Paris is now small and quaint

I often feel like I’m learning the same lesson over and over. It will sneak up on me, and suddenly I’ll realize – I already learned this one! It’s not that I forget, but just that when the context is so radically different, it’s hard to recognize familiar ideas.

One of the lessons I just relearned is that expectations completely color what you see.

This was my fourth time in Paris, but I felt like I was in a new city. It was quiet and clean and seemed so small and quaint. I was completely surprised. I remembered it as being overwhelming, intimidating, hot, dirty and crowded. At first, I attributed the turnaround to the season and weather.

I’ve never spent April in Paris and was very excited about the idea. Teachers have to resign themselves to never getting to take vacations in the off-season. We have the same holidays that everybody else does and are doomed to visit Yellowstone when there are thousands of RVs trying to park by the same ranger’s station. Teaching in Turkey this year has given me some unexpected holidays, like the 23rd and 24th of April.

This was nothing like my first experience in Paris, in August 1999, crammed in a bus with dozens of other teenagers, on a two day whirlwind tour before we were sent off to meet our host families and be exchange students for a year. April in Paris is different.

What first struck me was how much more dramatic all the familiar landmarks are when menacing purple storm clouds are looming above. The Eiffel Tower looks shiny and new when the sun comes bursting through after a shower. Clouds clustered around Sacré Coeur give it depth and extra height. The air was clear and the streets sparkled. It was not what I expected, but weather can’t make a city that I thought was overwhelming and intimidating now seem small and quaint.

My first time in Paris I was coming from Boise, Idaho, and the second time from Villeneuve, in southern France. Saying that those two places are small and calm compared to Paris is a gross understatement. Paris was a shock.

This time I am coming from Istanbul. After eight months in a massive city spread over two continents, with 19 million people whose language I do not speak, moved around by multiple transportation systems, I see things differently.

I now expect getting somewhere to take longer than I used to. I expect to not be able to communicate with the people around me. I expect there to be so many people that I won’t get a seat on the bus. I expect people to do things that seem completely illogical to me, and for them to think that what I do is illogical. I expect to be lost often and not know what I’m ordering in restaurants. I expect the sidewalks to be covered with trash and the roads to have unmarked hazards. I expect to see stray cats and dogs everywhere I turn. I expect to be surprised by the clothes people wear. These have all become normal parts of my life in Istanbul, and therefore to be expected.

It takes me several months, sometimes longer, to feel comfortable in a new place, to feel like I know what is going on and what to expect. I am now learning just how much those expectations stay with me. When I went home to Boise after two years in Morocco, I expected people to be multilingual. Even though I knew that my friends and family were not, I expected it from the population at large, since that was what I was used to in Morocco.

Now I’m learning that my expectations change as I adapt to new environments and become a part of where I live. It surprises me how familiar Istanbul has become. I expect that whenever I have a few hours to spare, I can visit an interesting museum or ancient historical monument. I expect to see unfamiliar styles of clothing and an eclectic mix of fashion. I am happy to take for granted that I will see the stunning skyline of the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya and Topkapı Palace.

Not that my expectations made the skyline of the Eiffel Tower or Sacré Coeur any less impressive. I was still delighted and amazed by everything I saw in Paris. What I really learned this time in Paris, is that as long as I keep growing and changing, learning new things and seeing from different points of view, even places I thought I knew can look different. Everything can be continually new and amazing as long as I keep learning to look at it from new angles.