I’m trying to use my time in a productive way

I am currently seated down in the laundry room of the apartment building were I now reside, and a few moments ago I was trying to get some work done. I then wondered if I would be able to bill hours that I worked while doing my laundry and thought probably not. Since I am sitting here in front of a computer anyways, I thought I would try and get back on the blog train.

Now that we are pleasantly situated I really don’t have much to write about since my post this afternoon (please note that the fact that I posted at work was cleverly disguised by messing with the timecode). As such this post will be filled with foggy recollections of my time in France. I am hoping that Dave will be able to fill me in on any pertinent details I have omitted or simply gotten completely wrong. I sort of doubt this though as apparently Dave has ceased to exist following his trip to Costa Rica. If anyone else who went to France with me happens to read this please fill free to tell me I am wrong. I am so used to hearing that at my job that I kinda like it now.

On to France. The trip was a school exchange with French students from various parts of Tours, a city in some valley that had lots of castles (details such as this will not be fleshed out as I have no access to the internet here in the laundry room). We applied for the trip in Grade 10 and actually got to go in Grade 11 (turns out this is actually just an exercise in me not remembering things). Whenever it was, there was a solid core of kids from Grosvenor (the crew I went K-12 with) and a bunch of people from random other schools (of note were Janessa Lepp, some girl named Mandy, the girl twin, and Tess; all worth mentioning for the ease with which they spoke the French language). The flight out to France saw us stopping through Toronto, home of sweet layovers on every trip I have ever been on, and Montreal. From there we made our way to Charles De Gaulle in Paris. On the flight I sat next to Jord, and right near Erin Bare (or some name like that) and had excessive nosebleeds due to the thin air and general dryness. I really don’t remember much about the flight, but probably spent a large portion of it listening to the sweet sounds of Bush and the Smashing Pumpkins, while creepily staring at girls.

My first memory of this new country was the giant golf ball structure we had to walk through to get from our plane to the airport. From there I believe we boarded a bus and made our voyage through roundabouts and weird French streets (I think I should point out now that it is word that continues to capitalize the word French. If I had it my way it would stay lower-case, but Microsoft and my languor have prevailed). From here we made our way to the Hotel Isis Place D’Italie to drop off our stuff and start sightseeing as we had landed in Paris early in the morning, and Mme. Dube did not want to waste a minute of our short stay.

The first thing I remember doing is making our way down the Loire en route to Notre Dame de Paris. Some people were stopping to get bread and whatnot to eat, but not me, I got suckered by some creepy street vendor who drew a crappy caricature that he bullied me into paying for. I was so embarrassed by this that I threw the picture out and never told my parents about it. Fortunately, it was the only time I got burned that trip. After wandering around in front of Notre Dame and meeting up with everyone by some statue of a guy on a horse (I may have totally made that up), we actually got to enter the cathedral. I think it was palm Sunday when we were there, so there were actually people attending some kind of service in Notre Dame prior to us entering. I am hazy as to the specifics, and am relying on memories of pictures I took, but I don’t think we ever did a full tour of the place. Now I realize this is stupid, but I recall being dumbstruck by the size of the organ inside the cathedral, and since this time have had somewhat of a fascination with them. I would really like to go back and hear what the thing sounds like, because Good God is it huge, and beautiful.

Upon leaving Notre Dame things get hazy, and I am unsure as to the exact sequence of the next set of events, but here it is. I recall spending time wandering through Paris, following Mme. Dube until we found a place to cash our traveller’s cheques. This happened to be right near the Opera, where I seem to remember having a small session with the hackey sack. There may have been lunch somewhere in here, but I could not tell you where. Also around this time I took a picture of an Audi TT. I have no pictures of the Opera. Obviously, I was appreciating my surroundings. From there (or before arriving there) we walked past one of many Egyptian monuments in the city, which I believe were put there by Napoleon. Now I have no idea when Napoleon ruled, but I’ll bet it was sometime a long ways back. Seeing a pillaged obelisk that had been sitting in a city square for longer than the country in which I live has been founded makes you feel kind of small.

Wow, my laundry is done and I didn’t get anywhere near as far as I thought I would. No where even close. Turns out this is going to be an epic journey through the recesses of my skull, so please bear with me. Or if you don’t want to bear with me, you can always quit reading for a couple months and come back when I am done. Ya, I said a couple months. This took me damn near an hour and half to write and I am still on the first day. I was there for three weeks and probably remember more from my time in Tours than I do in Paris. So I guess I’m sorry if you are only interested in hearing me write about how dumb I was the previous weekend, but I really want to try and get this story out of my head and on to paper before I drink it away.

That being said, next time we might even get to Versailles.