November 5th is a national holiday here in England: Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night or Firework Night. These other names should give you a clue as to what happens on that night. Guy Fawkes was caught trying to blow up parliament of the fifth of November 1605, and in celebration of the king and parliament surviving this attempt on their lives, people lit up bonfires all over England, and the tradition has stuck.
Mastering the metro has been one of my proudest accomplishments during my time in Paris thus far. Not only do you get to experience the majesty of the Eiffel Tower on the above ground metro and the outrageously blatant sexism in the below-ground metro ads (“There’s no such thing as an ugly woman, there are just women who don’t try hard enough.”) you also get the opportunity to sample the unique bouquet that is Parisian body odor. Personally, I use the metro as an opportunity to spy on the Parisians in the hopes of emulating them.
The second block has started. That means students often start or end classes to get the right amount of credits by the semester’s end. My Dutch history class is a two-part course, so on the first day of block two we added about a dozen new students.
People keep asking me how I like living in Paris, as if I could possibly answer that question. I can’t think of any one word that could accurately describe my life here. Paris and I have a complicated relationship. Sometimes, I even hate Paris.
I hate the way I have to spend 40 minutes commuting to school every morning on the Metro.
How crazy the time has passed.
I wanted to go to Dublin. There was a contact up there, Chris O’Rourke whom I wanted to visit while in the UK. I figured there’s no telling when I’ll ever be this close to Dublin again, so why not book a flight over the midterm break!
… And, I never saw her, again.