you never know when autumn starts, until there's fog inside the glass around your summer heart.
my parisian life is characterized by utter randomness.
la villette:
-played in a french toy store and actually bought stuff, including a "premiers mots" poster with little cartoon illustrations of food, clothes, and farm animals, among other things.
- indulged the inner child at cité des sciences et de l'industrie (ie. the paris version of the exploratorium). somewhat of a struggle since everything was in french, including the planetarium show, but it was fun anyway. oh, and we watched a movie about dolphins in the géode, basically like watching a 180° movie inside a disco ball. luckily we could get english headsets for that one. it was awesome, even though le fromage factor was off the charts. ha.
-went down the crazy dragon slide. got sexually harassed by prepubescent boys at the bottom. ("you three. we three. want to have sex with you. please kiss my ass. pleeeaaase. i am tunisia. arab. i have big sex.") how glad am i that they teach english in french schools??? yeah, not very. i would really rather have a language barrier on that one, thanks. hahaha. whatever though, it was pretty funny.
hookah trip:
-got caught breaking french law. sweeeet. in other words, didn't have metro tickets on the metro. 25 euro fine = the most expensive metro ride ever. but damn, that shit was actually really funny. we played the dumb americans to perfection but, alas, we still had to pay. of course the ratp police's portable card machine doesn't take american express so i got to go for a 15 minute walk with one of the dudes to an atm. he was actually really funny and nice. haha. definitely one of those random paris experiences that'll stick with me for a long time.
-finally made it to la mosquée, the absolute cutest tea house and hookah bar EVER. seriously one of my favorite places in paris. chilled with our persian mint tea and apple hookah. heaven on earth.
bibliothèque nationale françois mitterand:
-decided maybe we should study for our three midterms next week. and so began the most confusing library experience of my life, probably because it's so f'ing huge, no one spoke english, and the maps suck. but seriously, this place is ridiculous to the max. it's like 20 reading rooms and auditoriums built around a courtyard. what's in the courtyard? a redwood forest! wtf?!? haha. we finally figured it out though, and spent the next several hours of our lives in the littérature française reading room with a million other poor souls unfortunate enough to call themselves étudiants. several of them talked to me but i didn't understand enough to respond intelligently. dunno if they figured out i was foreign or if they just thought i was retarded. oh well. man, being there made me unexpectedly homesick. i mean, the only time i ever go to the library is in berkeley, when my friends drag me and then we don't actually get any work done and peace out early to go get gelato or something. (and no, erin and natalie, i don't consider expanding your music library as "getting work done" in the library. hahaha.)
the quest for foooood:
-went to rue mouffetard and wandered around for a bit. making decisions when confronted with such a multitude of options is really hard. lol. we finally settled on a pizza place that smelled super good, la oulala. yummmm. but we all agreed that we miss american-style pizza that has more bread and therefore actually fills you up. needless to say, we were still hungry after our italian-style pizza...
-so we got häagen-dazs for dessert, which is a serious business here. they have menus and wait on you and everything. again, it took us a lifetime to decide, but i finally settled on chocolate midnight cookie and bannoffre (banana cream ice cream with caramel and cookies). only slightly less heavenly than the hookah and tea.
and now it's sunday. i've gotten almost no studying done and i'm supposedly making up for it today. but as you can tell, i'm not. it's so bad because nothing here feels real, especially where school is concerned. i don't really have tests this week, do i? nah. am i really leaving for 10 days in italy on friday? no way, man.
la villette:
-played in a french toy store and actually bought stuff, including a "premiers mots" poster with little cartoon illustrations of food, clothes, and farm animals, among other things.
- indulged the inner child at cité des sciences et de l'industrie (ie. the paris version of the exploratorium). somewhat of a struggle since everything was in french, including the planetarium show, but it was fun anyway. oh, and we watched a movie about dolphins in the géode, basically like watching a 180° movie inside a disco ball. luckily we could get english headsets for that one. it was awesome, even though le fromage factor was off the charts. ha.
-went down the crazy dragon slide. got sexually harassed by prepubescent boys at the bottom. ("you three. we three. want to have sex with you. please kiss my ass. pleeeaaase. i am tunisia. arab. i have big sex.") how glad am i that they teach english in french schools??? yeah, not very. i would really rather have a language barrier on that one, thanks. hahaha. whatever though, it was pretty funny.
hookah trip:
-got caught breaking french law. sweeeet. in other words, didn't have metro tickets on the metro. 25 euro fine = the most expensive metro ride ever. but damn, that shit was actually really funny. we played the dumb americans to perfection but, alas, we still had to pay. of course the ratp police's portable card machine doesn't take american express so i got to go for a 15 minute walk with one of the dudes to an atm. he was actually really funny and nice. haha. definitely one of those random paris experiences that'll stick with me for a long time.
-finally made it to la mosquée, the absolute cutest tea house and hookah bar EVER. seriously one of my favorite places in paris. chilled with our persian mint tea and apple hookah. heaven on earth.
bibliothèque nationale françois mitterand:
-decided maybe we should study for our three midterms next week. and so began the most confusing library experience of my life, probably because it's so f'ing huge, no one spoke english, and the maps suck. but seriously, this place is ridiculous to the max. it's like 20 reading rooms and auditoriums built around a courtyard. what's in the courtyard? a redwood forest! wtf?!? haha. we finally figured it out though, and spent the next several hours of our lives in the littérature française reading room with a million other poor souls unfortunate enough to call themselves étudiants. several of them talked to me but i didn't understand enough to respond intelligently. dunno if they figured out i was foreign or if they just thought i was retarded. oh well. man, being there made me unexpectedly homesick. i mean, the only time i ever go to the library is in berkeley, when my friends drag me and then we don't actually get any work done and peace out early to go get gelato or something. (and no, erin and natalie, i don't consider expanding your music library as "getting work done" in the library. hahaha.)
the quest for foooood:
-went to rue mouffetard and wandered around for a bit. making decisions when confronted with such a multitude of options is really hard. lol. we finally settled on a pizza place that smelled super good, la oulala. yummmm. but we all agreed that we miss american-style pizza that has more bread and therefore actually fills you up. needless to say, we were still hungry after our italian-style pizza...
-so we got häagen-dazs for dessert, which is a serious business here. they have menus and wait on you and everything. again, it took us a lifetime to decide, but i finally settled on chocolate midnight cookie and bannoffre (banana cream ice cream with caramel and cookies). only slightly less heavenly than the hookah and tea.
and now it's sunday. i've gotten almost no studying done and i'm supposedly making up for it today. but as you can tell, i'm not. it's so bad because nothing here feels real, especially where school is concerned. i don't really have tests this week, do i? nah. am i really leaving for 10 days in italy on friday? no way, man.
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