Watch Out For The Water Behind You!! ...we're in the ocean.

I have exactly 18 days left, including today. Leah leaves a
week from today. It’s all starting to sink in that my time abroad is almost
over. I can’t believe it. I told someone the whole Anne saga the other day and
it literally feels like a lifetime ago that I lived there, yet it was just
yesterday that she picked us up from the train station. Sigh. I’m not ready to leave.
BUT, there have been some exciting/terrifying/awesome things that have happened
in the past couple days that I want to recount. Friday was our Scottish friend,
Mairead’s birthday. We all hung out in the residence for a while and then had
agreed to go to a bar of her choice. It was so much fun and we danced the night
away. However, the real story was on the way back. A group of us, me, Leah,
Melissa, Guillermo, Giovanni, Elias, Peter all left to walk back home. Elias
had had a little too much to drink, so it was difficult to move quickly. Leah
got cold and decided to run home and the rest of us stayed to help get him home
safely. We were about halfway home when all of a sudden we heard one of our
friends, Agnes, screaming for Peter and Guillermo. It wasn’t a ‘hey, wait up’
scream either. We all turned around to see her and our other friend, Michael
with two big French guys. One of them was grabbing Michael’s shirt with his
forearm pressed up against his throat and the other one was up in his face
saying things we couldn’t hear. Peter and Guillermo took off running to go
help. The full story is that Agnes wanted to leave the bar about 20 minutes
after we had left, so Michael told her he would walk her home. On their way
back they heard two guys walking behind them. Agnes told Michael that she didn’t
feel comfortable because she thought they were following them. Michael wasn’t
worried though, so they blew it off. But they kept following them and getting
closer and closer. At this point Michael was a little worried and told Agnes that
if they grabbed her, he would try and fight them off, but if they grabbed him,
that she was to start screaming because they saw us up ahead. About a minute
later one of the guys came up behind Michael and put his arm around his throat
and asking him if he was scared over and over, hence Agnes screaming for us.
After they came over to help though, the guys backed up because Peter is around
6’4” and they didn’t know that their friends were close. Michael said later
they were just looking for a fight. I’m jumping around a lot, but after they
backed off, the boys got all of us girls moving quickly and Peter had to go and
get Elias who had wandered off. As soon as he was out of sight the French guys
picked up these huge rocks and started walking towards us shouting all this
stuff. Right at that moment though, Peter and Elias (who is just as tall as
Peter) intercepted the path in between them and our group and they stopped and
left after that. The only reason I’m telling this story (as I normally would
have left it out for the protection of my mother’s nerves) is because I would
like to point out that everything happens for a reason. If Elias hadn’t had
stopped to get food, stopped to eat it, wandered off, etc, we would have been nowhere
near to help Michael and Agnes. Michael said he was sure he would have ended up
in the hospital, and if he had been hurt, what would have happened to cute,
little, English, blonde Agnes. Praise to God for taking care of our friends and
planning everything out. Yes, at the time it was annoying that Elias was taking
ages to walk anywhere, but thank God he did. WHEW. So on to happier stories. Yesterday was one of the
best days ever! Got to sleep in got ready and met a bunch of our Irish friends and
some of their Gaelic football team to go to the BEACH! Last Thursday Leah and I
got invited to go to their Gaelic football practice. We were all in as it’s a
sport we had never played. Long story short, it was amazing. I got tacked by my
German friend who also came to play that night. My right leg has huge scrapes
from my knee to my ankle, but I still absolutely love it! Leah and I even
looked up the Indianapolis Gaelic football league afterwards. J We rode with Clodagh,
Jerome, and his girlfriend Felicity. It took around an hour to get there as it’s
right next to La Boule. I taught an Irish guy and some French men how to throw
an American football, which was really amusing. Meanwhile the guys all set up
the Gaelic football goals. Then we played BEACH GAELIC! Not sure if that’s ever
been done before, but it was a blast. We played some volleyball and then went
for a swim in the ocean. The Irish are so funny, they must have reapplied sunscreen
over ten times in the four hours we were there. They all said they are white,
get burnt to a crisp, and then return to white. Hah. We came back around 6,
showered and got ready really quickly, and headed over to one of our Mexican
friend’s apartment for Mexican Night! Ana and Andrea are the two Mexican girls
here and they made a dinner of Chilaquiles. Andrea made a homemade spicy salsa
to go with it and I almost cried with joy. I have been not only craving Mexican
for months, but anything with a little flavor/spice. It was delicious. For
dessert we had Dulce de Leche. Heaven. I got to talk for a while to a girl from
Uruguay. One of the things I love most about being in France is meeting people
from all over the world. It’s so interesting to hear about her life because it’s
so different from mine. All in all, yesterday was kinda perfect. J

Today’s a lazy day. I eventually have to study for my exam
which is..tomorrow. Eh. After this exam and a paper that’s due Thursday, school
is officially over at Audencia. I’m really happy summer’s almost here, but that
also means I won’t be here anymore. ;alkdgf;adjf.

croque Monsieur

I am starting to realize that my vacation is almost over and I don't like it one bit. Yesterday was insane. Well let me start before that. Our first day in Paris we had loose plans to go tour the Opera Garnier and go to Musée d'Orsay. So after sleeping in a little, we went to the opera; the inside is just breathtaking. One of the hallways rivaled if not surpassed the hall of mirrors that we had seen the previous day. While we were inside tooling around, we saw a poster for the ballet of Romeo and Juliet at the Opéra National de Paris-Bastille for that same day in about two hours. I glanced at Leah and told her that we could probably still make it if we wanted too. So after hurriedly finishing our self-guided tour, we ran to the metro station and arrived at the other opera ten to fifteen minutes later. Upon arriving, the woman informed us that the ballet was sold out and the line for potential extra tickets was log so basically we didn't have a chance. Thus being the stubborn women that we are, we thanked her and got in line. :) After waiting for around a half hour and getting up to second in line, the man told us that there were absolutely no more tickets. However no one else was moving, so we held our spot. The people right in front of us got some tickets for 89€ and bei at te front of the line, we figured to just wait until the play started, which at that point was in ten minutes. Finally the man came up and said the had 15€ student tickets. AHH! so we paid and literally had to run from the ticket office into the main building and 30 seconds after we sat down the lights turne off. Win. Our seats were ground floor in the dead center, last row. Basically amazing. The ballet is beyond description. I won't even try. Afterwards we had to pick up Kelli, Leahs friend from back home who came to visit for a week. After runnig through the metros and train stations ( naturally we were late) we got her and went to a cutie pizza place for a late dinner. We arrive at Amaury and Nathalies place around 11, chatted for a bit, an went to bed. Yesterday was basically a full day of sightseeing. We went to Notre Dame, Louvre, Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower (where there were, no joke, no less than 11 wedding couples), Napoleons Tomb, out to the best creperie in Paris for dinner, then back to the Eiffel to see it at night. IT SPARKLES!!!!! Oh word it was amazing. It happens on the hour so we saw it once and then stayed an extra hour until it sparkled again. I'm not sure how I missed it the last 2 times I've been here, butit was incredibleeee. Afterwards we took a quick trip to the Moulin Rouge and back to our couchsurfers. Today Leah and Kelli left for London, so I hung out at Amuaryand Nathalies place until I met Malika to exchange money andeat a delicious dinner at her house. LONDON TOMORROW!