Arrival in Paris

After numerous bittersweet goodbyes, one last American cheeseburger, running bleary-eyed around a massive Paris subway station trying desperately to figure out what I had to do to get to the M4 train that my 5% battery iPhone recommended (the M4 symbol, paired with an arrow, seemed to chase itself in circles around a massive echoey room of people way more competent and/or sinister than me), finally settling on an Uber before my phone kicked the proverbial bucket, and hoping to God that my driver didn't pull anything funny while the one tool I had to keep him honest was donezo, I find my way to an airbnb where, despite poor technology and instructions, a friendly stranger on a balcony sees my gaping mouth and comes to the rescue.

She is a short and stout woman with wiry brown hair and a weathered face. She says something to me in french.
"Parlez-vous Anglais?" I shout from the street.
"No," she replies. And so it's going to be complicated. I'm pretty sure this is the place, although the instructions that I received were in French, and google translate did not really clarify things beyond a street address. I gather she's asking me who I'm looking for, and I say the name the best I can. She gives me the hold on signal and I gather she's coming out to meet me. Soon she appears at the gate and I try to tell her my situation in the best French I can muster.

"Je pense que... je... Airbnb ici... Merci pour votre ayudar" (that last one is a Spanish word). I say the name of the person who's hosting me. She looks puzzled at first, I show her it written down and she understands.
"Aaaah oui!" then she repeats the name back and it is reborn in the deep throaty vowels of French. She goes on speaking in French, and helps me get into the building, gesticulating the whole way, explaining how I unlock the gate, and what button to push to leave. I am so struck by her kindness, all I can do is keep saying "merci" and then, eventually, when we're inside, "je m'appelle Dylan." "Enchanté," she replies. She indicates her name on the mailbox and it is a traditional Spanish name.
"Oh! ¿Usted habla español?" I'm excited because I know a little more Spanish than French (though not much of either).
"Si, ¿y tu tambien?"
"¡Si!" but it is too late because the young female friend of the Airbnb host is here to help me get into my room. She speaks a little English, and so we toss around French, Spanish, and English for a bit as all the information that needs exchanging gets to the right place. I give an emphatic "Merci beaucoup! Gracias!" to the friend from the porch and soon I'm taking the shower that I'd been craving for the past several hours.

I'll take a moment to acknowledge, I'm posting for the first time and I've already had more experiences than I'll realistically be able to recount. Maybe it was silly of me to think that I would be regularly typing away my little blog-project when there was the other option of walking around a foreign city. But now, I'm glad for the downtime, and I feel like I ought to deliver at least a few anecdotes. Even if no one reads them, it should be satisfying for me to get these things out on paper (screen?) so that they don't slip off that memory horizon.

When I arrive, no one is home
but the windows are open.
Maybe it is safe? Being on
the fifth floor, after all.
That night I catch
two flies and a ladybug,
and set them free.
They loved my little bedside
light. They shuddered inside of
my closed hand, and whirred out,
glad, into the night with a toss.
I felt proud of this.