Wanderings

hey guys.

really can't remember what we did this morning... oh wait, now i can!

we went to a cemetary! The Pere Laichasse cemetary. Relatively famous - it must be if it has its own metro! very cold... i was particularly more cold because in the morning i discovered at the last miiinute that my scarf was burnt. yes, burnt. You see, a couple of days ago my laptop made a "bang" type sound.. well not bang, but a bad "i don't like myself" sound. And then i smelt just a little bit of smoke... like hair dying. I thought... ok. computer not happy. But i won't worry about computer until computer stops working. I shut it down, went out to classes, hoped the maids wouldn't notice the burning smell and accuse me of smoking.

turns out it was my black scarf that was burning as it was lying on the step that leads out to my bedroom light... all my other scarves were also there... but only that one suffered. poor scarf! now i have ashes all over my room (the maids vacuum: it's ok) and a once-lovely scarf with a big hole in it which is edged with charred remains. yey!

So i was cold sans scarf. The cimetiere was built in th 19th c by who other than Napo! My man. Cimetiere slightly depressing - i don't like cimetieres - and i saw the grave of Haussmana and the grave of Jim Morrison (i'm told he's a famous musician, so i took lots of photos for those of you who know who he was... i'm guessing dad).

Anyway, the lady (who was very jolly and passionate) was meant to finish at 12. We had to catch the metro which would take 30 minutes to get to where we needed to be, and then have lunch, and we were meant to have lunch from 12. So ana and i left at 12. Sure, she wasn't finished, but we were.

Then we went to a local café (originally we were gonna have gelati but we were too cold). We ordered hot chocolates, and then after we'd finished them the man was like "so have you decided yet". And we were like... "no, we don't want to eat anything." Then he said he'd give us a few minutes (i.e. get the hell out of my restaurant if you're not going to eat anything). To make it worse, the hot chocolates were small. So then we tried another place closer to the metro, and we bought our second hot chocolates. Miam miam! Then when the rest of them were finally released (about the time we finished our second hot chocolates - around 12.45) they joined us, they scoffed some food, and we ran off onto the metro to arrive and.....

Sylvia got the time wrong. we were meant to meet her at 2.45, not 1.45.

Fabulous.

So we got an hour to do whatever we wanted. Not as much fun as you'd think, especially since there was nothing near the Musée Putin or Patun or some spelling like that. He was a famous sculptor. Depicted misery well - famous sculpture "la Porte de L'Enfer." (the gates of hell).

We visited Napo's mausoleum (Les Invalides)- very much a small you-know-what replacement.

We didn't go in because we couldn't be bothered paying 6 euro to see him glorifying himself. Also, most of it was "military museum" - french army uniforms, guns, history. Not really worth it.

Oh, by the way as soon as ana found out Sylvia got it wrong she pissed off. No questioning, no wondering, no "should i"s. Very proud of her. Decisive girl.

So yeah we sat in the parc on a bench and there was sun and we worshipped it and talked. Oh, by the way, the "others" before were Gemma, Jen, Sarah, Amanda and Jessye. Amanda chickened out on leaving the cemetary early.

So then we sat on the bench, and some retard french boys - around 16, 17 started shouting out at us – “hallo hallo” – “tu as un preservatif” etc. What retards. They were dressed in hoodies, baggie pants – real paris scum. We kept on ignoring them, and then Wayne walked past! Yey for Wayne! We were all like “wayne, save us!” (joking… the boys weren’t threatening at all). And then we was like “je vous presente” joking ha ha… he’s lovely Wayne, such a laugh.

Um then we went to the musée… it actually wasn’t that bad, it was warm and while I didn’t like some of the sculptures I was actually quited pleased by some of them. There were a few that were really nice… one of his dead sister, another of two babies or cherubs and one called “le bisous” which was two lovers embracing in a kiss. It was quite beautiful. But most of his stuff is much rougher – focus on the sufferance and la douleur et those things.

Anyway, then we went home. I grabbed some water from hyperchampion. Set out a budget – in the end, it looks like I’m going to spend about $2000 aussie dollars here… which is what I put as my limit, which is ok.

As soon as I got back, ana was in my room – there were choccie biscuits downstairs, yey! So we went down to the café and ate them… was great talking to her… good to have a nice n excited convo.

Then we had dinner – it was good – so nice to have diner au self, car you can choose your own food – have as much of x as you want, and there’s heaps of lettuce etc which is really missing in the French diet. Sylvia reckons that they used to have a much more veggies based diet years and years ago n they’ve become more “americanised” in their food – less veggies etc. Used to be your entrée was always salade, now you have heaps of different things – rarely salads. Apparently the reason why they’re going crazy with worry over obesity crisis (much less severe than ours) is that the seats on the metro are quite small and skinny and fat people just can’t fit in them – their bums get stuck in between the two seats, and they take up the entire row etc – while that’s the extreme, if bit by bit people are what we’d call “normal” in Australia for adults, then everyone’s going to be much more squashed when they sit next to each other etc. It’s true – sometimes with the bigger people your knees are touching when you sit opposite to them, which is uncomfortable. There’s nothing weirder than feeling your knees pressing against a stranger’s knees.

On the metro on the way home there was this weird French guy who refused to sit up straight in his seat and ended up preferring to twist his body in weird ways to keep his legs from touching mine… what a weirdo.. he looked strange, and also had very skinny legs for a guy!

Now I’m in class, and I don’t like it.

Going to go through my suitcase tonight, fold everything, make it look nicer.