What a weird country

Or city. Welcome to Paris, the most chic city in the world que je connaisse (that I know). I don't think that any 言葉 (kotoba, way of saying) for "feeling" (感情, kanjou) would work for the mixed pains and pleasures I've been feeling ever since I got to Paris. Let's start with today, of course.

Today I bought three drinks, two canned, one bottled, for 2.09€ (euro). The bottled water was 1€, the can of Lipton peach iced tea was .60€, and guess what that makes the can of 7UP? That's right, .49€. And these cans were the standard size, not those tiny things you get on a British Airways flight like the one I came on. (Those tiny cans serve a purpose: you don't have to drink an entire standard-sized can when you just want a normal, decently healthy amount of soda, and you're on a plane where that can poses a hazard and becomes an annoyance.) Were any of the other canned drinks as cheap as the iced tea or the 7UP? No. Why? I don't know. These weren't even sale prices, or at least if they were they didn't want you to notice.

I'm in another country where people tell me that sales mean cheap clothes, regardless of whether the starting price is always above 70€ and the discount never gets you down past 40€ (well, one went to 38€) and hardly ever past 100€. That's not cheap. America, by the way, is one of these countries. H&M is a very good exception here, in that you have some small chance of finding something you like. I bought a t-shirt and a coat today. I was dumb enough not to bring any of my thin, reasonably tight coats to keep me warm inside instead of either cold or hot or wearing a medium-sized coat that doesn't feel right to wear inside. I was also dumb enough to forget my scarf, and since I got a haircut just before I came here, I'm feeling the chill. The fact that everyone else is wearing a scarf is not helping.

My greatest pain so far was not getting locked out on the first day with lots of euros but no way to contact my host mother (or anyone else for that matter, except the police who, in their dishonesty, decided to let people park alongside a divider in the middle of the road and then ticket them ALL, instead of telling them to move when they were there the whole time). No, my greatest pain so far is the resurgence of what is apparently TMJ, which in turn is apparently inflammation of the jaw. Whatever it is, it suddenly came back with a roar, the morning after my first night here. The next night, I woke up at 5 AM and couldn't get to sleep because it was so painful. It's painful now, and it hurt all day and it makes me hate Paris, just because I have this impediment that's incessantly interrupting my pleasure. It used to feel like a sinus infection. Now it feels like a toothache. Son of a bitch. I guess I should've gone to the dentist before I came here, but oh well.

Last night I managed to position my alarm clock in such a way that the sound wires were loose in the back. Guess what that means? NO WAKE-UP CALL!! I woke up a few minutes after 1 PM, which was 20 minutes after my only class today started, and as it's 30 to 35 minutes to get to my class, that meant I didn't go to class. Lovely. Actually, I went, and when I got there I consulted with one of the directors of the program and she told me it basically wasn't a good idea to go in 30 minutes before the end of the class, which I was suspecting too. The class was 2 hours, which made it all the more aggravating that I missed it. If I arrived at 1:40, which was possible, I would've missed half the class and I would've been disheveled worse than the homeless guys here. Actually, the homeless people here dress pretty nicely, which is a testament to how even the more affordable clothes here look good; either that or how many expensive clothes people give away here. That's in turn a testament to how many things they buy. I still remember how big of a wardrobe my exchange student from 3+ years ago had. He was 14 at the time, too, and he had all these nice fancy clothes and possibly something for any occasion anywhere except a Navajo reservation pow-wow.

I think, perhaps because of the tooth pain, a little bit of my lost humor has returned (though I didn't notice I lost it), at least in the blogosphere. Either that or because it's because I have to speak in French all the time, and one of the best ways to find something new to say is to tell jokes. I just thought of that, and it's so true. It's something I've had to consciously think of here: how to communicate in French with what little I remember from my vocabulary. All the grammar stuff I remember, but I'm bad at vocabulary and I hardly recall most of the more complicated stuff I learned. I don't even remember what diriger means. Let's look it up in a French-English dictionary:

diriger [pronunciation alphabet I don't understand] vt (entreprise) to manage, run (...)

Thank you Collins French Dictionary Plus Grammar The complete two-in-one reference published in 1997, 2000, and latest reprint 2001, by HarperCollins Publishers, and printed in Great Britain. **** you MLA formatting.

Apparently "fuck" is a swear but ***** isn't (see above swear). Thanks federal radio regulations, which seem like they'd violate the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law...") to me. Possibly not. Haven't investigated the matter seriously enough.

In any case, I will swear freely and liberally here because the French don't seem to censor themselves on TV. In that spirit, I shouldn't either. Actually, I might anyway. It makes for better writing. This is even a common criticism in the rap world, where fans often criticize rappers who swear too much. It takes away from the finer content.

I haven't really hung out with anyone here yet, but that'll change soon. I hope to find some way to get back into frisbee, because I haven't really found any people that are both athletic (aside from running, zzzzzzzzzz) and fun here. You can't really tell when everyone dresses to impress, which hides a lot. Dressing to impress doesn't say much in Paris; you pretty much have to do it to fit in. Fitting in, of course, helps you protect yourself from getting robbed by a すり (suri, pickpocket), or from even worse things. It might hide you from yourself, though.

And that's why I don't wanna dress to impress.

But I heard some good dance music today. They have dance music radio here, and it was so. good. Boston, get with the program.