My Roommate.

I've recently moved in with a really cool and nice guy named Phillipe. Phillipe doesn't speak any English so all of our conversations have been in French, but he is a nice guy and things have been generally going very smoothly. There is something off about him, however, based on a few strange things.

Firstly, when I initially met him through a room-finding website he told me his name was Kevin. We met in person on three occasions until he finally informed me that his name was, in fact, Phillipe. He said that he used the name Kevin for the website so that when an unknown number called his phone and asked for Kevin he would know it was about the apartment. That's not really something I would do, but it seems harmless, and it wasn't too big of a deal.

The other night, however, the second strange thing happened. A friend of a friend needed a place to stay so I let him sleep on my floor for a night. We had all gone out to get a drink at the bar, Phillipe included, and upon coming home my guest wanted to go to sleep. He set up his spot on my carpet with a blanket and a pillow and was doing just fine. I was in the kitchen browsing the internet and listening to music when Phillipe came in and asked me if my friend needed an air mattress. Seeing as my friend was drunk and already probably asleep, I said it wasn't necessary. I continued to hang out in the kitchen listening to music with headphones. I thought I heard Phillipe talking to someone but didn't really pay attention to it.

When I finally removed my headphones I could tell that he was definitely talking, and in fact yelling, at someone in my room. I went back to my room and they were having a heated argument in French about sleeping on the floor. Phillipe kept repeating that it "wasn't clean" and "wasn't proper" for someone to sleep on the floor. My friend kept insisting that, for him, it was totally normal and not a big deal. This went on for another 10 minutes until my friend and I finally gave up and said that blowing up the mattress was fine. The mattress was blown up and everything was OK, and Phillipe told us a couple more times that in France is was not OK to sleep on the floor. The whole experience was kind of weird but not a big deal really.

Anyways, fast forward to 30 minutes ago, two days after the blow-up bed incident. I wanted to watch a French movie and I didn't have any so I figured I would ask Phillipe if he had any. I went over to his room and it turns out he is not home. Thinking it wouldn't be too big of a deal just to peek to see if he even has a DVD collection, I wander into his room. I walk over to his shelf and see that he has an entire shelf dedicated to DVDs, totaling about 50 or so. I think it looks pretty promising, but then I notice that all of the DVDs all look kind-of the same, like they are all from the same collection or something. Wondering what sort of collection it was, I looked a little closer. One big name appeared on the side of every single DVD: "L RON HUBBARD."

Genuinely frightened and feeling as though I had stumbled onto something I shouldn't have, I ran out of the room and closed the door. I returned shortly afterward to take a picture and to convince myself of what I saw.

I mean, this isn't the biggest deal ever, but I'll definitely be looking for strange things coming from Phillipe for the duration of my stay in this apartment (3 weeks).

Dancing with myself.

Tonight, Lynnsy, our French friends Olivia and Eric, and I went to dinner and then we went to a bar to get a drink. The bar was actually pretty cool because it was a big cellar basement thing that provided a fun drinking atmosphere.

Anyway, I've seen a lot of funny things here, but in the basement I saw the funniest fucking thing yet. There was this guy who must have been influenced by a number of illicit substances who was dancing with himself in the mirror. When we walked downstairs it was a relatively empty room with maybe 3 people at the bar and then this guy, the champion of the one-man dance.

He had a lot of cool dance moves, all of which he performed to himself in the mirror. He did the "come over here sexy" kind of finger motion, a bit of general "you are sexy" pointing, and some other swell moves, all directed at his mirror image. He went on like this for about 10 minutes until the girls at the bar left and then he left a few minutes later.

Although it may be hard to tell, the picture above is an attempt to chronicle the event but the bar had strange lighting. The shape on the right is the guy while the mirror on the left is the mirror. I love that guy.

Elbow.

I took it out of the cast for a second. It's pretty big and purple.

I hurt myself.

I went to a French hospital and it was really funny. I'll write more about it later.

The New Shanghai.

This is the view from our apartment. If you look down to the bottom left you can see the storefront of a restaurant called New Shanghai. When we moved into our apartment the landlady was pretty relaxed about most things and casually explained all of the logistical aspects of the apartment rather nonchalantly. Then she got really dramatic and serious and said "You guys, there is one thing, you must NEVER, EVER eat at the New Shanghai across the street." She was more emphatic about this than about any other aspect of our apartment. She then put forth some hypothetical situations where we might think it's a good idea to go to the New Shanghai and she insisted that we must "Never, EVER go." She reminded us not to go at least two more times before she left that day.

Naturally, we eat there every day. We love it.

The Ideal Shop.

It's about time I told everyone about "The Ideal Shop." The Ideal Shop is an urban clothing store located just below the window to our apartment. Every day some of the funniest shit I have ever seen happens at the Ideal Shop and it gets more ridiculous each time. In the picture on the left, on this particular day, those five black men were borrowing the photographic talents of the white guy in the sweater. Basically he was walking down the street and they asked him to take their picture with their camera phone. The guy ended up taking so many pictures of the guys in different poses in front of and inside the Ideal Shop. After each picture, all of the guys would break out of their pose and walk to the white guy and look at the picture and laugh and demand another. The guy was taking pictures for over ten minutes.

As I type this the Ideal Shop is blasting the "Mortal Kombat" theme song and there is one guy doing the robot at the entrance to the store. I'm four floors up and I can hear the song clearly even with the windows closed. I love the Ideal Shop.

Maybe one day I will actually go inside...

Men in Uniforms?

Lynnsy and I were getting on the metro at around 3:00 PM earlier today and this relatively normal looking yet obviously frazzled guy came up to us and asked us a question in French. I didn't quite understand what he said and I told him, in French, that I didn't understand. Then he said "English?" and proceeded to ask us the same question in English. He said: "Are there men in uniform, police, upstairs looking for someone?" We said no and he said thanks and he ran off up the stairs.

Cool guy!