darcydodo | (no subject)

So, I do indeed have free internet access, now. This can only be counted as a very very good thing, and the computer room reminds me desperately of being back at college. Except everything's in French. Very strange.

Sadly, FTPing doesn't seem like it's going to happen, so I'm not a hundred percent positive how I can transfer some files here that I wanted. I have some ideas, though, and I'll try them out when I get bored.

I also can't look at the keyboard while I'm typing or I get terribly confused -- where do the French get off making their keyboard layout like this?! Who ever heard of an Azerty keyboard, anyway?

So. Qu'est-ce que c'est passé? (Yes,

livredor, go on and correct my French.) Saturday I wandered around the Jardin de Luxembourg and the Jardin des Plantes. I encountered a very strange person in the Jardin de Luxembourg; I was wrapping up the remnants of my lunch in the paper they'd come in, and this man comes towards me exclaiming something in French. All I understood was the last word: papier. And I thought he said something like rouler before that, but I wasn't sure. So after a bit of "what did you say?" type stuff, he switched to English, and apparently he was trying to tell me not to litter, and to put my rubbish in a bin. This confused me immensely, as I was planning to put my leftovers in my backpack.... And then he asked me if I was Jewish. And, IIRC, called me a good Jew when I explained about my intentions with the paper. O-kay. But then I went and sat by the pond in the garden and watched little boys pushing around toy boats with long sticks, and read some of Harry Potter in French. Somehow it's just not the same as in English.

At the Jardin des Plantes, there was a fuschia display. They had Lord Byron fuschias, which surprised both me and my parents, when I told them; they're very hard to find, these days. We have one at home. There was a very pretty fuschia called 'Napoleon'; white casing and bright purple inner petals. 'Autumn' (or something like that; I don't have the paper I wrote some of the names on) looked like it was sick or dying or something until I looked at the name: the leaves are masses of different colors. The flowers aren't doing much, but the leaves really are very cool. There was also one, which I forget the name of, sadly, that was all peachy (color-wise, that is). And one named after Gustave Doré! Who, it turns out, also illustrated the copy of Charles Perrault's Contes that I picked up.

I also found the Arènes de Lutèce, which was fun, but nothing remotely resembling the original structure, from what I can tell. The seats are all reconstructed, and it really seems to be nothing except seats. OK, maybe the shape is the same, then.

Sunday I moved in to the Cité Universitaire, as I think I mentioned in my LJ. There's a gorgeous rose bush outside my window (and down a level; I'm on the first floor), and it's generally very pretty. Not precisely like a college campus; I'm not sure what it reminds me of. Almost a camping ground with established cabins, somehow, but since it actually looks nothing at all like that, I'm not sure where that image is coming from.

Yesterday's events were most amusing, and they were prompted by my desire to write a

sunday100 drabble. I therefore went to the internet café that I discovered the other day (since I still had some time left on the ticket I'd bought) and looked up this week's challenge. Then I looked for somewhere to sit and write it. Where to find a nice and inexpensive café? The last part was the difficult part, as I was at the Place St Michel. I passed by a Greek restaurant and the guy standing in the doorway tried to get me to come in and eat there (as they tend to). So I told him sorry, but I was looking for a café. Unfortunately, in French, this is the same as the word for coffee. "Ah, we have coffee here!" he says. "A cheap coffee," I reply, not bothering to attempt to figure out a way to explain what I had actually meant. "It's cheap, it's two euros." No, too expensive. "For you, one euro." I smile and shake my head, but he starts in with the "Are you Greek? No?" that I have grown so used to all over the world. At the end of which, he tells me to come in and have a free coffee. OK, he's being nice (if French), and I can hardly say no. So I go in and drink the coffee and start working on my drabble. After a while, he comes back and talks to me, then brings me another coffee, and we discuss Greek food and other cuisines, and eventually I say I have to go, but he tells me to come back and have dinner there that night. "Je t'invite," he's said, and I know perfectly well what that means: I don't have to pay. Well, I'm a student, and this means that I have the eternal curse of not being able to refuse a free meal. But anyway, he is nice, and unlike the boxer guy who was actually hitting on me the other day, he's keeping conversation and touching within reasonable bounds -- that is, we're actually having a conversation (so it's not variations on the theme of "I need a nice girl like you"), albeit one limited by my vocabulary and grammar; and the only time he touched me was when we were discussing whether I was sportive and he wanted to see if I had any muscles. So, fine. I say I'll come back but that I do have to go now, and he looks vaguely disbelieving when I tell him that I really will be back tonight.

I go and finish my drabble elsewhere, go home for a bit, and then go back. I'm given lots of glasses of kir, some moussaka, yummy chocolate ice cream, and generally left alone to read Harry Potter, except Jacques (that's his name) comes and talks to me every so often. At about 11pm I decide it's well time to leave, so I say goodbye ("Déja?") and promise that when my parents come at the end of the month, we'll go eat there.

Today was somewhat less interesting, though it had its lively moments. (OK, one of them is not this keyboard, which is bugging the crap out of me. It ignores half my letters and beeps at me instead, and lots of the keys get stuck, too.) I started classes, discovered that a transport strike does not mean no transport, just that it's less reliable, and got to watch a little bit of a dance/percussion presentation by some Kenyan students at the Alliance Française. That was very cool, and I would've loved to see more, but I had class.

Nearly got suffocated on the last train I took today, thanks to the strike (a LITERALLY packed train), so I'm glad I don't live in Japan. I'd have to put up with that sort of thing every day.

Anyway, people are waiting for computers, so I ought to go....