show me a garden that's bursting into life

Chaotic week, this has been.

Other than my host parents being out of town, I thought it'd be relatively normal, or as normal as a week in Paris can be. That was until I came home Wednesday night to my host brother throwing a party of around 15 French, mid-twenties-and-up males who were all sitting in my living room dressed from work and drinking wine. When I walked passed, they invited me to join them, and I made my excuses that I had to drop my stuff in my room first. You have to understand that in the six plus months I've been living in this house, the host brother and I have spoken all of twice, and both times, all we said was 'Hi'. So in the mere act of inviting me in the sitting room for a drink, his friends managed to speak to me more than he has.

I hid in my room until one of his friends came looking for me, inviting me to eat dinner with them. Although I'd eaten earlier, after class, at Breakfast of America, I decided why not? Food's food, and free food is even better. Apparently, according to his friends, my host brother was the one to do the cooking, and he's pretty good at it. Curry chicken, and better than most meals his mother has made for me. I did find it extremely odd, however, that throwing a party in your parents' absence for this group is getting together, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes for a few hours, eating a fancy dinner with actual courses that was prepared by the host (a mid-twenties male), then listening to American music from the 80s and 90s while drinking expensive champagne.

Most of the guests left at or before midnight, as I assume they had work the next day. Me, my host brother, and two of his friends were the only ones left, cleaning up (I think there were around 12 empty wine bottles at the end of the night). The two friends suggested going to a club, where they know the DJ and can get in easily, for free. Of course they wanted me to come along, being the only female, and I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to ride on the back of a moto (the motorbikes/vespas that are so popular over here) through Paris at night. After a brief argument about which helmet would fit me best and who was going to ride with who, I found myself holding on for dear life as we rode across the bridge of the Seine and down the Champs Elysee.

The club was a typical club; on a Wednesday night, relatively deserted, but still populated enough for me to have plenty of entertainment from the girls shimmying drunkenly on the dance floor. Tensions arose after one of the friends bought me a drink, and the two had a bit of a hard time deciding which one of them would get to spend time with me. The issue settled itself when the one who bought me the drink repeatedly reminded the other one that he had a girlfriend, a fact he didn't seem to keen on remembering at this point. I found the whole thing ridiculously amusing, in a detached, no-way-is-this-really-happening way. I got free champagne out of it, though.

When I got home that night at somewhere around 5 in the morning, even facing the knowledge that I had class at 10:30 that morning wasn't enough to make me regret going. The moto rides alone were worth it all, and I got practice using practical, everyday French. The whole night was spent talking in a complete mix of French and English, and lots of French given my host brother doesn't speak a word of English.

I fell asleep around 7, woke up again at 9 and was forced to get up, and go through the day of classes on two hours of sleep. Amazingly, I think I participated more in my French class that day than ever before, as I actually spoke up in class when not called on specifically. And I stayed awake during Film with the help of a second can of coke (the first was consumed in my first class of the day, French).

Thursday night, after a full day on little sleep, I couldn't manage to shut my brain off enough to go to bed, so when my roommates rolled in from a club at midnight, drunk and loud, I was awake. Thank goodness, too. They decided the middle of the night was a good time to confront our host brother about the issues they have with him (he goes to the bathroom with the door open, for one), and managed to wake him up, piss him off, and make him think they'd brought guests home, which is strictly against the rules. I went in and played peacemaker, reassuring host brother with our newfound actual-talking capabilities, that they were just drunk, they hadn't brought anyone home, and I'd make sure they left him alone to sleep.

I was happy to see the weekend arrive, even if it was on a Friday the 13th. Turns out, however, I should've been more wary. Just—not for me.

Friday was a quiet night of catching up on my TV shows, and getting to sleep at a decent hour of 00:30. It was Saturday morning, at 9, when one of my roommates came into my room asking to borrow my phone. I pointed to where it was laying on the floor, and she had a really hard time finding it despite being out in the open and perfectly visible, but I didn't think too much of it, as I was half asleep.

Then she came back into my room, and I sat up, because even my sleep-induced stupor wasn't thick enough not to notice something was wrong. She explained that she didn't know where our other roommate was, and she'd just spent the past five hours alone in a French emergency room.

She'd broken her nose. After leaving the club, somehow she and the other roommate had gotten separated, and she was sitting outside of our apartment (not knowing she had her keys in her pocket) when she somehow managed to fall over and slam her head into—something. Not clear on what. The wall or the ground. And she broke her nose. There is still a pool of dried blood on our stoop.

A couple passing by were nice enough to stop, realizing she wasn't okay, and called an ambulance, sitting with her until it arrived and trying to get her to calm down.

Did I mention she lost her cell phone in the club somewhere? And our other roommate's phone was broken, so we had no way of getting in contact with her. We hoped she'd gone home with another girl who'd been with them, but we called her cell phone (thank you, Facebook) and she hadn't seen our roommate either.

I'm the only calm one in the situation at this point. My roommate is nearing hysterics and on Skype with a friend from home, telling her how much she wanted to go home and how horrible her life was and how this was the worst night of her life, and getting herself nice and worked up.

I'm sure sobbing with a broken nose wasn't the best idea, add no sleep and a hangover on top of it, and she was a complete wreck. I had her take an ambien and go to sleep, and laid down in bed to wait and see if our other roommate came home.

At 13:00, I started thinking maybe I should figure out how to contact the police or hospitals in case something happened to her, when she shows up. She'd gone home with a French guy, and when I informed her of the night's events, got pretty freaked out as well. I couldn't say with a straight face that she had no reason for feeling guilty, because I think that one of the major rules about drinking is that you never, ever, leave your friends alone even when they tell you they're fine. And a girl doesn't let another girl find her way home in the middle of the night while drunk. Still, she couldn't have known something would happen, and having her feeling guilty on top of everything wasn't going to help out the situation. Thankfully, I'm good at side-stepping questions, and we managed to figure out a plan for how to handle this whole mess. The day has been spent dealing with the fall out from last night. Let's just hope the Ides of March passes by more gently.

I'm kind of amused by the fact that my roommates are still going to Dublin tomorrow for St. Patrick's Day.

And on top of everything, there's some details I never divulged from a month ago. My iPhone went missing one night, when I went out with a friend. The next morning, it was simply not in my purse and I had no idea if it had been stolen or if it had fallen out, or if I'd accidently left it somewhere or what. The fact was my $400 phone that I paid for with my own earned money was gone. Prospects of replacing it are non-existent, and the most I was hoping for was buying a refurb when I get home this summer. It sucked, and was my own fault for not being more careful, but I'd gotten my head around the fact that my precious, pretty, new, awesome phone was gone for good.

Except maybe it isn't.

On Friday, my dad got a text message from my iPhone saying that someone had found it, and that they didn't speak English, but I could get in touch with them. I texted them from my French phone, and it turns out these people found my phone in the Japanese restaurant where I'd eaten dinner that night, and I'm in the process of setting up a meeting with them on Monday to get my phone back. Obviously, I'm taking a tall, male friend with me.

But what are the chances that I would ever see my phone again? And I might?

This is certainly a year to remember.

Being young, and being in Paris, it's got its risks, but it's definitely changed me, and I'd like to think for the better.

Now if only I could figure out this l'imparfait de subjonctif thing.