8 rue du repos

And now as I settle in to my desk, my apartment at a reliable, refrigerator-cold temperature, I type as quickly as humanly possible to update you on the past two days in the city of Paris before my battery dies and I go up that preverbal creek for perhaps the four or fifth time in my short stay here without a paddle (or a three prong adaptor).
My flight over from Copenhagen was forgettable, literally so, as after I finished reading what I could of the Herald Tribune I finally fell asleep and awoke to the muffled announcement of our soon to be textbook landing at Charles de Gaulle.  I easily found my way through the airport using my mastery of the French language (sortie -->) and gathered up my bag in no time (mine was the one with the bright orange "HEAVY" sticker on it).  After that I blazed through to the other side of customs and realized that no one had stamped my passport.  I wouldn't have been concerned only except that I was kind of hoping that after how many months of work somebody official would have noticed that I had acquired a visa, but, no, that wasn't the case. Actually, my real fear was that I was supposed to show a copy of my "stamped" passport to the immigrations office within a week of my arrival and I really wasn't looking to start of my journey with some bureaucratic oopsy.  As I devised a plan to get some one - anyone - to stamp my passport I switched over the last of my loose USDs over to euros at the currency exchange counter.  Then I meandered my way to the informations desk to inquire about my little stamp issue.  After some discussion in a speed of French that I had never realized was possible the three little ladies behind the counter assured me that the stamp I received entering in Copenhagen would be enough to prove I had arrived and that I should shuffle along.  Okay, fine.
I headed off towards the signs labeled "M et RER" and took a shuttle to the Metro station.  There I went up to the first counter I saw and purchased a carte d'orange, handing over one of my many dashing passport photos.  Total? 70E.  Dear god.  That's fine, that's perfectly fine - it's transportation, and I knew Paris would be expensive.  With this card I can get around all of central Paris with unlimited access for a whole month and then renew the same card later for cheaper.  D'accord.
A couple of quick observations.  One: If the French can help it they will always sit in the direction of travel.  Maybe not a huge observation, but something that I did notice immediately as almost all the opposite facing seats were unoccupied.  Two: The Parisians have discovered how to stop people from hopping turnstiles.  On the other side of the turnstile is a gate-like door that will not release unless the turnstile moves, so should you not pay and decide to hop, it would be a sad ending for you as your face met the hard plastic reality of French justice.  Though I should point out here that I "noticed" this, not "experienced" this.   Just in case Emily was confused when reading.
Getting to my place was easy enough, I rocked at figuring out the Metro (thanks mainly to an app I downloaded before I left), but once I got out onto the street I - how shall I say this - got lost.  Who designed this city?!  A half-blind parkinson's patient scribbling away at a piece of paper that had been placed carelessly on a potters table?  That is the picture that I'm getting.  But I digress.  The point is I asked some Parisians where rue du repos was and they had no idea, but they took a guess and they weren't far off.
When I got there I stood outside not knowing quite what to do next.  This was as far as my directions went and I was there at 6:45 on the dot (like I was told) with my overweight bag and bewildered gaze looking up and down the street for a woman that was supposed to meet me there.  After about four minutes the door opens and two teenage girls poke their head out.  I looked at them, they looked at me, a small black boy appeared from the bottom of the doorway sucking on a piece of crumpled paper, then finally one of them asks me something I do not understand.  What?  Blah, blah, blah, apartement?  Oui, apartement.  They smile and open the door, and I come into the entryway.  They ask me something else and I smile and say Je ne parle pas francaise.  This gets a smile from all three of them.  Parlez-vous anglais?  Non.  They shake their heads.  Good.  As we get up to another door one of the girls stops and puts her hands to her mouth and turns to the other.  The only word I can make out is "key".  Both girls look at me, I look at them, the little boy chews on the piece of paper, the hallway light turns off.  Now what?  The girl goes up to the com board and starts pressing buttons, but no one answers.  Me?  Oh, I just stand there smiling away, because why not?  Of course we're locked out.  Inside the apartment the keys are sitting all forlorn and left-out.  And out here?  Well, we're standing, feeling much the same way.
One of the girls goes and switches the light back on and then they begin talking, devising some way to get us back in.  One girl goes to a back door leading out into the central courtyard, the other keeps turning to me shyly saying "desole", and me I keep trying to remember how to properly say "It's fine" - if I say "c'est bon" will that mean it's good?  Because frankly it's not good.  It's not fine either, but at least I would be reassuring somebody.  I start thinking about that hostel information that I had looked up while at the airport and figure that maybe I should start heading that way to get a room for the night when finally, like the voice of god (if god spoke French very quietly), a man came through the speaker (figuratively).  The girl in front of me jumped and she ran to the com board "Allo?"  After a minute of confused conversation that I had the bliss of not understanding a man came down the stairs and let us in.
My place was nice, cold, but nice and I figured the cold would go away once I turned the heater on.  Poor silly me.
Here's the thing: as one of the girls was going over everything in the apartment, me not understanding a word, that little boy finally throwing that piece of paper away, she mentioned something about the heater and pointed to a button on the side.  I said "Oui", like I had a clue, and that was it.  She gave me the keys (which by the way consist of three locks (separate keys) on the front door, a swipey thing for the front and inside door, and two big bolt keys for the massive grate that comes down over my front windows and door) and she was off.  Said she would be back on Sunday to check in - hopefully with her father who speaks English.  Later that night as I decided it was getting too cold for words I went over to that radiator thing and pressed the button.  After a minute or so went by I could feel it heating up, but not much.  Ten minutes go by - still about the same.  After a half hour I'm like "Okay, what the hell" , cause nothing's happened, in fact I think it might have even gotten colder.  No worries - I'll check the web.  I've got an ipod and a computer (though no three prong adaptor - another story that I don't have the battery life for, ironic) and luckily there is internet (though the password to it is longer than the paper it was written on). But after hours of searching I couldn't find anything that explained how to make it work, though I did discover that there was supposed to be some kind of remote device to set the temperature.  That made sense, but I couldn't find one.  I started opening drawers and sure enough - a thermostat.  But it won't turn on?  I look at the manual, which comes in two convenient languages, French and Spanish.  Good.  A language I barely understand accompanied by one that I've never understood.  What I gathered from the pictures was that it needed batteries, so I whipped out my trusty multi-tool and went to work.  I even found batteries in the drawer next to it.  What did I find when I got the back open?  They were the wrong size batteries.  Okay...  So where can I get batteries?  By this time it was too late for most stores to be open so I decided to let the whole thing rest till morning.  I crawled into bed (fully dressed - scarf and all), set an alarm, and lay there like a stunned rabbit for a few hours before I realized there was nothing to it.  I wasn't tired.  I had bought some choice items from the grocery store hours earlier (chips, petite au chocolat bread things, a bottle of their cheapest wine - why not, and some microwavable mac-n-cheese - why? because I had a microwave and this was the only thing they had and no I didn't feel like cooking at that particular point in time) and so I turned on my light and went about nibbling on the remains and watching some Walking Dead on my iPod.  No netflix in this part of the world.  Sad, but I'm sure in the end healthy.  I did this for about 30 minutes or so and then turned off the light and tried everything I could to sleep.  My alarm was destined to go off at 6:45 and I wanted sleep.  And I got some.  When I finally did wake up, though, my clock said 2:00.  Okay, I guess I didn't get that much sleep.  But a quick peak at my window revealed daylight peaking in.  Two PM??  Damn.  How did this happen?  I'm going to need a new internal clock and a new external alarm.
With the dawn (I use this term lightly) came my renewed search for batteries.  I figured I'd blown my chance of having a really productive day so at least I could get my radiator working.
The short version is this (my battery screams for rest): I had looked up this electronic superstore the night before so that I could possibly find an adaptor for my computer - I was hoping that there I would also get batteries.  Lucky for me the store was in the Latin Quarter, right where my school is supposed to be so I figured I could kill two birds, learn the neighborhood and solve my electricity problems.  New problem: no store.  It wasn't where it said it was, which was in a place that was harder to find than the square root of pi without a calculator (bare in mind here I still hadn't picked up a map and my ipod's tireless searches for password-free wifi were fruitless).  The only thing I did manage to find was a grocery store which sold batteries (I tried the one by my place when I woke up - no dice), oh, and the river.  Which was nice.  Granted it was viewed through the lens of a very weary, confused, and awkward fish out of water who was tired of zigzagging through the poor city planning of Parisian backstreets.
Okay, seriously wrapping this up, and I'm sorry about writing about batteries - I swear other things have happened, but this has been my only goal for the past day and my mind is about as capable of multiplicity as my tongue - I didn't find an adaptor, found batteries, had a coffee though I really wanted food, but the guy didn't understand me or they weren't serving food or something (no one else was eating), but I had a coffee none-the-less, and turned on my thermostat, didn't do crap, no surprise, I can't work the one at home and it's in English, bought a sandwich, finally ate, still cold, unpacked, scanned through Rick Steves' travel phrases, cursed quietly, loudly, triple-locked my door (because I can!), drank a half bottle of wine (not bad for 2E), took a shower (it's just big enough to get cramped in), and now I'm done.  Phew.  Time to plan out tomorrow and figure out how to learn French ASAP.  Whoever said the French know a lot of English is lying or the French are lying to me about knowing English.  Either way somebody isn't telling the truth.  Nobody speaks it except at the tourist shop that I went into today to find a map and the first English I heard in awhile was "Sorry, we don't have maps".  Yes, I'm sorry, too. And a little shocked.  But my spirits are still somewhat high, and I'm sure I'll figure this out.  Don't want to leave this whole downward slope of a story on a bass note, so here's the kicker: I'm alive, I'm in Paris, and I'm going to check into the Sorbonne tomorrow.  Pretty cool (literally and figuratively).