I spent so much time while I was gone missing the familiarity of my routine and my home and my friends, but now that I’m back, I just want to leave again! It was so easy to get around and feed myself and take care of all these basic day to day concerns in Paris. It freed up a lot of space for thinking and being. A different pace of life. I miss that.

I’m all out of French Marlboros and the American ones taste like nail polish remover. This is probably for the best.

I’ve walked to work for every shift since I’ve been home. I always walked a lot around town but now it’s even easier. I wish I had more places to go. Fredericksburg feels like such a ghost town to me now. I went thrifting a few days after getting home and was immediately recognized by a co-op customer. I did miss running into people I know everywhere. I like being able to strike up a conversation with strangers in the same language again.

I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to travel but I also always felt like it kind of goes against my natural inclinations. I went to Minnesota for work for a few days last week, and it felt so normal to just have a bag going through the airport and walking around a big city again. I feel a lot more restless now. It’s fun to know that everything is still happening out there while I’m here, and I want to go see more of it again.

I have $270 in flight credits with United to use before October 11th. I could get back to Spain in the cheapest possible seat only having to spend a little extra. I could travel pretty much anywhere in the U.S. if I wanted. I’m still deciding.

It kind of feels like I might have to move. I might not be as committed to settling down as I thought I was. It was challenging and I liked that. I think what I wanted when I first signed up for this trip was to sit quietly in the park and eat good snacks, and what I got was maybe not quite as restful, but that was good. I don’t think I want to sit quietly for the rest of my life anymore.

I still don’t think I would like to live in a city as large and dense as Paris, but there are smaller ones. I think I would just like to keep seeing more. There are so many places to go and I have seen so few of them.

Big crossroads moment. Gotta keep taking it one day at a time and gathering information. It will all become clear sooner or later.

Okay, I think I’ve seen them all. The only new train seat pattern I saw recently was orange plastic with gray cloth on line 4. Did not get a pic. Very crowded train. I have enjoyed cataloguing this.

Sunday was my 28th birthday. Last year, I ate sushi and got drunk on Veuve Cliquot while watching movies with my ex. This year I spent my birthday eating a sandwich in the nudist section of the Bois de Vincennes. It had too much mayo, and I’m like 98% sure the park was just a cruising ground for old men.

This has been a weird trip. I’m not sure I was really ready to be out of my house this long, but I also kind of needed to be forcibly removed from Fredericksburg for a while.

I have done all the things I set out to do. I went to Champagne, I smoked a lot of cigarettes, and I’ve seen countless places and works of art that I’ve always dreamed of seeing. I’ve tried a lot of things I’ve always been curious about. I’ve spent a long time wondering what it would be like to live in a major city, or just around a lot of people in general, and now I know.

What I needed out of this was to be alone for a while and to learn to be with myself again, and I’ve gotten that. I feel a lot more capable and independent for having proven to myself that I can do it, and that I can do it in an unfamiliar place completely different from anything I’ve ever experienced.

There are so many things that I will miss when I go home: the bread is unparalleled, the public transit is incredible, and there’s just so much to experience on every street. It’s amazing to walk down such beautiful avenues every day just to run errands. The way Paris is designed to be so livable and aesthetically pleasing just blows me away, and I feel very lucky to have gotten to experience it. I never plan anything like meals or what store to go to, because I can just wander around and find whatever I need within three blocks of wherever I happen to be standing, and it will probably be in a gorgeous building that has existed long before anything in Fredericksburg. I feel like I’m only just now beginning to really settle in and get comfortable, and that I have so much left to do here.

I’ve learned that I really like the life I already have, though, and I will be happy to return to it with some of my many questions about what I want answered.

I will also be returning to it with a lot of artistic inspiration! I’ve started sketching again and building on some ideas for new collages once I’m home. I have a million pictures of textures and architectural details and street art to pull from. I feel like I’m finally getting back to a place where I can really look at the world around me again, and there is an overwhelming amount to take in here.

Today at the museum of architecture, I was thinking about how different it is to look at the casts of the details removed from their context. Seeing all the details of a cathedral together at once can be almost too much sometimes. Easy for things to get lost. I liked getting to pay more attention to the singular pieces for a change. It will be interesting to see how that carries over to looking at all the pictures I’ve taken here when I get home.

I’m excited to see what I do with all of this. I’m excited to see where I go from here. I spent all of the last year since signing up for this going, “I just have to get to Paris,” and now I’m here, and it’s ending, and I have no idea what is ahead. I am curious to see how this experience influences the way I see things at home. I have some ideas about what I will view differently or what will stand out to me more, but I wonder what else will become apparent in the months to come.

All my posts feel so fucking angsty but it’s my blog and I can say whatever I want! I already graduated.

Here are some photos:

When I first got here, I was like, “oh my god, everyone is so chic, I will never be able to blend in.” And I haven’t! It was so impressive initially, the level of put-togetherness. Every outfit is so clean and structured and…conservative.

I’m bored with it! I miss dressing stupid on purpose! I miss my friends and the array of textures and unique pieces they thrift and alter in ways so much more creative and outlandish than anything I’ve seen. Everything here that is different follows a very clear set of rules and it just feels so limiting.

The tailoring is impeccable, the fabrics are high quality, and everyone is so fucking skinny that it’s just a constant question of “is this stylish or are they thin?” and I am just so over it. The most I’ve felt like myself was wearing shorts in a metro station eating tandoori chicken wings with my leg hair out. I like wearing my Birks with socks and I don’t care if it makes me look dumb next to yet another impossibly gorgeous woman in a fabulous monochromatic suit look.

I am a tacky bitch (obviously) and I miss my fellow tacky bitches. I miss wearing a hot pink sequined dress that is maybe just a bit too tight to the grimiest bar in town. I miss my patchwork hippie pants and shirts for bands like Dayglow Abortion, featuring vampire Ronald and Nancy Reagan eating a baby covered in steak sauce. I’m sick of this uniformity and commitment to such a perfectly curated aesthetic, even though I can appreciate the effort and quality that goes into it.

Getting side eye from the Printemps employees for daring to sample Le Labo perfumes in the hoodie/shorts/socks/sandals combo made me feel alive today.

I will say that I do appreciate the men’s fashion a lot. I have seen so much more stylistic diversity among the guys here and that has given me a lot of ideas to work with when I am home again. I usually stick to women’s clothes because there’s so much more variety, but the men here are showing me new dimensions to it! Also, everyone wears so much jewelry, and I will be improving my accessorizing game as a result of this.

I like to dress preppy frequently! But I also like having the option to wear something ridiculous and poorly thought out. I am not a clean, structured, conservative person. I am a sprawling mess of a person and I would like to convey that sometimes through the things I wear, and I am kicking myself for not packing to have that choice this month. It’s all linen pants that are too big now and cheap crop tops. Boring. It’s all boring.

Anyways, I don’t have any good street fashion photos or pictures of myself that would align with this topic, so here are some things I thought were cool this week!

Continuing to take more creep shots of metro seats! Keeping a running list in my phone of each line I take and any new patterns I see. This week’s additions:

-line 6 had a green to yellow gradient on the fixed seats and teal dots on the fold down seats

-line 2 had funky colorful stripes (thin), while line 4 had chunky lines in a different color scheme

-line 4 also had a crosshatched yellow/purple/teal pattern and a blue to orange dotted gradient

-RER A with an orange background and a contrasting blue branching floral pattern

I love the consistent use of complementary colors and the mix of simpler patterns (gradients and stripes) and more geometric or floral designs. Every time I see a new one I just keep wondering exactly how many there are. Whose job is this? How do I apply to design metro seat fabrics? It just gets me thinking about merchandising psychology and all the things that go into why stores are laid out the way they are. Why these patterns? Who decides? What criteria are they using?

I am probably reading into this too much.

Something I’ve enjoyed paying a lot of attention to is the seats on the trains. I was so taken aback the first time I got on the RER B and saw green velvet on the seats. Originally I was kind of grossed out by the thought of fabric seats in such a heavily used public space, but Smith pointed out that they actually wear better over time than the hard plastic seats of U.S. metro systems. They certainly have more personality.

I’ve noticed a few different patterns so far: green velvet with a purple geometric pattern, a blue to orange dotted gradient, a similar dotted gradient in green to red, and blue vinyl. The blue vinyl was surprising after so much cloth! It’s getting to the point where I get a little disappointed when I get on a new line and the seats are something I’ve already seen before.

I am excited to continue on my cataloguing journey! I need to be less self conscious about taking creep shots of the seating. It’s fun to see so much variety after the blue plastic or orange and blue vinyl of the D.C. metro.

So I live in Fredericksburg, and I pretty much never go more than three miles away from my apartment in downtown. Fredericksburg has a population of roughly 28,000 people, and I know a lot of them! You can easily go outside and see only a handful of other people on the street at any given time. First Fridays are usually the busiest I ever see it and that absolutely pales in comparison to what I have just witnessed here.

This level of population density is completely foreign to me. I’d been to just about every major U.S. city by the age of 16 and it just does not even come close. Personal space is not real anymore. A man fully shoulder checked me in the left tit the other day (but I’m pretty sure that one was intentional). There are twice as many people per square mile here than there are in the entirety of the city of Fredericksburg.

In Barcelona, it was a lot easier to move around as a pedestrian. Completely different vibe than Paris. Very laid back, people walking fast but not in a rushing kind of way, cars driving in a somewhat confusing manner but not aggressively, no honking. It was easy to get into the flow of it and not stressful.

In Paris, people are constantly honking at each other. The sidewalks are virtually nonexistent on some streets (gotta love that medieval growth), but cars are still driving down them. Bikers almost never stop for any lights. It feels a lot more uptight. I do enjoy the walking style though. It’s just a big game of chicken and I will never blink first.

I could get away with my crunchy granola patterned patchwork hippy pants in Barcelona. Not here.

One of the big things that has surprised me is that I actually see way more alt/goth people in Fredericksburg regularly than I have seen here. They’re around, maybe I just haven’t hit the right neighborhoods yet, but I swear I see more punks at home than in this major city. I know Paris has a strong DIY scene, so where is everybody hanging out and how do I get there?? This warrants further investigation.

I know this is one thing everyone talks about, but it really is wild to go outside and no one is wearing sweatpants and athleisure. Also, no one ever looks sweaty somehow, and their hair remains smooth and un-frizzed. I am determined to uncover these secrets to take home, because I feel like a mess.

I do love how much of life here, and in Barcelona too, seems to be centered on simply hanging out. Everyone is constantly just hanging out at the cafe, along the water, in a park. It feels so much less socially isolated.

It is also so weird to me to not see any gas stations. In Fredericksburg, everyone has their preferred gas station that they are loyal to. My one friend is firmly committed to the Wawa life. At work, people are always running across the street to the 7-11 for Redbull and cigarettes. There’s the gas station in my neighborhood that I walk to for a quick snack. They’re such a routine fixture in my daily life.

This barely even scratches the surface, but it’s only week one. I will end it here for now.

Hi! I’m Megan.

We’ve spent the week getting settled in Paris, surviving the first, but probably not the last, heatwave of our time here. I have spent a combined 110 euros on fans and I have no regrets.

I do not leave my house for this long, ever. My routine has been disrupted and I am very much out of my element. That being said, I think this is good for me. Seeing new things and discovering new ways to live are things that I need. When I signed up for this trip almost a year ago, my life looked very different. When I go home in August, it won’t be to the same life I left, and sometimes I find myself struggling to accept that. I do not like change.

But I can at least look at some great art while I find my way through!

Highlights for this week include:

-A reliquary at the Musee de Cluny that contains the alleged umbilical cord of Jesus Christ

-One of my favorite sculptures, Sleeping Hermaphrodite, at the Louvre

-A very tasty lemon tart from a place I do not remember

I love reliquaries. I think they are the funniest things, but also, I get it. Sacred things get a special ornate box, that just makes sense. Sometimes that sacred thing is somebody’s foot and it gets a special foot shaped vessel. This is natural. As someone who keeps sentimental boxes of sentimental things, I am now considering starting my own churches with the relics I keep from people in my life, past and present. It could be a fun concept for some sculptures, at least.

I have always found Sleeping Hermaphrodite to be very moving. Obviously, the historical context is completely different from how I am reading it now in 2025, but I’ve always appreciated it as a very tender and loving depiction of a trans body, and that’s not something I’ve gotten to see a lot of in that kind of classical/ancient art. Yes, I know that isn’t really how the piece was probably intended originally. I’ve seen plenty of discussion of how sculptures in that vein were more a trick to the viewer in the original context. The way Bernini carved that cushion, though, reads as an act of love to me. It really adds a new dimension to the original piece. I just appreciate getting to see art that reflects the people I love and the reality I live in.

Lemon tarts. Nothing more to say on this, I just really love lemon and I am excited for all the lemon pastries I’m going to eat. I am enjoying it while it lasts, since I know I will never be capable of fully replicating them at home.

I guess the overarching theme here has turned out to be things that bring me comfort when I am unsettled: something that makes me laugh, something familiar and a little bittersweet, and something that tastes good.