La Dolce Vita, pt.1

So I am back and rested after my voyage to Rome. It was certainly a perfect way to launch my spring break, celebrate the end of work, and begin this next month and a half of very little work and mostly play. But let's start at the beginning.


On Thursday morning, I woke up dark and early (5:30 am) in order to get my shit together and leave on time. I organized my stuff, did some dishes, fed the cat. My landlady is selling the studio and I was told that some potential buyers would be coming by on Saturday (they didn't), so I tried to tidy up a bit. Not that I should ever do anything nice for my landlady. I had the intention to stop at the 24 hour internet cafe to print out the bingo cards I made for the kids, but I was too frenzied and so decided to try my luck printing them out at school.


The picture you see to the left is the view from the train as you get into Marly le roi, and it was the last time I'll ever see it. I got to school plenty early and set out to print. The computer worked (hallelujah), but for whatever reason, the printer was being retarded. No matter. I was only teaching one class that morning because Satan's class was going to the Louvre. Talk about a going-away present. So I me débrouilléd through my first class, who threw a little party for me at the end. I got cards, cake, and orange juice. Basically it was super nice and totally unexpected. I ended up getting ride over to St. Exupéry because the new English teacher was following me around all day to get acquainted. She's about 2 months away from retirement, French, and the kids were just not thrilled about her arrival. Anyway, we arrived at school number 2 and I tried to print out my bingo cards. But the fucking computer at the first school fucked up my jump drive. So I basically improvised the whole day. The kids got a piece of candy (I brought 6 bags) for winning bingo or answering a question correctly. Whatevs. Everyone was extra nice to me for my last day and it made me a little sad to leave. But just a little.

After work, I headed straight to the train station. Took the train to La Défense, then the metro to Porte Maillot, and I was on the Beauvais shuttle by 5:30. When I arrived at Beauvais, immediately someone called my name. And what do you know. It was Elvira, a friend from Nanterre, and we were taking the same flight to Rome (she was going home for spring break). Being very take-charge and Italian, she told me she had some cheese and we could go buy some bread and eat it together. But first we checked in, and I ended up shelling out 22 euros to check my bag. Assholes. We sat in the restaurant area and ate our dinner and chatted about whatever. I think that day was my best conversational French day ever. I was just on my game or something. The flight went well, my bag was the second off the carousel at Ciampino, and I quickly hopped on the Terravision shuttle to Termini station. It was too easy. Lauren met me and we got a taxi to her place. After some Nutella on toast and a little bit of Juno, we passed out around 2 am. An excellent start.