Meeting people 'n' seeing stuff

I met a Belgian girl and fellow au pair at the language school while signing up for classes. She came over to chill the other night; we had tea on my roof and then brought some wine to the Tower and hung out there for a bit.

The next day I went to Maia’s, and her sister Jeanne and their mom came over. Professor Maia taught Jeanne and I how to make sushi. It’s not as difficult as you’d think. Maia said making the rice is the hardest part because it has to be just the right consistency. We did maki, California rolls, spring rolls … The four of us ate together and then had mint tea from the mint Maia set aside from the spring rolls.

(Jeanne making a California roll under Maia's supervision

(Me making a roll with all veggies!)

I went back over there at night and ate the leftovers with Maia and Matt, and they played some music for me by request. I love when they play Nina Simone covers. After, we took the metro to Concorde and walked to Pont Alexandre III, which is right by the Grand Palais and pretty close to Champs-Elysees. It was around 10 p.m. on a Thursday, and hundreds of people, mostly older than us, were standing and sitting along the river by this incredibly beautiful bridge, drinking and smoking cigarettes in suits. Some people were partying in the clubs in the boats that floated by us. Because it was Thursday, almost everybody was dressed in business attire because many people go right from work to this spot to have drinks and dance next to the Seine. We met up with Maia’s mom and two of her bubbly friends, who were also dressed up very nicely, and talked for a bit.

At one point Maia and I were sitting alone and a man came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder, leaned down and asked, “Comment t’appelle?” in my ear. I took his hand and threw it off me and leaned away, but he came around the other side and started massaging me and I immediately jerked out of his hands. Maia simultaneously reached over to push his hand off me and grabbed her drink, ready to throw it at him. “I don’t want to tell you,” I said firmly, and he finally left me alone. Maia explained to me that although Parisian men are notoriously flirty, that’s not even normal here. Thank God. That image of Maia, though, poised and ready for battle, whiskey in hand, will forever make me laugh to myself.

The rest of the night was lovely, though. We sat by the river, and I could see the lights of the Eiffel Tower shining out over the city. Maia and Matt left for a 9 day excursion in Sicily the next day, so it was good to spend time with them before they left. Matt had his credit card pick-pocketed from him. At least he didn’t get stung by a bee that night.

This weekend I met up with Sara again at the Sacre Coeur. I checked out Montmartre, the surrounding area, before when I went to visit Maia at her driving school a couple weeks ago, but I didn’t go inside the church. 

While I waited for Sara, I sat on the steps on the only hill in Paris, overlooking the city. It reminded me of this hill in San Francisco where you can see the whole city, especially since I couldn’t see the Eiffel Tower. A guy was playing music on a steps a few flights down from the Sacre Coeur, and right after I thought that about San Francisco he started singing a song with the lyrics, “I left my baby down at San Francisco Bay.” Then he played two Neil Young songs.

Sara and I walked around inside the church, where nuns  hushed talking tourists because many people were kneeling in prayer. A little ways away we wandered through the cheap tourist shops and the square where a hundred artists stood at their easels painting landscapes of Paris and portraits of people who sat in chairs. A beautiful Spanish woman played an accordian surrounded by a stand of pastel, fake flowers under a yellow umbrella with glued ferns hanging from it.

A quirky middle-aged woman sang in raspy French while cranking the handle of this strange wagon contraption and handing out candy to children who put change in her bucket. She had really fun energy, and you could just feel that she wasn’t performing for the money but because it made her happy.  

There was an au pair picnic that Sara told me about on Sunday. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have gone if she didn’t want to so badly; she already knows me well enough to know it takes a lot of texting, pestering, and encouragement to get to me to go to social events where there are a lot of people. We arrived by Champs-Elysees, where you can see the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe all at once. A group of maybe fifteen ladies all our age stood around chatting. I thought we had arrived and that they were the only others, but I was very wrong. We started walking to find the actual location, but after a couple minutes I realized that the whole group was blindly following me and this German girl I was talking to because we were in the front. I stopped to see if they would stop, too, and they all did. I had  no idea where I was going, but I decided to just keep walking anyway because I thought it was funny they were all herding together in a group like my little ducklings with no idea where they were headed. After a few minutes, though, I took out my phone and found where we were supposed to be, and I lead my foreign chicks to a crowd of more than a hundred 20-something-year-old white girls sitting on the ground in little cliques speaking different languages, but mostly English and German, and drinking wine next to the river.

I talked to a group of German girls and a Spanish girl whose kids go to the same school as mine. I met two Americans. One, a guy from Texas. He looks like a bro, is really friendly and energetic, speaks fluent French and Spanish, and is an au pair, so he’s really good with kids. Needless to say, the ladies seemed to love him. I also met a sorority girl from Arkansas who didn’t know the difference between World War I and World War II and who kept asking people where she could find “bumpin’ clubs” and saying she wanted to go get more “booze.” I felt like I was back at college.

Sara, Vera, and I walked back to the Jardin de Tulieries and lay on the perfectly-groomed, soft grass surrounded by geometrically-trimmed shrubs.

When we went our separate ways, I found myself back at the Tower. I just tried to count how many times I’ve chilled at the Eiffel Tower by now, and I can’t even count. And that’s really frickin’ cool.