#ohpear

and so my class is all au pairs. a lot of germans. a lot a lot of germans. like 8 of them then one finnish boy and a swiss and canadian and irish girl. I am the only american which is weird and cool. i got invited to like a party saturday maybe. english being the inbetween laguage for communication is annoying because. i dont need to practice that. but it is really hard to like make myself speak french if i dont have to idk. but we went and all had lunch together and that was fun and they asked me all those like what are your hobbies sort of questions.

then i got a prepaid sim card with orange so i will see how i work that hmm

also she makes it so everyone speak in french in the house which is like just what i need really even if i don't really understand like even 50% of it but i will but also she is  kinda learning english so sometimes like she looks at me and switches to enlish then winks

There's so much to say about this trip - it rekindled my love of travel and adventure. It helped me remember why I'm in Paris - and that I do genuinely love Paris as well. Yes, four days in Amsterdam did that for me. Thanks Holland.

Anne and I traveled by bus on the night of the nineteenth and arrived early Easter morning. (It also happened to be 420, but that's only a major American stoner holiday. Dutch stoners were unaware of the significance of the date.) After setting up camp - yes, we camped just outside the city - and after taking a quick nap, we set off on conquering museums and monuments. 

To our credit, Anne and I managed to fit in a lot in just four days. We saw the Dutch masters: Vermeer, Van Gogh, Van Loon and Rembrandt. We saw Chagall and Pollock. We learned about the history of Amsterdam, starting from its early days as a village in the 1200s into its golden age during the 1600s, and its actions/inaction during War World Two. We took a canal cruise and a walking tour. We even went to the zoo and I fit in a nap at the Planetarium. 

We accomplished so much, and we still didn't even get to see it all. 

We never rode a bike while we were there, nor did we visit the Red Light District by night. We didn't visit a "coffee shop" either. Still, we had our own adventures. At the campsite we made friends with some Canadian gentlemen who supplied me with free beer, hot dogs and various other goodies (ahem). I appreciated finally being in male company again, for after four months of spending my time exclusively with women and children I rather doubted my ability to talk to the male gender. 

I also managed to go Stand Up Paddle boarding my final evening. I went with a local group that heads out every Wednesday on a lake in the suburbs, and they kindly invited me along. It was a quiet, warm night, and as I stood out on the water with a red setting sun I couldn't even believe how awesome my life truly is. 

Recently, I haven't had the energy or the ambition to put my face on every morning. Not that I've ever been a heavy makeup wearer, but now it's becoming a battle just to convince myself to apply a little bit of mascara to my eyelashes. Who am I trying to impress anyway? The kids? The French men who must spend 90 minutes a day perfectly crafting their just-woken-up/post-sex coif? The French women who already sneer at me for having big boobs and lacking the necessary thigh gap? Yeah, no thanks.

Here's a fun fact for you: I'm considered a hefty girl over here. I'm tall and wide, and therefore I'm supposed to be hideously unattractive. But even while I receive those judgmental lip-curls from the French women, it hasn't stopped the French men from being their usual skeezy selves. I mean, what au pair hasn't experienced the requisite Metro Grope?

Now please, this is not some desperate cry for the internet to tell me I'm beautiful. This is more a kind of personal documentation on the state of my finances and just how lazy I've become. The truth is, I'm too poor to buy more makeup even if I wanted to. I'm used to the expensive shit, because I used to make a lot of money prostituting myself *cough, waiting tables*, but now my salary allows me two options: either look pretty and sit sadly in my room, or enter the world barefaced and have some pretty rocking adventures. 

Which brings me to my next point: How do women manage to look so damn fantastic hiking through ancient runes and medieval cobblestones in wedge sandals and sundresses? I mean, sure ladies, you're going to look great in your Facebook profile pic, but aren't you in PAIN? Was that selfie WORTH IT, 'cause I'm pretty sure your toes are bleeding? I gave up style for comfort a long time ago, which doesn't make me better than these girls in any way, but it sure does save me the agony of blisters and a limp (usually).

But then again, I'm not someone who takes a ton of pictures. I used to be, definitely - I think I took over 500 pictures when I was in New Zealand, but the more I travel the less necessary a photograph seems. My memory hasn't failed me yet, except for the names of small towns or exact dates, but that's why I keep a journal. A photograph won't help with that anyway. I AM NOT DOWNING PHOTOGRAPHS. I have a couple friends who are incredible photographers, and I really think that they have a future in the industry. I'm speaking of my own amateur photography that never seems to do justice to what I'm seeing or experiencing, and what would be better left to my memory. 

For me, it's about living in the moment. It's about touching the sun-soaked rocks of the Temple of Apollo, or kneeling on the cold stone floors of Notre Dame. It's about lying in a park and smelling in the fresh-cut grass, or eating an exotic meal where I can't pronounce the names of the dishes. Even if I take a picture of these moments, I don't want to end up in the photographs.

The Parisian au pair is a unique individual - no two of us are the same, though we seem to share a decided air of restlessness. I cannot speak for everyone, but this is what I’ve gathered from talking with my friends: We don’t want to be where we were, we’re not completely happy where we are, and we’re desperately hoping that when this is over we’ll feel better about where we’re going.

I’ve grown particularly close with a young Canadian woman named Anne, and she’s given me permission to talk a little bit about her. She’s my age, 24, and a recent art history graduate. Like me, she’s here because her degree has done little to better her chances of finding a well-paying job. She has nothing in particular to return to in Canada, but she’s hoping that by the time she does return a solution will have presented itself. Grad school? A job? Any job? We were asked to stay on another year by our families at around the same time - while I gave a resounding no thank you, Anne thought over it a bit and decided that she would like to stay. This makes her a braver, stronger person than me - neither of us particularly enjoy the monotony of nanny-life but she’s going to better her French and really take her time in deciding on her career-path.

Meanwhile I’m going to go back home and pretend like I know what the fuck I’m doing.

That’s not true - I’m going to go home and wait tables somewhere because a friend suggested the Inca Trail over New Year’s, and I’m not someone to say no to an adventure like that. The truth is though if I were to die in a year, or five, or ten, would I be more likely to regret not hiking the Inca Trail or working a steady 9-5 job? The answer is obvious - I’m going to save up enough money with my temporary job so I can set out exploring again.

Travel doesn’t make me a better person - I’ve never pretended to be an open, understanding individual. I’m actually kind of judgmental and selfish. I don’t travel because I like to learn about different cultures - I travel because I’m a dissatisfied young woman who needs to stay in constant motion.  

So I work long enough to allow myself to keep moving. I’m not happy staying in one place for too long. There was a surprising amount of relief that I felt when I got dumped - I mean, yeah, I cried and I still feel pretty down about the whole thing, but there’s a lot of relief as well. I wanted to settle down with him, but maybe settling down just isn’t in the cards for me yet. Maybe I can’t find a real job because I honestly don't want one.

And there it is… How am I expected to be an adult when I refuse to assume the responsibility of a functioning member of society?