Girl Uprooted: A Memoir by Lena Lee

Author:Lena Lee [Lee, Lena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little Koo Press
Published: 2023-07-02T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Paris, France, 2005 (age 17)

“Lena, have you heard of Haussmann?” my dad asked in an upbeat tone as he drove me and my mom around Paris. “He’s the man who transformed Paris into the city it is today.” My dad spoke with pride as if he’d commissioned the work himself. It was my first time in Europe, and he liked acting the tour guide—his first trip abroad had been to France in 1983, when he was twenty-five.

Heartbroken, I feigned indifference. But as much as I refused to be impressed, I couldn’t help admiring the historic monuments, the luscious gardens, the cobbled boulevards, the magnificent bridges. The streetlights looked like something out of Beauty and the Beast. The Eiffel Tower was right in front of us. This was Paris. And we weren’t tourists; we were there to live. It felt surreal that this was our new reality.

Our new home was a three-bedroom apartment in an Haussmann building with cream-colored stone façades and two imposing wooden doors. It was located centrally in the eighth arrondissement, only a few minutes’ walk from the Champs-Élysées. My parents and I (my brother was still at university in Korea) would go on many long walks up to Montmartre or along the Seine to Notre Dame or on an evening stroll to the Élysée Palace, where President Sarkozy lived. Jjanga always came with us, and the French would tease us for putting a leash on “une petite souris”—a little mouse. Thankfully, Jjanga only “spoke” Korean.

In many ways, the French seemed to live up to their stereotypes. They really did like their baguettes, fromage and red wine. True to their motto—liberté, égalité, fraternité—they regularly took to the streets (at the time, students were demonstrating against Sarkozy’s university reforms). They seemed to enjoy life, committed to their thirty-five-hour work week, sipping an espresso or a glass of wine over their leisurely lunch breaks on terraces. They were fashionable: dressed in deceptively simple outfits, Parisian women seemed to pull off an air of effortless elegance about them.

Based on first impressions, however, the French were also rude. Not long after we arrived, while on a walk near the Eiffel Tower, my mom and I were stopped at a traffic light, facing a swarm of people also waiting to cross the road. When the light switched, I bumped into a man. “Regarde!” he shouted, scowling at me. The way he coughed up the “R” sound, I thought he was drawing up phlegm to spit on me. Were all French people like that? Was it because I was Asian? I felt a lump in my throat and wanted to return to Korea so badly in that moment.

My heart still ached. I knew from experience I would make new friends, but this felt different. I worried if I would ever get over my heartbreak. “I really can’t do this. I want to go back,” I told my mom tearfully, but she only gave me a sympathetic look.

***

My new school looked nothing like my previous schools.

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