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.

so i suppose some clarifications are necessary...

so i suppose that some of you are thoroughly confused at this point as to what is going on with me.

here are the necessary clarifications:

1. i am not going to milan second semseter.
2. i decided to stay here in wonderful paris. i love it. why ruin a good thing?
3. i went home for christmas. and surprised everyone. not even my mama or my papa or my lindsay knew i was coming home. GRAND FUN. everyone should try it sometime.
4. i really did go to egypt and i will post a few pictures soon just to prove it. as for stories, best to just ask me in person so i can talk your ear off for the better part of two hours rather than type for the next eight in order to get them all out.
5. gros bisous = big kisses
6. do not panic for me after reading my day two post. i am alive. and functioning. and still having loads of fun despite being banished to the banlieue.
7. banlieue = parisian suburbs = horrendous = a bit ghetto
8. ghetto = http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghetto

for further clarifications and questions, please email.

the beginning of our first two weeks here. DAYS ONE AND ZERO.

So at this point and time I’m not even sure where to begin with this story. This story that actually takes up a week and a half of my life back here in fine EUROPA. Well so I suppose I’ll start at the beginning.

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.

i haven't fallen off the face of the earth!

hello all.

so its been ages since i've blogged. sorry for that. its incredible how fast things get going at the end of the semester here. school is super different from at home, because at home, yes finals are busy, but its just a couple of exams. here, its exams, presentations, papers and everything, piled into two weeks (mostly one). so i've been working my butt off on getting all that done. but i'm almost done now (TUESDAY!)

i'll be posting more frequently now, and i'll write some past blogs so that everyone can know all i've done over the past month. : )

off to the land of karfu and ramses. of cleopatra and king tut.

So perhaps my most exciting tidbit of information that I have to share with the masses is that this Friday, in precisely 105 hours, 21 minutes and 2 seconds, I will officially be on my way TO EGYPT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For a 10 day vacation. Complete with pyramids, mummies, a bazaar, camels, sand, and 80 degree temperatures. (do I need to mention again just how truly excited I am)

I checked my schedule and that week it turned out that all but one of my classes was going to be cancelled so I figured that I’d take a long vacation to somewhere that required that much time spent. Contemplated Dubai as well, but then when I was looking at prices for hotels dubai came in at around 70 dollars a night whereas Egypt clocked in at about 3 dollars a night. I was sold. So booked a flight. Going with my friend Jason. Cannot wait. I’ll write all about it once I’m back….. but here’s a preview.

(pretend that’s me in the photo)

menagerie

So I went to the zoo the other day. Of all the amazingly cultural things I can do in paris, I go to the zoo. Very apropos. Well lets just say it was one of the absolutely coolest things I’ve seen here so far. I mean besides amazing museums and grand architecture. It was the weirdest zoo I’ve ever been to. I walked in and the first thing I saw was a bunch of red pandas, which I’d never seen before so I was off to a good start to begin with. Continued walking and encountered loads and loads of birds and little deer like things. I swear the one thing about the zoo is that they pick the 30 things that they want to exhibit and then elaborate on those indefinitely. If they had one species of macaw they had 10 different species. For example they had 6 different types of owls, and 5 YES 5 different species of vulture. I didn’t know that many types of vultures existed in the world.

One thing that was equally as thrilling about the zoo is that all of their exhibits that need tanks (such as amphibians and reptiles) were all housed in these buildings that looked like they could’ve been old science halls. It was like something out of a 1950s movie. (see below, you’ll understand) also, they didn’t feel bad at all about housing two different types of animals in the exact same cage. A python and turtles for example.

Also, I think the entire 20 other people that were at the zoo must think that I’m totally mental, but I kept walking around and cracking up hysterically at the things that the zoo deemed necessary to exhibit.
EXAMPLE: they have a bunny rabbit and guinea pig exhibit. LITEREALLY guinea pigs. And their pen was bigger than the goats’ pen. Needless to say when I saw that I laughed so hard out loud that people openly stared. Guess they don’t have guinea pigs as house pets….

EXAMPLE TWO: they also have a raccoon exhibit. Again, I was laughing so hard I was in tears.

After it was all said and done I had spent a brilliant 3 hours at the zoo, and I had taken over 450 photos. Nothing like paying 5 euros for an entire afternoon of entertainment.

le tournois du rugby

Hello all.

So after a big long week of school off I suppose I’m ready to start blogging once again. I’ve had a couple of rugby matches now. And its absolutely brilliant. After the last game I was bleeding from my right knee and my left knee looked like someone took a mallet to it and just beat it. It was purple and green and blue. Totally ridiculous. But rugby really is loads of fun. We had a tournament on Thursday and it was an all day thing. 6 different schools. And each school brought a girls rugby team, boys rugby team, boys and girls soccer. In any case, we tied our first match and won our second and then ran out of time to play our third. Which was lame. But in any case, ESCP wound up winning the entire thing, the whole gosh darn tournament. Needless to say there was much celebration both on the bus ride home (the games are an hour outside of paris) and afterwards in the school bar. Very fun. Oh, and some famous track star was there too, but alas, my French culture is a bit rusty. Apparently he can run fast. Much other than that I’m not sure who exactly he was.