Note: Journaling is a great way to build your stories. When you keep a journal you can record details that would be long forgotten if you let days pass. Then when you look back at your pages, you relive those moments and your stories emerge. Sometimes journals can be stories in themselves.

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Monday I can’t get on the internet and I phone Isabelle. I try many things and nothing works. I go out. I go to the market at the Rue Cler. Vendors have vegetables and fruit. It is in the 7^th Arrondissement, I take the recommended walk from Isabelle’s guidebook in her apartment binder and I've read about it on the Rick Steve's site on the Internet. Some of the places I can’t find and some are closed. But it is a lovely street, many vendors with their food stalls. I see fruit and veggies and there is a beautiful frommagerie that has the most wonderful array of cheeses. I see Parisian women, dressed in their skirts, out going for their baguette for the evening meal. This is a neighborhood market and not a tourist spot. I see a Starbucks and go in and meet an American student. She and I talk for a long while over coffee, she having pancakes with syrup and hot chocolate. She has been studying in Spain and is leaving to go back that afternoon. She tells me of a man who befriended her as she walked along the Seine, but he put his hands on her in a way that was uncomfortable and she managed to elude him and get away. She is young, self-conscious and is returning with her mother to Paris in a month. She is from Reno, Nevada.

I can’t get my messages on my cell phone. Isabelle called me back. I am so frustrated. I need an American GUY, I am thinking! I need one of those American tech support guys who calms you down and talks to you on the phone and makes everything right most of the time.

I see two American couples in a café and go in to have some lunch. I seat myself next to the American guy and tell them I can’t get my messages. The one guy says sometimes you have to press something. I remember that at work I have to press # to get the messages remotely. I try that, and it WORKS ! I can hear Isabelle’s voice and she wants to help me with my internet connection.

My lunch is a green bean salad, cooked just right, with mushrooms, al dente, tossed in a light mustard vinaigrette. The two American couples are so nice and we have several more exchanges over lunch, it is very pleasant, we are at an outdoor café and the weather is fine. After lunch, I walk up all the way to Ile de la Cite along the Seine. The day is really beautiful. Many people out walking. I see this man and ask him, “are you American,” I think he must be because of his plaid shirt and baseball cap. I want to know where something is, enough to ask someone, but as I write this, I can’t remember what it was. We walk along the Seine, in the sunshine. He tells me about architecture, points out some buildings, tells me to look and see the alleyway. It is like that because the horses were on the street and they threw the food down to them from above, “le nouriture.” He asks me if I have 5 minutes to see a beautiful church, pas loin, not far.  I say yes, but first can you help me to buy my metro tickets. “Yes, of course,” he says. We go downstairs into the busy metro and try the machine, which doesn’t work. We go to the window and manage to get them. “Thank you,” I say. “Close your purse,” he says, “many pickpockets.”

He shows me a church in the Marais, small and so old, St. Sebastian. Afterwards, he takes my hand and we cross the busy street, and he says, “bon journee,” and I say, “thank you!” I take the metro back to the Tour Eiffel stop, my first trip, successful.

Back at my apartment, I phone Isabelle. We try for a long time to get my connection to work. It doesn’t. She suggests that there is a couple also renting from her who upstairs and maybe I can connect from their router. I go up there.  He is nice, she wants to leave to go to dinner, she has her coat on. He gives me the security key. I go downstairs and try it. It fails. I go back upstairs. It was the wrong number. He gives me the right number. I try again, no luck. I phone Isabelle back, no luck. Her husband gets on the phone with me. No luck either.

We resolve, in the morning, I will try again upstairs, this time bringing my laptop with me, if not, then I will phone Isabelle.

Meanwhile I hear from Jack. We are going to have dinner tomorrow night. Well this is great and my first night out in Paris, alone, on the metro.  We agree to meet in front of Notre Dame. Certainly a place where there will be few people, ha ha ha. He says, “how will we know each other?” This has not occurred to me. “What do you look like,” he says. “Well, I have dark shoulder-length hair and I am slender,” I say. “Oh,” he says, “I hate you already.” I burst out laughing. “DON’T hate me already!” I say. “I know,” he says, “I’ll wear my green hat and green tennis shoes.”

Between the internet tension and the idea of the metro late at night for the first time, I do not sleep well. But I am happy to have plans. I think of all these people connected to other people, Jack and Randy and Isabelle and her partner with their baby and I think I have no one. This makes me sad, not to have someone, but yet, I want the right someone with me. Because I am not too sad to not want the right someone, I am not too sad to settle for less than the right someone. I am not that sad.

You can continue to read about my Paris trip here: Day 3 http://tellourlifestoriesblog.com/2011/05/25/tuesday-april-12-2011-grand-colbert-and-dinner-with-jack-and-randy.aspx