So, having spent the past 4 days romping around Paris and London, I felt entitled to a bit of sleeping in glory in the hotel where the API orientation was to start. I was woken up sometime at around 11 by Brendan, another student with API, and the guy whom I would share a room with. Brendan is a very nice guy, and we immediately bonded over baseball and football, and how bizarre we found European sports.
By around noon, Brendan and I were hungry, so we decided to venture out in search of some food. We found this small cafe right outside our hotel room that looked neat. When we walked out, the man who was working gave us a glare. Forgetting a fair amount of my French for lack of consistent practice, I asked the man in French "parlez-vous anglais?" I did not think this was a particularly bold thing to do, since we were in a very tourist heavy part of a very tourist heavy city. The man, with a healthy dose of disdain in his voice, replied with a hostile "No. Je parle Francais." Taken aback by his hostility, we sat down and ordered as quickly as possible, just pointing to what we wanted. We ate quickly, not wanting to stay in the cafe any longer than need be. I felt bad the entire time, feeling as though I had immediately marked myself as an American tourist who demands everyone speak my language. Brendan and I were both so scared of this man that we argued over who was going to ask for the check. I did, and we paid and got out of there. It was my first experience with a truly unfriendly European, and to my good fortune, it remains one of only a few to date.After lunch, we wandered around Latin Quartier a bit. Just walking, we saw a very beautiful looking church, so we decided to stumble it. It was an incredibly ornate and beautiful cathedral. I thought that the act of stumbling into a gorgeous cathedral was so remarkably European. After the church, we found an amazing crepe stand, and I bought my first authentic French crepe. It was a plain sugar crepe, but it was amazing.
We went back to the hotel, where we rested for awhile. That night We had a demonstration about our cellphones, and that is when I first met the other API students. After the cell phone demonstration, we left the hotel for a river tour on the Seine. To be honest, I was still too jetlagged and too exhausted to really appreciate the tour. We decided to sit on the top level, on the outside, and it was FREEZING. It was really gorgeous to see the Seine at night, but I definitely want to take this tour again when it is a bit warmer. I found the Eiffel Tower at night very striking. Unlike the Globe Theater, I was overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, by the Tower. Its pictures do not do it justice. It is a much more beautiful structure in person than in photos. I also got a kick out of some of the old bridges, including the Bridge Neuf, which had these very odd carvings of demon like heads all around it.
After the cruise, we had an API-paid dinner on St. Germain des Pres. Without exaggeration, this was the most delicious meal I've ever had. I had tartine (which if beef cooked for hours), beef burgundy, and chocolate cake filled with warm chocolate on the inside. According to our host, it was a very authentic French meal. Our host's name is Marie de Socca. Her name isn't very old stock French because either her or her husband is Corsican (an Island off of France that is culturally very different than mainland France). She is a very energetic and wired woman, who is a Parisian by birth, and who now lives in Grenoble. During dinner, she gave us a French etiquette lesson. This was very helpful, because some of the rules are not intuitive. For example, when eating bread, the French do not put their slices on their plates, but on the table clothe next to their plate.
(I have to go to class, but I will continue writing about my next 3 days in Paris, as well as my first impressions of Grenoble this upcoming evening/afternoon).
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