friday night.

So. Now comes Friday night. Friday night we don’t go to the bar for the first time, I think, since we’ve been in paris! Now, that doesn’t mean we didn’t have our fair share of fun. It just means we didn’t pay 9 euros for a beer. In fact, we paid nothing. Man I love house parties. Parisians need to have more of them. If only I lived in a proper house… in any case… one of our new friends from the park (the really cute blonde guy in some of the photos – Sebastian) told us about one of his friends’ house party that happened to be a five minute walk away from our place. Needless to say, we went. This nice guy named Amory, and his girlfriend Amelie (which sound eerily similar with a French accent – for the longest time I thought they had the same name which led to a large round of confusion and me going, ‘what’s your name?’ ‘so you have the same name?’ ‘oh, it’s different?’ ‘how?’… or something along those lines) and their third roommate amory’s sister welcomed us into their homes, and fed us wine. They were super nice, and I do hope we see them again sometime soon.

But, alas, they ran out of wine, and another one of our new friends from the park, ashik, told us that he had vodka, tequila, whisky and beer at his house—to which we responded with a resounding, where’s the nearest taxi? So off to the taxi stand we went. After a trek across most of the city, and into the very lively and interesting ‘turkish’ section of paris we arrived chez ashik to a welcoming shot of vodka. Yum. Tequila shots and the like followed. Then before we knew it, it was getting to be morning so the girls (sam, jess and I) left, escorted by our new friend Sebastian (seb), back to my house to get a ‘good night’ sleep. You know, like normal people who go to bed at 7am.

my school throws 'school-sponsored' parties

Dear lord the debauchery never ceases. This weekend (meaning two weekends ago when I started writing this post for the first time) started on Thursday after Jessica and my first day of rugby and didn’t end until, well, it never really does end in fact. In any case. On Thursday was the school’s first party. (yes, our school sponsors parties. It is amazing) it was at this disco called red light, which was small, and packed to the gills – see photo.

There was dancing, and flirting, and more dancing, and laughing, and a bit of fighting. Oh, and did I mention there was an open bar? Man I love my school. The party went all night, and into the morning. Some of us lasting longer than others… (we don't know her)

I’m pretty sure that along with 20 other strong people we closed the club down at 5am or so.

(hooray for the Americans!) The party continued far into the night with a final bedtime of 830 or 9 or so in the morning. So much for being a proper person with a normal Thursday night bedtime… I went to bed after most people had already been at work for a bit. (this tid bit of info was pointed out to me by one of such workers….sucker) : )

days in the park.

So I’m pretty sure that this happened before a few of the other things that I’ve already put into the blog, but hey it never hurts to back track, right?

So… in the not so distant past, oh say a few Sundays ago or so, it was absolutely beautiful here in paris. I mean, really gorgeous. So we get the brilliant (and when I say brilliant I really mean it!) idea to go hang out in a park. Michael, victor and eddy and I go and join the crew that’s already been sitting in the park for awhile with their new friends from that morning. There’s wine, and conversation (in 4 or so different languages if I remember correctly) and a bit of leftover brunch from that morning. We meet loads of people, who are all amazing and super nice. And they go over and recruit a few random strangers to come over and join us. note: these people were invited solely on the fact that they had musical instruments and could therefore be our entertainment for a little bit. Needless to say, it was absolutely fantastic. Love the park. Can’t wait until we get one last nice day here so we can have one last hurrah….

(don't they all look so european? i love it. i love this place.)



musical entertainment



the blob on the left side is a couple going at it in the middle of the park... paris is the place for lovers right?

ahh the joys of cross-cultural team sports

So Jessica and I had a brilliant idea during orientation week. Let’s join a sport. But me being me, and her being her, we get this brilliant idea to do something that isn’t offered in the US. so what do we choose… rugby. Yes, I am officially a rugby ‘baller’. Although I’m still a bit hazy on the rules. Mostly I run around saying. ‘quoi?’ (what?), and ‘ici’ (here) although when I get the ball I’m still not really sure what to do, so I pass it real fast like it’s hot potato or something. Oh, and the best part is, on the first day of practice I went up to the coach and said something to the extent of, ‘she doesn’t speak any French (while pointing at Jessica)’, and his response was (in french no less) ‘oh well, I suppose she’ll learn real fast because I don’t speak a word of English.’ Needless to say, it’s great fun. Because he’ll try and explain something and then look at me and say, ‘translate for her will you?’ which then turns into me saying, ‘well, jess, he said something about holding the ball near your chest, and another thing about holding it out at arms’ length, and something about one of them being better.’ Then jess will say something like, ‘well which one is better’ to which my response is, ‘I have no idea.’

This goes on for most of the practice. On occasion I have literally no idea what the man has said, or any of what the girls are talking about so jess and I stand around really really super awkwardly and just watch them until someone does something. Then we figure out what we’re supposed to be doing through our powers of deduction. Mostly it involves a lot of running.

I’m thinking that maybe eventually I’ll learn enough French to know the rules, but that’s still up in the air… good thing we don’t have games until November…

VIVA LA MEXICO!!!!

Sam and Jessica have a roommate, Ana Paula who is from Mexico. And apparently Mexican independence is on the 16th of September. Not on cinco de mayo like many people think. (turns out that they just won a really big battle on that day, and what a better reason to party than because of a big battle win, right?) in any case, ana paula invited the girls and us to go to this really big party for Mexican independence. Naturally, we agree. Who wouldn’t want to celebrate Mexican independence by drinking copious amounts of tequila on a Monday night?

We all go to the party. Sam, jess and I are way too dressed up, but whatevs.

And it’s margarita and cerveza, tacos and tortilla for all! Super fun. Mariachi band and everything. The Mexican ambassador came out and riled up the crowd and everything. The one thing that was so so so fun about the whole thing though was that none of us could really understand what was going on because everything was in Spanish. Well, I take that back, eddy and victor could because they’re both Mexican, I could get a bit from my broken Spanish, but Michael, Sam and Jess were a bit lost. But Ana Paula had warned us a bit about what goes on. Pretty much there’s just a lot of yelling that goes on. The ambassador (or whomever) comes out and yells viva ___________ (insert appropriate important Mexican political figure here, such as Hidalgo, etc) and the crowd responds with VIVA! And that goes on for about 5 or 6 people, then the ambassador goes VIVA MEXICO! Crowd goes, VIVA! This gets repeated 3 times in a crescendo and gets really really REALLY loud on the last one.

Needless to say, it was so fun. Whether or not I understood anything that was really going on… VIVA!!!!

bateaux mouches

Team texas and us have had many grand adventures so far here in fabulous paris. One of which was our truly touristic act of going on one of those boats that goes up and down the seine called a ‘bateaux mouches’. Pretty much what it is is just a boat that goes up and down the river, pointing out all the famous landmarks, and repeating the same sentence about them in english, French, german, Spanish, Italian, Chinese (mandarin), Korean, and Japanese. Although, it actually is pretty cool because you get to see everything from the river which is not a normal perspective of such things. I’d recommend it.


Oh, and we classed it up by providing our own wine as an accompaniment to the beautiful scenery, oh, and by getting yelled at by some eastern European women because we were standing in the way of their photos, and they were too lazy to get up and move, instead they just felt like yelling at us and calling us stupid American children in polish. It was great fun!

oh, and the pope was in town giving mass at notre dame and the boat goes right past. so we were closer to the pope than most of paris. pretty much awesome.

(pope on the screen, well, kinda, in theory)

coldplay in PARIS.

so on the 10th i saw coldplay in paris. it was unbelievable. victor and i had seats waaaaaaay in the back of the stadium, but we were in the first row right over one of the entrances. so pretty much no one in front of us, good view, it was great. and the best part is, at one point, the band ran up into the stage and was running around on the aisle right below victor and i and we thought they were just going to run around the whole stadium, but then they stopped at the doorway right before ours (so close) and performed right there. needless to say i quickly hopped over seats and wound up about 15 feet away from coldplay as they performed 2 or 3 songs. it was amazing. enough said.

(what's going on there? is that coldplay right next to where we're sitting? why yes, yes it is...)