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I Don't Know How to Say Goodbye in English
April 25, 2008 - 12:00amIt is an interesting writing environment when you are stranded in Rome and the only thing for you to do is wait and hope for some divine act and ... write your last abroad column?
Yes, well, soldier on mate.
Through life you will have these moments — moments where you are sitting on a sleeping bag on top of a hostel bunk, but you are still concerned about some awful sort of skin disease, moments when you feel abandoned because your mom, sister and guy you were supposed to meet up with yesterday can not figure out there is a reason you are not responding — because you can not — and that they need to call. These are moments where you are numb with doubt.
Au Revoir, France
April 18, 2008 - 12:00amI am currently asking myself how one says goodbye to Paris. I have said goodbye to people, places and things before, but never like this. An image of life without baguettes from local boulangeries, without infinite open-air markets brimming with bright, fresh produce or architectural and historical wonders around each corner suddenly seems bizarre, unfamiliar. When riding in the metro, I see one of the most beautiful urban views that exists: the Eiffel Tower, essentially the symbol of Paris, stands over the Seine, the basilica of the Sacred Heart a small silhouette in the distance. In less than two months, I will return to a city where this view is mere memory, and I ask myself: Is that possible?
"Ah, the East End ... Where's That Exactly?"
April 11, 2008 - 12:00am“Don’t ever go out alone. Ever.”
These were the parting words of my airport shuttle driver, moments after arriving in London, in reference to my school’s location. Every so often, over the rare drink in the even more rare club in the more posh (read: more touristy) area of central London, I’m asked where I live. After a brief internal investigation of whether said asker is a stalker, I answer, “At Queen Mary.”
Blank stare.
“In Mile End …”
Unconfident nod.
“East London?”
The English Invasion
April 4, 2008 - 12:00amThere is a French institution called the Académie française that strives to control the usage and maintain the purity of the French language. Founded in 1635, the Académie also works to prevent the Anglicization of French. For example, rather than saying “tie-break” or “walkman,” the Académie française imposed the use of “jeu décisif” and “baladeur” in France. Though they do not say as much on their website, I believe the Académie mourns the loss of the era where French was the language spoken in the European courts, the language of the aristocracy.
Falling in Love in a Foreign Land
February 29, 2008 - 1:00amI am in love.
It came on me, suddenly, without warning, on a London day like any other.
I woke up at 9 a.m. to the warm sound of my various flat mates laughing, soft voices and heavy accents wafting to me from the kitchen with the clank of spoons in cereal bowls. I cannot remember a time before arriving in London when this phenomenon — waking up with a smile — occurred. Similarly, as I look in the mirror, my reflection is strange to me. I do not recognize my face without bags underneath my eyes.
At 1:30 p.m. I threw open my curtains to another sunny day. It was an honest warm day, rather than one of those — brilliantly sunny, but a chill forty degrees — that catch newcomers to London unawares.
Let's Talk About Sex
February 8, 2008 - 1:00amWhen passing by the metro station Tuileries, I am greeted by a larger-than-life image of Josephine Baker’s breasts. I don’t note this because I have any particular attraction to her breasts. Rather, they are a blatant paradigm of the cultural difference between the French and American attitudes toward sex.
A New Semester
January 25, 2008 - 1:00amSeveral weeks ago I found myself in a very familiar situation. For the second time in four months I stood at Logan Airport’s International Terminal in Boston, preparing to board a transatlantic flight from the United States to Paris. In some ways, nothing had changed since September, when I first arrived in Paris as an American student on the Educo (Emory, Duke and Cornell) in Paris program: though I was certainly more familiar with my European destination, waiting in airport terminals always conjures uncertainty in me. I inevitably fall into asking myself banal questions.