i should (as usual) be in bed

i just wasted half an hour looking at pictures from the dorms frosh year. ohhhh we were a fun bunch, weren't we?

can i interview you?

after class today, chris was like, "nicki, you wanna walk up that way?" pointing in a direction we've never gone. i was a little tired (i had 3 classes today!) and a little hungry, but i reluctantly agreed. it's a relatively nice day and i didn't have anywhere else to be, so i figured that a walk might be nice.

we wandered over to the champs elysees (which is pretty dang close to school, but we never realized cuz we're directionally challenged). we saw a guy holding a camera interviewing another guy with a microphone...as we get closer, we see the E! on the mic.

chris: "ooo nicki, look, it's E! let's over there"
so we walk through the shot of the camera and stop conveniently in the shot, pretending to look at a map and figure out where we want to go....but really, we're both giggling because the backs of our heads are totally going to be on TV.

as i folded the map up, we noticed that the guy with the camera was walking toward us.
chris: "omg, nicki, i think he's gonna interview us!"
me: "no, he's not."
he walks closer; we both look at each other a little incredulously. the guy came up and asked if we spoke french, and chris said oui. so then he went off on some speech in french (which we didn't understand) and said "britney spears" at the end. god, you should have seen chris's face then. he looked like a little kid who's mom had just told him he could eat all the candy in the world.

the guy realized that we didn't speak french, and goes, "do you want me to speak english?" yessss please. so, in broken english, he asked us if we knew about britney spears and her ordeals, to which chris responded, "I LOVE BRITNEY SPEARS! i know all about it." the guy (man, i should have learned his name) was like, "okay, which one of you wants to be interviewed? duh, i pointed to chris. i dont think i ever would have been forgiven if i had taken the interview.

the guy points the camera at us and asks some general question, like, "what do you think of britney's most recent news?" chris launches into this "i love britney and what the media has done to her is unforgivable and disgusting" speech. hahahah...i just stood and stared from the microphone to a piece of sidewalk to the camera. i think the interviewer was a little overwhelmed with chris's responses. at one point, he asked if we think britney could/will get her kids back...i said that it doesn't seem like she cares enough to fight for them right now, that she just doesn't care about being a mom. chris goes, in that tone of voice that's level but you can tell he's holding back big emotions, "uhm, i'm going to have to disagree."

the guy finished up the interview, chris signed his life away and we were off. these random afternoons in this spectacular city rule.

more parisians smiled at me today

that's my goal...to get those not-so-outwardly-friendly parisians to smile at me. and i did it today! i was out on a run and did the grin-nod thing at anyone who would look at me. yeah, some of the french looked away or gave me a "what the heck are you doing, you crazy person" look, but some of them gave me a warm smile back. that made my day. i don't know what everyone's talking about, saying the french aren't friendly. i mean, yeah, some are rude, but most of them are perfectly pleasant.

last night we went to the french theater...actually, the comedie francaise. we saw le mariage de figaro. i couldn't understand anything (wait, that's a lie...i did manage to catch a few things, like "his mother" and "my wife"), but i had read a plot summary before, so i could follow along for the most part. it was pretty funny...had me laughing and i didn't even know what they were saying. plus i felt so very french, going out to the theater. all in all, a good experience.

all i can think about is DISNEYLAND ON SATURDAY! ohhhh and now amsterdam in december :-) europe rules. can i move here and bring all my friends? actually, no, i don't want to do that. california rocks pretty hard.

traveling is pretty simple (er, at least, making plans to travel is). it's making me want to roam around more in the states...you know, like make random trips to texas or montana or florida for the weekend. do people do that? it doesnt matter. maybe i'll start the trend.

sans maison

is that how you would say "homeless" in french? whatever. either way, that's what we are when we get back to sb. i've been looking at fbook marketplace/craigslist/apartments.com/EVERYWHERE for a place to live. so far, i've found a helluva lot of people looking for places to live, and just a couple people actually looking to sublet.

it's funny, the listings for people who want housing. it usually says something like, "i'm fun, responsible, laid back, and a great roommate!" well, duh you're gonna say that. i'd like to see someone say, "actually, i'm pretty uptight and i really like to have things my way. i hate compromise and i don't clean my shit." you might be a horrible roommate, but at least you're honest.

oh, and on that note...anybody got a nice place for some really fun, responsible, and laid back girls to live? seriously though.

sharing wine with my professor

i just played with the title for a minute or two, writing and deleting, writing again. i'm pretty anti-informative title for my blog. i like for it to be something that'll catch your eye or that will make you go, "huh?" like a confused puppy.

there are SO many cute puppies here. it must be puppy season, because i see a new one every day.

i'm so easily distracted. that's probably why i've been in the computer lab for an hour now, but haven't done anything more than look at headlines for my comm paper. i have to research/write about something having to do with media globalization. hellooooo huge, sweeping topic. i don't want to look at something that says globalization is bad, because i generally think it's a good thing. i like that we're all super connected and i like googling my name and finding some embarrassing column i wrote for the nexus. i like that i can find out about anything i want in the click of the mouse and tap-tap-tap of the keyboard. i suppose i could do something on blogs again, but i already did that...i SHOULD expand my horizons. but then again, it's be easy to recycle some of my info from my blog paper, and it'd lighten my load...bah. we'll see. i'll have to decide by friday.

last night i went to dinner with my french class. it turned out to just be 6 of us + our prof, so i guess that's not really the "class" so much as a handful. anyway, i thought it was gonna be awk and not very fun...we were supposed to speak in french the whole tim. and besides, i'm not really good friends with anyone in my class, so i wouldn't have anyone to really talk to/i'd have to make stupid small talk the whole time.

FALSE. i had an absolutely fabulous time. i got to the restaurant at 7 and didn't get home till 11:30. i didn't even notice how quickly time passed. i had a delish meal and we shared 2 bottles of wine between all of us. OH and i enjoyed my first french créme brulée (i think that's how you put the accents on that). we spoke very little french because we got caught up in conversations that were far too complicated for our elementary french. it was refreshing talking to new people and getting to know their stories. i get high off meeting new people. that's a new requirement for whatever i decide to do when i grow up...i must do something where i get to talk to different, fascinating people all the time. that, and playing with kids. can i combine those?

paris is life on speed

i never stop going here. there are brief pauses (afternoons spent in a park, nights where i turn in before 11), but those only give me enough time to take a big breath to prepare for what's coming up. i love this life, but i don't think i could do it for more than a semester. i think paris would eat me alive.

so all week, chris has been talking about these fashion shows (apparently, it's fashion week in paris...i would never know if it weren't for maddy, mal and chris). he says they're SO fun and that i had to go. on friday night we went to one, but it was kind of a bust, so we ditched that and went to one of the greatest dinners i've had thus far. anyway, last night, chris convinced me to go to another fashion show (some head designer for dior...hell if i know/care). i didn't really expect it to be much fun, but i wasn't doing anything else.

here's a surprise--i was wrong! the fashion show was way fun. we stood near the entrance and watched the glamorous and famous flash their VIP tickets to get in the door. when the show ended, we watched the teeniest models slink out (still in their over-the-top make up) next to celebrities (naomi campbell and kanye west and uhmmm crap, that one top model girl who almost one a couple seasons ago) next to tired looking journalists. the atmosphere was exciting and i got a rush just standing there. most everyone was too busy to look us college kids in the eye, but near the end, a model came out laughing with a bouquet of balloons, looking like the happiest person in the arrondisement. we couldn't get enough of her and had to take a picture.

after all that excitement, a few of us hopped on the metro to get to line 14 for nuit blanche. (i don't know how long that link will be good for...maybe just wikipedia that) in a nutshell, it was hundreds of varieties of art displays set up from 7pm to 7am along metro line 14. it seemed as though all of paris came out for the event. others dropped out, but chris and i made it through the night until the first metro of the morning (5:30 am...see the last post). we were walking around notre dame area at 2 am, but with the amount of people out, you might have guessed it was something like 9:30 pm. it seemed like ALL of paris came out to celebrate the nuit. this is why i love paris (we must have said that line 2349075 times in the night). i could never imagine any city in california setting up art displays all around the city for an all night event.

i won't bore you with too many details (i'll have lots more details about the exhibits in my captions on fbook). i'll just give you my highlights.

the tuileries was the most beautiful display. they had taken gardening pots, put something flammable in them, lit them on fire and arranged them in huge balls that were smack in the middle of the gardens. the pots also lined the sides of the walkways, and were on floaty things in the middle of the fountain. looking straight down the path from the louvre was spectacular. i tried to look for a good picture to show you, but they're all really lame in comparison to what it was.

the most moving display we saw was one put on by the "médecins du monde." it was pictures of some of the most impoverished, ruined people of the world. there was a photo of a 20-yr-old girl who had already birthed 10 children (8 of whom had died) and been married (at age 10), but her husband divorced her cuz she was giving birth to fragile children. another picture showed a soldier holding his chest, oozing with blood. the caption said he died just minutes later.

hey, how's that for an upper? after that, we walked quite a few blocks to see what was supposed to be short films directed by the director of "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind." we waiting in line for about half an hour to get in to what was the most beautiful theater i've ever seen. it had 4 floors with a sparkling glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. then they played music videos. seriously. kanye, bjork X2, white stripes...cool videos, but def not short films.

there was this question mark display listed in the program that we decided we wanted to check out. after getting a little lost (keep in mind, it's also 4:45 am), chris and i found our way to the église st-paul. we walked in and there was a HUGE question mark hanging inside this gorgeous church. think about it: a fucking question mark in a church.



anyway, it's the first sunday of the month, so most of the museums are free. we're headed to musee d'orsay. like i said, never stop going. :-D

and i'm on blogger

i know that there's a timestamp on this blog, but i need to remind you of the time again. it's 6:33 am. and i haven't gone to bed yet. what am i doing blogging? i dont know.

i dont want to forget things that happened at nuit blanche tonight, so i'll give you a little preview (which will double as a check list pour moi):
-fashion show
-celebrities
-models
-spandex squares
-tulieries (sp?) on fire
-sandwich
-noticing those the media left behind
-walking, walking, walking
-music videos
-a big statue
- ?