[Paris] An ordinary day

It's another gray, dark day here in Paris. In the diffused light, you wouldn't know if it was dawn or dusk or just another winter day. I didn't sleep terribly late today, but I use the dark weather as an excuse to fritter my time away over decaf, at the computer, thinking my melocholy little thoughts.

The night before last I went to a pub with Tina and some of her friends. A woman she met at a party was playing guitar -- live, free music. They played a lot of tasteful covers, but I get tired of hearing the same songs over and over. I wish people would write their own music. That said, they have beautiful voices.

I met a few more of Tina's friends, talked about planning with Chris, shared stories about struggling with the language, etc. I nearly forgot my point on this topic, but it is that I can't believe how many Americans there are here. I hear more American spoken walking down the street than I do French. The singers were American, the company, the bar tenders, the patrons.... How am I supposed to start understanding French when spoken if absolutely everyone I encounter either speaks Engish as their native language or speaks it nearly perfectly. Meanwhile, I can say I am fine and that I would like a little more wine, please. it turns out I have been asking for the toilettes incorrectly all these years.

Last night I had Gitte over for dinner. A few days ago I bought a kilo (2.21 lbs) of pasta for 90 cents. not sure what i was thinking bc I will have to eat pasta for 3 meals a day for my final 2 weeks in France, the culinary capital of the world - so they like to tell you anyway - in order to finish this bag of pasta. Anyway, that's what I cooked for dinner, and for a very small girl, she sure ate a lot of it, making me think that it didn't suck.

Gitte is from Denmark. A Danish family adopted her from South Korea. So, strangers have trouble understanding her cultural background from looking at her. She says she has no interest in finding her birth family because they won't even have a language in common and the culture is so different, but she does want to go to Korea just to see the country. Her sister was adopted from a Danish birthfamily, and she found them. It sounded a little strange -- she actually has siblings who are older than she is, from the same parents. Her birthmother rejected her at first, but she did a lot more research to find her siblings. They are younger and older, and they did not know about her. She found them by calling everyone in the phone book with the same last name, eventually reaching an uncle who agreed to help her, but he didn't know exactly where to find the siblings, only their names and what part of Copenhagen they live in. So, once the siblings knew about her, they confronted their mother, who still didn't want to meet the daughter she gave up, but her new husband did. By the time the whole family was getting together to meet Gitte's sister, the birthmother agreed to meet her too bc she didn't want to be left out. Happy ending.

Every day in Paris is lifechangingly beautiful. Yesterday I wanted to go to see the Musee des Plans-reliefs, "a unique collection of models of French cities and their suurounding countryside commissioned by the state from Louis XIV to Napoleon III." But the sun was out and the sky clear and blue (none of the usual gorgeous parisien clouds) and I couldn't bring myself to go underground and get on the Metro for fear of missing some of it. So, I walked and walked and walked, observing the bright slanted light and every masterpiece building lined up against the next. I saw some really wonderful things, including:
* a woman in a full-length fur coat rollerblading to do her shopping.
* fake palm trees covered in fake snow decorating a cafe.
* a couple walking down the narrow winding street, laughing incredibly goofy laughs, these laughs bouncing off the stone urban canyon and flowing away light water (and bringing tears to my eyes).

The ticket to the museum turned out the bundled with the military museum and 10 euros, so I decided I will check it out when I come back in the spring one of the first Sundays of the month then most museums are free. Tomorrow is reserved for the Pompidu Centre, Musee d'Orsay, and maybe the Delacroix museum if I have time.