Earlier excursions into the city included being led through metro by someone a little more savvy than I am with maps and directions. This person happened to be Mark. Yet, today, he had homework to do and so me and my two other classmates were left to travel to Saint Michel and then the U.S. Embassy on our own. This was definitely a task. We went on a tour starting at Saint Michel. It was easy to get there, but the challenge was that we had to leave the tour early in order to meet up with the rest of our class on time. In doing so, we ran across quite a few obstacles. We walked probably longer than we had to in order to find a metro, and then couldn't get into it because my metro card was acting up. Finally, we spoke broken French to the lady at the info counter, and in broken English, she responded that I could go through because she opened the gate for me. From there, it was a bit of a hassle to figure out how to get to the exact station that our class would be at. After making what felt to be like a million mistakes, we found the right place that we were supposed to meet. We looked at the time and we were 10 minutes late. Not bad, considering how utterly confused we were. Eventually, we gave up and climbed up the stairs to go back where we came from, and voila- our class happened to be right there.
We definitely meant to do that.
Afterwards, we went to the U.S. Embassy and listened to two guest speakers. The rest of my day following this consisted of sleeping, because I was totally worn out. I may or may not have had a few nightmares about the Paris metro.
Below is an accurate depiction of what a Paris metro map looks like:
