Background

I'm a North Carolina native, having grown up in Charlotte and Asheville. I still couldn't tell you what the catalyst was for my love affair with France, but after a school trip to Paris and Asheville's sister city, Saumur, in 11th grade, I decided that I'd like to spend a gap year there after high school. Thanks to a mutual tourist visa agreement, any American citizen can travel to France and stay there with no reason for up to 90 days, but they are not allowed to work or study during this time. Any stay longer than 90 days requires an application and visit to a consulate in the US for a visa. After much research, I decided to sign up for the Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne, or CCFS. This was, and I believe still is, the go-to excuse for anyone who is interested in spending at least several months in France and needs an official reason to obtain a visa. 

My parents were decidedly not thrilled about my choice to take a gap year, mostly because they feared that it meant I would end up not attending college at all. They also did not approve of my at-the-time girlfriend, who would be accompanying me to Paris. For these two reasons, they chose to not financially support me during my time in Paris, so I worked and saved up for many months beforehand. I won't focus too much on my experiences with obtaining a visa at this time, as it was in mid-2008 and much has changed since then. I will, however, say that we chose to find an furnished apartment through an agency (NY Habitat, I believe) that caters specifically to foreigners. Initially I opposed the idea on the principle of not wanting to pay an agency fee, but looking back on it now, the agency fee was well worth it.

Once I arrived, I realized only the first registration session at the Sorbonne before I realized that the amount of money I had saved up would not be sufficient to carry me through another 6 months in Paris. I decided to skip out on the CCFS and to find a job instead. Not so easy with only mediocre language skills. Let's backtrack a few years to see how I eventually found employment.

The same high school French teacher that brought our class to France in 11th grade had been a flight attendant before 9/11, when he was laid off and reduced to teaching high school French. After I graduated high school, he was called up again by Delta and rehired on what I imagine is a relatively prestigious route reserved for those with seniority: Atlanta-Paris. When I found this out, I got in touch with him and mentioned that we could meet up for lunch or dinner sometime while he was on a layover in Paris. He responded that he'd love to, and if I remembered the falafel restaurant (Chez Hanna, 54 rue des Rosiers) he had brought our class to a couple years back, he'd be happy to meet me there the next week. It was a favorite of his, and he had seemed to be a regular there. When we met that next week for dinner, I mentioned to him that I was searching for just about any job I could find, and he called over the patron, Guy. After a quick back-and-forth, Guy asked me if I could start the week after that. 

I was officially limited by my student visa to working 20 hours a week, but Guy had different plans in store for me. At first he needed me weekends only, starting Friday nights. The restaurant is open from noon to midnight every day except Monday, so I would work 7 hours on Friday night and 12 each on Saturday and Sunday. Guy was under the impression that I was actually enrolled in and attending the CCFS courses during the week, and because this weekend work schedule was already more than enough for my tastes, I didn't bother informing him otherwise. Eventually though, I had to "come clean" and pretend that my courses had ended and I had graduated, after the Christmas holidays in 2008. From here began my full-time work weeks, at more than twice the mandated 35-hour work week in France and nearly four times the limit my student visa imposed on me. The best thing I can say about that time is that I was able to save absolutely everything I made, having no time to spend money. I didn't even have to buy food, eating all my meals at the restaurant six days a week. 

Here we see the namesake of half of the title of this blog. Philosophy is yet to come. 

It was during this time that I applied to and was accepted at North Carolina State University, with plans of attending in the fall of 2009, after returning to the US. This is where I would start and finish my undergraduate career, with little knowledge of what lay in future after that.