Paris

August 11th

I'm sitting on a train to Pris form Germany, and some little kids are siting in front of us, speaking Arabic, and having a monster tantrum, running up and down the aisles screaming. It's close to 100 degrees on the train, and we still have 3 hours left! I guess now I've seen some of the less glamorous sides of travel :) We had quite a morning- Tess, Laura and I got up at 5:30 AM to catch a train to Frankfurt and meet Tim, but we accidentally got on the wrong train and had to hop from traint o train for about 3 hrs. until we finally made it. We missed our train that we had reserved, so we had to wait an extra five hours for the next one. Oh well. Poor Tim was waiting at the train station for us for several hours before we arrived, and for some reason my cell phone wasn't working. We finally made it to Paris around 5 PM, and then made our way to Jessi's house (the older sister of one of Tess's friends) who has lived and worked in Paris for the past two years. To get there, we had to walk through a little park that was a little sketchy. I really had to use the bathroom, so I walked over to an outhouse in the park, only to realize that I had about 100 eyeballs of Moroccan men staring at me. A fight was about to break out between the men, and it was obvious they did not want us on their turf- we ran out of there as fast as we could! We still had two hours until Jessi's friend would meet us at the apartment to give us keys, so we searched for a restarurant in the neighborhood, but nothing was that early. I peered into a Moroccan restaurant where an unshaven man in sweatpants was sitting at a table eating couscous and lamb kebabs. He motioned us inside to eat, so we plopped down at a booth and proceeded to eat a feast of french fries, chicken, and soup. The place was barren except for a couple Moroccan men eating in the corner. Our waiter was hilarious, and even had the nerve to (jokingly) inquire whether Tess and Laura were lesbians on a double date with Tim and I! "She is very beautiful, eh?", he said to Tess, pointing at Laura. It was pretty funny. He brought us a glass of Moroccan mint tea, which we almost refused since we thought it was liquor in a shotglass- we really are such stereotypical tourists! But we walked out of there full and satisfied, and just as we left, they turned on the music. That's when we realized that the place was just opening! he had invited us in and the restaurant hadn't even been open! :)