Day 1: It's almost over

Bonjour mes amis (Hello my friends)! So today I arrived in France. It was the longest plane ride of my life. I slept 5 minutes! I met this kid named Richard though. I'm not too sure what happened to him after the airport. He didn't speak French. It was his first plane ride and he had no idea what he was doing. Best of luck to him I guess! I also watched Changeling. It was a good movie. I recommend it. The food on the plane sucked. O well. 

But then I got to France! The farms looked so much greener and prettier from the plane. When I got to the airport I had no idea what was going on. I went up and down these nauseating escalators without steps. I didn't even realize that I had made it through customs. All they did was stamp my passport.  I could've had God only knows what! Then, I got really scared because it took my luggage forever to get out. After my brief panic attack (not really, just really worried) I got free and then had no clue what to do. This is when Richard disappeared. Au revoir! I hope I taught him enough French! 

So at this point I'm freaking out because I basically don't know where to go to find Brad (thanks bud, joking)! Brad was running a tiny bit late. I walked back and forth a few times wondering what the heck to do, people looking at me weird. Just when I wanted to sit on a bench and cry, I went to an escalator and the doors open and who appeared, but my roommate in France, Rachel! The doors just parted and there she was. A miracle I tell you. So we wait the other crew and head to find Zoe. Zoe disappeared and Melissa and I tried and tried to use a pay phone to get ahold of Brad (Lesson number 1: Dial 0 when using area code in country, not outside country). We asked an Israeli Frenchman for help and he let us use his phone card. God bless his soul. I wanted to kiss him. End of story: We found Zoe and Brad. But little did I know that the worse was yet to come...

...The trek our hostile was rough. Luckily Melissa and I didn't take a taxi. Brad saved us tons through the Metro (thank you Brad!) But we had to drag all of our luggage. It was heavy. And after the trudge to the other side of the airport we were not ready (and we were really tired) for the trek to the hostel. Poor Zoe even got stuck in a door. We went up and down probably at least 15 flights of stairs (no joke, and they weren't small flights!) I must say, I regret taking just that one extra small bag. I'm in pain. But as Brad said, we didn't have to pay a lot of money for a taxi!

We came out of the metro around the Oops! Hostel (good name right? I hope the people in the room next to me having sex against my wall didn't make any oops!) It was really quite cool and different. The trees, the birds, the people, the baby cars. It was cool. We looked like weirdos though with all our bags. But hey, were dumb American tourists! Bring on the funny looks!

We finally made it to the hostel and got our phones activated. It was expensive, but I don't plan on using it much. In the evening, we went down a cute street with shops and tons of places to eat. It was fun. I had the best dinner ever. And it ended with the best mousse au chocolat (chocolate mousse). Afterwards Brad bought a bottle of wine (its so cheap here!) and we went back to our room. I passed out around ten (only 5 pm in the states). It was an exhausting day!