Sunday, October 17, 2010

Dia de los Muertos? (yes I realize that's Spanish)

First of all I just have to say I think it's funny that my post titled "Uneventful" has the most views.

Anyway, yesterday was a long but really fun day. I went running at the Parc Montsouris near the dorms. It had hills, so that was rough haha, but it felt good to get up and go be active. Since we didn't end up going out the night before, it was great to be not hungover and exercise as opposed to being hungover and sleeping in. Good life choice. I came home and got ready because we were planning on going to the Catacombs that afternoon. I met up with a few of the girls at the entrance, which is literally across from the Metro exit (only 4 stops away). We had to wait in line for a little bit, but it wasn't too bad. We finally got in, got our tickets, and started making our way down. The Catacombs are under the Metro and under the water and sewer lines. And it's a small spiral staircase all the way down. I got soooo dizzy and I felt like the descent was never going to end. It finally did, and we started following the dark tunnels underground. I have to admit I was kind of creeped out. I'm glad I was there with other people. We ran into a girl who had come by herself. Never ever haha. There were a lot of tunnels gated off because apparently there is a large network of tunnels down there and you could get lost if you wandered down one of them. We stayed on the (dimly) lit path and followed the main tunnels. Again, it seemed to go on forever. We passed a lot of inscriptions on the walls, some telling us which streets we were under. So weird to think that this is just underneath a main square in the city. Then, we got to the actual bones. I was nervous we were going to turn a corner and then see skulls all of a sudden, but there was a doorway that warned you haha. I didn't really know what to expect. We walked it, and the sheer number of bones was unreal. The walls are just lined with skulls and what I think were femurs just stacked on top of each other. I took pictures, but you weren't allowed to use a flash so they're not very good quality. We just wandered through, looking at all these bones from anonymous people. They used to be buried in a cemetery, but then the people who lived nearby started complaining of rampant disease from it (I think?) and so they dug everyone up and stacked them underground. There weren't any railings or barricades down there or anything; you could reach out and touch the bones if you wanted to. I wanted to, but I didn't. I felt like Bones, it was awesome haha. The bones were also kind of designed. There was a column of bones that you could circumvent, and there were a bunch of skulls in a wall in the shape of a heart. I wonder who put all the bones down there that way. It was really cool until (hopefully) water started dripping from the ceiling, and then we were ready to get out of there. We climbed the 83 stairs back up and ended up on a random street kind of far from where we had started. We did a little shopping and then Mado and I went to the Père Lachaise cemetery, where SOOO many people are buried. It's not exactly laid out on a grid, though, and we didn't have a map, so we only found Oscar Wilde's grave and then Jim Morrison's, which was pretty cool. At Jim Morrison's, there were a bunch of kids just sitting there getting high, so I didn't stay over there for very long. It closed just as we found the exit, and we headed to Bastille to get dinner. We were going to get Indian food, but the place was closed which was a bummer. Also, I forgot about the protests for the retirement age, which take place at Bastille. Should have connected those dots better...there were a ton of people with flags and signs everywhere. Luckily the area by the restaurants wasn't too crazy, and we ended up at a random restaurant and had the most delicious pasta ever. Maybe it was just because we were starving, but it was sooo good. After that, we both headed home, and it was FREEZING. It was so windy I popped my collar haha. I couldn't take myself seriously for the next half hour getting home, but whatever, I was a little bit warmer. All in all, it was a fun day, even though we spent the majority of it with dead people.


This morning I woke up early and instead of studying for my test I'm going to fail tomorrow, I finally watched Dear Jack, Andrew McMahon's documentary about when he was in the hospital fighting leukemia. It was soooo amazing. I cried the entire time, but it's such a great story. Everyone should go watch it!! Then I actually started studying. Hopefully Bibiane will check my answers on my practice sheet so I know where I stand. I'm very unmotivated to study because you can only conjugate so many verbs.... Also I just want to go back to sleep. I would want to go out and do something, but it's currently 43 degrees outside, high of 48 for the day. I think the AZ/SoCal girl made a bad choice coming to what appears to be the Arctic. Definitely getting boots and a warm coat stat.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like you had a good day - dead people and all haha! I love reading your posts, Sam!

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