Here at last!

Here at last! The flight went smoothly, but getting into Paris did
not. There is no reason to believe that I went about it in the wrong way - the train simply broke down, then I couldn't firgure out how to use the public phones so I didn't call Joy to let her know what was going on until several hours after I was supposed to have met her. (For the record, public phones in Paris are opperated by using a phone card that you have to buy either in a shop or at a train station - not by change or credit card.) But it worked out and she got me to her houseboat, where I crashed for a few hours. Now I am in an internet cafe down the street from her school, where I will meet her shortly to go to the bar where she's a regular with her friends, then on to dinner and band practice. What fun!

The rest of the night went rather well. Joy's band is named "Good Looking Bastards" and features Joy, a woman from Paris named Anne, and a Swede named Emil who looks like Johnny Depp. They play guitar and sing and do hand and tamborene precusions - mostly blues-flavored things. There is also a lot of improv in their singing, especially as they are still working on many of the words. Songs tonight ranged from Bob Dylan's "Quinn the Esquimo" to Sweedish pirate songs. Dinner was cooked by Emil and mostly involved vegetables - for the veggies being from a frozen bag, it was not bad at all! (Though apparently not quite up to Emil's standards.) After dinner was political conversation until we were all so exausted we had to go home and hope the trains were still running. Paris has a wonderful train/metro system that will get you just about anywhere.