(Blog post for May 30, 2011)
Today was move-in day, and as I'm writing this, I'm (finally) settled in and beginning to get the hang of things. But, boy! Getting here was a process!
We left Tours early this morning to return to Paris. When we got there, we dropped our things off at Mme Clay's, went to Monoprix to grab something for lunch (I bought a cranberry salad!), and headed to la Place de la Sarbonne to eat next to the fountains.
We were sitting on the edge of the fountain and had just finished our lunch when we heard
splat splat splat
splat! A pigeon had been kind enough to bestow four of us with souvenirs of
his fabulous lunch. It got all over my left shoulder and in my hair. And I was wearing a white shirt. And it was green. Wonderful. We quickly wiped up as much of it as we could, but we quickly ran out of napkins and decided that a trip to
les toilettes was in order. I tried to be a good sport about it because, well, what can you do in a situation like that? Like I told the group, "You can't really blame the pigeons because we poop too."
C'est la vie.
We walked to Musée de Cluny, the medieval Paris museum. After washing up as much as we could, we toured the museum, and although it is Mme's favorite museum, it didn't rank very high on my list. I didn't think it was organized very well, and the layout of the museum doesn't easily flow from one topic or time period to the next. It was just kind of there. To the museum's credit, though, they
did have a whole room dedicated to statues that had been beheaded and torn off of Notre Dame during the revolution. They also had one of the most famous medieval tapestries. (Actually, it's a set of six tapestries, with one general tapestry and the five others representing the five senses.)
After Cluny, we went back to Mme Clay's to prepare to prepare for our host families! (Don't worry, I changed my shirt!) I managed to carry my now very heavy suitcase down the four very narrow, spiral flights of stairs without falling. (The suitcase did get caught on my shoe once, and there were a couple of other close calls, but I made it. One step at a time.)
The next mission to accomplish was getting myself and the equivalent of my body weight through the subway.
But when I got to the subway, my ticket went through the gate before I did, so I was stuck in the subway entrance. (Meanwhile, my suitcase was flipped over from trying to get it through the gate, and I was holding up rush hour traffic.) While I was waiting in line to ask the ticket master to let me through, a guy my age tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to follow him. "No," I motioned to him. "My ticket doesn't work." Still, he persisted, and I followed him. I realized that there, indeed, was a God because he picked up my suitcase, carried it through the gate, held the door for me to sneak through, and once I was clear, held out his free arm to me to escort me down the stairs to the platform! What a
saint! We introduced ourselves, and after thanking him profusely, he told me that he helped me because he thought I was nice and he could clearly see I needed help. (See, it
does help to be cute!) After he left, I stuffed myself and my baggage onto the already sardined
métro car and headed for my host family! (I'm not even joking. When the métro screeched to a stop, it was so packed, that no one fell or even stumbled; we all just leaned against each other and stood up together when the car came to a stop. There was simply no room to move. (Mommy, kudos for doing this while carrying luggage
and me!)
I finally made it to the metro stop near the house, but it was a different stop than the one Elizabeth and I tried out on the homestay hunt. (It was a bit longer of a walk, but I didn't have to change lines, so it was worth it.)
Much to my dismay, there was a flight of about twenty stairs glaring at me once I exited the station. There I went again. One step at a time. The big man upstairs must've been in a good mood because a police officer (they're always guarding the Bastille Opéra!) came over and helped me carry (ok, so he carried it) up the stairs. I, again, thanked him profusely, and went on my merry way.
Not.
If you've ever been to the Bastille, you'll know that it's a
crazy 'round-about' second only to the one around l'Arc de Tiomphe. As such, there are copious streets, and I couldn't seem to figure out which one was mine. I asked some trash collectors wearing green oompa lumpa-like suits, and after realizing their directions weren't any good, I asked some men who were setting up for a contemporary art festival. As Murphy's Law would have it, I headed back across the Bastille and finally found le Rue de la Roquette.
After walking for what seemed like forever, I finally met up with my host mom. She is middle-aged, with an complexion and dark, long hair.
Elle est une actrice, and she has posters all over the walls from the various plays she's been in. She has two daughters, Sophia (11), but the second daughter, who is 16, is away at school in Switzerland. When I started getting homesick, she told me about her second daughter and what it's like to have your children away, from a parent's perspective. But she cooked Ratatouille for dinner! Even though I'm not the biggest vegetable fan (big surprise, I know!), it was still neat having a traditional French dish for my first dinner at "home." Not to mention that it's the namesake of Disney-Pixar's cutest mouse ever! (Sorry, Gus Gus!) She also made pasta and set out a selection of cheeses, and I was soon stuffed.
My room is a cheerful, bright yellow with a pink, floral bedspread. I have a white desk and a bookshelf, in addition to an armoir, for my things. I share two half-bathrooms (One with a shower, the other with a toilet) with Claudia, another foreign student. She is 24, and while she is from Honduras, she lives, works, and studies in Dublin! She is trilingual (!) and is studying in Paris for the first half of the summer to improve her French. Just like me!
But now that I'm settled, exhaustion is finally starting to win over. Tomorrow is a free day, and I think I might spend some quality time with a pillow. We have a lot of catching up to do! Bon soir from Paris!
