French President Francois Hollande’s office sent me a reply to my letter to him telling him how much I would like to teach English in France. I wonder how many Heads of State reply to letters sent in a foreign language. I will always think highly of him for taking the time to respond to me.

My time in Paris was heaven-sent: it literally saved my life. I had been through an awful lot and my brain felt worn: I’d been going to the same places using the same routes and doing the same things for so long that the synapses in my brain felt like too many well-worn paths. I needed to do different things to keep my brain fresh.

More importantly, my spirit had been waning. I lost everything I owned prior to 2009 – my pictures, family history documents, my wardrobe, my furniture, everything – and sometimes it’s been difficult to keep my spirits up. A broken heart can kill a person as assuredly as a bullet: it just takes longer. I needed to do something to make my heart leap with joy and to feel really alive again. So, when my TOPA rights (Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act) were bought out by a buyer of the house I was living in in Washington, D.C., I knew a trip to Paris, my very favorite place, was in order. It was just what I needed. I found a renewed purpose and a sense of hope while I was there. I feel like I belong in Paris. Paris certainly belongs in me. And as a result of my trip, I developed Elsa’s Travel Blog on Paris, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I use it to help others get to Paris and to discuss significant cultural points. As I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, sometimes more divides France and the U.S. than just the Atlantic: I hope to be a bridge between the two cultures. I am a traveler like all others, certainly, but my eyes are open with awareness that antagonism lurks beneath the surface of many people in both cultures, likely due to our differences, and sometimes, to misunderstandings. I hope to bring these differences out in the open, at the very least, so people will think about them.

So what lasting impressions did my trip have on me? French people aren’t consumed with making money — their focus is on enjoying life. I was astounded to see adults in coats with their children on kiddie rides — I don’t know whether that would happen in Washington. (Though, honestly, it doesn’t get quite as cold in Paris as in D.C.) I was not astounded or surprised to see French people sit for hours at a café, talking and enjoying themselves: but when it came my turn, I found myself looking at my watch, wondering when the waiter was going to ask me to pay my check and leave, as often happens in the U.S. French people allow you to be your best self, and they still value good manners and class. Moreover, they are not “in your business” all the time: I can’t say any of that about Washingtonians. My passport may state I am an American, but in my heart, I feel French. Well, almost.

Unfortunately, the trouble I’ve been having in the States followed me to Paris. See what I mean:

1. My bank account was frozen twice despite my having given my bank a travel itinerary – and Wells Fargo could never tell me why they did this, even while telling me they saw my travel itinerary in my account documents online.
2. My personal care items (my 3-1-1 bag in my carry-on) went “missing.” I saw the bag when I went through Dulles Airport security, but by the time I got to Plug-Inn Hostel, the bag was gone. I cannot account for what happened to it.
3. My Facebook and Outlook accounts were both frozen shortly after my arrival in Paris. No matter how many security questions I answered to verify my identity for both accounts, neither could be satisfied: they both wanted me to sign in my account “using a computer I’ve previously used.” After my arrival back in the States, they both unlocked themselves, as if by magic.
4. Over half of my pictures were deleted from my digital camera. Not “the latter half” or any segment, but individual pictures, such as when I bought my cape and posed for someone to take my picture in it, all of the pictures I took of Plug-Inn Hostel and its staff, most of the pictures I took at Le Basilic. These are not arbitrary deletions, but rather my favorites – what made my trip unique from someone else’s.
5. Someone threw out my lemon drink, ate my dinner, and stole my water bottle from the refrigerator at Plug-Inn Hostel. They left the lemon drink in the trash for me to see, so it was personal.
6. My resume vanished from my flash drive and the computer I was working on when I tried to print it in Paris. This means there was a virus (or something like it) attached to it to make it delete itself as soon I tried to do anything to it. As a result, I didn’t get to apply for positions to teach English, or at even upload my resume to leboncoin.fr.
7. I contacted Wells Fargo soon after I arrived back in the U.S. about them freezing my account twice when my travel itinerary was clearly visible to Customer Service. A district manager contacted me and told me he would find out. He never contacted me about the outcome of his investigation, and Wells Fargo has forgotten all about it. They “mistakenly” closed my account.
8. My blog is connected to my Facebook account (as well as to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+), which means my blog posts are supposed to automatically publish on Facebook and on other accounts. Yet, sometimes Facebook seems to “save” two or more posts and publish them without the featured image for those posts. Facebook can’t do this: they don’t “know” whether I’ll be publishing my next post the next day or the following week. Moreover, I usually see my blog posts in my personal feed but in the public feed, so I manually re-post them.
9. So far, I have been unable to upload the .pdf of French President Francois Hollande’s letter to me (that is, from his office) in response to my letter to him telling him how much I’d like to teach English in France. WordPress is designed to upload .pdfs just like other images.

Which leads me to ask, does anyone really think that all of these things can happen to one person without man-made intervention? I blame the Fancy Boy Idiots. See if you don’t agree.

Salut !

Image of French President Francois Hollande from an interview on July 14, 2012, found on Google.