I met up with Shelly tonight for a couple of drinks and to see a friendly face. Shelly went to high school with our mutual friend, Janice, and is now doing her Masters in international development (I believe) at Sciences Po. After a pretty quiet day of laying around in the sun and cleaning the apartment a bit, I met her and her friends at Odeon Metro station for them to take me around their university hood. I've always knows that the Saint Michel area was what they call "cool" but they took me to corners of the area I had never seen before. I guess that's what they mean when they say it's always better knowing a local. We went and got a drink at a cafe near Saint Sulpice Church and I had some good conversation with two of her girlfriends who are also doing their masters at Sciences Po. Their names have escaped me (I am horrible with names!) but one was from Taiwan and the other from Singapore. I talked to them about my time in SE Asia and Hong Kong and it made me nostalgic and I sent messages to all my HK friends as soon as I got back to the apartment. I've been thinking and I would really like to live and work in Hong Kong at some point in my life. I want to brush up on my Cantonese but taking classes when I'm back in Vancouver and then hopefully I can get transfered there for a couple years with E&Y or whoever I'm with at the time. Anyway we then moved on to this retro bar that Shelly likes and ordered a pitcher of amazing sangria where one of her friends (the guy from Paris) told us about this weird unwritten rule among the different universities that draws light on the hierarchy that exists in the school system in Paris. Apparently when you meet someone, you are only allowed to "tu/toi" people (informal greeting) when they are from the same university as you but you have to "vous" (formal greeting) to everyone else....EXCEPT for the kinds at PolyTech, they are allowed to tu/tois whoever they like! We finished up and they all went back to the books and I went and got a crepe for my walk home. Lovely night and now ready for bed :)xox
Alexis
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