The word for squish in french is much more violent sounding than in english: ecraser (said [a-craz-a]). Bugs can get "ecrased" and then they are smooshed, splatted, or flattened. I was nearly "ecrased" in rush-hour traffic this morning. It wasn't because I was tail-gating or even driving. I was in a metro with people who tend not to have such a defined bubble of personal space as the "american" in me. We had no choice. As the RER line A approached the center of Paris, more and more people tried to flood into the train. There was literally no space left. I was determined to get off at the heart of the city at a stop called Chatelet. The only problem was that the people were so packed into the car that we couldn't get out, and to make matters worse, there was a platform of anxious people, 15 feet deep trying to get into the car I was trying to get out of. At one moment when I thought for certain that my lungs would collapse between the 5 'pressing' people, all trying to go in separate directions in the paralysed mass of bodies, I decided that if I couldn't get out of the train until La Defense, I wouldn't complain. Somehow, I was spit out in the mass of yelling people and one woman caught my arm as I nearly tripped on the hundreds of feet lined up as a gauntlet letting the few of us get off the train. I touched the arm of the woman who has been 'ecrased' up next to me, and wished her a good day and we went our ways. I think this is an experience I will not forget.

I found a little reasonable sandwich place near my school and a park to go with it... I sat and rested from a long weary walk and munched a parisien sandwich and watched a group of young boys get high. Two of them grabbed skateboards and took off in one direction after some time and the others moved on to cigarettes as they headed off for the rest of their afternoon.