This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at NYU chapter.
I’ve realized all my blog posts have been the same. Yeah, I know, the titles change and I talk about different cafes, but trust me, they are nearly identical. They have been about getting settled in Paris, about my routines, and about finally achieving a (temporary) sense of settlement here. Oh, and croissants, a lot of them have been about croissants.
Delicious, fresh baked pastry aside, realizing that everything I’ve written is the same was unnerving. Today is March 1st. It’s the beginning of my third month abroad and I was expecting to be sharing wild stories of crazy nights and foreign friends I’ve made. Granted, some wild and crazy nights have indeed unraveled, so I wonder then, why am I not writing about them? Why do I find it more interesting to explore what it feels like to sit at a different table in a new café instead of partying on the Champs-Élysées?
It’s because I’ve been searching for some kind of continuity, something reliable. I’ve been counting on my routine to make me feel at home. Between shuffling back between New York and Los Angeles for months at a time and completely uprooting myself from America for these five months, I’m constantly grappling to grab hold of something that’s not there. This past Wednesday however, I realized I don’t need anything to hold on to.
Part of my course load is a two-credit creative writing in French atelier, or workshop. Six students, two hours, one French professor, one smelly classroom. During these two hours, we simply write. We’ve written about different windows we’ve looked through and what we see on our way to school everyday. I’ve never taken a creative writing course, let alone one in French, so I have created some less-then-presentable pieces of work every week. Despite the quality of what I write, last weeks assignment was just what I needed to get out of my monotonous routine rut, without having to change a single aspect of my daily routine.
“Starting with yesterday,” my professor explained (in French of course, but I’ll spare you all…), “describe a real moment, everyday, from the past week, in which you were in the middle of a ordinary action, when something extraordinary happened.”
Ordinary? Extraordinary? Remember things that happened more than 15 minutes ago? I thought she was crazy, but the clock was ticking and I only had hour and half left to describe incredible moments from the past, average, week. “Hier…” I began… and I contemplated…and then I remembered. Something extraordinary did happen. On my metro commute to class there is normally a man playing the violin in my car every morning. It’s loud and it’s squeaky and it makes me miss my giant Starbucks lattes more than anything. The violin man began to play a song from his usual repertoire when suddenly, a group of old French men wearing matching berets walked into our car. They began to sing, like a French version of a Barbershop Quartet. Their soft gentle voices and subtle harmonies were refreshing and pleasant and I even considered giving them some change. At the sound of their voices, the violin man stopped playing, and all was right with the world. The Quartet got off at the next stop and the violin man immediately began playing in hopes of earing a euro or two. And so the rest of my day continued like normal.
But that was it. Everyday isn’t the same. Every metro ride isn’t mundane. Something unique happens every moment, whether you are in Paris, New York, or Los Angeles. You just have to recognize them.