yuliyas visit

hey, so its been a while since i wrote here. hoepfully you havent been in too much suspense waiting for the next edition. theres so much going on here that its hard to keep it all straight and up to date. although its throughoutly enjoyable every minute. so the week after the running of the bulls was quite painful (literally) as my entire front side was sunburned except for a curious patch in the center of my chest, for what reason i dont know. although i met up with my firend Flo Cognat who I visited in Lyon one night for dinner which was pretty fun. the next weekend was Bastille day weekend. My friend Yuliya from UNH visited. She came in on the TGV on friday night and right from the train station we were off. We walked all around until about midnight by which time we were both dead. It was fun to see her reaction to all of the things I have seen many times by now. Especially fun was the eiffel tower because on the way there, and the entire weekend, it seemed like we were in some epic quest for "the perfect picture" which is pretty much any picture of it because for some reason it has a quality i think that makes even the most amateur of photographers seem really good when you look at the pictures. We got back to the maison Etats Unis as nearly 12:30 and after making pasta for dinner, went to bed.

The next day was huge, we started by going to an SNCF (train) station so I could buy my tickets for August (which as I write is acutally tommorow :) ) and then were off. We went to Luxembourg and then to the Pantheon and then we walked around the back of Notre Dame and coming to the front I spotted someone in front of me that I thought I recognized and to our astoundingly huge surprise, it was a one Mr. Richard Drenkin!! So, probably only people from UNH know who this is but for those who dont, he is another UNH student, was the student body president, and both Yuliya and I knew him in some way or another and this was one of those like 1:1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 chances of happenning because I mean seriously, being in the same foreign city as another person you know at the same time is rare enough I would think but then happenning to stumble upon them in such a huge city with massive crowds like PAris. Whoa! Thats unbelievable. So we all went and got lunch together. After saying goodbye, Yuliya and I continued on our journey and went to the Musee d'Orsay. It was just as cool this time and even more fun with another person, especially because i got to tell her about the aintings I knew and try to explain to her what little I knew about their meaning. After that we went up towards Centre Pompidou to find a place to eat and stopping in a gift shop to buy a tshirt, the lady said she recognized me. It was crazy that in such a huge place with so many tourists, she recognized me(kind of cool)! We then started to walk and after getting semilost a couple times we managed to find our way all the way back to the Latin Quarter (which is next to Notre Dame) and found this amazing little restaurant called Le Tango du Chat where we had an amazingly French dinner complete with, of course, escargot and Creme brulle (not mixed though).

The next day we planned to go up the Eiffell Tower so we were going to beat the crowds and get there when it openned at 9am......I guess a lot of other people had this same idea because it turned out the wait was nearly 2 hours. However, it was made interesting because the entire bottom section was cordoned off at one point and the Gendarmerie (police force) were running everywhere with machine guns. I still dont know exactly what this was for though. The top was amazing and it was as clear a day as anyone could have wished for so we got a view like nothing else. After that, we were going to go to Versailles for the afternoon. I mean, I was excited to see Versailles but it seemed like it was the most important thing for Yuliya in the whole universe so her being excited made me really excited to and helped alleviate the thought that all we ate until nearly 6pm was a bite of bread and an apple. On the train there, we met some people from Texas and discussed aboutour adventures and shared reactions and tips and other fun stories. When we got there though, Yuliya and I raced ahead and getting to the entrance saw a line that seemed to curl 8 times and was like some dragonof people waiting. We stood in line for a bit and then Yuliya went to get a map. Coming back she tld me to get outof line cause she had to tell me something. Reluctantly she pulled me out of the line and i was ready to get mad at her when she showed me two tickets she had somehow managed to buy when she went to get a map. What!?!? Amazing!! So we were feeling like a million bucks when we walked in and had the most time in the world. The chateau was nice, big, very big, and overtly decadent. However, I think even more amazing were the gardens outback. Initially, we thought we had to pay more to get to these but we bumped back into the Texas people in the chateau and together we found what seemed like a free entrance. I dont know exactly what it was but in any case, we didnt pay a euro and we got to see the Gardens. They were absolutely huge!! Like it seems as if they go on forever and then when they stops theres this lake that starts and behind that is a huge field. And the hedges in the gardens,huge!! and in every alcove theres a different fountain to a different Greek god. It was very fun to walk around although by the end we were getting quite tired and we happy to find the exit and say "au revoir" to Versailles. We got a sandwich on the way back for dinner and re-energized, we went to Montmartre to relax on "la butte" (the hill) with some wine. we walked around for a bit and then when it was getting later we headed down towards the redlight district to see the Moulin Rouge. Ill spare the descriptions of some of the things we saw, but i would say many of them fit with the conceptions one may have of a red light district and was pretty bizarre. We then were walking around the district for a while and stumbled upon this square where a band was playing. We stopped and listened for a bit and then decided that there was no way we couldnt dance. So, Yuliya and I, along with some guy from Senegal who seemed to be very friendly, although in a quite inebriated state i think, single handedly started a dance party. It was great because at first it was only us and then a few more joined in and then a few more and after about an hour, lots and lots were dancing, from little children of a few years to seniors. It was the most fun I have had there and it pasted a permanent smile on my face that didnt leave for a long time. One of the reasons for the band though, was because it was July 13th so it was like a celebration the night before for the Quatorze Juillet celebration, so there was also a few drummers there who were all dressed in traditional army garb playing marching beats that were acutally really intense and there hands were going so fast you couldnt see them move. It was very cool. After this, it was quite late and we made our way back to Cite U for the night.

The next morning we woke up at 6:30am and after getting ready, made our way to the Champs Elysees for the parade to celebrate the Quatorze Juillet. After getting some breakfast at a boulangerie we waited....and waited...and waited some more. More people were piling in behindus and by the time the parade started the entire sidewalk was packed, but we were right in the front. It was pretty cool. This was like no Ameerican 4th of july parade though. There was no candy, no boyscouts or girl scouts, no fancy cars or antique cars. This was a military parade and indeed, it was military. It started with the ground military lining up from all different countries in the EU because Sarkozzy had invited them all to be a part of it. When they all got at attention, Sarkozzy drove down, waving to everyone and it was a very fleeting sight to see him dirve by. They the parade started. Jets flew over head and released smoke to make a French drapeau in the sky and then planes after more planes flew over. And then the marching, they all started to march and they were then followed by trucks and tanks and huge army vehicals I could never imagine. They were all just so, big! It was quie intimidating I must say. And the order of the whole procession was very particular with line after line of vehicle. After a couple hours of this though, we decided to go because theres only so much flexing of a nations military " machoness" that one can handle I think. And, the Louvre was open free for visitors today. So that was the next destination. It took us over an hour to find our way there but eventually we got to the Louvre. And I can confidently say that it defeated us and kicked our butts. It was partly because we were so tired but it was also simply because it is just such a huge museum. Its massive! Truly. And at a few ponits, I think we got lost easily. We ended up seeing most of the key things and, although I was not surprised this time, the Mona Lisa was indeed quite underwhelming. Although it was pretty cool to see Hammurabis code I think, even though it was right at the end and Yuliya was pretty much draggin us through to the end of the museum, both of us dead tired. Afterwards, we went out in to the courtyard and took a nap before heading back to the Cite to collect her things. We sat in park Monsourris (across the street from where I live) for a bit and just marvelled at how different life is here and how "hanging out" in France is nothing like "hanging out" in America. We then said goodbye at the trainstation and she was off. It was an extremely fast weekend but, right when she left, I went to the ticket both and bought tickets to Brest for the next weekend. I was going to Bretagne!! Later that night, I went to the Eiffel tower to watch the fireworks where I met some really fun people from the University of Florida . The fireworks were spectacular and it was amazing to see them with the Eiffel Tower in the same image. LAter, I discovered that that night, there were over 600,000 people at the Eiffel tower for the fireworks! This was kindof overwhelming. This explains why getting back on the Metro was like a fight to breathe, although I must admit that I have reallyfound awarm space in my heart for the "friends" I make with those pressed up against you, sometimes in a awkwardly intimate way,on the metro. At the end of the night, I was officially exhausted but very glad for the entire weekend