Day One: Sam and I arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport. I get in an hour before sami and wait in the airport baggage claim in some back terminal somewhere. American airlines gets some back ass terminal, clearly getting the shaft because they’re not European. OOOH I FORGOT SOMETHING.
Day ZERO: so I get on the plane from Madison to Chicago, and there’s literally no one on the plane with me. it’s about half full. Which is nice. So I’m sitting looking at my ticket and all of a sudden I realize that the transfer between my flight in Chicago is only 45 minutes. So I’m like oh no. but the flight goes on and the flight attendant woman reads off where everyone’s gate changes are and PHEW I was only just a few (or so I thought) gates away. So I get off the plane and am walking to my gate, and I see a starbucks, and immediately think, oh no, I’m going to be in Europe for a really long time (where starbucks just really isn’t as good) so I had to get one last American starbucks drink. So that was pit stop one. Then I make it almost to my gate, and decide that I best be peeing before I get on that tin can thing we like to call an airplane where you can’t even turn around in the bathrooms. In any case, I do that, and I make it to my gate finally. I literally sit down and they start boarding the plane. Not 30 seconds after I sat down. RIDICULOUS. And yet totally amazing. No waiting. When does that happen in Chicago? Yeah, that’s right, never.
Anywho, I get on the plane, and I’m one of the last ones on the flight because I’m in the section right behind first class, so we’re the last to board. I get on and see that I’m seated next to a nice lady. Except in my section of about 50 seats, there are about 12 of us. literally. Totally amazing. I got 3 whole seats to myself. Which would have been amazing had I been able to sleep at all on the airplane, but even one sleeping pill couldn’t knock me out. So I sat and listened to a fuzzy French version of Ratatouille. Ahh, the joy of airplane flying.
BACK TO DAY ONE: so sami and I reunite and have a wonderful reunion. Get her bags and then proceed out of the terminal to go find her cousin who is supposed to come pick us up. We find her and then she tells us that we need to go back to her Chinese restaurant in the suburbs of france, a terrible, horrible place called Vaujours, that sami and I will later in this blog get to know better than we ever wish we had. Enough of that nonsense though. We go back to the Chinese restaurant. Where we then wait for TANTIE (sam’s 47 year old cousin who we have endearingly named tantie) to work the lunch shift. TON-TOHN (sam’s cousin-in-law) was with us too. Later in the story you will also meet sam’s real aunt who we call grand-mère (grandmother in French).
In any case, we go back to the Chinese restaurant, and all sami and I want to do is go back to her apartment, put all our traveling stuff down and take a big ‘ol nap. But we wait for tantie to finish her lunch shift, eat some Chinese food, and do some much needed internet surfing/apartment hunting. Sami and I have some luck with apartments and actually get one woman on the phone who tells us that we can go see it later that night. So sami and I hurry our little butts up and get on the RER to go back into paris. Make it in to paris with just a little bit of time to spare. We go see this cute little apartment right in the 1st arrondissement (section of paris). Right near the big shopping center called les halles. Adorable little place. We’re immediately in love. But we have to talk to the other girl who’s gonna live with us and see what she thinks. Well, so we call her, and set up another showing. But that’s another day. This day continues by us going back to sam’s old apartment. (note: we’re under the impression that we’re going to be staying in this apartment until we find a new apartment) We’re walking up on the sidewalk and of all people who do we run into? Sam’s old landlord, who proceeds to tell us we need to give him the set of keys that we had and that we should be getting our bags out soon. To which sami and I respond with, oh no. So much for that plan. So sami and I go into the apartment and quickly pack a bag with her landlord PIERRE watching our every move. Scary I tell you. So sami and I leave with a small bag packed, and no place to go, and no idea what to do. So to solve issues we go to McDonalds to use their free Wifi. Off we go.
(see photos below for our feelings on our situation...starting with hope and fading to despair)
At MacDo we buy two beers and proceed to search hostelworld.com to find a place to stay. We find this nice hotel, only issue is that it’s all the way at the end of line 12 waaaay down south in paris. Literally not near anything, to the point that it takes 45 minutes just to get to school. so awful. But that’s all done for day one, we went to the hotel and went to bed.
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