Well, there was me telling you I'd been feeling homesick but I'd found ways to battle it and make myself feel better, and then Friday 13th happened!
On Wednesday night, Riley arrived, she's a close friend from uni who's spending the first half of her year abroad in Valencia, and the following day was her 21st birthday. All very exciting, I'd been looking forward to her visit for so long!
On Thursday and Friday, Sam and I had exams, so we said we'd go out and celebrate on Friday night so that we weren't hungover or tired for our exam on Friday afternoon. So on Thursday, we took Riley to the Trocadero to see the Eiffel Tower, took some super cute photos and then went to see the Notre Dame and visit some of the shops alongside it which sell all the tourist rubbish. We had a really lovely day, watched a film in the evening and I cooked for the three of us. Good vibes, good people and all that jazz!
On Friday, Sam had something on in the morning for a job he's applied to, so Riley and I had a nice, chilled out morning and bought lunch from a patisserie. Then I went to my exam, which I think went pretty well!
The plan for Friday night was to go and have a couple of drinks at Alice and Alex's flat and then head to the bars in the 11th arrondissement. So, we get there, have some drinks and all is well. Then Sonia messages me as she's lost, so I call her and go and wait outside while I'm directing her to the flat. In the ten minutes I'm on the phone to her, I received about ten messages on Facebook, which I saw once I hung up. The messages were in a group message from my friends from work back home 'Bean, are you okay?' 'Bean what's happening in Paris, are you alright?' 'why isn't she answering!!' - you get the idea. So, I just replied and said I was fine, really baffled as to why they were asking if I was alright. I then got a notification from the BBC News app on my phone 'shootings in Paris, 11th region'. Thank you, BBC, for without you, we would not have had a clue!
Back inside the flat we're all a bit confused and unsure about what we should do. Do we go elsewhere for drinks? Should we stay inside? Should Sam, Riley and I go back to our own flat?
We decided to wait it out for a while and see what happens. We carry on drinking until there becomes a distinct lack of alcohol in the building - a definite cause for concern!
You need to realise that we had no idea how close were really were to the shootings and explosions at the time (we didn't even know there were bombs involved at first), and that the gravity of the situation didn't really occur to us as we were safely tucked up inside. After a while, the number of messages we're all getting from people at home gets me worrying. This is definitely more serious than we realise.
At about midnight, Riley and I decided to go out and see what was happening in the streets near us, so we head down the stairs and as we open the front door to the building, the crowd of people playing sardines in the bar opposite started yelling at us to go back inside straight away. Scary. So we walk back upstairs, but we look out the window and they're still shouting at us to get inside. Even scarier. That's when it hit that we must be fairly close to whatever's going on, and whatever it is, its big. At this point, I'm feeling pretty nervous, I'm texting my mum to reassure her that I'm fine, I'm concerned about my teddy back in my room on his own (yes, that thought really did cross my mind) and I'm wondering what to do.
Eventually, just after 2am we decided to try and get home - we saw that people from the bar were stood on the streets, so assumed that it must be safe again. By this time, I was so on edge about everything that when a man pulled up next to us on his scooter and stood in front of us, I jumped backwards pretty quickly when he pointed at us for whatever reason. Honestly, a person's fingers have never looked more like a gun in my life! Our taxi never came, so we ended up squeezing nine of us into Alice and Alex's two-bed apartment. It was cosy, to say the least!
The next morning, we woke up and decided we needed to get back to our own flat, so we took the metro, realising that were were only three stops away from both of the places where the shooting occurred.
We got home without a hitch on Saturday, although the feeling of the city was like in the films after a zombie apocalypse - a total ghost town. Very, very creepy and tense.
Since Friday night, we've all been fine, Riley got back to Valencia yesterday with no problems, and Sam and I have stayed inside mostly. We'd not really even felt that worried about it all over the weekend.
I don't know what happened last night, but Sam and I started talking about everything that happened on Friday night, and the more we talked about it, the more we realised that we're actually feeling quite weird about it. I can't fully describe how I'm feeling, other than saying I feel on edge, scared, freaked out... I'm currently not going to my classes at uni because I got myself too worked up about being that far from the flat, and in the more central parts of Paris. Part of me never wants to leave the flat again, part of me wants to go back home to England. I'm nervous that something else is going to happen which will cause France to stop people coming in or going out; I think that's my biggest fear - not being able to get home. Right now, I don't really want to go home because it involves travelling across Paris, across France, through London - is basically just a terrible idea! But I also really need to hug my family.
I want to say another big thank you so much to everyone who sent me messages to check I'm safe on Friday night and over the weekend, I really appreciated all the messages. And I do feel incredibly thankful that I've not been affected by these attacks in a more serious way. Of course it goes without saying that my thoughts are with the family and friends of those lost or injured.
One of the most surreal situations of my life. Hopefully my next post will be much more positive, telling you Paris has found its light again and Christmas is on its way.
Bean xx
