The joys of the late night Paris metro!

The Paris metro is always fun but especially late saturday nights. To be honest, it has been a while since I took the metro home before it closes but it was definitely interesting this saturday. It was just after midnight and I was heading home. About two stops into my ride home, five 17/18 year old girls got onto the metro. At first, I thought they were just hyper, then one of them actually fell off the seat she was sitting in and onto the floor. The others simply looked at her and laughed, and then continued to discuss the level of their drunkness and how funny it was. The one girl even leaned over and placed her head on the shoulder of the poor man who was sitting beside them. Everyone else in the metro car could hear and see how drunk they were. They started making fun of the others on the metro and started asking everyone where they were from. I have to say it was quite an experience. I know me and friends were pretty crazy when we were younger but taking public transportation completely hammered and making fools of ourselves was never part of it. Gotta love that it's acceptable to be 17 and not care whether everyone knows you are hammered or not! lol Only in Paris!!

Canadian olympics while in France!!

What an experience it has been watching the olympics being hosted in your home country while living abroad. Everyday someone else would ask about it and how Canada was doing, etc. However, the best things was watching the Men's Gold medal hockey game between Canada and the USA. Me and some girlfriends decided to watch the game. We started at a Canadian bar but it got way too crowded and the game was still an hour away. So we headed down the street a bit and ended up at an Irish pub (just around the corner from another Canadian bar). We thought it wouldn't be too busy. Boy were we wrong. However, we were lucky enough to get a table so we could actually sit and enjoy the game. What a game it was too!! Those of you are interested in the actual game probably already know all the details so I am going to discuss the watching of it rather than the amazing-ness of the game itself :) It was actually pretty cool to have a whole bunch of Americans and Canadians (as well as some French who thought they were either Canadian or American) watch the game. What an atmosphere. Everytime someone scored, or almost scored, or there was a great save or a nice check into the boards the whole bar would roar. There was some definite rivalry between our table of Canadian girls and the Americans around us, but we had lots of support from all the Canadians in the bar. It was almost like being home and enjoying the game. I actually enjoy watching North American sporting events out here because of the mixture of cultures that show up just to witness the atmosphere. It is pretty cool and a lot of fun. You meet crazy, random people simply because you are going for the same team or because you aren't. Either way, it was a super event and definitely worth going out on a sunday evening for it. Up next, March madness!!!

snowing in Paris

So for the past two years that I have been here it barely snowed all winter. This year, now that it is February, it has snowed more than it did while I was back in Canada for the holidays. The difference is, in Paris they handle it a little differently. Firstly, the transportation system. A lot of the trains that go out of the city and are above ground are much slower, less frequent and much more crowded. The slowness and the frequency has to do with the snow on the ground and icy tracks. The crowdedness makes you realize just how many people either walk, drive a scooter or bike to get to work, or just don't like driving in the small amount of snow. So that makes the metros even more crowded and more stressful. Secondly, the sidewalks and roads aren't salted. There hasn't been a lot of snow sticking to the ground but enough, and some ice too. However, they don't have a street crew going around salting and no store owners or apartment building owners are outside salting either. Needless to say, the city is pretty slippery, which doesn't stop all the women from wearing their heels. Thirdly, you would think it had been raining as there are so many people walking around with opened umbrellas. Maybe it happens back home and i just never noticed it, but out here lots of people use umbrellas when it is snowing. It makes sense and all, I had just never seen so many people doing it. I guess it does keep your hair from being ruined from a hat but still, it is only snow! The snow made the past few weeks of cold, grey weather a little better though. It has been mostly grey and cold and with a few flurries. It is also funny that -5 degrees is seen as REALLY cold out here. I can only imagine how most people here would react if they lived somewhere else like Canada or Russia! lol

The first transport strike of 2010

So today was the first fairly significant transportation strike of 2010. Of course, it happens on the day that I need to use 2 different RER (regional trains), both of which are affected by the strike. It probably wouldn't be so bad, if I wasn't on such a precise schedule as well. So first off, I am thankful I wasn't heading to the airport. Not only was it one for every two trains running, but they were only leaving and returning to Gare du Nord and from the upper platforms, which is you are not from the area or haven't been here for awhile, could make things more complicated for sure. However, the trains I needed were still one for every two trains running. Thankfully, I left for teaching early enough that when the one I usually catch was cancelled, I still had enough time to get to work with the following train. However, coming back into the city was a little tight considering that on a good day, I have a 15 minute window to get from that train to the one that takes me to coaching, and of course the one I was on was 10 minutes late getting into the station. Needless to say, I did the unpleasant but sometimes necessary metro station dash. Luckily, the train I was supposed to catch again was cancelled and the one following it was only 10 minutes later. So eventually, I made it to coaching and only 10 minutes late. All things considering it could have been a lot worse. However, coming home tonight was a royal pain in the butt. First, the bus to take me to train station came by 15 minutes early which was while I was still in the gym, therefore I had to wait another half hour for the next. Then I got to the station and the usual trains weren't running and had to wait again for another half hour for a train. This train however, kept switching when it was going to get into the station, it increased by 5 minutes twice, then went back to its original time, then went to 5 minutes early then finally went back to the original time, which was when it arrived. SO after a long day of travels I can honestly say that eventhough I had some difficulties, it did not make my life riduculously crazy, and I was still able to get where I needed. Therefore the whole concept of a strike which would cause major problems in the city, didn't really work out so well. Most people were either not affected at all or very minimally, so if I was the negotiating parties, I would not have been eager to make any changes since the strike didn't really shut down the city as most strikes do back in Canada. Although I can't be too upset because I was still able to get to work and it would have been much worse if I hadn't :)

Gymnastics in France

So I just competed in my first competition a) in France and b) in 10 years since I stopped training. It was definitely a different experience. First the warm up was in a separate room and there was no actual floor to practice on rather, a bunch of small mats placed on the floor beside eachother. So we had an hour to warm up in this room, with the vault going into a foam pit. Then it is competition time. So we head into the other room and there is no presenting of the teams at all, the competition simply starts. They give a total of 1:30 minutes per event as warm up. I started on floor. I hadn't heard my music cut before so it was a little iffy with the ending but I threw my back tuck which was good :) Then it was onto vault. First, I've never competed on the newer round horse so that was different. The runway was a thin piece of carpet that is rough and actually physically hurt my feet to run on! But I survived! Beam was my final event. I managed to stay on (mostly) :) but it wasn't bad. Then came the scoring. This was also my first competition with the scoring system where a score could be more than a perfect 10. They give you a start value which gets added to an execution score of 10. SO basically you could get a score higher than 10. I then had to go coach my other athletes for their competition and then it was finally awards time. After everything, I still managed to qualify eventhough I only competed 3 out of 4 events. So how that is actually possible I am not even sure. Their system is a little odd, and for each level only a certain number of gymnasts qualify. Some levels had 15 competetors but only 13 qualify. It had nothing to do with specific scores but rather simply numbers. So overall it was fun but not as fun as it used to be when I was back in Canada. My old teammates weren't there and my coach was good but not my original one and the other competetors weren't as friendly either. I enjoyed myself, but I had a lot more fun when I was back home (and 15 years old :))

part two of my travels over the holidays

Sorry this took so long to add but I have been having problems with the internet at my place (the difficulties with stealing internet! lol)
Anyways,
So I headed back to Paris on the 3rd of January (a sunday). I had called the airport that morning to confirm that there weren't any problems getting through and to confirm the new restrictions. Apparently, they are only for American flights. If you are flying anywhere else, nothing has changed. lol So we went early just in case. There was definitely no need to do so at all! However, when I got there man did I get scared. We saw this line that went on for miles. It was crazy. But all the people still had all their luggage and hadn't checked into their flights yet. That was only one area. My mom and I walked around the corner and found my international flight company (I was flying with LOT Polish airlines). They weren't even open yet and weren't going to open until exactly 3 hours before the flight. So we went and sat somewhere and ate and watched all these poor people trying to fly to the states. Eventually I checked in with my two checked bags and my carry on bag and walked past the super long line and right into security. It took me literally 15 mintuesto get through! lol I went and waited to board my flight which ended up leaving a little about a half hour late. That didn't really matter too much to me as I was heading to Warsaw and going to have to wait 5 hours before my next flight anyways. So we got to Warsaw and disembarked from the plane. There were a bunch of people who were stressed and may have missed their connections but as I said, I had a lot of time.I headed to security again and unfortunately they don't know how to do it as well as north america does. They had two lines and that was it. Considering there were at least 6 flights that had all landed around the same time and people were trying to go through security and customs they probably should have had more lines. Oh well, I made it through and went and found some comfy chairs and slept for a few hours and then did some work while waiting for my hour long flight from Warsaw to Pars. All went well and I arrived in Paris at the same time I was supposed to have. No problems this time!! All I can say is thank goodness I was not going to the states. We will see what happens when I head home in the summer! lol

The trials and troubles of travalling at holiday time

So here are two tips when travelling. 1) don't do it close to the holidays or anytime in winter for that matter! lol and 2) suck it up and pay the extra money to avoid being with a stand alone airline.

This will be a two part blog:
1) My flight from Paris to Canada for the holidays.
I arrived early at the airport Charles deGaulle. There was a transportation strike so I left myself extra time just in case. When I first walked out of my apartment it was lightly snowing (flurries really) and I was pretty excited to see the snow. However that changed a few hours later when my flight didn't board when it was supposed to. We still hadn't boarded three hours later and had no information about when or if we were going to board a plane that day. All the information was in Dublin and they weren't giving any of it to the poor man at the gate in Paris. He therefore had no information for us which made it even harder when he tried to explain it in broken English. About four hours delayed they gave us a 5euros food voucher to be used in the airport. Finally we boarded the plane and sat on the runway for another hour and then finally took off for Dublin with no idea of what would happen once we got there.
Once we got to Dublin they seperated us into groups to help us figure out where we would stay for the night and what flights we were on the following day. Most of us got our flights all figured out right away and then some of us didn't and were told to head to our hotel and they would fax our information to us that evening. So I went to my hotel and relaxed, had a nice bubble bath and headed to the restaurant fo dinner with my meal voucher. What a delicious meal it was too. I ate with one of the other girls who got stuck on the same flight. After dinner we hung out at the hotel bar but I still hadn't heard from the airline. The receptionist called the airline to see if they had any information but they were closed. So all she could suggest was call back at 7 in the morning. So I went back to the bar with the others and we hung out there for the evening.
So 7am I got up and called the airline to see what information they had for me. Thankfully I was packed and ready to leave because when I called they told me my flight was at 11am which meant I had to be there at 9am. So I went and grabbed my free buffet breakfast, then got on the shuttle t the airport. All was fne with my flight information and I got through security fine but apparently not everyone got their flights all figured out. Unfortunately the flight they put me on was from Dublin to Shannon, Ireland, then o Boston and finally to Columbus. It all went smooth and it wasn't a horrible flight. I finally made it to Boston and then had t take my bags off the baggage claim, go through customs, recheck my bags, then take a shuttle to another terminal. I then got on a small plane to Ohio. I arrived in Ohio a day late but finally!! :)