Episode 23 - Parisian Home Stretch
Rugby, Louvre, and stained glass windows
It has been quite some time since the last blog post (almost 2 weeks!)
What happened, you ask?
Well, a combination of things.
I had final exams to study and prepare for, and I was focused on that.
I wanted to chill with my friends during my last full week in Paris, and I would rather do that than find a multi-hour long block of time to write a blog.
I just finished a lovely morning of surfing on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, and blogging is the last thing on my mind, lol.
I’m now in London. Crazy stuff. I went to a big party last night, and everyone else in the house is still asleep.
So with that being said, let’s get into the home stretch of Paris. It is back to California before I know it :(
Saturday 12/2/2023
I woke up at 9 and biked back north to Eliana’s again, this time for rugby!
Eliana’s dad, Max, plays recreational rugby with some friends and I was invited to join, and I was finally free this Saturday to do so. So, it was off to Eliana’s again.
My hands nearly froze off on the ride up, and I popped by a motorcycle shop to potentially buy some gloves. Those professional motorcycle gloves were extremely expensive, so I decided to suck it up, wrapped my hands with my jacket sleeves, and carry on.
Rugby was 5-on-5 touch rugby, with 6 touches before it is considered a turnover. I had a terrific time, and was being told that I was a natural too! Everyone at the rugby field was super nice and I kept thinking how cool it was to be playing sports with native Parisians. It was the most non-touristy thing imaginable.
After rugby, Max and I came back to the apartment, and I ate lunch with the entire family again. Unsurprisingly, lunch was just leftovers from last night’s dinner, which I thought was even better the next day.
I’m basically a part of that family now. I was even offered their couch if I ever need a place to stay in Paris in the future!
After lunch, I biked to the Apple Opera store (this is quickly becoming my favorite store!) to get some paperwork done (basically, I had to return the phone, then buy it again so that I can get the tax form and get a refund of the VAT at the airport when I fly back to the US). I got a pain au chocolat and espresso, then headed to the nearby Galerie de Lafayette to check out the pretty building and potentially do some shopping.
When I saw the prices in those stores, shopping quickly went out the window, and I decided to just look around instead. The stores were lovely but full of annoying, rich tourists, so I checked out the main Christmas tree and got out of there before their annoying attitudes could rub off on me. Along the way, I saw the Eiffel Tower on the top floor, and it was wonderful. :)
After the Galerie de Lafayette, I went to a nearby sports store that Max recommended to buy some gloves in the hope that my hands would not freeze off anymore when biking. The sports store was basically a Parisian Bass Pro Shops and I was super impressed. I got the gloves, and a beanie on the way out that they were selling by the exit.
Excellent product placement, I say!
My last errand of the day was to mail some books to Tatiana up north to London. I had borrowed 2 books when I visited her and just never gave them back, and she was heading back to California soon.
So to the post office, I go!
What a nice post office. Everything was so well automated, and I was extremely impressed by the entire operation. I do have to say though, that it was quite funny to fill out customs forms for books. Who would’ve thought I would do that?
At this point, I was so tired from all the errands, rugby, and tourists that I abandoned my plans for sightseeing and just biked home. Took a nice hot shower, ate yogurt, watched some of a movie (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), then biked to Bouillon to meet up with Joe, Gibbles, and Joe’s childhood friend Ella.
Joe seems to be having someone visiting him every single week. Perks of studying abroad across the Channel, I suppose!
Joe told me that the line was super short, so therefore I was urged to rush there soon to get seated with them. However, I knew that Joe thought I would show up late, so I predicted he would say something like this in the effort that I show up earlier. Therefore, I specifically showed up a bit late, so then the line would be almost at the front.
Joe, however, predicted my predicting, and by the time I got to Bouillon, the line was still extraordinarily long.
Well played, Joe, well played!
I ended up telling stories to the group and laughing tremendously loudly a ton while we were waiting in the line. The dinner was amazing as always (Bouillon is the best), full of bread, delicious wine, and lots of food.
Joe, in his infinite observation of his veganism, decided to eat oysters, despite the fact that they are literally in the animal kingdom. What proceeded what a psychological discussion on whether oysters were vegan, and what the spirit of veganism really is.
I also learned some more British slang, most notably, “bad chat”. I kept getting told that I had bad chat, but I think they were just jealous that they couldn’t come up with such hilarious and laughter-inducing jokes as me.
Finished up dinner, biked home, and watched The Hangover before going to bed. Great success!
Sunday 12/3
I woke up around 11 and finished watching the Hangover.
A wonderful start to the morning!
I cleaned up my apartment and started a bit of packing in preparation for my moving out in a few days. The fact that I am moving out of Norma Jr.’s soon is still quite strange to me.
Most importantly, I spent about half an hour just scanning all the papers and worksheets I had from my different classes so that I could store them in GoodNotes, recycle them, and call it a day.
And I have to say, it was tremendously satisfying recycling all of those papers.
I finished up taping up and writing in my scrapbook (I keep all tickets and momentos in there, thanks Jerome!), then headed over to rose bakery around 1 to meet up with Joe and Ella.
Lovely bike ride across Paris, and a lovely time chilling at Rose Bakery. I wrote a bit of my blog, got a couple of free coffees from Joe (who was working there), and was charged an outrageous 3 euros for an espresso.
Considering that I got a number of free coffees from Joe, the weighted average price for the espressos was less than a euro.
However, it was still a listed price of 3 euros for one tiny espresso. Crazy!
After rose bakery, I headed to the Louvre to check out some art. One of my favorite British phrases I’ve learned is “pop to the loo” — basically, going to the bathroom.
Therefore, I decided to “pop to the Louvre”, and Ella tagged along with me.
There wasn’t too big of a line to get in, and we then went to the entrance, armed with our student IDs to get in for free. Basically, if you’re a student under 26 in the EU, you get into many museums in Paris for free.
Me having a Science Po ID, I was all fine. Ella had a British uni ID, and so did not get in for free (Brexit and whatnot).
Fortunately, there were three entrances to the exhibits (one for each wing), so we simply walked to another entrance and the entrance guard let Ella pass through. He clearly could tell that the ID was a British one, but he adopted the “that shit is not my problem” mentality and let us through.
Mad respect.
Louvre was a great time, we saw the original basement structures of the Louvre, lots of great Roman pieces that I learned about in my Roman art and archaeology class at UCLA, and of course, the Mona Lisa.
After popping to the Louvre, we grabbed 2 baguettes on the way home, then took an incredibly slow bus back to Joe’s apartment. About halfway through, I realized it would have been faster if we had just walked, but at least the bus was dry and warm inside. At Joe’s, we ate the baguette with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I blogged, she read. Good vibes.
Joe eventually came over with Ben and Gibbs (fresh off of work), and they cooked a delicious dinner while I vibed and blogged some more on the couch. We all ate dinner together, then I chilled on the couch some more due to my tremendously low mental energy. The comfort of that couch has little compare.
Eventually, Ben and Gibs left, and Joe and Ella went out for some pints. I stayed in the apartment, called Mama, and just chilled on the couch some more.
Eventually, it was time for me to go to bed, so I left myself and biked home on a perfectly charged blue velib. However, the velib simply did not have a right pedal on the bike, so I had to improvise this strange hybrid pedaling mechanism to get home, where I fell right asleep.
Monday 12/4
I woke up at 10 in the wonderfully warm bed, made some coffee, and finished the Champions League blog. Got to start off the day productively.
I had been freezing in my apartment the last few weeks because I had no idea how to turn on the central heating, and Paris is experiencing single digit weather the last few days. I finally got my shit together this morning and figured out how to turn on the towel heater, which I basically left on full blast, maximum heat level, continuously, until I moved out. That alleviated the worst of the cold, and I was able to survive in cold, northern France.
Eventually, I biked over to Strada Cafe near the Pantheon to meet up and “study” with Joe and Anna. Inevitably, any studying attempt with Joe and Anna devolves into a conversation about life, so absolutely no work got done on my end.
However!
In the process of biking to Strada Cafe, I reached the massive velib milestone of…
1000 kms! In Paris!
Anna had an upcoming Russian B1 exam, so I asked her to read the numbers she was studying in Russian. I remember Anna laughing at my horrid French pronunciation a few days ago before my final exam in French, and today I returned the favor by laughing at her Russian pronunciation of numbers.
An eye for an eye, they say.
After about an hour of hanging out, I walked over to Saint-Chapelle, a large church that I had been wanting to visit for a while now. I’ve found that now that I’m leaving Paris soon, I’m transitioning more into becoming a tourist so that I can see all the things I’ve wanted to see before I head back to the US.
The line for Saint-Chapelle was quite long, so I started my recently found hobby of downloading pirated book pdfs from the Internet and reading them on my phone. In this case, I started reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
What a tremendous book! It basically talks about how all the greatest thinkers and innovators had both tremendous talent, but also tremendous opportunity. Both are needed to do great things.
Eventually, I made it inside Saint-Chapelle, and it was amazing. The church’s claim to fame is its massive stained glass windows that are some of the largest in the world. Massive, massive stained glass windows, stretching from the floor to the ceiling!
I was there for a few minutes looking at all the windows, and before I knew it, it was time to go to fencing for the last time. It was raining at this point, but fortunately, the metro stop nearby went straight to the fencing studio.
I was absolutely exhausted at this point (not really sure from what), so my fencing was extraordinarily low energy and of poor quality. By far some of the worst fencing I’ve done, but it was still a good time. For some reason, when I get frustrated in fencing, I start speaking to myself in Russian, and then my fencing mates around me ask what I said.
I don’t remember what I said, but I think they can get the general gist of it. Frustration is understood across all languages.
I said a massive thanks to the instructor, and headed home from fencing for the last time. It’s still quite crazy to me that I became a French fencer for a short time. What a cool experience!
It was still raining after class, so I took the metro home instead of a Velib. I had hit the 1000 kms already anyway.
I made it home in one piece and started packing up some of my things in preparation for moving out on Wednesday. I was supposed to hangout with Emma in the evening, but rescheduled with her to the next day because I was just so absolutely exhausted for some unknown reason.
I went to Urban Grill for dinner and called my sister while eating the lovely kebab and fries, and then headed home super early to get an early sleep.
Before that though, I finished reading Outliers. I had been a while since I’ve read a book so good that I effectively dropped everything to finish it in the day.
One of the most interesting things in the book was describing why Asian children are much better at math than Western children. Rather than an innate proficiency for math, the book describes the fundamental differences in counting structures between Western and Asian languages that make it much easier to count and do simple operations in an Asian one.
For example, 11 in Chinese is ten-one, 12 is ten-two, and 45 is four-ten-five. Adding becomes much easier under this system because the math equation is built into the sentence itself. Add 45 and 12 means you add four-ten-five with ten-two: five-ten-seven.
I highly recommend the book. :)
Went to bed at 9, wow look at me!
Tuesday 12/5
I woke up extraordinarily well rested after a wonderful 10 hours of sleep. Hooray!
Because I actually woke up on time today, I made it to the international finance class on time.
Recently at Sciences Po, there was quite a large scandal because the president of the school was arrested (?? unsure exactly what happened lol). As a result, there was a massive protest happening outside the entrance of the school that blocked the main walkway, so I had to get it through the back entrance.
I actually found it tremendously funny that the entire school was kinda shut down for this scandal. I was so unfazed from the entire situation because I’m American and used to scandals all the time, but all the French folks were freaking out. I was even talking to the French classmates, and they found it so funny how unfazed I was.
As Anton Ego would say, it’s all a matter of perspective.
The last discussion went tremendously well as a result of me being well rested, and I have Lionel a hearty thanks after class for the nice semester.
He said that the pleasure was “all his”. Let’s go!
After class, I hung out a bit with my French classmates and they tried to exchange instas. Unfortunately for them, I don’t really use insta, so now I have 2 new subscribers to my blog. Hey, Eban! :)
I still needed to finish up my history final paper, so I headed over to the language building to study because they had the best coffee machine (it’s the same coffee machine as the other ones but there’s never a line there, hence it’s the best).
Rather than studying, I proceeded to waste 2 hours watching comedy shows and doing absolutely no work lol. Emma stopped by for a bit and we chatted about her weekend in Holland, where she revealed she loves Dutch clubbing. Good stuff.
I decided to get my shit together and headed to the productive Apple Store to write my history papers. I wrote the outlines for both of the papers and decided to call it a day.
Tourism awaits!
I biked over to the Hotel Invalides, a massive complex in the center of Paris that has a military hospital and lots of museums. I got in with a free ticket with my student ID, and checked out some sick weapons, paintings, and assorted knight armor.
By far the highlight of the entire exhibit for Napoleon’s Tomb located in the center of the golden dome that rises above the Parisian skyline. The giant sarcophagus has stone from a bunch of difference countries and is quite extra in my opinion, but still really cool to see.
I then proceeded on the most wonderful grand bike ride around Paris. Oh, it was amazing! The most perfect blue velib ever!
I checked out the Princess Diana memorial, biked up and around the Arc du Triomph, saw the BCG Paris office (it was so nice!), and then visited the largest Russian Orthodox Church in France. It was so nice to speak Russian with people, and I got some yummy Ferrero Rocher chocolates from some random lady that asked me to pray for her grandmother.
Nearby was a toy store, and I bought Eliana a chess and checkers set for Christmas. Tomorrow is the last tutoring session I have, and I wanted to get her a present for the holidays!
I biked home tremendously slowly, enjoying the Champs and the lovely day. I made it home, cooked dinner for the last time in my apartment (moving out tomorrow!). I proceeded to pack up the apartment, then Emma popped by to help pack up!
There was a potentially catastrophically bad situation of Emma being hungry (that hangriness is something to be feared), so I made her some popcorn to keep the anger at bay. I’m happy to report that it was a great success!
I had way too many things to pack into the suitcase, so Emma had to suit on the suitcase for me to be able to close that one heavy mofo (the suitcase, not Emma). I metroed with Emma back to her apartment to drop off her things, got some tea in a bowl, and we worked on our papers together like the old married that we are.
I called Mama on the way home and fell asleep for the last time in my apartment.
And so, the last few days in Paris are coming to a close. The end of an era is approaching.