I would like to say I've been busy lately... but I haven't. Just sick. It was only a matter of time until it hit me, but all of this public transit and walking in the overcast, wintery temperatures has finally resulted in a massive head cold. I've been trying to just veg out and keep myself resting, but I don't really like staying inside all the time (which I think has only made this worse).
I am just waking up into my third day of dripping boogers from my nose and involuntarily leaking from my eyes, after waking up about a hundred times from fever chills/burning up last night. It certainly does suck not being able to go home when you're sick and have your mom make you soup!
Here's a quick recap of the recent days I haven't posted about:
October 11, 2013
Friday. We attended our first official director's class with Céline at 8:45 am. The RER workers are apparently on strike, which we didn't know ahead of time, so the train was late and the métro was packed, resulting in us being 15 minutes late. That's better than some of the other kids being 30 to 45 minutes late, though. We went home between classes and did some homework, and then went off to buy our school books. Mine totaled about 38€, which I am completely thrilled about considering these books at home would have easily came to $300. Audrey and I both have our separate grammar classes from 2-4pm ("14h - 16h"), so after class we dropped our things at home and went to do some apartment shopping at Tati. Then on our way home we stopped at our first Boulangerie, and picked up an awesome baguette ordinaire for ,90€ (cheap!). Ate that for dinner, and skyped with people when we got home. I would say this was a good day.
October 12, 2013
Saturday. We slept in for the first time (for me this means sleeping until about 8:00...), and decided to go on a quest to find the Walmart of France - a big store called Auchan. Here, they sell almost anything you could possibly want for about half the price you'd find it in the city center. We didn't really plan on it, but did quite a bit of our grocery shopping here. They sell Dr. Pepper for ,89€ and Frank's for about 2€, as well as peanut butter for around 3€. Probably so cheap because no American's ever find it - it's so far off the beaten path. We also explored the metropolitan area for a bit - La Défense is actually a gorgeous city area. It's like a cross between a college campus and NYC, but there's
no people around. It has this completely eerie feel, because it's so nicely designed, but completely lacks the tourists you'd think should be there. Anyways, we also ate McDonald's while we were there. In the spirit of trying something new, I ordered a McBaguette - an odd little baguetted sandwich with breaded chicken, ham, cheese, and curry sauce. We returned home, unpacked, and vegged out again (cue sickness).
October 13, 2013
Sunday. We planned on going to Versailles around 9am, hopefully to arrive there around 11 (we left ourselves an extra hour of transit time just in case things didn't work out the way we thought they would). Needless to say, things DIDN'T work out the way we thought they would. We got up late, since I don't think either of us were able to sleep our way through the gross mucus liquid dripping down our throats all night long, and ended up leaving the apartment around 10ish. Technically, this
should've been fine, since we did leave that extra hour in there. But, nope! Nothing can be easy for us!! We took the metro to RER C, which took us a bit to figure out which train to get on (all the while, we have two people continuously asking us for directions while we're trying to figure it out ourselves). After a while and a train switch, we got on the right one, headed for Versailles. We got about three stops out of Paris when we found the train saying it had reached its terminus. SO we followed the massive crowd all headed for Versailles onto a complimentary bus, stayed on there for about a half hour, before getting on a different line (Tram N I believe), and finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere at a random and very busy station. We wandered in the direction of a beeline of people, and did end up finding the Château, but it did add about three unexpected hours onto our experience! The line to go inside of the castle was insanely long, so we wandered the enormous gardens for a few hours instead. They aren't so much gardens as they are a maze of tall shrubs and fountains that go on for ages and ages and ages. There was no way we could possibly see everything in one day, so we picked out a few things from the map that looked interesting and wandered towards them. At a fountain show, we pulled out our little picnic lunch and ate while listening to the music and watching the dancing waters. I could literally feel myself getting sicker by the minute, so we eventually left and took Tram N back into the city. Unfortunately, stores aren't open on Sundays in Paris, so I wasn't able to buy any medicine. Instead I just kind of layed around again, drank a lot of juice, Audrey gave me two sudefrins, and I watched a movie and went to bed.
And that concludes my day recaps. I'm now blogging, doing some homework, about to take a shower, and then later on today I'm hoping to stop at Gibert Jeune to pick up the mortal instruments books, and I have class from 2-4 again (like every single M-F for the rest of my Parisian life).
