Greece!

We made it! Sarah and I are in our apartment in Piraeus, with a charming view of the marina. Athens is just a metro ride away, which we'll be trying out tomorrow. We got in today and couldn't do anything except sleep all day. It was kind of a stressful day from when we left my house to when we arrived here, plus it was raining, so I regret nothing. After landing at the airport, we took a bus for an hour, and then a short taxi ride to the place we're staying. The woman who owns the apartment, Maria, warned us that it was possible we'd be overcharged, so we were kind of nervous about that. The other thing that made me nervous was showing the paper with the address on it to three different taxi drivers, none of whom knew where it was, until we finally found someone who spoke English and who understood what the address meant. He ended up being very nice, and he even told us how to make sure we didn't get ripped off by taxi drivers.

The apartment situation is interesting. On one hand, it's nice to be in a real place where we have a living room, a real bathroom, a refrigerator, etc (we bought some groceries today for breakfast and snacks). But it's also kind of weird because Maria's stuff is everywhere -- as in, the only reason we even have a drawer in the bedroom to put our things in is because she cleared one out when she showed up. And her food is in the refrigerator and there are dishes in the sink. She works here during the day because this is where her office is, but apparently "during the day" actually means "until 9 at night". But she's really nice and has been extremely helpful about helping us figure out our sightseeing options and transportation, so that's good at least.

For dinner, Sarah and I found a place where we could sit and have gyros for only 2.20 each! That's less than the espresso we had earlier in the day.

Also, I've been able to ready a bunch of signs because of having to memorize the uppercase Greek alphabet when I was in the sorority. Totally an unexpected benefit!

I'll post pictures when I have some :)

Orly Airport

I'm taking advantage of my free 15 minutes of wifi as Sarah and I wait for our flight (it's currently 5:36am on Wednesday).

I've been away from home for 5 months, and the only questions my brother has asked me about my experiences here since I arrived were asked last night in the background of my skype session with my mom:

Mom: Linus, say goodbye to your sister before she goes to Greece.
Linus: You're going to Greece? Why?

He's so charming.

I couldn't sleep last night even with my drowsy cold medicine, so here's to hoping I sleep on the three hour plane ride. Greece is one hour ahead of France and 10 hours ahead of Los Angeles, fyi.

See you in Athens!! :)

Athens tomorrow!

Can't wait! My friend Sarah and I are catching a 6:45AM flight on Wednesday, and we'll be there for a week. I plan on eating gyros for three meals a day, everyday.

I'm bringing my computer, so I'll do my best to update from our apartment. Muah!

Productive Week

I've had trouble keeping up with my blog this week, but I have a lot to report on from the last few days. 

Thursday: Mariene and Sarah and I descended below Paris into the catacombs! (Fun fact...the silents 'b's in English are not silent in French). It was a really fun break from the normal museums, gardens and pastries of our everyday life (ho hum). 

The Paris catacombs is the kind of place that would get shut down by safety inspectors in the US. There's a lot of descending and ascending stairs with no elevator (and no toilettes or coat check!), and enough water dripping on the ground where you can slip if you're not careful (and where you can definitely step in large puddles). Plus, they give you a little guidebook at the beginning of the tour, but it's so dark that you can only read what it says if you stand under one of the lights that appears every so often...but you can't really stand there and read for long, because staying in one place too long means that the other people behind you will be held up. But it was really fun. 

No smoking in the ossurary??

There are bunch of things like this...but they're not tombs, they're actually clever ways of disguising the need for foundations!

Then after the catacombs, I finally had the chance to see Lise dance because her ballet class was open to visitors. Each week I see all of the little girls go into the dance room in matching purple leotards and matching hair buns, so I always kind of assumed that they would dance with the same strictness and unity. But I forget that they're 7 years old, and it was adorable to watch them because whenever they did an exercise that required a leap, all 20 of them would literally manage to jump at a different  second than the others...it was like they were doing it on purpose just to be cute. Lise was very graceful, and Anne managed to get home 2 hours early to see her dance, so that was a nice surprise. 

Then on Friday night, I finally had the chance to watch Juliette play basketball. She was really fast and scored a lot of points for her team, but they didn't win (the other team managed to be made up of girls that were noticeably bigger than Juliette's teamembers). Youth sports are completely different in France than in America. First of all, it seems like every kids plays at least one sport here (hardly any of my friends or I played weekly sports while in elementary or middle school). The other difference is that middle schools and high schools don't have sports teams, so if someone plays, they play for their city instead. It's also apparently much cheaper to play sports here. 

Then on Saturday, Rachael and I decided to celebrate being in France for officially five months by spending the day in Monmartre! I'm not a big fan of northern Paris, but again, it was nice to hang out somewhere different for a change.

 

First, we had cupcakes! 

That's a marshmellow chocolate bear on her peanut butter cupcake, and a chocolate covered coffee bean on mine, which was tiramsu-flavored. 

Then we went to the cemetery at Montmartre for a little bit...

...where moments after I took this picture Rachael would get attacked by this cemetery cat.

Then we split this delicious strawberry tart on the steps on Sacre Coeur. 

And yesterday was really fun as well. When my parents and aunt and uncle and cousin were here in December, we had met up with my aunt's friend Jane (pronounced "Jeh-nay"), and yesterday I went to eat lunch with her family at her house in the distant suburbs. Lunch was delicious, especially the veal that Jane made. I always like opportunities where I can speak French, but I'm still a little sick, which means that my French and my accent weren't as good as they could be. It was still really fun though, and I like escaping Clamart and the city once in a while. 

Afterwards, I met up with Nathalie and Rachael. I decided that Sunday early evenings are quite possibly my favorite time in Paris. True, not much is open anymore, but as the three of us walked around the Jardin du Luxembourg to the Latin Quarter, everything was so quiet and the light was so pretty that we could truly enjoy and appreciate where we were. Plus, inexpensive beer and even cheaper Nutella crepes on Rue Mouffetard make for the best possible way to end a Sunday night! 

HAPPY 5-MONTH FRANCEVERSARY!

I made it! It's amazing to me that my Bordeaux experience was shorter than this has been....and that this time I get 5 more months after this to enjoy life in France!

Coming back here felt like the biggest decision ever, and I seriously feel like my going away party was yesterday. I think it's safe to say that this period of time since arriving has been the fastest of my whole life. But it's been a good type of fast, because I'm very proactive about seeing everything, and I've never felt like I've been wasting my time here (case in point: today Mariene and Sarah and I started our morning with a trek under Paris in the catacombs! Pictures soon).

Also, something else really amazing to me is my friend Rachael...I don't think either of us thought that when we met each other on our flight from Chicago to Paris exactly 5 months ago today that we would still be texting each other 5 months later about Harry Potter and our frustrations with the French postal system. She's one of my best friends here, and it was fate that a girl from LA and a girl from Nashville who might otherwise have never met (and who might otherwise have never introduced all of their friends to each other, creating an extensive web of friendships!) ended up being assigned seats next to each other on that flight!

These are my big goals for my last 5 months:

1. Finish visiting the Musee Carnavelet...I've been three times and I never get to see everything! I finally made it upstairs the other day and had to leave soon after. I am definitely going back.

2. Eat more tartelettes aux frambroises (raspberry tarts): they are my #1 favorite French pastry, and I simply don't eat enough of them.

3. Go back to the Louvre: I definitely take it for granted. Gotta go and see more!

4. Drink more: It's important to take advantage of the fact that one lives in a city with such great public transportation!

5. Sewer Tour: Enough said.

6. Chartes: My friends and I keep making plans to go and we never follow through. It's happening for sure though soon.

7. Visit more of France: I decided that even if I save up, I can't really afford to travel internationally, so I WILL at least see more of France, especially since I have an SNCF discount card. Rouen/Normandie/Strasbourg, anyone?

:)

The Sopranos

Not having the internet over the past few days means that I've plowed through The Sopranos, up to the middle of Season 3. That Ralphie is trouble. Can someone tell me what actor plays him? The problem with watching HBO shows is that you can't let yourself look at IMDB until you've seen all the seasons...because  a large portion of the main characters WILL die on any given show, and I hate being spoiled.


I'm still sick, but all it is now is a cough that keeps me up at night, and hunger that won't go away no matter how much I eat! I had two breakfasts this morning and then lunch an hour later, ahhhh. I have to get better before I leave for Greece.

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm still going, but I've been checking the State Dept. website religiously (well, whenever I can get online), and until they tell me not to go, I'm definitely still going. If the discount airline wouldn't refund my ticket for a natural disaster last time, they're definitely not going to refund it for a little potential violence! But I'm at least signing up online with the State Dept so that they know I'm in Greece next week, if they need to find me or anything, don't worry.

Still No Internet/TV/Landline

On normal days, even when we have access to these forms of entertainment, we don't spend all day using them, because we tend to play a lot of barbies, have a lot of dollhouse time, etc. And we definitely spend a large portion of our days pretending to be a zookeeper and a baby animal (usually a wolf...today she was a dalmation puppy though).

Anyway, not having access to the internet/phone/TV meant that the kids were SUPER depressed, which I thought was funny because on any other day they wouldn't have actually needed them to be happy. Lise has this Nintendo game called Nintendogs (I think Linus has it, actually), but it only works on her friend Clara's DS because she has a different kind. Lise couldn't call Clara today to invite her over (more like, to ask Clara to bring her DS over), so apparently today was the "worst day of her life". Or something to that effect.

According to her, Clara is the luckiest girl in the world. Pooooor Lise ;)