Super-Duper Wacky n' Tacky Euro Adventure

And try and write about yesterday because it was such an insane day; it's worth remembering.

Where to start? Well, I guess it starts with the Russian invitation company telling me thursday that their advertised process time of five business days is actually six days. And then six days in the afternoon on top of that. You see, with my many adventures with the Russian embassy here in Paris, I know that they are only open every day from 9 to 12 am; this would mean that I would now have to get my invitation and application in at 9am monday morning to be ready by wednesday morning, the day I left. I didn't even wanna think about the price. But wait. My internship presentation was scheduled for 10am Monday morning. So somefrantic maeuvering rescheduled it to 9am (there are 5 people that need to attend) so i could bounce quickly and go to the embassy. Well after pleading with them, they decided to send me the invitation on thursday on not let me know until the Stanford center (where it was being faxed) was closed.

So comes Friday morning. I was due in to work. That couldn't happen. I e-mailed my boss to let him know I would be in late. As soon as the Stanford center opens at nine I'm in the building, and, thank God, someone was able to read through all the cyrillic and kindly put the invitation in my mail box. But I still had work to do. You see, I don't have any documents saying I have health insurance for the summer. The Russian embassy website says I need this. So, I did what I only knew best: I forged the exsting letter to include the summer season. Frantic running around the computer room for half and hour and it was done. Documents in hand, I began my trek. You see, Russians purposefully put their embassies in inconvenient places to discourage visa applicants. The one in Paris is right on the edge of the city at the side of the bois de Bulogne. I amazingly got there in about 30 min from school and waited the standard ten minutes it takes to go through security. I got yelled at by cutting in line to get the special American visa application (with questions like "have you ever worked for any charitable of non-profit organizations"), and took my place again at the back in a line that has never known a short existence. Luckily about one hour was just the time I needed to finish the endless application and get to the front of the line. I almost didn't have my picture pasted to my app (I've made this terrible mistake before) but a very nice person behind me had some extra. Got to the exact same lady that kicked me out for cursing three months ago, and get this: she accepts it right away. Really. Like, looked over it and asked when I needed it ready. Didn't even asked for my forged documents. So I told her I needed it Wednesday, so that would be the price to expedite for three days. Nope, for reasons always unknown, they are closed Monday, so that would be the 48 hour expedition. Oh yeah, I would have been there Monday morning. So I actually get through, they take my passport, and I pay the special "Amerikanski" price for business visas that is of course no where listed on their normal price list.

It was time to finally get to work. Got there about 11:30 am. My boss is nowhere to be seen. I thnk he's in a meeting, but at least I avoid the awkward "hey, so did you get my e-mail?" But once I settle down, a quick check of the email gives me some more good news. My "intership report" which needs to be presented at my internship presentation (remember that thing at 9am Monday?) needs to be printed and assembled into the nice presenation booklet style before the weekend. The offices are not open on the weekend. One quick note on the bosses desk and I'm off again in less than an hour.

Decide to take a quick break to visit my local CROUS and get some nice state-subsidized lunch. But no time for enjoying, this was to go. So I'm eating my sandwich and walking to my destination, which the French generally look down upon. I get to EUSA (the internship people) office and Julie invites me to slow down a bit and finish my lunch outside. This was nice (especially with the amazing weather!) but the French also take too long for lunch. Way too long. I had shit to do, and they were small talking and relishing their dessert. Finally get into the office and figure out what a bitch it is to create these reports. Basically, there is a lot of printing, a lot of punching, and a lot of assembling. Five reports in total. Hour and a half later I'm off with five fresh reports in my hand. Had to make a quick trip to the Stanford center to drop off a report and get back an edited paper (by the way, rarely have i seen so much red ink on a page). Finally back at the office to finish with about two hours left to work. He was there this time, so let the awkward conversations commence. Oh yeah, he also forgot that I was leaving, so he gave me all that good advice and such and we exchanged thank-yous, and we looked over the last spreadsheet that I had done.

Heading home I call up Tim to see if he wants to see the first game of the World Cup at our local cheap pub. Tim is kinda drunk because it's his last day at work and they kindly sent him off with many glasses of wine. So of course he's down, but he was gonna be late. So I head it home and find a pleasant surprise: my host mother was not gonna be home for the night, so she left my dinner ready. This is always a happy time for me as I get to eat at a decent hour. So by seven I was full and ready for some yummy beer and football. Tim's tipsy self gets over this side of town just in time to see the last 15 minutes, but no worries, there are plenty of games to see in the next month.

A little more home time and, even though I'm rediculously tired by this point, there is talk of a champs de mars (garden in front of the Eiffel tower) gathering. Since it is freaking amazing weather, I had to go. So after a daily monop run to get "supplies" I head over to the champ. Btw: even though I get there around 11pm, the sun is still showing its last traces, which makes for an amazing visual spectacle. Takes me about 45 min to find my Stanford peeps, but all the other drunk French kids their (there were tons of them!) are giving me entertainment. Stanford kids end up not sticking around their for long. But Mr. David Pfau, who is always down for everything, decides to stick it around with me. No sooner do I shake his hand after finding him than drunken French girls come to chat and "practice their English." Ok, you know I'm a good little boy, but I encourage Pfau to indulge as much as he can. And they indulge back. They notify us that an American accent in French is actually kinda sexy. This is the first time i've heard this, but I'm willing to entertain it. After a few hours and the lights on the eiffel tower dissapointingly going out (but not before a "grand finale" of sparkling lights!) and it's time to head it out. Young Mr. Pfau grabs the digits and we're good to go. Of course we start walking the wrong direction for the night bus, but we finally find the right way and luck decides to reward us: sandwich grec for only 3.50 euro. Oh yeah. Chow time. Then a lot more walking and we find it. By that time, i was in walking distance and I get back to my apt before 4. The very sad part is my very trusty dPod has decided to poop out on me again and I can't seem to fix it this time, so I had no one to accompany me on my walk home.

Well, what a day. But it seems as if I'm off again. Some French girl that Chris knows knows about a party, and well, you know how that goes. Pray for my papers and their hopeful conclusion sometime soon.

and I'm walking in to the kitchen here in the office to get my second cup of black coffee - which I don't really need - and what do I see, but a pristine new espresso machine waiting for its new users. Now everyone in Paris knows that espresso's are for after lunch and American coffee is for the morning. So I dared not try it then, but I was drawn to the also pristine sign next to it, informing the office of the instructions to manipulate the new gadget. Anyone who's ever worked in an office environment knows about these. Mostly it's "Don't forget to wash up!" or "Please put me back in the cupboard." Always cute but annoying that someone felt it necessary to remind you. Well, as there was a perfectly fine-looking espresso machine next to the new one, I investigated a bit and found a pleasant message at the bottom:

"Attention : ne pas brutaliser la machine. C'est la troisième."

Couldn't help but laugh at how the French do cute but polite: "Attention: don't beat (or brutalize translated directly) the machine. This is the third one." Oh cultural differences.

and I've moved on to my human rights class. Somehow I got stuck with the right to die for my expose and the death penalty for my final paper. Just finished with my expose that I'm giving tomorrow and damn, am I depressed. I don't know if I can take much more of this. More than anything, through this class I've learned how depressing life can be sometimes. And Then you have to go to domestic and international courts just to fight for your right to be not as depressed, but still be in a shitty situation. Oh man. Think I might get back to econ after this.

Saturday wasn't the crazy night I thought it might be, because Johnny had to head it in early to catch his flight next morning. Tim was being lame (to his credit, it's his first time flaking these entire two quarters) writing papers and such. I had just had a meeting with my internship tutor and he gave me a go-ahead with that project, so I felt I deserved at least one night out. Not that I hadn't gone out the previous night, but that's beside the point. So Erin and I were feeling a bit agitated in the feet and there was only one cure: dancing. So we set off for this salsa club that I had been introduced to the week before. The only problem was that I knew the quarter where the club was, but not the exact street or the name. Oh yeah. One of my personal pet peeves (sp?) is when people bring me around on pointless journeys where they don't exactly know where they're going. Sat night I did that exact thing to Erin. But luckily she was ready to roll with it, and we settled for a place called Cafe Jade in the same quarter (I looked the next day and it turns out "La Pena" was about a two minute walk from Cafe Jade). Cafe Jade is not the cheapest place in Paris. In fact it's one of those places where trendy Parisians and clueless foreigners congregate to show off their latest purchases from Galeries Lafayette. Luckily though, the cocktails were good - and strong. So we finished up our very tall and pretty drinks and decided that we were not sober enough to return home. The only solution: seek out more dancing or more drinks. Went to one of my fav's this time: the Moose Canadian bar. So stereotypically North American student bar, but you know what, sometimes you need that vibe after the trendy bars. By 4 am we still had not found a place to dance, so we decided to write a rain check and head it home. Again, the stupid birds starting singing the arrival of the sun as soon as I got in. As if I didn't have enough of that the night before.
I wasn't completely unproductive yesterday. Got some good stuff done on human rights. I think the employees at cafe Malongo are prety much sick of me now ordering only one coffee and then plopping myself down for at least two hours with my laptop in front of me. Oh well. It wasn't made any better when my table-mate Zoe the other day spilled almost half a sack of decorative coffee beans on the floor here and then bounced before anyone noticed. Johnny and I were subsequently ridiculed for the act by the lady cleaning up an hour later. Shouldn't have said 'I'm sorry,' now she realy thinks I did it.
I know it's not gonna be fun, but I just gotta get through this week and then I'm home free. about 18 pages to go.