A Brief Interview with the Latin Quarter

My plane was supposed to leave at 6:45. I got to the airport at 4:30. Lisa came with me (so nice!). We had had a hectic morning printing stuff, returning stuff, buying stuff (a carryon bag for me!) but it was a glorious day and my bags weren't too heavy now that I'd lost all my stuff. (ha.) And then my plane was late. It was now scheduled to leave at at 9:20. I sat down and ate some nuts. I got up and perused the duty free. I went to Zara and bought a skirt for a bat mitzvah that I'm going to the first weekend in February. I peoplewatched. I had no book. No music. No computer. I was bored. And then they changed the gate number. And a mass of moroccans moved from one gate to the next. I followed, slowly. Then they changed it again. And again. And finally - at 8:45pm - they opened the doors.

It was early in the AM when I arrived at my hotel, conviniently named "Campanlie Roissy le Mesnil Amelot", a name foreigners like me are bound to forget as soon as they read it. I arrived at 3am only to find that someone else had been checked into my room. My life is a barrel of laughs.

This morning I got on a shuttle to the airport from the hotel, met a guy from the upper west side (!) goes to Vassar, had been studying abroad in Paris, and had had his flight cancelled. Then I got on a subway to Paris. I got off in the Latin Quarter and spent the morning searching for a book. The first English language bookstore I went to was closed :.. ( so I went to a second. It's famous. Its called Shakespeare & Company, and I found a book. A book I'm excited to read. By David Foster Wallace. It is, I think, his most famous. "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is now my sole form of entertainment after my internet time runs its course in exactly 7 minutes.

Anyway, on my way to the internet café, I walked into a little grocery store (think makolet/hanut type) only to hear a radio broadcast in Arabic. So, of course, I started chatting with the patroness in Arabic. Oh it was nice to be understood again. And gave me directions in arabic to this place which, wonder of wonders, contains computers with English keyboards! Alhumdililah wa rabi yichalik!

Again, no music. Sorry - you have to suffer the loss of my itunes along with me. Sigh.