The Main Event

I made the mistake of trying to fall asleep with my head on Jon’s lap last night while he was watching UFC. Every time they go from throwing punches to grappling on the floor, his body starts to slowly contort. It’s the weirdest thing. He gets so into the matches that when his guy is in trouble, HE gets all tense and squirmy. Kind of like jerking your hands up when you’re trying to make Mario jump. Or putting your foot on an invisible break when you’re in the passenger seat…I do that one all the time. Anyway, my favorite UFC fighter is George St Pierre. He’s an ugly cuss, and I’m not sure if he’s any good, but calling him “GSP” makes me happy.

So we’ve been reading tons about monuments and history, and planning out our itinerary…so far it includes a “leisurely bike tour” in Versailles (I’m pretty excited about it), and about everything else we think we could possibly cram in. You name it. Oh, and plus, we found out that Jon’s convention requires less time than we originally thought, so that’s good news. Oh, and plus, there’s supposedly the world’s oldest ice cream, or something, right across from Notre-Dame, so I’m definitely looking forward to it. Oh, and my cousin Jenny mentioned the Catacombs, which piqued my interest, so I read a ton of material about them, and in my own words, here’s a summary of events.

Okay, so way back in the day, when the Romans were turning Paris from a little village into one of the world’s largest cities, they needed lots of limestone for building material. So where did they get it? They just scooped it out from underneath the city. They mined and mined and mined these enormous tunnels under Paris until the city started to implode, and then they quit doing it that way. Duh. Anyway, they were left with this city sitting on top off hundreds of miles’ worth of tunnels. I guess even to this day, they have issues with buildings falling through. I found that on the internet, and everything on the internet is true.

Anyway, another problem related to a growing city – lots and lots of dead people. Some cemeteries had up to THIRTY generations of people buried underneath. And when they ran out of room, they started stacking the graves, and when they ran out of room, they built the walls up and started mass graves, and when those got full, the cemetery walls would swell and tons of rotting corpses would come spilling out into the open. Ew. So when people around the cemeteries started getting sick, finally enough was enough. They started moving all these bodies into the creepy tunnels the Romans had dug while building the city. DUN dun dunnn! There are over SIX MILLION bodies in there, and apparently you can pay five euros to head down and walk along one small portion of the entire thing. Jon really wants to do it, but it sounds pretty intense. Anyway, I’m not even sure if they’ll be open while we’re there, because on the website is says they’re closed between November 2007 and April 2008, and who knows when in April they open back up? We’ll have to see about it when we get there.

Jon’s been trying to work something out so that he can receive emergency phone calls from work, and so that if anyone from home needs to get in touch with us, they can. Anyway, all he could come up with after multiple calls to his wireless provider was to pay an arm and a leg for the European equivalent of a Go-Phone once we get there. So THEN he calls back with some other question, and mentions it to this lady, and she’s all “um, we’ll just send you a phone that’s compatible on the European network, and all your calls on your regular phone will just be forwarded to that phone, and you pay just over a dollar per minute.” Okay, are you kidding me? And it’s a free service, too, all we had to pay for was shipping. And it came the next day, which is today, and I haven’t seen it yet, but Jon says it’s actually really nice. So anyway, for just over a dollar per minute, you can reach us in Paris on Jon’s regular cell number. What?! How is that possible? And how is it possible that no one mentioned it earlier?

Anyway, we’ve got tons to do tonight and tomorrow to get ready (I’ve hardly even begun packing), so hopefully it all comes together in time! Not just packing, but I want to clean the entire apartment beforehand (I HATE coming home from a trip to a dirty house. It’s one of those rare things that got that from my mom. I wish I inherited more from her…but I didn’t).

So, consider this my last post before I leave. I may or may not be fluent in French when I get back….