Silly.

Friday morning I went to Bikram, finally. It was amazing. I love the studio (of course the French manage to have the cleanest Bikram studio I’ve ever seen—I’m pretty sure they scent the air or something, haha), and the teacher was nice. They even have Advanced there! And it’s a 10 min walk. Pas mal. And I felt like a real person again after I did it.

Then I dashed off to class, blah blah. After I came home and had dinner, I went to Neil’s for some pregaming. His apartment is also in the 9^th, but way closer to the Moulin Rouge, at the Place de Clichy. It’s a fun area, but gets SUPER sketch late at night. His apartment is amazing though. 2 stories, there’s a Spiderman statue, gorgeous balcony and view. But mostly I was jealous of the fact that everything was brand new, rather than grungy and dusty like in my apartment. Oh well. But I can certainly see why they’ve been having parties there all the time.

The wine and the champagne kept on coming, so by the time it was time to go out, I was pretty drunk. Oops. Ali and I wandered around a bit, had a delicious beer at a bar, and then tried to meet up with people. No one really knew where they were going, and I think we all pregamed a bit too hard, so around 1am I called it a night.

[Photos stolen from Ali]

Saturday morning I was woken up by stupid screaming children outside of my window (I live across the street from a school, and they have Saturday school here). Didn't they know how hungover I was?? At least it was GORGEOUS outside, sunny and warm. After I ate my fresh baguette for breakfast, Maria asked me if I wanted to go exchange Traveler’s checks and try to fix our internet. (Yeah, of course the internet that I  had on Thursday was a false alarm. It’s a Wifi thing you have to plug into your USB, and we ran out of hours that we paid for. But the stupid thing wouldn’t let us buy more online, so we went to do it over the phone.) 

The American Express store was near Opera:

We did the traveler's checks thing pretty easily, but the Orange people were bitches and would not let us recharge our hours at the store. And since they don't seem to accept American credit cards over the phone or online, once again we don't have internet. Fucking sucks. Me and Maria are back at our good old cafe now. Ugh. 

But anyways, since we were near the Grands Magasins to run our errands, Maria and I went into Galaries Lafayette. Amazing. Especially the shoes. They were all so different than anything you'd see in the US--very stylish, but a totally different selection. I cam very close to buying some. Instead we got cashmere sweaters for 40 euros--not bad! The store was beautiful too.

Then we met Julia for a delicious brunch.

[From Maria]

Next was vintage shopping in the Marais! I bought a belt. For only 5 euro!

A hilarious sign on a store window:

All the places we went to were jam packed. It was overwhelming to have to squeeze through into the crammed aisles and dig and dig. They were great stores, but I think we made a mistake coming on a Saturday afternoon. By the time Maria and I got home at 6 pm, we were beat. I took a nap, and tried to fix my internet for an hour, but got so frustrated and gave up. Then I quickly showered, changed my outfit a bajillion times, and met Anne and Maya for drinks.

We were in the St Germain de Pres area, and after we each had a beer we went to meet Anne's new petit ami, Baptiste, and his two friends, Benji and Eli. They were drinking wine on the street, and we joined them...kind of felt weird but I guess it's ok in France? I surprised at first because one of the French orientation leaders had given us a SUPER strict warning about drinking straight out of a wine bottle on the street/in a park--she said if you do it as a girl it's super trashy and people will think you're poor and have nowhere else to go. But here we were, and these normal and not sketch guys told us it was fine. Guess the woman lied. 

After we finished their two bottles, we went to a bar on the Rue de Princesse. The street was packed---so many bars and drunk people. I definitely need to return soon. We went to a bar that Anne had been to before with Baptiste, and that Maya's friend recommended to her--apparently it was owned by Eli's grandmother! Ha. it was a good bar, but every time I met some French people and started talking to them, Benji and Eli would come and grab me away. Anne told me that they both liked me, but they were sooo possessive it was freaking me out. Like, I only met them an hour and a half earlier. 

We only had one drink at the bar before we decided to go to CAB, a club near the Louvre. It was actually where Anne had met Baptiste the week before. The club was super fancy and expensive, but at least we got one free drink with the cover charge. We got there around 1am, and we all hung out and danced until around 3:30 or 4am. By that time, I was exhausted, and my feet hurt. I tried to rally the troops to go home, but it took forever, and I didn't actually get home until 5 am. 

Also, on the way to the club from the bar, the cab driver was creepy as fuck. He was talking in French to the guys we were with about how he was in love with me and how he wanted to marry me. Like I didn't understand. He literally drove past the club because he was distracted by talking to the guys about it. I would have been so freaked out if I was alone.

I think if I keep it up at this pace, I'm going to wear myself out. But going out here is so much fun I can't help myself.

Today is all gloomy and cloudy again. It rained last night. I'm chilling at the cafe for now, but hopefully today I can go to yoga again and clean my kitchen. I haven't been cooking at ALL, just eating out all the time or grabbing pre-made stuff from the store because I'm afraid to use this crazy lady's dishes. And I have a shitload of reading to do.