god stole my hat.

In Notre Dame.

I know this is kind of a big accusation. But like. I don’t see any other option here.

We went to Paris last weekend. It was such a good time. Granted now everyone is dying of a cold because of our constant adventuring in freezing temps…but I think it was worth it. Also I’m saying that because I was sick the week before and so now everyone but me has it so KNOCK ON WOOD I don’t want this shiz again we go to Dublin on Saturday!!

Yah. We have one more week left. I can’t believe it. Time has seriously flown by. It feels like yesterday (cliché…BUT SERIOUSLY) that I was freaking my shiz in Albert Heijn (grocery store) overwhelmed by everything. And I still can’t read everything today but now I bomb through the aisles annoyed when people are walking too slow. Feels like home.

I’m getting off track. Today is about Paris.

Back to God. One of the days (they have blurred together to be honest…) we went to Notre Dame and Dani took off my hat and gave it to me or something I don’t know it disappeared into thin (holy) air. It was also in the middle of mass.

It is my genuine belief that God took my hat. Maybe he’s not too psyched I haven’t been to church in a while. It could possibly be because I didn’t get confirmed………………I don’t know. Point is that if God wanted my AWESOME HAT THAT I LOVED AND I NEED ANOTHER ONE then he can have it. If that is what he chooses to take from me then I am totally fine with that.

Sorry God. Seriously. MESSAGE RECEIVED!

me and my hat in happier times RIP

(I  even went back the next day to check if anyone turned it in. SO if it wasn’t the big guy and it was instead a little guy that took my hat from Notre Dame 1^st off you’re in way deeper than me cause you stole something in a church????? Also what if I had lice?????? (I don’t.) But seriously you would run that risk and pick up a hat off the ground and keep it you’re disgusting seriously like…I have lice.)

Anyways. Paris. Couple of interesting things occurred.

First off, everything here is in military time and since I don’t have the brain capacity to learn it (I just refuse to sit down and memorize it. Like my times tables. Or addition, basically.) That makes things a little bit confusing for me. Our train to Paris left at 19:00. (7pm) We got there like 10 minutes before 18:00 (6pm.)

I was confused by this.

As we stood on the platform everyone was like it’s gonna be here in a few minutes! And I was like wait what? I thought it was at 19 and they said no it’s at 6 to which the inside of my head exploded and I was just like what? Okay and so when the train came 5 minutes later I got on it and found my seat and was just like…whatever.

So I got in my seat. Shortly after that a drug dog german shepard came on. I instructed Dani NOT TO PET IT. That is super not allowed I know this because I almost did it once.

The dog promptly became interested in the kid behind us and the cop was like “This dog smells drugs. Is there any truth to that?” and the poor kid looked like he was gonna poop his pants and he also spoke French I think. There were like 7 different people representing each language for this stuff.

Long story short the kid got taken off of the train in handcuffs a few stops later. I eagerly watched this go down like it was my own law and order episode. I’m a rubbernecker. I felt bad for the kid though!!! Sometimes it’s hard to forget that marijuana is illegal elsewhere seeing as there are more coffeeshops here than dunkin donuts in Boston. (To people not from Boston: this is shocking and impressive)

Anyways. Then I sit down in my seat and I’m falling asleep like immediately. That is until a French lady wakes me up and tells me I’m in her seat. Now, I have obsessively checked to make sure I’m in the right seat but I freaked the f out and ran from the French lady because you should always run from French people.

After counting on my fingers 100 times and then comparing my ticket to my friends I realized…..

I was on the wrong z-ing train.

Everyone else had the ticket for 18 and I had 19. I promptly began to freak out. I just rubbernecked the kid behind me getting in huge trouble and if anyone knows I got a ticket for accidently not having a ticket (lol) on a train in Florida to which I promptly publically cried….so I was sure this was gonna be a doozy. I had three more hours left and they hadn’t come to check my ticket and what the f was I going to say to this maybe French person?????

I spent the next three hours like a little fugitive bouncing around the car. It was not unlike a suspense thriller.

They never checked the tickets.

So I survived. But I probably took about 4 years off of my life to be honest.

I thought that might be the end of my struggle for the day but fast forward to the streets of Paris where Katie, Jimmy and I are drinking wine out of water bottles trying to figure out how to get wifi to call Justin to find out where he lives.

We went to the American Embassy (Mcdonald’s) used the wifi and found out…promptly took the metro a few stops too far and I gotta tell you this not being able to text people is super inconvenient. We were lost in Paris at midnight.

We eventually got to Justin’s where we promptly passed out because we are 90 years old.

This blog post is getting so long. I’m going to sum up the happenings.

In one sentence: we did everything. Seriously. We did so much stuff. We woke up early, we got out in the world and we did all the things. It was obviously cloudy and freezing but it was overall a great time.

True to the beast that is advertising, half of our friends had to work the entire weekend and couldn’t adventure with us…so it was mostly the AMS crew all over the place.

We saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Troimphe, we stumbled across the site of Princess Diana’s death and left our initials.

We did a freezing cold hop on hop off tour and saw the entire city.

We went to Notre Dame (….) We ate so much good food it isn’t even funny and it’s also true that wine is insanely cheap. It was very nice. I’m not sure if the French seem to think that there are diamonds in Coca Cola or something because it was seriously 5.20 euro everywhere we went.  THAT’S ALMOST 7 DOLLARS!!!!! (I have an app to figure that out btw LOL math.) That is so many dunks iced coffees. Wow.

We spent so much time with so many good friends. It was a big Miami Ad School reunion. A big part of our MAS crew is in Paris and so all of the AMS crew was spoiled with great free accommodations with good friends. We all celebrated by getting super drunk one night and it made me feel like we were in Miami except I looked like a pale vampire with dry cracked hands and seriously I cannot handle living in this weather for real someone help me.

A highlight was certainly the night we celebrated Dani’s birthday. We got a bunch of wine and champagne and set up camp across the water from the Eiffel Tower where we popped bottles and sang for Dani’s birthday. It was, again, so fun to be with everyone, and Dani and I got probably one of the most epic photos of all time.

P.s Happy Birthday Dani: one of my most positive friends and a great roommate that puts up with my nonsense and knows exactly how much wine to pour me. You’re the best.

On Sunday we went to the Louvre. Culture, Y’ALL.  It was free museum day so it was…you guessed it…FREEE!!!! Which meant that the line was like a million years long. The sign said it was an hour and a half long.

FALSEHOODS!!!!

The girls stood in line (playing candy crush) and the boys went out to get us some breakfast from the embassy. (Yes…McDonalds.) Well long story short panic set in when about 20 minutes later we were nearing the end of the line. We were like…crapping our pants because what was gonna happen? We waited in this literally giant line and if they came now we would have to scarf down our food and there was no way this was gonna work ahhhhhhhhhhh.

And once again we couldn’t call each other. Technology is SO IMPORTANT.

So we got out of line right at the end. The crowd went wild. With ridicule. They laughed us out of town. Okay…like one guy murmered something about how we waited in the entire line blah blah like dude I know I was there.

Then the boys showed up. We all died and that’s the end of the story.

Well actually we got back in the huge line and we ate our burgers because the embassy had stopped serving breakfast. We looked very American.

Then the line went by and we had a great time at the louvre, right?

No.

As we approached the end of the line for the 2^nd time a bird kamikazi shat on us. This is real. This is real life.

Not only did we wait in the entire line twice but we got shat on.

It hit three of us.

It hit me on the bottom of my jacket.

It got Jimmy on the neck of his jacket. (SO MUCH WORSE. Poor Jimmy.)

So that was lovely. It’s effing huge. Justin told us a stat that if you spent 15seconds looking at each thing in the louvre it would take 17 months to see it all. Ain’t nobody got time for that so after we saw a majority of the stuff I literally felt like I had just run the Boston marathon.

It was awesome though.

After that we went to the huge famous graveyard Pere Lachaise where we saw the Doors’ Jim Morrison’s grave. It was the one thing Jimmy wanted to do.

We also saw my man Oscar Wilde (writers unite) and Chopin’s grave. There are a lot of huge names in there and it was an insanely cool place. Some of the graves went back to the 1600’s. Unreal.

Paris is huge. I had no idea. I am so soooo happy that we went. Not only did we get to experience an amazing and historic city…but we got to spend a quality time with a bunch of good friends. This program is tough because you make such serious bonds with people for the first year and then you never know if/when you will see them again…so spending that time together was such a serious gift. Like…a whole bunch of my friends in PARIS, FRANCE?? What??

French people really weren’t that mean by the way. They didn’t like my inability to speak French but I’m serious I was frozen in space I had no idea what to say ever and all I could think of was weird Spanish stuff or a mix of Dutch and it was much better that I didn’t try.

And that was Paris. Next up…Dublin and Rome!!

I can’t believe this is almost over…but I’m also missing the good old U S of A and all of my friends and family there. And convenience. Just convenience in general.

BUT I’m gonna try to fit a few more posts in here before I fly on home, I promise!!

xo tay