The subject of today's post is a meeting that took place between myself, Nicole, John, Naomi and a bunch of new folks. That's right, I went to a party- my second in a fortnight, in case you're counting (don't worry, I'm not delusional enough to think anyone's counting).
I started pre-drinking for this party as soon as work ended, because I didn't want to be meeting new people sober. So, I finished class, said goodbye to my students and then went back to my room and took a couple of shots of vodka. In addition to the fact that I can now no longer claim to have never drunk alone, this was a bad idea because I had to get the bus to the train station and, since it was the end of the school day, my students were also waiting at the bus stop to go home. And I was standing there, gently swaying from side to side and singing 'So Happy' from Into the Woods: I'm hoping that I'm weird enough in general that no one noticed anything out of the ordinary.
When I got on the train, I promptly fell asleep and woke up in Paris, a bit disoriented (I said aloud 'why am I moving?'. In English.) but otherwise completely sober so, you know, that was pointless. John was there to meet me at the station and we were soon joined by Naomi and Nicole, whom I hadn't seen since November. We hugged, we laughed, we rode on far-too-crowded metro trains- it was a rehashing of our greatest hits, is what I'm saying, and that was exactly what I wanted; if only we'd got stuck on a ferris wheel!
Anyway, we arrived at the party pretty early, but that was fine because there was pizza and people from Minnesota, so we could make Fargo jokes. Pretty early on in the evening, John donned a tiara and declared that it would not be coming off for the rest of the night- he didn't wake up with it on, but no one knows where it went.
First up, we played flip cup and, with much like anything else involving vague atheleticism, I was extremely poor with occasional flashes of mediocrity which I had no idea how to replicate. We lost handily, but we also had the first team mate to get properly smashed, so isn't that what it's really all about. We then played a quick game of ring of fire- emphasis on quick, I don't think we even got around the circle twice- and then the party descended into that most nebulous and difficult-to-negotiate of stages, which I like to call Feudal Times: lots of disparate groups, everchanging allegiances and backstabbing, no easy way to make long voyages (like from the kitchen to the living room), accusations of witchcraft and people pissing in pots.
I met some cool new people and I got to have some interesting conversations, a lot of which seemed to involve people mimicking my accent, which I've never thought of as being particularly strong, but there it is.
I went to bed around five, and then woke up at seven because some practical joker had set an alarm and then hidden their phone. Hilarious. After extinguishing that fire, we went back to sleep and woke around noon. We then went out for breakfast and ended up eating on the street because there were no seats inside- my grandmother always predicted I'd end up munching scraps on the street, but she never foresaw that I'd have friends when I did.
After this, we went out for coffee (the place where we breakfasted was not only too fancy to have ample seating- it was too good to serve coffee. In France.) and then to Parc Luxembourg- sadly, by this time, we'd missed the puppet shows, but we did get to take some lovely photos:
And John and Naomi pioneered an experimental new kind of Colgate advert:
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