I Got A Job!

Late last night I walked to the Eiffel Tower with two cool people who are currently staying at the hostel. An Aussie called Tom and a girl from North Carolina called Maggie. It was awesome. Maggie is very cool. Full of life. And Tom is friendly and talkative.

We watched the lights flicker on the hour (and went a bit crazy to celebrate!) then walked for miles to find a crepe. And when we found one. Wow!

Then this morning I headed over to Rue Bayan near Charles de Gaulle Etoile for a job interview. I turned up right on time but couldn't get in the door so I yelled "hello" into an open window I could hear kids playing out of, and a really friendly man popped his head out and then let me inside. And then I met a really friendly mum. And three really friendly kids. Theres Céleste who is 7. Paul who is 4. And Justine who is 2 years old. The family have been in India for the past three years and are back in Paris for a little while and want to keep their childrens' English skills up. So here steps in ME! I had a chat to the parents as the kids warmed to me ("I'm a bit scary aren't I?") and then before you know it I'm in the games room with Paul and Céleste and we're playing for an hour! And that's basically my job. 20€ per hour (which is about $37NZ) and the aim is for me to come around 4 times per week for 1.5hrs. So awesome. A good little/big booster for my budget! And nice to meet some lovely people. I mentioned that I'm looking for an apartment too and the mother, Marie, (the dad is Bertand) said she thinks she might know of something. Probably too expensive for me (I'd say the family are fairly wealthy) but you never know!

After an hour of play I went for a stroll through Charles de Gaulle Etoile (went to a great department store called FNAC) which had heaps of sweet stuff in it. I guess it's kind of like Whitcoulls and JB HiFi and Flight Centre combined with a pinch of class. Then walked through some great markets.

Sweet! You can plug this into your iPod! Want one Gina?

Inappropriate.

Then strolled down past the Arc de Triumph which I think would have to be my favourite piece of architecture over here.

It's very bold yet understated. And it's surrounded by cars in this stupidly dangerous super wide round about that apparently you can't claim insurance if you have a car accident there because accidents happen every 30 seconds on average.

Then popped into Orange Mobile to try again at getting data blocked on my phone because all my credit keeps mysteriously disappearing even when I don't use the phone and it's cost me shitloads already. Found the guy who speaks English. And he fucking yelled at me then stormed off! Haha! So much for customer service. I was being perfectly calm and reasonable. I was being a bit demanding. But nothing major. I just couldn't believe it. Not that he was that rude. But that just wouldn't really happen in NZ. But that's kinda great. Isn't it?

After - came how and ate corn chips and drank a beer. You can get big tall cans of beer for 60c across the road. Yum.