Catacombs! Picnics! Moisonniers! Coffee! ... oh, my ...

So. I'm a little behind. But I think you'll forgive me because I asked nicely: please forgive me?

Well, Sunday the 10th of February, I went to Paris to meet up with some exchange student friends of mine: Taylor, a Canadian (Alberta); Anna, an American (Washington), Brittany, and American (don't remember which state); and Brent who was Canadian, but recently sworn in as a US citizen in Colorado.

I got there an hour early because Taylor asked me too--his train came in an hour early and poor country bumpkin didn't know where to go in Paris. As he greeted me, I got two or three false tulips because of Valentine's Day that week. He had a bunch and was giving them out like candy all day.

Anyhow, at 11 everyone got to our meeting place and we set off ... for the Catacombs.

We all know what the Catacombs are, right? Well, if not, here is the explanation from the English-language brochure given to me at the entrance:

"The Catacombs ossuary was created at the end of the 18th century due to the closure in 1780 of the largest cemetery in Paris, the Saints Innocents, in the Halles district, which the local habitants believed was a danger to public health. The Council of State issued a decree on 9 November 1785 authorizing the transfer of the bones. The quarrying service, created by decree in the King's Council on 4 April 1777 and responsible for protecting and reinforcing the ground beneath Paris, was asked to select a suitable site. The choice fell on a quarry called the 'Tombe-Issoire', which was subsequently adapted for use. Bones from every cemetery in Paris were transferred to the site until 1860... The Catacombs were opened to the public at the beginning of the 19th century, exciting a great deal of interest and attracting huge crowds of visitors. Famous examples include Emperor François I of Austria, who visited them in 1814, and Napoleon III, who toured the galleries in 1860 with his son, Prince Impérial."

It was very cool, but for me really thought-provoking. I kept thinking about the people the bones belonged to! They had names once! Now they're faceless and part of an infinite number of other people's bones (I think I read somewhere 6 million people, but I may be inventing that). Sayaka, the Japanese girl who lives along with me and my host mother, you may remember, told me she's afraid to go to the Catacombs because she things the souls will follow her home and harm her.

Personally, I recommend it. And it's much less expensive than going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Less crowded too. And the history is really interesting.

Well, nothing stirs up the ol' appetite like seeing a bunch of bones lying around underground (and even better, carrying out bone dust on gloves/coats/shoes/cameras), so we left the Catacombs in search of a place with some good munchies.

After about fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, we came upon ... a market. Someone had a brilliant idea: a picnic. A real live French-style picnic. Best idea in the world. We rushed through the market, buying all the ingredients necessary: four baguettes, chicken, cheese and wine (the supermarket was closed so we had no plates or plasticware), and we hurried off to the nearest park we could find.

It was SO much fun! Best meal I've had in France so far, even including rabbit. It's all about the company, you know.

That evening I returned to my house and packed up my things because I was going to spend the week with my next host family, while my host mom was with her ill daughter.

I suppose the best thing that happened was Saturday night of that week--my last night with them. It had been a nice week, you know, I really like them a lot and I'm almost positive I will be very happy at their house.

Well, that night we went out because it was Pierre's birthday (Pierre=future host dad). We went to see a comedian in Paris with a few of Pierre's friends and (obviously), his wife, Myriam.

The important note about the comedian, of course, is that I understood almost all of what he said!

But when that was over, we went to eat at some place that served mussels, which is, luckily, one of two types of seafood I can stand (the other being calamari).

Well, when the bill came around, there was the usual squabble over who got to pay for the meal. They finally decided to split it, and Pierre handed his friends over his half of the bill. The problem was, though ... it was more than half.

"This isn't sharing!" his friend protested. "This is much more than half."

Pierre indicated me and said, "I have my daughter with me."

His friend laughed, but Pierre didn't. He was serious. He didn't say "I have my American with me" or "Leah's with us too" ... he called me his daughter. I wanted to cry for happiness, but I settled for smiling harder and more sincerely than I ever remember doing before.

Especially having spent the first four months of my exchange in a family that never got around to making me feel welcome, being called someone's daughter, whether in joking or not, felt so incredibly good. Like rain on a warm day. Better!!

The only bad thing about that week was that, that same night, I was sleeping (not very well, I may add) and someone (not mentioning any names, but you know who you are) called the house at 6:30 in the morning and woke me up. I don't hold grudges, though. At least ... not after I get even. ((cough))

That's all for now. I expect I'll have more soon because me and Sayaka are going out tomorrow with a friend to play pool. Cool!

Later!

XOXOXO,
Leah

ps: I should just add that I have developed an unhealthy addiction to French coffee. I just finished my fourth cup since lunch and I still want more. I never liked coffee before France and I hate to get all Parisian on you ... but ... French coffee is just better!

At Least I Update my Blog ...

Seriously. I am WAY behind on my journal. I just have no patience/discipline for that kind of thing. I'll get up to date though ... someday.

Well, this past Friday evening I went to Moulin Brûlé (don't you worry you head about what that means--it is unimportant) and heard Nicolas Sarkozy speak. In case you aren't up to date in French politics (and I assume you aren't, even though the US legislative elections were all over the French news ... how internationally aware!), presidential elections are this spring and Nicolas Sarkozy is the major candidate for the right in France.

That's right. The right. Leah went to hear a righty speak.

In fact, I think the term I used when I told mom about it was "blab his mouth off about shit." Oh, you know the normal stuff: today's youth is bringing the world to pot and they don't respect anyone and they think that the world revolves around iPods, cell phones, gameboys, etc etc etc. I wanted to die listening to that nonsense. "The youth today needs to learn that life is not a game!" he declared to the applause of the regrettably ignorant audience.

Here's a question I would like to pose to my little brother because I know he likes playstation and all that a lot. Daniel, do you think that in real life you will be able to press an X button and all your problems will be solved? Are you going to go to your first job interview with a gameboy so you can control what your potential boss says to you? Do you think you are given extra lives and are thus nearly invincible? Basically, do you think life is a computer/gameboy/playstation game?

As Mom and I were saying, even if he said yes, should we seriously be concerned? No! He's twelve! He has YEARS before he has to be an adult. If he was twenty-something and I asked the same question and then he said yes, we'd have something to be concerned about, maybe. But seriously. Children should think life is a game! Old crotchety people like Sarkozy (he's really not that old, but his attitude ages him fifty years in my eyes) are just jealous of small children's carefreeness and naïveté (although some are displaying an amazing amount of the latter themselves) so they want to force them to be adults before they have to be. What is with career education in middle school? Some people don't know what they want to be until years after they graduate college! Children should be allowed to be children and if that means the devil's toys of gameboys and other electronics, I say bravo! and give such devices a standing ovation! Daniel! Be a kid! Preserve that for as long as you can! (I miss you, by the way--and I hear you got today off of school, lucky!!)

Damn, now I've gotten all political. Je me calme.

In other world news, I had a marvelous adventure yesterday.

As some of you know, and others of you will be interested/excited/horrified to hear, I was invited to an accordion concert yesterday (Sunday) by my Canadian friend Taylor, who was going with two other girls who live near him. He plays the accordion, see.

So, we met at 1:45 in Paris under the giant DEPARTURES sign at Gare du Nord as planned and the concert apparently started at ... it must have been five. Yeah, it started at five. So even though it was really far away (WAY WAY WAY outside of Paris) we thought, "Oh, we have some time to kill," so we set out in Paris. Taylor, Alesha (Alaska) and Krystin (Tennessee) live farther away from Paris than I do, so they call me "the Parisian" and even though Parisians have the reputation of being a bit bitchy, I take it a compliment and stick my long Parisian nose down at them ... the tourists! Leave me alone, I don't have to be an adult yet either!

Anyhow, we found a Canadian bar that had hockey sticks for handles, which we thought was hilarious and we went in and ordered some very colorful drinks. I took a picture. Once I get the USB cable thing in the mail, they'll be posted online somewhere. By the way, if you didn't already tell me you wanted the site of my pictures, tell me now, because if you didn't tell me you aren't getting it.

Well, we drank our colorful drinks, payed way too much for them (Paris, you know ...) and set off to the nearest public transportation system, which was conveniently enough an RER station, which is what we had to take to the concert. The RER trains go farther outside of Paris than the métro, see. So we payed exorbitant prices for the RER tickets (the farther away from Paris, the more expensive for the RER, and this was over 6€ far) and got on and we were off.

We were talking really loudly, either that or the train was really quiet, and that is significant because it is my way of showing that time passed. So some time passed, we were still way far away from the concert and Taylor said "it starts in four minutes." Oops. Too much time killed with our colorful drinks at the Canadian bar. But no big. We could be fashionably late, right?

Well, "in four minutes" soon turned to "four minutes ago" to "fifteen ... twenty ... thirty minutes ago." When we finally got off the RER, the concert had been going for fifty minutes.

Having no idea where t head to, we asked the guy who sold tickets to the RER where the Espace Prévert (no, not pervert) was and he just said "It's far. There are buses outside."

We went outside and saw lots of bus stops lined up in a row ... but no buses. And this was out in the Boonies, my friends. We were probably the first foreigners that town had ever seen. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. Clovis's village is smaller. The "big town" near Clovis's village is smaller. Still. It was the country to me.

No buses to speak of, we set off in a random direction asking people occasionally about éspace prévert. Either no one knew it or they had never heard an accent like ours before (yes, I'm making fun of small town people, I apologize). Finally, one woman we asked, stopped someone else on the street and asked her.

She seemed unsure for a minute, but suddenly the words éspace prévert clicked in her mind and she sort of started and said "Oh ... it's far."

"Yeah," we said laughingly, for even though we were almost certainly going to miss the concert, we were all in good humor, "we've heard."

Well, she gave us directions, but as we began to follow them, the woman yelled down the street to us, "The bus is here!" So we ranranran to the bus stop and payed for a ticket (1€40, in case you were wondering). It turned out we hadn't needed to run because it was the terminus (however that translates) and the bus was stopping for about ... ten minutes.

So we began again with the talking thing and other people began getting on the bus and once the concert had been going for an hour and ten minutes, we took off.

Now. We, as the first foreigners ever to visit this microscopic town, stuck out like a sore thumb (that's the expression, right?) and everyone on the bus was giving us curious/suspicious/regular looks. Eventually (about an hour and twenty minutes into the concert) the driver told us it was our stop so we got off.

We looked back at the bus and EVERYONE was staring out the window at us. Well, what would any regular person do in such a circumstance? Wave, of course! So wave I did.

We headed off to the éspace prévert where the concert had started long, long ago. We hypothesized that it was over. But Taylor, however in a good humor, had been looking forward to this concerts. Seriously. How many accordion concerts have you heard of? So we asked one of the guys working there.

"You're late," he said good-naturedly. "They're on their last song, I think, but you can go ahead and have a look."

So, for free (cha-ching!), we walked into the auditorium and watched the remainder of the song, seeing a passionate fifteen-minute performance with one of the band members convulsing in his seat as he played his accordion. Either he was really into it, or it was some sort of choreography. Considering that it looked like he passed out onto his instrument at the end and then stood up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to take a bow with the two other members of the band, I'm going to hazard a guess at the latter.

Everyone was leaving the auditorium, but Taylor advanced further into it, Krystin, Alesha and myself following him.

"What are you doing?" one of us asked.

"Look," he said, "they left their accordions onstage. Do you know what that means?"

"You finally get that high-quality accordion you've been looking for?" I guessed.

"Either that," he said, "or ... someone has to come back to get them."

We were going to meet the most famous accordion band in Europe. Oh. Yeah.

A few pictures were taken, including one of me and Krysten and Alesha in the empty auditorium so we could tell people we were the only ones there (at an accordion concert ... people might actually believe that). And about ten minutes into our loitering ... sure enough ... one of the band members came out onstage.

That's right. I know you're all jealous. I met a real-live accordion player. Polish. With longlong hair tied back in a ponytail like a rock guy ... one third of the renowned ... um ... well, I don't remember the name of the band, but ... they're really famous for accordionists.

I took a picture of him with Taylor, so cool. I have proof.

And voilà.

There was my exciting adventure. It seriously was. We had a blast ... even if we did get lost on the way back to the RER station and Taylor, Alesha and Krystin missed their train back to Compiègne.

So, until next time! I can't promise as exciting a story but ... you never know. I'm spending next week, starting Sunday, with the Moisonniers because Guite has to go see her daughter, who's having surgery that week. ...you never know what could happen ...

Love to you all from The Parisian/The Irish Catholic (my other nickname, thanks),
Leah