Well, I managed to make it all the way to Paris. I’m here at Robert’s now getting ready to catch a few z’s before meeting my family tomorrow morning. The boat ride was great. I spent most of my time hanging out with a Scottish fellow. He’d just been hanging around Morocco for the last six months soaking up sun and fun.

I liked the trip though again having more people to talk to would have been nice. There were some friendly French people, but unfortunately my French is only good enough to follow them when they speak nice and slow. Not really condusive to animated conversation. The trip ended up taking 36 hours, but it was fine because food was free on the boat. I managed to miss both dinners though. The first one because I didn’t know it was free and the second was karmic I think because I didn’t pay for my coke at lunch. (They wanted 1,8euro for it and I didn’t know it cast anything). I went in to breakfast ready to pay, but they didn’t ask. After I left though one of the waiters acosted the Scottish guy. All white folks look alike.

Getting up to Paris was amazingly easy. The train left about 30 minutes after we pulled into port. I had a fifteen minute layover in Montpellier and was on a TGV (high speed train) arriving in Paris by 4. 66euro in all, though not once during the ride did anyone examine my ticket. It turns out the seats were assigned on the TGV and I was occupying the seat of a rather cute French girl. Damn my inability to express anything intelligible in French.

It took me a good hour and a half to find Robert’s even though he is only about a mile away. It is just something about my uncanny sense of direction.

We went out tonight and had some really nice food. Robert treated which was especially nice since it would have been about half my remaining money. A friend of his who is a travel writer name Jack came over and livened things up quite a bit. After dinner he walked us around a while to see the city a bit. It is really beautiful and I’m going to hang out for a bit at the end to see more.

Seeing it though and having a sense of the homogenity of large wastern urban centers has left me thinking more about my end of service trip. I was going to go Europe, but Asia and Nepal in particular are looking more attractive now.

Boy, if I thought I’d be cold in Europe in September… I also learned there is skiing in the Atlas mountains in Morocco for pretty cheap. A road trip up from Mauritania sounds like an interesting adventure. Have to keep it on the list of potentials.

Well, it is 1:30am here and I need to be up in qbout six hours to meet my family, so goodnight. Bisslamah as Kahrim taught me to say on the boat.

Love,
Will