the continuation. DAY TWO. (it's long...)

DAY TWO: so sami and I get up and go to school to do some stuff, and then we head off to meet the girl who needed to see our apartment.

But now this is where the story gets interesting. Sami and are sitting on the metro, talking in English. And at one point sami looks at me and says, those girls in the back of the metro are talking about us. so I’m going to look at you, and then look at them, and continue speaking in English, just to let them know that I know they’re talking about us. Anywho, that happens all the time, people talking about us that is. In any case, we’re walking through the hallways to our transfer and sam tells me what the girl looks like that was talking about us, so I turn around, take a peek at her. Awful highlights in her hair by the way. In any case, sami and I walk up to the platform to stand and wait for the train. The girl who was talking about us comes up right next to sami, way too close to be comfortable and stops and stands. So I look at sami and we sort of switch spots so that she’s on the other side of me and we move down the track a little bit. The girl follows sam. Creepy. So I look at sami again and say, hey, I’m thirsty let’s go to the vending machine and get something to drink (mostly so that we can just walk away from this crazy girl).

Well, that plan didn’t work so well, because crazy girl follows us and gets in sam’s face and starts saying (all in French no less) ‘you know me, you recognized me on the metro. You know me.’ pointing her finger in sam’s face and starting to yell at her. Sam is like, i have no idea who you are. I have never seen you before in my life. Crazy girl keeps yelling. Then she changes from saying that sam knows her to saying, ‘you stole my bag. You stole my bag. You bought that from my mother, and you stole it from me.’ (NOTE: Samantha has a real louis vuitton bag) (ALSO NOTE: what this girl is saying makes as much sense to us, as I’m sure it is making to you right now) Crazy bitch keeps yelling at us switching between everything that she’s said previous, and then throwing in a new one: ‘ you know naima’ to which sami and I keep saying, no we don’t know you, we don’t know naima. At one point I interject and get into the conversation (if you can call it that) between sami and the girl and say, no, she bought the bag in the US, not from your mother, it’s not yours. To which I get a swift reply of ‘ta geulle’ and a hand in my face, basically meaning shut your face – both with words and a hand motion to go with it.
At this point the crazy ho grabs sam’s bag by the handles. And I love little sami dearly, but she’s not the strongest person that I’ve ever come across, so I get in there and make sure that I have a hand on the bag too, so that way there’s two of us in there versus the one girl. Well the girl starts to get a big violent at this point. Trying to pull and such. So I grab her thumb on her free hand. Without a thumb, you really can’t do much. Needless to say, she gets pretty pissed at me. Tries to elbow me in the face actually. Winds up hitting her elbow on the wall. In any case, at this point we’ve gathered quite a crowd around us. No one is really helping though… finally, this nice man comes up and says ‘I’m with the RATP (the metro staff), I’ll call security and we’ll get this thing worked out.’ With that the girl calms down a bit and lets go of the bag. So I get out my phone then and call the cops. Except at this point I’m too shaken up to speak French, so this nice woman calls for me. We explain what happened to the metro guy and he listens intently. The crazy bitch says her part of the story, all the lies that is, and he listens. Then this really nice woman comes up to us and says I saw the whole thing while riding with us on the other metro car. And more or less verifies our entire story. Even says that the girl gave her purse to her friend and told her to wait above ground. obscene. At this point the girl says something to the extent of I need to go get my telephone, I need to go get my telephone, you better be here when I get back! To which sam and I respond with ‘okay’ utterly confused, and shaken up, with adrenaline pumping.

Another nice guy who apparently saw the entire thing went to go find the girl after she didn’t show up for about 5 minutes and came back just saying that it was ‘voleuse’ which means stealers in French. So sami and I wait around for the cops, who by the way, apparently don’t think its necessary to come for a simple act of theft on the metro. Alas. After waiting for about 15 minutes for both absent parties to show up, we finally head off, a little less steady, to go meet up for the apartment showing. While in the metro sami and I realize that even at one point during the whole fiasco the crazy ho checked inside the bag to make sure that it was a real ‘vuitton’ and to make sure that she wasn’t wasting her time and energy on a fake thing. Dear god. All we can say, is it makes for a great story now, and thank god it was our second semester in france and not our first, because if this had been our actual second day here ever, I have no idea what I would think of Paris then. But I still love it. Mugging and everything.

DAY TWO, PART TWO: so unfortunately our day of ridiculousness isn’t over. So after the mugging fiasco sami and I head back to our hotel to decide what to do next. Not long after we get a text message from the Texan girl that sami knows from back at home, Jennie, and she says that all the Americans are going to the Erasmus club (foreign people club) called MIX. Which happens to be right close to our hotel. So sami and I decide that there is no better thing to do after the day that we’ve had except to go out and drink and dance with random European foreigners. Wonderful. So off we go after a jolly half bottle of vodka—yes, between the two of us—yay us. we get to the club only to find out that the LAME Americans have in fact, already left. Losers. In any case, as we’re walking up to the club this nice fellow, named Vincent, comes up to us and asks if he can get in the club with him because it’s hard for boys to get in. we of course say yes, and start up a fine conversation with the young man. Turns out he’s in Paris for a ‘stage’ which means an internship, and he’s looking for a place to live. Sami and I immediately offer a room in the apartment we were thinking about getting (the first one we saw the first day we were here… the French girl didn’t want to live in that one, and we were desperate for an apartment) in any case, our new friend Victor tells us that he will let us know in a day and a half whether or not he can live with us. (he later found a place to stay with a friend) in any case, we go into the club, proceed to take numerous photos with unknown people. Dance the night away and slightly forget our sorrows for a few hours. But then it’s back to the hotel at 430 with a hunger pain rumbling in our stomach.

NOTE: the deskman who’s working the night was there the night before and treated us as though we were absolute morons, and then proceeded to tell the rest of the staff that we were in fact, morons. This is known because the next morning after sami and I stayed the first night she went down to ask a question about re-booking, IN FRENCH, and the woman when she was done talking with sami said, wow, you can actually speak really French really well. Real cool dude. Real cool.

In any case, we get back to the hotel, after taking a taxi no less, and ask the jerk deskman where we can get food near the hotel. Or just get food within a reasonable distance. His response was to laugh, and then tell us that everything was closed and there was no possible way we could get food now. So sami and I, disheartened, return to our room. While sitting we begin to think, we’re right by a train station, there HAS to be something open. So we go downstairs again, take a taxi right back where we came from – club MIX, right next to the train station GARE MONTPARNASSE – and what do we find… an open restaurant called pizza pino. It was near closing time that we got there (5am) so they made us our pizza, and then all the waiters sat down near us and started talking to us. We make new friends, and wait with them for the metro to open again (530ish). We all head downstairs and go to the metro, and once we get there sami and I realize that we both don’t have our metro cards. OH NO. well our new friends tell us that’s no issue, they have a police metro card. So we go, OKAY! Sami and I make our way back to the hotel then. Upon our arrival, the jerk deskman is still there, and sami says to him, ‘there was a restaurant open! Pizza pino!’ and then walks away. To which I then say, ‘yeah! And a lot of others too!’ and then we walk, with our heads held high, to the elevator. We sure told him.

Team AMY and SAMANTHA: 1
Team stupid desk man: 0.

In the morning we had quite a laugh over that. Oh, and the fact that about 10 minutes after that sam had to go back downstairs, shoeless because her feet hurt, to inform the deskman that we would actually be staying another night because we didn’t want to have to checkout in less than 6 hours. Yeah, we’re real cool.