Uh-oh

Well, it's happening. I'm experiencing my first case of writers block. Either that or my life unexpectedly became uninteresting. In any case my hit reality blog series is taking a turn for the worse. The sad thing is that I've actually been traveling. I left Meschers on Wednesday to go to Paris for a few days and take care of some business. Nothing too exciting there. Wait. No. Yes, I'm inspired again! So on the train to Paris I thought of something funny. What if you somehow got a bunch of short grannies and grandpas with luggage into a train car. Work with me here. And in that train car, you add one young man to help them put their luggage into the overhead storage area. At the first stop, remove young man and insert hidden camera. Yep.

While in Paris I spent the two nights hanging out with my cousin. The first night I'd really rather not talk about but I'm going to let it out anyway. We went over to his friends house for a couple drinks, and once again I found myself in front of a Wii. And what's better is that they were playing Mario Kart! I quickly got in on the action only to find that these goofy French bastards were damn good. In fact, I won a few races but didn't win a single cup all night! WTF? How embarassing. And if you think you know someone competitive, multiply that by 100 and you get the French. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

Moving on, the next night was a little less disturbing. I've got to give you a little background for this one. A few months ago my cousin discovered the magnificent mystifying world of interned dating. But dating sites in France are a little different. More on that later. For now we'll just say that their primary use isn't for getting a date. So two days earlier, my cousin met this girl online and within hours they had already exchanged phone numbers. They talked a little and she invited us to a party at one of her friends' house. It wasn't exactly next door but sometimes you've got to make sacrifices. After about an hour drive we showed up at this house full of people we didn't know. I made a mental note of something that I really appreciate about the French culture. When you show up somewhere, whether you know everyone or not, you introduce yourself to each person individually. It's really nice; you inevitably feel more at easy right away. And it's polite. Just like how you never show up anywhere empty-handed. We brought whiskey. Anyway, the night turned out to be pretty fun. I met a lot of new interesting people. 5:00 a.m. rolled around quickly and I was in the living room talking with my new friends and waiting for my cousin to finish target practice in the upstairs bedroom. Once he hit bull's-eye, we said goodbye and took off. We made it home just in time for him to change clothes and leave for work. I got some much needed sleep.

When I woke up, I made the trip back to Tours to spend a couple days relaxing before the long awaited, nervously anticipated two weeks of vacation with my cousins in Meschers.