The week's happenings

Prepare yourselves for a really stupid metaphor (or simile I suppose):

This week I feel like a hot air balloon whose ropes have been snipped and is merely floating around in the sky without an anchor or a purpose. I'm going where the wind takes me, baby!

I warned you it was bad, but it’s the only way I can find right now to accurately describe my sentiments.

I also find myself using weird terms like “sentiments”. Normally I would refrain from the word sentiment to avoid sounding like I used the “find synonym” button on the word processor, but it’s not my fault! The French language has set-up camp in my brain and has taken my English hostage. AIDEZ-MOI!

So finally, after seven plus months of living in this city, I became self-motivated enough to visit a couple of museums this week. On Sunday, I spent the afternoon writing in a bustling and sunny park at Chatêlet (not a museum, I understand, but definitely some world-class people watching).

On Monday, I took advantage of my age and country of residency (national museums are free for European residents under 26 years-old) and visited Monsieur Napoléon Bonaparte at les Invalides. I learned quite a bit about French military history (by my own choosing, might I add).

On Tuesday, after my first spring trip to the open-air market by my apartment, I went to the musée Carnavalet (also free entry), which stuffed me full of nonsense about the French revolution.

Yestearday, after babysitting two non-English-speaking kids who live in spitting distance from la tour Eiffel, I wandered to the NYU in Paris “campus” because I am interested in applying to their “Teaching French as a Second Language” program. The campus consisted of a townhouse hidden in a garden behind a building and is ridiculously adorable.

On my way to the campus, an 80 year-old Parisian man stopped me on the street, told me I had a nice smile, and then asked me to sit and have a coffee with him. He seemed pretty harmless and so I said “oui, pourquoi pas?” During the next twenty or so minutes I endured his stories about old Paris and about how he used to own a famous café called “L’Ombibus” in Montmartre (the neighborhood where one finds the Moulin Rouge, Sacre Coeur, and all that jazz). He was difficult to understand, but I enjoyed his stories nonetheless.

On today’s menu: article writing and apartment cleaning. Nothing worth talking about, but the weather is beautiful, I’m in a Bobo café, and the overall mood in Paris is good. I couldn’t ask for more.