Save Tonight

"People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

Everyone and everything is interesting to me here. It makes me realize how unobservant I am at home. I am curious about the simplest things. I love watching people in the metro and imagining the kind of life they have or had; I especially find the homeless people interesting here. And those are people I definitely ignore at home. In general I'm more interested in people here. Whenever we go out, we're always looking to talk to different people and make new friends. It's a fun atmosphere to be in. I'm really just trying to take it all in.

So on Friday we had a very good dinner near the Louvre because Mme Dugan was having a party so we couldn't eat at the house. Then we met up with Bea and Keesean and got to wander around the Louvre at night! It had an incredibly different ambiance at night, very magical. I'm thinking that will turn into a Friday night ritual.

After the Louvre we went to the Latin Quarter to this Irish Pub to watch our German friend Jan perform. When we met Jan last Sunday, we all sort of thought he was a joke. He's an off the wall, crazy kind of person, so we didn't really have high hopes for his music. But we decided to go anyway. And thank God we did...he was AWESOME. Great music, great new friends, and we met all sorts of people, some Americans, some French, some girls from Holland. It was a great time. Gabi and I called it an early night though since we had to be meeting for Versailles at 10am.

Versailles was good to see again, I feel like I took it more in this time. It reminded me of the first time I was there with French Club and Eveline was our tour guide. Being here has this strange way of unlocking memories for me. It's somewhat refreshing to be out of my normal routine. Moral of the story about Versailles...those people never got the advice "Less is More."

Traveling around Paris all the time has this way of absolutely exhausting you. After Versailles, all I wanted to do is sleep. There's so much walking and waiting and thinking that I'm constantly doing but not even aware of it. Even just the effort it takes to constantly interact with people in French is exhausting. But it is becoming much more second nature which I'm so excited by!

So after a nap and a delicious dinner, Gabi and I shared a bottle of wine and met up with some friends from the group at Hotel De Ville. We had heard that Le Marais was a fun place to hang out and was a lot cheaper than a lot of the places we had been frequenting. While we were aware that this was technically the gay district we didn't realize they were so strict about it! They would take one look at all of us and tell the boys we were with "Desolee, pas de filles." No girls allowed. So we had to do some walking to find a place that would take all of us. But we finally did and we ended up having a great night.

Today we went to a Brocante, which is sort of like a flea market but on a little bit smaller of a scale. It was fun to wander around the stalls and look at all the old things. I got this awesome old cookbook in French...cookbooks are my weakness :) The people that owned the stands were so eager to tell you about all their things and the history behind them. That's the thing about French people...they seem cold and standoffish initially, but once you break through that exterior, they don't shut up. It's just a matter of making that first step.

Tomorrow is another visit to the Louvre. I'm so happy that I can take that museum bit by bit. When I was there the first time I felt so overwhelmed, but now that I know I have time to take it all in, I'm very excited about it. I'm eager to start class on Thursday. I'm so incredibly eager to be able to notice my French improving. I have a burning desire to really, really know this language. And I'd say right now I'm in a pretty good place to be able to do that.