Ethan after a homerun ball landed IN his hands…and then he dropped it.

The perks of working for GiveForward…welcome back to America!

Animal style, mustard grilled, with peppers please…

They say that happiness is not a goal but a state of mind.  And I can’t help but feel that I’ve found it.  From the day I arrived in Australia, more specifically Bondi Beach, I thought “Uh oh, I love it here.”  A strange reaction, but it was true.  I came on this trip thinking I would definitely return to Chicago.  Well, I guess I should rephrase that.  I came thinking that I would NOT want to return so that I should book a return flight because that would make the decision making process of whether or not/when to return easier…it hasn’t.

Today was yet another great day on this adventure I began just 2 short months ago.  I have traveled thousands of miles, caught up with people whom I’ve met in life that I wondered if I’d ever see again and experienced the kind of inspiring moments that you hope for when you embark on a trip like this.  You would think I’d say, “Ok this has been great, now back to reality,” but for some reason I can’t.  I’m learning that “reality” for me might be a constantly changing lifestyle…and I’m ok with that.

Because I have moved around a lot since college, I have had the following questions posed to me numerous times: “what are you running from?” and/or “what are you trying to find?”  The truth is that I want to say to people asking me this, “what an absurd question.”  The implication that I am looking for something could be true, but equally as plausible is the idea that I just enjoy new experiences, meeting new people and a constantly stimulating lifestyle.

I called my sister this morning for her birthday.  She is the closest friend I have and she is currently on the other side of the world.  She is happy, in love, successful in her business and on her top 5 priority list of things she wants (and, sister, I hope I’m not overestimating my importance on this one)  me coming home is probably top 2.  For those who don’t know, she is my hero.  Truly.  If you have someone in your life who you respect, look up to, want to be like, enjoy being around and think is pretty much the most impressive person you’ve ever had the privilege of calling a close friend kudos, but he/she doesn’t hold a candle to my sister…sorry.

So today I went to the beach, sat by the water and just let myself think.  In the serenity provided by a cool breeze, crashing waves, and  a healthy amount of wine, I thought about what I want, what my heart is telling me to do and what the implications will be if I just say “F*** it” and do what my impulsive spirit is begging me to do.  I feel alive.  I feel happy to have options.  I feel excited about what the future holds.  This is a feeling I wish everyone could have and, like everyone else, is a feeling I have found myself missing at times as I try to grow up and become an adult.

Figuring out who you want to be is not easy.  Learning what makes you happy is exhausting.  But I can’t help but think that as my dear friend Katy Burke wrote to me in a very meaningful and much needed email , “I think if your 20 year old self could look at your 27 year old self right now she’d say ‘Yes. You are exactly where you are supposed to be.’” 

So that’s it.  There is not going to be a “here’s what I’ve decided” line at the end of this post.  I still don’t know.  I’m torn between two equally appealing realities, and I can’t help but feel grateful to have options.

During our time in Sydney, Meghan and I have stayed solely with couch surfing hosts.  If you haven’t heard of couchsurfing.org, go check it now and get on it.  It is a wonderful way to open-minded and adventurous people even if you never leave your own city.  Last night, over a traditional Indonesian dinner with my couch surfing host, Simon and the Swiss couple that is couch surfing alongside Meghan and myself, I was told a story that made me have confidence that this “follow your heart” mentality I’ve had for quite some time can have a happy ending. Andrea, a Colombian engineer and Phillip a Swiss engineer both working for Johnson and Johnson met in Ohio when they were attending a month long conference there.  As practical and punctual Phillip puts it, “There was no reason we should have pursued a relationship with each other.  It made no sense, but I just had this feeling in my gut.”  To hear Andrea recount the story is more romantic, perhaps because she sounds exactly like Sofia Vergara from Modern Family and is constantly smiling.

“I am the first to spot heeem,” she recounted.  “And then we go to an outing for golf, and I go to his van and say, ‘there is room for me?’ and then I seat next to heem.”  She smiles broadly. Phillip blushes at this point in the story and explains, “She is Colombian.  So she was touching me a lot.  And I wondered, ‘is it that she likes me or this is just how she is?’”

She counters with, “No! Not a lot, but I say ‘oh look that,’ and I put my hand on his arm, his knee.”  After this description, Phillip is smiling as big as Andrea. They spent the next 3 weeks “dating” and when it was over they decided to just go for it.  So they boarded their flights, hers headed to Colombia and his to Switzerland, and made plans to meet up in a month.  After a few weeks, Andrea admitted that she wasn’t sure if he was as serious about making it work as she was. 

“Then, a few days later (Valentine’s Day) I receive a giant bouquet of flowers.  So beautiful and I think, ‘jeesss, he is serious.”“Best money I’ve ever spent,” Phillip says with a smile as Andrea reaches out and puts a loving hand on his leg. 

To hear them talk about this meeting and how the timing couldn’t have been more off and that there was really nothing other than this instinct they both had that motivated them to give it a shot was inspiring.  This trip has been full of conversations like this over dinner, over wine, under a starlit sky on the beach.  It’s part of the magic of traveling and meeting other travelers.  What Phillip and Andrea described was the same, “we should just go for it” feeling that Meghan and I felt the first day we discussed taking this trip over Bloody Marys at Dunlay’s in Chicago.  Taking this trip felt like something we couldn’t not do, and it has been as fruitful for us both as we hoped it would be. Everyday we either walk or run along the Eastern Beach Path that runs from Coogee to Bondi Beach.  A more perfect backdrop for life consideration could not exist.  So, as often happens when you create room for inspiration, you start finding it everywhere.  This morning it was in a book called “Our Favorite Poems” a collection of the favorite poems of New Zealanders.  I sat on the balcony that overlooks Coogee Beach, with a cup of coffee and perused the book until I found a poem called “If” by Rudyard Kipling.  Given that this trip has given me the free time and peaceful setting to consider what I want out of life, I am not surprised that I found so much meaning in this poem.  But I also felt compelled to share it.  Hope you enjoy!

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

I realize I haven’t written about China, and truth be told I’ve been avoiding writing about some great moments here in Sydney because I felt obliged to address my time in Beijing first.  To make a short story even shorter: I came, I saw the Great Wall, I spoke more Spanish in China than English, Meghan got food poisoning.  I could talk more about our whirlwind 2.5 day tour of China, but it’s boring.  I realized as I was recounting my version of our plane ride from Paris to Beijing at a dinner party last night, that the most entertaining part of Beijing happened about 30,000 feet above it. I’ll start the story this way…what have you heard about Ambien?  Maybe you’ve heard about Tiger Wood’s extracurricular use of the sleeping pill for adult activities, maybe like Meghan you have a friend who woke up trying to eat his own hand, or maybe like me you have well traveled friends who swear that if you take it on your redeye from Paris to Beijing, you’ll sleep the whole way.  Meghan and I took his advice…and that’s where the story gets good.

We made our flight by 8 minutes.  The train from Paris having technical problems coupled with the fact that Meghan and I left late meant we arrived at the absolutely last moment (they actually shut a gate behind us after we got to security allowing no one else through).  Still coming down from the anxiety produced by our close call, Meghan and I stood in line waiting.  I was hesitant to take this notorious sleeping pill as I was afraid I might wake up spooning my seat neighbor and/or end up sleep-eating the entire contents of an airline food cart.  Meghan was eager to take it because she said she wasn’t feeling that well and wanted to sleep.  The next 8 hours of my life can only be described as…hazy. You know the flashback scenes in movies?  The ones where they use a filter that looks like the shutter of a camera and it flutters open and shut to imply first person perspective and a disoriented person opening and closing their eyes?  That was my flight.  I took the Ambien, feeling a bit of trepidation and promptly put my inflatable neck pillow in place (thanks Desi and John for the useful and stylish Xmas gift).  I closed my eyes, as the little Chinese girl behind my continually kicked my seat (which she was not reprimanded for) and drifted off into a deep sleep. 

Cut to slow blinking shutter and a pale looking Meghan…with great effort I opened my eyes because I saw Meghan standing in the aisle at my seat.  For a girl who took an Ambien and can sleep until 2pm without prescribed medication this was not normal.  She told me that she thought she has food poisoning and had been throwing up for an hour (including of course the Ambien).  So at that point, I do what any great (and drugged) friend would do…I said “I’m sorry” and then readjusted my neck pillow and fell asleep again.  I knew I needed to help her but my body and brain were in a sleep timeout with Ambien playing Mom and Dad, and there was no chance for time off for good behavior. The next few hours were filled with the following flashbacks (I definitely was not present for any part of this):

1. Meghan missing from her seat
2. Airline attendant asking if there is a doctor on board
3. Me asking people why they had called a doctor (not sure if this actually happened, as I’m pretty sure I could not speak)
3. 4 English guys in the row directly in front of me are swaying in unison left and right as they pass a bottle of Tanqueray, drinking from the bottle and singing.
4. Me getting up to look for Meghan and seeing her nowhere on the plane, then returning back to my seat…once again, me moving at all does not seem very likely, so not sure if this happened either

I got the full story from Meghan after the flight.  She got sick 10 minutes after takeoff and had spent the entire flight making trips to the bathroom.  She had requested to move away from the guys in front of me (that flashback had actually happened) because they were being so rowdy.  She too had heard them call for a doctor and thought “finally, someone to help me.”  Turns out the doctor was for someone else and Meghan was only spoken to when a flight attendant asked her to leave the bathroom so she could refill the towels.  Needless to say Meghan felt terrible when we landed and in fact looked so sick that the immigration woman in China didn’t believe that she was the same person as in the passport photo so she made her take off her glasses, put her hair down and smile to validate it. I guess what I took away from this experience is that Ambien is great as long as you don’t get food poisoning…

Alright, with my China post completed I can now focus on sharing (with more frequency and less length) some of the fun I’ve been having in the Sydney summer.  But that will be another day as I’m off to the beach for now.  The sun has come out, and I have an old classic to re-read.  East Egg and West Egg here I come.

I don’t know how I never made it to San Sebastian during my time studying abroad in Spain, but it’s a good thing I didn’t because I think I would have abandoned all plans to study in Sevilla and moved there immediately.  They say that places or experiences can speak to you, and that is exactly what San Sebastian did to me.  It said “Come live here…you’re home.” 

San Sebastian is a city in the Basque region of Spain with a population of about 400,000 in the metropolitan area.  Although you can absolutely get by speaking Castellano Spanish, their native language is Vasco. 

And, as I’m sure you knew was coming from me…I have to talk about the food here.  The first night we arrived we went to a place called Zeruko that a friend of Gagfi’s recommended.  They did Spanish tapas in a more original and gourmet manner than I ever saw during my time in Spain.  My hands down favorite dish was the Bacalao La Hoguera, a raw piece of cod served on a grill with a cracker topped with what can only described as aioli from the gods (and I really don’t like mayo!) on a toasted bread with, god knows what else.  First you cooked the bacalao yourself on the grill, then placed it over the cracker to eat and finished with a palate-cleansing, fresh parsley juice served in a small test tube.  From the presentation (see picture below) to the procedure of consumption to the uniquely delicious flavor, this dish was absolutely outstanding.  I think it may have been the best flavor I’ve tasted since I began this adventure.  Other dishes like sea urchin served in the shell with spicy cream, scallops skewered with marinated artichokes, Gold leaf topped steamed artichoke and some sort of cream cheese, pine nut, berry dulce were unbelievable as well.  Everything was buffet style on the bar and all you had to do was stand there and pick what you wanted in unlimited supply.  For the best meal I’d had since we arrived in my favorite city on the trip so far, we paid only 25 Euros…and that included drinks!

I spoke to Marily (not Mary Lee, but Mareeee Leeeee), the owner and she was as gracious as could be although her restaurant was by far the most gourmet in the area.  We talked for almost half an hour about the culture in San Sebastian and why she thinks there is no better city in the world.  She explained that for people in San Sebastian food is a part of the culture and a part of life.  As she explained, “you don’t do anything without food.  Business meetings, conversations with friends, celebrations, funerals, everything!”  She explained to me that they are trying to open locations in NYC and Paris, and I can only imagine how successful those will be. 

In addition to having a culture that worships food, San Sebastian also has a rich history and great museums…and all of this in a city that lies on a gorgeous beach with the biggest sky I’ve ever seen.  Taking photos here felt like having an unfair advantage in that the lighting was constantly gorgeous, the blues in the night sky were radiant and all of the lights glimmer against the backdrop of beautiful ocean.  Day or night, the natural beauty was the star of every photo.

We arrived on a Friday night with Gagfi, his friend Habib from Nigera and an intern at his work from Germany named Fabian.  After our delicious meal at Zeruko we headed out to the bars/clubs.  Just like everywhere else in Spain, clubs in San Sebastian don’t get busy until about 2am.  So we first killed some time at a bar that Habib recommended.  When we arrived at 11:30 there were 3 other people and when we left at 1:30 it was so packed you could barely move.  We headed toward Bataplan, which is apparently the “it” club in San Sebastian.  Even Meghan, who was in San Sebastian for only a few days in 2007 knew of it and was excited to return.  When we arrived, however, we were told they were having  private party and we couldn’t  enter.  Dejected, yet buzzing and ready to dance we found a club right down the beach that let girls in for free…guys had to pay 20 Euros.  So with nothing to do but dance the night away we did just that.

The next morning we woke up bright and early for lunch…at 1pm.  We walked all the way along the beach taking pictures and reminiscing about the prior night’s events as we headed to a café on the water to have some coffee and tapas.  From there we took a walk around San Sebastian and found a place to have a proper meal (Habib only eats one meal per day, and it is always steak…seriously).  After lunch we went to a point in San Sebastian where you can climb/hike up a big hill to get an even better view of the city.  Unfortunately, it was closed on the side we were on, but had we not walked the wrong way we would never have seen one of the most beautiful skies I’ve ever seen (see pictures below).  I once again took a moment to think about Brooke, the friend I lost and invite her to share in the moment with me.

As going out and touring cities can be somewhat tiring, we headed back to the hotel for a nap and shower before repeating the previous night’s events…tapas, Bataplan rejection (they were having YET ANOTHER private party…either that or they really didn’t dig our style), and finally club down the beach featuring dancing until 4am. 

The next day we headed out early make sure we had time to pass through Biaritz before arriving back in Pau for our overnight train that night.  Biaritz is another beautiful city on the water, but if you ask me it doesn’t hold a candle to San Sebastian.  We stopped in a café near the water for some breakfast, and by breakfast I mean Molleres a la Marinere…or Mussels.  Yes, with a hangover, I had mussles for breakfast…not my best decision, but Gagfi swore by them and how delicious they were, plus it was 1:30 in the afternoon.  We walked to a point that looked out over the city area of Biaritz, took some pictures and headed back.  On the car ride home everyone fell asleep except for Gagfi who had to drive us…poor guy.  We arrived into Pau, ate one more meal prepared by our friend from Camaroon and said our goodbyes. 

There is a horrible and expensive travel story that goes along with this account, but I refuse to taint the sanctity of my San Sebastian worship in this post by sharing it here.  Plus, I’ve already written enough about logistical travel drama…it’s part of the adventure.  Sometimes it’s smooth sailing (i.e. Meghan sleeping next to me in a Starbucks in the airport in Beijing because we made it with hours to spare and WEREN’T charged an extra bag fee) and sometimes it’s a bitchy French woman telling you “C’est la vie” when you explain that it’s not your fault your first class (yeah we’re high rollers when they’re the cheapest tickets) train tickets were stolen but you have your confirmation code and email that she then refuses to honor and makes you pay double what you paid the first time for a one way return home…ok, I guess I needed to vent a little and get that out.  See you in Beijing!

If you’ve recently misplaced 250,000 Black Cats I think I’ve found them…they’re currently being set off by a small Chinese man outside my hotel window.  If only I were kidding.  Meghan and I were super excited to be in Beijing during Chinese New Year, and while we’re still very happy to be here we found out that it’s really a family holiday where people eat dumplings with their families and celebrate mostly at home (this was what our tour guide “Orange,” that’s her American name, told us this morning)…everyone that is except for our neighbor who had one Black Cat streak that lasted, I kid you not, 23 minutes.  I thought it was the grand finale, but turns out he has forgone eating all year just to afford every firework in the Beijing province.  As Meghan aptly described it as we lay in bed trying to sleep, “It sounds like Kosovo out there.”  So I’m awake and figured why not blog? Meghan and I arrived in Pau last Monday night on a train that we boarded from Montparnasse station in Paris.  It was about 5 hours, but I was finishing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (yes, I’m officially the last person on Earth besides Meg to read this book) and felt super short.  We arrived to a train station where our host, GAGFI was waiting.  GAGFI is the best friend of one of my best friend’s husband (Brie VanKeuren) husband Scott, and I met him at Brie’s wedding in July.  I’d like to give a special shout out to Brie and Scott Kelman for not only having an “epic” and amazing wedding but also for introducing me to most of the people we have stayed with thus far on our trip. 

Pau is a smallish (population around 80k people if I remember correctly) town at the Southern border of France.  It’s adorable.  When we arrived to the train station there was a gondola across from the station that takes you up to where the downtown area is.  It stops running at 9:40pm and we arrived at 9:45 so it was a short walk up a very steep hill to get to the apartment.  Gagfi’s apartment is in an over 200 year old building.  It’s a giant, fully furnished 3 bedroom apartment with oriental rugs, a piano, built in antique wood cabinets and it may or may not smell of rich mahogany.  With not only a place to rest our hats but also a washer AND DRYER, Meghan and I were in heaven.  We spent the first two days trying to catch up on (read: do for only the second time since we left Jan. 6th) laundry, exploring the city and eating daily Pain du Chocolat, which put every pain du chocolat we tried in Paris to shame. Pau as a city is charming.  It sits at a relatively high altitude with a view of mountain ranges in the background, but has palm trees all over the city area.  So the contrast is great and palm trees I swear make you feel a little warmer.  The castle in Pau is where Henry the IV was born and is a beautiful building with engraved stone and nice gardens that is open to tour.  As I mentioned the baked goods were outstanding, but even more impressive (just because we were in a small French town) was a Camaroonese restaurant located a block or so from Gagfi’s place.  He goes so often the woman knew exactly what he wanted and was very happy to meet more of his friends.  She cooks everything herself in a small kitchen in the back, and you just have to hope the place is empty so you can eat in a normal amount of time.  We ate Chicken Domba, a pork dish that tasted like the Carne Sudada my Tita makes so well and had plaintains and yucca on the side.  As a beverage, she makes a Ginger cocktail that is the strongest ginger flavor I’ve ever tasted in a beverage but is indescribably delicious.  Gagfi has asked her repeatedly for the recipe and she promised to share it with him in 40 years…he’ll be 72. 

After 2 days in Pau and with the blessing of our gracious host, Meg and I set out for a road trip in France.  Gagfi not only loaned us his car (with the warning that if we break it we bought it), he also gave us his iPhone so that we could call in case of emergency (see below for that story) and use the GPS without which we would never have made it home.  We set out bright and early (11am) for Bordeaux via Bayonne.  It was smooth sailing until I was forced to make any decisions regarding direction and took us on a 45 minute detour of some winding country roads.  It was sort of a blessing in disguise however as we had the GPS to get us back to our course and got to see some great little towns along the way.  We arrived in Bordeaux, had some sangria and sandwiches and toured Bordeaux a bit.  It’s a big city though, and Gagfi had highly recommended we see Saint Emilion, a small town in that same Bordeaux wine area.  So after lunch we headed to Saint Emilion with Meghan behind the wheel and me as co-pilot, a dangerous idea. We arrived in Saint Emilion a bit late so the free wine tastings were already closed…fail.  But the town was cute enough we didn’t care.  We stumbled upon a place that offered us fresh-out-of-the-oven macaroons and I fell a bit more in love with France.  I didn’t even know I liked macaroons.  We bought a box for Gagfi as a gift, which we ended up opening on the car ride home (I’m convinced every day I couldn’t have picked a better travel buddy) and continued our exploration of the city.  As much of it was closed, it was more about seeing a new place than getting to meet many of the people, but we were just happy to have seen it.  On the way to the car we found this sort of hidden fountain and saw coins in it.  I made a wish about a dear friend I lost and felt for the first time on this trip an ability to invite her to share something beautiful I was witnessing with me, and it felt wonderful.

As we reached the car we decided to “fuel up” before our long drive home.  I had made it a habit of drinking more tea than coffee before I left, but coffee (with a lot of milk and sugar) has been a nice substitute for meals when in a pinch on this adventure.  We headed into a shop right by the car and ordered two cafe au laits.  I asked the woman to come out and take a picture, and as we set down our box of macaroons on the counter, she launched into a big time spiel about how the place we bought from did not make “real” macaroons and had copied her style.  She then went to retrieve a book with at least 40 newspaper and magazine clippings about her bakery and insisted that we had made a huge mistake.  I apologized but was actually really happy to have met someone as passionate about food as I am. Our ride home was pretty uneventful until….cue problem to solve….we passed a gas station.  I asked Meghan if we should stop but the tank was on 1/4 tank and had been for quite some time.  15 minutes later the tank was on empty…20 minutes after that we had not only NOT passed a single gas station, but not even a street light…uh oh.  I got on our trusty iPhone and saw Roquefort (not home to the amazing cheese, I later learned) was the next biggest city.  As we rolled into the city on fumes in a car we borrowed from a new friend who had to be at work the next morning and needed both his phone and his car to get there, we grew more and more anxious.  There were no lights on in apartments and everything was closed at 8pm.  We got to the bottom of a hill and saw a woman putting patio chairs away in a restaurant that was clearly the last to close.  She explained where the gas station was (en France bien sur), and I used my powers of deductive reasoning and charade skills, hoping we were headed in the right direction.  2 minutes later my faith was restored.

We pulled into the gas station, actually jumped up and down dancing and then it happened.  The machine ate my credit card.  So now we had no gas, no food and our pets heads were falling off (Jane, that Dumb and Dumber shout out was for you).  But in all seriousness, we were stuck and now we risked me having no credit card for the next 2 months.  Because guys are this way, Gagfi happened to have pliers in his glove compartment, which we used to pull the card out of the machine manually.  Meghan then tried her card with trepidation and we learned that they didn’t accept American credit cards.  Merde. 
There was only one thing left to do…Me: “Hey, how was work today?”
Gagfi: “Good.”
Me: “Did you solve any big problems?”
Gagfi: “No, it was pretty low key.”
Me: “Want to solve one now?”

With only one option that seemed plausible between the three of us, Meghan and I put the car in neutral, rolled down the hill and prayed to find…anyone.  Find someone we did.  A lovely woman and her son were sitting in her car smoking…they were exactly who we were looking for!  I tried in French to explain what happened with my typical simple sentences. ” I have credit card. I don’t have gas.  Credit card is not good.  I have cash.  You pay with your card? I cash you.”  (that is a word for word translation of what I said in French).  She laughed as did her son and they drove with us, presumably on our absolutely last drops of “gazole” in the car, to the gas station.  When we tried to stop pumping early so that we could give her the difference in Euros as a tip, she waved her finger at us and pumped the rest of the gas herself.  She was an angel. Upon returning to Pau, Gagfi vowed to never lend us his car again and we vowed to never ask.  As a thank you for letting us stay with him and loaning us his car, we cooked dinner for him and his friend Habib.  The next night we were headed to San Sebastian, and that is another story for my next post.

Meghan and I have been lucky enough to stay with friends along the way during this trip, but of course one of the best parts of traveling is getting to meet fun new people.  Julie and Benji fall into this category.  Julie is our new friend in Paris who lives in an apartment owned by an old friend.  Benji is a friend of a co-worker in Chicago…Hillary, I can’t thank you enough for the introduction to such a wonderful human being.  Seriously, I’ve met few people so far who are as thoughtful and generous as Benji.

When we arrived in Paris, we had no phone so we found a McDonald’s with free wi-fi and emailed her.  She found it quite entertaining that the two American girls she was hosting for the weekend wanted to meet at a McDonald’s…”it was the first place we found with wifi!” we told her.  After setting our huge packs down, she took us to a local restaurant where we ate the best pumpkin soup I’ve ever had in my life (topped with crème fraiche and a thick piece of bacon), a charcuterie plate and a cheese plate, along with a bottle of great French wine…wish I remember what it was.  It was the perfect first night in Paris.

The next day Meghan and I set out to explore the city and run some errands…and by “run errands” I mean go to the Chinese Embassy in Paris.  Apparently you need a visa to enter China…who knew??? Special thanks to our new friend Jack in London who alerted us to this.  Without him Meghan and I would never have realized and wouldn’t have been allowed on our flight to Beijing this Monday.  I should mention that I speak a little French…by a little I mean, I can speak like a 1^st semester  high school French student.  “Je m’apelle Ariana.” “J’ai faim.” “Ne j’ai pas un visa.”  That sort of stuff.  So we ended up having to navigate this complicated process in my broken French and the Chinese Embassy representative’s broken English…Mom, Judge and Mrs. O’Farrell, don’t fret, we got it all sorted out :)

So after TCBing (Mom, that’s an acronym that stands for Taking Care of Business), we walked on the Champs Elysees, went to Notre Dame, ate a crepe and some French onion soup and formulated our plan for our remaining days in Paris.  That night when Julie got home we went to see the Eiffel Tower and see the light display.  Many French citizens have told me how cheesy it is now, but to be honest, seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time with or without the lights is pretty breathtaking.

The next few days in Paris were filled with exploring, cheese, lots of walking, cheese, fresh food markets, cheese, wine, pain du chocolat, and for Meg especially lots and lots of coffee.  To say we ate our way through Paris is an understatement…it actually got bad enough that we took a picture and after looking at it I said, “I look pregnant in this picture.”  Benji took the camera and said, “Yes. For sure.  You are 5 months pregnant in this photo for sure.”  Thanks, Benji.

I almost titled this blog Paris for tourists vs. Paris with locals because there was an incredible difference.  Meghan and I took the initiative to see as much as we could on our own, but it was really Julie and Benji that showed us a sort of local’s version of Paris).  Benji took us to La Marrais, which my friend Paul had also insisted I visit, and we toured around Le Village St. Paul.  It was an adorable area, with cute shops, cobble stone streets, winding roads and little plazas that “ACTUALLY” (that was for you Benji! Oh, and Hillary, I took a video of him saying that for you ;) reminded me of the plazas in Sevilla, where I studied abroad.  We stopped at a little café, had a Kir Royale and talked about politics, health care, and basically a touch of everything including why people don’t like Sarkozy and what we “really” thought of Bush being elected for a 2^nd term.  We had a really interesting conversation about the advantage the French have when it comes to things like healthcare and vacation time (Benji gets 10 weeks vacation every year, although the average starting vacation time in France is 5 weeks…with a 35 hour work week) but the disadvantage of having more rigid style of government that doesn’t enable them to do things such as start their own business as easily as we can in the U.S.  It was a conversation that opened our eyes to what it’s really like to live in France and also enabled us to provide some perspective on life for Americans…in short it was exactly the kind of conversation you hope to have on a nice Saturday evening in Paris, and it showed me once again that I am exactly where I want to be in life right now…meeting new people and having perspective changing conversations.

On our 2^nd to last night in Paris, Julie took us to a club called Elysees Montemarte, where we saw one of the most crazy cover bands I’ve ever seen.  Their costumes were…well, I posted some pictures so you can see, but they had more costume changes than I’ve ever seen and they covered everything from YMCA to Seven Nation Army (if you’ve never heard a Parisian try to imitate Jack White, count yourself lucky)   When the band took a break, they had a DJ who played mostly hip hop, but played the most absurd songs in between…at one point he played Frank Sinatra “New York” followed by Rage Against the Machine.  It was quite the experience.

After our crazy weekend, we laid low Sunday and headed to an Irish pub to watch the Bears game.  I’d been saying to Meghan that I always see someone random whenever I travel abroad, and of course it happened at this bar.  I saw someone I thought I knew and by the end of the night we’d worked out that it was the brother of the boyfriend of the sister of my ex-boyfriend…confusing, but still crazy to run into someone you’ve met only a few times in a bar in Paris. 

On Monday morning we stopped by the Chinese Embassy to practice my French (read: drop off our confirmation of our hotel reservation in Beijing).  Luckily we found a great deal on hotels.com for a hotel right next to the Forbidden City and very close to Tiananman Square.  We then, packed our smaller bags leaving the big bags at “home” (read: Julie’s apartment) and headed to the train station at Montemarte to head to visit our friend GAGFI in Pau, a region of Southern France close to the Spanish border.