Work

Started my new job. Hence the infrequency of my blog entries (ok so that may be an excuse, really I'm having trouble putting myself out there in the Internet ether - I'm actually quite a private person, you know). I work for one of the oldest study abroad programs in Paris. It was created in the fifties right after the implementation of the Marshall Plan, as a way for the upper-class southern girls at the school to see a bit of Europe before settling down. They studied art and languages (probably French cuisine as well) during the academic year and then during the summer went on a "Grand Tour" of Europe, doubtless so that they would appear very worldly and cultured at the dinner parties that they would later be hosting for their husbands' colleagues. After a major crisis in the 80s they thought they might have to shut the program and the university down altogether. Luckily this didn't happen because the board of trustees, largely composed of the gentile older ladies who had participated in the Paris program in the 50s, would have had a fit if the program were discontinued. However, the program has been in dire straits, never attracting the appropriate amount of students. We have been assured though that the program is "intouchable."

The office itself is adorable. We're on the fourth floor on the north side of the first courtyard of an 18th century building. Like all top floor rooms, it has mansard windows that make the ceilings slope down at a dramatic angle. I've never lived or worked in a mansard room but it feels somewhat like I'm working in a kind of doll-sized office, like John Cusack's office in "Being John Malkovich." Our desks are set up so that our little heads poke up into the airy and bright space left by the windows. We look out, not at the courtyard below, but directly across at the offices of another study abroad program and into the closet-sized office of the local apartment rental expert. His office is so small that I first mistook it for a bathroom, which was mildly disturbing, but thankfully, we aren't subjected to such an unpleasant view. In order to see the courtyard below - still fragrant and ornamented with the soft pink bloom of Elizabethan roses - we have to stretch our stand on our tip toes and stretch our necks out the windows. From our neighbors' perspective it must look like a re-enactment of the execution of Robespierre. All in all, I have the impression of working in an attic somewhere, but I like that feeling, sort of cozy and romantic.