If there were ever an arrondissement that represented me, it would be the 18th. I could hardly wait to begin my exploration of this district after two weeks of the intense luxury of the 16th and 17th , so I started early. Thursday night I took the metro straight from my French grammar final to the foot of Montmartre, the steep hill crowned by a huge church that makes this district famous. But I wasn’t there to join the long line of tourists who stream in and out of the cathedral and then pose in front of the breathtaking areal view of Paris. I was there to pray.

The prayer service was at 8, and my tedious exam left me quite exhausted, so I decided to grab a bite to eat before church. The whole surrounding area is full of little crêperies with to go windows for tourists to ogle over, so I chose a rather unassuming one and used my very best French to politely demand an egg and cheese crêpe. Perhaps it was my earnest attempts to converse in French while the crêpe sizzled, perhaps it was sheer boredom on the part of the crêpe maker, but he invited me in to the near empty restaurant and set my crepe down on a table for me. From inside the tiny restaurant we watched the tourists stream by, and commented on their tendency to stop and stare, looking almost as if they were going to buy something, and then move on to the next little stand. I helped a Spanish girl find the bathroom. We laughed at an Asian man’s attempts to teach us Korean. And then, as I was getting ready to go, the crêpe man makes me my own little nutella crêpe, as a gift, slathers it in fresh cream, and asks me to help finish off a bottle of cider. Two crêpes and 3 glasses of cider later he let me go, on condition that I pray for him.

Taize services start with silence, then songs in every language, then more silence, then more songs. I had trouble finding the service in the huge church because it consisted of a grand total of three people. But where two or three are gathered together the Spirit of the Lord is present, and God was surely present on that hilltop Thursday night. What peace! The service ended and the couple who ran it invited us all over to their house for…… crêpes!

I came home late that night, leaving the rest of the exploration for the weekend. What I found truly proved that this arrondissement represents my essence! The neighborhood changes drastically at the bottom of the hill, from a terre de tourists to a terre des exodes. The inhabitants here represent almost every nation in Africa, all living side by side. Saturday morning an African market comes to life in the streets, with everything from dried African fish to live chickens. Goods are shoved in your face and the bargainer rules. But even this neighborhood is changing, as more and more immigrants move outside of Paris, faced with the boboisation (bobo = bohemian bourgeoisie, you can guess the rest) of the neighborhood.

Sunday I looked at the neighborhood one more time, though the eyes of an artist. I met an art history student in one of our conversation workshops, explained my blog project, and since then have been adopted by the young French girl, excited to rediscover her city through the eyes of a foreigner. We meet every week in the arrondissement at question and battle over languages while we walk (she wants to learn English almost as desperately as I want to practice French). As we neared the bottom of the hill, I commented on the stark difference between these neighborhoods. “No, no, they’re all tied together,” she explained, “See, Renior lived right over here, and there was the studio of Picasso, and further down, that’s where they went out at night!”