Life in Paris is Still Life...

So far pretty much everything that I have written about in this blog has been about my amazing experiences and all the fun that I have been having here in Paris. But I must admit, life in Paris is still life... not everything is perfect and there are still bad days and even bad weeks. I have had a little bit of trouble adjusting to this fact and letting myself be ok with the fact that I don't have to love every single aspect of Paris or be happy at all times. So in the spirit of keeping an accurate account of my adventures here in Paris, it is now time for me to share my experience from this past weekend even though it isn't happy and isn't going to make you jealous...

First of all I would like to preface this by saying that I have not enjoyed living alone. I like my apartment and I like the neighborhood, I love that I am so close to the school, but I would give these things up to have a roommate that I could come home to in a heartbeat.

That being said, this weekend I was feeling a little lonely so my friend Caitlin offered to sleep over last night. And thank God she did.

On our way home from the bars, around 1:30, not too late considering it was a Saturday night we were riding the metro, which has always seemed very safe to me because there is always an abundance of people riding with you. Anyways when we changed trains to make the final leg of the journey home, we happened to get on a car with about 10 young men, somewhat thuggish in appearance and behavior, most likely from the banlieue (suburbs outside Paris, not nice as a general rule) Anyways, one of them approached Caitlin and me and started talking to us and when we ignored him he got offended and persisted with us, becoming more and more creepy and threatening in his stance. He was smoking a cigarette and holding it in my face so I told him in French that I am allergic to the smoke and to please move his cigarette. His reply... taking long drag and blowing the smoke in our faces. After this, Caitlin and I decided to get off of the train, but he stood in our way so that we would have to physically push past him in order to get off. Once we were off we moved down to the next car so that there would be some distance between us. Then when we went to get off at our stop we could see them looking out the doors to see where we were so we stayed on the train until the whistle sounded to signify that the doors were closing and we jumped off, making sure that they were all behind the closed doors of the train.

This was definitely one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me and I was very disheartened by the whole thing. I couldn't stop thinking, "What if I had been alone?" Sure there were other people on the train and I really think that they guy was just trying to show off in front of his friends, but I didn't see anyone attempt to help or stop the situation.

I am usually pretty ok with the idea of taking the metro at night especially since the alternative is a taxi, which costs more than most of my meals, but I know that from now on I will not be foregoing my safety to save and extra 15€, and come to think about it, it's rather concerning that this is even something that I would have done in the first place.

Sorry for the bummer post.

Hill