September in France + Birthday Intentions
On good omens, French expressions, and serendipitous encounters.
I’ve learned a few things since being in France for September:
-while french people kiss you twice on the cheek when they greet you, they’ll kiss you three times if they’re from Switzerland, and four times if they’re from Brittany (at that point, they’re just getting greedy in my opinion)
-going on a date and then making out by the eiffel tower is cheesy as hell, and also very fun
-french nude art models are the most flexible, athletic models I have ever seen
-while I love speaking and practicing my french, and it has improved a lot since being here, I’ve learned I have a cut off time of about 11pm-midnight. At that point I can no longer speak french, and have lost all my energy and focus. My options are either to stare blankly ahead and disassociate while french people continue speaking around me, or I must find american friends to hang out with once the clock strikes midnight
-no one understands my obsession with halloween here, and this is a big issue
-if you tell a french man at a bar wearing a black turtleneck that he looks like a cartoon version of what a french person looks like, he will get angry
-a saying I learned that I love a lot: la nuit porte conseil. Which translates to the night will bring you advice the next morning. A reminder that a good night’s sleep always makes a difference
It’s been a very educational experience so far, as you can see. And while sometimes I’ll feel very happy, in other moments I’ll feel a deep loneliness from being a foreigner. It’ll come in waves, if I’m out and don’t recognize the French music everyone else clearly knows the words to at the bar. Or sometimes it’s after struggling with very simple things, like when I want to do the laundry and need to look up words I don’t know on Google Translate.
They’re all the growing pains of being in a new place, and not speaking the same language or being raised in that culture.
Still, I find myself wanting to push through that discomfort and not just leave because there are some uncomfortable moments. To still see it through.
Two weeks into my stay in Paris, I traveled down to Biarritz, in the southwest of France, for my friend Chanese’s birthday. A group of friends from Paris were coming down for the long weekend to celebrate.
I showed up a night before everyone, because the train tickets were a lot cheaper, and I wanted more time to explore the town. I had been once before, actually earlier that summer. It was on 3-day romantic road trip, which only left me with about 4 hours to explore.
Now, I was back, and would have a few days there. I arrived early in the evening, and the hostel I stayed at had an entire shelf of drums outside my room. As someone who travels everywhere with a tiny drum, this was a very welcome surprise.
When I travel, sometimes it’s hard to know when I should stay or leave a place. So, I look for small signs. I see if the universe opens up in my favor, or closes me off.
If there are small encouragements along the way to make me feel as if I should follow a certain path, I’ll keep going. It’s been a really interesting practice in following my intuition more. Maybe it’s a chaotic way to travel, but it’s also led me to places and people I never would have discovered otherwise.
I know it sounds funny, but to me, the drum was a small sign, that I was meant to be there. A small encouragement that it was a good place for me to be at that moment.
It reminded me of an evening a month earlier. I was in Reading, England, and sitting by a fire, when a priestess walked up to me. She told me to pull a card from her tarot deck, and I pulled the Shamanic Drum. I asked her what it meant, and she told me that it was a sign that things were opening up for me at this point in time, that this was a point in my life where anything I desired would come together.
I put down my bags and asked for the best place to watch the sunset. I was told to head to a bar by the cliffs, but when I got there the bar was closed. I also realized once I arrived, that I had already been there before, on my 4 hour road trip earlier that summer. Clearly, it was a popular spot.
When I saw the bar was closed, I went to a restaurant nearby for some dinner. Because it was just me, they sat me at the bar. My phone was about to die, so I asked the man next to me if he had a phone charger. He told me he’d go his car and get one for me.
A few moments later, after he returned, he told me how he had grown up in Biarritz, which was already quite rare since it was such a small town. And in fact, he had a bar in town. It turned out it was the same bar I had visited that night.
We continued talking, and he told me how he was actually selling his share of the bar to go and travel the world for the next few months. He was there at the bar to narrow it down to where he wanted to travel. Right now he was thinking of Colombia or Thailand next. When he asked to follow me on Instagram, he saw my name and asked if I was Jewish. I told him I was. It turned out he was Jewish as well.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “This is very rare. I think you might have met the only Jewish man in Biarritz.”
He gave me a ride home, and I told my friend what had happened. It turned out the bar he owned was the one she planned for us to go to for her birthday.
“How did you manage to be there for three hours, and meet the owner of my favorite bar, who also likes to travel and is the only Jewish person in town?” she mused. “It’s like you have a sign on your forehead.”
Maybe I did. Maybe it was the power of the Shamanic Drum. Maybe it was a very, very small town.
During my weekend in Biarritz, I thought more on what kinds of places made me feel the best. And I realized how all the places I’ve been happiest have been the smallest places. I wondered if part of my problem was that I kept jumping from big city to big city, when I kept craving a slower pace of life.
If I really wanted this slower pace, maybe I had to try living in a small town instead, and do things differently.
Sometimes, there is a bigger fear that all this searching is fruitless. That there is no “perfect” destination, but what I am searching for, this inner calm, can only be found from within.
Still, I pick myself up and keep trying, because a part of me knows that there is something worthy in the search. When I think about where I’m going next, I can feel both so clear headed and intentional, and then so lost the next day.
I told this to my friend Amanda over the phone. “I think we all feel that way sometimes,” she responded.
Maybe, it didn’t really matter where I ended up in the end. Just that I was enjoying the process of discovery along the way.
My birthday is tomorrow, and I always tend to get a little extra emotional. I feel both deep panic at assessing where I am at this certain point in my life, and then, deep gratitude, that I’ve made it this far. I’m just lucky to be alive, and healthy, and happy, and sometimes it’s as simple as that.
BUT because humans always have to overcomplicate things, here are some intentions I have for my 31st year of life:
Keep applying sunblock every day. The secret to eternal youth.
Tell everyone in my life how I feel about them. To be as vulnerable as possible, even when it’s scary.
Invest in a new hair conditioner.
Swim as much as possible.
Always prioritize the most meaningful connections in my life.
Walk down the the streets of Paris with Oreo one day while he is wearing his tiny red beret.
To move slower, and feel okay with neutral moments in life, instead of always chasing the next exciting one. To see how it feels to ground in one place.
To get better at naming all my French cheeses.
To get better at listening to my inner voice, until it grows even stronger, and I don’t look to others for answers.
To practice being more present with every day.
To let go of seeing the world in absolutes, or black and white. To leave room for messiness.
To continue making out around famous monuments.
In other exciting news, I am going out with a book proposal soon!
I have been working on a book about my health and travels, and I was told that it looks better to publishers to have more paid subscribers on here.
SO, I’ve lowered my prices from $8/month to $5, and now it’s only $50 a year. Please consider contributing if you have the means, it would be incredibly helpful!
Thank you so much for your support. I feel so honored to be sharing this journey with you.
Love,
Julia