Here I Come, Paris!

Man, it has been months since I've posted in this thing! Logging on today I realized that the last entry is dated December 18th, which means I haven't even written anything about my trip to Paris and Amsterdam. So, of course, that sounds like a fantastic place to begin where I left off.

Well, December 22nd I'm schedule to travel to Sevilla by train, and then hop on over to the airport to fly into Paris. The flight's only about two hours, so I was pleased by the thought of not having a miserable traveling day of death of chaos.

Little did I know...

Cut to several days before I head out of Córdoba. I'm teaching my cute little five years olds and we're all sitting down to do some worksheet. One of them, Paula, is sitting next to me while she colors, and asks me a question to clarify exactly what she should be coloring in the first place. Up until now I was very excited about the steps I had taken to remain healthy. Up until now was the first time I had been feeling solidly healthy since I arrived in Spain in the first place. But up until now, I had not had little five, germ filled five year olds cough directly all over me.

Thanks Paula.

That Saturday I spent the day in bed shivering. You know that shivering where you're laying under about 30 of your heaviest blankets, freezing your bum off even though your brain seems to acknowledge that something is warm, but it surely isn't you? Yeah, that's about how I spent the two days before I had to leave for Paris. But thank God it was just the shivers and a bit of a head flu and it hadn't migrated down to my stomach. If only I had been so lucky.

I wake up on Monday, travel day, feeling fantastic. HA! All those antibiotics I had been diligently been taking must have worked and I felt peachy-keen amazing. A quick shower, some breakfast, gather up all my stuff, and off I go, ready to see Paris!

All is going well, I make it to the airport safely, manage my way through security (although for some reason they viewed my face wash and shaving cream a threat to the airplane. Not my shaving razor, mind you, just my shaving cream), and sit down to wait for my flight with a bit of coffee and a book. That's when I hear it. The grumbling. The grumbling of an angry organ deep inside your body that is severely displeased and wants to make sure you know it, and organ that, no matter how much you beg, plead, and pray, will feel free to expel its contents whenever it deems necessary.

This, of course, is pretty inconvenient when you've got a window seat and you're waiting for take off and "MA'AM YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND I NEED TO USE THE BATHROOM AHORA!"

So the flu had migrated, and my hopes of a chaos free day of traveling were dashed away with my wind.

Of course, the very pleasant frenchman and his girlfriend didn't fault me, and after the third time of disturbing them I gathered my things and found my way to an aisle seat. Of course by then my stomach had settled down.

Cue arrival in Paris. The Bonjours, the Faire les Bisses, and even an occasional Beret. My life would have been complete if right there and then someone had been playing the accordion.

Yet, nonetheless, I had arrived and had not died in the process. Bryan 1. Paris 0. Stomach 10.

Thankfully my friends had already found their way to the hotel without a hitch, and I met them there and promptly ordered that we go find a restaurant and drink delicious wine while discussing poetry, politics, and the social implications of Sarcozy's cabinet. Or, you know, instead we just talked about how wacky Europeans are and how, frankly, they don't make any sense. In any case I had an... interesting meal of chicken liver paired with a tasty white wine in a restaurant where all the tables were draped in -- I kid you not -- red and white checkered table cloths, and then the lot of us returned to the hotel for a well deserved sleep.

The next morning I felt fantastic, well enough for a good walk around the city. Looking back on it we managed to cover and awesome amount of distance. We headed straight for Invalides (a hospital built for soldiers that contains Napolean's tomb) , The Eiffel Tower, the Arc, the Louvre, and a couple places, before deciding it was time for a nap. This is how the next few days were spent, idly wandering around the city checking out the sites and grumbling about how the ridiculous cost of beer was preventing us from drinking as much as we wanted.

Not that yours truly would have considering it would be just a few hours before the monster inside of me decided to erupt in an angry, fiery fury...

But I'll save that for the next entry!