Pure Gluttony

The last few days have been a complete smorgasbord of food and slight agitation.

Saturday after my ridiculous run, I invited Lorena and Peter over to watch a few movies. Peter brought "Trainspotting" (appropriate, since it’s Scottish), and Lorena chose upon “The Prestige” (seen already by Peter and me). We had a good conversation afterwards, and they left for me to sleep.

Sunday was a gloomy day. Paris’ overall morale goes way down low on Sundays; everything is closed, everyone is recuperating from a rough Saturday night (sans moi), and it’s just an overall somber day. It didn’t help much that I’ve been craving certain people to hang out with right now who are in America. So, I was in a slightly downtrodden state.
I had to go to Cité to work on a project with my group. We met up at the Portugal House’s kitchen. I ended up making a French friend named Pierre as we talked about his luck in diplomatic jobs and how I only dream of such good fortune. We exchanged emails and mobiles and plan on getting together later to talk about it and perhaps throw a cooking fête. My group ended up accomplishing nothing.
I went for a walk around the Cité and realized how lovely and convenient it is. Everything and everyone is in good proximal distances. Social feeling. I am kind of sad that I am living all alone in the middle of the city with no human contact.
I ended up feeling so low that I concluded to go to the patisserie on my block and buy 2 desserts: Frasier & something like an almond custard pie. I ate them both. Alone. In my flat. Within an hour. Which ended up making me feel even worse about myself since it was completely contradictory to my attempts at weight loss.
Luckily my friend Nate went online (saved!) and we ended up having an intense and uplifting conversation. We sorted a lot of things up, and I think it’s put life, at least between us two, at a better place (for now at least). He’s such a wonderful person!

Monday was a long day at school. After classes, Peter and Rahul ended up joining me home for dinner. Lorena called and decided to tag along with us. We went to the store nearby and grabbed some items for a meal.
Before we started cooking, I insisted that I go on a jog while the boys watched “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and drank wine. The jog was to my normal Eiffel, but I was getting held up in traffic everywhere, so it was a bit over 35 minutes.
Rahul is a vegetarian due to Jainism, so I was responsible for the vegetarian dish (an eggplant, onion, and tomato sauce). Lorena helped out by working on the meat sauce for our pasta dish. She also made one of our two baguettes (the first was eaten by the boys) into garlic bread. And a bottle of red wine. DAMN, was that a lot of food!
But no, we weren’t done. I cut up some apples, brought out some crackers and the brie cheese we bought, and it was our dessert. We cleaned up shop completely. I cannot believe how much food I consumed!!!!!!
And the boys did the dishes, which was miraculously wonderful. And the dinner itself was great. I put on some jazz and we just chit chatted. A good night, overall. But so, so much food!!
Today, after discovering (much to my chagrin) that I’d have to repeat learning simple French grammar all over again, I asked my teacher about my French level, where he answered mostly that he was going to recommend me for the level higher than the one I’m in now. Thank god! Let’s hope that it comes through…I really really pray I will get in. I have to change around my schedule anyways (so I messed up…).
To compensate for the terrible foods I’ve eaten lately, I decided to keep my consumption on a very minimal level. I’m very hungry, but the idea is to shrink the old gizzard and I won’t have to gorge on food again.
I went with the class (but hung out with the kids) to the Cimetière Père Lachaise. Buried here are people like Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Proust, Oscar Wilde…..A LOT of dead people. The place is literally a City of the Dead! Tombs are overlapping, and towers scatter the plots with ample little chapels and mourning rooms. Massive burial site. It was fascinating to watch how people behave with graveyards. Normally, I am alright if pictures are taken in cemeteries, as long as they are out of respect for the dead and attempting artistictness. But for people to be eagerly taking pictures of tombstones of celebrities as if they were the real living beings…it was just bizarre. And people noticeably weren’t being respectful of the other burial chambers. I was almost tempted to ask tourists if they wanted me to take a picture of them smiling next to some dead person’s tomb, just so they could show their friends they were REALLY THERE! Really now, people. This is why I absolutely refuse to be buried and have a tombstone. Cremation.