In Which I Try to Coherently Word Sentences

I am sitting on my bed in my room in my suburban village thinking I should fall asleep because I have to leave the house at the ripe hour of 9 a.m. tomorrow morning to begin the adventure entitled French Lessons (In Paris).

I realize I haven't blogged for a while and after reading some hilarious support-group-esque blogs, I have come to the conclusion that I should resume angrily tapping my fingers at a keyboard as a cathartic pre-sleep exercise in which I expel my body of its negative thoughts and irrational anger/anxiety.

I will begin by briefly going over my experiences of work over the past two weeks. My children are great, I really am lucky. Save for the few and far between scrunched-up-face screeching tantrums, hyper-fast child-french, and long walks with my directionally-challenged nine-year-old, I have enjoyed playing Uno, La Bon Paye (weird French monopoly), and a quintessential parisian game of the girl's where she designs high fashion outfits and pins them to her child-sized mannequin.

The first item on my angst list is LA BANQUE. I have gone into my local bank approximately five times now to open an account. The first time I was greeted by an overweight, old, greying French lady who spoke absolutely no English. She promptly told me I needed a rendez-vous and chided me for not bringing the extortionate amounts of documents prescribed by the bureaucratic French regime. After returning with said documents and dealing with three other employees in my rusty French (none of them spoke ANY English), I was sent away and returned once I had received what I thought were the documents to retrieve my bank card (carte bleu). Bearing in mind, last week and this week's pay was in a cheque. A VERY USEFUL PIECE OF PAPER. So I returned to be told that these were not the correct letters, and that a very secret hedwig-delivered admission to Hogwarts letter would turn up in the mail within the next couple of days with my very secret code that I would hand to them to open my very own chamber of secrets. I'M GETTING PAID 80 EUROS A WEEK HERE PEOPLE. So I received my hedwig letter and walked happily up to the bank, braving the pouring rain, to find out that it's closed on MONDAYS. ARRRGGHHH.

La Banque aside, I have had a lovely weekend in Paris. I will tell you about it because I like to think about positive things when I am doubting my very existence and life decisions.

On Saturday morning, I ventured out with some fellow aupairs to the Techno Parade, or Fifteen-Year-Olds With No Parental Guidance to Speak of Get Drunk and High in the Street Parade. We walked from Place De La Republique to Bastille drinking wine and beer at noon and being pelted with mini bags of Haribo candy while techno music blared and naked people frolicked.

We then had a small incident in a cafe wherein another aupair and I bought three euro baguette sandwiches, tried to rejoin our friend in line for the bathroom, and entered mistakenly into a face off with an angry, drunk, French man.

After returning home for a Skype session, I dragged myself back out to the centre of Paris in the dark, stormy night, quite unwillingly, and met up with some really great people, armed with pink grapefruit flavoured rose wine, to head over to a friend's birthday party. A lot of wine drinking ensued and good times were had by all.

I metro-d to my friend's apartment to save going all the way home at 1:45 a.m. and we chatted into the wee hours of the morning only to be promptly woken at 9 a.m. for brunch in Le Marais with twenty or so other girls.

Brunch was at Le Loir dans La Theiere, and was 21 euros, a quarter of my weekly salary, for the mot delicious breakfast food I have ever tasted. The coffee, the freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, the croissants, the pain au chocolat, the toast, the eggs... and don't even get me started on their pie.

We tried to enter the Grand Palais for the Patrimoine weekend, but were deterred by the 5 hour wait and so sat in a garden and soaked up the fleeting September sun.

Naps were had before our Sunday night venture to The Thistle, a great Scottish pub where good beer, pub quizzes, and genuine Scottish guys abound. Our pub quiz team came second-to-last and won a round of shots for our name: The French Toast Mafia.

After midnight nutella crepes and climbing the winding six stories to my friend's apartment, we collapsed and were once again promptly woken by the dreaded Alarm of Death and I returned home to begin working at 5, or 17h.

All in all, it's almost midnight, and I begin classes tomorrow, so I should probably bid you bonne nuit.

Love always,

Coral