Recap Part 2

So after Nice got boring, we pretty much just hung out a lot. The last day with my family was interesting to say the least, it was the France vs. Mexico game and everyone was really interested. Or so I thought.

The football game was simply a façade to allow the kids to drink to their hearts content, something that left me rather (._.), for lack of a better word. I was watching them as they finished their first glass of beer, upon which they moved onto a bottle of rosé, and then another beer after that. Looking through their photo album of that night, it's fairly clear when they started to get drunk because they all began taking pictures of random road signs, climbing up these respective road signs, and singing/screaming at the top of their lungs. This was all while going through several cartons of cigarettes, of course. Needless to say, it was a little surprising, but once again, it's a different country, and they were really having a good time. That said, I didn't join in for fear of expulsion, so I was branded the evening party pooper. Once weighing this against being expelled, however, I thought my integrity was fairly intact.

So after that crazy night, we all slept over at the same house, and waking up a bunch of hungover teenagers was, not surprisingly, fairly difficult, especially at 8h00. We drove to the train station, said our fairwells, and I got back on the TGV to go to Paris. Which was, ironically, the longest train ride I have ever taken: While we were out having fun, a storm had rolled in over Marseilles, which is directly between Paris and Cannes. A flood destroyed a great portion of the region, and while they were able to clear off one of the train tracks in time for our departure, there were terrific electrical problems during our voyage. We started off at a decent clip, but once we hit the flooded region, we inched along at what seemed like 5-10 mph. We eventually came to a halt, upon which the conductor told us that there was a problem with the electricity that would necessitate disconnecting power from the railways. For the next hour, the lights in the train were limited to the aisles and one ceiling light out of 5, and no air conditioning of any kind. By the time the grid was fixed, we were all very eager to get underway, and cheered when we saw the countryside begin to pass before our eyes again.

After a bit, we hit a stretch of TGV track that let us cruise along at the usual 200 mph; TGV track is different from normal track because it's smoother, allowing the train to travel at a faster clip. So there we were, moving right along, until we discovered that the train in front of us had hit a goat, and that the SNCF crew had to clean up the resulting mess. So the train stopped once again, and we sat, waiting, for several hours more. At last, the train advanced!... for 50 yards, then stopped again. The conductor went on the loudspeaker to tell us all that, in hitting the goat, the train in front of us had thrown a bolt and would need to be repaired on the tracks. More waiting. Thoughts of walking back. After all, we were only an hour away from Paris. It'd have to be faster than repairing a 300-yard-long high-speed train, right? We never found out, because we eventually got moving again and arrived in Paris 4 hours late. We had sat on that train for 10 hours, which is 3 hours longer than the time it took for me to fly from New York to Paris. We almost missed our reservation for the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower, but thankfully we were able to get there only 10 minutes late. We would have gone to the Musée d'Orsay, but the 3 hours it would have taken were consumed by the obnoxious train delay. So we settled with dinner on the Eiffel Tower, poor us, and got back to our hotel at about 1am.

The next day, I got myself ready by about 7:30, which was, apparently, 30 minutes before a receptionist would show up at my parent's hotel. While I was a bit irritated for waking up earlier than I had to, Mr. Barrs was absolutely panicked, because this meant that he'd have to find a way to get me to my parent's hotel before he got to the airport, which would have had to have been at 8h45. Thankfully, we figured out that my dad was on his way from the hotel, and that he'd be arriving at around 9h00. So I went back to the hotel with my dad, and I spent my first day in Paris without a friend, which really wasn't fun at all, because all my family wanted to do was sleep, and I kept having fleeting thoughts of re-finding Mr. Barrs and my school group at the hotel, only to realize that they were on a plane headed for Chicago. So I've pretty much been relaxing since then. Pretty much. One of my Saint Louis friends is on a tour through Europe, so the 20th and 21st we've been hanging out. After she left, we checked out the Fête de la Musique (Music Festival) of Paris, in which anyone gets out on any street corner and plays an instrument, no matter how good or bad they are. I've found that this can be both good and bad. We went with some friends of friends, the Bottes, and they were really friendly. I hope that we'll be able to meet up again when we return to Paris, although it'll probably be a bit busier considering it's the school year and all. We'll see.

So that's my entire recap! Well, I've abridged it a bit, but for brevity's sake I figured it'd be better that way. We're headed off to Montpellier tomorrow, we're getting a taxi to take us out to the dealership where we'll be picking up the car that our mom bought for our stay. I still really wish that we could live here. I just love the subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences between American and French culture. Maybe I'll get to live here when I'm older. Who knows.