another day over already. the days are starting to go by so quickly. and class hasn't even started yet. (officially tomorrow, and every weekday until july 30th.)
it's hard to plan stuff with everyone's differing class schedules, and because there are so many people, but hey, we'll work around it. i'll go do stuff by myself if i have to, i suppose, but i don't want to, except for a little bit of the time.
today we had our placement test in the morning. i think i'll get intermediate 1 or 2 but i'm not sure. in the afternoon we attempted to go to the catacombs but they were closed (since it's monday, surprise surprise) so we went to Père Lachaise instead. :) It was nice. There was a surprisingly high amount of asian graves (all Chinese except for one Vietnamese.) I saw the graves of Frederic Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde (whose grave is randomly very famous), and Jim Morrison, among others. I still want to come back for Maria Callas and Francis Poulenc. I wonder where Debussy and so many others are buried?
home for dinner, the first night in 3 days. I have a few qualms about my homestay but tonight's dinner was not one of them. It was very good.
I really want to see everyone's homestays. And the dorms. It seems so interesting. But I shouldn't, lest I compare and FOMO. :(
Anyway, on to the funny story, which involves me speaking a LOT of French, just like the last funny story (so apparently a story is only a funny story when I struggle through it in broken French. :))
So while we were walking around Pere Lachaise, Jose goes "can you call me rebecca? i think i lost my phone." such a stressful thing, right? so i called him three times but no one picked up and it obviously wasn't anywhere in his bag. So he left it on the metro. he was surprisingly easygoing about it, too, saying "there's nothing I can do." And it's pretty true--once you lose your phone somewhere (especially a roving subway train), it's hard to do anything to get it back. We shrugged and kept going.
About 45 minutes later, my phone rang. A call from Jose--quel étrange! So I answered it, and it was the person who found his cell phone, on the metro! HOW KIND OF HIM to actually give a damn and call the first person on his missed calls list! And the one who can speak French, at that! La gentillesse des étrangers. The kindness of strangers. Of course I couldn't hear very well and had to keep asking him to repeat and felt stupid, but after talking for about 15 minutes we decided he would leave it at the information desk of a metro station for us to pick up. I said n'import où--it doesn't matter where. So, he chose Les Halles, which, unbeknownst to us, is one of the biggest and most complicated metro stations in all of Paris, with connections to 7 different metro lines and all 4 RER lines. It probably has about 20 information desks.
Luckily, I guess this guy's plans changed, because as we were leaving the cemetary he called me again, saying that he would leave it at the "kiosk" next to the Fnac (a kind of electronics superstore) in and/or underground station of Les Halles. (one of the few things he said to me in English: "it's undergwound.") I went with Jose to accompany him, because my French is higher than his and because he is introverted and also gets lost easily. :) We didn't know, but Les Halles is not only Paris' biggest metro station, but also a GIANT mall attached with every store imaginable. We walked around for a good while, even using the directory, and still found it almost impossible to find a kiosk next to a store. Well, voilà. My phone rang again. Another call from Jose. Or rather, mysterious-mall-employee-who-has-Jose's-phone. Just in the nick of time, when we were tired and on our knees, we got another call. She was able to direct me to the location of the kiosk (about 20 feet from where we were) and Jose got his phone back. :) :) It was a miracle. Imagine! He would've not had his phone the entire rest of the trip, a recipe for disaster. He would've had to pay for the phone and the SIM card lost, and since he didn't get insurance, it would have been very expensive. So what a great day, thanks to the kindness of a couple strangers! :)
Right now, my host mom is chattering on the phone in French to her cousin. The television is playing a French TV show. People out in the street are speaking French as they pass. French French French French French. It's a fact that you take for granted, that you think you know and understand--the world has multiple languages, and English is only one of them. But English has always felt so central to my existence that it does take some insight and internalization to realize that entire cities and societies and countries operate entirely--for business, for academia, in the street-- using a language which I only have a passing understanding of. THIS is the language the little kids yell to eachother in the park, or say to their mamans on the train. It's the only language they know, the one that connects and makes sense to them. THIS is the language that the african moms on their way to work on the metro talk to each other in. THIS is the language that the businessmen are reading in their newspapers and muttering into their cell phones. It's French, and it's all French, and it's their world. Sometimes it's a little tiring and even fearsome to have such a weakness in you--I can't understand my host mom, or the TV, or the people passing in the street. I could get a weak jist at best. All this seems so stupid, like I already knew it, and I did intellectually, but it really does take this actual physical tangible sensory experience for it to become real to me. It's so interesting to be here and think these things.
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