La frustration

FRUSTRATION.

That is the key word to describe the first ¾ of my day today. Holy cow I was a grump this morning/afternoon.

I don’t really know what it was but everything just did NOT go as planned. We woke up and ate breakfast so that we could leave by 10:15am to meet a group to do another walk for class. Amy wasn’t feeling well this morning, so we had to bail so that she could sleep and wait until she felt better. I cleaned my room, napped, and posted my first photo essay to the study abroad blog. That was fine.

The day wore on and we needed to get going so that we could finish our walk and be home in time for dinner. We got to the station, switched lines in Paris, and got to the starting point for our walk (Montparnasse train station). As soon as we exited the station, there were a bunch of tents up with street sales. They had silk scarves, shoes, shirts, etc. for really reasonable prices. I may or may not have found a souvenir for my Momma while I was there. J That was fine too.

Here’s where it gets frustrating.

Our walk book outlines where we’re supposed to go and is sometimes vague. I don’t know what the deal was but we got lost ALL DAY TODAY. First, we couldn’t find the right road to turn on to get to the Luxembourg gardens and walked around in circles for 30 minutes. Then, when we finally found the road, we missed the next turn we were supposed to take by like half a mile and had to backtrack. Then, we got dehydrated (it was super hot today) and had to stop for water. And finally, we found the right road and made it into the park. But wait. We missed a bullet point in our book saying that we needed to turn along a side road to see a statue. After an hour of wandering aimlessly in the streets of Paris, the LAST thing that I wanted to do was to walk to see a stupid statue. Especially when there’s a picture of it in our walks book. I was gonna kill something. BUT, we backtracked and went to see the statue and then went back to the park.

Les jardins de Luxembourg are absolutely stunning! It was definitely a nice stress relief after a long day of grumpiness. We made it to the gardens around 6:00pm and had an hour to wander and do the walk. I tried to take some pictures too. It’s interesting...parks in Paris are super public. Everyone goes to them to lay out in the sun, play games, run around, eat, read, play chess, sleep, you name it they do it. There were so many people there! Even Superman! (Who is WAY better than Batman...)

The gardens are also home to where Marie de Medici’s palace is. It’s so stunning!

For those of you who don’t know, the key to my heart is ice cream. After a long day of walking and getting lost, I felt as though I needed to reward myself and promptly purchased Amorino gelato right after leaving the park. It was SO GOOD! I got amoretto and dark chocolate and Amy got raspberry and another fruity flavor. Definitely a good ending to a crazy day in the city.

After a long afternoon in Paris, it was back to Croissy. We ran into some other girls that live near us and they invited us to go and see the Eiffel Tower get lit up with a big group of people from the program. I was majorly bummed that we couldn’t go because we had dinner with our family tonight. I guess I’ll have to go on my own while I’m here. That, or charm some lucky French guy into taking me...yeah, that’d probably be dangerous...

Dinner with our host family was so fun tonight! We had a lot of great conversation, really good food, and the weather was so gorgeous that we got to eat outside. Madame made a salad with tuna, hard-boiled eggs, parsley, pickles, and lettuce that was amazing. We had mixed vegetables (broccoli, green beans, mushrooms, and peppers all mixed) on the side. That definitely took some effort to get through...mushrooms AND broccoli. Yuck. But I ate it! We also had some hummus and bread on the side, which was tasty. Dessert was a tarte aux pommes (apple pie)!!!! It was amazing, especially with lemon juice sprinkled on top! Madame made me eat three pieces because she didn’t want to have leftovers. Thankfully they were all small slices!

We made sure to help clean the table and the dishes for Madame. She does so much for us, it’s the least we can do! After the dishes, Monsieur called us down to the basement to watch a popular French television show with him. Yay for family bonding time! It was the coolest show! I don’t remember the name (all I remember is that it’s on channel 2), but there were a bunch of circus type performances. One of the performers was HILARIOUS! It was called a “short” tribute to Michael Jackson (the French love Michael Jackson) and he wore black on everything but his arms so that when he crawled on the ground, it looked like he was a tiny Michael Jackson. I guess it’s kind of hard to explain, but trust me - it was hilarious.

Well it’s getting late yet again but I wanted to make sure and post before I went to bed. Hope everything is going well in the states! Being in France has really made me appreciate living there. I mean, I love being in France but I’m starting to miss our culture. And English. J But I’m going to soak up everything France related while I can! Goodnight everyone et à demain!