November 13th

People have been asking me where the next blog post is, so I’m sitting here trying to find words for what is happening in my life. There are plenty of things I could write about; my trips to Brussels or Dublin, the various cafés I’ve been to, the funny things the boys say, but writing about any of that seems like I would be ignoring the elephant in the room. Everyone wants to know about Paris after November 13^th. I think most people are trying to be polite and not ask, but if you did ask, I guess this is what I would tell you:

Oberkampf, the area where most of the attacks occurred, reminds me of a much longer Broad Ripple Avenue. Bars and restaurants line the streets, full of students and young people who are enjoying themselves at the end of a long weekday or during a busy weekend. The last time I lived in Paris, we went out in Oberkampf all the time. We had specific bars we frequented and even knew exactly which crepe stand had the best ham, cheese, and mushroom crepe at 2am. We spent countless nights in Oberkampf living our lives, laughing, making new friends and enjoying old ones. The weekend of November 6^th was the first time I had made it back to Oberkampf this year. We were on a rooftop bar, tucked off the main road, and I remember looking at the Sacre-Coeur and wondering if life could get better. I was having a conversation with a 20 year old friend of a friend who was spending a few months traveling around Europe and I remember thinking to myself; my god, I can’t believe that people come here for vacation, and I get to really live here. 

On the way home, I looked around the street and saw that people were hanging Christmas lights. I knew I wanted to come back and wander the streets when they were turned on. That is why on the 12^th of November, when my friends asked what we should do that weekend, I suggested walking around Oberkampf & Canal Saint Martin to look at lights. We planned to make mulled wine at a friend’s apartment and walk through the streets of Paris on the 13^th of November. The strangest thing for me is that I never make decisions. When people ask me what I want to do, my answer is always “Oh, up to you! No worries, I’ll do anything,” and it’s the same answer when people ask where I want to eat, what movie I want to see, what party I want to go to, anything. Even if someone picks something I don’t necessarily want to do, I tend to go with the flow. On the 12^th of November, I chose. Without hesitating, I said Canal Saint Martin. 

The afternoon of the 13^th, my friends suggested that instead of the canal, we could go to the Christmas Market that had just opened on the Champs Elysees on the opposite side of the city. Because of my ‘go with the flow’ nature, I agreed. “Sure! Up for anything!” Changing plans meant that we changed locations for where we planned to meet-up. We decided to meet at a friend’s apartment near the Eiffel Tower. If we had kept our original plans we would have been right in the middle of the action. I don’t know what word to use here. I don’t want to call it ‘action’ because I feel like that trivializes the events. I also don’t want to call it terror, although I suppose that is the exact word to use. I just don’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing that they caused terror in the streets of my city. 

At any rate, I got off work, changed and got ready to leave. At 10:00pm I got onto the metro. When I got off the metro at 10:20pm, I got a text from my friend that said “Call me.” I thought, well that’s super weird, I’m going to be at the apartment in 5 minutes….I’m sure she just meant to type, call me if you need the door code, or something. My phone plan only has 2 hours of calls a month, and my host mom told me to try to save it in case of emergencies, so I ignored it and kept walking. I walked by groups of people standing around outside. I walked past a party at a ground floor apartment that spilled into the courtyard outside. College aged kids who were smoking and drinking and generally enjoying themselves were everywhere, like always. I got into my friend’s building and entered the elevator. I hit the button for her floor. When the doors opened, there were my friend’s faces staring back at me. I jumped. 

“OH MY GOD, thank god you’re here.” 

“What?”

“Oh, of course, you don’t know what’s happening. Come on.” 

And into the apartment we went as they started telling me what was happening around the city. When I reflect back, I feel a bit silly that we were all so scared, because we were nowhere near the action. But at the time, we had no idea what was happening. It was chaotic. Anywhere could have been next. We were close to the Eiffel Tower. We wondered out loud several times if someone would try to hurt people in the area where we were because the Eiffel Tower is such a huge landmark. We spent the next hours reading breaking news on every form of social media that was available to us. First came the report of a possible bomb at the Stade de France and then a shooting in the street in Oberkampf. Slowly, reports started rolling in about the other attacks. The screen flashed “hostages taken at the Bataclan” and I think that was the point where I realized the gravity of the situation. Our phones started exploding with concerned messages from family and friends. At any given time, one of us was on the phone or facetiming with family members letting them know we were safe. We sent out group texts to friends that we weren’t with, trying to figure out where they were. We couldn’t get a hold of some people. My phone died twice. I watched as Parisians began to use the hashtag #porteouverte on Twitter to let anyone who was trying to seek shelter find someone with extra space on their couch, or floor, or hallway, so that they could go inside and be safe. 

It wasn’t until an hour after the first attack that we realized we should turn on the news. We turned on the TV and saw President Obama speaking. I quietly cried. I’m always the first to cry over anything. 

We sat in silence watching the “death toll” number rise on the screen.  We kept obsessively checking the internet for new information. We got angry at the news anchors on the channel we were watching; they kept spouting their own opinions over what was happening and repeating the “known facts” over and over until they lost their meaning; but looking back, what were they supposed to do? I’m sure they were told they had to cover and commentate on the live feed. How do you come up with the accurate words to pair with horrifying events as they happen? It has taken me a week to be able to sit down and write this, and I’m not even sure “comprehensive” could be used to describe my written feelings.  

We wanted information, but no one could give it to us. People wanted information from us, and we couldn’t give it to them. We were helpless. We had blind guesses as to what was happening. At the beginning we wondered if it was sports related, we then wondered if it had something to do with the climate change conference happening here, then we blamed terrorists, we talked about the attack the day before in Beirut; all these ideas and theories but no facts…we were lost. We wrote things on Facebook, we “checked-in” as safe, we chatted with people via Instagram, & Whatsapp; we knew we weren’t leaving the apartment any time in the near future. To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur. It’s a blur of conversations, website refreshing and small bursts of laughter; as perverse as that sounds. We didn’t know what to do, so I started showing my friends videos of cute small animals. We would laugh for the duration of the 30 second video and then go back to the television where they were showing police carrying bodies. We didn’t know how to appropriately react or manage our emotions. We drank our mulled wine as we listened to people describing the streets as ‘apocalypic’ and likening it to ‘scenes from a horror film.’ 

Knowing that none of us would be leaving, at 3AM we all put on borrowed pajamas, washed our faces, rubbed some toothpaste on our teeth with our fingers and lay down sideways across the queen size bed. Four grown girls, not sure what the next move was. We tossed and turned, none of us really able to sleep, none of us very comfortable, but comforted in the fact that at least we were together; we weren’t home alone when it happened, or worse, out in the streets. 

We woke up around 7AM to more information but still no real answers. Eventually, all we wanted to know was if it was safe to go outside and go home. We watched the news in the morning, seeing the victim count higher than it had been when we tried to sleep, and we just felt sad. We were sad for everyone. The interesting thing about this kind of grief was that I don’t feel like I was allowed to feel it. I’m not French, no one I knew was hurt or injured, I had never been to any of the locations, and I stayed safe with my friends all night. I felt guilty being sad. I felt that by being sad about the situation, I was giving myself more of an important role in the events, like I was more involved, more affected, when really, my sadness paled in comparison to the sadness experienced by other people who woke up that morning. 

Why was I sad? I was so sad for the people who didn’t survive the night, because I had been them. I was almost them that night. I had been out in those streets the weekend before, the month before, in years before. I passed many Friday evenings in a tiny purple apartment in Republic; I followed my friends into the masses of people crowding the sidewalks; I spent my hard-earned money in a dark corner of a bar; I giggled as I tried to order two crepes at once and then, just like that, I made it home, safely to my bed. These people didn’t. I felt sad for their families, who likely heard there was an attack in the city on Friday night, and tried in vain to reach their loved one all night long, only to have no response. I felt sad for the people posting pictures of their loved ones to Twitter and Facebook, asking, begging, praying for information. Even for survivors, their post-traumatic stress has to be unlike any I’ve ever known. With all of that sadness, I still felt out of place, like I was an onlooker, feeling sad about something that didn’t concern me at all. 

So many people reached out to me to ask if I was okay and how I was handling the whole thing. “I’m sad” felt so trivial. So I resorted to speaking out about the French as a whole. “The French people this… the French people that…” I never felt like I could say “We.” It felt like when you go to the funeral of an acquaintance and although you feel sad, you know there are people, like members of their immediate family, who are sadder than you. Your friends tell you that they are ‘sorry for your loss’ but you feel like the deceased doesn’t belong to you in that way. They were someone you knew, maybe even someone you loved, but they weren’t yours.  I knew I was allowed to be sad, but my sad felt different then the sad of the Parisian people, but that didn’t make it any less real.

My sadness was also wrapped up in what I thought would be the loss of my idyllic image of Paris. I have told people time and time again about how safe I feel here. I have never been scared in this city. With two terrorist attacks in under a year, do I allow myself to get scared now? If I allow myself to be scared, the terrorists win; but the fear is a very real emotion. How do you continue living normally after that?

All of these thoughts were swimming around in my head Saturday morning as I tried to walk back to my apartment. I assumed the streets would be bare. Museums, parks, schools, markets and any other government related buildings were closed, and I assumed the streets would be empty and I’d be walking through a ghost city to get back to my apartment. 

I stepped out into the sunshine with my friend and saw a little old lady walking her dog. It felt so normal that it immediately became surreal. All the sudden, we started to notice that there were people everywhere. People were walking on the streets; people were talking to each other like it was any other Saturday. We started to walk home. We passed a Monoprix, and were unsure if any other stores would be open so we went inside to get food for the weekend. The security guard stared at us; there were many other people in the store doing their Saturday morning grocery shopping. The woman at the cash register looked bored. I remember thinking to myself, how is everyone so normal? I also remember thinking; I don’t want to be in this Monoprix for longer than I have to. I felt like a sitting duck. That’s the strangest feeling; to feel like it might be dangerous to stay somewhere too long. I have never felt that way before.

We kept walking home and I will never forget walking down Rue de Sevres and seeing a man hanging Christmas lights. He probably picked up right where he left off at 5pm Friday evening. It was at that exact moment that I realized the beauty of France and Parisians, and I knew my idyllic Paris was still there. You can’t and won’t scare the French. In fact, they’ll be damned if you ruin their Saturday. Yes, for many people, that weekend was ruined. But life continues. My mom said she saw pictures online of little old men outside in front of their shops, washing blood off their sidewalks. I’m crying even now, just thinking about it. They pick up and move on. The bakery by my apartment was open. I went in and got a baguette. The cashier sold it to me and smiled. People were greeting each other in the street as if they were old friends; children were going to birthday parties and laughing. If you didn’t know what horrible things had happened the night before, you wouldn’t have known. I was so confused. I wanted to be sad, and I was. But I was also intrigued by how the restaurant next to my house had a terrace full of people, eating their lunch. I was so proud to be living among such strong willed people.

When you let the terrorists scare you out of your normal life and habits, they win. I will never forget a Facebook post by a good friend. It was a picture of him holding a beer with the caption “Meme pas peur, toujours soif.” Not even scared, still thirsty. I think normalcy was the most beautiful thing that Parisians could give to each other that day. They also gave each other hope, love, and strength. The Place de la Republic became a spontaneous memorial. Piles of flowers and candles and photos and trinkets line the monument at the center. My Facebook news feed quickly filled up with stories of people who saved other people’s lives, of beautiful tributes to victims, a video of two young guys going to the memorial and getting people to tell each other jokes, a video of the little boy and his dad talking about flowers, a video of a blindfolded Muslim man asking people to hug him if they trusted him. It also filled up with more and more requests for help finding missing family members, each one being shared by complete strangers hoping to help ease someone’s pain. I saw pictures of people standing in lines that were wrapped around the block to donate blood. I eventually heard that so many people tried to donate blood that they had to send people away. I saw an invite for an event “A Candle in Every Window” in Paris. I bought candles and put them in my windows. I watched as the world wept with Paris. But I heard the Parisians reply to their tears with, “please don’t.”  They responded to the hashtag #prayforparis with #prayfortheworld and #parisisaboutlife. A beautiful cartoon came from the artists at Charlie Hebdo “Ceux qui aiment. Ceux qui aiment la vie. A la fin, c’est toujours eux qui gagnent” Those who love. Those who love life. At the end, they are always the winners. Paris didn’t want the world’s tears or hate, Paris wanted the world’s love. 

I have never felt so much love in a city, so much pride, so much determination to continue living. I feel blessed every second I spend in this amazing city, and every chance I get to learn from it’s beautiful and wise people. I could spend more time talking to you about the sad things that have happened after and how much I want to hug all of you at home and tell you that I love you (and I do), but I want to leave it at this. Paris is about life, and it always will be. No one can take the life out of France. The Eiffel Tower was dark the Sunday after the attacks, but when it lit back up, it was breathtaking. It was blue, white, and red and it stood taller and stronger than I have ever seen it. The city motto since at least 1358 was projected upon it: FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR.  TOSSED BUT NOT SUNK. 

That is the Paris I know. 

(Thank you to travel and film for this photo.)

On coupe le fromage

So here I am. I'm sitting at my computer in a studio apartment in the 5eme arrondissement and I'm  wondering how I make a transition from my last entry in 'the Alpha Au-Pair' to here and now. How does one do that?

My blog last left off with my friends and I standing naked in a hammam staring at each other, before getting into the wrong bathtub; and then being exfoliated by strange women who kept giggling about our faux-pas. So much has happened between then and now that I feel like it is almost impossible to catch up completely, so it seems best to just move forward? Suffice it to say that I finished my time in France, I moved back to the states where I got a job, I worked at that job until I couldn't any longer and then I made a mad dash back to Paris.

I am back to being an Au-Pair but I am in such a different situation that I can't even really compare it with the last time. They were two completely separate amazing adventures, just with many of the same details. I am currently living in the 5th arrondissement, basically on the Seine, in the studio apartment of my dreams. I take care of two very busy little boys, ages 4 and 8, I will call them N (4) & L (8). I started my french classes on Monday and am hopeful that my french will continue to improve over the rest of this year.

So far, my host family has been wonderful. They are constantly concerned that I need something, even when I don't, and they are always offering me things. An umbrella (this, I admit, was a stupid thing to forget), a rain jacket (when the airline lost one of my bags, they lost the one with my outerwear, of course), grammar books, normal books, and countless other items. They really are wonderful, and concerned, and they truly want the best for me. As soon as I make friends, they are even going to help me host a dinner party!

The boys are cute, hilarious, weird, and so smart; they make me laugh every day. They don't speak very much English but are eager to learn. N always asks me what something is in English and then when I tell him, he looks at me very seriously and says "hmm okay.' Like he is cataloging it in his little brain for later use. I love it. L has an English teacher twice a week at school, so he comes home and his homework is to practice asking people "What is your name?" and "My name is..." It's really cute.

I am teaching him different English phrases. Two days ago, we took a shortcut home from one of L's activities and he told me "on coupe le fromage." Meaning; we cut the cheese- which means to take a shortcut in France. It made me laugh of course. So I told him what that phrase would mean if he said it in America and he thought it was the best thing ever. So now he repeats it to me often. He also taught his mom. Oops.

Each week I draw them something on their dry erase board that they can practice their English over the weekend. Last week I wrote 'feeling' words and let N draw a picture of each feeling. The week before I drew them a face with all the body parts labeled. I'm not sure what I'll draw them this week maybe different animals... :)

I'm taking language classes that started on Monday and I can't lie, they are harder than they were last time, which is good because it means I have progressed enough to move up a level, but I still feel a little behind.

This weekend is Nuit Blanche, which I assume I posted about on my last go around, but if not: it's a night time art festival; the museums are open late, some of the metros run through the night and there are art exhibits set up all through the city with music and fun things to do. Last time it was rainy, but we walked through this giant interactive art exhibit with light up balloons that you could throw around. From there we parked ourselves at a tent with three guys painting these giant murals to music, all standing next to each other - when the song was over, they'd switch which mural they were painting. I'm excited to see what happens this year, apparently they are turning Gare du Nord into a giant nightclub, so I definitely want to see that.

I think that's going to be all for my first blog post from Paris, it's not very exciting, just a quick catch up!

don't give up on this post

So it has been almost 1,000 years since I have blogged so this post will hopefully be a quick wrap up of the last few months while I sit at dance, waiting for H. It is currently the first 2 week vacation break of this half of the year. The boys are going to their day camp type thing and I don’t have school so it is kind of a vacation for me as well… except for the occasional errands. Here is a quick list of all the things in this blog post: Tupperware party, getting wallet stolen, birthday, small details and then the best/worst thing that has ever happened to me.

This last weekend I went to a Tupperware party hosted by some of the girls on Siobhan’s field hockey team and it was actually a ton of fun. The woman who ran the party brought all her Tupperware and then taught us to make a bunch of really simple recipes (using her products of course) and then we all got to eat and hang out. I learned how to make ham and cheese croissants, chocolate fondant, English crème with a meringue, and these little cake things with shrimp and zucchini. Of course, I have zero money (this story coming next) so I couldn’t buy anything from her, but if I could have trust me I would have bought almost the entire catalogue. However, just for attending they are sending me a ravioli press, so I’m pretty excited about that.

The reason I have no money is not for lack of it, but because someone stole my wallet! I was at WOS as per usual and my bag was hanging on a hook underneath the bar in the middle of all of my friends. None of us had moved from that location so we are all at a loss as to how it happened, but all of the sudden I look down and my wallet was hanging outside of my bag, completely empty. Not even a single centime. Annoying. Now, French credit/debit cards all have a microchip in them and are ONLY usable with a pin number, so that was essentially useless to this person. My American card was called and cancelled immediately. My navigo pass (for the train/metro) was gone but had my name and photo on it and if anyone is caught using it there is a HUGE fine, then my student ID card from IU and my Indiana Drivers License were all stolen as well. I think there was possibly 20 euro in the wallet at the time, so really, the most that person got away with was a 20 euro bill and one really good photo of me from college (the only reason I kept the IU ID). Luckily, I have the most wonderful friends in the universe and they took care of me, drove me home, gave me money to take the metro and fed me. Actually, I spent the night at Siobhan and Thomas’s apartment and in the morning they let me make cookies in their kitchen and it made me feel about 1000x better. Upon returning home that day, my parents called me to let me know that someone had found my driver’s license, used the address on it to find my home phone number and had called my parents to tell them they found it. How nice is that?! So the man left it in an envelope at a café for me and I went to pick it up this weekend. Other than that, replacing things has been annoying. My navigo cost 23 euro to replace and they only take Carte Bancaire (credit/debit cards) at most stations. Can someone please tell me how that makes sense at all? Someone stole my wallet. HOW WOULD I HAVE A CB TO PAY YOU? After going to 4 different RATP offices (being redirected about 1,000 times because 1. There was no one working 2. They only took CB 3. They weren’t authorized to do replacements) I get to the 4^th completely and obviously exhausted (and also poor from buying all the metro tickets to cart myself around) when the woman tells me that they too only take CB. I must have had an exasperated look on my face because the woman said, “listen… do you have the 23 euro in cash on you right now in exact change?” I did. “I will put it on my CB and you can pay me the cash directly.” If there hadn’t been a window and a desk between us I would have hugged her. So then within about 5 minutes, I had a new navigo.

My other American cards are on their way here, and I need to go tomorrow and talk to my French bank about getting my French card replaced. I’ve been avoiding it because they don’t like me very much… every other week I get a phone call from them about how I don’t have a positive balance and blah blah blah. My bad, guys.

My birthday was good. Definitely very strange being away from my friends and family, but luckily I had a wonderful time with the people here (despite getting robbed haha) Katherine, Valerie and I got sushi and ice cream for lunch on the day of my birthday then after work I headed to WOS for a small drink and Siobhan had made me a chocolate cake and even brought candles. They lit the cake and sang happy birthday and then I proceeded to embarrass myself in front of the entire bar when they were trick candles and I absolutely COULD NOT get them to go out. We all had a good chuckle and then I went home and watched IU win in REAL LIVE TIME. Host dad was travelling for business on my birthday so we didn’t do anything; but they invited me to their apartment for dinner Saturday night. We had a raclette (my first) and it was delicious. Basically it’s just melted cheese on top of a potato and ham, what’s not to love about that? Then when dinner was over, A told me he had a surprise and he and host mom went into the kitchen and came back with a cake that he had baked for me, they sang me happy birthday and then I let all the kids help me blow out the candles. It was really sweet.

Let’s see… what else... I feel like I am pretty much skipping January because it was cold and I don’t really think anything too amazing happened? I basically laid in bed and was cold all month except for the week that AUGUSTA came to visit. It was literally wonderful being reunited with her and if she is reading this she just needs to stop dragging her feet and move back because I miss her.

Jen also moved back to the US during these few months which made me sad but before that happened we went to Versailles which, as everyone knows, is my favorite place in the universe so… that was perfect even though it was freezing. We were the coldest people on the planet that day.

OH WAIT. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN JANUARY. THIS IS THE GREATEST STORY OF MY LIFE. SO, for Siobhan’s birthday, Thomas bought her a gift certificate to a Hammam, a Turkish steam bath. Upon hearing that it was not that expensive, Katherine and I decided to tag along. We made the reservations and were happy little clams. We knew very little about hammam’s but knew that there is some level of unabashed nudity involved. We chalked it up to being in Europe and just decided to bite the bullet and get over it. We get to the spa, which was absolutely gorgeous, and are slowly directed around. We are taken to a little locker room type area and given lockers and told to get ready and then when we were, we could head into the steam room where someone would greet us and tell us what to do/where to go. In these lockers were flip flops, white cotton robes, towels and something in a little plastic bag that we assumed was a shower cap (this was only confirmed at a much later date).

At this point, we all look around awkwardly and realize that this is it; it’s officially time for us to get naked under our little robes. We kinda look around to see if we should get all the way naked or what, and we see a girl start to put her underwear on so we just decide to go for it. We head into the steam room fully unclothed but wearing our little cotton robes and a woman comes to greet us. She says she will take our robes and we can get started. So there we are, the three of us standing naked in the middle of a spa room with massage tables, exfoliating tables, women who work there, and clients. I see one of the women workers absolutely crack up and I look around and realize that everyone else is wearing some kind of underwear or bathing suit. Except us. Naked as the day we were born. In public. God bless the woman who was in charge of us because she handled it with so much grace that I would never have been able to muster. She got us the right equipment (weird disposable underwear) and got us on our way. They explained the spa to us and said we could get started. We sit in the first steam room for a while and relax and then it gets hot and we go into the second room they told us we could go into if we were hot. In this room there are benches and also a little cool water pool, so we go into the pool. After about 5 minutes of being in the pool, a woman comes in to tell us that the pool is the very LAST thing on the agenda, and that we aren’t allowed in until after. So not only did we just get super naked in front of everyone, now we are doing the wrong thing and in trouble. After that we just kept our heads down. We got a full body exfoliation, a shampoo treatment and a head massage, THEN we were allowed in the lavender bath and they gave us homemade lemonade and we went about our evening. CASUALLY OF COURSE.  And now dance is over so I guess that’s all for now.

What is my life?

Le metro

When I got to france, host dad told me thy I needed to always have a book on the metro and that I shouldn't make eye contact with anyone. Sometimes I forget my book & I want to recount the various awkward encounters I've had thus far. I've got some gems.

The singing accordion player

Very often, people play instruments on the metro and people give them a little bit of money if they play well. There is one accordion player who is constantly on line 3 and we keep having extremely awkward run in's. This one particular evening he stopped playing his song and in front of the entire metro car, told me I was the most beautiful person he has ever seen. People clapped. It was uncomfortable. Every time I have seen him afterwards he has winked at me.


The hop-off

Also on line 3, a man got on the metro and sat directly across from me. He was humming and singing to himself but wasn't threatening in the least. He asked if I had a tissue, I did not (bad Au Pair) he asked several other people, eventually found one and then went back to humming his song. It came time for me to get off the metro and switch lines so I got off. As I walked through the metro station I heard a "mademoiselle!!!" and turned around to see this guy had hopped off the metro and run after me, I assumed I dropped something and stopped. He proceeded to invite me to get a coffee and told me I was really pretty and he would have regretted the chance not to at least invite me for coffee. I politely said no thank you but that it was really sweet, he wished me a wonderful night and then went to wait for the next train.

Let's get married

Staying out until 6am is always awful. It's so exhausting and taking the train in the morning is rough because there are rowdy drunk people, so you never go alone. This time, Katherine and I were taking the metro back and an extremely drunk guy heard us speaking English, and told me he really wants to live in the United States one day and proceeded to propose to me and then introduce me to the entire train as his woman. He was not bad looking. Should have let that one ride.

Naked homeless

This happened just the other night, I was sitting on the 1 and a man gets on the metro with his guitar case and he is just talking a mile a minute. I understand exactly nothing of what he is saying but immediately realize he is homeless. He sits across from a really pretty blonde girl and starts waving at her and trying to get her attention. All of the sudden he lifts up his shirt and shows her his stomach. Everyone is horrified. He then unbuttons his shirt and flashes his whole chest and everyone. Literally speechless. He then sat on the metro and played his guitar the rest of the ride. It was weird.

Lesbian dance party

Waiting for the metro one night and it finally pulls up in front of me. I should have known better when I saw people dancing on the car I got onto but I just assumed this was a rowdy group of French people who would mind their own business. Not true. I sit down and am unnoticed for several minutes, enough to get a good look at the situation. It's a group of 7 people, 2 girls dressed really fancy with short skirts and hiiiigh heels, one girl with super short hair, a sports bra and these weird pants that I can only describe as short parachute pants, then the rest were guys dressed pretty scuzzily. They had these homemade instruments that were like big sticks with strings and looked African? All of this is completely surreal to me. They are dancing and shouting and the girl with the weird pants is doing hand stands and swinging from the handle bars. I consider getting off and switching compartments when one of the guys spots me. I knew immediately I was in for it. He comes up and serenades me in a language that I didn't recognize and then dances around me. He tries to take my hand and kiss it but the girl in the weird pants intercepts him and does it herself. The two of them proceed to dance literally on top of me even though I kept saying "arrêtez s'il vous plaît" and then the girl tells me she loves me and the entire group got off the train and went about their way. Um...what?

Riding in the conductors cabin of the metro

Waiting to take the metro home from school one day, hands in my pockets, I yawn. At the moment I yawn, the metro pulls up and the conductor opens his front door and tells me that it's rude not to cover your mouth when you yawn. I apologize and start to get into the train. He tells me to come in the front compartment with him, and he will show me how the train works. I say no thank you and scurry onto the train. I sit down and the conductor then opens a door into the compartment. He tells me he won't drive the train until I get into the front of it. There were like 20 people in my compartment staring at me, looking at me like 'um, get into the front section. Now. We're late.' I'm only going 3 stops and I really have wanted to ride in the front of the train... So I go.

He sets me up in a little seat next to him and starts showing me buttons and levers and then asks if I like Tupac and plays some songs on his iPhone. He introduced himself to me (I immediately forgot his name on accident) and am just content to watch the view from the front of the train. It was actually pretty cool. Suddenly it was my stop, I thank him and he tells me that he drives the 2 every afternoon and if he ever sees me waiting for it, I am not allowed to ride in the passenger cabin, I have to ride with him.


I am the queen of the metro

Yes it's rude here too. But who are you voting for?

My first few days here were immediately after the French election. One of the first things that A said to me was "so, who did you vote for?" I tried explaining to him that I am American and that I did not vote. This was confusing to him. "Why wouldn't you vote? Everyone votes. My dad voted for XXXXXXX"

This left a big impression on me. A 5 year old knew who his dad voted for and knew that it was important to vote and although he didn't quite understand, he was horrified that I didn't vote. So naturally as November approached they grew extremely curious about our election and I learned more about theirs. Here is what I learned.

Everyone in France has a political opinion. Everyone is extremely well informed about politics of not only France but also the world (although slightly biased by their pretty liberal culture). The French voting percentage is in the mid 80's and they were absolutely horrified to hear how low ours is in comparison. There are many many political parties in France, more than 5 and each is either as liberal or more liberal than ours, even their 'conservative' parties.

They are currently voting to legalize gay marriage which is causing a lot of uproar in the predominantly catholic country but I believe will ultimately be passed. All other personal rights remain extremely open in comparison to ours.

The French are well informed of American politics but from what I discovered, they really only hear the big points of the arguments and sometimes they didn't understand them. They would ask me to explain what was meant by certain comments made by the politicians and I would have to do my best to explain them.

The first time the family asked me who I was voting for, I started to explain that in the US it's not really appropriate to ask people who they are voting for because it's a personal thing and they said that it was the exact same in France. (Note that this didn't stop them from asking me... however I take it as a sign that they see me as part of the family so it's no longer necessary to follow etiquette rules like that.)

I shared my political views with them and we actually had a nice discussion involving American politics, trying to explain the electoral college to them (this was seriously next to impossible) and comparing our two processes.

The funniest thing to me is that the French didn't seem to understand why anyone would vote for Romney. They treated the election like a formality and assumed Obama would win with flying colors. Not a single person seemed concerned that he may not win, which I also tried to explain to them. I told them how close the election was and that lots of Americans did in fact want Romney to win, to which L scoffed and said "god, Americans are stupid." (This is a typical sentiment echoed by her on a semi-weekly basis; we're stupid, fat, lazy, etc. I have learned to ignore these comments because she is 14 and I remember that everything was stupid around that age.) but it also wasn't just the French. German girls in my classes, Swedish girls and various other Europeans would just come right out and ask who I was voting for and when they got the answer it was a resounding 'ohhhhh good'.

Finally it came time for the election and despite my fathers insistence and organization and help with my absentee ballot, I didn't get it turned in on time. (Read, dad told me 1,000 times to do it and I kept saying that I would, eventually I sent it in just under the wire and was informed that it was too late. Let this be a lesson, daddy's are always right.) So I did not vote in this election and I feel very un-American.

In effort to right this wrong, I only felt it appropriate to go sit at WOS for the entire evening and watch the election from start to finish. I wore a navy blue shirt, a red white and blue hair bow and painted my nails as close to red white and blue as possible (dark pink, blue, light pink)

I watched the election with Katherine, Jen, Jo and the Swedes, by the end it was just Jo and I who made it the entire night (this was a feat and a half considering I had to take care of children the next day and that we are 6 hours ahead of the US so we had to wait that much longer.

The French were extremely happy that Obama won and think its funny, ridiculous and ignorant that people are trying to secede. Let's be honest... Because it is.

Parc Asterix; the coldest I've ever been

For the teenagers birthday, she asked me to go with her and her friend to a theme park just outside of Paris. I hear 'theme park outside of Paris' and my brain goes like this:

OMGPARISDISNEYWORLDICANTWAITTOGOIVENEVERBEENTOREALDISNEYWORLDIMFREAKINGOUTIHOPEIMEETSLEEPINGBEAUTY!!!!!!!!!

My princess dreams are cut short when she says she wants to go to Parc Asterix, a French theme park based on a French comic book about a time traveling Viking and his friends. (I think) but hey, of course I'll go, sounds awesome!

I agree to go the Saturday that they ask me to because; hey, free theme park with roller coasters? Why not. So I get up at 6:30 on a Saturday (not fun) and we take the metro to the louvre and board a bus that will take about an hour to get Parc Asterix and bring us back at 6:30. It doesn't open until 10 so we wait just a little bit until the park opens. It's a little chilly and cloudy, which was concerning but I decide to think nothing of it.

We go ride the big roller coasters first before the lines get long. There were about 2-3 big roller coasters, definitely nowhere near as big as the roller coasters that I have been on, but they were okay. Around the end 3rd roller coaster it starts pouring down rain. I go on one more roller coaster with the girls were I got drenched down to my absolute bones. Not a single inch of me was dry.

I immediately started shivering, we wandered around the park for a while until deciding to have lunch and warm up. The food at this amusement park/ the set up was really interesting. They had real food not just burgers. And there was a buffet section that came free with your meal. It was ridiculous.

I wanted to stay in that warm restaurant all day, and the teenager told me I totally could but I didn't want to leave the girls wandering a park alone so after lunch I followed them around but was uninterested in the other rides. They were all kinda lame or closed and the teens just wanted to go back and forth from one big roller coaster to the other. I basically just followed and then sat at the exits, soaking wet and freezing.

Finally the girls were cold too so we went inside and shopped around in the 4,000 gift shops and we went on a carousel possibly 6 times because it was covered from the rain. I picked a pink horse and didn't move. No one was shocked.

I have never been so cold, wet, or tired in my lifetime. Finally after the longest and coldest hours of my life, the sun came out. I am not joking when I say that I found a patch of sun and just stood in it for the duration of the day trying to warm up. The girls rode some ride 15 times in a row so it was totally fine that I didn't move. On our way out, we buy waffles with chocolate (delicious and horridly messy) and finally get onto a bus to take us back home.

We get back to the apartment and I take the hottest shower possible. When my shower runs out of hot water (spoiler alert, within 10 minutes) I get out, sit and wait a half an hour for it to get warm again and take another steaming hot shower. I somehow made it out that night to WOS for the back-to-school party, but don't ask me how because I have no idea.


The pictures: Asterix sitting on top of a mountain, my pink carousel horse, other horses on the carousel, Siobhan and I in silly costumes at the back to school party.