a corner turned

A corner has been turned, I think.  The beginning of the past week was a little hard, with something between culture shock and just normal loneliness creeping up through the first few weeks.  My frustration over my limitations with French was mounting, I'd spent a few too many hours by myself in the apartment, I didn't yet have a phone (let alone really know what there was to do) so I couldn't particularly make plans,  I had to walk up hill both ways to get anywhere...   Hopefully I'm past that now.

Monday morning (day two of our weekend) I put on Sophie's feather earrings, and picked myself up all the way to the city center, and commenced with my long to-do list.  The prefecture (yeah, going again next Monday, by 11 am they closed the ticket machine, because there were already more people waiting than would be seen by 3 pm), all of the major French mobile carriers, an interior furnishing store, a little "artisan" bakery for lunch, a dingy phone store to unlock my iPhone, the Capitole square while I was waiting for the phone to be unblocked, back to the best of the mobile offers, and home!  Incroyable!  So, the longer summary:

The home-furnishing store left me mostly with art supplies -- I'm excited about my cylindrical cardboard boxes and painting supplies in order to be little storage bins for my desk or closet.  I also have lots of drawing paper -- decoration ideas any one?  The phone situation, despite being quite the run around, was eventually successful!  I had to go back the next day to the unlocking-hacker-guys after I'd accidentally synced my phone a little too much with my computer, and had Apple get mad about my newly acquired international abilities, but NOW, ladies and gents, I officially have a French phone.

In the lovely phone-hacking store, however, I was reminded about quite how small this little world is -- also waiting for their new phone was a lovely couple in their 20s from Victoria, BC.  The girl is studying at the Toulouse Business School for a semester, and her boyfriend just graduated from the UVic MBA program, which, it so happens, is where Mum is helping design the new Sustainable Development program, and why yes, they do know who she is.  Got to love Canadians ;)  So we exchanged facebook information, and will be going out for dinner some time soon, lovely lovely.

My French feels like it is just barely peeking its nose around the corner of something new, where I'm understanding more and more and there are starting to be French words on the tip of my tongue when I need them.  The kids spent a while during our story time trying to get me to make that lovely French "ooouuu" sound that just doesn't quite happen in English.  I've been reading chapter books for 7 year olds out loud for bedtime stories, which are about at my level... Lots of phonetic reading, relatively good comprehension, tons of laughter.

All week we've been running all the way through Giselle during the first half of the day, and then continuing to choreograph Kader's new ballet, La Reine Morte, after lunch.  We're in the theater tomorrow for staging and dress rehearsal, and then shows Saturday and Sunday.  I'll be back soon with pictures of the theater and news of how the shows go.  I spent a wonderful evening last night going to yoga again with Julian and Vanessa, and then dinner afterwards.  Because the yoga with the teacher they go to is very traditional, lots of holding poses for a long time while you do mental work and let your muscles sort themselves out, I can't help but feel I'm missing a fair amount by not being able to really understand what the teacher says.  I get the gist, but there are lots of little pieces (I can understand "elbow" but that doesn't really tell me what I'm supposed to be doing with said elbow) that escape me, and it's not really like flow where I can just follow along or look around, it's mostly internal work.  We'll see, as my French gets better it will be more worthwhile, I think.  Til then I have some yoga podcasts I'm excited about getting to try out.


I have had the strange sensation this week of watching shadows of myself living out the life I didn't choose...  Haunting the brick pathways of the quad and the 116th St. subway station on the Upper West Side is a mirage of what I would be doing now in this first week of classes, the people I would be with, the things I would be learning.  I ache, deeply, for my loves there, and for the inspired, articulate, loved self that exists there.  It's not regret though, I think that I did make the right choice -- I had a moment sitting on the floor in the side splits with my head propped up on my elbows today watching a section of Giselle and remembering that that isn't exactly how most people spend their work day -- and I'm not really sure I'd recognize regret if I was feeling it, it's not an emotion I'm particularly in tune with.  Being able to dance all day is just as much of a luxury as getting to spend all day learning about everything that interests me.  And this particular luxury isn't one I can return to later...  Being here, in this company, in this city, is an opportunity for me to grow in ways I can't envision yet.  There will be people here for me, experiences that will thrill me and shake me and inspire me.  And I will dance, dance beautiful works in historic theaters, and there is something magical about that chance.  I will get to see just what I can do with this instrument of mine, what beauty I can bring to this world of ours that is so often focused on the broken and the ugly.  Maybe it's alright to focus on making something perfect and whole and inclusive, for a little while at least.  For now, this can be my place.  It's new still, but I think I could get used to it.