Pretty much everything that has happened this week demonstrates that I have a long way to go when it comes to fitting into Parisian life! I'm staring to notice a pattern when it comes to embarrassing moments; they always seem to come along just as I'm feeling like I've cracked this whole adult, earning a living, studying abroad thing.
For example, take the time I went to the swimming pool at 7am (which we shall hereby refer to as the Incident of the Overly-Complicated Locker).
The Piscine Armand Massard is near to me, and in a well-meaning but misguided attempt to get fit I decided buy a 3 month subscription and go in the mornings before Uni, as it opens at 7am. Those of you who know me are probably staring incredulously at your computer screens, and rightly so, as me getting up early to do sport is about as likely as France restoring its monarchy (casual reference to this week's lectures *applauds self*). But nevertheless, that is what I did.
I got to the pool, changed and put my stuff in a locker. They have a different system over here; you need a PIN code to access your locker instead of a key. Great, I thought, and went off to have a nice refreshing swim. 45 minutes later I came back and entered the PIN, and tried to open the locker...and could not.
Picture this; a frantic English girl wearing only a bikini and swimming hat (yup, they're compulsory here) running through a sports centre full of fully clothed dignified French people in order to find someone at the desk to help.
As if this wasn't mortifying enough , when a very patient security guard came my aid, it turns out that my locker was actually open the whole time. I hadn't shut it properly in the first place, which was why the PIN wasn't working. All that embarassment for nothing!
Yes, I will carry on swimming, despite running through centre in nothing but a bikini. There's nothing that a glass of wine with my friend from the 5th floor won't cure, and that includes mortifying pool incidents!
Around Paris I have seen some funny sights, one of the oddest being a goat and a couple of sheep grazing on the Esplanade Jacques Chaban-Delmas behind the Dome des Invalides (I have yet to find an explanation). Another is an elderly lady wheeling her cat down the rue de Rennes in a special cat suitcase (I feel like this is my future self).
I also had an odd moment on the Métro. I saw a man looking very confused, in a very Anglophone way (I can't explain this. You have to see it to believe it). I helped him find his stop and he gave me a pancake. Odd, yet strangely heartwarming.
On Sunday, I came home from a lovely visit to Versailles to find a protest happening practically outside my window. Literally thousands of people were marching along the Boulevard du Montparnasse against reforms to the school system. When I saw on a placard that languages were under fire, I felt like joining the march myself! Just as I was contemplating whether it was socially acceptable to join a protest halfway through and alone, a woman shouted through a megaphone, 'At 3pm, we lie down in silence!' I kid you not; thousands of people just dropped to the floor. It was almost eerie; of course the police had stopped the traffic, but seeing people lying down as far as the eye could see on one of Paris' busiest Boulevards for a cause they believed in gave me goosebumps.
And then, I went home and ate a baguette. What an anticlimax.
These past few weeks have been super busy and the next few seem to be similar- apart from the fact it's the school holidays next week, so I have time off from babysitting, which I shall use appropriately (ahem, most likely reading second hand novels in the Jardin de Luxembourg and having a few glasses of cheap wine with the girls on my floor).
I must go off to bed now like the sensible adult I am, because I've planned another 7am swim tomorrow! I must be mad.
K x
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