All My Peeps

 

During my time east of the Atlantic, I have been lucky enough to see some amazing places.  I’ve strolled down the Champs Elysée in Paris, dipped my feet in Lake Geneva, watched the changing of the guard in London, and even biked on volcanoes in Iceland.  For my next vacation I’ll be taking a trip to Turkey, and I have plans to spend time in Barcelona in early May.    

The Atlantic Ocean in Iceland

Changing of the Guard in London

The Champs Elysee on a Sunday Afternoon

But as cool as all this sounds, none of it has brought more depth to my life than my new routine – the fact of living, working, and playing in France.  Although I do my best to make it all sound glamorous, living in France can get a bit lonely for a foreigner. 

That’s why I’ve got my peeps.    

This post is going to be an ode (I apologize in advance for any excess cheese) to the people who have made my life here in France not only less lonely, but more meaningful and a heck of a lot more fun! 

Here they are.  In more or less the order I met them:

Gregoire: I hardly stepped into Pasteur (my place of work, not the man who invented pasteurization) and he was already inviting me to coffee and signing me up for salsa classes.  Gregoire has lived in Canada, so he knows what it’s like to be “the foreign guy” at work.  He often teases me for working too hard, and is constantly distracting me with coffee, cake, youtube videos, and stories of weekend shenanigans.  

Charlotte: Charlotte was the first native English speaker I met in Besançon. She works at Pasteur also, so I met her just one day after meeting Gregoire.  It was the first time I’d heard a Scottish accent in real life (by that I mean not on TV) and at the beginning of our friendship I found myself giggling at phrases like “wee lad,” which I had always assumed were just for dramatic effect in movies and weren’t actually said.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without my wee Scottish friend.  Some days we are together constantly  – drinking coffee in the staff room, having inappropriate conversations at the lunch table because no one can understand when we speak English, stumbling through salsa class in the evening, cooking some Asian-style chicken dish for dinner, and going out for a beer or two at the bar near my apartment where they give us discounts for being foreign. 

Gemma: When I first met Gemma, I assumed she was French.  She was wearing a stripped shirt and standing outside a popular bar, with a group French guys who were taking a smoke break.  But Charlotte ran up and hugged her, chatting away in English.  As it turns out; she’s from a town on the southern coast of England.  We became fast friends – probably because we both have the same dorky, but slightly off-color, sense of humor. Gemma is my favorite person to travel with, because she is both organized and laid-back. We’ve taken weekend trips and day trips together, and we are going to Turkey in a month.  More often that not, we crack ourselves up taking touristy pictures and talking about our own made-up country called “Janadia.” (I’m not even going to try to explain that one). On the train home, we spend hours doing nothing but cracking up at our own bad jokes. 

Katya: You may have read about Katya in my recent post about Russian Christmas.  She is truly a brave soul – being perhaps the only Russian in the whole city of Besançon. She is taller than most French men, loves hosting parties in her apartment, and drinks only the most expensive vodka (the cheap stuff isn’t really vodka, she says).  At first glance she seems quite timid and meek, but once you get to know her, you discover a fun-loving girl who is up for anything.  Katya is constantly giving advice about men, whom she claims to appreciate more than the rest of us silly girls because there are supposedly very few good men in Russia. 

“Ann Marshall, stand over here so you are in that guy’s line of vision.”
                                                                        “Don’t wear that shirt.  It doesn’t show off your figure.” 
“That guy’s not good enough for you, tell him you’ve got a boyfriend so he’ll leave you alone.”

 Let’s face it, without Katya, I’d be a lost soul – particularly in the romance department.          

Elvin: Living far away from his native Nicaragua, Elvin and I feel a bizarre camaraderie since we are from the same side of the Atlantic.  We both love to complain about the lack of sunshine and spicy food in Besançon and don’t understand why the French don’t smile or strike up conversations in the grocery store.  Elvin doesn’t own a coat, although the temperature here is regularly below freezing.  Instead, he shows up to work in the same faded-blue hoodie everyday, claiming he’s not cold.  When we hang out outside of work, I speak terrible Spanish to him while he laughs at me and we are usually a) dancing b) drinking, or c) all of the above.

Laura and Julia: These lovely sisters are my French guardian angels!! In fact, I met them before any of the others, when I was in France two years ago.  They are part of the reason I am here in Besançon.  Although they now live in Paris, they are from Besançon originally and return often.  My apartment is even in the same building as their mom’s!  Laura and Julia have introduced me to all their friends, invited me to family dinners, included me in nights out, and even extended an open invitation for me to visit them in Paris, which I do often.   Although I do not see them every day, I am constantly texting, calling, or facebook chatting them – making weekend plans or telling them about my latest French faux pas.  

Laura is my age and works at Le Pacte, a Parisian company that buys and sells the rights to international films.  She studied film production for a year at NYU.  Julia is just a bit younger – the same age as my sister.  She studies Art History at the Sorbonne and dreams of being a professor or a museum curator.   Not only do we share interests – film, art, music, traveling… etc, but Laura and Julia are truly two of my greatest friends.  When the three of us are together, it’s not two French girls and one American, but three girls talking, laughing, and at times crying, about life’s absurd twists and turns.