Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted anything! Suffice to say, march was more or less uneventful, filled with long days in the library, working to get ahead on my end-of-term papers so that I could enjoy the great, surprise visit from Amelia and Sara in April…but before I get to that, just 2 quick, cute stories…
In addition to giving conversation lessons to a little girl (she’s already more or less fluent bc her family spent 18 months in London recently), I babysit her and her little sister every so often, right? Well, a few weeks ago, when I was last watching them, we were sitting around the kitchen table, eating dinner. The girls love asking questions about what I do on the weekend, so when Margot asked my plans for Saturday (it was Friday night), I sais that I was going to spend the day in the library; Sunday? Also working. Monday? Still working on homework. She looked at me, aghast, and in totally precocious French-style, exclaimed, “What?! Don’t you ever have a day just to rest?!” haha it was adorable, and I told her all about the perks of higher education. Then she asked how old I was. I said, “bof, just old”; she asked again (very persistent kid), so I told her 25. Again, big exclamation: “oh, Danielle, that’s not old! You’re so young still!” Sooo since then I’ve had these 2 gems to keep in my pocket and keep my head level
Second story: the trials and tribulations and occasional upsides to having to rely on the Laundromat. After 10h in the library on Saturday, all I was planning on doing was laundry and a bunch of sex and the city reruns. I needed to use the “big” (20lb) machine to wash my linens and whatnot, so I figured this was a perfect plan. I mean, who does laundry a Saturday night, besides exhausted students who can only afford t go out one night per week, right? Wrong. I haul my junk to the laverie, and just about all the machines are taken, including the one, precious big one. And the dude using that machine had a pile as tall as me of things to wash. I pulled a sour face, huffed out and huffed home to look up another laundry place (there isn’t one in my building, as is typically the case in the US); found one under 5 min from my apt, and set out. IT’S CLOSED. Groooooan. Walk back to the other one, hoping that either the man has left, or at least 2 small machines would be free – at this point, I was dead-set on cleaning my clothes, I guess, so I’m walking up the street and I hear someone singing opera. ‘oh, Paris parties,’ I think to myself, believing it to be coming from inside an apartment. Nope. It’s the dude from the Laundromat, singing – no, belting – opera. He is, of course, alone. I sneak in, stuff my things into 2 machines and try to make an escape before catching his attention. No such luck. Am pulled into a conversation about music, life, opera, italy, I don’t even know what. I escape long enough to run a few errands until my load finished, then came back and had to wait a bit. So the dude (who was still singing when I came back from my errands), sings me a song from Carmen. Of course, I’m like what the heck is going on?! And 2 young guys pass the place, while he’s singing to me, and make the crazy gesture to his back. I almost peed myself. Voila, only in Paris will you meet a gregarious character who sings to forget his worries while waiting for his laundry to finish and will sing to you, and sing WELL, at that!
Anyhoo, on to the good story : my favorite people from DC-life, and life in general, came to see me for a long weekend!!! Amelia and Sara, generous and amazing souls that they are, decided to jet-set to Paris from Thurs 7th until Monday 11th of April. It was the best weekend ever. They came to see me (with 2 other girls with whom I’m no longer in contact) in 2005, and for Amelia, this was the first time out of the States since 2005! Luckily that meant that we had done all kinds of touristy things already, so we were able to take full advantage of the AMAZING weather (seriously, so sunny you could just puke, and high 60s/lox 70s. couldn’t ask for better!) in parks, cafes, and walking everywhere. This was also the first weekend spent not working at all in a loooong time – I felt so guilty! But it was nice to enjoy the city, of course.
Just to give a quick run-down of what we did …
Thursday, I forbade them to sleep until 10pm. They wanted 8pm. We settled on 9pm, but they managed, in the end, to make it until closer to 10pm J So to keep them awake, we walked from my apartment to the Seine, through Saint-Germain-des-Près, and to the Tuilerie gardens at the Louvre. Hung out there, getting sun burned, while some Danish high schoolers tried (unsuccessfully) to woo Sara in at least 3 different languages. Then we walked to the Place de la Concorde and back down to my neighborhood, stopping for cherry tea and rhubarb juice (and coffee for me!) in a darling teahouse. Cooked dinner together every day, after leisurely trips to the supermarket (where the girls marveled at the cheap cheese prices and the myriad yogurt flavors and the chooooocolate!)
Friday, I left them sleeping off the jetlag and got a few hours’ work done at the BnF. Afterward, we went hunting for a public library where I could find a few books to take with me to Valence during the holidays
, but to no avail – totally my fault, I didn’t write down good directions! But Sara found a French book that she bought for post-thesis reading, and then we headed to the Rodin Museum, stopping along the way for sugar crepes. We just went to the gardens at Rodin, but frankly it was so nice that day that all we wanted to do was enjoy the sun. Dinner with Alexandra and her friend, then out to the canal with some wine, to hang out with some friends – a very French soirée for the girls!
I got up early Saturday to try finding the library again – this time, success! Then it was off to the catacombs – sooo cool, decently creepy, and best to be done with cheesy friends who will put up with my ghost sound effects and quote Hamlet and talk about wading in brain juice J Amelia was the most impressed, I think, in that she really was just…flabbergasted (hehe) by the sheer number of bodies in there. I was too distracted by the “design” - all you see are piles of femurs and skulls popped into the piles to make nice patters. Where were the spines and finger bones and pelvic bones??
And then, all too quickly, it was stupid Sunday.
We had stayed in Saturday evening so a
s to be able to get
up early Sunday morning to go to one of the flea markets near my apartment, Marché Vanves – antiques and fake antiques and lots of cute doggies. Then hopped the tram for Chinatown, bought some goodies for the apéro we were going to have later in the afternoon with Tanya, had some pho in a Vietnamese restaurant, wandered around exploring, then trammed over to Parc Montsouris, where we stretched out in the sun again. Place des Vosges. Rosé with Tayna on her rooftop terrace. Dinner with Alexandra at my favorite café in my neighborhood (dinner service left a little to be desired, dommage!, but man was it yummy)…
with tanya!
Their visit went far too fast, of course, and it was such a refreshing time for me! It was the first time the 3 of us have been together in over a year, and even long since we got to live together - we were always such good roommates! We spent so much time just being ridicule, laughing all over the place, which of course attracted a fair amount of (mostly good) attention. Sara had a ridiculous little camera, so of course we make mini-films all over the place. Amelia just had to do a handstand with Rodin’s The Thinker; both girls sportingly picked up/reviewed their French words…I am just so grateful that they came; it reminded me what it’s like to be with people that you truly know and love, which can be hard when it seems like the great part of your friends are just friends of convenience (with a few exceptions, Tanya, Alex, etc)…I guess Amelia and Sara just have to accept the fact that they’re more or less my sisters now, which means that they’ll always have a face to see and a place to crash in France!! Love them!
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