nawl

I have arrived in Paris. Renaud lives in a tiny little apartment just off of Nation, right above a Mac store.

First, there's the startling realization that I appear to speak French. I mean, everyone's speaking not-English, and I just happen to understand it all. It's a strange sensation. One forgets this sometimes when trapped in English-speaking places. My expressiveness remains somewhat limited, but we're working on reminding me of all the vocabulary that I forgot ("C'est quoi 'boulder'?" "Rocher." "Oh, right.") and some important new terms (bobo, as in "Le maire de Paris est bobo.") and refining my understanding of particular words (entrer vs rentrer, trouver vs retrouver, tourner vs retourner).

I've never been in a car in Paris before. Drivers here are *insane*. It's enough to give a passenger, or even an onlooker, a heart attack. Imagine, if you will, everyone driving as if they are playing Grand Theft Auto, except that the streets are narrower, there are bicycles and more cars, and sometimes there are cobblestones on the street. If you don't go fast enough, the car/moto/bicycle behind you will speed up and pass you on your right with mere centimeters between them, you, and the cars parked haphazardly on their other side. Drivers speed up at the sight of a jaywalking pedestrian. Last night, we ended up behind a car that had a video screen (currently playing some movie) mounted on the dashboard.

In the afternoon, I took a short walk around to stave off sleep. Hey, I'm in Paris. The houses look like Paris. The cars are little, or rather, they are not grossly more gigantic than they need to be to move people and a normal amount of stuff from one place to another. The men are short and wear sweaters. If you don't watch where you step on the sidewalk, you'll probably step in dog poop. Aggressive pedestrianism is de rigeur, minus dodging the scooters aiming at you.

And the people speak French! It is epitomized for me, somehow, by the perfect rounded pursedness of the lips for several of the range of 'o'-related sounds, and by the cheek-pouf. Poof. Pouf.

In the evening, we went out to be tourists and had dinner at a creperie in the Quartier Touristique. Otherwise known as the Quartier Latin. They've been installing brightly colored lights on all the bridges over the Seine and along the water. Some look neat, some less so.

We went to admire the Tour Eiffel lit up for the night. The exact interesting shade is difficult to capture on a digital camera.

We walked underneath...

... and off to, er, I forgot what the name of the place is, but it has two huge artsy/human rights slogans on it, and a wide platform overlooking the Eiffel tower. I remember being there 8 years ago and noting the large number of african men there selling trinkets to tourists during the day. Renaud says a co-worker of his swears it's the best place to pick up foreign tourists. There we saw the whole Eiffel tower light up with sparkling lights, as it does for the first ten minutes of every hour. I find it awesome that the city actually pays for something that silly.

Today I'm going to stay home and sleep and hope that rest will make this awful cold go away.