Paris

I wasn't too very excited when I was packing for Paris, even before I learned that I was going to have to pack all of my belongings up. I dunno, I'd never really wanted to go to Paris as I'd not heard amazing things about the people or atmosphere of the city, just nice things about the monuments. Really though, in all honesty I did not meet one person who was anything ruder than indifferent. Plenty of people who could care less, but no one went out of their way to be mean, and in fact most people where really nice. We traveled by Chunnel Train to Paris. Trains are my new favorite form of travel, and yes I know that they crash more than planes, but I just feel much more comfortable traveling across the ground rather than the sky. The train wasn't one of the new super fast trains, those started this week, but it still it didn't take too long to get there. When we got to Paris we were immediately shuffled onto a bus for a 3 hour long bus tour. It was fairly interesting and informative. Like to the fact that Marie Antoinette was beheaded across the square from where Louis the 16th was beheaded because the ground under the guillotine was becoming unstable as it was over saturated with blood and the rotting bodies where obscuring the view of the platform. Gross, but interesting. We did this long, sleepy tour because we couldn't check into our hotel . Everyone fell asleep by the end of it, me just long enough towards the end to not know where in Paris compared to everything else our hotel was located. When we all awoke at the hotel we got checked in and up to our rooms. You were automatically sitting next to on the train and rooming with your roommate from the study center, and as Emma stayed behind, that meant Cassie was sharing the room with me. Yay! The room was TINY. Not unlivable, but if you had tensions with your roommate the people in the hall would be able to feel it, because there was no room for it inside. But as we were only really in there to sleep it wasn't bad. Cassie and I ended up hanging out in there for a short time before heading out to dinner before the guided tour of the Louvre by one of the art history Professors from the study center. A number of us went, which is never good with me. I'm not fond of groups larger than four, as they tend to include more than one annoying person and no one will make a decision that the rest of the group will all unanimously agree on. Of course this happens when were are all cranky and hungry. Finally choosing a place that had a menu in English we sat down to one of the most strained meals I've ever had. The food was all pretty good, it was the company. Some times there are people you have in your life that you like alright, for small amounts of time and there is never any reason in the world that you want to have two of them in the same place at the same time. This is because you know they will feed off each other's annoying qualities. Which is what happened. I was about to punch someone. But we ate quickly enough and scooted off the Louvre without incident. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, an a bunch of other amazing pieces. It really made me sad that we ended up powering by a lot of wonderful art, but I'm telling you after 3 hours of walking around in there and not covering more than one wing I was art-ed out. I really didn't care anymore, which I acknowledge is sad. There was really just too much there to take it all in. They say that it would take someone years to look in to each and every peice in the Louvre. That and I plan on using it as an excuse to go back some day.

Uneventful night.... I could only wish

At 8 I decided that I couldn't stand it anymore, no one was going out to eat, so I was going to cook dinner. I had some left over curry that had served me from 2 previous meals (it was 9 pounds guys, I needed to make it last), eggs, rice and spinach.
Let me say that today has not been a good food day for me. I got rice today, because it goes with everything and I'm not as fond of bread or potatoes as my daily starch. Plus, I make awesome egg and rice dishes. I get ready to make my lunch, which was curry over rice, and I discover that everything in the little fridge on the bottom shelf has frozen. Eggs, spinach for salad, tomatoes, and my curry. Everything. I get annoyed so I move everything up to a higher shelf and hope for the best. I end up microwaving half my curry block and eating it over rice. Quite tasty. Though, we don't have a measuring cup, so I've managed to make rice on the stove with a glass. Half a glass of dry rice makes the perfect amount of rice for one person. Which rocks hard core.
Moving back to dinner. The eggs had dethawed, yay!!! Rice was well on it's way to done. Spinach... was... well... sparkly still. But I used it anyways. the pan was WAY too hot for my eggs so they started to burn. Just alittle at first, but then a decent amount of smoke. But! the fire alarm didn't go off! Phew! So I serve up my food and sit on the couch. Not five second later, the alarm starts. Shit. That's me. This was also followed by a string of non-parent-approved-words. I left my eggs on the counter, and everyone in my room resignedly put on their shoes and trudged downstairs, through the corridor, down another flight of stairs, through another tinier hallway, up a third flight of stairs and finally out. Did I mention that the fire escape and emergency exit doors don't work? If that had been a real fire, it would have killed us all. We all pool outside, and wait. The security guy turns off the alarm and yells out to whom ever lives in Flat 8. See? Told you it was me. I told him what happened. He told me next time to just let him know on my way out, he'll turn off the alarm and fix everything. The sensors are sensitive but kinda... slow. Gah. Mind you that this was the entirety of the program who wasn't out for the night that had to leave their room. I told most anyone who asked that I was sorry, but no one really seemed to mind that much.

I mean other than realizing that if one of the other buildings lit on fire, we'd all die.
And yes, after all this, I ate my burnt eggs. Wasn't too bad actually, the curry covered most of the burnt.