Bonanza

Im woefully behind on the last two days exciting activities, but the explanation is there, its been two days of exciting activities. I have freshly returned from a night of playing Bonanza (my new favourite game) with some other New Zealander's (they do exist!) in an amazing appartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Just casually, every day activity to be playing cards with a group of friends on a balcony overlooking the beauty of Paris. After a particularly turbulent bout of metro'ing, my brain is seriously insuffucient to explain two wonderous days in the City of Lights. (Metro: retarded. We were super smart today and bought day passes after using about 7 tickets on Saturday. Yes, 7 tickets, 1 day. Sounds like a bad movie).

However all stations seemed to hate at least one of us and so someone always became stuck on the wrong side of the gates. Therefore one of the following always insued: either we were very crafty and were able to slip closely behind someone else using a ticket, thus getting through on their ticket, both naughty and adrenaline pumping, or simply climbed the gates which was much easier but much more obvious. By the time we arrived to the final Cite stop, it seemed the machines not only hated us, but everyone, and apart from my ticket, the machines would not let anyone through (clearly karma will come and bite me in the arse another day). This meant everyone could freely climb over the gates without too much fear of the soldiers who roam the metro stations with their fingers prised on their AK-47's (or a similar combination of letters an numbers, I've never been good with weapon lingo).

One poor man behind us, travelling with 3 other male friends his age (not gay, I confirm) was unlucky enough to be a little on the larger side. Now when I say he was travelling with 'friends', I use this term very loosely after their following actions. The gates are very narrow and therefore clambering over them to get to the other side is hard enough for the average joe-blog let alone a 200pound, 50 year old man. So of course, he got stuck. His 'friends' clearly took this as an opportunity to take a photo of him for future blackmail purposes.

We actually got talking to these men and they informed us that they had been judging (or officialising in some way, I can't be positive they used the french word for judge, I paraphrased) the judo tournament. Coincidentally we watched part of it on television today (another story) and so didn't look completely out of our depth or completely un-french when they told us the world champion was crowned. We tried to look excited and failed, so proceeded to tell them our national sport was rugby and that the All Blacks could take down these ankle tapping judo players any day.

French friends made today: -4.

This bright computer screen is completely putting me to sleep so missing days will be written soon. Busy busy day tomorrow so hopefully I can find time to write, too much excitement, too little time.

Bonne nuit!