The Score

The Bad:

• Michael's flight being delayed and re-routed through Manchester instead of going Atlanta-Philadelphia-Charles de Gaulle as planned, and causing him to arrive eight hours later than originally anticipated, with no way to contact me to tell me what was happening. Also, the French staff of US Airways are buttfaces and would not help me figure out where he might have been re-routed, even though I CRIED IN THEIR FACES.
• Super sketch apartment that I rented for us being locked/inaccessible when we got there, and the customer service of the apartment rental company being absolutely awful, making us wait in the frigid hallway of a super dank and gross apartment building for two hours without a direct line to call them at. Their customer service line works really weird, too: it cost me like €0,35 per minute, and every time you call, you have to leave a message instead of talking to a real person, so that they get your information and then call you back. This resulted in them taking ages and ages to call me back every time, as my messages to them became increasingly angrier and more insistent. (I think in the end they were afraid to deal with me, so they TEXTED me directions on what to do instead of actually calling.) They suggested - in the un-timeliest of manners - that a locksmith come "at some point" that night, or that we could go to another apartment. I eventually got hold of the dude and basically tore into him, saying it wasn't worth it, that I wanted a refund, that the company's customer service was unacceptable, etc etc. Michael (poor Michael) and I decided to go have some food and wait for their response, which eventually was to give us an apartment (and I use the term "apartment" loosely) in another neighborhood of Paris. We eventually got there and, although it's kind of a hole in the wall and barely fits the two of us, it's in a beautiful neighborhood and is enough of a roof over our head to make it feel marginally like a home.
• We have no internet in the tiny hovel they gave us, and I've been doing some hardcore internet begging in our building for the past couple days, asking people to share their wifi access codes. After several failed attempts and a few rude French characters, a nice man a few floors below us gave us his info. Unfortunately, it only works in the stairwell and not in our room... This is where I write to you from right now.
• Really rude woman at the bakery we went to today who told us "ça ne va pas être possible de manger ici," when she saw that we were eating food that didn't happen to come from the bakery. We don't know if she noticed we were eating one of their baguettes...

The Good:

• Making snowmen in Montmartre outside our sad hovel residence.
• Getting baguettes, croissants, and pains au chocolat every morning for breakfast.
• Watching ice skaters at the Hôtel de Ville (we haven't gotten up the energy to brave the lines just yet).
• Walks along the Seine (of course).
• My Japanese class with Michael as the guest of honor.
• Riding the Metro all day long and walking just as much.
• Watching movies together (Going the Distance! haha, Gattaca, Tarzan, Dead Poets Society, Gremlins...).
• Falafel and a crêpe with Mara who had the misfortune to get stuck in Paris on her way home from Marseille (her flight was delayed and then canceled in the end ;_;).
• Exploring Massy (the park and the hypermarché... the two main attractions haha)

Above all, we're alive and doing relatively well, given the circumstances. Don't worry! This is what matters. :)