Bonjour!

After 9 hours of travel (including a really brief layover in Dublin. I want an Irish accent!), we made it to Paris! I’m really happy that we didn’t run into any mishaps, like lost items or broken limbs… though I did find out that my sister isn’t the most reassuring travel companion. Yes, Justine, you get a special shoutout.

The other day, my sister spouted off some crazy story about a man who beheaded and gutted a guy on a Canadian bus (you think I’m kidding? Check it out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7537675.stm ). Which, of course, made me really, really anxious about sitting next to strange crazies on buses/planes/modes of transportation. So when my sister ended up sitting next to me on the plane, I was pretty relieved.

And then the plane began to take off.

Normally, I don’t get nervous during flights. Heck, I spend most of them asleep. But just as I was about to actually fall into a Dramamine-induced slumber, my sister decided to start talking about:

• How the brace position snaps your neck on impact, meaning less suffering for the victims of a plane crash (totally not true, Justine: http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/06/mythbusters_killer_brace_posit.html . Way to be a wiener)

• The story of a private jet that crashed and demolished some guy’s family (his wife, kids, mother-in-law) and home.

• Childbirth mortality rates. And lots and lots of blood loss.

My sister got to sleep that flight. I did not. I kept trying to make myself feel better about flying by playing peekaboo with the adorable red-headed, blue-eyed baby across the aisle, but the baby totally lost interest in the game before I did.

Anyway, after a good nap, my sister, mom, and I wandered around the Latin Quarter for a solid couple of hours. I have never seen so many bookstores in my life; the Latin Quarter would be my book Valhalla if only – IF ONLY! – I could read French! More motivation to learn, I guess. First, we refueled by eating some sandwiches at a café called Les Petits Écoliers, staffed by a nice, smile-y bald man who cooked prepped our meals on a teeny, tiny stove:

Then, with the aid of a certain, incredibly awesome Paris map – provided by a certain, incredibly awesome Elspeth – we got lost, got found, got lost again, got found again… I would have taken more pictures, but my camera ran out of battery power.

And on the way home, I had to power up my camera one last time for the U of C geek in me:

[Oh boy, is anyone as excited about this as I am?]

And with that, it’s off to more reading and sleeping for me… tomorrow, we tackle the Eiffel Tower! Hope the rest of you are enjoying what’s left of winter break/ringing in the new year right!

xoxo,
D

Counting down the hours

Fact #1: I have six in-progress journals. They are, in fact, sitting next to me.

Fact #2: I have writing ADD. Which is probably why I have six journals.

Fact #3: I am leaving for Paris in 3 days (!!!).

Fact #4: My French is abysmal. Rather, nonexistent. At this point, I only know how to say my name, age, stuff about my personality, and some random assortment of baked goods.

So I suppose I've created this blog for a number of reasons. First, I need to get over my writing ADD by having a centralized place to collect my thoughts. Writing was a compulsion in high school - I carried journals, notepads, and post-its with me (instead of, say, my actual school work), and wrote on napkins, flyers, my skin, product packaging, paper bags, etc. when my own paper products were unavailable. Consequently, there are Starbucks napkins taped to the insides of my journals and stacks of post-its in my drawers still waiting to be ordered, organized, and collected...

Second, my poor grasp of foreign languages and indescribably bad luck usually leads to some calamity and/or hilarity. I mean, I've gotten stuck in Spanish elevators, ridden bikes into parked vehicles, fallen into Filipino coral reefs, bruised an entire buttcheek on a Costa Rican mountain... I'm pretty sure there are some moments in there that I'll never want to forget.

At the very least, when I arrive at the hospital with a weathervane sticking out of my kidney, I can point my insurance to this blog and they'll understand. Maybe.

xoxo,
D