First Day in Paris

So I have had such a great time so far. The international flight was relatively uneventful. I brought ear plugs and when I had them in, I couldn't hear anything. I tried to go to sleep immediately and it seemed like I was half asleep for the first 5 or 6 hours of the flight. In the last hour or so, I read a long review article that was related to my research.

We got off the plane and went to buy train tickets. My credit card got rejected but luckily I had bought some euros at the airport before my international flight. This threw me off for a bit, but for the most part, I felt confident because I know enough French to communicate with people here. For example, when we were on the train, a lady asked me to put my bag up on a rack near the ceiling and I was able to understand her. Another instance was when I was walking on the street, a lady asked me where "rue d'Histoire" was. Even though I didn't know the answer, I was still able to understand her question. In general, I have found that it is very easy for me to ask questions but it is harder to understand their responses. Also many French people have just started speaking English when I have asked them something.

Anyways, a few hours after we got here, some French students from ENSTA (ecole nationale superiere de techniques avancees). They showed us around Paris and they were really fun to hang out with. They had a number of crazy games that they played with us. One of them was where we were on the train and a bunch of us sat in a line and then the last person dived on top of us and we used our hands to push them to the back of the line and then the front person did the same. I appreciated how they could do crazy fun things like this. We also played a game where if somebody yelled "Pigeon" we had to stop what we were doing and crouch down and cover our necks. If somebody yelled "water", then we had to run to the nearest place where we could stand on something that was not the sidewalk. We also played a game where we ran in front of tourists who were taking pictures and posed with them.

While playing all of these games, we went around and saw a lot of tourist attractions. I don't know the name of some of these places, but we went by a few amazing churches and we got to stroll around a French neighborhood. There were lots of street vendors and it was fun to look up at the walls and get the feeling of a French area. We continued along and passed by an art museum. There were a lot of people around and a lot of street performers. Among other things, I stood side by side with a mime and tried to copy his pose. Whenever a little kid came near him, he would bow and the kids would run away. We also went by the Louvre, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower. We didn't spend to much time at any particular tourist attraction. The goal was just to show us around a bit and I think that we will be coming back later. When we were at the Eiffel Tower, we played a few games. One of them was where you stand in a tight circle then one person moves their left foot so that it touches the left foot of the person to their left. Then the person to their left does the same. This is repeated until somebody either cannot get their foot to do that or somebody falls. This was a lot of fun. We also played mafia. Apparently the french have a similar game called werewolves.

Another interesting aspect of our trip was seeing how tourists are treated. At the Eiffel tower, there were at least 50 people selling the same little Eiffel Towers. I found it very strange that all of these people were selling the same thing but apparently a lot of tourists buy them. The French students that we were with said that there have been vendors like this as long as they could remember. Also there seemed to be a lot of people who were trying to trick tourists and get their money. One example was at one of the churches, there was a little boy holding out bread for the birds. It was very cool to see the birds flock around the bread. So I picked up a piece of bread and held it up. Then an older man grabbed my hand and put some bread into it. It was really awesome to feel all the little birds jump onto my hand. So I appreciated that but at the same time, if my wallet wasn't securely in my pocket, it could have easily been stolen.  There was also an instance of a woman who claimed to be from Romania and she was stuck in the country. There was another woman at the train station who was groveling for money. One other experience that I enjoyed was that there were a lot of performers on the train. I saw a puppet show, a violin, and an accordion player.

This is already a long post so I wont talk too much about what I have been reading. I will get that later today or tomorrow. There were other interesting things that I also hope that I can blog about. For the rest of the day, I am going to try to get some more work done.