Ok-Mega Update Time

So, obviously I haven't updated in a while. Well, I will not share the story or stories with everyone.

When Emily and I first moved into our apartment, I started having allergic reactions. Hives, those extremely attractive things, covered me. I assumed I was allergic to a lotion, even the water. So obviously a month and a half went by, I couldn't figure it out, and I kept having reoccurring hives. At the same time, Emily started getting bites. Little bites localized on her hands, her neck, her back, even her ankle. One day Emily mentioned, do you think we have the same thing? "Nah," I said, "I get hives all the time, it's normal."

A couple weeks later, Emily asked our landlord if there was a bug problem in the apartment, and showed her our bites. Our insane landlord replied, Nahh, "Must be the ladybugs". Hmm. Ironically enough, the next day we walked into our apartment, and our landlord was CLEANING our apartment top to bottom, doing our laundry, rearranging our clothes. We said, "Nhat, what exactly are you doing?" Her response: "Sometimes children need help cleaning". Yeah, well I don't know about her, but I don't know anychildren that pay 460 euro a month rent.

So, after the crazy cleaning/bizarre landlord sesh, our friend came into the picture. As we were all sitting around a table at a dinner party, discussing our strange occurrences, a friend of ours asked, "Is it possible that you have bedbugs?"

And so that is where the story begins. That night we decided to stay at our friend's house, just in case this theory were to be true. The next morning we walked into our apartment, and looked around. I guess we thought they would just jump out at us. Well, they basically did. Not only we're they in our rooms, but in the kitchen, on our clothes, in the bathroom. It was the most disgusting experience ever. We quickly grabbed one pair of clothes a piece, and left the apartment to wash them. We had nothing but our books, laptops, and the set of clothes on our back. We were homeless. So after making a few calls, Emily got in touch with a family who lived outside the city. We made our way to their home, and it was lovely. Minus the fact that their daughter and exchange student thought we were diseased and refused to come near us. It was a nice stay, but due to the fact that it was so far outside the city, you had to pay to get out there as well as take a very long commute. So, so we started to stay with various friends. We jumped from house to house, and eventually broke down and bought new clothes. We would spend our days sitting in internet cafes, waiting until someone would send us a text saying they we're headed back to their house so we could get in. Ahh, it was terrible.

As for the apartment, we went to our program office, and they called our landlady. Let me tell you, she was pisseddd. The first step of the process was denial (we showed her some of the bagged critters), the second part of the process was embarassment, the third step was blaming it on someone else (us).

The funny thing about the french is that they think New York City occupies the entire state of New York. When I said I live in Northern New York once, a kid asked me if it was near Queens. So while my landlord was trying to find some way to blame us for the incident, a light bulb went off in her head. "Well, I hear there is a large problem with bedbugs in New York City," she told the program. I was ready to strangle someone. So when she mentioned this little fact to me in person, I very nicely commented that I lived 5 hours from NYC, and hadn't even taken my flight through there. Take that.

So, while she didn't have any other choice, she hired an exterminator. We emptied out all of our food in our landlords apartment, very awkward I might add, and the guy went to work. For 5 days we couldn't enter our apartment due to the fact the fumes were so bad. Our landlord insisted it was fine after less than 48 hours, she either has rocks for brains or is trying to kill us.

By week 2 of not having an apartment, it was starting to wear on me. The day that is imprinted most into my memory of this lovely adventure was this.

I was sitting in Mcdonalds with a coffee and my laptop getting internet. I needed to call my parents and update them on the situation, read emails, and do homework. To the right of me a homeless man had sat with his meal, however at the time I had been wearing the same clothes for about a week, so we actually looked rather cute together. I plugged in my headphones, and gave the ol' family a ring. That's when the mental breakdown started. The schizophrenic homeless man next to me though I was the same as him for a moment, so laughed at me as I started speaking to my computer. People stared, I felt gross, it was bad. So, as I was talking to my parents, I started crying, crying hardcore. People stared, the homeless man laughed, my parents sat confused on the phone not understanding my situation.

Ah so that was the day things hit rock bottom. However, from then on, things got much better. We finally were able to move into our apartment thankfully. Due to the fact that I had been feeling so homesick (probably due to the fact that I hadn't actually had a home for 2 weeks), I decided to take a break in the country side. A family friend outside of Tours invited me to his home for the weekend, as well as my two good friends. So together we took a train and left Paris for the weekend. It was so fantastic. We spent the weekend having phenominal food (chicken AND pork, the first meat I've eaten in a month), playing with kids, and driving their minivan around the countryside. It was priceless, and it definitely brought everything back to normal.

So, after a phenominal weekend, I just wanted to update everyone on my crazy Parisian excursions. All is well, I've started planning my spring break trips; I believe it's going to be Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Scotland, Poland, and finally Prague! For the summer, I am trying to find a job so that I might be able to stay here. I've applied to a favorite it Spain, teaching english at a day camp, accomodation, great pay.

So that is all for now, sorry for the lack of updates, but when your homeless you don't get wifi. It's rough.

Updates soon!