Today‘s dress is vintage from a store in Santa Barbara. The label says it was made in Hong Kong. I really need to sell this one. It’s not flattering on me no matter how hard I try! Speaking of trying hard, my semester abroad was an important time in my life. I had never done anything like it. I was ready for a break from Northeastern and from Boston. It was Fall of 2005 and I was 22.
After landing in Paris, I went to a youth hostel. That’s where we would stay until we received our housing assignments, which were based on a lottery system. I had a bad lottery number, so I didn’t get called until later. My options were a chambre de bonne, which was a small studio. Many of them were old timey servants’ quarters that had been fashioned into tiny modern apartments. The other choice was to live with a family. Having learned nothing from my previous French family experience, I chose the latter. The problem was that not many French families had room for a visiting student. It was mainly old widows. My only option was a widow named Isis Fahmy. She was an Egyptian woman who divided her time between London and Paris. Apparently she wouldn’t be home that often. The location was ideal, since it was across the street from school, on Rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement. The room was extremely dark. It was on the first floor and faced another building. There was no natural light at all. If there’s one thing I need in life, it’s natural light. But I went to meet Isis and express my interest anyway. After all, if I tuned this place down, the next place could be worse.
As soon as I moved in, I knew I’d made a mistake. Isis was mean. She was in her 80s and was the first female Coptic journalist in the 1940s, traveling the world and interviewing royalty and other dignitaries. She wrote a book called “Around the World With Isis.”
But she had no interest in chatting with me. She yelled at me when I put my food on the wrong shelf in the pantry. When she would leave for her other home, I could relax. But I never knew when she was coming back. She had a cleaning lady come to only clean her part of the apartment. One day the cleaning lady left the key that was used to lock the master bedroom. It had great light, so I began spending time in there.
School was difficult. It was demanding and I was constantly writing papers and feeling stressed out. I took a Color Communications class that I liked, and the teacher had told me about an internship which would allow me to go to the Paris fashion shows! That was heaven. More on that tomorrow!
Comments