My Friend Miss Vancouver

So I have this friend Amy here in Paris and she has been my partner in crime in many of my Parisian escapades and we've jokingly nicknamed her Miss Vancouver. Initially, she protested against the nickname but now she pretty much embraces it. If you met Amy you would realize how fitting the nickname is on so many levels. For the record, I consider Amy one of my really god friends here in Paris.

Now, with that said, I must put Amy on blast. Several weeks ago when the sales started Amy decided that she wanted to buy a new pair of boots. I agreed to tag along with her as a shopping buddy to offer feedback on any purchase. We travelled to multiple boutiques and large department stores but were unfortunately unable to find the specific style boots that she was looking for. About a week before the sales were to end Amy asked that I accompany her to the mall in the St. Lazare area. I insisted that there was no other mall in the area that we had not already checked out yet she assured me that a mall existed and went on to explain that it was fairly large and that it had 7 floors of stores. Intrigued I agreed to meet up with her. After waiting for Amy to arrive for 15 minutes we walked down Boulevard Haussman to the address that Amy had identified. To make a long story short the "mall" that Amy was referring to was actually les Galeries Lafayette. Folks, les Galeries Lafayette is not a mall rather a large upscale department store.

Fast forward to today. I had recently purchased some books for a language course at Gilbert Jeune. After purchasing the books I decided to change the course I was taking and this in turn required that I had to buy new books. Amy is taking a language course as well but hers is located in the St. Germain area. Since Amy and I were hanging out today I decided to go with her to class and then stop by the bookstore nearest there. I go into the store, asked someone for assistance, picked up my books and went to the register. In French I told the cashier that I wanted to do an exchanged because I had purchased the wrong books. The man looked at me like I was absolutely crazy because I wasn't in Gilbert Jeune, I was in Gilbert Joseph. That's like trying to return a book purchased from Barnes and Noble at Borders. I scraped up any dignity that I had left and walked out of the store all the while cursing Miss Vancouver in my head.

Inside the French Mindset

American Woman: "French men are so skinny."
French Man: "We like to wear slim, form fitting clothes. If we had more muscles our clothes just wouldn't fit right."

LA to Student: "A hotel is a place where..."
Female French Student: "People go to faire amour (make love)."
LA to Student (laughing): "Sometimes."
Female French Student: "Non, souvent (often)."
LA to Student: "Moving right along."

LA to Students: "We're not going to play a game today."
Students: "Aww but you played with the other class."
LA to Students: "I know but I don't want to play the game with this class."
Students: "We're going on strike."
LA to Students: "FINE, we'll play the game."

My First Visitor is Coming

My most wonderful, colorful, fun, famous and long time friend John is coming to visit me in 5 days. I'm one of the people in John's life that keeps him grounded and he's one of the people in my life that let me know when I'm walking the streets looking like a homeless gypsy. So it's a perfectly symbiotic relationship. I'm really looking to his arrival so we can paint the town pink like good old times.

He arrives early Saturday morning at CDG and little does he know that I will not be waking up early to meet him. He's a big boy and is perfectly capable of navigating the metro on his own. I gotta get my beauty rest if we're going to be partying non-stop once he gets here.