I don't understand the Parisians! Literally. They talk too fast.

[rebecca_in_blue]

Things that have made me feel stupid recently...

• Finding out that the line in U2's "Beautiful Day" is actually, "Don't let it get away." Ever since that song came out in my sophomore year (of high school!), I thought that Bono was saying, "It's romantic in a way."
• Finding out that the German assistant, whom I have been calling Marlena in this journal because that’s how it’s pronounced, is actually named Marlene. I think I had this same problem with Marlene Dietrich, because I remember that I once mispronounced her name around Sara and got that disgusted sigh that I always get when I don’t know as much about celebrities as she does.
• Asking Heather (who is the other American assistant, but whose parents are Korean) if her family was from South Korea. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Well, of course.” She also said that she had never met anyone from North Korea in her entire life.

 Paris Recap...

I don’t want to say that Paris was disappointing, but, well, it was a little. I left around 10:30 yesterday morning with Heather, Marlene, Sara, Nakeisha, and Marianna (who is the assistant from Mexico, in case I haven’t mentioned her before). We arrived in Paris around 11:00, and the first sight we decided to see was Notre Dame Cathedral.

It wasn’t until I saw the Notre Dame in Paris that I realized how amazing the Notre Dame in Amiens had been. I knew the one in Amiens was bigger, but I hadn’t known that it was so much bigger, not to mention so much more visually stunning. I hate to say it, but after seeing the Amiens Notre Dame, the one in Paris looked like a small model. But the Paris Notre Dame certainly had about a hundred times more tourists. It was so crowded that when I took two steps away from the group, they disappeared in the crowd and I didn’t find them until almost twenty minutes later. Heather said later that there must be more tourists in Paris than there are Parisians. We went inside the cathedral, but it was even more crowded there. And I was so disgusted by many of the tourists – the gang of girls who decided to butcher “La Marseillaise,” the people who took pictures in parts of the cathedral marked, “Private prayer only, no pictures please” – that I got out as soon as I could.

After Notre Dame, we decided to walk along the River Seine to the Eiffel Tower, and that walk ended up as the majority of our day. We stopped at several nice sights, including the Pont Alexandre, but we soon realized that there were famous statues and buildings almost everywhere we turned and we couldn’t possibly stop to see them all. But the time we reached the Eiffel Tower, we were all so exhausted that we sat down on a bench in the park across the street and stayed there almost until it was time to catch the train back to Villers-Cotterets.

We went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, but I didn’t eat anything. (In fact, except for a Snickers bar, I didn’t eat anything the entire time we were there, but for some reason I didn’t feel that hungry. I kept looking for a fast-food restaurant, but I never saw one. There were about a billion cafes, though.) The two old Chinese ladies who worked at the restaurant were incredibly rude to us, and I think they were cursing us out in Chinese at one point, but they shut up pretty fast when they realized that Sara could understand everything they were saying.

I plan to get some of my Paris pictures developed tomorrow and mail them home. Thanks again to Grandma for giving me her digital camera.

Comments

Disgusted sigh! I love it!

[makebeliever.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in German the "e" at the end of lots of names is said like "uh." In names like Marlene and Helene you don't say mar-leen and he-leen like you would in English, you say mar-le-nu and he-le-nu. Marlene is actually a contraction of Maria Magdalene (Mary Magdalene), but I'm sure it's also used as a stand-alone name there. Never say my name obsession has not come in handy for some things!

I'm sorry you didn't have a good time in Paris. Maybe you can go again when there are fewer tourists-- though, wait, I doubt that every happens there. Hahaha! It's probably why people in France have such bad impressions of Americans. That and Double-V. It would have been funny if Sara started cursing back at the Chinese ladies.

Anyway, I hope you have a good week. I took the pictures over to Grandma's so she and the Mortimers got to see them. Grandma said to thank you for sending them; they "warmed her heart." That's just what she said! Oh, and she wants to know if you've gotten either of the letters she's sent. I miss you!

[babygoose85.livejournal.com]

Hah, did you ask Sara what they were saying?