An American girl in Paris part une

Just like that, and there are less than 4 weeks left of my time in France.
I haven't updated in about a week so I've got a lot to go through. So rewind back to the 31st, how I remember all of this, I don't know...
Last Tuesday, Stephanie and I went on a class trip to the Montmartre, which is a cute little hilly area that doubles as the highest point in Paris. Cobblestone streets and tiny, German-style houses galore, as well as lots of art vendors, gelato stands, and many other activities catered to tourists. We climbed a bit to reach the Salvador Dali Museum, which I thought was surprisingly small for the amount of art it houses. I'd assume that Dali would expect a larger museum, given the size of his ego... yes, I did just diss Salvador Dali. Regardless, I think I share his fascination with time and its omnipresence. Steph and I took the liberty to take another photo booth picture in the museum, our faces juxtaposed on a thumb-nail. After, we hiked some more to the Basilica Sacre Couer, which overlooks all of Paris. As beautiful as it was, it was hard to feel relaxed or overwhelmed by the beauty, I was more-so overwhelmed by the intense amount of people surrounding me. Next was the Moulin Rouge, which I was disappointed to see was modernized beyond recognition. It is now highly dependent on its glowing lights at night for beauty, but at day, it definitely has lost its previous rustic facade. All for the sake of entertainment and tourism I suppose... however, at 95 Euro per show, it was not a viable option for any of us to participate in. Finally, we headed back through Paris' Red Light District, to the metro and went back to campus. I went for a jog around the Hotel D'Invalides, and past the Eiffel Tower, got a little lost, but was rather happy for this. I mean, how many people in this world have the privilege of jogging with the Eiffel Tower at their right-hand-side? Later in the night, we (us girls, Ricardo, Lucas) bought some wine and headed to the Sienne. There (quelle surprise!) we were able to sit on one of the many bridges with our backs to the French Parliament, and drink wine into oblivion, and laugh and yell and drunkenly talk... with no limitations, because this is legal here! Europe has got it so right, consumption of alcohol outside often does NOT lead to murder as commonly believed in the US. This was probably one of my favorite nights thus far, because of its relaxing (and cheap) simplicity. After a certain point though, the cops did have to shoo us away, as it was getting late, and people were getting belligerent. On the walk home, as we often do, we sang like we were in a Kidz Bop recording studio and somehow ended up in a bar. There we bought no drinks, but the older men gladly let us girls dance around to music of our choosing. After Pon De Floor played, we hastily exited and walked 100 feet to campus.
The following day was pretty uneventful... I stressed out at the supermarket, trying to find cheap, carb-free meals to last me the week. I was able to find some pre-packaged salads, that tasted equally as unappetizing as they looked. Let's just say the French are all about their bread. This same day, I finally received a roommate. I've been without a roommate for 2 years now, due to one reason or another, so I've kind of had to mentally prepare to live with some and have little to no time alone. In the evening, Steph, Brit, Korissa and I went to a cafe on the Sienne, had espresso, and studied for our respective classes.
On Thursday, I woke up feeling extremely anxious. After class, I thought it would be a good idea to try to break my writer's block in my new leather-bound journal... I headed to the cafe, and stopped by an ATM to take out money. There, because I was mindlessly functioning, I was haggled and pushed around by 2 gypsies. Panic mode was about to transfer to furious mode and as I was about to throw some punches around, a woman behind me grabbed the 2 women and told them to fuck off. I was thankful for this, but also largely confused, and shaken up by the experience... This completely threw off my concentration and while writing at the cafe, I couldn't write more than one sentence without feeling paranoid or inadequate or insecure in my writing. The espresso didn't help much either, but a cup and a torn out page later, I headed back to school. At home, I took a much needed nap and relaxed a bit, before preparing for another night out. Girls night out turned in a whole ceremony, with 15 of us scantily-clad girls heading to Latin Corner to how you say... own the place? A bottle of wine on the bridge later, we were thoroughly buzzed and heading to the bar. Needless to say, this time around we were much more prepared and lively. Nor the half-naked servers nor their rotating pelvises phased us. Except... well we were all surprised to witness arguably what was a live sex show when one classmate got the "Sperme de Serveur". An experience that none of us (thanks to our cameras) will ever forget. Depression-vomit mode hit me kind of hard at the end of the night, and I was thankful that we were leaving by 2 AM, since 5 of us had a plane to catch to Amsterdam in the morning.
3 hours later, the 5 of us woke up like the skeleton in an episode of Tales from the Crypt, grabbed our backpacks, and hopped on the metro. To start off the morning with a bang, we were ticketed for not purchasing the correct tickets upon our entrance to the airport. Check-in and a 40-minute plane ride later, we were in The NETHERLANDS! We checked into our hostel in central Amsterdam, and headed out to explore. We walked to a sex shop, but our eyes were set on a coffee shop. Let's just say that Amsterdam is just a whole 'nother world... and oh, they also have it so right... After the coffee shop, we walked silently to a bakery, in order to gorge ourselves... hot dogs, pizza, Belgian waffles and an hour of onnomnom later, we went back to our hostel to nap. I was having wicked depressing thoughts but was thankful to discover that it was TTOTM when I woke up! At 8 PM we headed back into the city, and did some sight-seeing, mostly getting lost in Amsterdam. We then went to coffee shop #2. In coffee shops and bars there, you are welcome to bring your own anything, as long as you pay for a drink at their locale. This particular coffee shop was the best yet, as it was set up in the form of a castle, with dim lighting, irregular wooden tables and cushioned benches. We had some Heineken and did that thing you do in Amsterdam legally... and then we walked to another bar... but not before a cup of Vlaamse fries. We went to a bar that was fairly Americanized, with a strange mixture of English tunes playing, sat around the pool table as Steph played a game with a cute British guy... meanwhile we all attempted to not pass out. I spotted some eye candy in the shape of a hostel receptionist, but I was too much of a puss as always to start conversation. Once we exhausted all the fun at this bar, we walked across the street to another... to take shots of absinthe. Licorice is probably one of the worst tastes in the world... and Brit seemed to agree with me when she immediately puked on the ground after taking her shot. We laughed about this for a bit and attempted to walk to an open live sex show before our night was over. Unfortunately, all we found were prostitutes in windows so we hastily walked back to our hostel... to a 6th stranger roommate, and knocked out.
The second day, we checked out of our hostel feeling like death; we did whatever we could to each of our greasy hair-dos and grabbed our backpacks. First stop was The Pancake House, which we had to wait a bit to open. The pancakes there were delicious, consisting of two crepes housing whatever toppings you wish and grilled on a pan (mine was cheese and chorizo.) Then we walked a block to the Anne Frank House, which had a line wrapping around the building to the next block. Steph and I left Brit, Vanessa, and Christa waiting in line and we went to surprise! a coffee shop. By the time we got back, the girls were inside, so we just laid down by the river, talked, and listened to music. Then we walked to the "I Amsterdam" sign and took a lot of annoyingly inconvenient pictures with the sign (due to the amount of people also wanting to take their singular pictures with the big letters.) After, we walked to a quaint park and sat on the lawn. There, we were perplexed by this owner of 2 dogs, one being a Bull Terrier, the other being significantly smaller, who was making these 2 dogs "get used to each other." But this whole process involved endless hours of the Bull Terrier humping and simulating 69 on this poor other dog. An hour later, we trekked to a Mexican food restaurant on the other side of town. The food was surprisingly good for the fact that we were eating Mexican food in The Netherlands. Then we once again walked to the Red Light District and deeply analyzed the prostitutes' lives. Another coffee shop stop and we decided that we needed to see a sex show. 30 euro well spent (?) and we were walking into a neon-illuminated hallway, turned the corner, and wala! 2 people on a stage having sex, with about 50 pervy men drinking beer and watching them. This couple was not attractive... to say the least and we all watched in horror as the woman attempted to sensually mouth a scene from Grease while the man (with hair that rivaled Stephanie's in length) went down on her. Safe to say, we all had question marks floating above our heads by the end of that scene. Then 2 girls, one after another, stripped on stage and performed their own sort of rubber and glass dildo routines, respectively (LOL.) They were more attractive but the question marks still didn't leave our heads. Then, for the grand finale, a woman got naked on stage, picked a volunteer in the audience, took off his shirt, and took out a marker. She placed this marker in an unmentionable area and squatted on top of the volunteer (now laying on the ground.) And then... now this was definitely the most incredible thing I have ever seen... she proceeded to pen "sexy boy" on the man's chest in handwriting that was arguably better than mine. We speechlessly left the show and went to a sex shop... not that these two events correlated in any way because the show was one of the most unappealing performances we've ever witnessed. As a final stop for the night, we went to bar and some intoxication later, we were ready to pull our all-nighter. We took a train to the airport and we knocked out at 3 AM in the waiting area. The rest of the morning was a blur, we flew, we rode another train, we walked, we took another train, we ended up on campus, I took a much needed shower, and slept like a baby. When I woke up, all the girls and I watched Eurotrip and reminisced about Amsterdam. And just like that, the night (and weekend) was over.
Monday, back to school, talked Philosophy and Theology, had endless coffee. I went jogging with Stephanie once more, and we both were annoyed at the dodging of the constant influx of people in our ways. After dinner, it was study time for once, and I read about Hinduism for about 2 hours.
Yesterday, I took the quiz we were all dreading and it didn't go too badly. Both my teachers are really cool, and my classes are very... philosophical, if you will. Steph and I went to the supermarket to pick up some lunch and at some point in between the hysterical laughing and talking, we fell asleep on her bed. I woke up 5 hours later, at 7 PM, and went to dinner. After dinner, Steph, Vanessa, Korissa, and I got dressed up and walked to a different arrondisement to go to Vogue's Fashion's Night Out on the Champs Elysees. It was wicked crowded, with 90% of the people wearing blazers and smoking cigarettes outside of the stores. Since we didn't have passes to go into the stores (because we didn't buy a French Vogue that we couldn't have even read if we wanted to) we people-watched for a bit and at some point, we saw Karl Lagerfeld in the passenger seat of a Bentley, trying to exit the crowd ambushing him with cameras. The fashion world is so... je ne sais pas. As much as I love clothing and styling... that sort of pretentiousness is just something I could never handle. We then walked home and on campus, I had an interesting non-encounter with an old French "friend." This left me very weirded out for the night... but today is a different day, and it certainly helped me change my outlook on how I've been treating myself. I always, pardon the expression, put the pussy on a pedestal... and it stops now. In the meantime, I am going on a Facebook hiatus because far too many thoughts of home are stressing me out, and preventing me from letting loose here. Sometimes, Facebook is such poison, so I'm going to be disconnected for an undetermined amount of time (probably about a week.)
Wala! My first week and a half in Paris!