My Super-Exciting Vacation Whatever

I was up really late last night abusing myself with a much-needed overdose of sugar when it occurred to me that I hadn't let you American people know about my vacation. SO. Briefly, I can tell you that nothing remarkable happened the first week, so we won't even bother talking about that.

We shall start with Monday the 26th. That particular Monday we had a Rotary conference that sounded as though it was going to be interesting. Guite said it was going to be about cooking and why we need certain ingredients in food: flour, baking soda/powder, etc.

Possibly ... no, no ... not quite the most boring thing I'd ever been to, but it's up there. It was nothing the way Guite described it.

Some lady who used to teach at my lycée came in and spoke for forty minutes about the chemistry of eggs. She did say a lot about cooking but it was nothing interesting. When her lecture was over, though, she decided to torture us further. We had to apply, yes, apply her lecture in practical work. We had to make some weird thing with egg whites and stir and add veryveryvery slowly olive oil. I had no idea what I was doing because I'm really cool like that. So I worked with Sayaka, who did everything perfectly of course. Whenever I picked up the bowl and the beater to mix, about ten people jumped on me:"Nonononnononononn!!!! That's wrong!"

Basically, it was pretty stupid, is what I'm trying to get across here. Understood? Cool.

Anyhow, the fun started when we finished with the stupid work and commenced with the usual Rotary festivities, ie: eating, drinking, and having a merry old time! Lalala! Monday happened to be Sayaka's birthday, so we sang to her after dinner and she had me help her cut the cake like we were getting married. It was quite fun/ny.

Tuesday (the 27th), though, I got a glimpse of what it is like to ... ((gasp)) have a life! At 11:40 my super-fun Canadian friend Taylor arrived on a train from Compiègne, which is farfarfar north of Paris. That, my friends, is when the real party started.

We started out by walking around for about an hour, wondering where to eat. We finally found a place that happened to be right in front of the train station where we'd started an hour before. It was a kebab place--no, I'm not talking shish kebabs. Kebab as in the big stick of lamb meat they have rotating and cooking and when someone wants some for their sandwich they scrape it off. You know, like, for gyros.

This wsa a mistake. Not only did I get hit on my the guy making our sandwiches (j'em ai marre, my friends), but it opened up a horrible debate between Taylor and myself: where did kebabs originate? He says Turkey. I say Greece. He's probably right because he knows stuff ... but I'm standing my ground nevertheless.

Quite frankly, apart from eating, we had nothing else to do that day except wait for Anna, our friend from Washington (the state), to arrive because due to a long and boring story, she was staying at my house that evening. So we hopped on the métro and did our famous "spontaneous" thing, but with improvements. Usually we just get on the métro train and get off on a whim. This time we picked at random a person to follow, so when they got off so would we. Eventually this disintegrated because I had to stop and buy a water (my kebab had been quite spicy) and we lost the person we'd been following.

At that point we went to Bercy, which is, in my opinion, the ugliest area of Paris. That was my sole reason for going. To demonstrate how ugly it was. And it is. Very ugly.

We got bored then and went home. Anna wasn't arriving until 8:40 anyway, so we had several hours before we needed to worry about her.

Time passed ... oooh ...

Anna's train got in at 8:40, as scheduled. Which was lovely. After a small adventure, which I recall being an adventure, although I do not remember the details, we found her and headed home.

During the day, Taylor and I had had a lot of time to talk. And inevitably, when one talks, one comes to certain points in conversation (or debate) when one simply does not know what one is talking about. Luckily, for any questions we'd had about our conversations that day, we had Anna. Anna, who lives on Wikipedia and has memorized the entire site. Thus, she knows everything. One very important question we had to ask her, you'll recall, was about the origin of kebabs.

We were on the bus to Guite's house when Taylor decided to open the conversation.

"Anna," he said, "we have something to tell you." Of course, he meant "ask you", but everyone makes mistakes. He paused to collect his thoughts, for although the kebabs were of utmost importance, we had other things to ask as well.

The pause went on for about two seconds before I (being the silly American girl I am) grabbed his hand and filled in the blank: "We're getting married."

It only seemed appropriate.

"Wow." Anna didn't even flinch. "When did this happen? Wait. You can't get married in France. It's illegal; you're to young."

"We're getting married in Turkey," Taylor supplied. "We hear the kebabs are good--"

"We're getting married in Turkey," I interrupted, "then honeymooning in Greece because we hear the kebabs are great there."

Since I got to finish the sentence, I declared myself the winner. Even though he's probably right.

But the marriage joke lasted throughout the three days he was at my house. Good times, my friends.

That night, we did not sleep. Well, Anna did. Party pooper. But she held out til three in the morning. Taylor and I continued to talk and once five in the morning rolled around, we figured there was really no point in sleeping. So at 7:30 I got up (from the couch) and made eggs because Taylor (poor deprived thing) hadn't eaten eggs for breakfast since his arrival in France. The French rarely (with the exception of one person I know) take salt with breakfast.

Really. You won't want to hear about Wednesday. I mean, I had a lovely time, but we were so tired it was pretty pathetic. We spent most of the time in this tiny tiny bedroom reading childrens books in French and occasionally dozing off. Babar, the king of elephants, apparently had some interesting adventures. We did go to Paris to meet some friends but that was pretty pathetic as well because (a) we had a coffee and then they left, and (worst of all) (b) ME COFFEE WAS DECAF!!!!!!!!!!! The nerve.

In other news, after dinner we played Scrabble. Once in French, but that was lame so we switched to English. The best French word we (I) came up with was "phoque"--seal. Woohoo.

I slept reallyreallyreally well that night, needless to say.

The next day at 10:30 in the morning we got an email from Anna (who'd gone home the afternoon before) saying a bunch of people were meeting in Paris ... at 11:40. So we got there late. Turned out, so did everyone, so hakuna matata. The first thing we did, of course, was ... eat. Wanna know where we went? The kebab place.

We decided (Taylor and I decided, that is) that we should put the kebabs debate to rest. For it had not been solved. I asked the man making sandwiches where he was from.

Tunisia. Problem NOT solved, thus out wedding/honeymoon question not answered. Will we be eating kebabs in Turkey or Greece, people????

This is very important, you understand.

And all other events thereafter I am either not telling you about, or are just not exciting.

Turkey or Greece? First person to answer gets a prize. Oh, and leave your sources. I don't trust you ...

Right. Now it's a week later and nothing else exciting has happened.

Til next time, Americans!

Love,
Leah