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Just found this floating around a folder from the photos I took in Paris and I got awfully reminiscent. This was from a trip me and my friends made to Marseille. It was kind of a big deal because none of us told our parents we’d be leaving Paris and it was totally spontaneous. We got lost at the train station and I tripped twice. Marseille was beautiful. No one spoke english, which was a big change from Paris, and so we really had to apply our rather crappy french into action. The train arrived around midnight, and our taxi driver was absolutely nuts! He was driving way too fast, and the road was literally on the side of a cliff. I also mistakenly took my roommate’s passport without noticing, and when I handed it to the hotel guy he looked at me real funny, because we look nothing alike! I felt so foolish! That weekend I went crazy with the Cosmopolitans. I drank like seven in one sitting by the beach while chatting to this nice Swedish man and his husband. We also got room service that night and wore the ridiculous hotel robes and got pretty drunk off some tasty french wine. We jumped on the beds yelling out pick-up lines, we’d learned in french. I remember showering the next morning while the tv was on really loud (I used to like repeating what I heard to practice my french), and hearing the news of Amy Winehouse’s death. We lazed by the beach and met some really interesting people. I felt like one of those Bond ladies, ready for anything thrown at me. Unstoppable, even. I had just turned 18, and I felt like the world was mine to take. After that awesome weekend was over, on our train ride back, two things occurred to me that literally changed me. The first was that I saw a ghetto out the window, and it broke that sheltered mind set I had. I had never seen poverty in my life like this. There were nude children playing amongst their cardboard homes, and that shocked me to say the least. Of course I had seen photos and heard about it, but it was entirely a different thing seeing it for yourself. The second thing, although it wasn’t such a ‘big thing’, still changed the way I thought about myself. We sat next to these hot Norwegian brothers on the train, and halfway through conversation I realized one of them was flirting with me. He was so obvious about it, and I was a bit surprised. Not because I’m some kind of prude, and have never flirted before, (although I am rather awful at it haha) but because I was used to the whole high school thing where you meet guys through friends and flirt through text messages before making out at the movies. But here was this very attractive 26 year old guy coming onto me. I felt so grown up, I guess. Later on he got up to ‘get a soda’, and I had to gather all my courage and follow him knowing we weren’t going to get a soda. We fooled around in the train bathroom, and I had never kissed anyone with real stubble before, and it was thrilling to think that anyone could catch us in the act. When we returned to Paris we said our good byes and took off to drink at some bar next to Champs Elysees where my friend threw up on my shoe. Oh….how I wish I was back to my darling France…