If it weren't for Fifi asking if I would like to post about Paris...I wouldn't have spent the morning taking a wistful journey down memory Lane...getting to know me...26 years ago. How soon we forget!
I spent 4 months going to University in Paris (Exchange through the Sorbonne). I found my dusty and faded journal stuffed with pictures, metro passes, wine labels...and a much younger handwriting and outlook. The eternal optimism of youth.
We had to find our own housing, a new friend and I found a quaint and once beautiful place in the 17th arrondisement to lease.We shared it with a tortured young art student. It smelled of oil paint and varnish. The land lady was eccentric.We boarders made her nervous.
'...The tiny kitchen has no refrigerator, her food sits outside in a shoebox on the windowsill to keep cold. A broken gas hot-plate needs the urging of a match to work. Crouched between the kitchen and the livingroom is a tiny bathroom...consisting of a small stained sink and a temperamental toilet with a broken seat. She leaves us notes taped to the wall, shakily written in black felt tip pen. Cette lavabo est casse. N'pas utiliser s.v.p'
We shared a room with a large shuttered window that overlooked bustling market street of rue de Levi.
In the early evenings you could buy everything you needed ~ from chickens, and deer to bread cheese and pâtisseries and flowers. While no street lights, the lights of the shops lit the way home.
I studied the social and economic system of France. Travelled by metro to the furthest corner of the city to study French language. 
I remember being amazed by their politics...which helped me to understand ours better. I met intriguing people. I was brave...not at all cautious. I inhaled Paris.
Paris...Intense, inscrutable, ingrown~Sometimes infuriating. Always intriguing...
It was an amazing experience...One of my last pages held a quote by Hemingway.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
Thank you for this month long moveable feast Fifi...it has been a beautiful Journey!
___________________________________________
Thank you Linda for sharing your school days with us and some beautiful OUTDOOR shots of Paris... and thanks to you taking over for moi... I was able to sit in an outdoor cafe ...
and paint flowers...
and more flowers...
Now... we must run off to visit Susan and her Outdoor Wednesday participants!
ALL paintings are AVAILABLE in My Etsy Store!
Tomorrow... join me for a FAREWELL TO APRIL IN PARIS Tablescape Thursday... and I will have a GIVEAWAY!!!
