Finding an apartment in Paris is a bit like finding a new pair of jeans or finding people to interview for a story. You have to try on a lot of jeans to find a pair that fits. You have to call a lot of people to find someone who will speak with you on deadline. You have to go to a lot of apartments to find one you can rent.

Sciences Po Paris students are on their own when it comes to housing. The school has an office to help students if needed, but there’s no university-sponsored accommodation in the city. Landlords usually require the renter to be present and have a bumload of documents proving that the renter is a real person with real money and that (s)he knows other real people with real money who can cover rent if necessary, so I waited until I arrived to find a place — though trust me, I had scoured listings for months. During the first week here, I felt very, very spoiled by UNC’s easy housing system and Chapel Hill’s abundance of apartments available to students. After four failed interviews, I finally found a proprietor that was okay with me leaving the apartment in May.

Please, take a moment to imagine a choir of angels singing Hallelujah in relief.

And please, let me take a moment to, once again, thank Lucie for her help and her friend for recommending the agency I ended up using.

The agency handles short- and long-term leases, so there was no need to lie and say, “Oh, I don’t know when I’m leaving Paris” to landlords who wanted tenants to stay longer than five months. (To be fair, though, I haven’t booked my plane ticket home, so I technically don’t know exactly when I’m leaving. Totally honest.)

The apartment itself is quite nice. It’s on the top floor of a 6-story building. Wealthier people rent rooms on the floors below as offices or housing, and my floor is a hallway of former maid’s rooms.

As you can see above, there’s a slanted wall, so there is some strategy involved with sitting on the bed and getting up in the morning. Thankfully (for once), I’m short. The room itself isn’t that small; it’s about the size of the bedroom I had in my apartment in  Chapel Hill. Only instead of just a bed, desk, chair, in-wall closet, and dresser, this one has a bed, pull-out table, three chairs, a dresser, island, sink, refrigerator, cabinets, closet, and shower.

Oy.

Yes, I’m quite glad that I’m small.

Rent includes electricity, water, heating, and Internet — a very good deal for a Paris apartment. The apartment comes, too, with sheets and dishes — another relief.

No one knew an American would be renting my apartment, but this mug was at the front of the cabinets when I moved in. A lovely welcome gift, indeed.

The water-closet is in the hallway, so it’s not unlike a college residence hall. (I do, however, think I might be the only girl on the floor given the position the toilet seat is always in.)

The building is in a lovely neighborhood. Like, next-to-the-Eiffel-Tower-lovely. I pass many, many souvenir shops on my way home, no matter from which direction I come. If I stand on my bed, reach out through the window, bend to the left, stick out my camera and look through the monitor, I can see the tower.

The closest metro stop is maybe 8 minutes walking distance away, but there is a bus stop close-by, so I’ll be taking the bus to and from school — just like high school, only nicer.

It feels very, very good to have my own place. My pictures and other mementos from home are on that quirky slanted wall, my clothes are organized in a small dresser instead of a large suitcase, and the closet now has a small selection of food, from “American” (sliced) bread to canned haricots verts extra-fins (green beans). Turns out the fridge isn’t quite working, so I’ll have to get my fromage francais a bit later.

If you’d like to send me mail because you love me and know how much I like mail, e-mail me and I’ll send you my address. If you need to send me mail because of something important or logistical, same process. A little man with a nearly unintelligible accent will slide mail through my door, “porte R,” and into my new home.

Guys.

Guys.

The sky was blue today.

The sky was blue today.

It was also blue for a bit of yesterday afternoon — the first blue sky I had seen in 8 days. I didn’t realize it, but, having been adjusting to the cloud coverage, I had kind of forgotten what a clear sky looks like.

And, yes, I have officially been in Paris for a full week as of yesterday.

It’s felt a good deal longer than a week. My flight from Philadelphia to Paris feels ages ago. My first night feels ages ago. My last weekend at home feels ages ago.

Though those ages, that one week (plus today) have been…surreal. And incredible. And, simply put, good.

There have definitely been low points. Getting lost is not an activity I particularly enjoy. Homesickness is kind of like a dull walking pneumonia; symptoms aren’t constant, but when they arrive, you’d really rather feel less encumbered. I still feel a bit handicapped when people speak quickly or with accents new to me.

But, that’s part of the adventure, I suppose.

So far, the adventure has included:

• Taking 3+ hour walks four days in a row.
• Eating enough bread to offset the calories burned on the aforementioned walks.
• Interviewing for a gorgeous and affordable apartment and being told that, while I was very nice, I’m unable to rent it since I’m here only for a semester.
• Eventually finding a less affordable but more gorgeous apartment and being told that, yes, I can have it even though I’m here for a semester.
• Officially signing for an apartment (celebration!).
• Being stopped in the road and asked for directions to the metro stop I usually use and being unable to tell the person how to get there because I was, at the time, lost.

(Just a subnote: If you’re in Paris sometime within the next four months and want to ask me how to get somewhere, do not do it. I and my torn map that’s almost in pieces will be very little use to you unless you have a minute or hour. Anyway…)

• Being stopped in the road the next day and asked for directions for a place I actually do know how to get to because I was, for once in the past week, not lost.

(This is a rarity, though, and should not act as reason to ask me how to navigate yourself around Paris.)

• Being asked if I’m British or American (a point of which I’m kind of proud).
• Being asked if I speak a language other than French.
• Learning all about the French education system and thanking my 50 lucky stars that I’m American.
• Witnessing a political protest and all of the traffic that comes with it.
• Finding Kinder Eggs.
• Eating a McBaguette.
• Carrying a real baguette down the street on my way to temp-home.
• Discovering that the French wish one another a happy new year and dispose of their Christmas trees in the middle of January.
• Getting my Sciences Po student ID card and managing to have a picture more intimidating than the one on my visa.
• Registering for the semester’s classes, pas de probleme.
• Typing (slowly) on a French keyboard.
• Seeing the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Ecole Militaire, Invalides, Lovers’ Bridge, Seine, Pantheon, and Opera House.
• Seeing the Latin, Chinese, and Jewish districts, as well as some very poor and some very posh districts.
• Not developing hypothermia. Yet.

It’s bizarre that all of this has happened in a week, and it’s surreal that I’ll have more than 15 weeks here. I feel like I’ve done so much, but there’s still so, so much to do, both in and out of Paris.

I do hope 4 months is enough.

Things always change. It’s one of those clauses written at the very bottom of the contract of life in fine-print. It’s a terribly important clause that allows us to live healthy and productive lives, to emotionally and intellectually grow, to travel and see foreign bits of the world.

And I was doing just fine with the changes — being away from home, moving time zones, speaking to family and friends only over the Internet instead of face-to-face, not being able to have a set eating or sleeping schedule while everything gets situated.

I was doing just fine, that is, until the homesickness hit me like a ton of bricks.

Now, lovely reader, before you start the:

“You’ll be fine!”

“It’ll pass, don’t worry!”

“You’re in Paris!!!”

I know.

Paris is still beautiful. I’m still immensely grateful for the opportunity to live and study here for four months.

And I’m honestly rather surprised and impressed that it’s taken a week for me to come down with a bout of homesickness.

But there’s no escaping the Paris cold and the Paris gray. The city is constantly crowded, sometimes unbearably so. It’s difficult for me to communicate clearly with people, something that makes me wilt a bit as someone who studies how to transmit information clearly and concisely. I don’t know if I and other orientation attendees often don our prettiest masks of neutrality reserved for meeting dozens of new people, as that’s what we’re doing. There are different stressors each day.

And there doesn’t seem to be a place I would be more fond of at the moment than in my warm and safe bed in the Eastern Standard Time zone in close proximity to the ones I love and those who, so fortunately for me, return the sentiments.

Paris is very lovely and very gray.

The worst part about this, I think, is simultaneously wishing to speak to everybody at home and wishing to keep the mind in Paris, away from North Carolina. This was going to be a different post; it was going to be about when communication dynamics change (hence the title), when going abroad finds you developing communication patterns that feel unnatural because they’re new but needed because they’re important. Example: I’ve had to update my parents (Hi, parents!) on something related to apartments or banking or cell phones or my safety every day since I’ve arrived (which, crazily enough, was a week ago tomorrow), whereas we had our usual weekend chats back home.

I’m not complaining, though, since my parents are awesome.

Some new patterns have been really nice, as I’ve gotten to catch up a lot more with this girl, with whom I’m chatting while writing this.

Hint: We share the above parents.

Some, however, are just weird, and I find that these patterns and homesickness feed off of one another a bit.

When dynamics between people, dynamics of relationships and connections and conversations change, leaving the country doesn’t exactly help stabilize them. I knew I would have to adjust to living in Paris. I didn’t realize how much I would have to adjust to not living at home. It’s more than missing the semester at Chapel Hill; it’s turning what used to be normal life into a facet of the current normal life. If that makes any sense at all, then good, and if not, apologies. There are people to whom I haven’t spoken in ages (actually, just a week) but need to and people with whom I run out of small talk and people with whom I can’t be quite as open anymore and people with whom I’m now an open book.

And it’s more to juggle than I was expecting across the Atlantic.

Plus, while the Internet is one of my new best friends for allowing me to talk with friends and family, it’s a poor replacement for face-to-face interactions (and hugs. Dear French: Your fake kisses on the cheek are spectacularly lame compared to hugs. Sorry. No offense.).

And these new patterns are weird and mildly uncomfortable, a bit like hand-me-downs that one will grow into but are too big for now.

My communication habits, they had fit just fine. But you change sizes while abroad (I can’t decide if mine will grow because of all the bread or shrink because of all the walking), and it’s hard to tell when you’ll fit back into your habits with others or if you’ll need to shrink them in the dryer or try to stretch them out.*

People rarely want to read about the downsides of studying abroad, of adventures, of life. People are excited to hear about Parisian adventures — the newness of life abroad and the foreign lessons untaught at home and the thrills of navigating  with new acquaintances or new independence. I’m sorry that I couldn’t write one for you today.

Paris is very lovely and very gray.

There’s been discoveries, encouragement, and moments of certainty.

There’s been fatigue, confusion, moments of doubt.

It is, however, snowing in Paris tonight. Just a little bit, just a dusting — just like when it snows back home. It’s quiet and peaceful and soft and lovely and gray.

And it’s a very nice thing to see tonight.

—

*This is probably the weirdest metaphor I’ve ever written, second only maybe to comparing siblings and fish in my high school’s yearbook.

My first three days in Paris have been a twister of…of everything, really. Except of literal twisters, of course, as all it’s done here so far is drizzle a gray, cold drizzle.

There’s been jetlag, homesickness, mistranslations, moments of doubt.

There’s been discoveries, communication, encouragement, and moments of certainty.

I think one of the biggest pieces of hail in this figurative, extended-metaphorical twister is balancing dependency and independence. I’m super uncomfortable being dependent on people; I’m most content when I can rely on myself to accomplish what I need to.

But when you’re a newcomer to a country, especially one in which you’ll live for four months, you’re forced to depend on the kindness of others.

I had to depend on two strangers, friends of a friend, to pick me up from Charles de Gaulle Airport 8 a.m. Tuesday when my half-asleep self wouldn’t have been able to decipher the metro maps to make it to my temporary accommodation. (Thanks a million to Solene & Corentin for picking up a stranger, a friend of a friend, at 8 a.m.)

I have to depend on the aforementioned friend, who’s providing my temporary accommodation and who is my favorite French person in the entire universe. She’s helped me look for and interview for apartments, figure out the metro, and learn key French phrases that no one tells you are key during six years of French classes. She also feeds me. She is seriously too kind. (Thanks, Lucie. You’ll basically get a shout-out in every blog post, it seems.)

I had to depend on natives to find the street on which Science Po’s administrative building is located but that isn’t pictured on a city map outside of the metro. I had to depend on many people’s patience towards the fact that I’m far better at reading and writing French than speaking and verbally understanding it. I had to rely on a stranger’s I-don’t-even-know-what-she-was-thinking-hopefully-confused-sympathy when I told her I was trapped in an apartment building’s staircase because I could not figure out how to open that expletive door for seven minutes and the button only made the door make a clinking sound and the door will not budge and oh my word I’m trapped in a French staircase foreeeveeeer.*

So yes, I am unaccustomed to being dependent on others for basic procedures, such as opening a door. And it still feels very, very surreal to be in Paris.

Just the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Apparently I’m in Paris?

But yesterday, I went for a walk by myself (to find the above photo). I didn’t get lost. I went into a bakery to order lunch and, while I did need help translating the French “for here or to go?” not a word of English was spoken in the transaction.

Today, I went to what was supposed to be an apartment interview by myself. I did get lost — in a neighborhood that made me terribly uncomfortable.

Twice.

And then, I got myself unlost.

I found the metro and successfully took it to Sciences Po and its administrative building. I spoke French with the natives who directed me to Rue de la Chaise, a tiny street that almost blends in with the very large Boulevard de Raspail. I picked up my student ID card and went for a walk around the block — which turned into a two-hour stroll. Along my aimless wander, I found La Seine, Le Louvre, & Le Musee d’Orsay.

Apparently, I’m in Paris.

So, yes, I’m learning how to be independent in Paris, how to navigate a huge city in French, how to be self-reliant. And I know it’s something that comes only with time. Three days isn’t a lot.

The first three days have been stressful. But they’ve also been very, very good.

This is, I find, mainly because people are very kind, and when you’ve found a place when you can depend on kindness, you have found a very, very good place.

Tomorrow, I start the welcome program for exchange students, and classes begin a week later. Hopefully by that time I’ll know better how to open French doors. Perhaps, I realize as an afterthought, that sentence works both literally and figuratively.

—

*I am sometimes melodramatic when I panic.

Well, United States, it’s been fun. We’ll say our goodbyes in Philadelphia — a charming place for Americanism, of course, and goodbyes, I’m sure. I’ll see you again in the middle of May. I do hope you stay relatively sane while I’m gone.

For those who don’t know, I’m spending the spring semester of my junior year in Paris, France, studying journalism at Sciences Po (or, if you’re feeling really fancy, L’Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris). I’ve known this day was coming for months, and I’ve hoped it would come for years; I’ve wanted to study abroad since I was a kid. I received a French-English dictionary for Christmas when I was 8, and I, a superbly naive child, was positive I would teach myself French and become fluent. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t). The dictionary sat more or less untouched after the newness wore off, until high school, when I finally enrolled in Beginner’s French. Now a pocket-sized monolingual French dictionary is tucked in a massive purple suitcase, just waiting to be used in Paris instead of the lovely town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I take French classes when I can and journalism classes all the time.

This trip contrasts starkly with the last time (simultaneously the first time) I went to France. It was, not so differently, actually, the spring semester of my junior year in high school. Fifteen other students and I spent a week and a half in Oyonnax, France, with the families of students who had a month earlier stayed at our homes for two weeks. We then spent half a week exploring Paris. Soon, I’ll be living in Paris instead of visiting it. I have, thankfully, packed smarter this time around. I have a good friend there instead of a near-stranger. Last time, I was positive the plane was going to spring a gas leak, and it would go tumbling down to the earth, and if I didn’t die from the impact then surely I was going to die from the imminent explosion. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t.)

And now, instead of all-consuming fear, my mind is split into a perfect dichotomy of nerves and excitement. I really quite don’t like flying. This is my first trip flying by myself, and it’s across an ocean no less. I’m still not fluent in French, and Paris is a massive city to navigate, no matter how many of its people speak English. And I’ll be away from home for more than four months; the longest I’ve been away is five weeks, and even then I’ve been in an hour’s driving distance — not eight flying — at a university that is a second home after two years.

But, I am extremely excited to go. I feel I’m rather overdue for an adventure. I can’t really get over how fortunate I am to spend four months in a gorgeous city studying what I love, training for the professional world while exploring culture and language and life. I’m thrilled to reunite with friends and meet new people and mentors. I can’t wait to speak and read French on a daily basis, even if my classes are in English. I know there will be challenges, but I’m eager to learn how to overcome them. I’m eager to make a bit of Paris a third home.

Yes, I’m excited for the adventure.

Of course, there are many, many people to whom I am indebted, either for helping me prepare for this journey or for keeping me sane during pre-departure. If you’d like, you can skip past the following bit of sap. But I must give enormous thanks to:

• Sarita, who frequently keeps me grounded with her clear head and past experiences abroad;
• Staci, for helping me through the past semester’s foreign territories despite the fact that neither of us had a map, and for the umbrella;
• Marshall, for being an insanely good listener and comforter no matter the dilemma;
• Sarah, who always shares my excitement;
• Tyler, for all of his support this fall;
• Saskia, for reminding me that fear is no excuse to turn down adventures and opportunities;
• Lucie, for her friendship and her beyond-amazing help even before I enter her country, and without whom I probably wouldn’t be doing this;
• Mme Hazard, parce que je crois que nous nous deviendrons les meilleures amies ce printemps;
• everyone at UNC Chapel Hill — especially the Office Study Abroad and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication — for the opportunity. Special thanks to Professors McDonald and Furry for their endorsements in my application; to Anne Steinberg for the knowledge about Paris living; to Michael Penny for never turning down a question; and to Paul O’Connor for his confidence and advice and for welcoming my unannounced visits before his classes.

Thanks to my family, especially to

• my uncle, who helped make this trip possible;
• my grandparents, for their love and support whether they’re next-door or miles away;
• my sister, for being one of my best friends;
• and, most importantly, my parents, to whom I owe absolutely everything. Thank you for inspiring me since I was a child to explore international opportunities, for making this trip happen no matter the sacrifices, and for not only just being present but for also encouraging me every step of the way. And for the assistance with all of paperwork. My word, my mother is a paperwork champion. Words cannot express neither how much they’ve both done nor how much I appreciate it.

And, of course, thank you, lovely reader, for sharing a bit of the journey.

I leave home at 10:30 a.m., Raleigh at 1:30 p.m. (hopefully), and Philadelphia at 6:25 p.m. (hopefully). I arrive in Paris Tuesday, 8 a.m., or 2 a.m. EST (oh, the jet lag  will be fun).

If you want to contact me while I’m abroad, my Skype username is deborahjstrange, and my e-mail address is deborahjstrange [at] gmail [dot] com. My Twitter handle is @deborahjstrange. (Yes, I try to keep it easy for you.) If you would like to send me tangible forms of love (read: physical mail), e-mail me, and I’ll send you my mailing address (once I have one). I won’t tell you my phone number because chances are neither of us can afford the long-distance rates.

So, United States, I’ll see you in May. Take care of yourself while I’m gone. Friends, family — same orders to you. Please.

A bientot,

Deborah