No Parlez Vouz Francais

Bonjour from Paris!  As you can tell, even after three days of staying in the capitol of France, my French has improved almost 0%.  Besides learning a few key phrases like “ja no se pa” (which means “I don’t know”) and “voulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir” (which means "would you like to come back to my place tonight?"…and I didn’t actually use it, it’s just from the movie “Moulin Rouge”), my knowledge of French is about the same as it was when I arrived.  Case in point: yesterday morning, we were all still asleep in the hostel (even though it was almost 11) and the hostel maid came in to change our sheets and stuff.  I never heard her knocking, but I woke up right about when Matt was groggily yelling in English “We don’t need any,” while the maid kept yelling something louder and louder in French.  I turned over in my bed and quickly yelled out “No Parlez Vouz Francais!” which technically means, “No do you speak French!”  Even though I think she got offended by me essentially telling her to not talk, she at least got the point and left.  Scott: 1.  Maid: 0.

Our entire adventure in Paris has been pretty eventful.  It all started with our long trek to the train station at 4:00 AM in London.  None of us wanted to try and figure out the buses that early in the morning, and we also didn’t want to cram into a taxi, so we instead decided to march the 1.5 miles (sorry, 2.41 kilometers) to the train station with all our bags.  Few men would’ve been able to make that walk, especially after we had walked the entire city of London the day before.  But we made it with a half hour until our train departed and hopped right on.  We were even rewarded with a free complimentary breakfast, which remains the best meal we’ve eaten yet because we’re all too cheap to pay for real food (unless it’s crêpes).

Our hostel here has been way better than the Piccadilly Backpackers in London.  From outside, it didn’t look like much, what with the large plants growing all over the metal frame.  Ryan affectionately referred to it as the compound from Jurassic Park.  But, once we got into our room, we realized that we had made a great choice.  Not only is it more spacious, but it also has big windows which means I’ve actually slept (no fan needed).  The only downside is that it is out in the middle of nowhere (and that's a picture from outside our window).

To counter our hostel’s poor location, we decided to invest in metro passes instead of walking everywhere.  This has worked out pretty well except for one pointless trip to Bastille.  We thought that we’d be going to the armory that was stormed during the French Revolution, but it turns out it was either destroyed in the last couple weeks, or it’s not actually in Bastille.  Either way, that was two metro tickets and an hour down the hole.

Other than that, we did actually see a lot, including the Eiffel tower, the Arc de Triumph, the Louvre, Notre-Dame, and probably every tourist spot you can think of.  We took every goofy picture we had an opportunity for (mainly of Ryan interacting with statues and paintings at the Louvre), so it might have been obvious that we’re Americans.  We also got to watch the French Army do some sort of routine at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triumph, but it mainly consisted of them standing lazily and smoking cigarettes.  We figured they were probably just planning the best way to retreat next time.

The Eiffel tower was of course the coolest thing we saw.  We went to the top and got a lot of great pictures on the first night (at least until my camera ran out of battery which was quite inopportune) and we even went back the second night just to watch the light show that goes on after sunset.  The monument itself was awesome, but the people around were kind of the opposite. First off, there was a massive abundance of public affection (is sunset at the Eiffel tower really that romantic? Come on).  This made it quite hard to be the only group of four guys surrounding the tower while everyone else was a newlywed couple.  Though, now I definitely plan on coming back here with my girlfriend some day.  Also, did I mention the body odor thing before?  Yea, that’s still in effect.

Alright, that was kind of a long one, but I hope it was semi-entertaining to hear of our successes and failures in Paris.  Tomorrow morning we head out again at 6:20 AM (and we have a taxi this time, thank god) and finally make our way to Athens for that thing called school.  I stated today that our vacation is about over, but really now that I think of it I guess it’s just beginning.  Life is so tough.

Special Shoutout of the Day: Sam Knigge, cause apparently she reads the blog, and might be the farthest reaching person I've heard of yet to read it...pass it on people!

European Insult Tally: Bill—1

                                         Scott—2 (My encounter with the maid today qualifies as my second)

                                         Matt—0

                                         Ryan—He made the comment about the French Army retreating,      which might have been offensive, but it also gives him credit for a      good joke.

Ya digg?

Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

Lock Down

Hello all from the Harry Potter capitol of the world…London, England!  My first couple days of adventure have been quite a breeze, which probably wasn’t helped by the long 16-hour coma that we all took on the first night or the 10 hours of travel time before we even got to London.  However, that’s all behind me now, and I’ve finally gotten around to writing my first European blog entry.

 It’s amazing how many little stories can occur in such a small time period, but I guess pulling a Jack Bauer and staying up for around 24 hours probably helps.  The journey started off with a couple of scares right away.  These were highlighted by my acquired skill of forgetting where I place things, namely the lock to my backpack.  On the first plane from Minneapolis to Iceland, I somehow lost the small lock on my backpack while sitting at my seat.  After initiating a code red lockdown, I searched fruitlessly for about 15 seconds and then decided to give up and try and sleep. But between love ballads by my dream girl, I kept waking up and checking my bag to make sure that nothing had been stolen (We’ve been told that pickpockets in Europe are more prevalent than wizards, so I naturally thought that everyone surrounding me was adept at thievery).  This continued for the remainder of the six-hour flight, which needless to say means that I didn’t sleep very well.  Now, remember this story, because I am going to skillfully segue into more amusing anecdotes (or change stories for those who aren’t gifted with the same knowledge of grammar as me…Mom).

 The next plane ride was comparatively short to the first, seeing as it was only two and a half hours.  The Three Caballeros and I slept for most of the ride, but by the time the plane was about to land, we were all awake and getting excited.  One Caballero was so excited that he couldn’t fully contain “it”, and he soon filled an airplane courtesy bag with “it” (Scott on the Rocks is above naming names, but this person’s name doesn’t start with a S, B, or R).

Once on the ground, we meandered towards our hostel.  But since our hostel was off Piccadilly Circus, this of course meant that there were no road signs (because who doesn’t know the street names near Piccadilly Circus?).  We were forced to ask a random Londoner for directions, but he seemed about as lost as us.  After an educated guess (which was of course correct…it was educated), we found our hostel and settled in.  Our room was about half the size of a St. John’s dorm room with twice as many beds.  With all of this body heat in such close quarters, the room was very hot.  Now, anyone who knows me may know that I need a fan to sleep.  In fact, if you exchange the word “fan” for a certain other f-word in this clip, you’ll see just how necessary a fan is to my life.  Without a fan, I stayed awake for about 2 hours at 1 AM BST and read a book.  I was going to blog to all you who care right then, but unfortunately the internet costs money in Europe and one thing I don’t have is lots of money.  If you all remember about two minutes ago, I already had had some troubles staying asleep (I told you I’d get back to the lock story…look at me not being forgetful anymore).  But, I eventually fell back asleep only to wake up with everyone else at the wee morning hour of 12 PM.  Oops.

Our day-and-a-half in London probably qualifies us as experts of the tourist business, because we somehow ran around and saw almost everything.  As if those 10-15 total miles wasn’t enough, we are planning to wake up at 3 AM tomorrow and hop on a train to Paris.  Whoopie.  So, for now I guess wish me and the Caballeros luck, and I’ll write again soon.

Also, I’ve decided to start a tally of all the times that the Caballeros accidentally offend someone in Europe (or purposefully I guess).  So far we have…

Bill: Not only did he have trouble understanding the Iceland customs officer (Customs Officer: “How long are you staying in Europe?  Bill’s response: “Thank you.”), but he also asked, “They have stairs in Iceland?” immediately after getting off the plane.

Me: When walking past a large crowd of people standing and taking pictures, I severely insulted a member of the Prime Minister’s security outside the Prime Minister’s office when I asked him what everyone was looking at.

Special Shout out of the Day: Steve Twelves, because it’s his birthday…or was his birthday, depending on when you read this.  He is another year older and now looks like this.  Just kidding.

Ya digg?

 Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

The First Entry

Hello everyone and welcome to Scott on the Rocks.  Let me start by paraphrasing every blogger in history about their first ever blog.  "This is my first time doing a blog, it's not really my thing, I've never really understood why people would care about what I'm writing," and so on and so forth.  Well, like those people, I am a first time blogger, but the difference with me is I feel I was born to write blogs as much as math blaster and number munchers were born to kick the snot out of kindergarten math.  Hopefully my faith in my writing heroes, Mark Titus and Rick Reilly, will help make this blog more entertaining for everyone involved.  Basically, I have two main goals in writing this blog:

1) To inform family and friends of my whereabouts while studying abroad this semester in Greece and Italy while also telling insightful stories and tidbits about what it's like to be a college kid in a foreign country with a bunch of people who don't wear deodorant.

2) To become a big enough internet sensation that Taylor Swift will finally notice me.

I realize that one of these goals is far-reaching, but the second goal should be pretty easy to attain.  Anyways, back to this being my first post.  As I write this, the countdown is on to me leaving on a jetplane and heading off on my adventures (It's currently at 10 hours, and 15 minutes until I go).  Though I'm not going on a dangerous mission to save the planet from an asteroid hurtling through space, I'm still starting to finally get nervous about not having the comforts of home for the next four months.  Since I go to the far away St. John's for college (exactly 1 hour from my house), this will really be my first experience venturing out from the nest.  My parents are obviously more nervous than I am at this point, but I think by the time I touch down in London town, I'm going to feel like quite the outsider.  My traveling companions, which I will henceforth refer to as the Three Caballeros, are most likely getting jittery about the trip as well, seeing as how one (Bill) has only flown once, another (Matt) will be deprived of video games for four months, and the last (Ryan)...well I guess I'm not sure if Ryan's nervous or not.  I'll get back to you guys next post on what his feeling are.

I guess I'm not really sure what else to write about yet because as of now, this entire post has been built off of speculation.  Obviously, as I go, this blog will become more advanced and exciting for all, but I think for this first one I'll keep it short and sweet.  However, I hope you're as excited as I am to discover new lands, hear new stories, and to journey where no Johnnie has journeyed before...or at least where only few have.

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Today's Special Shout-out: Charles Moore. He becomes an early candidate for "Biggest Contributor to the Blog Outside of Me," by coming up with the title for the blog.  Thank you Charles

Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves