Living Abroad Reflections: Part 1
Hi friends,
It’s nearly the end of July and yet the weather in Paris has felt more like the middle of October. These past few weeks I’ve been feeling unusually unsettled. I’ve had a hard time feeling inspired and being able to unpack the kind of emotions that have been leading to this slow, sinking feeling.
The end of August marks my one year anniversary living abroad in Paris and in many ways, I feel like I truly am one years old. Leaving the familiar and changing routines every quarter will do that to you. I went from knowing every location of every Trader Joe’s in a ten mile radius back in LA to moving to a foreign country where I felt helplessly illiterate at times just to read the signs at the laundry mat. Life abroad has made me feel reborn. It has forced me to rethink my approach to everything and taught me that normal can be totally relative and deeply cultural.
More often than not, I showcase the highlights on my Instagram. The aesthetic cafes, the museum visits, my little wholesome baking sessions at home, but for the sake of transparency, I wanted to share some of the more honest and difficult moments of my life abroad.
Working in France: Adjusting to a new job is hard. Adjusting to a new job where everything is in French is even harder. Anyone reading this could tell me, “If you don’t want to make life difficult for yourself, don’t work in a foreign country where you don’t know the language.” But the fact of the matter is, I chose this so I can learn the language. As of these past few months, it’s been a hell of a lot more difficult than I anticipated but I know it was inevitable to my desire to assimilate in France. The best way I can put it is like experiencing growing pains with little moments of loneliness.
Lately I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to have more things figured out. Finding a stable job with a good salary has been at the forefront of my mind. Not knowing where I’ll end up by the end of the year has been driving me crazy and it’s been keeping me from being able to feel present for my first summer in Paris. As I work to figure our where my professional journey will lead me, I realize that life’s problems are really the same regardless of where one lives. The dreaded job hunt follows you everywhere and I just hope my next job allows me to stick around for a while.
Dating in France: I’m not one to talk too much because I’m currently hung up on my own mental blocks but all I will say is that it’s not much different than dating in the US. There are highs and lows. There are pushy men and ghosting. But for what it’s worth, most people I’ve come across speak solid English and my American accent (so I’ve been told) is more charming than it is cringe.
Living in France: Everything takes a long time. From the smallest tasks like going grocery shopping at multiple stores because the shops here are small to waiting for my appointment at the city hall to pick up my residency certificate, everything runs on its own time here. Life in LA is built on being convenient. Sure maybe LA traffic is anything but efficient but time is money and money is everything. Here in France money is still everything but life doesn’t move fast even if you beg it to.
For the past three weeks, I’ve been living without a stove. One of my roommates accidentally broke our induction hob which was just a moment of bad luck on our end but as a result, we’ve had to live on only food that can be made in the oven or microwave. At first, the idea of not being able to fry an egg or make pasta made me crave brunch at home but now that its been a few weeks I started experimenting with new recipes like lasagna and baked eggplant. Despite the lack of convenience and product assortment that American stores offer, a typical Parisian grocery store might not have the six different flavors of humus but it does have produce that looks all organic and freshly pulled from the ground.
Because I’m on a student budget still, I cook most of my meals. Overall, I really enjoy cooking and I find that living here has helped me eat “cleaner” in the sense that I eat very little processed foods with artificial additives and significantly less meat since meat is expensive. So though it’s been more work to cook double time (meal prepped lunches and homemade dinners), cooking gives me a sense of autonomy and discovery.
With all that being said, life here in Paris is different and not without new challenges. But in the greater scheme of things, in life we are all faced with the same challenges: find a job, find a life partner, and feed yourself. If I think about all of the hoops I already jumped through just to get to the place where I am today, I shouldn’t be too worried about the future. Though I tend to push for the things I want, life has its own way of working itself out.
I think I’ll share some other lessons I learned as an expat in another post but as promised here is my recipe for my baked eggplant:
If you’ve gotten this far in reading my latest blog post, thank you so much for spending a few moments to reflect with me. I hope my posts are useful to give you insight into life as an expat or at the very least, you got a new recipe out of it.
Wishing you a glorious summer ahead. Until next time!
À bientôt,
Kiana