I like Paris this trip more then I ever have, and I think that has to do with several things. I've been to Paris five or six times, and at first, I found the city so much more sophisticated then I could ever pretend to be that I always felt on edge somehow. All of those thin, gorgeous, super fashionable women and men, walking their little dogs, all standing close together, talking in voices that couldn't make a loud American sound if they tried, speaking in a language that forces them to move their mouths and lips in romantic, kissy motions. It's just too much. The French made me feel frumpy. Now that I'm a middle-aged crone of a woman, I just notice these things; I don't care any more that some skinny French woman might be judging me. Consequently, I enjoyed Paris a great deal.
Now, having said that, I must admit that my trip to Paris was a bit strange. I had to skip Versailles, the Deportation Memorial, and Pere Lachaise Cemetery because of little emergencies. So here are the new things I did in Paris this trip: with a student, I visited a general practitioner and a proctologist. I road a bus and wandered through totally unfamiliar areas in the city in search of these doctors' offices. I purchased an inflatable donut cushion after lots of conversation with a pharmacist who spoke some English about what the item was called in French. I made an emergency run to the pharmacy for a student in need of tampons. When I couldn't find them, I asked the pharmacist if he spoke English, and he said "a little." He didn't understand what "tampon" meant and asked me what it was for. When I said "menstruation," he grew even more confused. There was a second when I thought, "how can I pantomime this?" Then I just said, "merci," and hightailed it to the corner store.
The sick student--actually, he had a very, very painful blood clot in an unfortunate spot--was silently miserable for days before he admitted to me what the problem was. The poor guy. How embarrassing would it be to tell your professor about this, and the to ask her to accompany you to the doctor for what was going to be a really embarrassing exam. He confided in another student who advised him to speak to me. She told him, "if it's a health problem, you talk to 'mom'; if it's a sexual problem, you talk to 'dad,'" helping him to figure out if he should tell me or my co-leader, Eric. The student did the work of finding an English speaking GP nearby, found out his hours (no appointments, just first come-first served) and off we went. The waiting room was teeny and hot, so I sat in the dark hallway. The student asked me to help him explain the problem to the doctor, so I went in with him, but left before the exam, of course. The doctor called me back in afterwards and said that we must go immediately to a proctologist across town for a procedure to lance the clot (oh, the poor student). This involved taking my first bus in Paris (the doctor tried calling two cab companies, but couldn't get one for us). We set off, and the journey by bus and foot took awhile, but we finally made it. The specialist barely spoke English, and when he asked me if I was the student's wife, I laughed and the student must have cringed. He guessed "mother" next, and when I said, "non! Professeur," The doctor laughed. I'm guessing he doesn't get many teachers bring students in for proctological exams!
The specialist refused to lance the clot, saying in broken English that flying a day or two after that procedure would lead to serious bleeding. Instead, he prescribed a TON of pain meds. We went to the pharmacy where the pharmacist said, "No! This is too much," and then changed the dosage on two of them. Fascinating. The next day, I was walking down a street near our hotel, and there was my student, looking green. He said the drugs made him sick to his stomach, and then moved quickly to an open trash bin and vomited three times. I helped him back to the hotel and called my brother-in-law, a doctor, and told him what the kid was taking. He identified the likely culprit and recommended that it be eliminated. I know that my student was just miserable in Paris, but I have to admit that the adventure through French medicine was interesting. He and I missed Versailles because of it, but that's okay.
Oh...one more French saga. On the 4th of July, my co-leader, Eric, and I had planned a little "day of the dead" tour for ourselves and any interested students. We would start with the Catacombs, head to the Deportation Memorial, and end with Pere Lachaise Cemetery where lots of famous people are buried. We did the catacombs, and they were fascinating--wall after wall of bones and skulls. On our way to the next stop, I stopped at an ATM, and the machine ate my card. So began my next new thing: standing in the lobby of a closed-for-lunch bank, saying to the voices I heard on the open stairway above, first, "pardon, sil'vous plait," and then yelling, " HELP!!! I'm a traveler and my card was eaten." This caught their attention, and they came down and told me to come back in two hours with my passport. I'm proud to say that I remained totally calm, went back to the hotel and skyped with my friend, Robin, and then went back and retrieved my card later. I missed the memorial and cemetery, but that's okay.
I did do some touristy things in Paris: the fabulous Musee d'Orsay, for example, the Eiffel Tower and Arch de Triomphe, a stroll down the Champs Élysées ending at the Louvre. But the Paris I saw this trip was so interesting--residential neighborhoods, laundromats, doctor's offices: regular, working Paris. I wish for my student that many of those experiences were unnecessary, but it was eye-opening for me.
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