ey! ey! qui ne saute pas n'est pas francais! ey!

boy did i come to france at the right f'in time! first was fete de la musique, then it's the WM then it's bastille day, then it's tour de france, etc. etc. etc! tonight france beat out portugal, bringing us straight to the wM finals. i've never been in a place where the whole city is cheering for the same thing!! right now, even as i am writing this, there are innumberable horns being blown, cheers being shouted and well you get the point. and that's just my street. i went to champs elysees two nights ago after france beat brazil, and it was just madness. people were climbing trees with no shoes, riding atop street lights, fireworks being shot into the trees and atop buildings and even into the crowd, it was defintely FUN (for the first hour). all until masses of people began running for no apparent reason towards me and nada who were sitting on the bench. deciding not to get stampeded, we ran also away from l'arc de triomph. there's a bunch more pictures on my flickr if you wish to see them. just click the pictures on the right, or the link that says, MY PICTUREs. oo here is a video i just uploaded onto youtube. hopefully it works.



so to catch up, i went to berlin two weekends ago to watch the Ukraine and tunisia game. with a less than stellar match, the atmosphere was truly incredible. the wm ticket was so official, it was heavy, thick cardboard paper, and it had a hologram on it. we got inside just as they were singing the ukrainina national anthem. the ukrainian side was going nuts, and afterward so was the tunisia side. i'd have to say though that ukraine definitely would have won in a cheer competition with tunisia side. anyway we had a blast at the game. i was really tired though from my last week of staying out too late and not sleeping. the night before we went to a club which i forget the name of it now, (EDIT: the name of it was Delicious Donuts!) but they woudln't let us in because they just opened (at 5am, crazy huh) and there were 15 guys inside. so they told us to go get some girls at this other club (which i forget the name of also now) and so we went and got half the girls in the club to come with us. impressive huh! well too bad there were only 2 girls in the entire club and one was with her bf. so we really only got one girl to come with us... and then we never made it back to the first club anyway.

the next night we went to some bars and i ended up tagging along on a mission to find a mural of joga bonito. we went through beach clubs, prostitute central, and everything else interesting in berlin's nightlife, including a free hoppin hip hoppity hop party which was tight until we realized the average age of the club was 16 and the music they played was back in the 90's which put me quinn mike christian and paul back into high school. anyway it was still a good time, and it was also christian's bday so we drank to that.

oh, also that night i went with quinn to rent a car at tegel airport. we had a shitty map so we ended up on the right direction but lost in the small streets of berlin. we decided to stop and eat at some restaurant we found. i had bbq ribs in the name of nostalgia (of home), and quinn and a typical german dinner, a snitzel. i think that's what they were called. once we got back to near our hostel we found a cafe and drank some beer and watched france KICK ASS. got back to the Circus hostel afterwards, met up with the rest of the guys and went out (see above paragraph). quinn christian and paul drove to munich after we got back that night, which i thoguht was totally crazy! but they made it to munich safely.

the next couple of nights i spent by myself but met some english guys whose names i completely also forgot. there were four of them, all really nice guys but one smelled incredibly bad. i learnt "i think he's fallen down the loo" haha. on sunday i took a half day walking tour... it was absolutely the best. i learned so much about the history of berlin and how much it sucked. i could really never live in that city because there is just too much sad history there and i don't think i could live with seeing things that reminded me of that every day.

the rest of that week wasn't very exciting. i finished my last day of school that friday, and got to watch france win some good matches. met kiyomi, who is a nyu'er who is also friends with nick and gang. she's gonna be in paris for a while. i also went to ayumi's dinner on the last day of school. gersende told me i could walk to her place so i did, except smart me decided to walk with 4 bottles of 75 cl beer ( a little less than a 40) and 2 bottles of coke PLUS 3 more bottles of 75 cl beer cuz nada said they didn't have any. the original 15 minute walk ended up with a sweaty shirt and 45 minutes later.

ayumi cooked curry and it was good! nada brought a roasted chicken and since nobody was eating the last of it, i went ahead and demolished it, licking the entire chicken carcass including the bones clean. i think i get that from my dad. after dinner we went to bateau far (sp i know it) and danced somewhat the night away to the illest techno music i'd ever heard. and when i say illest i mean i almost felt ill after listening to it. j/k. i just ended up spending most of the time outside the boat cuz the music was too weird. and it was yet another late night, i mean early morning for us.

next night france beat brazil. nada and i went to (side note, i mention nada a lot huh! i guess we hang out a lot here) champs elysees after the game ended. the metro ride was fine over there, but once we got out, there were TONS and THOUSANDS of ppl crowded to get out of the damn metro. i felt like i was going to die in there. i coudln't move, the station was 90 degrees F, and everyone kept touching me with their sweaty arms. however by the grace of some miracle, we actually made it out of the metro and walked with the huge parade along champs elysees. people were lighting flares, waving them around, climbing trees and street lights, and even shooting fireworks in random directions (some landed in trees and some atop buildings... good firehazards, no?). we made it all the way down to l'arc de triomph and sat on a bench for a while, just chillin. when all of a sudden masses and masses of people started running towards us... ( OK i just realized i already wrote about this night in the first paragraph. go reread that instead!)

the next day we had a picnic on canal st. martin. this was gustav's 3rd last day or something because his flight kept getting overbooked and he kept getting paid to stay an extra day. in all i think he made 1,000 € to stay an extra two nights. i sure hope i get paid that much bank to stay in paris, sheesh! so we had this picnic and chilled for like 5 hours. and guess who stopped by to have a picnic too? fleur de la coeur from Harry potter 4. she sat like 20 feet away from us. i asked her out to the upcoming hogwarts winter ball but she rudely said NO. gosh, what a meanie.

PS! Thanks for all the comments you guys have left. i really appreciate reading them! Sorry that i don't write back to you guys who comment as it would be nice of me to do that, but im really bad at this blogging thing and just writing entries is hard enough for me ;) anyhow if you get a chance, leave a comment or shoot me an email, jonwongathan@gmail.com and i'll get back to you as best i can. a bientot-