July 29

This is the view from where I am sitting right now. Kitchen window.

Yesterday, I woke up in London, tiptoed out of my hostel full of five sleeping girls, two French, two German, one Chinese, and me, climbed two flights of stairs to the bathroom and took a shower down the hall. I got an almond croissant and a banana and got on the bus to St Pancras international for my train to Paris. It was 2 1/2 hours of high-speed, underground, ear popping good fun. My lovely host Sharon met me at the train station with a packet of metro tickets, ample maps in which her apartment on le Rue de Montessuy was circled, and buckets of information about every monument and cobblestone road we passed. Her apartment is great- it’s a studio apartment blocks from the Eiffel Tower and the Seine. I recovered, put down my bags, and then head out to exchange my pounds for euros and see what the French coffee is all about. Expensive. That’s what I found. I understand the French thing about people watching. In Boulder, if you “people watch”, you’re just bound to be bombarded by classmates, teachers, friends of the family, and anyone who work in context but who I’d rather not share my table with. Besides that definite threat to one’s peaceful, cappuccino filled solitude, is the sad fact that, in Boulder, I feel like I already know everyone's story. Or maybe its just that a different culture, different language, clouds these people in mystery that, for me, is intriguing. First of all, I can often only guess what they are saying, which in itself is beautiful because Im not listening to words always, just the sounds of the language. The homeless man who came on to the subway last night for instance, didnt sound to me like a desperate man professing the tragedy of his life and family, rather he was spewing the music of the language.
Here in Paris, even the people watchers are interesting to people watch. It took me at least half an hour to get through a two page chapter in my lovely, fluffy-light travel book, most of the time not actually spent reading but either glancing up to watch a scene play out between two elderly women with deaf husbands and obedient small dogs or just staring blankly at the page, trying desperately to translate everything everyone around me was saying into English.
At home we ate a dinner that, comfortingly enough, comes directly from the cookbook that my dad would write if he ever decided to opt for a career change: pre roasted chicken, brown rice, broccoli and ample soy sauce followed by a cut up peach and some dark chocolate. Then, seeing as though I cant spend the week I have in Paris wandering the streets alone, Sharon brought me down two flights of stairs to introduce me to some friends. The man who answered the door took one look at me, stepped out of his apartment and said to me, “Do we need complete submersion?” “You want to dive in to French culture?”. Terrified, I smiled and nodded, and he, pointing for Sharon to go back upstairs, lead me down another flight of stairs to his son’s apartment where 5 twenty-something year olds sat around a dining room table talking in the kind of French that was so painfully fast, Im not sure I would have recognized it as French in any other set of circumstances. “Michel, David, je present Cookie” and then he shut the door. Without pausing in the fast paced, animated recounting of some story (which was apparently hilarious but, even after having it explained to me with intent, wide-eyed eye contact, leaning in, in slower, annunciated French, I still didn’t get the funny part), Michael pulled up another chair and made a sweeping arm motion towards the table which I interpreted to mean, “I have no idea who you are but sit down and have some ice cream and apple cider with us. We have three flavors.” I have never been more intimidated by five teenagers gathered around a table on a Tuesday night eating ice cream and drinking apple cider.
After introductions, it was established that I would stare at them blankly unless they either slowed down their speech or just spoke in English and that they all, of course, spoke shamefully good English, I was told to go fetch some socks so that the bowling shoes wouldn’t give me blisters, and we headed out the door. There was no better way that I would have rather gotten my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower at night than while bustling in the opposite direction amid loud, incomprehensible chatter, in the middle of a motley crew of incredibly stereotypical, but in that, so charming, Parisian teenagers, grabbing my arm and emphatically, mockingly asking how it feels to be in la Belle France in the city for lovers. Of course, all of them saw me as their personal English teacher so we traded off: they relaying stories to me in the kind of perfect English that is often hard to come by even in the US, and me stumbling along in French: conversation determined by a limited vocabulary instead of being determined by what I actually wanted to say.
Bowling was great. I’ve never had more fun bowling. These people bowled as if all those 50’s movies that advertise bowling as the number one hip thing to do on a Friday night, just came out last night and they all wanted to get on the bandwagon. So we bowled and they all told me about how Americans can’t dress but besides that, it’s the best country in the world. Thursday were going to the theatre for a comedy show, of which, Im sure I will catch almost nothing. But that’s just fine with me.