window in the courtyard below. I found this accounting of a students year of fashion study at Parsons Paris and it’s more accurate and eloquent than I will ever write. If you really want a feel for what it was like, check it out.
I remember my roommate and I living in a great sublet. It was the apartment of some VP at Mercedes and was quite modern for Paris having an elevator, balcony, wall to wall carpeting, etc. Except there was no furniture. And us being on shoestring student budgets, we never bothered to buy any. We had mattresses on the floor, and found a spindle that cable comes wrapped on and rolled that home to make a table. We painted it all funky colors. It was pretty cool. At one point my roommate got sick of sitting on the floor all the time and she bought a chair. Just one kitchen chair that she would sit on sometimes for 10 minutes here and there. I wish I had a camera for that. I know what you’re thinking…Why a fancy apartment if you are on a shoestring budget??? My parents picked up the tab on education, a roof over my head while I was in school, and I had a modest allowance for food and recreation – although they did encourage me to travel and make the most out of my time there. Anything else I was on my own. The apartment was in a safe neighborhood and walking distance from the school, which was also walking distance from the Eiffel Tower. Knowing that there could be a transportation strike at any time (and there was for a whole month!), my mom insisted on the walking distance thing.
I remember that neither of us knew what a circuit breaker was and we blew a fuse one day while doing homework. I called the electric company, garbled my way through making an appointment in French that was about 5 days in the future, and we went about our daily business without electricity. We had tons of candles and would do our homework either at school or in the hallway of our apartment building. Homework would usually consist of paintings and illustrations so we had painting supplies, and mini easels spread out all over the place. I remember after a few nights of this one of our neighbors came out to ask us what was going on. We tried to describe that there was a blackout and he marched into our apartment and flipped the switch. It was like the place exploded! Every light went on, 2 radios went at the same time too! We had been living in the dark for 3 days! We were both 18 and knew zip about being on our own! We were totally clueless! By the way, I never cancelled the electricity appointment and they never came. Gotta love Paris.
I learned to smoke in Paris. It’s not something that I am proud of, but it’s quite a feat to go anywhere without someone impossibly cool looking even cooler smoking a cigarette. I started out with Fin 120’s menthol. A 120 is basically as long as a pen. Put it in a cigarette holder and you’ve got yourself a look going! It created the perfect pause when I would be searching for the right word in French in conversation, or waiting for the metro, or simply breathing in and out got too boring. (kidding)
Because our apartment was one of the more roomier ones, my roommate and I invited our whole class over (mostly homesick Americans) for a Thanksgiving picnic in our living room. (If you know me at all, you know that me and the kitchen are NOT best friends. As a matter of fact, I managed to set the back of my favorite sweater on fire trying to make tea the second day I was in my apartment. While I was wearing it. That’s the last time I ever leaned against a burning stove! Luckily my roommate put me out before I got hurt.) I think I spent the majority of my bills allowance calling my grandmother for cooking advice that day and then running back and forth to the supermarket! Dinner was a great success.
As I think of more things I will post them on my blog. I would love to have a section filled with stories from Paris. 
October 30th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Awesome! love these stories