First impressions...

As part of my journal entries for the class I'm taking in Paris, I get to write about some generalities, like cultural differences, interacting with the host family, food, and transportation. I neglected to make a specific post about my first moments in and impressions of Paris this time, but I'd like to get that down into writing before I forget too much.

Whereas the other students on the program were coming from the United States (okay, with the exception of Ryan, who was coming from Italy by train), I flew from Hong Kong by way of Qatar. I only brought one suitcase on this trip, but in Hong Kong I picked up a suitcase of church materials for the Mandarin speaking members in Paris, of which there are a surprising number! When I arrived in Paris, I was surprisingly very much awake - I guess traveling east to west is easier than the other direction. The only problem?

I had no idea what to do with myself.

My roommate in Provo, who's here in Paris doing an internship, had arranged to meet up at 6pm at the LDS Institute building, which I felt absolutely confident I could find. My flight, however, got in at 8 am. I had hours and hours to kill.

So I got my bags, and headed for the train into Paris, where I met my first problem: I had to buy the ticket with cash, because the ticket-dispensing machines here can't read my card. And there was no ATM in the station, which was already a 10 minute (thankfully free) train ride from the airport center. So I hopped back on the free train, crossing my fingers and looking for a distributeur de billets (French for ATM). I found one, got some cash, and twenty minutes later found myself on the RER train, which connects Paris and its suburbs.

"Great," I thought. "Now what?" It was only 10:30 am. Solution: McDonalds.

Katherine had sent me an email with directions to the Institute building, and I could still remember which Metro station to get off at, and although I felt a little less than comfortable dragging these two enormous bags around with me on the Paris underground, I couldn't think of anything better to do. After a transfer or two on the Metro, I found myself totally turned around, blinking in the sunlight, in front of the McDonalds by the Hôtel de Ville. Another bit of useful information I'd gotten from Katherine: free wifi at McDonalds. So I walked in, luggage and all, ordered a fry and a Perrier water, and went straight to the Internet.

I checked my email, let my parents know I was safe, wrote to a couple friends, and tried to figure out how to get to the Institute from where I was. As it turns out, I was just down the street. Knowing the only time constraint I was dealing with was the battery life of my computer, I ate slowly and wandered around the "intraweb" (yep, colloquial Grace English, sorry).

By noon, I'd gotten up the courage to wander back out onto the streets of Paris. I found the Institute building with relative ease, and there met four people who saved me quite a lot of trouble. First, I ran into the missionaries - and the Chinese Elders at that! Even more, one was the brother of my dear friend Gabriel Jaquier. The Elders took the books off my hands. They are excellent, by the way. The Elders, and the books.

Second, I meet the full-time senior couple, the Stovers, who run the Institute. They were kind enough to let me keep my suitcase there for the day while I headed out to wander a bit.

A big thank you to those four individuals. Merci mille fois.

From the Institute, I wandered past Le Forum des Halles, a big shopping center, and found my first cathedral in France: L'eglise de Saint-Eustache. The photo in the right margin is actually from that church.

My experience there was beautiful. I sat down to read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and the Scriptures, which actually are quite complementary works, in the presence of the lofty grandeur you see here:



After leaving the church, I wandered some more, but by 3:30 the menace of jetlag was setting in with full force, so I headed back to the Institute. I tried to read, but couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to read a full sentence. I laid down on the wooden floor with Dostoevsky under my head and slept for a solid hour and a half, when Katherine arrived. I woke feeling refreshed, and we headed to the Champs-Elysées to celebrate our being together in Paris. By then, night had fallen, and we decided to get macarons (the miraculous gluten-free pastry!) from Ladurée.

To die for. Delicious. My mouth is watering now just thinking about it. The experience in photos:




Katherine's really cute, but I hadn't showered in like, 48 hours. No big deal. After eating pure joy, we headed back to Katherine's sketchy apartment in the ghetto (yep, she lives in the French version of the Projects). I slept like a rock.

There you have the story of my first day. What were my impressions? First, that I was vaguely lost, unshowered, and not exactly sure how things would play out.

Second, that in spite of all that, I was confidant that I could manage, with a little sweat from lugging my bags around a foreign city (not to mention the good work out it was to maneuver 80+ pounds of luggage up and down the stairs in the Métro).

Third, I was really grateful for the presence of a network of people to cushion my landing, even though I arrived earlier than the rest of my program.

Fourth, there was the relish of macarons in flavors like praline and green apple. Yum, yum, yum. It was a nice, calming contrast to the morning, and inspired a kind of giddy excitement about where I was and what lay before me over the next few months.

Last, there was a moment of exhaustion, which perhaps means I was more anxious than I was really aware, or perhaps that my body was just really confused about what time it was.