An Ode to Women (and wine)

 Hi readers,

Been a long time which I apologise for now.

But...

My friend Marlena from Poland came to stay for the weekend and to put it in a nutshell, we had an incredible time. We explored the whole of Paris – and when I say the whole of Paris, I mean three solid days walking and taking Metros. Seriously. I am currently in recovery mode.

But it was worth it. Every now and then you need a bit of an exhausting weekend to realise you are actually young, sprightly and loving life! (Instead of haggard, overtired and stressed by the mere sight of McDonalds – see previous blog posts).

I could recount the entire weekend back-to-back, missing nothing... but because this is Paris we're talking about, it really would be a mini-novel. So I will allow these pictures – a few of my favourites from our ramblings round the city of love – to speak for themselves and then I will proceed to write about a truly unforgettable highlight of the weekend, one that had to be committed to memory in written form because otherwise it would be a wasted anecdote.

"Student house a la France"

One of my favourite finds in Paris yet...

"Avenue Rachel"

Paris, called the city of love, has a wall of love...in many languages

French nights out - order a coffee in the nearest restaurant at 6AM. Followed by a glass of wine!

...Which some people proceed to drink, because

when in France,

Do as the French.

The Adventure of Marlena, Rachel and a Magic Bottle of Wine at a Certain Palais de Justice of Paris

Once upon a time (last weekend) two twenty-something year old, attractive female girls with red lipstick, heavy handbags and a penchant for wine set foot in the beautiful capital city of France – commonly known as Paris.

One named Rachel, the other named Marlena, these two girls had been brought together once more after a wonderful summer drinking beer on the sunny beaches of Spain. However, in Paris, where November sunshine was rare with the cold, dry winds of Northern Europe blustering in, the girls could no longer face the idea of drinking a cold beer out on the terrace as they'd used to!

No; quite the contrary. It was time to acclimatise themselves to the fruit of the vine. The national beverage of France, served warm, cold or room temperature, and which always came with interesting side effects:

It was time for a bottle of wine.

So along their travels, they stopped by a small supermarket shop not far from the Eiffel Tower and purchased one: a very cheap bottle of wine.

It didn't matter, they said to each other. A cheap bottle of wine in France was a good bottle of wine in every other country in the world. What else could France manufacture more effectively than wine; the motherland of champagne?

I (obviously) carried the wine in my handbag. In there, it was in very safe hands. That is, until we reached a stop in our travels which was a must-see for Marlena.

“We have to see this church, Sainte-Chapelle!” she said excitedly, waving the tour book in front of me. It was a rather rubbish tour book, in fact, £3.99 from the Works and had been lying in my bedroom at home for about 2 years before I'd even bothered to glance at it. But it had served us pretty well so far in Paris and as I leafed through it, I was quite impressed that Marlena had managed to make use of it so successfully.

However, I noticed something odd on the page about Sainte-Chapelle. I pointed at the photo and turned to Marlena:

“This chapel looks a lot like the Sacré-Coeur, doesn't it?”

She frowned and we examined it again carefully. Yes, the same dome, white façades and quintessential steps leading up to it. Could this chapel be the hidden, lesser-known younger sister of the Sacré-Coeur? Sitting behind a walled building right in the heart of Paris's centre?

How exciting, I thought to myself. Instantly, I was convinced we had to see it too. We made our way using the signposts leading to Sainte-Chapelle until we arrived at some rather elaborate gates which barred off an impressive and very large building.

We were at the Palais de Justice – or the Supreme Court as it was in London. Behind the gates were policemen in uniform and undoubtedly beyond that were some of the most intelligent lawyers in France. Maybe even in the world.

“But why are we here?” Marlena was frowning up at the gates. I glanced up and down the street and then noticed something.

“Look – entrance to Sainte-Chapelle!” I tugged her sleeve pointing to the sign I had just seen. ENTRANCE/ENTRADA/ENTRATA SAINTE CHAPELLE was inscribed on it, around the side of the the Palais de Justice. There a small queue which we could only assume was the queue to get into this incredible, mini-sister version of the Sacré-Coeur.

We joined the queue. After a few moments, Marlena glanced and the AA tourist's guide to Paris and then up at me. She was frowning.

Before she even asked, I knew what her question would be:

“Can you check this is the entrance to the chapel?”

When we'd met in Spain that summer, it had always been the reverse: me asking her to translate or ask questions in Spanish. Now it was my turn to be the interpreter. But I understood her concern – what if it was simply the queue to get into the Courts? It's not like anyone in these situations does anything to make life easier for you – sometimes they even find it funny to watch tourists get confused and frustrated.

So I went and asked. The response was typically French: vague, unclear, ask-someone-else. Perhaps it's the entrance. Or actually, it's the entrance to both. We're not entirely sure, we're just waiting here for something. So since it wasn't a very long queue, we waited. When we got to the doors, Marlena turned to me in amazement.

“It's like the airport!” she said, astounded, pointing to the metal detectors and X-ray machines. I shrugged and said “C'est la vie.”

(A split second later I berated myself for conforming to such an outrageously blatant level of Frenchism). But not for long, because Marlena had passed through the metal detectors which promptly started beeping madly. Whilst an armed and uniformed man with another metal detector began frisking her, I put my bag through the X-ray machine and confidently breezed through the metal detector.

It was only on the other side that another armed and uniformed man put out his hand to stop me in my tracks. He picked up my heavy handbag.

Another split second later, when he reached inside and started pulling the neck of our beloved rosé bottle out from underneath the pyjamas, leaflets, bags of souvenirs and goodness knows what else I was carrying around that weekend, I felt my heart sink right down to my stomach.

In all the hustle and bustle of the day, I had completely forgotten about our little bottle of cheap rosé (which was admittedly one of the things contributing so much weight to my handbag).

His expression was clear as an open book: You may NOT bring this through.

(This bottle was enjoyed later - I won't spoil it yet)

(We had also forgotten to take the bright orange price label off it, which didn't do any favours).

Marlena (who was finished being frisked) looked on in horror back and forth as I pleaded our case to the adamant security man in rapid-fire French. She was gesturing and saying something to me at the same time as the uniformed and armed man rattled away about “possible ways to recuperate the bottle when we left if he explained to his colleague”. (Just to clarify, the verb 'récuperer' in French is frequently used – recuperate in English is not. But my brain was too frazzled to think of anything more at that exact moment).

I explained to the security man that we wanted to try and pick it up again on our way out. He explained that he was going to put it in the bin – but only the paper bin. If we came back within the hour, we could pick it up.

Trying not to think about the build-up we were causing (there were a few curious glances being thrown our way from beyond the barrier) I agreed, thinking, the paper bin is not going to kill this bottle of wine...

The security guards were fighting back smiles and I could tell what they were thinking: all this for a bottle of terrible rosé that costs 2.80 euros?

But, Marlena assured me as we walked through into the courtyard, we bought that bottle. We deserve to keep something we spent our money on!

And for some reason, it had a lot more value on it now – now that it had been subject to a screening process at the Palais de Justice of Paris.

We turned a corner and voila! There was Sainte-Chapelle, said Marlena.

I looked at it dumbly. Then I looked at Marlena. Then I looked at the AA guide.

“This building looks nothing like the picture.”

No indeed. Apparently, the AA guide was mistaken. Or the book cost £3.99 because they didn't have the money to print an actual photo of Sainte-Chapelle (or else they hadn't successfully passed the screening process at the entrance when they'd tried to get one).

No, the AA guide's solution to this problem was to merely print a second photo of the Sacré-Coeur and stick it on the Sainte-Chapelle page. I didn't know what to say about that so instead I just shrugged my shoulders again and tried to hide my disappointment.

I shouldn't really have been disappointed by such a beautiful chapel (inside the stained-glass windows were particularly impressive) but really, when you're expecting a mini-Sacré Coeur, anything in comparison is disappointing...

*

When we had finished our tour of the Chapel (in about ten minutes – it was one room) and also a sneaky tour of the Palais de Justice's interior (“We can't come all this way and not see it,” Marlena justified), we were ready to leave.

And pick up our magic bottle.

We went back to the entrance where the security guards were. As we approached, he (a different uniformed and armed man) grinned at us and produced the magic bottle of cheap rosé from the (thankfully) empty paper bin.

“Here you go!” he said cheerfully in English. “Are you both American?”

Before I could even utter a single, indignant protest at the fact that he not only assumed we didn't understand a word of French but that he had quite seriously mistaken our respective nationalities, he breezed us through the metal detector.

“If you could both exit by this way, you can leave with your wine,” he continued, handing the bottle over, still bearing its incriminating orange price tag. “But,” he added in a lower voice, “I wouldn't drink it if I were you.”

He gave me that knowing, I-am-a-wine-connoisseur look that all French people can rightfully get away with, simply based on the fact that they are all wine-experts, even if they don't drink alcohol.

Feeling too ashamed and reprimanded to utter another word, I shuffled through the detectors after Marlena, ignoring the incredulous stares and peals of laughter coming from the uniformed and armed men from the other side and from amazed members of the general public waiting in the queue to get in. It didn't help that the metal detectors began blaring angrily and incessantly until we reached the blissful safety of the outside street, out of sight and out of earshot.

But at this point, it only took us a couple of seconds before we were in peals of uncontrollable laughter, swaying and holding onto each other for support in the street, the bottle of wine still clutched in my hand with its orange label proudly above the simple legend ROSÉ. Passers-by looked on in alarm, as we certainly appeared to be drunkards – but not merely drunkards; raucous, young, female drunkards outside the Palais de Justice of all places!

If Paris were a person and could give reproving looks, we would have received a very disapproving one at that particular moment for flouting the unspoken rule of ladies behaving ladylike, particularly in the streets.

“Really ladies!” Paris would have said, glaring at us, “This is not Montmartre! This is the 1^st Arrondissement...If you want to behave like drunken hooligans, go to the Moulin Rouge.”

I could feel Paris's heavy judgement on me, but quite frankly I couldn't care less in that moment. Marlena looked at me and we burst out laughing again. Then she grabbed my arm and said:
“You definitely need to write this one in your blog.”

*

Without challenges, life would never teach us anything. 

This is a conclusion which I have come to this week, in spite of many moments where challenges have presented themselves in diverse forms. 

As I haven't written a blog entry for a good couple of weeks (possibly even coming up to three now, which is seriously remiss of me), I have decided to make this one extra long. In fact, the reason for it was because I got something of a “writer's block” last week, and even the week before that. With each week that passed, I had a blog entry theme in mind and then when it came to writing it, I re-read what I had written and found myself swiftly pressing BACK SPACE...

It happens to the best of us; when there's something we really want to say we sometimes can't say it. And it's the same with writing: when there's something we really want to write – for example an essay on a topic we know all about – sometimes the words won't flow into sentences.

And then other times, writing is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

So admittedly, I've wanted to update my blog for a few weeks now but somehow “I never found the time”. As I sit typing this now (in my toujours Internet-less apartment) it is 1pm in the afternoon, I have a 1000-word “abstract” to write about my dissertation (whatever that means; can't those genius academic freaks get their act together and call it a summary or an introduction or something like we used to in school?), I have had only half a cup of coffee and 2 hours sleep (dangerous, very dangerous) and on top of that, I have no food in my house and a shopping list of things to buy.

And also the Internet thing to sort out.

(I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get Internet actually. That's another very long story altogether, possibly one of novel-length at this rate...).

But the thing that remains constant is the desire to update the world (well, the world of my friends and family) with the goings-on of my life in Blog Form. So, in face of the winds of all that is Complicated, Bureaucratic and Just Plain Annoying, I am giving myself an outlet for this and making sure that if I can't laugh at myself, others can.

It's hard to explain what these challenges are really. Where to begin?? Would be my first question. It isn't really just having lived in an apartment for 10 weeks with no Internet, neither is it always the “J'en sais rien; je ferais rien” attitude of some of the French official people I've met so far. (Seriously – when you need something done, it means you need it done, not in 6-10 weeks or “on the second left at the end of the road, where my colleague will help you”).

It's more the day to day challenge of facing new challenges which can wear you down. And actually, this is the most true thing really. In the time I have spent here, I've realised that maybe this year is a wake-up call for me.

Was I expecting an easy, relaxed approach to life on my year abroad; a year in the Caribbean lounging on a beach followed by a summer au pairing again in the Cote d'Azur or Nice?

Perhaps.

But did I get it?

Most definitely not; in fact I got exactly the opposite. But the challenges which present themselves in day to day living – getting on the wrong Metro and missing the last direct train home so that the journey is two hours rather than one, walking back and forth from McDonald's weekly and walking around Paris trying to find things like the British Embassy and a phone shop who will tell me my address is in a zone which can pick up Internet (and not the reverse) – these challenges are not crises. No food, no bed, nowhere warm to live, no job, no friends, no money – those are crises in Paris. These are the real crises people face: sleeping under bridges by the Seine, bunking in Metro stations and lying on the Champs-Elysées freezing themselves solid beside shop windows.

So when I stop and think about my so called “problems”, suddenly Nina Simone looms into my mind and starts singing “Got my hair, got my head, got my brains, got my ears, got my eyes, got my nose, got my mouth...I got my smile...” and then I feel ashamed of myself for having doubted this logic. (Thanks Nina).

My friend Marlena, before she left Paris, gave me a postcard with this picture on it and wrote me a little note on the back of it. Even though my “problems” are miniscule when put into context with real problems, she understands that I've had my fair share of “I CAN'T DO IT” moments since I got here.

'Whatever happens to you, remember you are a woman and you will always find a way to resolve your problems.'

Well indeed – how could I deny that logic? (Every time I look at this card, I can feel a slightly pro-female “Destiny's Child” speech coming on, so I'll keep it short).

Most of the superheroes are men (obvs. They have to save the damsels in distress who can't hack independence). But frankly, some of these damsels are just Superwoman but they don't know it. If Lois Lane had to save herself from getting kidnapped and thrown off a building, would she be able to? According to the comics, no. 

But personally? I reckon she could if she had to. Any woman could, if she had to. And since I've got here, I've realised this: if you're a damsel in distress who is used to a form of Superman always coming to her rescue...

Then wake up and realise what you have to do. Moreover, what you're capable of doing. When you have to do life independently, save yourself (in some cases, literally and in others, from all things bureaucratic) and rely on no-one else, well...

That's when you realise, there are lots of undiscovered Superwomen in this world. And you're sort of one of them, if you call yourself a woman.

From the Mountains With Love X

Hi readers,

It has been probably two weeks since my last blog post, which I apologize for now. I am trying very hard to stick to my rule of “At least one blog post a week” but ma vie Française so far has made simple things like staying connected to the world via Internet a bit difficult.

Currently, I am typing this message from Grenoble (and profiting from the free wifi) and I am en route to the Alps with my ex-au pair family from Nice. I don't know exactly know where to start with my “news” from this week and the previous except that I greatly enjoyed writing my last blog post. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I think I am going to start doing more blog posts with creative writing type styles to them.

This week and the next, for those of you who are not in France, are the “Vacances Toussaint” or in other words, two week's holiday from school (half term). So, instead of staying in my appartment for two weeks to stew over problems like wifi and lost passports, I made the executive decision to go and visit my old au 

pair family in Nice.

Cannes

Nice - the view from the top

The three munckins and their new au pair Imogen!

Antibes

Gwendal and Ronan (nothing has changed)

So far, it has been a great week. Seriously tiring, but in a good way. Tiring in the sense that I have tried to do as much as is physically possible in seven days in the Cote d'Azur. I have visited old friends, gone out in Cannes and Antibes, done quite a lot of shopping and forgotten all my woes of past times: pending dissertations, passport applications and Macdonalds de Bordel. 

The only woe I do have is now checking my bank balance.

*

I am now typing this part of my blog entry from the mountains, in Chamonix, Haute Savoie if anyone really wants to Google map it.

(Our view, and no, I did not find this on Google!)

The crazies. Not superimposed against a background, I might add. This is the real background.

 There is no wifi here, except that I found a small pub at the bottom of the mountain called the Green Monkey, which has free internet and beer (not free). So I am saved, once again.

I am having another week of insecurity, unfortunately, which I think is related to the fact I am anticipating my return to Paris and all the alarm bells are going off in my head saying DANGER! LONELY DAY! LOST PASSPORT! MCDONALDS WIFI TWENTY MINUTES WALK FROM APARTMENT!

Now, I know that my last blog post was called “Finding my Feet” and that it was all about how I was finally feeling okay about living in the middle of nowhere near Paris all by myself, but...

There are always ups and downs to the settling in process and I think that this is one of the 'down' moments. This experience of being abroad so far has brought back a few of the bad memories amongst all the good I have of being abroad – as an au pair. I am now remembering how lonely and homesick I felt some days when I was an au pair, how much I just wanted to be surrounded by familiar faces and old friends.

If I am completely honest with myself, I never imagined my year abroad to start off like this. Like I've said before, I always envisaged this to be the most amazing experience of my life, even better than my gap year. I never imagined I would want to hop on a Eurostar home at any given moment!

However, deep down inside I know better than to trust my emotions. I know for definite that there are as many good days as there are bad days.

Explanation: You can't tell who is having a happy day or sad day. You might be surrounded by bad day people when you're having a good day or you might be having a bad day when others are having a good one.

And of course, you have the classic, is it half empty or half full? picture. 

To be honest the only thing that matters is that there is beer in it.

It's stupid, but just thinking about things from this perspective cheers me up. I like the idea that even on a bad day, it doesn't necessarily mean you're having a bad life. And the truth is, I have already had some pretty amazing days in Paris, amongst the crappy ones. I've made friends, here and there and there are many more to meet, according to Paris's size and population.

The other day in Grenoble with my au pair family we were at dinner with some of their friends who know me pretty well now from my au pair days. The dad in the family said:

“Living in Paris is a weird experience you know, Rachel. You can be right in the centre, in a small apartment, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the city and you can still feel completely alone. It's as if it's so big that you feel small.”

And then he said:

“When I first met you, you were only eighteen, you were practically a little girl!” he smiled and said it's funny how things change. He said “Je ne sais pas si j'étais si autonome que toi quand j'avais ton age” (translation: I don't know if I was ever as independent as you when I was your age).

Then they started asking me all sorts of questions like “When are you going to meet your French man and marry him so you can stay here for good?” and “When are you going to come and work in France as a teacher?”

I just laughed and said, wait, let's see how this year turns out. One step at a time, committing myself to France forever is tempting, but it's not a commitment I'm willing to make right this second. And who needs men anyway?!

They all laughed but I bet they didn't really believe me.

Just a few more pictures to cheer myself up, because well...

...I can't get enough of this photo.

Or this one.

...because this is how I get when I see Daniel Craig.

This is how I feel when a bad day hits me.

We've all been there (literally, sometimes. the Tupperware drawer is a huge hazard in our house).

But generally there are ways of cheering up. 

I will stop posting pictures of gorgeous men in a minute. But here, last but not least, one of my faves :

Au revoir!

Finding my feet

 Hi guys!

I have not died in France! I am well, in fact. It has been a crazy week of running back and forth to McDonalds every day just to log into Facebook (to stay in touch with the world!!) and check my emails because alas, there is still no internet in my flat. 

I currently live in McDonalds.

I hope I am not becoming entirely dependant on internet, but the truth is, I am. There is very little else to distract me in this small little town of Mennecy, and so I have been making do with reading, decorating my flat, doing laundry, lesson planning, ballet dancing in my living room and watching back to back episodes of Gilmore Girls. I have to say, things are looking up much more than they were even a week ago. Now that my place looks like a home, I have a washing machine, a fridge, a bed and even a sofa to curl up on when it gets cold, I feel much happier and snug in my apartment. Which, incidentally, is enormous!

I still can't believe I got this sofa free online. recupe.net if anyone is interested!

And beneath is the state of my dining room table after the first two weeks of paperwork and French bureaucracy....

The 'lobby..'

Room 1 (cleaning products)

Hallway

My bedroom! 

Hallway two

Bathroom

Me in my kitchen (tea after a day of work!)

Yes, I am open to receiving visitors (and that is my way of saying, please come and visit me for a weekend in Paris!). I have already had the first, my friend Sara from sixth form, which was an amazing weekend of non-stop fun.

After this weekend that has just passed, I was absolutely exhausted, but in a positive way. On Sunday, something happened which was really amazing. I felt so amazed by the whole experience that I decided to not only blog about it but to write it in novel-style rather than bloggy style because I miss creative writing from school but also because I thought it was worthy of being told properly. I am going to call this particular episode of my experiences so far in Paris “Finding my Feet”. Because although the past 2-3 weeks have been stressful, tiring, challenging, unpredictable and at times, emotional, I feel that finally, after this weekend with my friend from high school I started to see things in a different light. After that weekend, I felt that:

• I have been so blessed and lucky by ending up here
• There is lots of potential for me in a city like Paris
• I am going to make lots of unforgettable memories and friends here, I just know it

Finding my feet

It is 11AM. The sky is clear, streaked with strips of wispy clouds and when the wind picks up it is strong and bitterly cold. I stand across the street, in a park opposite the coach station, looking down onto a giant motorway where cars pass underneath.

In a few moments, after I have taken a deep breath, inhaling the scent of autumn leaves and pollution, I glance once more across the motorway, across the coach station. In the distance, the Eiffel Tower is peeking over the tops of cream coloured buildings and the narrow, paved streets of Paris.

I take the opportunity, as I stand on the motorway bridge looking out over this impressive cityscape, to inhale a deep breath and commit this moment to memory. I have to count my lucky stars. I do not remember a time when anyone has ever associated the name Paris with anything but beautiful or elegant or impressive. And as I look out, I realise with a smile that I have somehow fallen on my feet, like a cat does when it jumps out of a tree. I think for a moment of where I had wanted to be in the beginning. I wanted to be in Martinique, I was so sure of it. A French island in the middle of the Caribbean, with beautiful beaches, hot sun and impressive mountains and volcanoes.

That was a place far away, where I'd wanted to have a great adventure, explore islands and jungles and caves, sit out on the beach day or night, sleeping under the sun or the stars. I never wanted to wear a pair of gloves or a winter coat. If someone had even suggested that I go to Paris for my year out as a teaching assistant, I would have laughed in their face and told them to dream on and find a different girl. No way was I going to Paris when it was only a train ride from London and in one of the coldest regions of France. I knew that all my friends understood how much I wanted the Caribbean adventure and they were all crossing their fingers for me.

But then I had ended up with a job in France after all. Paris, of all the places I had ruled out. But now I was here. And it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was mysteriously beautiful to me. Experiencing Paris is something that can never get old; it is timeless, full of history but at the same time modern, mixed and culturally different. Even after two weeks, I was beginning to see that.

I was sure in that moment, looking out on the city, that I was going to find my feet.

I make my way across the street and descend into the nearest Metro station, walk through the maze of tunnels and walk onto an underground train which whisks me away at top speed. At my stop, Chatelet-les-Halles, the lady announces in a proud voice, I get off and make my way to the train platform which will lead me home, thirty-seven kilometres away.

As I do all of this, I am completely lost in thought. Have you ever had a moment in life when you feel that your body is functioning (breathing, walking and seeing) but your mind is somewhere utterly elsewhere? I hardly realise that I am sitting on the train until I am out of the station, gazing out at the grey skyline of Paris's suburbs.

I reach into my bag and pull out my trusty journal which I like to take with me on long trips like this by myself. I take my pen and open it to a blank page...but as I stare out of the window once more, watching the world rush past me, I cannot think of the words to write.

Even though I have fallen on my feet, I think to myself, living alone in a foreign country is nonetheless a challenging feat. Did I know what I was doing? Not really. There were times when I felt lonely. When I didn't know exactly how the next day or the next week was going to turn out. There were times when I felt frightened, scared of the loneliness that might befall me.

What on earth did you do when you were lonely, with no family in a city that you barely had any friends in? What could stop loneliness when it hit, would it simply stop itself after time?

But a small voice in the back of my head reminded me, confidently: You have done this before. And you can make a life for yourself wherever you go. I considered the voice like it was my conscience speaking. Yes conscience, I told it. You have a point.

Out of the window I gazed once more, reflecting on my independence. Was it a good thing? Yes I suppose it was. But being completely independent could be tiring also.

Sometimes, you just need someone to do the work for you. When you're rushing around, opening a bank account, buying a mobile phone, shopping for food, carrying bags under the rain, sitting at the bus stop waiting to get home, reading a map to get on a Metro, going to the Post Office to send letters and running around a workplace trying to find the correct room for the correct time of day...it all becomes too much.

Sometimes you just need people to find you and be your friend, instead of you trying to find them.

It is not long before I hear something which brings me out of deep, distracted reverie. It is a beautiful sound, a pair of angelic voices, coming from somewhere down the train.

I soon seek them out. It a trio of teenage girls, one who is moving her lips so carefully you'd think she was a ventriloquist – a pro at what she is doing. Her voice harmonizes with the voice of the girl sitting next to her. The third teenager sits in front of them, filming them. They appear to be African, with their long dark hair and strong vocal chords, but I can't tell for sure.

At first I cannot hear what they are saying, beneath the noise of the train. Their voices compliment each other: one girl harmonizing with the other without need for any background music. I listen carefully, trying to make out what they are saying. Soon enough I make out one word:

Seigneur.

Have I heard it correctly? But then I make out another word:

Jésus-Christ.

Instantly, I smile to myself. They are singing a hymn. Seigneur means Saviour in French. It could quite possibly be a choir of angels after all.

Describing the sound of these voices would not quite encompass the feeling I had then, sitting on the train listening to these singers. The graffittied walls and dirty buildings of the Parisien suburbs shoot past in the background. Somewhere in the cloudless, wintry sky the sun was shining through the window on me, onto my lap where my diary rested open, blank-paged and speechless.

I decided sometime then that I was going to go over to them. There are only a few times in life when moments like this happen. There are times when I should have followed out on decisions such as these: many a person I have wished to speak to and I have let the chance slide by.

This time I won't.

I shove my diary into my bag and walk down the aisle towards the singers. They notice me approaching but they say nothing. I sit down opposite them and they continue singing.

There was a man fast asleep in the chair in front of me, completely oblivious to everything going on in the world. I crane my neck around to look at the rest of the coach and realise that nobody else is listening to the girls. Everyone is wrapped in their own world, their own bubble – just another Sunday morning on the long train ride to wherever home is.

Sitting opposite them, I can hear the words to the song they are singing. There is only one line, which is repeated again and again:

Je n'ai que toi, Seigneur... je n'ai que toi...

One of the girls uses her knees and feet as percussion. The drum, the harmonizing and the high notes float over the entire carriage of the train and I wonder to myself: why isn't anyone else listening?

The words in French do not translate in the exact same way into English, but a sufficient translation would be: I have only you, Lord, there is only you...

Or something to that extent.

I steal a glance at one of the singers. Out of the corner of her eye she has noticed me looking at her, but she says nothing still. As they bring their song to an end and I find myself clapping shyly and they all look at me hiding grins.

“Merci,” they say in unison and before I can even think about it, I say exactly what is on my mind:

“Vous chantez tres bien. J'ai jamais entendu ca sur le train!”

You all sing superbly, and I've never heard anything like it on the train.

The conversation is short as the train is slowing down as it pulls into a station where the girls are evidently getting off. Before I can stop myself I ask:

“Are you on your way to church?”

They nod and I blurt, in spite of myself:

“Can I come?”

Of course, no one ever really heard of anyone being refused entry to a place like church. But all the same, I feel a bit strange inviting myself.

But of course, they reply, and a few moments later, I find myself getting off onto the platform with them. We keep up a conversation, I find out their names: Eldad, Nelly and Rachel. Rachel! But that's my name too, I say and they respond enthusiastically. I find out that they are Congolese and that their church is currently in an apartment a few streets away. They lost access to the building they had, they tell me. Two hundred members scattered around the outskirts of Paris have been forced to set up mini-churches in apartments where they can until they can get access back to the main building.

I don't understand the ins and outs of the legal situation but I decide it doesn't matter. Even if it's informal, it is an interesting opportunity. Stumbling across a group of Congolese Parisienne teenagers on their way to church in the suburbs doesn't happen every Sunday. And in fact, I explain to them, I had missed church that very morning. A situation which I couldn't avoid – I had to drop my friend off at the coach station so that she could make her way back to London safely. She had been visiting me for the weekend and she doesn't speak any French, nor does she know Paris at all. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would just have to try again the next week, against all odds.

But then there I was, on my way to church now. It seemed as if they had found me, I hadn't even had to look further than a few metres down the train.

We cross an enormous bridge which takes us over rows of train tracks, leading into all the major Parisien stations. The sky is clear, very blue, contrasting with the black landscape of apartment buildings, grubby walls and telephone poles.

Soon enough, we are at an apartment building. We go inside and up three flights of stairs. Eldad knocks on a door and turns around to me:

“Par contre, on est vraiment en rétard,” she whispers, making a face. We are late. The 'service' started at 10:30AM apparently. It is now 12.

A small boy peeks his head around the door, staring up at us curiously. The girls ruffle his hair and he lets us pass, looking very intently at me in particular.

I walk into a large living room which seems to be holding about twenty people sitting around, mostly women, some children and other teenagers. Two men are sitting near a table, one of whom has a bible in his lap and is reading it with an expression of rapt concentration on his face. The other man is standing up, holding a bible in his left hand, gesticulating wildly with the other and almost shouting out the words from it. Everyone in the room glances briefly at me as I come in and Eldad leads me to a spare chair right next to the gesticulating man who appears to be the preacher. Everyone is African, or Caribbean. Quite frankly, I've never felt like more of a foreigner in my entire life.

But I decide that it doesn't matter. Everyone is looking at me curiously, but with expressions that suggest friendliness. Perhaps this doesn't happen very often, I tell myself. How would it, unless you knew exactly which apartments in this part of Paris held services?

The preacher is in Luke chapter 19 and so I decide to do what I can to blend in and take out my bible. I just so happened to be carrying my French bible with me that morning; before I knew I was going to miss church. He is speaking about something, but it is not the words which are on the page. He is saying what he is saying very passionately and very loudly and every now and then some of the women nod their heads and all affirm in unison “Amen”. Occasionally it is “Hallelujah”.

The sermon lasts another ten minutes, since we are very much latecomers, and then the three girls I met on the train, Nelly, Eldad and Rachel, stand up. Without prompting, they begin to sing, without background music, the same song they were singing on the train.

Je n'ai que toi Seigneur, je n'ai que toi...

The others in the room stand up and start to sing. I do not know the words so I close my eyes and listen. The voices of the three girls can be heard above the others and I keep thinking to myself how beautiful they sound. How I wish I could sing like that. But I am quite happy just to listen.

In the end, I meet everyone at the end of the service. I find out that this is some sort of extended family – everyone is Congolese. The group of teenage girls flock around me – around ten in total – fascinated and asking me lots of questions. Where are you from in England? What are you doing in France? How do you speak French so well? They are all smiling widely, friendly in the most extreme.

It is a better reception than I could have imagined – how are you supposed to know, before you walk into a place, someone's apartment at that, what everyone is going to think of you? But the other man, not the preacher, silences everyone and Eldad explains the story of how her and the two other girls were singing on the train and I came over to listen. She explains how I had missed church and asked about theirs. The man, whose name is Ange, like the word for angel in French, smiles broadly at me. He has very kind eyes.

“Well it is a miracle,” he says, and the ladies agree with “Amen!” 

I smile to myself. If there is one thing I admire greatly, it is the passion and enthusiasm expressed by African Christians. At home in England, I had been going to a church for six months which was predominantly African. In the time that I spent there, I began to see a different way of church, a different way of faith. The members of that church were not afraid to express their faith in every possible way. Some ladies danced wildly as if they were in a Whitney Houston video, sometimes the preachers screamed loudly as they were preaching and acted as if it were perfectly normal. Sometimes there were periods of time, half an hour or two, where there would be no service, simply music and the congregation sat at the front, lying down on the ground, deeply reflective. Even if it wasn't what every church was like, it was the kind of passion that inspired me to explore deeper into what it all meant.

Which was why I was very interested in coming back, I told them when the girls asked me eagerly if I wanted to join them for the service next week. Same apartment, they said. Since I had found nothing so far in the way of church and since I was already fascinated by the similar way in which they expressed their faith to the church I had back home, I agreed.

And you know what? It isn't every day that something like that happens on the train – sometimes there is a reason for these things.

Sometimes, I told myself an hour later when I was getting on the train to go back to my small village, you don't have to do any of the work. Sometimes, even when you're at your most independent and you feel that something as complex as making friends, finding your bearings and becoming part of a new culture is an impossible feat, something happens that makes you realise that you're not meant to do all the hard work by yourself. It is perfectly normal, once in a while, to land on your feet the way a cat falls out of tree and find yourself looking out onto a beautiful horizon, counting your blessings.

VDM (Vie de Merde...)

Um....

Where do I even begin with this blog post?

I have been in France less than a week and already the perfect blog title to describe my current state is, unfortunately, 'VDM'. For those of you who haven't guessed already, that means 'Vie de Merde'.

First things first though! I arrived, all was good. I stayed at my colleague's house for four days, while the school got my apartment situation sorted. Then I moved into my apartment...and that is where the stress began.

I had a mad couple of days running around the entire region of Essonne (South Paris basically) in a voiture and a camionette (car and minivan respectively) trying to pick up furniture from Ikea, my colleague's house (she lent me a fridge....Yaaaaaay) and from a random house in the middle of nowhere (I found a free sofa online). Fortunately, my parents were 'driving through France' (which occurs once in a blue moon, but there were en route to Bordeaux to visit friends) so they gave me a hand with the driving considering my recent Failee of Driving Test Status.

They helped me out a bit with the flat, unpacking and cleaning it up (the floor and cupboards were pretty dirty). Unfortunately, in the transition of moving from my colleague's house to my apartment, I somehow managed to lose my passport.

I lost my passport in FRANCE.

Of all places to lose a passport, France is perhaps the worst place in Europe to lose it. Before I arrived in France, I was unaware that paperwork and official documents are almost as revered and celebrated as much as pétanque and camembert. Not only am I unable to travel (potentially bye-bye to the holiday in Nice seeing my old au pair family I had planned for two weeks' time) I have also lost my only form of identity proof. Vie de Merde.

But bad things happen in life and the only solution when things like this happen is to stay calm and try and sort the problem out as soon as possible. So that's what I am currently doing.

Amazingly I have a flat, a fridge, a bed, hot water and food (which is more than I had 3-4 weeks ago). Amazingly I also have opened a bank account with minimal stress (so far) and done most of the important school documents (social security, CAF reimbursement and other such long, boring stuff will come in due course). But I still have no wifi in the flat which is more than mildly annoying in a time where I need internet for things like online banking, google maps, signing up for internet (yes, most of the good contracts such as Free are online sign ups).

On top of all that, there's the whole adjusting-to-living-by-myself and not knowing anyone in my small town. Fortunately I have made a few friends – also I have met some of the assistants – and I am sure I will make a few more in my area sometime soon.

But before that happens, I think I have to adjust to the flat, which is my main concern at the moment. It's quite a nice flat, I can't complain.

What I find difficult is the sheer loneliness of it at the moment. Perhaps when I get internet, I'll feel more in touch with the world in my flat, but before this week:

• I didn't realise how much I need people in order to feel like a functional human being.
• I didn't realise how stressful it can be when you have no one around just to help you, talk to or just rant about life to (which sort of ties in with living alone)
• how stressful setting up a life abroad has the potential to be

I know things will get better but right now I just want to do a massive U-Turn and catch a Eurostar back to Southampton, beg and plead with the Erasmus coordinators/Humanities staff to let me do final year a year early JUST SO I DON'T HAVE TO SUFFER ANY MORE FRANCE-RELATED CRAP!

In all the times I lived abroad, I have never done it completely independently. And now that I am doing this independently, I am starting that all of my qualms in Mallorca this summer about being abroad were not stupid. Setting up life on your own (i.e. being a grown up) is difficult enough in your own country, but in a foreign country it is even worse. I am thankful for one thing at least, that I can at least speak French confidently. If I couldn't, I think I would currently be in a much worse state of mind!!!

Having said that, my apartment is nice. And I am very thankful to simply have an apartment in the Paris area!!! I will post some photos of it when I have sorted my life out a bit.

When I have calmed down, I will write another blog post which is more encouraging and positive!!! For now, I had to rant because if I didn't I think I might have exploded in my very own apartment, bringing my year abroad to a very premature end.

Hasta bientot mes friends!