Autumn in Paris

Parc de Belleville; Paris, France.

Hey all! Autumn has arrived in Paris – it’s absolutely charming, spectacular colors, leaves lining winding cobblestone passages, mist and watery reflections of the cityscape in the mornings. The long walks are becoming chilly, my daily life is now organized around the rain, and my five-euro black umbrella is getting more than its fair share of use. Classes are in full force, most midterms have come and gone, and I’m currently trying to avoid thinking about my Sorbonne “devoir de connaissance” next week – that I just discovered the existence of yesterday :O In short – my Parisian life continues full-speed ahead, and the patterns of the new season have served as a subtle reminder for me of how the time is passing (and how rarely I’m writing new blog posts – whoops).

The University of Oxford; Oxford, England, UK

I had a wonderful return to London for fall break – I saw the awesome Ryan Grimes and Scott Abrams in Oxford who showed me around the colleges and the town, and we had a classic English tea-and-scones outing just before I left. It’s always so funny to see friends on a new continent – everything feels the same sometimes, the way you interact and the way you talk, as if it were only last week that we caught up on the quad or exchanged stories over brunch at Dfo. It was also wonderful to feel the same pensive sentiments about people or things from back home reverberate back from my friends – it’s so easy to think that you’re alone in your bizarre daily rearrangements of how you feel about home, or in the immediate reversals of whether you want to stay or leave. And then of course – London itself was absolute paradise. I can’t possibly explain the sentiment of “home” that the city holds for the now; how it felt to peruse the old streets of Marylebone that I once had at my doorstep, or to get pizza once again from Arancina, the best pizzeria in Notting Hill (heck, in London!), or how rewarding it was to rediscover the beautiful monuments and museums that I had kept so clearly in my memory. It was nothing short of invigorating. And of course, the new blended into the old! I met some wonderful distant Norwegian and Scottish family, I helped my over-energetic four- and six-year-old cousins plant radishes and fire Nerf-guns, I got a super-realistic-looking burn makeuped onto my arm for a burns video on Halloween (to the shock and horror of my friends on Snapchat), and I met two incredibly awesome Rochesterians friends-of-a-friend for drinks in Kensington! I’d literally always wanted to go to that pub we went to, and I was entirely thrilled with how it went, both by the cozy atmosphere and by the company (though I was shocked and thrilled to learn that a Jewish, vegan, Harry-Potter-loving, Irish-rock-band-adoring, Anglophile artist existed just across the Channel that I’d hadn’t hung out with before!) :) It was a charming trip back to my comfort zone, and I’d say I were sorry to leave if I weren’t going back in two days (yes, I’m in love with England)!!

Notre-Dame de Reims; Reims, Champagne-Ardenne, France

Classes here have been alright – I’ve essentially decided definitively though that the humanities are not where my heart is. It’s been quite an interesting experience to live out a semester as a language/history student, and I can handle the material of course, but the passion of doing what I adore is not here. You know that when you begin doodling glycolysis during your lectures and rememorizing anatomy in your free time, you’re missing an (albeit super nerdy) element of your life. The lab goes well of course and is a mild replacement for the science I’m missing, but I will be beyond relieved to return to a science-heavy lifestyle and learning about DNA and chemistry again. I feel like I could win one thousand trivia competitions with the knowledge of European history that I’ve accumulated, but sometimes I do tire of learning about dates and wars, and it’s frustrating to see history repeat itself so many times (more on this later). I don’t dislike the humanities of course, I do enjoy what I’m doing, but I think it should be tempered with some hardcore biology or chemistry as a necessity. Once major product of this semester, I will say, is that I’ve almost entirely become committed to the idea of pursuing a Ph.D. along with the M.D. – I’ve become convinced from all the research I’ve done that my life wouldn’t be totally complete practicing only medicine, so the question now is really how I’ll go about it (and whether I’ll require people to call me “Dr. Dr. Rogers” as lifelong compensation for all of the Mister Rogers jokes I’ve endured).

Champagne chez Taittinger; Reims, France

My life in Paris has been remarkably chill – a decrease in the tourism and an uptake in the hipster walks through the lesser-known areas, including in particular the 14e arrondissement where I’m living. I had kind of ignored it a lot at the beginning because it’s not as popular and lit as the center of Paris, but I’m opening up to its more laid-back charm. I’ve really been living up the café life – they become places for studying, for catching up, for hanging out if you’re bored, really anything. I suppose one good thing about how this IES program I’m doing splits up its students is that it means that when we want to meet up, we do so at a cool place in Paris rather than someone’s dorm room or something. So I’ve been seeing a lot of the city that way, going to cafés along the Champs-Elysées and in Mabillon along Boulevard Saint-Germain. I’ve also been going out to restaurants a bit more (the inexpensive and casual ones, anyway) which has been a good way to know the city better. I took a day-trip to Reims last week (the champagne capital of the world) and walked around a lot (shoutout to Sarah and Andrew!) – it’s a quaint and pleasnt little French town, and of I course we naturally toured a champagne cave and had a glass of €130-per-bottle-champagne (complimentary, thankfully) – the best champagne I’ve ever had. And then last week my host fam from Rennes came to Paris so I got to see them all again! It was a wonderful day, just like old times in Bretagne, it’s so charming to see them and feel a part of it all again :)

Some (previously alluded-to) words about the American election – it was quite an experience to watch it from here. Needless to say, the world is not amused by America’s choice. Regardless of anyone’s own political beliefs, I can say this honestly: our nation’s choice makes us look neither powerful, nor forward-thinking, nor “great;” it makes us look frightened, uncontrolled, and denialist. Our actions (particularly the environmental ones) will now continue to have devastating effects on the world and completely undermine the sacrifices the nations of the world agreed to make right here in Paris one year ago. It embarrassing to repeatedly have to account for the actions of my fellow citizens, and humiliating to be an international representative of a political movement with which I so deeply disagree. I am often told that I’m fortunate that I’ve “escaped” this election, but I can say that while I might be saved the troubles of protests, rallies, and omnipresent news, I instead have the task of giving an international voice to our country on a very personal level – and trying to justify the choices of so many angry and disgruntled people whose beliefs are now commonly viewed as representations of my own. Love wins, as always, and I’m actively reconciling my feelings with reality and trying very, very hard not to give in to the aggressive anti-Trump lashing-out that I so often see – but it’s a steep road, a very steep one. But in the end, love does trump hate, and that’s a message that is best kept remembered, deep down to the core. In the wise words of a wonderful friend (shoutout to Chris Muller), "I'm happy to call you all my friends and I still will be no matter what happens."

Now that we’re over with the present: voici my plans for the future! The next couple weeks will be in Paris, and then I’m having a flurry of traveling (as per usual haha) – I’ll be spending the beginning of December in Germany with some distant family in Geilenkirchen, and then the following weekend again in Germany, in Cologne with Ida (super excited to see your city now that I’ve shown you mine!), and potentially the last weekend will be back once more in Rennes! And then it’ll be off to Rhodes, Greece, for the end of the year!

Cheers friends – until the next! :)

Paris, France. 13 November, 2016.