as with any of my travels, paris has been a blur. between the time zone difference and the various language and cultural adjustments i’ve had to make, i feel as if the days have passed me by like a TGV (superfast train in France). now, with a little more than a day left, i just want to collect a few thoughts before riding this trip out back to JFK.
i originally planned this trip for myself. thank goodness i’ve been accompanied by sei-wook. i am an amateur when it comes to travelling. wook has saved me on many occasions, reminding me to bring this and that and waking me up whenever i fall asleep on the subways here. plus, having two brains collaborate to conjugate french verbs and form questions have allowed us to get by in most instances, although we’ve had to resort to pointing and repeating english to the french people who’re kind enough to tolerate our poor language skills. the pervasive use of english in paris by tourists has made me wonder – what if in nyc some foreigner came up to us (americans) and started speaking in their language, expecting us to know it? i know english, by virtue of imperialism and globalism (same thing, basically), has become an international language, but still – i can see why french people would balk at helping some rude american who approaches them with straight-up english. most french people have picked up on our struggling french skills and have offered to speak english on our behalf. i can only imagine how many americans would go out of their way to speak french to a struggling french tourist in new york. and yet, we love to tell ourselves that the french are so obnoxious and snobby about their language.
euros. talk about being rocked on the foreign exchange market. the dollar sucks! 5 euros is more than 5 dollars, and that makes us feel pretty wary about the money we’ve been spending. we’ve been getting by on limited cash, but i only wonder what my mastercard (which supposedly takes the “best” exchange rates when billing me) has in store for me when i come back home. good thing we decided to pass up fouquet’s!
internet, internet, internet. wook and i suffered greatly from our inability to connect to the internet the first few days. we were granted temporary relief when we found a starbucks (yes – we actually did starbucks in paris) in the opera area and logged on momentarily to check mail on my laptop before my battery went out. of course, that transpired a whole new problem – these darn europeans love to use this odd two-pronged plug for electricity. wook and i were able to exercise our french several times in trying to find a converter; no small stores carried it and we were left without electricity for our american electronics (laptop/camera) until we finally visited the BHV, a macy’s/sears equivalent in the hotel de ville region. as for internet, we found an apple store in front of the centre du pompidou and used their computers to check our mail and send a few. back at our hotel, finally equipped with the converter, we had to pay 10 euros to log onto the hotel’s (hotel etap is where we are staying – a decent place that is not too far away from the center of the city for a nice 50 euros a night) wifi network. it’s so weak in our room that i am currently sitting in the lobby at 3am writing this entry. is it really necessary for us to have internet? probably not, but i hope being able to write this entry will somewhat legitimize our efforts. plus, wook can charge his camera now.
korean church in paris! oh boy. some people will laugh and some will view me and wook with a critical eye after i am finished telling this one. for all who don’t know, wook and i are both korean, but not the church-going type. as for being religious, we love kanye’s “jesus walks,” but i’m not quite sure many would qualify us as ones to ever walk with jesus. best put, we both grew up going to church, but we are not so much the believers that many of our other korean peers back in nyc are. so – why did we seek out and go to a korean church on an unsuspecting sunday afternoon in paris? the day before, saturday, our first day in paris, wook and i stopped by at a korean restaurant near where finkel and big lou (our barnard friends who also happen to be in paris) were staying (more on them later). the korean restaurant was a small joint on a side street, its decor somewhat reminiscent of the Mill back home, but not as cluttered. we shared bindae dduk while i had soondubu chigae and wook had sullung tang. portions were tiny, the beef in both pretty rare, and prices outrageous – somewhat unsatisfactory. so, i guess i felt the need to get something extra. bori, a barnard girl who had worked on the art decoration for ksa culture show, had been a student in paris for a semester, and upon hearing about our planned trip, told us to go to a korean church there. we first dismissed such an idea knowing we weren’t church-types, but as sunday neared, i became curious about the possibility of going to a korean church just to “see” how koreans in paris were like. of course, when i brought up the question – do you know any churches around here – the restaurant owner (who had also been our server) asked what denomination i was, and when i struggled to answer, he asked if we were looking to “meet girls.” damn.
the owner was nice about it. a short and humble-looking man, he laughed at what seemed to be our shady intentions (well, girls are only a part of the entire culture), and tore out from a korean-french publication a listing of all the churches. he recommended two churches (not his own) and told us to go there beacuse they were “big.” we picked one that was closest to our place and planned our church visit for the next morning.
located in vincennes, the yeonhap korean protestant church was stationed in an unassuming “temple” that had a no-frills look to it. wook and i, having risen a bit later than expected and having stopped at a turkish kebab for a lamb sandwich (my pronunciation of “agneau” was corrected), we were about 40 minutes late. we entered the church and sat in the back, wondering several times what the hell we were doing. but a familiar feeling came over us – the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of sundays spent in a worship hall with other koreans had prepared us for the steady beat of the korean minister delivering his sermon, the leather-bound korean hymns and NIV bibles, that stuffy smell of velvet and old people’s perfume, and the crisp feeling of that week’s jubo (worship program). i looked around and observed the parisian koreans, wondering how different they could be from new york koreans.
for the most part, they were not much different – koreans of all sizes and looks, dressed not too differently from a congregation in, say, new jersey, although i was surprised that many girls were dressed in jeans and not in some fashionable skirt or dress pant. as much as people may accuse wook and me for coming to a church to “meet girls” we were hardly (or even capable of being) the lady sharks that the owner thought us to be. we sat quietly and smiled at the people who looked at us from time to time. when the reverend announced the newcomers and visitors, we rose to our names being called along with the mention of being from “columbia university.” i felt it was important to include that fact when i filled out the info card because koreans, if anything, tend to remember which college you go to in america, especially if it’s an ivy league one. so – we were known as those “haksengs from columbia” from then on.
wook and i spotted a few cute girls here and there scattered throughout the congregation during sermon, but it was weird hearing them and the little kids running around speak fluent french. koreans speaking perfect french! it was totally another world, and we became a bit intimidated and wondered how we would communicate with them – our french and korean speaking abilities being fairly limited. a mixer in the basement after service allowed us to mingle a bit with the people. well, not really. we sat at a table and quietly sipped coffee and nibbled on the pastries. one middle-aged woman, an involved church member judging from her friendliness towards us, asked us some questions and told us a bit about herself – some sort of artist who had lived in paris for more than 24 years with three kids all french-born. we quickly ran out of things to talk about, so wook and i sat back and just looked at other people. it was a tiny basement, so it was a bit packed for a bit, but they divided the room in half and had youth group service in the other room while wook and i sat on the side that began to empty out.
we were introduced to two other visitors, a fashionably-dressed middle aged woman in an ostentatious fur coat named sonia and a reserved-looking conservatively, yet fashionably, dressed college girl named jina. where were they from? not LA, but “beverly hills.” having found people from america, we quickly struck conversation with them. jina was awfully quiet throughout, but sonia was an outgoing, assertive type. wook and i first thought sonia was jina’s mother, but after a while we caught on that sonia was some fashion academy teacher while jina was a student who had been interested in working in france. they had been visiting the past 5 days attending the large fashion convention that took place in paris in the spring. this was their last day before leaving early monday morning. sonia was glad to find people from new york, and to wook and my surprise, she invited us to join her and jina for a late lunch. it was no time to be shy or scared, so wook and i accepted, and we soon found ourselves on our way to champs-elyeese for some steamed mussels. but before we left, i loved how the reverend, a young middle-aged man of medium build, made us all pose with him for photos. i bet we’re on their website or something. wook and i told him we went to redeemer in new york, which wasn’t too far from the truth because i’ve been there once and wook’s been there a few times.
we found out little about jina, although she was on the pretty side, tall, and thin. we did learn, however, that she had been mugged in the subway, her wallet having contained more than 800 euros. eek! wook and i cringed at the thought of losing such money, but then wondered why the hell she would carry so much cash on her in the first place. we thought of our total cash holdings at that moment, and it was hovering around 50 euros. we felt bad for her, but wished she talked more. instead, sonia dominated the conversation, which was okay. she told us about her fashion involvements, including having made something for j.lo once and some other celebrities as well. she also told us about her french husband and her fashion academy. we struck a common topic when we brought up branding. i was probably a bit of a lecturer in giving my spiel about why branding was important, but sonia listened intently and cajoled that one day we could teach some branding at her school. how funny conversation with strangers work.
we ate at a touristy location on the champs-elyesee called Leon. it was cleaner than the other french places we had been, and the mussels in cream with celery and chalots were certainly excellent. we also had a bottle of alsace reisling as well – a bit too thick for my taste, but a nice sweet compliment to the saltier mussels. dinner was fun and the conversation never dragged. we all exchanged contact information in the end, and we all had a good time. we all gave each other hugs before saying our goodbyes. wook and i laughed at our most unusual and pleasant experience. we were appreciative of God, perhaps not in the sense of believing in a certain religion, but in that the community-building aspect of religion, especially among koreans (all over the world), had allowed us to branch out and meet new people in paris.
a somewhat preachy note from my end: it wasn’t a matter of exploiting or disrespecting christianity to meet people. as a matter of fact, our slight lie to the reverend was more for politeness and convenience, both on our part and for his. as for sonia and jina, we told them on the train that we were not really churchgoers and that we were, as i stated before, curious about koreans in paris. they seemed fine with that. on a personal level, i’ve felt, for many years, marginalized by choice to be a non-religious individual in the korean american community. but having been a son of a reverend, having attended church for a great number of years as an adolescent, and continually having various christian friends, i can’t say that church isn’t a part of who i am; i am aware of it, i know what it offers as an institution, and i am not afraid to approach it nor its people. but please, don’t worry, you won’t find me picking up girls at church back in america; i’ve already tried (and failed) that cycle back in high school.
(diana “monster”) finkel and big lou. okay, after that long detour, some notes about finkel and big lou before i go catch some zzz’s. finkel and i went to high school but weren’t really friends until the summer before college, when i found out that she was going to barnard. her roommate as a freshman was louise, whom i call big lou as an endearing name (if you’re wondering, she’s not fat). big lou and finkel are staying at hotel relais de paris south of the seine, near the eiffel tower. wook and i met up with them on the first day out here, and we’ve been hanging out regularly since.
aside from the fairly pleasant times (including visits to the eiffel tower and the louvre), i’ve managed to piss them off on several occasions by being unable to keep meeting times (30 minutes late twice, and 17 minutes late the third time, according to finkel). we had our last dinner in monmarte in a cozy restaurant where we downed 4 bottles of wine and had a filling three-course dinner that included foie gras, goat cheese, escargot, tartar (salmon and beef), duck confit, fish, and various desserts. but the night ended on a bit of a sour note when finkel and big lou put me on a big guilt trip for being late each time and being insincere in my apologies, “as if [i] was too important.” i know i was at fault, but then again, i didn’t appreciate the approach that finkel took in judging my character as a result of the incident. the more wook and i reflected on it later on, it seemed as if the matter could have been corrected with a simple warning along the lines of – “hey, can you never be late again, it really pisses us off.” i think i would respond to that better than something about “it’s just like that of you to do that” or “whatever, you can’t be sincere about being sorry,” etc. but hey, all good – people have different styles of reacting to things that annoy them. we’ll have dinner again tomorrow, at alain ducasse’s aux lyonnais.
one more day. there are a lot more things about paris that i’ve omitted in this long entry. perhaps i’ve made the korean church incident out to be the highlight of the trip, but there have been some other interesting stories: my 8-hour conversation with a french guy – mathius – who studies at umass – on our plane ride here, my issues with the french “stench” and its small toilets, the quickest louvre tour ever (1 hour! and chance run-in with tammi from school), the lethal mix of alcohol and coffee during the day, our love of baguettes, the pervasiveness of asians in paris, and our rendition of Yeah! What? Okay! in french (Oui! Quoi? D’accord!).
paris? c’est la vie.
mais, je t’embrasse New York.