UK Border Agents go to Bitch School

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post: Getting back into the UK from France was significantly more difficult than getting into the UK from the States. What?!? Ok, let me preface this with it was like 2 in the morning. Or thereabouts. So no one was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I could maybe understand that making the agents cranky. But they were NOT cranky, they were straight up bitchy. While I was playing 20 questions with my border agent, the one next to her walks over with some poor soul's passport and goes, "Look at this! An Algerian passport, this visa's sideways, this one's upside down!" And then she shakes her head and scoffs, "Ridiculous!!!" Ok, hold up. It's not THIS guy's fault that people failed kindergarten and can't stamp passports. Also, you are a border agent on the graveyard shift. You are not a top Interpol spy, and you're probably not even a real blonde. And I bet your passport picture is ugly. Let's not make fun of other people's passports RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. Talk about unprofessional. I hope to God US border agents don't pull stunts like that. We're already douchey enough, thank you.

Yeah, and my border agent was like, "What do you get from [studying abroad]? How will it help you when you go back [to the states]?" Uhhh...basically it's an excuse to not study (sorry mom and dad) and spend all my money. And it looks semi-decent on a resume. But as far as you're concerned, Miss Nice-Border-Agent-Lady, what I "get" from studying abroad is BROKE. From YOUR COUNTRY. So let me back in so I can continue stimulating your economy. Capisce?

Also, some guy had to do the walk of shame and get all his stuff out of the bus with a border agent looming behind him because he got denied entry to the UK. Sucks to be him.

Paris and other excitement

So. You've found me out. I am a shite blogger. Well guess what: I WARNED YOU. There. Now that that's out of the way (and no, I will not apologize for not blogging for forever)...

Paris:

Dirty. Smelly. Seriously. Who knew an entire city could smell like piss? Well, I do now! I knew there was a reason we didn't go on the metro the first time we were there.

But Paris wasn't THAT bad. We went to the Louvre, the Eiffel Towel, Versailles, Notre Dame, Champs Elysees, the Opera House, and pet stores (don't ask). I think it was a good introduction to European travel because we kind of waded into it, and Paris is very similar to London--at least I thought so. The only difference is that Paris has trash cans (but no one uses them), whereas London is pretty immaculate but there are no trash cans. Probably because there are people who pick up trash on every single block. Seriously, if you walk for five minutes and don't see a trash-picker-upper, freaking call Guinness World Records immediately.

So, as some of you may know, we took the night bus to Paris, which worked out fine until we had to get on the ferry to cross the English Channel. First of all, some kid was puking and so they had to call the ambulance, and then ANOTHER kid started puking, and then they found a problem with the hydrolics or something so the doors wouldn't shut. Combined, this put us 2 hours behind schedule. Awesome, right? It actually turned out ok, we were just all super sleep drunk on the ferry. Like, all giggly. And someone made me laugh so hard that cookie crumbs wound up all over the table, so Mom (aka Lindsey) took them away and it was sad. Thank God Lauren brought cards. When we finally got to Paris, we made our way to the Metro (or the Paris underground/subway system), which is surprisingly similar to the tube, just, you know, DIRTY. And we found our hostel surprisingly easily, which made me very proud of us. Check in wasn't until later, but we could drop our bags off to store them in the luggage room, which was really nice. Carrying our ginormous backbacks on the Metro once made all the Parisians love us. NOT. We found food and got yelled at by an angry French baker because we were taking too long to decide what we wanted. That was a snazzy welcome to Paris for us lol. Then we went to the Louvre for a few hours and saw the big hits--Napolean's apartments, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, etc. After the Louvre, naptime beckoned, big time. When we woke up, we decided to check out the Arc d'Triomphe and walk along the Champs Elyeeses. And it started snowing!!! It was super pretty, and made up for the semi-slow first day and sketchy travel experiences.

The next few days were spent exploring Paris and doing lots of tourist-y stuff, with the exception of two things: we went ice skating (well, Hope, Lauren, and Shelby did; Lindsey and I looked like hobos and bag ladies, holding everyone's purses) and then stopped into a bunch of pet shops. Fun times lol. We wanted to go take pictures of the outside of the Louvre since we skipped that the first time around, and on our way there there were all these pet shops. Ask 5 girls to walk by puppies without even looking. Go on, ask. I dare you.

We also saw Moulin Rouge (the actual club, not the movie) that night, all lit up, so that was fun, then there was a live band back at the hostel. It was three Argentinian boys who just decided to go on a European tour from the sound of it. They were pretty good, but we just heard their acoustic stuff. Apparently they're more techno/electronica. We did buy a CD, but I'm not sure if anyone has listened to it yet lol.

The last day in Paris was dedicated to Versailles. I was a little heartbroken to find out that the gardens weren't open in the winter, since that was something I missed last time I was in Paris, but c'est la vie, I suppose.

Whilst in Paris, I bought a lot of hats. But one of them is not for me, so I'll have to send that off soon. I blame the weather. Guess what? Paris in January is FREAKING COLD. So. Thanks to Lindsey for letting me borrow her gloves. Pretty sure if I hadn't had them I wouldn't be typing this right now. Because my fingers would have fallen off.

Mostly, though, Paris made me miss choir a lot. Since I'd been there before, the Notre Dame was even more amazing but bittersweet becuase I stood in front of where we sang, and it just reminded me of high school choir tour. It was really surreal to look at the choir loft and know that I had been there nearly three years before. So much time has passed that it seems like both forever ago and yesterday at the same time. How does that happen?

I'm definitely looking forward to going new places soon. I think either Scotland or Ireland might be next up. I'll blog about Bath soon, I promise. Sort of. Just don't hold me to it :P