My 100th Post! Quel drame !

Quel drame ! What drama!

Saturday was chilly again, but Caitlin, Katherine and I braved the wind to go to the Place de Lices market around 9am. I mostly just wanted mini-muffins, and I got 16 to have two of each flavor! I also had to go to the central bank branch and get a bank check to pay for the Paris apartment in June. Oh, the joys of explaining myself in French to strangers...

We also ended up buying food for lunch, and I tried paella, rice with mussels, shrimp, calamari, chicken, steak, chorizo, and yummy spices. We sat in the Tchai House for awhile too, a tea house/café place with the only chai tea lattes in town. Caitlin and I napped in the afternoon while our third went on a rendez-vous with a male assistant ;) Apart from a quick stop at H&M for returns, we were in for the evening and made tacos with an El Paso kit that Ma sent me in the most recent package (eating the leftovers now, yum!).

After that, I decided that I wanted to go clubbing. Caitlin was easily swayed, so I prettied myself up and we went to Le Delicatessan, a club set in the old Prison Saint-Michel with stone vaulted rooms, around 12:45am. Tangent here: French clubs don't open until midnight, but they stay open until 5, 6 or 7am! In the US, it's more like 10pm opening and 2am closing! Ack! We went "early" because girls were free before 1:30, and we got waved through the line by the bouncer who spoke English with us and thought we were cool. He even knew where Tennessee was!

So at this point, the club was still rather empty inside, so we got (incredibly expensive) drinks and settled at a table to wait out the slow times. Two French guys from Normandy came up to talk to us--one was a baker whom I complemented on the deliciousness of French bread, and the other had actually worked in East Tennessee for awhile and had been to Knoxville! WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! Lol!

When the dance floor was fuller, we joined in and met some other people who wanted to speak Franglais with us! I suppose they heard us speaking American ;) I talked to another French guy who had worked in Chicago, so we reminiced a bit about the Windy City. It was a super fun night, and tons of people wanted to talk to us! I'm so happy we did it! We got home around 4am, and Katherine was sound asleep on the air mattress.

The next morning, Katherine got up early to go to the ice skating rink, and Caitlin and I joined her after a few more hours of sleep. Katherine is a skating pro, so she showed adept Caitlin some tricks while I wobbled around a few times near the wall. I think my last ice skate was Freshman year of college! People held my hand the whole time then... Sigh...

It was intense but a good excuse to get out of the apartment on a boring Sunday. The big crisis occured when we returned to my apartment and the electricity was out! I, of course, freaked out and called the electric company and my landlord, but then Caitlin found the breaker box downstairs and pushed a button that fixed everything! Hooray! Thanks to her for pulling me through all the troubled times in France! :D

Katherine left us for home and a skype date with her sister, and Caitlin is bumming here with me until her 7:15pm train. Phew! What a wonderful, exciting weekend for the occasion of my 100th post! Thanks for hanging in there, friends!

A weekend in Brittany

Friday evening was mellow. I had two small convo groups at school with graphic design kids. Laetitia made sure to give me a good mix of shy/outgoing, good/not-so-good in each group so that we could really keep a conversation going. Basically, I learned that if you bring up movies, music, or shopping, kids will talk!

Laetitia was nice enough to give me a ride home. She also offered her car next week for an Ikea run to get a table, lamp, and clothes rack to furnish my apartment. I said I was considering visiting St. Malo on the beach for a day, and she said that she was going to neighboring Dinard to visit a friend, so she could drive me up there too!

At home, I got some organizing done, hung up a curtain in my bedroom, read, watched ER, and chatted online with some friends. I was supposed to go to a dinner party, so I bought bread, cheese, and wine, but it was cancelled soon after. So I continued my activities into the night—reading Guns, Germs and Steel and French Cosmo, playing online, eating my recently purchased cheese and bread, and making waffles for entertainment. I also watched the people outside my window for awhile; I live on a main meeting square, so there are always tons of people gathering there. At one point, a group of people banging on pots and drums showed up with actual TORCHES!!! I still have no idea what that was about, but I’ll put the photographic proof in my album for you to review. I also skyped with mom and dad and planned a Halloween party at my place. The Monday after Halloween is a holiday here, so people have no excuse not to come!

Then, I had a solid ten hours of sleep. I think it was the best full night of sleep I’ve had since I got to France. Since I actually moved into my apartment, I am always running out to get things for the place. I have been so tired this week, so a night of calm and sleep was probably a good idea.

So this morning I checked out the market in Place des Lices, a three minute walk from my apartment. It is the second largest market in all of France! You can get produce, meat, fish, bread, cheese, flowers, Chinese food, pastries—everything you could want every Saturday. I looked around a bit and ended up buying flowers for Pierre-Antoine’s mom and sisters. I’m heading to Vitré in a few hours to meet the rest of the family and see PA’s basketball game tomorrow morning.

A plus ! Later!

Exploration

Hey all!

Spent the weekend in the company of various assistants! I last left off on Saturday evening, when I left to meet Caely for a (romantic) delicious Italian dinner downtown. We then found Seth at Place des Lices and searched for a bar. I had a glass of wine at a classy little place called L’Endroit (literally, The Place) and then we walked to Republique to await assistant Emma from Maine to arrive via metro. We went to an Irish pub named Kilkenny’s where I had a Kilkenny—delicious dark Irish beer. Emma studied abroad here last year, so she had tons of suggestions on restaurants, bars, clubs, and educational/cultural activities, of course. Good to get to know another person.

Had to metro home, and I was the only one in the apartment that night! So it was kind of a let down to go from socializing to solitude…

Yesterday, I slept in. Caely texted about a lunch/photography outing, so I went to her place right near Parlement in the historic center. It was pretty perfect location-wise and came furnished, but it is on the top floor so the ceiling is half sloping, and you have to bend down to get into the bathroom! Still a nice place for what an assistant needs to live here. Speaking of which, I lost a perfect apartment yesterday but found two more great ones today. I’ve left messages and emails, and one guy responded to say a person ahead of me gets to decide by tomorrow—so keep your fingers crossed that he or she turns it down!!! Or that I hear back on the other opportunity!

So anyway, I wandered around the pretty medieval parts of town with Caely and Seth with their fancy cameras putting mine to shame. I’ll share some of my takings with you in a post to follow. We managed to find the tourist office and got free maps and a look at the little history exhibit inside it. We also found some churches and other picturesque streets I had not seen before. I headed back in the evening to meet PA, fresh from another basketball victory, and we just cooked dinner and watched tv movies until late since he does not have class Monday mornings.

Which brings me to today—I met assistant Katherine at Ste-Anne to walk around some more. Got a kebab, took pictures of the city and the big park, Jardin des Plantes. We tried to go to a hot chocolate place recommended by Emma and Seth as the best in the world, but it was sadly closed on Mondays. Back at the apartment, I’ve been chillin’ and nursing myself to recover from this cold… PA has a class at 6, so I’ll run and buy food for the week and anxiously await responses on my apartment.

By the way, it is so cold here already! It only gets into the 60s here, so I'm wearing layers. I'm pretty sure it is still in the 80s and even 90s in Knoxville... :(

I promise my life will be cooler when I get a place downtown and start working. Then I’ll have anecdotes from working city life to share! ;)