A new chapter - the final post

Day 5:
Tour de Versailles; A Feat! (and we’re caught up to today, the day I’m writing this all out. I feel like If I didn’t do it soon, the beginning would get drowned out in a sea of experiences or just forgotten due to dead brain cells. Yay wine!):

I woke up rested and full of gratitude. A little ashamed of how being exhausted had made me so ungracious the night before; Victor apologized for taking me out when I was so tired, which only made me feel worse. It’s amazing how kind everyone is of my childishness. I may not say it often, but I know it and am really grateful for it. Today just brought more in life to be grateful for. We had breakfast with Victor’s family and then Kelly and I spent the next few hours, showering, being on skype, talking to family members, writing emails etc. Come afternoon, Victor came and got us. I went downstairs to find a table laid out in the backyard. I walked into, what appear to be, my first of many multi course French meals. Victor’s family has gone above and beyond, and while they swear it isn't for us, I know they are being incredibly kind. We started out with cantaloupe, followed by duck which his mom prepared with a side of vegetables, followed by different types of cheeses and his dad’s homemade bread with a bottle of wine, followed by glazed pears with ice cream and it was all topped off with REALLY good coffee. (first time in my life to drink coffee without sugar or milk). Anyways, we sat in the sun and talked for a few hours and then in fit French fashion decided to go for a bike ride. Clemont joined us, and as it turns out, we biked all the way to The Palace of Versailles (13 miles). It was beyond amazing. The biking was a bit hard, as I am a “non athletic American” were Victor’s words, I believe. He also went on to tell me that he wanted to marry an American Girl, but Kelly and I were making him change his mind, because we were biking so slow on the way back. Regardless, the scenery was beautiful, the company amazing and the palace spectacular. I really feel like I’m going to run out of positive adjectives. I guess that’s when I’ll start talking about the stress that is finding housing. But for now, we’re staying on the positive. We came back around 6, took a small break. Victor helped his dad chop wood for the winter season, which will be here in no time, and Kelly and I, like lazy Americans relaxed online. At 8:00 we were expected Chez Charlie et Claire. Charlie and Claire are engaged and incredibly cute. Claire made us Fajita’s and Charlie loves to have long discussions so, we were in for a good night. Also, Charlie is the hottest guy I’ve seen in France so far (minus a guy who sat next to me on the RER for 5 minutes and was talking to me until the freaking train got canceled. Totally my luck). That guy aside, Charlie is incredibly handsome, which I was telling Victor in private, but obviously Victor being a total jackass told Charlie and Claire. Queue embarrassment.

The fajitas were delicious and the salsa was surprisingly good. Of course fajitas were preceded by wine and appetizers and followed by dessert and coffee. I guess I’ll just get used to the greatness that is France. We talked about all types of really interesting things and Kelly and Victor both said they were impressed by my French tonight, which means a lot to me, since I’m truly aware of how bad it is. We got home around midnight, and Victor had to head to bed because he has work tomorrow. Kelly went to sleep as well, but I was not able to sleep. I really wanted to keep a blog of this trip, and even though it’s only been 5 days since I’ve arrived in France, I’ve been feeling like IT’S BEEN 5 DAYS SINCE I’VE BEEN HERE AND I HAVEN’T STARTED MY BLOG!”. So I’m really just glad to have typed this out. Hopefully I can do it a day at a time or an entry a week or something, instead of 5 days worth of information in one sitting. So… bare with me, and if you made it down here….well shit.. thanks for reading!

Day 4:
A Private Tour:

We woke up, let me correct myself, I woke up at 8:30: hung over but eager to get yet another beautiful day started in Paris! To my dismay, Kelly, Victor and Clemont remained passed out till 10:00. I guess that’s just the problem when you’re the new kid in town. I tried just going for a walk by myself, but I didn’t have the key, so I could only pace around the courtyard of Clemont’s studio complex. And honestly, that was fine for me, because even that was really beautiful. Kelly and Victor laugh at me because I’m always jumping around gasping, but honestly, it’s so new to me. Everything here is new and amazing to me. It’s not like East Asia or South Asia or North America, and that’s all I know. It’s wonderful to be in a place so foreign. And sometimes, in a weird way, I love not speaking French. It feels so amazing to be lost in noise. I make up conversations and just let sound and noise vibrate in my head. It’s really great. Anyways, around 10, I lost patience and opened the only window in the studio and pretty much burned them all into being away with the bright sun. Clemont’s apartment is amazing, because you can see the Sacre coure from it. This is the view:

I tell them this every day, but these bastards are spoiled!. (side note: the milk here doesn’t spoil for months…I’m talking, the milk in Victor’s fridge doesn’t expire till late November, wtf is that?). Anyways, back to Clemont, the view from his apartment is beyond amazing. So we finally get up and head out, and yet another reason why I can’t be lucky enough. Clemont and Victor take me and Kelly on a personal tour of Paris, so we pretty much drive through the entire city and see all the “tourist” spots. They laugh at me the whole time, because I’m a total American tourist who can’t put her Camera down, but all the same, they take me to all the places that everyone wants to see in Paris.

I hope to go to them all one by one, and really see them in due time, but for now, I can’t complain about getting a private tour of Paris while singing the Moulin Rouge soundtrack on the top of our lungs (Kelly’s pick, but it’s my guilty pleasure as well). Upon getting back into Noisy Le Roi, Victor made us lunch, and it ended up being the most unusual of treats, though it did not seem so at first. He made hot dogs with mashed potatoes and apple sauce and ofcourse there was the bread that his dad bakes EVERY night, with butter. Clemont brought over beef balls and though it may not sound like much, it was pretty great saying beef balls in French for about 20 minutes. Lol. This was followed by Clemont playing the piano for us and making goofy parodies of American things/songs and then we sat in the sun for a while. Later in the night Victor, Kelly and I went to eat dinner in Versailles and then to a bar to meet some of his friends (this is where I had my first pang of ungratefulness). We ate dinner at an amazing pizza place and I got the pizza Vieneto: Ham, artichokes, chorizo and egg . Yes, egg. lol, and it was good.

Still Day 4:
An interesting conversation:

At dinner Victor and I had a really interesting conversation about language and what it says about the culture it belongs to. He’s been observing (and this is something that I’ve been aware of as well, so it was cool to hear him speak about it) how loosely we Americans use our words. Specifically “love”. He was saying how it’s strange for him to hear American’s say things like: I love this pizza, I love your shirt, I love your eyes, I love your hair, I love this song, I love this movie, I love that car, I love paris, I love music and so on and so forth. Kelly was really defending this usage of love, which I thought was funny and cute, since she uses love ALL the time and even right after we got done talking about it, she proceeded to say “god, I love Europe”. Anyways, Victor’s point was that using love so loosely takes away a sense of sacredness from the word. And that while you may REALLY like a lot of things, it’s a little…strange to be saying you love everything and everyone you like, because…..well love ought to be something a little more. While I was trying my best to play devil’s advocate in Frenglish this conversation helped me realize something interesting, in Hindi there is NO word for loving objects. You simply can’t say it. You can say you really like something, that something is great and that you prefer it, but you cannot use the word love for it without also insinuating that it is something sacred and truly special to you. Victor seemed to say that French had a similar feel, though you can say it in French, there is a certain sensibility to you. Anyways, it was really interesting. However, after that we ended up going to a bar to meet Victor’s friends, and that’s when for the first time I was a little miserable. I think it was because I was sooo tired (hung over and up since 8:30), I could barely walk. I think I feel asleep at the bar and pretty much didn’t talk to anyone and had a mini sleep deprived melt down of: “oh god, I just want to go be alone somewhere and shake myself to sleep”. We finally got home, I think I passed out in the car, but I woke up in my bed and then it was the next morning. I was in France, the sun was out, the trees were beautiful, I could smell fresh bread and life was amazing.