La Vie en Errands

Today was an extremely busy, errand filled day. First I woke up and did yoga as I do almost everyday. Then I needed to go to those Fotomaton things that are significantly featured in the film Amelie. I had to get passport photos for program, even though they said 2 months ago they had everything they needed from me. But alas after a semi-argument over email with a student assistant I decided to go to one of these Fotomaton's and get my pictures. After that, (and a loss of 5 euros for that), I took the metro to the first school I will be teaching at tomorrow. I live in the 4th arrondissement, and had to take two different lines to get to the school in the 17th. It took about 40 minutes with a little added time for Google maps getting me lost in the neighborhood. But, I finally found the school. Then I had lunch at a nearby cafe. After lunch, I took the metro from this school to my NYU Paris building. This was to test what will be my Tuesday evening commute from teaching to class. This took about 35 minutes with a little more Google maps getting confused on the Parisian streets. But again, I managed to find it. I dropped of the passport photos and decided to take the bus back home. The bus costs 2 euros, (one metro ride slightly cheaper at 1.80 euros), and took what felt like 10 minutes to get me back home to Bastille. I decided to do one more errand and found a nearby Office Depot (I know, even in Paris #globalization). I made some photocopoies for my lesson tomorrow and bought a few more notebooks for school. After all those errands, I made it back home finally. I had a very long but interesting day observing people on the metro, bus and buying school supplies last minute. The most challenging and interesting part of the day was getting lost looking for a mislabeled metro stop. The line I was looking for used to have Porte d'Orleans as its last stop. I am familiar with this because it is where I lived last time I was in Paris. But the last stop on this line s now Montrouge. I followed signs for Montrouge as normal only to fins myself on the side of the metro going the opposite direction. After circling around forever, I found two other people doing the same thing. We went off together and eventually found the right direction for our metro. Who says the French are rude? I had quite the full day and am looking forward to going over my lesson plan for tomorrow and relaxing before Orientation Friday!

Au revoir!