the first two days

The first day we got here we were starving so we went out walking around looking for something to eat. Our luck, it was Sunday and almost everything is closed on Sunday. We finally found this boulangerie that sold sandwiches they made on the spot. We each got a jambon crudite, a ham sandwich with more butter than I’ve ever had on a sandwich but the girl didn’t speak English and I was not about to attempt telling her in French. Then we walked to this park looking thing we saw along the way and ate our sandwiches there while observing French children learning how to ride bikes without helmets or their parents help all while eating a cookie. It was quite a sight.  After attempting to find a place to eat for dinner, we gave up and just went to this café down the street from us for some food. Came home after, and passed out thanks to jetlag.

The second day we had to meet at school, “catho”, at 930am so we decided to leave at 845 thinking we would have plenty of time to get there. We set off down this one street dorene had seen on the metro map as having a stop. So we walked for a good 5 minutes at a power walk pace until dorene said we should turn around. I was confused because I thought she knew the metro was down that way. Turns out I misunderstood and I thought she knew which way the metro was when she just meant she knew there was one somewhere on this street.  So by the time we walked back to where we started we noticed we didn’t have much time left and just took the metro line that’s right next to our apartment. The problem with that line is that you need to transfer twice but we figured it would be faster than anything else at that point.

By the time we got off the metro stop near our school, I thought the vague directions our program gave us wouldn’t be enough so I took out this detailed map my dad gave me to use. I found what I thought was our destination and started walking. And we kept walking and walking until dorene started to question where we were going. When I relooked at the map I noticed that I had picked the wrong destination. We had already passed our school 5 blocks ago.

We turned around, finally found our school but at this point we were 30 minutes late and no one was out in the courtyard, where we were supposed to meet. We found the front desk and asked them in our franglais (french/english) if they knew where everyone went. They gave us this map of the school and told us to go around the block to this one corner where they were. We did. They weren’t there. At that point I was about to ask one of the french students to use their cell phone but chickened out. We gave up and walked back to the front desk and some girl there knew what room number they were in.  If only it was that easy. Luckily a really nice French lady saw us looking around and took us back to the front desk to find out where it was we were looking for. At that point another one of our program’s directors found us. We were officially an hour late and had missed all the introductions. Go us!

At night we went to the champs elysee because we had bought our weekly unlimited metro pass already and thought we would put it into good use.  Walked from the concorde to the arc de triomphe trying hard not to feel like tourists the entire time. We’re so not tourists. We have unlimited metro passes, we just slide our bags along the top of the metro entrance. We’re so not tourists.

I saw the disney store on the champs and freaked out. Made dorene go inside with me. I felt like I was at work again and got really excited. Here’s a photo I made dorene take with my blackberry because my camera broke. That black body on the right is me.

We ate some pizza and salad outside and then went to the arc de triomphe where we debuted “the pose”(see above post.) During dinner, when they gave us the check, for some reason we couldn’t divide 31.10 by 2 so we both started to laugh. Of course I ended up snorting which caused the French girl sitting 3 inches away from me to laugh very very hard which then caused dorene to cry from laughing so hard.  Maybe you had to be there to find it funny, but trust me it was.

On the way back home we went to the mcdonalds on champs. I wanted a mcflurry but none of the flavors excited me. I thought France would be more creative than oreos and m&ms. They had a cute little mccafe section that I loved for no reason. Too bad it was closed at midnight but all in all it was a great second parisian night.