9/13/08 From the "Ghetto" to Paris!

La cuidad Dreax es no favorite de Ahmee. Ahmee no se gusta la cuidad de Dreax.

Por lo todo yo aprendo un poco frances. Dicir hola en frances, tu dice: "Bonjour!" Dicir, "Yo deseo..." tu dice, "Je Voudres". En frances yo no hablo la final letter.

Early in the morning we grabbed our things and headed out. Our first objective of the day was to find something to eat for breakfast. Ahmee had decided the day before that we were not going to eat breakfast in that hotel because she'd seen dirty dishes in dishwater when she came in.

We stopped at a gas station and ate and then headed to the airport to drop off our rental car. We dropped this off because we felt that it would be much easier to get around in Paris without having to navigate the streets and without having to find a parking spot. It was interesting finding our way to get to Paris from the airport I must say. We walked from the rental car area to hop on a bus to the terminal where we searched for a bus or a train to get us into Paris. As we walked around looking for those two things we spotted an information desk. Normally, the information desk is where we would immediately get help. This time there was no one there. We did see a sign however that told us where to go to find people and after checking the maps and looking around to see if there was any information there that we could use, we went down to a different terminal to talk to people at the desk.

The people there sent us to get on a bus that we'd seen outside. That bus took us to the train station where we had a fun time getting tickets and finding our train. Ahmee took care of the tickets for several days by getting us a three-day pass.

After dragging all of our bags behind us this far I must say that we all were tired. Sitting on the subway really felt nice. I felt sorry for Poppy who was carrying my backpack (he refused to let me carry it) and who didn't sit down.

Luckily we didn't have to carry our baggage very far after we got out of the station. La Hotel de Terrasse was just across the street from the train station. We found out that our room wasn't ready for us yet and that it would be 30 minutes before it was. This was fine by us because we were hungry and wanted to grab a bite to eat. We went back out and ate under the watchful eyes of the pigeons. As we sat there a young beggar girl walked past and shook her cup of coins at us. It seems that the beggars of the area know to sit close to the subway and pick up any travelers that come their way.

We were glad to get settled in our room. I was extremely excited to discover that the Hotel de Terrasse had wireless internet. Unfortunately this wireless was suuuuuper slow. After working hard several days in a row to get caught up with my schoolwork I was more than frustrated to have this glitch in the computer slowing me down. When Ahmee and Poppy went out for a walk I let all my frustration out by shouting and stomping around. Something I must mention is that when I was having this outburst I was worn out, stressed, and really wanting to catch back up with my schoolwork. Another something I must mention is that when I was waiting for my schoolwork assignments to download Ahmee said, "Rachel, we need to talk. Your mom sent me an email saying you were stressed out because you felt you didn't have enough time. What's up? What's going on?"

I told her something I'd told her before: that I did my best to get all of my work done on the computer so that all I have to do is copy and paste and then download more work. I told her that the two things that took up time were copying and pasting my articles and my assignments, and the computers slowness. Then I said that something else that tended to take time were emails.

Something that thoroughly frustrated me was that she, like so many other people before her, gave me a talk about getting my homework done before I email people. That's what I've been doing! I've heard all of this before at LEAST 6 times. I was writing the short email to Iain to see if any emails would go through on the impossibly slow network connection.

Did I have something to shout about? Oh yeah. Did the people in the other rooms think I was crazy? You bet. Did I care in the slightest? Nope.

After Ahmee and Poppy got back I started getting the computer to work for me. Still calmed me down a bit. What calmed me down even more was getting out of the room and going on a tour.

The tour started just outside the Moulin Rouge and went through what the tour guide George called "the bohemian section", this is the section of town that goes by the name Monmarte. In this section we saw the homes of famous artists like Van Gogh, and Picasso. We also went up to Sacre Coure, the cathedral that overlooks the city. This cathedral is made with a special stone (when it rains the stone soaks in the nasty particles that made it dirty-so where ever the rain hits is white) and was made by the government to try and get more people to take a greater part in their religion.

While on this tour I got to talk to a very friendly and nice Australian woman. I learned tons of things while on that tour, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to that woman.

Like I've said before, I'm able to talk to people of many different ages. The woman I talked to on the ferry ride over to France was in her 60's-70's, this woman was about to her 30's (told me so when she was talking about how her and her sister weren't talking at all anymore). It's interesting how much people share with each other when they're traveling. Is it that they're more relaxed because this person is in no way involved? Is it that they know they won't be seeing that person again so they talk about anything and everything-doesn't matter what pops into the conversation? I don't know. I'll have to see.

After we got back to the room I jumped on the computer and did more homework. I eventually shut the computer and went to sleep, listening to the people outside partying. You could tell the amount of alcohol was starting to get to them. Their singing went from bad to worse at a really rapid rate.