Tim has informed me that one can read this blog for days and still have no idea what's going on in France. That may be best for everyone but in the spirit of diplomacy here it is:
-I've been listening to Belle and Sebastian's "Dear Catastrophy Waitress" for the past four days and I'm considering eloping with myself.
-Gisel had a going-away extravaganza (now with more Vaganza than ever!) on friday night. How odd it is to be in another country (one which, unlike America, actually has an official language) with spanish, finnish, chinese, mexican, french, canadian, american, hungarian and italian people... and the common language is English. Well, half english, half whatever familiar words one can snag out of the air in order to make half-coherent conversation. Santiago got drunk and threw a bottle of milk across the room and then got very angry when Carry made him clean it up; therefor we have a picture of him "crying over spilt milk." These boys I live with are like the brothers I never had in that I love them most of the time but sometimes wonder if they've been struck retarded. And they eat my food, steal my things and argue with me for no reason.
-I feel horrid for Gisel who has to leave in the exact moment when everything falls into place. Eveyone has finally reached a point where there's a certain degree of comfort- nicknames (Rox in a box with a fox, rox-a-thon, etc...), inside jokes, routines... How bizarre must it feel to be the one person who is leaves while everyone else is still making plans? I don't envy her. As many times as I've cursed this country in the past three(!) months I wouldn't want to leave now. Sometimes it takes a while for change to sink in but Gisel not being around hit me the second nine of us put her on the train to Paris. Now who's going to lick me and play with my hair and say innappropriate things really loudly under the assumtion that no one speaks English? Who's going to do Erin's laundry and manage Josh's booming hemp-necklace enterprise? Am I going to have to depend on Alexis to buy me kabab in the wee hours? So, so sad.
-But... there are better things underfoot that are a permanant part of France. Like attending Easter Mass in Notre Dame de Paris. Early Sunday morning Carrie and I put ourselves on the train and headed towards what may be the actually reason (historically and through justification) that France exsists at all: Paris. No, I had not yet been, except to travel in and out of Charles de Gaulle Airport, but now that I've been I have to ask myself "why do we not have an exchange with the Sorbonne?" Paris is rediculously lovely. It's lovliness is rivaled only by the lovliness of it's crèpes. Of which I had three: une crèpe complète (ham, cheese, mushrooms), chocolat chantilly (chocolate whippedcream) and chocolat banane (chocolate bananaaaaaaaah!). Stick a fork in me: I'm done.
Wait.... if I don't write the rest Tim will complain of negligence in journalism...
ATTENTION!!! Carrie has, just this moment, returned from dropping Gisel off in Paris with the news that Gisel is in Lille because Air France changed her ticket to 10:00 a.m. without informing her. Just when you think you can escape... And this is why I fly on international carriers based in the U.S. And also why I don't travel with two 80lb duffle bags like Gisel does. Incredulous laughter fills the air.
Anyway.
Carrie and I had the benefit of spending our Sunday morning listening to the bells of Notre Dame. We climbed the towers and came back down in time to attend Easter Mass in the front row. The story is the same in English and in French, in case you're wondering but there is one fascinating thing. Maybe this amazes me because I'm not Christian but the French use the familia when addressing God. For some reason this level of familiarity thrills me because I guess I've never thought about the fact that thee, thou, thy, etc, are the original familiar in English, to the best of my knowledge. And people say God doesn't want to be your friend!
Notre Dame is an absolute masterpiece. Beyond a shadow of a doubt it is the most luminous and impressive cathedral I've ever seen, which is a serious claim considering that there isn't much about gothic architecture that could be called "luminous." It's beyond words, and my pictures are basically crap if they're supposed to do it any justice. But it's not the only big church on the block...
We also went to a place by the Palais de Justice called Saint Chapel, which is a chapel that had been raided and used as a flour storage shed until someone (brilliant!) remembered that its upper chappel is a wall-to-wall stained glass window that tells the entire story of the Bible. The breath was literally knocked out of me when we came up the spiral staircase into something out of a lucid dream. I cannot fathom the work it must have taken to create that one room.
The next stop (with some crèpes in between) as we marched along the Sienne was, in typical tourist fashion, the grand Eiffel Tower. Pause.
As we approach it from behind, after walking from one end of the city to the other, Carrie looks up and flatly says: "why is that a tourist attraction? It looks like a radio tower." I have never laughed so hard in my life. THE EIFFEL TOWER. THE SYMBOL OF FRANCE. Coming from Carrie who loves everything and thinks everything is beautiful (except modern art). "What's the big deal?" But as we got around the hideous hotel blocking our view and were able to see the thing in all it's glory we realized just exactly why. It may be tall, it may be steel, but it's elegant. It's feminine and masculine. It's sweeping and overpowering. And it has a hell of a lot of steps.
Overall, Carrie (who counts stairs habitually) estimates that we scaled over 2,000 steps in that one day. Half of them in high heels. You tell me that's not impressive.
Essentially, what's happening in France is that I love Paris and cannot WAIT to go back, even though I must have spent 100€ total in one day and my calfs hurt and the torent of rain at the top of the Eiffel Tower gave me a burning fever. It's the sort of tired happiness which you take home and wonder how anyone lives without.
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