Chez Clemont and The adventure of the Velib:
On the third day here Kelly and I went out the city again and met her French friend Jenny. Jenny apparently needs a place to live, and asked Kelly if she could live with us. I'm totally happy to have a French person living with us, and in general, the more the merrier, but housing is really hard to come by here. I feel like Kelly and I are going to end up in some studio or 1 bedroom, so I don't even know how to accommodate Jenny living with us. It's just really frustrating, but I want this entry to be more about the positive and amazing experiences and less about the frustrating search for housing. Anyways, Jenny, Kelly and I were in the 15th (an area of Paris) and it was amazing. Just beautiful (in general, Paris has been beautiful to me). I love the cobble stone, I love the architecture and we have been blessed with AMAZING weather. We've been able to lie out and go to the pool, can you believe it? Anyways, we hung out with Jenny, she showed us practical things like "where to get waxed" lol. Afterward, Kelly and I returned to Noisy to get ready so we could go back into the city at Night. (The train we were on broke down, we got lost, it was REALLY frustrating and we were 3 hours late). Back to the fun stuff, so we got back to Victor's and got ready and then went to his friend Clemont's house. His grandmother has bought him a REALLY small studio (pictures to come) in a really fun area of Paris. I think Natalia lived around there. Anyways, so we pre partied at Clemont's apartment and then went to a bar called Cafe oz. It was really fun, but for me the real fun began after the night ended around 4 am. So by now the metro had closed down, so I figured like in America, we would just take a cab home. Victor told me "oh, we'll just take Velib". I figure, ok cool, velib is something like bill's bus that we will just take and head home, or maybe a taxi". Kelly and I are waiting for him outside the club with Jenny and some other friends and Victor and Clemont show up with 4 bikes. Apparently Velib is a bike rental system courtesy of the French government. It's on wiki. So at 4 am, the 4 of us biked through Paris and it was amazing. It was such a fun experience.
Needless to say Kelly and I both had to get dragged up the final hill, and it’s been a laughing matter since. But the whole experience was so singular and amazing. It just makes me feel lucky to have made French friends right way, because it’s allowed me to get engrossed in the culture on every level. The young culture through Victor, Clemont and Jenny and the more formal culture through Victor’s parents, (more on that later). When we finally got to Clemont’s apartment, we went to a nearby place and grabbed a Greek sandwich and then Kelly and I snagged the pull out bed and Victor and Clemont had to sleep on the floor. I have really funny pictures from this night that I will post eventually. It’s really hard to be on top of that right now, because I’m living out of a suitcase in a small room which I’m sharing with Kelly. I can barley find shit to wear, let alone have the courage to look for my camera cord. Anyways, the night was really fun and ended beautifully. The next day…
Day2:
Chez Victor:
Victor is pretty much one of the coolest guys I've met. He is so funny and intelligent. I know it sounds like I'm crushing on him, and I might be, but in all honesty, I'm glad to have made a friend like him. Kelly and I are living at his house for the next two weeks. His parents are SO kind and amazing. I can't say "thank you" and "can I help you with anything" to them enough times. They have provided Kelly and me with a room with our own beds, and have pretty much let us treat their house like it's ours.
Victor works during the day, so he was not able to hang out with us the first day with him. Kelly and I went to Paris and saw the Eiffel tower. I had honestly never thought of it as much, I know it’s' a magnificent symbol of human ingenuity and blah blah blah, but in pictures it always seemed kind of....ugly. lol. But seeing it in real life has definitely changed my mind. It was really majestic. Maybe it was the fact that it was a beautiful day in the sun or the fact that we had a picnic right under it, but I'm most definitely pretty charmed by it.
Since my French is nowhere near as good as Kelly’s I’ve really been making an effort to speak as much as I can. This results in a lot of really embarrassing moments. For example, today I walked up to the lady that works the information center and meant to ask: “ can I please have a map to the metro”. Instead what happened is, that I walked up to this poor woman, started at her square in the eyes and said: “I have a map of the metro”. Obviously she stared back, probably wondering, then why the fuck are you standing in line. Anyways, I thought maybe my accent was bad, so I repeated: “yes, I have a map of the metro”. After she continued to stare at me confused, I added “please”. I think this tipped her off and she smiled and handed me a map. AWESOME. Lol. Anyways, it’s stuff like this, that’s embarrassing, makes for good laughs while drinking, but has also been helping me a lot. After hanging out at the tower, we went to go meet Victor at the train station, since he was coming back from Germany, where he had gone for a business trip. Anyways, without a phone or any real planning, needless to say we didn't find him. lol after being lost for 2 hours, we went to Orange, a local phone company (I believe it's connected with Verizon in some way) and Kelly got her phone from before updated. In the meantime I walked around the street and took pictures, and asked a random really hot guy if I could use his phone to call Victor. It's really great sucking at French. I'm constantly making an ass of myself with poor grammar, and a limited vocabulary, (but so far I've ONLY hung out with French people...so really, my French is improving at a really good rate). When we got to Victor’s we had dinner with his family, which is a daily and wonderful ritual. We always have dinner together and talk about all sorts of things. I struggle along, but make an effort to make my opinions heard. Everyone is really patient. Victor and Kelly help translate a lot. Kelly’s French is really impressive to me, so I hope I can get there as well. After dinner, Victor’s friend Clemont came over. Victor and Clemont have been friends since they were five and it’s really cute to see them interact. Clemont is......lol. It's really hard to describe him. He's pretty hot, but also, just REALLY funny, outgoing and friendly. I swear Kelly has a crush on him, but can’t really act on it since she has a serious boyfriend. He is totally Mr. Party guy, but he’s really nice and interesting. So anyways, he comes over to meet us and hang out for a bit, and brings over a bottle of coke. Now, I appreciate a gift just as much as the next person, but this was one of those moments where our cultural differences and sensibilities get highlighted, and I thought it was really funny. I’m not sure if I am going to be able to communicate it, but we’re all sitting around just talking about stuff, and he pulls out this bottle of coca cola and four glasses and pours them for us, and that’s it. But that’s what is so funny. That was it. Usually if someone comes over and brings coke, there is rum or something involved, but Clemont just loves coca cola, so that’s what he brought over and it was really cute and funny. So we sat around and drank coke and talked till into the night and then it was the next day.
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