New York

Passed in a whirlwind of seeing friends, sightseeing, and reveling in the novelty of America.

Some things, though, made me think of France.

Par exemple, the free guided tour of Grand Central Terminal. When I took it, the tourguide explained how many features of the building were carefully designed with the traveler in mind. Like how the width of the floor tiles is just the length of the average human-in-a-hurry stride, and how the main foyer entrance is ever so declined, subtly inviting you inside. The designers of the terminal believed that “travel should be enjoyable,” he repeated over and over.

I think that French people, or Europeans in general, know this better than we do. Efficient, smooth rides and (mostly) well-kept cars on the French TGVs certainly come to mind. (They’re superior to Amtrak at least, where the trains go thirty-five miles an hour and are bumpy to boot.) Also, on my AirFrance and AlItalia flights to and from Europe, respectively, I was fed an entire meal and one or two snacks, plus plenty of drinks. Even the two-hour flight from Switzerland to Rome was substantial enough for breakfast and coffee.

The museums were also a bit of a nostalgia-fest for me. Within the collections of both the Met and MoMA are works by numerous French impressionist painters who, of course, painted their own country. I was both happy and sad to recognize those tableaux of places I’d been, of Honfleur, of Rouen, the Gare Montparnasse in Paris, the beach towns of the French Riviera.

Second-floor foyer, MoMA.

Also in the MoMA, there’s a live exhibit called Wish Tree, created by Yoko Ono, wherein people are invited to write a wish, anonymously or not, on a tag and hang it on the tree in the MoMA garden. I didn’t do it, but I did nosily take a look at the ones already there. Little kids wished to be rich, or famous, or live in a mansion; one person wished for a job; one person wished for her friend to be cancer-free; one person wished to come back to New York again soon.

What would you wish for? Success? Happiness? World peace?

Plenty of people, young and old, were hovered around that tree, scribbling away. Everyone has a wish. The world is huge, but that much is universal.

New York

I know it's been a few weeks. I've had a lot on my mind lately.

It was definitely a shock, the most dramatic changement I've experienced in awhile, to go from humid, tiny, rural, laid-back Martinique to New York City in the middle of winter. It wasn't my first time to New York, but it might as well have been, given the way I was staring in awe at the huge buildings, the people flooding the streets, the cars, the (dirty) snow, the bodegas, the organization of the subway.

It wasn't like this when I went to Virginia. It was suburbia there, basically; it also wasn't cold yet, and at that point I'd been in Martinique for less than a month. I wasn't totally island-ified yet, the way I seem to be now.

My friends from Berkeley that I visited in New York were impressed with my tan. Par contre I was shocked by how ghostly pale they were. But they were also homesick for California, just like me.

It was absolutely lovely to be in America. I almost regret it because afterward, I didn't want to go back to Martinique. After a week of seeing friends, speaking English, not being roasting hot, and experiencing some organization and order and familiarity, it was a letdown as we took off and I saw the friendly lights of Puerto Rico, the last vestiges of home, disappearing behind me.

Here are a few highlights.

Times Square in the rain.

Fort Tryon Park in the snow.

The Manhattan skyline, viewed from Hoboken, New Jersey.

Gray, gray, and gray. Just to provide some contrast, here's a photo of the Plage Cap Macré in the south of Martinique, which I visited this weekend.


It's nice to have some color in my life again.

Mi-chemin

Just a few ramblings as I procrastinate on all the crap I need to take care of before tomorrow.

As I approach the halfway point of my séjour in Martinique, I'd like to take a petit moment to reflect on a few things.

In certain ways I think I've changed a lot. Here in Martinique, you simply can't be uptight and stressed out -- you wouldn't last a day. You have to accept that things never happen on time, that things get done slowly (for example, it's been three months and none of the assistants have had the mandatory doctor visit to validate our visas), and that social events and even chance encounters in the street can last an eternity because people schmooze and chat and take forever to say goodbye. You just have to go with the flow. In a lot of ways, I think it's been really good for me. The slower pace is a welcome break from the meat cleaver, if you will.

In some ways, though, I haven't changed at all. Being here has, I think, forced me to face some of my worst character flaws -- namely, being timid and unsure of myself. I suppose to some degree a bit of struggle is only to be expected when living in a foreign country; everything is just harder when you can't express yourself in your own language, and when the culture around you is unfamiliar. Small difficulties you might have had in the States somehow become magnified by a thousand.

But still. After months of surfing sessions, for example, I'm still craintive, hesitant, and helpless, worried about messing up in front of all the expert French surfers and tourists. On Wednesday, Pascal worked the whole morning just with me, and when he helps me, I have no problems. See? he said to me as I took wave after wave. You know how to do it. Tu sais le faire. Mais il faut que tu aies plus confiance en toi. You have to have more confidence in yourself.

I didn't know what to say to that -- in English or in French.

Last night at capoeira class, we had a practice jeu in partners. Again, I found myself paralyzed, clumsy and unsure of what to do.

"Joue! Joue!" my partner kept telling me. "Tu réfléchis trop." You're thinking too much.

Again, how could I respond? For as laid-back and carefree as I've become here, I'm still having trouble, it seems, relaxing and letting my inhibitions go. In some ways, I feel just as shy and awkward as a middle schooler.

I'm leaving tomorrow for New York for another interview. I'm missing four days of work. But next week is apparently the French equivalent of STAR testing -- alors, in the words of one of my colleagues, ça tombe bien.

It's currently 82 degrees here in Martinique. It's 32 in New York -- exactly 50 degrees difference. And also, exactly freezing. J'ai peur. But I promise more updates soon! And (as I've already been asked to do by several people) I'll be sure to say hi to America for you all!