Thursday, March 31, 2011

Je me sens bien

Never thought that I would be feeling this good while living abroad.  The leaves are back on the trees.  The sun is out more than it isn't.  I wear my mouth guard so my jaw isn't constantly hurting.  And to top it all off, not only did I not fail my courses last semester, but apparently I got straight A's.  I haven't even done that at UCSB.

Thinking ahead to the next six weeks, I know for a fact that May 17 will arrive and I will be wondering where the last nine months went.  I can still remember the first night Chez Michele, when she took me around and showed me how to get to SciencesPo.  It seems like a lifetime ago, but I'm sure I'll write a lot more on how I've changed closer to my departure.

Today all I want to do is just feel happy.  And that is what I am doing.  I'm sitting at my computer, listening to a great Pandora radio station looking at bright green leaves in the playground of the school that is across the street from house feeling good.  I had my normal lunch of ham sandwich, dessert and drink.  Later tonight I have choir.  And on Saturday I fly to Florence.  So far, I'm seeing nothing that can bring me down.

Since I haven't been keeping anywhere true to my New Years resolution of writing five times a week, I feel like I should recount some of the fun things that have happened since I last wrote.  The most notable one is that last Saturday, we successfully pulled off the surprise party for my roommate.  Not screwing up and telling her about was probably the hardest thing I've done this semester.  But luckily I didn't.

We had it set up.  I would go with Aliya over to Cam's house and just dial them to let them know we were downstairs.  Cam lives on the fifth (french) story so I raced up before Aliya to find everyone crouching down in the kitchen with the lights off.  Then she walks in and we all just shout "SURPRISE!"  She said she had NO idea.

That was probably one of the most fun nights I've had in Paris, though the next day and night were pretty fun.  The day after, Cam, Logan (Cam's bf), J.P. (Logan's friend who was visiting that I met the night before at the party), Sarah, Edmond Aliya and I all went over to Cam's to help him clean up.  It ended up being a second smaller party/brunch where we just ate the leftovers and watched youtube videos.  After we all went home and showered and got clean ourselves, I went out with Cam, Logan, and J.P.  It was J.P.'s last night in town, so we walked up around Montmartre and to the Moulin Rouge.  Then we had a great french dinner close to St. Michele.  We ended up back at my house, where unfortunately Cam had an asthma attack.  I told them that they needed to stay the night and that I could just go to J.P.'s hotel.  It wasn't too far from my house and none of us liked the idea of Cam climbing those five flights of stairs.

So that's basically been my life since Saturday.  Oh, I forgot to mention that I think I was pickpocketed.  I have to say though, I'm not even mad.  I'm impressed.  When we were at a supermarket picking up some drinks, I opened my wallet to find all of my smaller bills were gone.  I don't remember how much I had in my wallet, but it wasn't a lot.  I hid a fifty in the second fold of it though, which was still there.  But the weirdest thing was that none of my cards were missing, nor any of the other non-money things in my wallet.  And they did it all without me noticing.

Oh there was that and I almost got my iPod stolen.  It actually did happen to my roommate a few weeks ago.  Basically these three guys (who look like they are part of the Gypsies that plague france, more noticeably Paris) walk really close behind you.  If you have your iPod in your pocket, they will literally grab it and turn and walk away before you notice who did it.  Unfortunately for them when they did it to my roommate, she was listening to it so she felt them steal it.  Plus she had a broken wrist, so she basically had a plaster mace attached to her arm.  When she threatened to beat them, they gave it back.

My situation was a little different.  I saw these guys coming.  My metro stop is pretty crowded at night, luckily for me.  I first noticed these guys when one of them tried to cut between me and the wall on my right.  The weird thing is that there was only about a foot.  Then he turned around.  Some more people were coming through the exit going my direction, opposite from the three guys.  But they turned and started to follow me.  Right as one stuck his arm out to grab my iPod some stranger cut between us.  I finally realized what was going on, so I put my hand in my pocket and just booked it out of the metro.  I was a little jumpy until I got back to my apartment, but they weren't following me so all was good!

And despite all of that, I still feel this good! 

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