New Room!

Finally, some pics of my new room. It's nice to have a single, I don't feel bad about staying up late to read or waking up early for class.

Mouse house.

I know Aunt Anne will particularly like this story.

This all happened a couple of weeks ago. I was in bed reading and about to fall asleep. Jen and Jess were upstairs asleep and Jose was too; the only girls up were Trini and her friend Ita. As I was about to doze off I heard a high-pitched squealing coming from the living room. Next thing you know, Trini is poking her head in my room like, "Steephhh? We saw a mouse!" I was like Noooooooooo! You've got to be kidding - a mouse? She and Ita showed me where they saw the lil vermin scamper and I ran upstairs to get the other two girls.

If you've seen pictures of the way my flat is set up, then you know that there is a little square cut-out from the kitchen to the living room, so you can be in one room and look into the other. I put on my rain boots (to guard against the mouse!) and naturally went into the kitchen to just stare into the living room through the window... there was no way I was going into that room. Trini and Ita were very brave, pulling furniture away from the walls and poking around in corners. Ita was convinced that since she saw the mouse run under the couch then it must be IN there somewhere. So they lifted the couch on it's side so that the underbelly was exposed. I'll have to admit, it was a pretty disgusting sofa... no telling how long it's lived in that flat... there were slashes on the arms of it, there were cushions missing, and on the underside there were springs and foam cushion busting out all over the place. Looking at it, you might think there was a whole mouse family infestation in the thing. Sooo even when Ita suggested the mouse might have sought sanctuary in it, I was adamantly against this theory because it grossed me out to think of a mouse living in my couch.

We searched and searched, but little mouse was nowhere to be found. Trini and Ita kept absently poking the underside of the couch with a mop and a long umbrella just in case. We were losing hope of finding the durn thing when all of a sudden - because of Trini's prodding - a little brown ball FELL OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF THE SOFA and sprinted behind the fridge. Trini and Ita were blocked in the room by the upturned sofa, so they were stuck dancing around and squealing with the mouse; Jen and I ran out of the kitchen and halfway up the spiral staircase to her room; and when I looked back to the kitchen, Jess had launched herself up in between the cabinets and the windowsill Spiderman-style. It was such stereotypical girl behavior.

So we're all like, What now? Trini said, "A box and some cheese?" Just like the cartoons. They pull out this empty cereal box and you can tell that Jess and I are thinking the same thing... that little box is not gonna work. So we build a better mousetrap (muhaha) using some boxes and stuff lying around the room to restrict the area around the fridge. At the end of the mousetrap is a box for him to run into. From through the kitchen window, Jess's and my job is to trap the lil critter once he's in the box. Believe it or not, the mouse ran straight into the box from behind the fridge once we scared him out - but Jess and I were too slow and he ran back out. This happened two or three times until the guy wised up and started to try to break through our makeshift wall....Trini yelled "Awww, he's cute!" and then trapped him in at the last minute. So then we're all looking at eachother like, well, how are we gonna get him in the box?? After talking it over, Trini and Ita look down and are like Uh oh... I think he's dead. I said No, there's no way, he's faking! If you lift your foot he's run out and we'll have lost him again! But they lifted their feet... and... :( Trini put her hands her throat and said "I think we took his breath away." (Isn't that the sweetest way to say "We crushed him so much he suffocated" that you've ever heard?) She scooped him into his little box casket and wrote R.I.P., Mouse.

But that was only half the battle. The next step was to move the disgusting icky hated couch outside. We could not have this vile thing in our flat any longer. So we start heave-ho-ing it down the stairs and we were doing fine until we came to the doorway from our flat to the stairway. This door is right by the door to our neighbor's place, and we happened to have brand new neighbors that week. We got the sofa STUCK in that threshold and made a ton of noise at about 12:30 am while trying to wedge it out. At one point it seemed reasonable to try to break the sofa apart to get it out... Ita grabbed a hammer and started banging away at the thing and we were like Ahhh Quit it! You don't live here, don't piss off our neighbors!! Haha. Finally we had the bright idea to try going back up the stairs and turning it around, and that worked. Once we made it out of the flat and chunked it on the sidewalk a huge crowd from the Three Kings pub came around the corner. We were all in our PJs and rain boots with this sofa and dead-mouse-box, and the whole drunken Polish crowd (all boys, go figure) came hustling over to see what the deal was.

Luckily that's the only little intruder we've had... we're hoping he came in through an open window or something (spider-mouse maybe?). It definitely made for an adrenaline-filled evening and bonding time with the Chileans but I really could have done without.

xxx

Paree.

So I never told anyone about my Parisian adventure.

Here's the long and short of it:

After spending time in Chartres with Charlotte we took the train to Paris to meet up with her friend Amanda who is living there. That night we went on a pub crawl that started in Monmarte right in front of the Moulin Rouge, classy classy. I spotted a Buffalo Grill (same name and logo as the restaurant where I worked last summer and fall) in the area and that gave me a laugh.

The next morning Charlotte was my little tour guide... we started at one end of the Champs-Elysees at the Arc de Triomphe and walked all the way down to the end, to the Louvre.

I was only there for three days, and they say you could spend an entire week in the Louvre, so we didn't bother going in. A museum that size is daunting, I'd rather go when I actually have a little more time to look around. Plus, Charlotte's been. Surely I'll be back in Paris at some point and go there!

So we continued walking around and made it over the Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter.

We actually ran into a fellow Millsapsian on the way to the Latin Quarter! As we walked by this guy I heard him quietly say, "Charlotte??" He's a couple of years younger than us so he's still at Millsaps but spending a semester in France. He remembered Charlotte from French class. Weird!

We had coffee at this cute cafe next to the Shakespeare& Co. bookstore, where I got an old copy of Brideshead Revisited. Very cool.

Amanda met us up later for dinner and we had a very French meal: appetizer of escargot and then fondue! It was delicious and quite the experience. I've had escargot before, so it wasn't too much of a shocker to be eating snails. But the fondue was different... we had a mini cauldron of oil to cook meat and onions on skewers, and a mini cauldron of cheese for the bread.

Diggin into a snaily. Interesting tools we had to use.

Amanda and me eating fondue!

The next day was BEAUTIFUL weather... still cold, but at least it was sunny and clear skies. I was surprised how much colder it was than London. Wasn't expecting that one. I went to Sacre-Coeur and it was absolutely gorgeous.

Then we went to the Catacombs. Soooo apparently way back when, the cemetaries got to be too full (ew) and they were condemned for sanitation reasons. So what did they do? Dig up everyone's remains and dump them together in a place underground, of course. Later on they decided to arrange the bones in some sort of order so they might be nice to look at and open the place to tourists. Go figure.

Charlotte being silly in the tunnel leading to the Catacombs... (it was NOT this light! so much creepier in real life)

Me in front of some of the remains... eeeee! Did I mention we did this on Valentine's Day? Yeah.

Next we went to see the sweet little miniature Statue of Liberty that the US gave France, and then to the Eiffel Tower. It is soooo pretty at night! Like I said, it was Valentine's Day, so there were beaucoups (see, I know some French) of couples waiting in line to get to the top of the tower.. awww, how romantic.

You can barely see me, but I'm there.

My last day in Paris we went to Musee del'Orangerie (no idea if I spelled that right!) It's close to the Louvre, but much more manageable for just an hour and a half of browsing. It has two rooms of Monet's waterlilies and then other great impressionist pieces downstairs.

Soooo lovely! This one above was my favorite.

After the museum we went to famous Angelina's for lunch and the richest hot chocolate you have ever tasted in your entire life. It was delicious but ooooo boy it was like drinking a melted chocolate bar or something. Then we went to Galeries Lafayette to have a gander and then did a little rummaging through some vintage stores. It was a ridiculously quick trip for such a tremendous city but I'm amazed at how much we managed to see and do. It was looooverly and I hope I get to go back sooooon!

xx