Je Suis A Paris

I took the first one way back in ’07 and the second one today. I didn’t mean to be in the same place but I stumbled there by accident.

This morning I went to the Eiffel Tower alone, where there was a vast amount of rugby fans? Who knows what the fuck they were there for but one group started chatting me up. I said my “bonjour” and then my piece de resistance, “je ne parle pa francais”. They somehow assumed I was from Spain? I don’t know but that was cleared up rather quickly. The boy’s name was Chris and he wanted to give me a kiss on the cheek but I literally bid him “au revoir” and he was calling after me “I love you America”. It was really cute. Whenever I’m in Europe, I tend to be called America. It happened loads in Poland.

After that I just hung out around the Eiffel Tower and got this DELICIOUS pastry. It was to die for. There’s a lot of yummy food. Some of the not-yummy food was escargot, which they legit fried outside in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Escargot

These guys supported USAP... which is about all I know. Chris was a USAP boy.

More USAP fans.

They were really excited.

I'm going to assume a donkey is their mascot.

Along with that, apparently some big event was happening where a world record was being broken. I snapped some shots of that too.

That’s the name. Mega Jump. A guy basically jumped 40 meters (I think) off of the Eiffel Tower and onto a ramp.

The ramp from a distance

Up close and personal

They also set up ramps for kids and adults to skateboard, rollerblade, and bike on.

Skateboarding

Bike ramp

After that, my cousins decided to take me out. Of all the places in Paris, where do you think we went?

Yep. A gay bar. Naturally. It’s basically where I feel most at home due to the fact that nearly my entire school and neighborhood are gay. Nah though, it wasn’t actually a “gay” bar in that there weren’t any gay guys/gals so it was kind of weird. There was a hot bartender too whom I assumed liked men but apparently not? France is making my gaydar go loopy. Men in white pants aren’t gay here. It’s a strange world.

At the bar I had a Long Island Iced Tea, which Frenchies suck at making. There was no “tea” about it. It was basically a concoction of the ingredients minus the tea taste.

We didn’t get to the gay bar for ages though because we failed at finding a bar that was cheap, had good music, and relatively young people. We wandered around the Latin District, near Chalet, and a few other places but we ended up at that gay bar.

Basically, I’m having a good time in Paris. It’s only been two days but so far so good. I think my favorite aspect of the trip is that I’ve decided I’m not allowed to “hate” myself. You know, the whole “oh I’m fat” or “I’m ugly” bits that we all feel sometimes. Whenever I think something like that, I try to change focus. It’s been working so far. I’ve also been trying this thing called “interacting with guys” where if I see a guy I think is cute, I actually do something like SMILE at him. It’s surprising to see how much more fun it is to do something active instead of passively thinking about it. On the train I had a cute experience where we sat next to this guy who I thought was absolutely adorable. Blonde hair, green eyes, and a cute smile. After sitting across from him and making eye-contact a few times, I decided to just fucking go for it and smile. He smiled back and while there wasn’t any instant love connection or even any conversation,  it was nice. I looked over at him when I was getting off the train and gave him another smile, which he returned. It was kind of adorable because you know that look you sometimes get when you realize you had a momentary connection (which may be too meaningful a word for what I’m trying to convey) and you get happy? That’s the look he had on his face after our little interaction.

It’s the little things, the tiny smiles, that are the best parts of my day.

Update: Apparently I was much more tired last night than I thought when I wrote this. Sorry for the whole repeat thing. I going to send this as a message to my friend but I failed? Sorry lovelies.

Tags: Eurotrip 2010, Paris