My birthday is this Sunday. I’m going to be 23 years old. My first instinct is to crawl into a ball and cry because my youth is gone and I still haven’t done things I always imagined I would have by this age like publish a book, speak at least one foreign language completely flawlessly, or be 100% financially independent. I just need to think of all the things I have accomplished in 23 years—I got myself into law school (four acceptances and one waiting list so far), I found myself a handsome Frenchman who loves me with the same intensity that I love him (and haven’t done anything to screw it up for almost two years now), and I finessed my way out of a job that was crushing my soul and then found an infinitely better one.

I just had to remind myself of these accomplishments, and that crying in a ball is a waste of time, and I came up with the following ways to celebrate starting tonight and going through next weekend. Ader’s company is closed all next week so he can celebrate with me. Isn’t that nice of them? Tonight we’re going to a free stand up show and Tuesday night we’re going to see How to Become Parisian in One Hour (http://www.oliviergiraud.com/). It wasn’t cheap but I’ve been wanting to go since the summer, and about ten Parisians now have told me que je vais le kiffer.

One night next week we’re going to see Intouchable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXu2MhWYUuE). Ader doesn’t generally like French films, but he’s making an exception. Thursday night we’re going clubbing, because I know a place that’s free for international students on Thursday nights, and I’m hoping my German ID will get me out of paying. It clearly says that I’m an au pair, not a student, but only if you can read German. Even though it’s a little bit cheesy, we’re thinking about going to Dinseyland for a day. It just seems Christmasy. Which is the same reason I want to go stroll around the Christmas markets. Actually my real reason for wanting to go to the Christmas markets is the churros.      

Speaking of delicious things, on Sunday we’re having lunch at Le 14 Juillet (http://www.lafourchette.com/2_restaurant/restaurant_Paris/restaurant_Le_14_Juillet/382/). I thought I would really embrace being in Paris this year, plus I wanted to see what all the hype was about. And since it’s relatively cheap, I think I could convince Ader that we should get take away sushi another night when we stay in and watch Dharma and Greg and take bubble baths.

So that’s how I’m going to kick off my 23^rd year. Actually my 24^th year, since I was alive for a whole year before I turned one, right? In any case, festivities begin in a few hours!  

I feel about 1,000 times better than I did two days ago, because I was offered a new au pair job and I accepted it! Beata and her Lebenspartner, Helmut, invited me to Helmut’s house in the Alps for the weekend. It was a short weekend because I had to work until two on Saturday and be back by seven on Sunday night, but it was enough to erase any doubt that this family would be my best option. 
 
Beata and Helmut met me at the train station in Nesselweg. The train was like a bus, you had to press a button and request a stop. When we got to the house I met baby Julia and her nanny Christina. Julia is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. She can walk, although cautiously, and she loves to talk but not in any language. Her hair is growing in like a mowhawk and she has four teeth. Christina is an older lady who is going back to Poland next week because of her back problems.

We made a vegetable pizza for dinner and for dessert Helmut taught me how to make this traditional German wine foam thing (I forgot the name) which was good but strong. So I slept really well. They usually rent out the apartment upstairs, but since there were no renters this weekend I got to spend the night there.

In the morning we bundled Julia up and put her in her stroller to go to the bakery and take a tour of Nesselweg, which took about five minutes. It’s the kind of town where you stop and say Grüß Gott should you cross paths with another human. After breakfast we drove over to the airfield where Helmut gives flying lessons. Christina, Beata, and I took turns flying with him in his tiny two-person plane and keeping an eye on Julia who was sleeping in the car. I was a little scared and a lot nauseous when the wind started rocking the plane, but it was still really fun. I got a lot of good pictures of the Neuschwanstein Castle, the one built by the crazy kind Ludwig and the model for the castle in the beginning of every Disney movie.

After everyone had a turn flying we said good bye to Helmut and drove back to Putzbrunn. Julia started crying during the drive. She was in the backseat with Christina, then she sat in my lap and calmed down. After showing me the apartment in Putzbrunn, Beata drove me back to Gauting, and I got back in time to babysit these brats. But it’s a lot less miserable now knowing that my days of this Scheiß are numbered.

I’m still coming to terms with the fact that last weekend is over, Ader is back in Paris, and the only things that I have to look forward to now are still uncertain. So I’m just going to reminisce. 
 
Friday night I dropped the kids off, grabbed my backpack stuffed with clothes, and ran out the door like I was in some kind of rush. I got to the airport early enough to eat an overpriced pretzel and bubble over with anticipation.

The arrival gate at the Munich airport is one of the most stoic I’ve ever visited-- lots of people in business attire coming out and shaking hands with people holding signs with names on it. I think Ader and I deserve a prize for the most dramatic reunification of the night. We took the S-Bahn to Neuperlach, the neighborhood where our hotel was and, according to my German teacher, one of the two sketchy neighborhoods in Munich. By the time we got to our room it was around eleven and we just decided to curl up in bed and go to sleep.

The next day we went on the walking tour (http://www.newmunichtours.com/daily-tours/munich-free-tour.html), although we stopped for krapfen on the way there which made us a little late. Our tour guide, Craig from Chicago, brought his ten year old son with to help narrate, and they did a better job of showing all the highlights of the city than I would have been able to. Then, once we were sufficiently hungry we went to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant that I had heard good things about. It was one of those places where the sushi comes by on a conveyor belt, and you can either pay 1 Euro/plate or 13 Euros for as much as you can eat in an hour. We of course chose the latter. The sushi wasn’t terrible and we certainly ate our money’s worth. But a lot of it was bland (plane cucumber rolls) or bizarre (cherry tomatoes and arugula stuck on top). So I have yet to find really good sushi anywhere in Germany.

Sunday we wandered around for a little bit taking pictures and then ate at a slow but delicious Bulgarian restaurant. I plan on taking anyone who comes to visit me there. We made it to the airport exactly on time, and I only cried a little bit, while I stood there with my giant backpack and watched Ader pass through security. I took my time getting home. Sleeping by myself again was no treat.

In other news I finally got over to the Gasteig to pay for my next German class. Now I just have to wait and see if I’ll get to stick around long enough to take it.            

I feel like no one else in the world gets locked out of doors for which they have the keys as much as I do. In Ader’s last apartment in the dixième, I had a key but needed someone strong enough to come open the door for me any time I wanted to go in. Once in my apartment on campus last year my key went in the lock but just wouldn’t turn. I had to go to the residential life office and explain, I have my key but I’m still locked out. The RA on duty looked at me like I was crazy, and I was so sleep deprived (this was finals week), that I worried that I was. Then the maintenance guy who finally got the door open with his master key told me that he had never seen a door stuck like that. 
 
And then Tuesday. I left for my German class at 7:45 in the morning and then came back a little before I had to start work at three. I put the key in the door and couldn’t turn it. Pushing and pulling with all my strength didn’t make the door budge. I went to pick up Robin hoping that by the time we got back someone else would have figured out a way into the house and let us in. Instead, I got back with Robin and found Max outside without a jacket. He forgot his key and was thus standing outside muttering profanities and shivering. He couldn’t open the door either. Ten minutes later Aga came with Sophie. She couldn’t open the door with my key or her own. So we called Axel so he could come home early and let us in through the garage. In the meantime we took the kids to the bakery down the street for some hot chocolate. Turns out some guys had come to install a lamp or something and closed the door behind them at a weird angle or…I don’t understand what happened really. But anyway, this is the third door that I couldn’t open even with a key. I’m just curious, has this ever happened to anyone else? Because I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone else, and when I tell people “I had my key but was still locked out”, they look at me like I’m stupid/delusional/lying.

Well in other news, I will be on my way to the airport this time tomorrow to meet Ader. I’m so happy I feel dizzy. And although the waiting is still torturous, every day I’m closer to when I should hear about my visa and law schools, which is kind of a nice thought. In two weeks it’ll already be December, and I’m going to Göttingen for a weekend to meet another potential new au pair family. But mostly I’m just thinking about tomorrow for right now.     

Robin has puked twice tonight. Maybe he’ll feel all better tomorrow and will go to kindergarten, but I have to brace myself for the possibility that tomorrow I’ll have to miss my German class to stay home with a puking kid. The bright side of this is that I might get reimbursed for a portion of my class and earn some overtime which I can cash in around Christmas. But damn, tomorrow is going to suck if I have to stay here.

This weekend, if my visa doesn’t get here between now and then, I’m going to the airport to buy a ticket back to the States for December eleventh. Besides the fact that I won’t be able to spend my birthday with Ader, going back to New Jersey for a month might not be the worst thing in the world, if only because it will be a break from the lovely household I’m currently residing in. This weekend I’m also going to find the hotel I reserved and do a walkthrough of all the places I want to take Ader. Maybe that sounds a little crazy, but he’s here for such a short time that I don’t want to waste any of it being lost. Plus I’ve filled up this weekend with plenty of coffee dates so that I have plenty of excuses not to be here.

This next week is going to be unbearably slow and next weekend way too fast. I wish there were something I could do about that. And while I’m wishing, I wish someone would just tell me already if I go accepted into law school.

The weekend after Ader visits, I have to babysit on Friday and Sunday nights, which is miserable but results in more overtime. That Saturday afternoon I’m hopefully (knocking on wood) going to visit Beata, a Polish lady who lives in Putzbrunn and is looking for an au pair for her eighteen month old daughter, Julia. We’ve only had one phone conversation so I’m trying not to be too optimistic, but this job sounds infinitely better than my current one. Even if Beata turns into Mr. Hyde once I sign the contract, she would still only be one miserable person instead of five. And I know that babies, especially babies who are learning to walk, can be exhausting, but they’re still cute enough that you can’t really get frustrated with them. The job, as Beata described it is picking Julia up from day care, playing with her, and then cooking dinner for the three of us. Not my dream career, but kind of my dream au pair job. So basically, I just have to keep hoping that things will work out as I want them to.        

I spent almost all my money this morning, but I have lots of new warm fuzzy clothes to show for it, plus a new book and hand cream. I had my visa appointment at two o’clock in Stamberg, so I didn’t have time to go to the Hauptbahnhof and ask about tickets to Göttingen. There’s a family there who’s looking for a new au pair in January, and they invited me to come visit for the weekend. They seem super nice. I know I said that before about my current family, but this new family actually volunteered to put me in touch with their current au pair before I even asked, and I heard first hand from her how much she likes living with and working for them.

My only real reservation at this point is that they don’t live in Munich, which means if I move there I have to find a new German class, new friends, and generally get used to a whole new city. All of that is doable but daunting. They also said they were looking for someone for a whole year and I can only stay until June or July. In any case, I really want to take them up on their offer to come visit, because when has visiting a new city and meeting new people ever been a bad thing? The problem is that the intercity trains are ridiculously priced, and the reasonably priced trains are ridiculously slow because they stop in every single town. I’ll just have to see…

I also didn’t get a chance to go ask about my next German class. It starts December sixth, goes until mid February, and costs 220 Euros. I don’t know if I pay for it and then find out that I’ll need to go home for a month on December 11, or that I’m moving to another city, if I can then get my money back. I also don’t know how long I can put off paying and still have my place reserved. I like my class; I’m learning a lot and have friends in it. It puts me in a good mood before a crappy afternoon of work. So if I’m going to stay in the vicinity of Munich for December through February, it would kind of suck if I couldn’t continue going.

The visa appointment today made me feel slightly better. I got the paper that says my official visa is coming and I’m allowed to work in the meantime. It’s nice to no longer be breaking the law. But it’s still true that all I can do is sit around, waiting for some office in Berlin to get their act together and hope that they do soon enough for me to be allowed to stay in Europe for my birthday.       

No German class next week. Should I tell my family or not? If I tell them that I have to go to class then at least I have those three mornings free. But then I have to wake up early and find somewhere to be. And Tuesday is a holiday. They’re not going to believe me if I say I have class on Tuesday. Okay, I’ll just tell them the truth I guess. I think I overheard Gabi saying that she’s taking the kids to Regensburg for a few days this week. God, I hope that’s true. You know you have a crappy job when you look forward to being left alone to clean. 
 
Ader went to Morocco for two weeks yesterday :( But then he comes to Munich :) And in these two weeks, either I’ll get my visa and can start more aggressively looking for a new job, or I won’t and I’ll go buy a plane ticket which I can change the date for. Doing either one of these things will feel pretty amazing.

If I ever get the money that’s owed to me, I have to go pay for next month’s metro card, my next German class (I’ll be up to B1!), and buy all my winter things-boots, gloves, a scarf, a hat…I saw a lot of cute, cheap, non-leather things at Forever 18. That’s what the Germans call Forever 21. And the money better come soon. I must have asked at least fifteen times now, verbally and in writing, “Can I get paid now?” Every time I get the same answer, “Ja, klar. Erinnere mich später.” I hope this doesn’t become any more of an issue than it already is.

I also hope that I find the time/workspace/inspiration to work on my novel soon. I heard back from my editor and I need to cut out some characters and then choose one perspective—first or third—and stick to it. So basically, rewriting will probably be as many hours of work as writing was. Can’t say I didn’t know it would be like that though. If my novel doesn’t make its way into a literary agent’s hands before the summer, it probably never will.

Unless every law school I applied to rejects me. That’s another thing I should know about soon. And once I know if and where I’m going to law school, then I can start looking for jobs for Ader and then an apartment for us. There will be so much planning for the future to be done! Which, in case you haven’t realized yet, is kind of my favorite thing to do.  

I’m majorly stressing about my visa. I sent all my paperwork three weeks ago and I was told I have to wait six to eight weeks, so in a way I guess I should chill out. But then all the other au pairs who needed visas tell me that they did something slightly different than what I’m doing to get my visa, plus I’m never 100% sure that I understand things correctly in German. 
 
Best case scenario: my visa gets here on time, I find another family who wants to hire me in January. I spend Christmas and New Years with Ader, and then work normal hours for a nice family as an au pair, not a maid.

Worst case scenario: My visa never gets here and I have to go back to New Jersey on December 12. As much as I don’t like being in the States, I would probably by that point know if I got into law school and I could concentrate on rewriting my novel and then finding an agent. Plus I wouldn’t miss family Hanukkah, and then it would still be possible for me to come back to Germany on January 11 and work six months more. Actually, I’m realizing just now as I’m writing this that my life will very likely get better shortly. Hmmm.

Speaking of things getting better, Ader is coming to Munich in less than a month! He’s only staying for a weekend, but then I probably don’t have to wait too long to see him again, so I think I can deal. Out hotel is booked, so for two nights I get to sleep in a room with heat and a lock on the door, and for two mornings I get to wake up to my own alarm or whenever I feel like it, not to screaming kids.

We’re doing a free walking tour on Saturday and then eating in a restaurant. I need to do some more research about which restaurant, which is my favorite kind of research. We might also do one meal in a beer garden, although I’m not sure how much fun that will be if it’s freezing out and we don’t partake in the beer or meat. Then on Sunday the museums only cost a euro, so we’ll probably do that until we have to go to the airport because the malls will be closed. And because I like museums. Actually, I like just about any activity with my boyfriend.

Next week is normal and then the week after that I don’t have my German class and I don’t have to pick the kids up from school because they have the week off too. I think that means I’ll have some extra free time, but we’ll see.

I’ve been here for over a month now. Time for another rant: I want to leave. I think I’ve given this job a fair chance. I’ve done my best, I really have. I save all my sarcastic comments in my head for later. Instead of my usual passive aggressiveness I try and talk my problems out, which isn’t usually successful and just generates more sarcastic comments for me to repress. 
 
The main problem is that I don’t like the family I work for. My first instinct is to say that I don’t like the children, but that’s not really fair. At five and seven years old, kids are still like dogs in that they can’t really be blamed for their own bad behavior. Who I really can’t stand are the parents who are doing a really half-assed job of teaching their kids basic manners: Saying please and thank you. Not yelling and throwing tantrums over minor things like the waitress bringing your sprite out two minutes later and in a different glass than your brother’s.

And they’re not even trying to teach their children to be grateful for what they have or cognizant of the people who clean up after them. I will die of shock the first time I see Sophie or Robin put their own toys away or stop and say, “Let’s not play with this right now because it just creates more of a mess for Aga and Rose, who work hard enough already.” Or the first time we go to a restaurant and Axel doesn’t bitch at the waiter because his wiener schnitzel isn’t coming out fast enough. Or the first time Gabi and Axel share a pot of tea instead of making two separate ones, thus leaving me with fewer dishes to wash...

Last weekend we were in a hotel in the mountains, and two things became clear to me: as awful as the children are, they aren’t any better behaved with their parents than they are with me. Therefore, it’s probably unrealistic of me to think I can bribe or discipline them into being any less terrible. I also realized that Gabi and Axel don’t get along very well and their marriage doesn’t seem to be a happy one. In the month that I’ve been here I don’t think they’ve spent more than one interrupted hour awake and in the same room before last weekend, and it’s because they bicker constantly…I guess if I can’t change jobs, I can just gossip a lot to make myself feel a little better.

This weekend, while nursing a cold, I finished The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. It’s the kind of book that makes me wish that I were still in a book club because I really want to hear other people’s thoughts about this. Basically the author spent a year trying out some conventional and some unconventional wisdom about how to make oneself happy and reported her findings.

I was ready to disagree with everything she had to say. Gretchen Rubin went to Yale law school (therefore she’s waaay smarter than me), wrote lots of books about American history (the most boring subject in the world to me), and has two daughters. While I have absolutely nothing against parents or want-to-be-someday parents (most people in the world whom I love are in these categories), I don’t ever want children and think of myself as fundamentally different than people who do. So I wasn’t feeling very receptive to Ms. Rubin’s advice.

But once I convinced myself that I probably shouldn’t switch jobs, only because there’s no guarantee that the switch would not be for the worse, I figured I need to find a way to make myself happier with the situation I’m in. I’d always heard that people can choose to be happy or unhappy, and this is one of the pretexts of The Happiness Project. But my happiness had always seemed to depend on external factors. I’m picnicking in a Parisian park with my boyfriend? I’m at the beach gossiping and tanning with my best friend? I’m watching Parks and Recreation with my mom after a tiring but productive day? The of course I’m happy, how could I not be? But my train is stalled at rush hour and people are stepping on my toes? It’s mid-April and I’m still wearing my winter jacket? I need quiet place to write and can’t find one because it’s Sunday and not a single fricking library is open? The of course I’m not happy, how could I be?

Turns out there are still things you can do. Singing in the morning, for example, can actually help. Okay, I haven’t starting singing in the morning, but I listen to a few uplifting songs instead of NPR while getting dressed now and it actually makes me feel better. I used to think (and I guess I still kind of do) that listening to a song you like too often will “wear out” that song. If I listen to any song I like too much, then logically, one day I’ll be incapable of extracting any pleasure from music. But reading this made me realize that that’s kind of a ridiculous idea. Plus I need to trust that there will be more good music in the future in case I “use up” today’s music, so I should just allow myself to enjoy music I like now freely.

I’m running out of time now, so go check this out for yourself: http://www.happiness-project.com/ and then let’s discuss!

Should I change jobs or not? Maybe writing this out will give me some clarity, because right now I’m so back and forth. In the same day I contemplate packing up my things and staying at the airport until the next flight to Paris that I can afford, and then a few hours later I figure I should just stick it out until the summer as planned.

So let me explain what I don’t like: The number one thing is my schedule. I work thirty hours a week, five hours each day except Sunday. Fine. But then I have to work overtime if Axel can’t bring the kids to school in the morning, if one of the kids is sick, or if Gabi and Axel are going somewhere and need a babysitter. I do get paid extra for this (theoretically, I haven’t gotten any money yet), but I can’t say no, regardless of what plans I had made. And it’s likely that I will have to cancel plans because they don’t give me much advanced notice. Plus I have to keep my cell phone on me so that I can accept work-related calls 24/7. So being in class/the library/the shower/out with friends/asleep…none of these are valid excuses for not being available.

The second problem is the youngest kid, Robin. He is, to say the least, poorly behaved. Just a few examples: Saturday morning I took the kids to the park. When I told Robin it was time to go he took a handful of pebbles from the ground and threw them at my face. He missed, but still. Once when I refused to let go of his hand in a busy train station he bit my hand. I know it’s lame to let a five year old bully me into leaving, but the real problem is his parents who don’t think this kind of behavior merits any real discipline, or maybe they do but for some reason never follow through with anything more than a stern talking-to.

The third thing (there are more, but I’ll stop after this one) is the amount and kind of housework I have to do. I scrub toilets, vacuum, and generally have to clean up after the whole family. The only person who helps me is Aga, the other hired help. Okay, and to be faire, Gabi helps a little. Some if it, like laundry and dishes aren’t so bad, but what I can’t stand is that children know that making their own beds, putting away their own toys, and clearing their own places at the table are all activities that are beneath them; foreigners have been hired to do that for them.

Of course it isn’t all bad. Right now “working” entails waiting for the laundry to be done while writing a blog entry and gnawing on some dried mango. I need to think on this some more.

Finally a good day! It’s amazingly therapeutic to get together with other au pairs and make fun of Germans who have too much money. The beginning and end of my day sucked and I’m running on not enough sleep, but I’m still smiling because I’m starting to have a life again.

I earned two hours overtime this morning bringing the kids to school, which means I had to get the kids up and dressed, make breakfast, make sure the kids brushed their teeth and got their shoes on, and get everyone to the train station by 8:02. Then I had to bring both kids to Sophie’s school and Robin to his school on a crowded S-Bahn while trying to annoy other commuters as little as possible (although I’ve kind of given up on that last part). Maybe it doesn’t sound that stressful, but trust me, it is.

I was supposed to meet Nante, another au pair from Madagascar, at 9:30. At 9:15 I realized that the bus I was waiting for to take me to Marienplatz wasn’t coming, so I had to walk and then take the metro. I got to Marienplatz late and tried to call Nante, only to be informed that I had no credit left on my pre-paid phone. Luckily she called me, and by 10:00 we found each other. We got McDonald’s coffee and had a nice conversation in French about how much not being born in Europe sucks.

I had agreed to meet Amy, the South African au pair who works for a family that’s friends with my family, at eleven. I like meeting new people back to back, that way if they’re weird I have a legitimate reason to leave. But I really liked Nante and had already cut our date a half hour short. Amy sounded friendly enough on the phone that I figured she wouldn’t object to me inviting another person, so I told Nante this, and turns out that she and Amy used to work together until Nante quit under unpleasant circumstances. Nante told me that she liked Amy, but they had trouble communicating so I was going to have to translate.

The three of us went shopping and I felt useful because I was facilitating Amy and Nante’s first real conversation. Plus I was the only one of the three of us who had ever seen snow so I got to give a lesson on how to dress for cold weather. Then Nante had to go, Amy and I wondered around a bit more, and then it was back to reality.

This week has been exceptionally crappy. If that’s true, then I can deal with this. If this is how every week is going to be then I need to find a new job before I find myself in a mental hospital. Here’s what I mean: I don’t especially like being an au pair; I didn’t honestly expect to and that’s why it was a last resort before being an illegal alien/bum. I don’t think anyone enjoys cleaning up after other people, and watching these kids kind of sucks too. But I think I could deal with a crappy job for four hours a day if that was it and I liked my life otherwise. Tuesday marked my first week here, so it really hasn’t been that long even if it feels like it has. I haven’t got my visa yet, which I need in order to open a bank account, which I need in order to get paid. My German classes don’t start until October fourth and my social life is thus far non-existent. So can you blame me for being stressed and unhappy?

Monday morning I was all ready to go to the Volksschule and sign up for my German classes. I was excited because being able to communicate better is also a big part of me being happy here. But then Axel comes into my room and tells me that Robin is sick—“nothing serious, just a bit of a temperature”—so I’ll have to stay home with him. What he doesn’t say is “I’m sorry, I know you had something important that you were looking forward to doing today and now you won’t be able to…” But okay, it’s in my contract that I have to stay home when a kid is sick. I guess I just have a different definition of sick, because Robin seemed perfectly fine to me.

I wasn’t going to let this get me down though because on Tuesday morning I was going to meet Amy, another English-speaking au pair in Munich for some much needed social interaction with someone my own age. But no, Robin still has a temperature so we’ve got to cancel that one too. Oh! And Axel has to go to work early, so I get to drop Sofie off, bringing Robin with of course. That means half an hour less of sleep which of course I don’t mind. Wednesday Robin went back to school but that day I had to drop off both the kids and pick up Robin and clean the house in between, so no time for myself that day either. Today I had a (mostly) free day so I could go and sign up for my German classes, plus I have tentative plans to meet up with some other au pairs. I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself soon.

The settling in period is over. I’m finally on German time. I didn’t take any naps yesterday, crashed early, and woke up at seven ready to go. Which is good because Friday is the day that Aga and I clean the whole house. This will probably be my least favorite part of the job. It’s not hard or disgusting as some cleaning jobs can be, just boring. While scrubbing someone else’s bath tub, it’s hard not to wonder at some point why I bothered with college.

After the house was clean and Aga left, I walked over to the organic market. They left me money to buy milk and whatever else I wanted. I got some vanilla-mango yogurt, which is heavenly by the way and the first thing I will make anyone who comes to visit me try. I had a few hours of “free time” which I spent on skype with the law school admissions counsel trying to figure out why the website isn’t letting me send my application to the University of Florida. No one’s figured it out yet.

Then it was time to pick the kids up for the first time by myself. I went with Aga yesterday and it’s really not complicated. Even so she wrote out detailed directions and then made me recite them to her. First I go pick up Robin, the five year old son. He’s the only Bavarian I know who actually wears lederhosen (every day) and a spelunking light on his head (most of the time). Then we take the bus one station and the S-Bahn one station to Sofie’s school, then back to the S-Bahn and the kids have their snack while we wait for the train back to Gauting.

Today, as Aga suggested, I brought two bananas. Robin started eating his, then Sofie decided her banana had too many brown spots on it and threw it out. So of course Robin’s banana then had too many brown spots on it also and he threw his out. I’m glad that no one would mistake Sofie and Robin for my kids (they’re as Aryan as they come) because the looks I get on the train are less control-your-damn-kids looks and more you-poor-foreigner-stuck-with-these-brats looks.      

Wow, this sounds really negative. Truth is that overall this job is not so bad and Munich is awesome. And I expect life here to get much better once I enroll in my German class and start meeting people my age, which I’m going to see about tomorrow…so more positive entries to come very soon!

I live in Germany! It had barely been twenty four hours and I’m still in the phase where all I want to do is sleep. That’s what I would probably still be doing right now if I didn’t have to wait to let Max, the fourteen year old son of the family who forget his key, in.

I left New Jersey on a Sunday afternoon. My friends have, collectively and generally, been pretty lame this trip. Of course there were exceptions. You know who you are. Nevertheless, I was unambiguously happy to get the hell out of there as my mom, my brother and I drove up to Long Island. By the way, four hours of NPR on the tenth anniversary of 9/11—not what I’d call a pick-me-up.   

We visited with the good half of the family. I saw my cousin’s new apartment and her new cat. We all watched and made fun of the Real Housewives. I started to feel like there were some things I would miss. On Monday we got to the airport early, which was fortunate given the length of the security line. My mom cried and waved to me right up until I passed through the body scan. If tearful goodbyes at airport departure gates are the saddest part of my life, passing through arrival gates are the happiest part. And that happens again in only ten months. At my age, that’s nothing.

I couldn’t sleep on the flight to Dusseldorf even though by the end of it I was so tired that my legs started falling asleep independently of the rest of my body. When passing through customs the officer asked me if my passport was forged but then took my word for it that it wasn’t. After a short connecting flight I was in Munich.

Axel, the dad of the family, met me at the airport. He drove me to the house like we were in a video game (no speed limits!) while giving me a crash course in Bavarian history. He had to rush off to work but he showed me my room and gave me a brief tour of the house. It’s literally the nicest house I have ever been in. Pictures will be posted to my facebook soon, but my private bathroom has a sauna attached to it, if that gives you an idea. Axel told me I could do whatever I wanted until Aga came home with the kids. Aga is their Polish nanny. I asked to make sure I understood, and yes, they have an au pair and a nanny to look after two children.

The urge to crawl back into my new bed is overcoming me now, so the saga will continue later.   

This time next week I’ll be on a plane to Dusseldorf, and if I’m lucky, sleeping. It’s too bad I can’t bring a rum runner past secretly because I can’t not sleep after one of those, I have learned. One of the many great things about no longer really living in South Jersey is that whatever shame I used to have is gone now that the probability of seeing any of these random strangers ever again is even further reduced. So I was not embarrassed that after only one rum runner (consumed with food no less) Katie and I had to make an unplanned visit to the Brigantine beach so that I could pass out on the sand for a whole hour. Or that I stripped off my leggings in front of everyone, because who wears leggings to the beach? I don’t even care how many people saw my underwear while I was passed out because I don’t see how anyone could have known that they weren’t bikini bottoms. And if anyone was enough of an undergarment expert to notice the difference and then get offended, je m’en fiche. This is my typical thought process these days.

I’m coming to terms with the end of the summer, which is I guess officially today according to most social calendars. For some reason when talking about Labor Day I always accidentally say Memorial Day. I know people know what I mean, but they’ll still smugly correct me. “That’s in May, dear.” Well so is Labor Day in every other country in the world. Anyway. Nights are getting longer and colder. Out pool is freezing but I’m still going to go in every day until it’s covered because there may not be many more pool opportunities for a while. The ocean water was just too cold to be in this weekend. I was really looking forward to jumping in the waves, but there will be more summers I guess.

And I’ve a got a good feeling about the interim between now and the next real beach day. I can’t remember the last whole year I wasn’t in school because that was also a year I was still in diapers. But I think I’m going to like a more focused routine. My goals are the same as they’ve always been: make money, speak more languages, write a book. I suppose a college degree was  prerequisite, but now that that chapter’s over I can admit that writing papers about the image of Joan of Arc in each century or whatever the hell I was doing this last year was kind of a waste of my precious time. This year time will be wasting no more. I’ll drink to that.      

I’m going back to Germany in two weeks. This trip to New Jersey is half over. These last two weeks have been full of death and natural disasters, plus a sun burn, a cold sore, and a computer virus. 
 
I survived my first real hurricane. When I was in middle school, the eye of a hurricane supposedly passed right over my town. School was cancelled, and everyone stocked up on canned food and braced themselves for power outages and flooding. But nothing happened. It rained, but not even for the whole day. I remember at one point going in my back yard to kick around a soccer ball.

So now, ten years later, I wasn’t taking the hurricane warnings very seriously. It’s my experience that people really enjoy freaking out and making a bigger deal out of things than is really necessary. Plus I had scheduled a trip to New York which I was really looking forward to. At first it looked like Saturday was going to be decent weather and the hurricane would only ruin Sunday. Then it looked like both days were going to be pretty crappy. Then by Thursday they were telling us to evacuate Atlantic County, at which point it was finally time to accept that the trip was cancelled.

We really didn’t have anywhere to evacuate to; the closes available hotel room was in central Pennsylvania. Who knows what that would have cost, plus when you consider the traffic…we decided to take down the lawn ornaments, flood proof the garage, and stay put. And despite everyone’s efforts to get me to participate in the hysteria, there was no tornado, no power outage, and no damage to our house. Okay, a tree branch did crack the fence around the pool, but we’ll live.

By Sunday afternoon the sun was out and the grocery store was open again. Good thing because I hadn’t wanted to go pre-storm. I hate crowded parking lots, plus I knew there was a chance the fridge might stop working anyway. I was subsiding on clementines, chocolate, and a soup I made with whatever vegetables were left in the fridge. The first season of Modern Family, Uno, and Apples to Apples kept my family from going too insane. So basically, we all survived unscathed. I’m just not ready to do this again anytime soon.   

Summer’s ending, and every year that kind of feels like the year is dying. This year it’s especially tragic because weather-wise, I had a total of maybe ten summer days. I know some people would love that, but despite my choice of places to settle in, I really love the sun. Since I have an iguana’s ability to produce my own body heat, I really appreciate this brief period where I can wear one layer of clothing and still not shiver. Thanks to my friends deodorant and aloe I don’t mind sweating or moderate sun burn and I don’t really understand why other people do. Okay, I guess the whole skin cancer thing, but I choose to put that out of my mind.

Speaking of friends though, it’s always interesting to come back from an extended leave and see who’s still my friend and who has lost interest. It’s no fun coming to the realization that some people just can’t be bothered to make time for me anymore, but I guess I’m glad I have this kind of clarity. If I haven’t been here all summer and I’m leaving again in three weeks and you’re repeatedly flaking on me and then not even apologizing, you’re not really my friend and you don’t get a Belgian beer I smuggled back with me. You know who you are. But if you’re reading this I’m probably not talking about you. And I have seen my best friends. They work crazy hours and still make time for me, and that’s why I love them.

I’m going to “The City” this weekend to see my favorite cousin and my favorite aunt on Saturday and Katie and I’m hoping some of my other friends on Sunday. All this distracts me from how much I miss Ader and how much it sucks to be forced back into a long distance relationship by things way out of our control like immigration laws. He’s in Morocco now without internet so we can’t even Skype. He’s going to call me briefly on Thursday so I can wish him a happy birthday, but since it’s expensive we probably won’t talk long enough for me to vent about how they charge for water at the Beach Bar or people who ride their bikes in the middle of the road right next to the bike path. He’s missed me too.

In other news, the University of Florida lied to me; they said they would start accepting applications for fall 2012 on August 22, but they pushed it back to September first. And I found out that editing the rough draft of my novel the way I had envisioned costs about a tenth of what I had been told before. Just thought you’d like to know.   

I’m back in New Jersey. It’s only for four weeks so I’m not complaining. I didn’t even cry when passing through customs in New York this time. All the things I hate about America are still here: English with American accents, prices that don’t include sales tax, the feeling of isolation and dependence that go along with not owning a car. Just to be clear I never want to live in the land of undereducated overeaters permanently, I haven’t changed my mind about that.

But I think that I will always like to come back and visit. Firstly and obviously because this is where my immediate family lives. My mom threatens to move to Australia if the Republican candidate wins every presidential election, but she won’t go anywhere without my dad, and he’s probably never going to stop teaching at Stockton College. My family and my family-like friends are pretty firmly rooted here, and not everyone can just hop on a plane and come visit me in Europe. It’s nice to take a break from converting dollars to Euros and cringing. And then there are the material comforts-my bed, our pool, Hulu, my favorite brand of chocolate soy milk…My linguistic insecurities are gone here. My accent’s kind of ugly but so is everyone else’s. I don’t have to stress over tu or vous, du or Sie. In Europe I am average-looking with an average knowledge about the world that comes from having read an average number of books and visiting an average number of countries. But relatively speaking here, I am very pretty and very smart. Sorry, but that’s what I think. You’re free to disagree.

In other news I’m looking for an editor for my novel. Because it sucks right now but not so bad that it couldn’t be good with some help. I just didn’t realize how expensive this is going to be. About $3,000 if I want someone who knows what they’re doing to edit the whole thing. My mother is graciously lending me the money, but what do people who don’t have and can’t borrow that kind of money do? I guess write brilliant fiction that doesn’t need to be edited, or stay out of the literary world. Do I really want to be part of such an exclusive, capitalistic group of snobs? That’s how I will comfort myself if this whole writing thing never works out.      

On August fourteenth I will have been on the Schengen Zone for ninety days without a visa, so I have to leave Berlin on Sunday. And I get to leave Berlin on Sunday. I guess I could say both today. Right now, this second, it would be the former. I’m sitting on a park bench. It’s sunny. Nobody’s bothering me. My tummy is still full from breakfast: kimchee and noodle soup I bought from the Asian supermarket for 86¢.

But an hour ago I was contemplating packing my bags and leaving early, now that I have my Deutsch Zertifikat, i.e. the only thing I needed to accomplish here. I’m not going to because one I’m not a quitter and two I know the second I pass through customs at JFK and find myself surrounded by Americans I’ll regret it.

But it’s been lonely here. In New Jersey and Paris I have at least a handful of friends I can call and make plans with. I don’t take advantage of this as much as I should perhaps, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone two whole weeks without seeing anyone I’d consider a friend, not since the last summer I spent in Dobelinik when I was sixteen. I’ve had the same conversation—Hi, I’m Rose, I’m from Canada/France/Poland, where are you from?—with strangers at the hostel probably about twenty times now. But that’s the extent of my social interaction so far for this month.

Earlier this summer I read Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (which I recommend you read to by the way), in which she describes how hellish it can be bumming around a foreign country with a roof over your head yet no place to call home. She was in Southeast Asia and had to do things like travel between cities in a bus full of chickens, so she had more to complain about than I do.

But I totally get when she was saying about how much it sucks not to have your own space. I sleep on a bottom bunk so close to a top bunk that I can’t sit upright. I’m almost never in the room by myself so when I’m sleeping it’s almost certain that someone will come in and wake me up, and when I have to go in the room to get something it’s almost certain that I’ll have to be quiet and rummage around in the dark because someone is already in the room sleeping. To use anything—the shower, the sink, an outlet, silverware—there’s probably going to be a wait. I can buy groceries to save a few Euros, but there’s no guarantee that there will be space in the fridge for them, and then no guarantee that someone won’t eat or throw away my food once I leave the kitchen. As you’d expect there are people in the hostel from all over the world, which is cool but also means that everyone has their own culturally specific idea of how to conduct one’s self properly. And then of course there are those who are drunk and on vacation and, unlikely to run into anyone of us again. That’s the only reason I can think of why anyone would organize a sing-along with bongos at three in the morning, or cook a meal with every communal pot and pan and then not clean up after themselves. Living here reminds me of living in the dorms of a party school, minus the pretext of school.

Well, that was my rant, thanks for listening. To my Jersey friends, I’ll see you next week, and believe me, I’m looking forward to it.    

This is my fifth time in Berlin and I’ve done the free walking tour three times now, which is where all of my knowledge of German history comes from. So I’m not an expert, but I think I’ve finally figured out that what I love so much about Berlin is the extent to which it has reformed itself in such a short time. Just a generation ago life here was pretty dismal and two generations ago I would certainly not have been welcome here. But today Berlin is a green, left-leaning, cultural melting pot, and it comforts me to know that a city is capable of such a turnaround. I can’t think of a way to say this that isn’t cheesy, but if Berlin is capable of such self-improvement, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of the world. Berlin makes me feel like someday I’ll be something more than a wannabe writer who’s always in need of a nap and a visa.

And this is why I think it’s such a shame that the only mention of Germany in my American education (until I got to high school and elected to take German) was about Nazis. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have taught us about the Holocaust; of course they should have. But at the risk of sounding cynical, I’ll admit that I don’t believe that Holocaust education was built into our curriculum for the right reasons, or the reason out teachers gave us: So that it (genocide) never happens again. First of all that’s a load of crap because it did happen again, repeatedly, and is never discussed. But I also think that Americans extensively study--dare I say dwell on—the Holocaust because it not only distracts from our own unsavory history but also fits with the narrative that America is the best country in the world. History as we learn it clings to an era when this might have been true. We love to say “Look at these incompetent Europeans and the atrocities they committed. Look at how much help they needed, and how wonderful we were being by providing that help.”

But we never (outside of my German electives) stopped talking about Nazis to have an honest discussion about modern Germany and modern America, and how each country treats the environment, foreign policy or its own citizens. Because such a discussion would make it painfully obvious that America is, in fact, no longer number one.

But anyway, besides the free walking tour I’ve encountered a few obstacles in doing things I’ve wanted to do. It’s totally possible to eat well in Berlin with 10 Euros a day, and if you’re willing to eat the same thing every day it doesn’t even require any planning. But I used my googling skills and planned out where I could go to sample all kinds of cuisines whilst sticking to my budget. The problem is that three of these places so far are closed, either permanently or for the summer. I wanted to climb the Reichstag, but turns out I would have had to register for that weeks ago. (Every other time I’ve been to Berlin you just had to show up and wait in a ridiculously long line.) Oh, and Museum Island isn’t actually free on Thursday nights, even though an English website and my French guidebook both said otherwise. But I’m still having as much fun as one can have alone. And given that I can’t be in France, and will be at the beach in less than ten days, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than Berlin for the moment.            

I’m in Berlin now in religious exile. Actually, that’s probably an offensive thing to say. Sorry, let me explain. The reason I am no longer in Paris is because it’s Ramadan. Ader and I decided it’s just better if we don’t live together while he’s fasting. We did last year, and it was terrible because for most of the time my neighbor from New Jersey was in Paris with his high school students. They mercifully kept me busy all day and I could stay with them until nine something at night, at which point I went home with cupcakes or seaweed salad or whatever else I was craving. At night we ate and said and did whatever we wanted without stopping to consider how god would feel about it until morning.

But the days that we were sharing a confined physical space were pretty miserable. If I ate or drank anything when I knew that Ader couldn’t I felt terrible. When I didn’t eat or drink anything I felt terrible. I was reluctant talk, because I didn’t want to say anything that wasn’t allowed, because I didn’t completely understand the rules. Ader also didn’t have a lot to say to me either except occasionally asking me to put more clothes on (until the fast was over and he was back to his normal self). If I had to describe our relationship to someone who didn’t know us, I’d probably start by saying that we’re very affectionate and we love cooking/eating together. So if we can’t have any physical contact or meals together I’d rather juts not be there.

Even though I know it’s better this way it still kind of hurts that Ader would rather observe Ramadan than be with me for two more weeks. I know it sounds ridiculous to some people that I’m complaining that he’s choosing god over me. But from my perspective, he’s choosing something imaginary over me, his flesh and blood girlfriend. Oh well, I guess I should just be happy I found someone who makes me so happy, who’s willing to look my most irritating personality traits, and who gets along so well with everyone else I love. Getting to be with him all the time is I believe that’s what’s referred to as having your cake and eating it too, which is apparently not allowed.

So instead of eating my cake I’m in Kreuzberg eating falafel and seitan currywurst and patiently waiting for the sun and wishing my time away.  

I’m sitting outside in a sleeveless dress. I have a few goose bumps but my teeth aren’t chattering and it’s not raining, so I’m not complaining. The last week I would have worn my winter coat if I had it with me. I didn’t have it with me so I was just cold and cranky. Things I used to ignore started to seriously irritate me, like people who hold the door to the metro open and don’t let it leave on time. Like it’s the last metro ever. Like waiting three minutes for the next train is so torturous.

But today’s not so bad. Sure there’s still no sun, and I’m less than a week away from my next tearful airport goodbye. Still, I feel better because I’m not as materialistic as I had feared. I ran out of money about two weeks ago. Not completely, but I spent all the money I had allotted myself for the whole summer before July was half over. Because I wasn’t paying attention the way I should have been, and didn’t choose the right bank account to pay for my plane tickets and my hostel in Berlin.

Being broke is stressful, but I’m lucky enough that all of my necessities are already covered. I paid my metro card until the end of my time in Paris, and Ader doesn’t expect or even allow me to help with rent or groceries. So my only sacrifices are eating out and semi-recreational shopping. Not so bad when you compare my financial woes to other people’s, and when you consider things I’ve said in the past.

“Capitalism sucks.”

“I don’t care about money; I just want to be happy.”

“A shopping addiction is not a real thing. Why are they having an Intervention for this chick?”       

But secretly I was concerned for myself. Not that I really shop that much, and almost never for things that aren’t essential/super useful/gifts for my closest family and friends for worthy occasions. What concerned me was how much I enjoyed buying things, trying on clothes, smelling soaps, testing eyeliners on my hands…Shopping online was a double high, when I finalize my order and again when the package comes in the mail. Trips to Bath & Body Works were always the high light of my day in college. I could not wait to run out of shower gel.

So when I checked my balance and saw it was basically zero, my worry was not that I’d have to starve or sleep on the street or go back to New Jersey. But I was afraid that I was going to have to give up the only pleasure. And how terrible would it be to have to admit: Material items are the only thing that can make me happy?

Fortunately I know now that that’s not true at all. Going back to Montrouge and cooking lunch is not any more painful than waiting three minutes for the next metro. The same crêpe everyday was getting boring anyway. Instead of shopping I’m writing, I’m meeting my friends and hanging out in a park instead of a café, I’m making the most of the short time I have with my boyfriend. Sometimes I can’t keep myself from going into stores. But just looking, imagining buying things satisfies my cravings. Now I’m sure, I’m addicted to nothing.    

Where does my time go? How is it that it’s already 4:30 and I’ve accomplished nothing yet today? Every day is uniquely unproductive but today: I slept until 10:37 instead of ten because it took me so long to fall asleep last night. Now I know that, yes, coffee éclairs have caffeine in them. It took me an hour to get ready because I’m slow and then I went to the pharmacy to pick up something for Ader. That part was actually pretty speedy. I showed the pharmacist the receipt, she handed me the filled prescription, I said “merci, bonne journée” and left. Oh the horrors of socialized medicine! But that’s a discussion for another time.

I got back to our building and found the elevator broken so I had to walk up six flights of stairs. I’m out of shape my own standards so that took a few more minutes than it should have. Then I had to change clothes because my desire for a hot sunny day has little to no effect on reality and I was freezing. I had some emails to send in French (easy) and German (hard and time consuming). I checked my voice mail hoping someone had left a message with a job offer but all four messages were from Agathe. Agathe is a fifty-something French lady who contacted me through Conversation Exchange. It’s not that I’m opposed to hanging out with people a generation older than me, in fact just about all of my friends are older than me. But Agathe vouvoyers me and just seems really stuffy and old.

Back when I was a self-forcer I agreed to meet her, but then I admitted to myself that I didn’t really want to. I sent her an apologetic text to cancel and then spent the evening making guacamole and watching Secret Story with Ader, which was all I really felt like doing. Four times now Agathe has called me at nine a.m. asking if we could try and meet again. I never answer, I never call her back, and yet she just doesn’t get it. But people like this are also a discussion for another time.

So now I was dressed appropriately and my bag of books was packed and I headed off to the library in the Mairie of the seventh arrondissement. I took the metro all the way to Varenne and then it was still a bit of a walk. So I had plenty of time to remember that all the public libraries in Paris are closed on Mondays, a fact that I have lamented to anyone who will listen. But I didn’t before I got to the door and pulled on the handle a few times. Then I went to try and find the supposedly very nice Jardin Atlantique. I finally found it but it’s not that great after all plus it started raining. So now I’m home sitting on the floor using the coffee table as a desk. And that’s what happened to Monday, July eighteenth.    

I’m a pretty hardcore self-forcer. By which I mean I am constantly making myself do things I don’t want to do. The reason here is that if I only did what I felt like doing, some days I would just stay in bed and eat olives with my fingers. But it’s gotten to the point where I completely disregard my own volition and make myself unnecessarily miserable.

Examples: I made barbecue sauce for dinner the other night, even though I didn’t have molasses. It wasn’t the most disgusting thing I’ve ever made; we ate more than half of it with our fried tofu. But after a night in the fridge it was super bitter and literally made my eyes water and hurt my stomach a bit. Still, I finished it for lunch the next day on the principle that I don’t waste food as long as it doesn’t literally make me gag.

Yesterday I agreed to see a friend, more of an acquaintance really, a fellow Erasmuser for my Paris III days. I’m not a huge fan of this dude. He doesn’t make appropriate facial expressions while I’m talking and loves Terminator movies. I don’t have any real reasons to dislike him either though and I wasn’t busy so I accepted the invitation. We spent two hours talking about nothing in the Luxembourg gardens. The logic being, if I only socialized with people who have never ever annoyed me, I’d be all alone.

There are literally hundreds of other examples of this kind of situation from this past week alone, but I think you get the point. I think that I’d like to stop being a self-forcer or such a self-forcer anyway. There have been occasions, usually at the end of a semester when all of my willpower is used up, where I say fuck it and do only what I want to. This never lasts more than two days because I start to feel weak and moody from all the time spent in bed and the poor nutrition. My phone fills up with concerned text messages--What happened last night?!!!—and the worry that I’m wasting my life away becomes overwhelming.

So the next day I’m up early, running, eating protein, writing, and making plans with my friends, like it or not. So the idea now is to find a balance. I need to learn to make the most of my time without punishing myself. Right now I’m at Esplanade des Invalides for the second day in a row. Usually I force myself to find a different spot. I don’t like to go to the same place too often just because Paris is a big city with lots of neighborhoods each with its own personality. But here it’s clean and calm and unlike most other parks in this city, free of creepers. I just like this park better and for no other reason this is where I decided to go. That’s a start, I think.  

Time passes too quickly here in Paris! In college a month was a mini eternity, but here a good chunk of my time here is over. I’m not going to calculate the actual percentage of time that has already elapsed because that will only make me sad. I wake up at ten because if I wake up any earlier I’m throwing away an opportunity to sleep in. After the all nighters and days started at five am demanded by school and traveling on a tight budget, I appreciate a morning spent in bed. I wish I were one of those I’ll-sleep-when-I’m-dead kind of people but if I don’t set an alarm I can literally sleep for twelve consecutive hours. I’m not proud of this.

But then again there really isn’t much of a reason to wake up before ten. By the time I get my day started I’ve missed morning rush hour (perhaps the most miserable thing about city living), stores and libraries and cafés are just opening and the sun is out if it’s coming out at all. Don’t you hate it when you wake up early and it’s cold so then you bundle up and then by noon you’re dressed too warmly and have to carry some stupid jacket with you everywhere or just suck it up and be hot and tired too because you woke up too early? I do, but at least for the rest of this month that doesn’t have to happen.

Then I have to go grocery shopping pretty much every day-“marketing” as my grandmother calls it-because I refuse to schlep around twenty pounds of groceries once a week Albany style. Navigating the giant grocery store closest to our apartment is surprisingly time consuming, I think because I have a hard time accepting that such an enormous store doesn’t have, for example molasses, and I’ll do a thorough search of every single aisle before giving up, going home to put the groceries away and then searching some Asian market/health food store for the missing ingredients.

By this point it is usually mid afternoon, and if I don’t have a rendez-vous with friends I try and sit in a park or library and write. Except that my writer’s block in pretty bad. This stresses me out because if I can’t write now that I’m out of excuses: I’m well rested and warm a virtually free of all other responsibilities then when am I ever going to finish these novels? And then stresses make my writer’s block worse. Stress makes everything worse; it’s all stress’s fault! By the time I’ve calmed myself down it’s time to meet Ader at home and the days is basically over. Sigh.                    

I’m back home, my adventures in Namur are over. I have to admit I’m kind of glad to be done, which is not to say that I’m not also happy I went. I would even suggest it to anyone who wants to work on their French and live in Europe with virtually no living expenses. (If I were capable of resisting sales at the Body Shop and weren’t such a picky eater I could have literally not spent any money for the entire six weeks.) But a lot of things were starting to get  old like hostel beds, hostel food, internet that works only when it feels like it and only in one noisy room with one rarely available outlet…Namur is not exactly a sprawling metropolis, which has its advantages. It’s clean and friendly in a way that larger cities just can’t be. But after one afternoon of wandering around I saw everything I wanted to see. After one night at a bar I felt like I met just about twenty-something Namurois.

I know some people like that but I prefer Paris, which is where I am right now. Okay, technically Montrouge, but still not beyond the reaches of the Paris metro. As much as I hate to say this, my job right now is stay at home girlfriend. I’m trying to find a job babysitting or teaching English or showing tourists around, but seeing as I’m visaless and only staying for a month I’m probably only going to work a few hours a week at most. So I’ll keep living off my graduation gifts and—I’ll be honest here—mooching off Ader. I’ll fill my days with writing and trying to get my legs as tan as my arms are and I hope catching up with the handful of friends from junior year who still live in Paris.

And I’m going to start cooking dinner. I never cooked before for both ideological and practical reasons. Having dinner on the table when the man gets home from work just seemed too much like something the Christian Right would approve of. Plus I never really had to learn what with a mom who’s such a good cook and a brother who’s an actual chef. I do need to feel like I’m contributing to making our little household run smoothly though; not doing so seems more lazy than feminist in these circumstances. And I don’t really cook as much as I dump ingredients in a salad bowl, crock pot, or on really ambitious days a frying pan and wait hopefully for it to turn into something yummy.

I’m not going to be on the Real Housewives of Île-de-France anytime soon. But I have to admit I really love this lifestyle, and in a sustainable way. So the plan now is to write a best seller so I can live like this forever with my own money. Just kidding, there still is no real plan.