i received an email this morning from a contact in paris who had spoken to me about a job opportunity teaching esl at an international school for three weeks in july. my resume was sent and approved in january and several emails, including one in which i provided lesson plans, assured me that the question was not the availability of a position but whether or not i would be available for full time rather than part time.
based on these transactions i got my passport renewed, bought a plane ticket ($2000) and put a down payment on a hostel in one of my favourite neighbourhoods. i had started to accumulate resources and started imagining how i could use field trips to local landmarks as fodder for lessons.
if you speak french, you know that my opening was portentious and that the email was not good news. yes chers amis, my contact regrets to inform me that inscription into the summer school program was less stellar than anticipated and he will not be able to offer me any work!!!!!!!!!!!!!
as i read it i was at once mortified that i'd now have to find a new way to finance my living expenses and elated that i wouldn't have to be in the classroom for 8 hours a day.
if i seem strangely calm about the outcome it's because a part of me knew that this might happen. i had prepared myself in some subconscious way for it. as i wrote an email at one point in march describing my desire to teach full time rather than half my fingers were leaden and i put off sending it for two or three days. part of me knew that the entire purpose of going to paris was to be in paris and not to work, be drained, have a glass of wine and sleep in paris.
i feel freed in a way. now i can fill my days at will. i can do paris the way i have always wanted to do it. i have been three times before, each time in longer spurts but never for more than a week. each time i've tried to squeeze in as much as i could and pounded the pavement for hours on end not wanting to leave a nook unexplored. i've always enjoyed myself but this time i want to do the things that aren't part of the package tour. i want to spend a day at the sorbonne, reading anais nin's journals, simone de bouvoir's work. i want to bring my music with me and try to coerce my way on stage and sing a song or two. i want to go to the movies with the locals, to bring a sketchbook to the musee d'orsay.
it's a gift, this. a chance to breathe, to be a vacation in the truest sense of the word. just going to have to count my pennies and make those baguettes last!
isn't it odd how places that are half way across the world can feel like home? i remember being stunned at how familiar everything felt and how even the dodgy bits had charm. i felt the same way when stepping of the ferry in Dublin. The air felt familiar and the experience had a deja vu like quality. there might be something to that past life thing after all...
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