Theme of the day: Getting LOST.

I have never heard of greenery closing.  I guess this is another thing that is different here - seems like one of the few negatives.  I just got home from a really nice "picnic" with a girl I recently got reacquainted with from high school.  She is older than me and we were not friends back then, but as they say there is something about ECS girls - as corny as this sounds, somehow there is a bond.  We had a great night.  Everything today went wrong until we finally started our picnic.  

This morning I went to the gym and then off to work for my first Monday morning.  When I decided to go to the gym, I chose to take a different route because I kept feeling like I was walking down to ultimately go back up and figured there must be a better way.  In discovering this new way, I got a little lost.  I quickly figured out where I was going and was back on track.  This time, getting lost wasn't so bad - but hey it was only the morning - there was much more of the day to come.  

Finished at the gym, my work day started with the weekly meeting where the whole office convenes and we discuss what jobs will be worked on this week.  My tasks today included translating an english text to french and doing some research on the competitors of a company we are going to be doing a website for.  Note: when translating an english text that a french agency has written - there is not only the challenge of translating my native tongue to a foreign tongue, but in addition the mystery of what is this guy actually trying to say.  The memory of my high school compositions marked up with 'expression anglais'  from when translating word for word from English to French came back to my mind.  Now I understood.  This was what they had done and it made no sense when I read the text.  Therefore, on top of translating English to French, I also had the challenge of correcting the English so it made sense.

Lunch came earlier than usual because of the meeting that took a good 2hrs.  I bought a Lomography Diana medium format camera before I left New York, because I wanted a fun no nonsense camera to throw into my purse and experiment with when I was here.  I had finished my first roll of film and wanted to get it developed.  I asked my boss where to go and he explained it was just down the street.  I ran out before eating my lunch, expecting this trip to the lab to take little time and I ended up going in the complete opposite direction and getting VERY lost.  A very nice man walked me back to my main street half an hour after I had continued walking in the wrong direction.  I was quite nervous because I hadn't brought my map or my phone...as c'était juste a coté du bureau!  Yeah not if you go the wrong way!

After work, I decided to try again.  This time I went in the right direction after thoroughly studying the map but walked way to far up the street and had to turn around.  I call that incident Lost #3.

Today was very hot.  Remember no air conditioning in Paris.  So the office was unbearable and the walk home was even worse.  This lab was further from my apartment, but closer to work the opposite way, so the walk home in the humidity was so much fun.

My friend messaged me wanting to have a picnic cause the weather was so nice and I was excited all day.  The forecast showed that there was a 60% chance of rain as of 7pm, but luckily it held off until just now where it is poring buckets!  I wanted to take her to the cute green patch under Sacre Coeur that I went to on Saturday close to me.  We met at Monoprix (the grocery store) to get stuff for our picnic and walked up there.  Little did I know, parks close here!  The doors were barred closed as of 9pm.  At least we had a nice walk in Montmartre.  We resorted to a fountain 50 meters from my apartment right in the heart of the Red Light district.  Its no park, but granted, it was a nice picnic.