It ain't Rio, but it'll do.

Ironically enough, it was never a big dream of mine to live in Paris. 


During my adolescence in a small Scottish Ontario town, I would dream of future grown-up lives in a variety of exotic places, ranging from Montreal (where I did eventually spend some time) to Africa. Of course, the place my fertile imagination reverted to most often was Rio de Janeiro, the hot, swaying, uncontrollable city whose promiscuous encounters between sea and mountain where people either seemed to live in hillside shanties or slick palaces-in-the-sky represented everything that the town I lived in did not. And so I spun a fiction of Rio in my mind that was probably more surreal than it really is---or might my imagination have fallen short of reality?---but which helped sustain me through the more disappointing moments of my early teenage years with the promise that there was something better out there in the world and in my future.


Amongst all my dreaming about Rio and elsewhere, Paris occasionally made an appearance. What sensitive North American doesn't at some point imagine a life in City of Lights, after all? Nevertheless, I seldom indulged in Paris for too long compared to my other potential destinations; maybe I thought Paris was too obvious or civilized, or that I would be unable to make an impact there, whatever that would amount to. For whatever reason, although I certainly wished to visit Paris, I didn't nurse much ambition to live there.


And yet here I am, moving to Paris in a week, for a year. This situation is the outcome of my dissertation topic on eighteenth-century French architecture which requires research and networking in France. My thesis directors suggested that I take this research trip, which I am happy to do. Yet I tend to see this opportunity (obligation?) to go to Paris as something that has landed in my lap, as it were, taking me somewhere I never seriously thought I'd be, and where I had certainly never schemed and strategized to end up.  I am definitely excited to go (and naturally a little scared), but my excitement is mixed with honest surprise.


This blog will be an attempt to record my observations and adventures over the next year, both for my benefit and any friends and family who wish to follow along. As I'm sure many people find with blogs or journals or regular letter-writing, keeping account shortly after an experience can vividly record our original impressions and particular details, and I hope this blog will achieve that. Moreover, I'm wondering if maintaining this blog will encourage me to relish each moment, something I tend to forget to do. If there's anything I've retained from my teenage daydreaming about places like Rio, it's a tendency to ignore the here and now for something future and far-away. A bad habit in general, for sure, but in Paris such disregard would be unforgivable---but also, quite likely, easy to overcome.