Tuesday was good. Class went by quickly, but after that I had errands I needed to do. I had to stop by an insurance agency not far from school to sign the forms for my renters insurance. However, since it was lunch time when class got out, and french businesses usually close for an hour or two at lunch, I had some time to kill once I found the place. And what’s better to do in Paris when you have free time but shop? So I wandered through a few stores and the famous “Au Bon Marche” and made mental notes of things that caught my eye. I then took care of the insurance which, also protects me in case of theft on the street, and headed back to school because I had signed up for a tour later.
It was semi-useful because, like most colleges, there are quite a few buildings, and they don’t always make sense in their layout and such. The girl giving our tour was nice and helpful but scared me when she talked about the french students coming. “Don’t be surprised when the french students arrive in October and they are very cold and don’t want to be your friend. That’s just the way they are, and it is worse at Sciences-Po because it is a prestigious school. The french students who are students here are some of the best in France...and they know it. I’m not saying you can’t become friends with them, but it’s hard. You have to be the one to break the ice, and if you invite them to coffee 3 times and they turn you down, keep inviting them, because eventually they come around.” So that wasn’t real encouraging to my hopes of making friends with french students, but at least I know what to expect.
That afternoon when I got home I had to call my landlady because, if you remember when my phone rang during class the day before, well that was her calling me because Mr. Dressner had called her to ask for the password for the internet for me. So I had to return the call which is always a little nerve-wracking because well, I don’t like talking to strangers on the phone anyway, but doing it in French is even harder. She was very nice, said she and her husband would like to meet me but they would be out of town until Sunday, but they hoped to visit next week if that was alright. (At least I think that’s what she said, sometimes the french pleasantries and propriety make it hard to understand what they are actually asking because it’s all idiomatic) But then she said “you have some questions about the internet I hear, I am going to put my husband on so he can explain that to you.” Fine I think...except that her husband has a spanish accent. French with a Parisian accent on the phone is one thing, french with any other accent on the phone is a different story. Plus he was talking about technology which is words that they don’t usually teach in french class, so it was a challenging conversation. I understood him fine, but I don’t think he believed that i really understood. He asked if I needed him to explain in English, but I insisted I got it. Basically he told me I could use Ethernet or wireless to connect to the internet and that he’d give me the password but he didn’t have it with him so he’d have to look it up and would call me back later in the evening with that information. I asked him if I was allowed to have mail sent to the apartment and he said yes but I needed to put my name on the mailbox so the postman didn’t get confused. I realize that conversation sounds a lot simpler than it really was so you’ll just have to trust me that it was exhausting.
So I had a few minutes before the social activity of the night, and I thought I’d try to connect to the internet with the Ethernet cord. It wasn’t working and he had told me that if it didn’t work I should unplug and replug in the power. So I did that, however, on the little screen of the box where there was supposed to be a clock if the internet is working, there was only a little green line going around and around. Not a good sign, but I had to get to the metro stop to meet everyone for a walk around Montmartre. Conveniently I live just south of Montmartre so it was about a 1 minute walk to meet up with everyone. We all traipsed up the hill, and I learned that I live just down the street from Amelie’s cafe. (If you haven’t seen the movie Amelie, it’s one of the few French films that has become real popular in the U.S. It’s really cute and you can rent it from blockbuster, but keep in mind that like ALL french movies, there are a few scenes of an inappropriate nature. Anyway the cafe where Amelie works in the movie is a real cafe, and the last time I was here I had coffee there with my group, but I didn’t know where it was in location to anything else so I hadn’t realized that I lived so close.) We walked to the top where Sacre Coeur is. It was evening mass which was interesting because nuns coming in all wore regular fleece zip-ups and coats over their habits. Out on the steps some musicians were performing for the crowd of tourists. They were playing everything from U2 to mexican music and a lot of things in between.
From there we walked down to a cluster of cafes and everyone split up into groups to have coffee/dinner/drinks. I ended up in a large group consisting of 3 other Americans, 3 irish girls, Erin from New Zealand, 1 German, 1 Japanese and we were later joined by another guy from New Zealand and one from Brazil. It was a lot of fun just hanging out and chatting, although we looked like tourists because we were talking loudly in english and laughing a lot. Erin is one of the funniest people I’ve met here because she’s short and loud and doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. She refers to herself as “the little hobbit” because she’s so short and she’s from NZ where they filmed the Lord of the Rings. Conversations are never dull when she’s there. Anyway, we talked about all sorts of things, from why people in Ireland don’t wear shorts (“Irishmen’s legs really shouldn’t be shown. They’re not much to look at.” said the Irish girls), to whether Germans are offended by Nazi jokes (not the young ones at least, they even make a few themselves) and why law school is like being in Harry Potter (the random latin phrases you shout out sound a lot like the incantations). And in case you were wondering, to say you live out in the boonies, in New Zealand, you say you live out in the whomps.
When I got home, I had received a text message from the landlady with the internet password, so I thought I’d give it a try. No luck, it still wasn’t connecting from when i had unplugged it before i left. So i break out the user manual (in french of course) and it says that if the little green line is going around and around you may need to do a hard reboot. So I find how to reboot and it’s really weird- unplug and replug the power cord 4 times. So i do that and it says, after that it should restart and synchronize itself. When the green line is going around it is trying to connect and synchronize and once it is connected the time will reappear. So I do what it says but the green line just keeps going around and around. I read on a little further in the problem solving part and it says that if you hard reboot and the line doesn’t stop going around you may need to call for service, (oh brother, i’m thinking) but, that before you call, it’s a good idea to give it several hours to, get this, several DAYS to synchronize. Days?! You’ve got to be kidding me. I thought I read it wrong. I pull out my dictionary to make sure that I didn’t misunderstand. Nope, wait hours to days for it to connect before calling for assistance. What kind of instruction is that?! So I figure there’s nothing I can do but pray really hard that it is closer to the several hours end of the spectrum, and go to bed. So that’s exactly what I did.
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