Pakito's and Le Pape

Wow so many things to upsdate on. First I will start with Thursday...

I bought myself a cell phone finally since I realized that I would definitely not be getting Internet in my French house on my laptop, which means no skype. Sad. But the cell phone and email will have to suffice I guess. Thursday night, our group of 10 went out to dinner together with all 4 of our professors and Dr. Morgan to Pakito's, which is a tapas bar. We ordered lots of appetizers and drank lots of sangria. The sangria, however, was not the best part of the night (though it was a highlight). The best part turned out to be the fact that I got to sit right across from Madame Chauchat at the table. She is absolutely hilarious and adorable and incredibly personable. She is one tough French grammarian but as a person she's just so much fun (and she's in her late 50's or so). And she has a really romantic story. She is an American who came to France for her French studies when she was 18. When she was 14 she had spent a summer in France and had met a few Frenchies at that time and she came back to the same area of France at 18, so she was abke to meet up with the people she had met 4 years earlier. And while she was hanging out with this group of French friends, she and her future husband Pierre ended up falling in love with each other over a course of like 3 months. Only thing was, Pierre was like 33 at the time. She said she was so scared to tell her parents about him but they were so in love that they just knew they wanted to get married, and they did very soon after they told both of their families. And ever since then, since she was 18, she's lived in France with her husband and are together still. So cute. Although she is very happy with her husband and has a great family in France, she did say that she missed being in America sometimes because Americans are more personable than the French because we are more touchy feely with each other. We hug each other a lot and are sometimes very animated when we talk and we just not really afraid to touch each other. The French don't hug each other ever unless you're dating and they're just more reserved than Americans. Like sometimes when Americans talk to each other, they'll touch the other person's arm or shoulder or something like that, but the French just never communicate like that. This is also evident in how Europeans dance versus how Americans dance. We dance very close to each other and are always touching whereas Europeans in many cases don't touch when they dance. They just dance in front of each other without really touching. If they do touch when they dance, they do a swing dance kind of thing--none of the grinding that you get in America. Europeans aren't prudes, it's just not the social norm. And that is what Madame Chauchat said she missed about the U.S. (not the grinding) but that closeness that Americans feel they can have with each other. I think I'd miss that too.

The next day we went to our second civilization class and a woman named Madame Roussel came in and gave us an intense lecture about the Chateau of Versailles in French. She gave that lecture as if she were talking to a French university class. It was tough and LONG because the class was 2 hours and Ive never had so much information thrown at me like that, even in English. I got a good part of the lecture but some parts would've gone cmpletely over my head had Dr. Morgan not been in there writing notes for us on the board while this lady rambled and rambled in French. I was really thankful when that class ended, and even after two hours she still wasnt done talking! She kept going a good 7 minutes after class had technically ended and we probably would have been there for another hour had Dr. Morgan not stopped her. Overall the class was pretty interesting in terms of the information given, but wow was it intense. After class the 8 of us who were going to Paris to see the Pope (or le Pape en français) went to buy lunch and dinner for ourselves and met up with the kids from St. Jean's. We met a group of students who we ended up hanging out with for most of yesterday and today. Their names were Arnaud, Paul, and Adrien. Those three hung out with us pretty much the whole time. Arnaud was the best to talk to because he spoke English really well because he had lived in Ireland for three years. The other boys were harder to understand because they spoke fast and used a lot of words I didn't know because they used a lot of slang. And they couldn't really speak English so well either. A lot of other French students would try to speak English with us (and many times we just had to communicate in Frenh) and it was pretty funny. They loved asking us questions about the U.S. and a lot of them told us they had been there and really liked it. We all had a lot of fun interacting with them even though they were all quite a bit younger than us (especially me, lol. I'm definitely the old one on this trip). They were mostly 16 or 17 year olds on the trip, so they weren't way younger but definitely way too young for me--a lot were really flirtatious, especially this one kid named Edouard. That kid was definitely a player--he took an immediate liking to Monika, but he pretty much flirted with everyone. The kid was a bit ridiculous. We got to know these guys really well because all we did this weekend was wait. We took the train to Paris and then the metro to Notre Dame. We got to Notre Dame around 3:45 and had to sit outside in this sandy space for 2 and a half hours before we could start watching the Pope on the big screen that was outside. He came on the screen around 5:30 where he went into a church and was welcomed by various important members of the French community. Then he gave a speech and afterwards the screen showed him walking outside and getting into the Papamobile (no joke, his car was literallly called the Popemobile) which I guess is a pretty accurate description since it was a specially designed car. The front looked like a limo but after the part for the driver had been built, the designers just built this rectangular plate-glass dome thing that had a nice big white leather seat for the Pope to sit in. It was like a carriage-car, and it was clear so everyone could see the Pope. People in the streets went completely nuts. After driving around in the Popemobile throught the streets, the Pope finally arrived at Notre Dame but I didn't really get a good look at him because the crowds were so huge. The Pope went inside, gave a long speech in French and then there was a small mass. After the mass the Pope changed and then came outside Notre Dame to address us and all the other students who had amassed outside the church to see him. He gave a very inspirational speech and then blessed us. It was pretty sweet. Then there was a small concert after the Pope left that we stayed for and we had about 2 hours of free time to go to prayer vigils or do whatever before the candelit walk through Paris. After the concert, Monika, Katie, Elizabeth, Michele, and I went to a cafe to get some coffee because we knew we'd have a long night ahead of us. We sat down outside and I'm not kidding you, immediately when we sat down we got hit on by these two drunk French guys who were about 28 years old. One guy gave us bisous and when he did that he gave all of us an actual kiss on the cheek. This would've been cute if they guy were actually cute. He had the potential to be cute but he was missing a couple of teeth so that kind of killed any kind of attraction. This guy's name was Cyril. The other one just wasn't all that cute--i don't remember this guy's name but I'll just call him Blondie because he had really light blond hair. Blondie first started talking to us and then Cyril joined him a bit later. They asked us what we were doing in France and were especially concerned with how long we would be in Paris. They wanted us to go to a discotheque with them but we told them we were only here for that night to see the Pope and that we were doing a candlelit walk that evening. They wanted to hang out with us so bad--it was a bit ridiculous. At one point, Cyril left our table and went back to his and then he started flirting with Elizabeth by just eyeing her all the time and waving and she totally played along with it. While Elizabeth and Cyril were eye flirting from across their tables, Blondie asked us all if we were Catholic since we were here to see the Pope, and everyone was Protestant except for me. So we told him this and he suddenly just says "fucking Protestants" stands up, looks at me and says "Julianne (despite numerous attempts to correct his pronunciation of my name, the word "Jillian" just could not get through his beer brain--not to mention, no one is named Jillian in France...oh well). So he says (in French) "Julianne, come with me" and he bends his arm for me to take (he was going to take me to his table with toothless Cyril and his other sketchy friends and he only wants me to come with him because I'm Catholic). Obviously this is not a situation I want to get myself into. I say no because he just insulted my friends. This guy then gets on one knee in front of me and begs me to come over to his table, which is about when we all decided that it was about time to leave. So we all stand up and Blondie looks at me as I'm leaving and tells me that I'm breaking his heart. Although he was trying to illicite sympathy from me, all I could think was "Ew." Cyril however was not going to let Elizabeth get away from him. He stopped her and Elizabeth, who is really nice, let him talk to her and accepted the card he gave her, and he told her to call him. While that was one of the sketchiest encounters I've ever had in my life, it was definitely memorable.
After that, we met up with the St. Jean group again and walkeed throughout the streets of Paris with our candles while prayers were recited. We ended up using this time to just talk more with our new French friends. After walking for close to three hours, Katie, Monika, and I walked with Paul, Arnaud, and Adrien to the nunnery where we would be sleeping for the night. It was 1:30 in the morning at this point and we didn't get to the nunnery until 2:05. The boys and girls were then separated. Our stuff shouldve been brought to the nunnery and placed in our respective rooms for us to find, but for some reason the French teachers thought my bzgs belonged to one of the boys. I guess they read my name as Julian. So I had to walk into the boys' room which was pretty much the equivalent of me walking into a boy's locker room because a lot of them were changing out of their clothes when I walked in. Edouard was pretty excited to see me though--he waved. Thankfully my stuff was in there, and I grabbed it and booked it out of there because it was pretty awkward. I finally crawled into my sleeping bag at like 2:40 and slept for about an hour on this hard floor. At 4:00 we were woken up to pack up our things, eat some breakfast and head to Les Invalides to attend the mass that the Pope would give. We got there at about 5:15 and already there were a bunch of people there and many had camped outside for the night. So we sat around for almost five hours until the mass started. We were all so tired because we'd either gotten only one or two hours of sleep or no sleep. But it was fun because we just hung out again with the students and had them teach us slang. We also met a new friend. His name is François and he was the cutest thing. He's had pretty big glasses and was such a nerd in the way he looked and also in his mannerisms but it worked so well for him. He was so funny and so fun to talk to. He definitely kept us entertained until the Pope came, and he was my favorite Frenchie. That kid was just adorable.
The Pope finally arrived at 10:00 and I actually got a good view of him rolling up in his Popemobile. Then he did the mass in French and that was really cool for me getting to experience a service that I've experienced many times in my life in a very different way. I knew what was going on but I just didn't know the French equivalents for what I was supposed to say. Nonetheless, it was very cool. I slept during the homily though because my lack of sleep kicked in at that point (plus I got to sit down at that moment). I left at communion because it would've taken forever to distribute communion to the literally thousands of people who had gathered there for the mass. Plus I was tired and incredibly hungry and Katie, Monika, Elizabeth, and I decided it would be best to leave then to beat the crowds who would be flooding the train and metro stations after the mass ended. I'm so glad we did because we got back into Versailles around noon, ate lunch, and went home to sleep. I slept from one till 8:45...it was fabulous. Overall, the Pope experience was mostly about a ton of waiting and then not really being able to see anything, but I'm glad I did it. Had I not gone, I would not have had all these stories to tell. And now that I've written a novel for you all, I'm going to bed. Bonne nuit!