My Glorious Return

this is a long one, so get out your reading glasses!

Most of you have probably heard by now that I will be returning to NY this winter - one assumes for good.  There are two main reasons.

- It is hard, although not impossible, to renew my visa here.  Without being an au pair again (which was fine, but I don't want to do it for another year), I would need to find a place that would hire me full time as an employee, and would be willing to sponsor my visa renewal.  That means they would have to pay extra for my medical insurance - everyone here must be on the national plan, but for foreigners that means employers have to pay additional fees to do it - and given my position here it's difficult to find a place willing to do that.  In the meantime I'm doing some miscellaneous hourly work until I leave.

- I've said this in the past, but I really don't know that many people here and it's fairly hard [for me] to make friends.  I was friends with some other au pairs last year, but as that is usually a one-year thing, they've all left Paris.  I'm really not the type to randomly go out and meet people, so it's been somewhat lonely here (although I am by nature a loner so this is not so big a deal as it might seem).  However by now I really do wish I could be around my friends and family again.  I've missed three or four weddings since being here as well!

- Additionally, thanks to some amazingly lovely people in my old office (hello, SFS!) I'm not incredibly stressed about finding a new job in NY, which makes the transition at least easier.  I don't know yet what exactly I'll be doing after I get back, as it's hard to figure that kind of thing out from an ocean away, but that is not as heavy a burden as it would be otherwise.

Obviously it is going to be a big transition for me to go back, in some good and some bad ways.  I have mixed feelings about it.

Things I will miss:

- Paris!  All of it.  I will miss walking along the Seine; trying to memorize the order of the bridges; climbing up my hill towards the Pantheon when I come home; taking my shortcut through the Luxembourg as I come home from babysitting; saying hello to my local baker, produce people, and sandwich people; discovering new little streets I'd never seen before; finding new cheeses and wines I'd never tasted.  Living in the midst of incredible history.

- Speaking French all the time.  Immersion is really the best way to learn a language, and if you don't practice it, you will lose skills. I didn't even begin learning French properly until I was 19, and I've only been speaking it semi-fluently for a few years.  Learning a language that late has disadvantages, mostly that it's a lot easier to lose as you lose it less.  Not only that, but it's a beautiful language and I will miss using some of the more descriptive or fun phrases.

- My tiny little apartment.  I've grown very fond of it in my time here.  Despite all the stairs and my lack of a stove I really do like my space, and I love my location in the city.  I will not miss my stupid low wooden beam, though.

- The children I do/used to babysit.  They really are good kids, and it's sad to think I won't see them after this winter (although I've already been invited to the next bar mitzvah, which would be in February 2014!)  They all improve my French, even the little ones.  I'll miss cooking with them, gossiping about their school friends, brushing little M's long, curly, perpetually tangled hair (I'm the only one she lets do that - not her mom, dad, or her new nanny), answering baby O's impossible number of questions about everything (he's not really a baby anymore, at more than two, but everyone calls him that anyway).

- Watching Parisians.  They really are the most beautiful city of people I've ever seen.  I love looking at their outfits and eavesdropping on their conversations.

Things I'm excited about:

- Seeing everyone!  That is of course the overwhelming good part about this whole thing: I'll be around New York again not as a visitor but as a resident.  When someone tells me about their concert coming up in a couple of months or is planning a birthday get together I can say yes, I'll be around, I'll see you there!  I won't have to plan how to fit all the people into a limited time because I'll have unlimited time.

- Speaking English all the time.  Possibly a contradiction with the above, but oh well.  It will be nice not to have to think about what comes out of my mouth.  Are my subject, verbs, adjectives all in agreement?  How do I form the imperfect tense with that irregular verb again?  Oh..what is that word, I know I know it!  I won't have to think about all of that, I can just talk.

- Related to the above, being surrounded by American products again.  One of the trickiest parts about living here is that there is a lot of specific vocabulary I don't know: less common food (especially cuts of meat), medicines, things you'd get at a drugstore, things like that.  Also things are of course measured with the metric system here; it took me a while to get used to requesting produce and such by the kilo or get a good feel for conversions in recipes.  It will be so nice to be able to just go into a store and pick up exactly what I need instead of trying to describe something random to the salesperson.

- Food.  I do love French food, but I'm very excited to get spicy things again!  Mexican, Indian, Thai, Japanese...ah, the possibilities!  I just hope I can still find good falafel.

Things I'm apprehensive about:

- Having missed certain things, or generally being out of the loop.  This has happened every time I've been home: I don't hear about some pieces of news - this could be on a personal, local, or national level - because I'm not around.  People forget to tell me things because they forget that everyone doesn't just know.  Or, because I've gotten out of the habit of reading local NY news online and get most of my news at an international level, I miss little news stories that everyone else has heard of.  I always feel really dumb!

- Running.  I've been running frequently of late, and I do it in the Luxembourg gardens, close to my apartment.  Parisians don't really run on the streets/sidewalks, and gyms are crazy expensive, so that's the appropriate place to do it.  I don't know what I'll do when I go back, as I'd feel weird running on streets and there are either no good parks for it (in Northport), or the ones that are I'd feel weird about running in (in Brooklyn, ie Prospect Park; Central Park is too long of a journey from Brooklyn).

- Finding a new apartment when I eventually move back to Brooklyn.  I loved my old one so much that I feel like anything else will be less!  Also I've been perusing prices and they appear to have gone up, boo.  For the record (since I've heard rumors that certain uncles are suggesting I should move elsewhere), I believe the only places I could ever live long-term in the US would be NYC or Austin - although the latter is a bit dubious because it is, alas, surrounded by Texas. 

- Explaining to move and my plans to each and every person I encounter when I go back.  I understand the need to do this but it gets tiresome and every time I recount things like that it makes me question myself again.  I hope to negate some of that via this post!

So those are pretty much all my thoughts on the matter.  I'll probably post a bit more in the upcoming months about it, with greater amounts of angst about leaving Paris, and excitement about returning to NY.  I'll be back for good December 21st, and will be making a pre-move visit around Thanksgiving.  See you this winter!