Well, so today was largely spent out in the city, yet again, but this time I sat around waiting. You see, the friends I'm with are only here for this week, whereas I am staying for...much longer. They bought a 2-day pass to a variety of museos around here, but I'm guessing my language program here will take me to them as part of a workshop. If not, I probably can still come later in July when I'm here showing my sister and her husband around Paris. Either way, I didn't want to fork out even more money that I have already to pay for something I'll pay for/see again later. If it were cheaper, I wouldn't mind seeing it more than once, but the Louvre and Versaille aren't exactly cheap. So, instead, at the Louvre I went to a restaurant area inside to do work on my thesis project, meanwhile realizing that my friends and I hadn't created a backup plan for if the French police detained me for hanging out on the premises! Once my friends came back two and a half hours later, we tried to find a restroom. The one we used yesterday was madness with all the masses, s we found another, nicer one, soon to find out why it was nicer: It costs! And something I took for granted in the US is that bathrooms and water fountains simply go together. Oh, not so, my dear friend, not so.
Anyway, we decided to just head on over to the Museo d'Orsay, where this time I waited outside under an overcast sky. I didn't really feel like reading or working on my thesis project, so I people watched, amusing myself by eavesdropping on others to figure out what language they were speaking. I'm one of those obvious stare-at-you people watchers/eavesdroppers, but apparently a little old Brazilian lady didn't mind. As soon as she realized I was listening and could understand her, she scooted right on over to me on the bench started speaking to me, explaining their plans on the city map. I spoke to her in Spanish and she to me in Portuguese--SO COOOOOL! That reminded me just how much I love language and why I'm here.
Sadly, the encounter with the Brazilian woman was probably some of the most excitement I had for a while, so I decided to explore a bit and finally get away from all the smokers! (Seriously, the French eat them or something. The trash system here is brilliant, with metal round rings to hold trash bags in on many street corners that people use quite often, but then they go and toss their dumb cigarette butts on the ground--it's their #1 litter, I swear!) It didn't take long to realize, though, that it'd be hard for my friends to find me if I were wandering around, and my feet hurt anyway, so I went back. Before sitting back down on the bench in front of the museum, a school kid scared off one of the many pigeons, which wasn't anything crazy. What was crazy, though was that it almost flew into me! Thankfully, I survived, at least long enough for my friends to finally come out and we could go to the Chatelet to buy some authentic Greek gyros from Indian-looking men in France. Mmmmm, delicious!
Feeling quite full, we then went to the Sainte Chapelle, which I actually did enter. Why not? My age got me a reduced fee! And let me tell you, we weren't there long, but it was tellement belle! En serio, the stained glass walls all around were amazing and have been astoundingly well kept.
And to go with such splendor, of course the only white space was on the floor as negative space, balancing out other designs.
And don't worry, I've been keeping in contact with my fam and friends, thanks to GoogleChat, GoogleVid, GoogleVoice, Skype, and Facebook.
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