[I am starting a new paragraph because a giant block of writing looks boring and formidable] Anyways, I was pretty nervous about this all week because it's a day of just speaking in French and I'm so bad at meeting new people and I never know what to say and it's in French oh my God what am I doing. It was the worst, however, when I woke up on Saturday morning. My chest was really tight and I think I had a small panic attack LOL It was pretty bad. I'm sorry I'm really bad at describing things but I wasn't even hungry. That's saying a lot. I always wake up in the morning feeling starved so you can say it was really bad (haha my priorities though...). I considered, more than once and pretty seriously, whether I should just bail on Andrew or not. I decided not to and I'm pretty glad I didn't!
École Militaire
Used to be a military school - later became a school for the art of espionnage - now an administrative building used by the French army
I literally live across the street from this place. When I look straight out the balcony, this is what I see. I run around this building three or four times a week. This is pretty cool.
This guy is SO French.
He let me try a gun! I like him.
I think this car looks so happy ^_^ Also, this is my friend Andrew. Say "Hi Andrew!"
This is me with the French Resistance flag! Vive la France!
Here is a picture of the main wing of the building. If you look carefully, you will see that it is being guarded by a giant albino dragon.
Collection of miscellaneous vintage + américain items that one would have seen during the war (I suppose).
These fruits are fake but they looked SO real! I had to pick one up to determine that it was fake. Très bien fait!
These ladies offered me a "true American snack" AKA pieces of bread with vintage peanut butter LOL Andrew didn't take any because he doesn't like peanut and I was telling him that it was too dry because it was basically peanut butter by itself. He was confused and I explained to him that usually, one would eat it with jam and make a PB&J sandwich. He was pretty grossed out by that. He had NEVER EVER EVER heard of a PB&J sandwich and he looked at me with the most incredulous expression. I, of course, was appalled (what kind of depraved childhood do French children have??) and now I am determined to make him try a PB&J (I need to find a place that sells Crunchy JIF T_T)
Random tent.
Random desk with random things.
Another random tent. I like the jacket.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
L'Hôtel des Invalides
Military museum - Andrew told me some stuff about it and from what I understood, it was a hospital/hospice for military personnel
This place also happens to be right by where I live, just two blocks in the opposite direction of École Militaire
I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before, but everything in France is always being renovated or restored... This is a first though. A for effort.
wutchu lookin at.
This was really weird. There were paintings and columns painted onto the walls to LOOK like the wall was decorated with real stuff. The capitals on the fake columns, however, ACTUALLY projected from the wall. Bizarre.
Anyways, they had a special exhibition for the weekend that highlighted stuff from WWI and WWII. This is a super old flag from... I don't even know. But just look at it. It's old! Haha the other parts of the hall were interactive so I didn't really take pictures... This is all you get!
The entrance to the chapel of Les Invalides. You can already tell it's going to be très fancy inside.
So the ceiling was reeeeeeeally high
And super intricately decorated
Not really sure what's going on in this photo but here is my interpretation: God catches Moses doodling on the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments written on it. The angel on the very right is laughing at him while the angel in the middle is like "Ooh let me see!" The angel on left is Moses' awkward sidekick who is stressing out because Moses is getting in trouble. (Yea, I don't even know if that's actually Moses or not but that's the vibe I'm getting lol)
Let's play a game: How many Napoleon corpses can you put in one building?
Napoleon Bonaparte (the famous one and probably the only one you know)
Joseph Napoleon I AKA Napoleon Bonaparte's lesser-known elder brother who was appointed King of Naples, Sicily and Spain (talk about nepotism!) AKA King José I
Yea I couldn't see which Napoleon he was but there was a roman numeral I after his name. I don't know any other Napoleon I so I guess I lose :( There were three or four more coffins of some obscure Napoleon. I just got tired of taking pictures of them haha
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
Afterwards, we went to the Champs Élysées and we were going to go up on the Arc de Triomphe because it was free! We were not the only ones with this idea and the line was insane! Apparently, if you have a French school ID you can go up for free any time so we decided to come back another day. Instead, we decided to go the Tuileries Garden. As we were getting off the Metro, I got a text from Justine saying that the forecast for tonight was heavy rain. I showed him the text as we were walking up the stairs out of the Metro and he was like "oh I can already feel some raindrops. Let's take a quick look around before it starts to--" and then it started pouring. Hordes of people were stampeding out of the garden and by the time we turned around to go back into the Metro station, it was full. The entire station and platform were so full that the staircase and the entrance were flooded with people! We decided to walk to the next nearest Metro station and hopefully, by then, it would be less crowded.
We didn't really know which direction to walk in and we just kind of huddled under my umbrella. What a bad day to wear a white shirt. I'm glad I have my umbrella with me 24/7 or else we would have been in big trouble lol. Anyways, all of a sudden, he remembered that he was going to show me something! He wouldn't tell me what it was but he just started walking really fast! It ended up being a Korean grocery store! I only had 5€ on me though so this is all I bought:
YUM KOREAN SNACKS
I think this was the best part of my day! We found a little... I don't even know what to call it. A pedestrians-only street of sorts with a glass ceiling. One of the restaurants was closed so we sat at a teeny tiny table outside of the restaurant and enjoyed our snacks!
The end. It wasn't as bad as I thought and I spoke in French 95% of the day (albeit, for the first half of the day I barely said a word HAHAHA). Andrew, if you see this, I'm sorry. Next time I promise to be less shy/terrified of speaking French in front of actual French people. Ugh I need to get over this stage fright deal.
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