Settling In

The following was written the night of Thursday June 18^th:

Anyway, I’ve had two days of work by now, and overall things are going fine. Tuesday morning when I arrived, I grabbed my bags, expected a long customs line (there was none), hopped in a cab, took the 1hour 20 minute ride to ICB (at least my driver entertained with complaining about traffic, whistling to the radio and laughing at the DJ’s jokes) down in the 2^nd arrondisement and grabbed Eric Wrobley from work. We got back in the cab and went to my apartment in the 16^th arrondisement. Really, I should call it my room, as it is a single room with a bed, a table, a sink, a shower, fridge, microwave, pseudo-armoire and many shelves. It’s certainly small, but very comfortably cozy. And it has a nice large window that keeps it from getting stifling hot at night. And my host mother (who I’ll get to eventually) put some food in the kitchenette area for me, which was a very pleasant surprise. Anyway, voila my room. We then walked to the nearest Metro stop to buy me a rechargeable card. We were fortunate to have top-notch service: the ticked vending machines didn’t sell the cards, so the man there come out of his booth and disappeared into some door in the subways station wall. He reappeared a couple minutes later with the card, and from there Eric and I split, he back to work and me back to my room.

I went back to my room to unpack and relax finding a place for everything and napping for about 30 minutes, I then headed back to my neighborhood Metro station to catch it back to ICB for some brief “training.” Eric introduced me to some coworkers of mine and produced a list of possible projects I’d be working on during my 4 to 5 weeks there. They include everything from doing spy work (research on competition) to taking mug shots of all the English teachers for the website to setting up and figuring out how to use Eric’s new Blackberry (and then showing him how). After this brief introduction to my job, I came back to the 16^th arrondisment, called my host mother Marie-Laure to see if she was home, turns out she was, and so I went to her family’s apartment.

There I met her and all the kids for the first time. Alexis (boy) is 14, Maylis (girl) 11, Guillaume 9 and Hortense 4. I can’t describe how adorable the young ones are and how smart, kind and obedient the older ones are. Hortense, even now after 3 or 4 days, just sucks her thumb and stares wide-eyed up at me when I talk to her. Then she runs away to her mother. Guillaume is an avid reader, unhealthily his mother seems to think. Earlier today Marie-Laure pled for 15 minutes for him to leave his book behind so he could bathe after his tennis lesson. And during dinner Tuesday night, he'd sneak away from the dinner table to read his comic book. Maylis is very quiet and hasn’t spoken much to me while I've been around. Alexis is a model boy scout (good thing he is one): obedient, kind, humble, smiling, cheery.

Anyway, after meeting them and breaking through some of the awkward initial greetings, Alexis took me on a brief tour of the neighborhood while his mother finished preparing dinner. I got completely turned around during it, and probably couldn’t lead you to the places he took me without a map at least. He showed some of the stores I might need while like Carrefour, fnac and others. And I discovered I live pretty close to the Arc de Triomphe: we walked around it a bit, and then it was time to head home for dinner.

We ate a dinner of fish and vegetables followed by cheese and then finally desert. After dinner I went back upstairs to my room to get ready for the next day. Around 9:30, Marie-Laure called me (oh yeah, Eric gave me a cell) because her husband, Régis, was home. I went back down to their apartment to meet Régis and present them with my gift for letting me use their upstairs room. It’s a book of really nice pictures of KC. They seemed very impressed.

I realize I haven’t even talked about Marie-Laure or Régis. They are both equally excellent as their children. It’s easy to see where their kids get their kind, happy maturity. They are both all smiles and willing to offer themselves for anything I might need. I couldn’t have asked for a better host family. I sometimes feel like I cant reciprocate their kindness though, because I feel my lack of ability to express myself completely in French, my hesitancy and my constant search for the right word (often the simplified version) comes across as laconic and terse. But I hope to improve over the next couple of weeks.