Settling in without settling in……

I’m going back to Australia in a couple of weeks, just for a quick family visit. I’m starting to organise appointments and dinners and lunches with friends and old work colleagues. I’m dreaming about eating at my favourite Asian restaurants again. I’ve been thinking about my beautiful apartment I had before I left, and how much I loved living there. About the great lifestyle I had.

Now I really feel like I’m hovering between 2 countries.

My feelings change minute by minute.

Recently, I’ve started to feel homesickness. The yearning for my comfort, the things I know and am sure of. And when I feel that yearning, and then look around me, Paris looks like an alien planet. Its cold, with no meaning or connection to me. I’m looking at it from a distance, through a window, like a film. I yearn for my city.

Maybe its different if you have a job here and you come over with your partner. At least thats some stability, some familiarity. But I’m still job hunting and I came here alone. And that really is making a difference.

But in another way, when you work and come home to your partner each night, when do you get time to explore your new city? 2 days a week? When do you get the motivation to go out and meet new people, meet the “locals”?

I feel like, as hard as its been, that sense of loneliness and discomfort has pushed me to get out there.

Walking around my area now feels much more “normal”. I walk into my favourite bars and cafes and I’m greeted like an old friend. Taking the metro isnt a tourist experience any more. Going to the organic markets with Adam on Sunday mornings for a hot potato galette and a coffee and gossip afterwards is now a “tradition”. Spending 3 days straight speaking nothing but French with people who dont speak English doesnt freak me out anymore. No one speaks English back to me these days and I even find myself bantering with stall holders and customer service staff.

I still feel like I belong here.

I heard 2 English and American writers describe how France has a magnetic pull on some people. I certainly feel like there is something magnetic in the earth here that attracts me even more than the idea of seeing Justin Timberlake naked (oh, what would I pay for that…..). And thats even after so many of my fantasies, my rose coloured glasses, my Disneyland ideas of France have started to wear off.

Paris IS just a city, like many major cities in the world, even though it is very different to Hong Kong and London. People really are just “people”, wherever they are in the world. Frenchies  just want to be loved and respected like everyone does. They just want to live the best life they can.

So I start to think: I am a person like everyone else here. I know what its like to live in a big city. I can make a life here. It does feel right.

The problem at the moment is that I dont have personal connection or history here. And that, well, that just takes time. No other way around it.

Again, my lesson for this year, and for the years to come: Patience.

Just relax. Enjoy the ride….