L'IKEA et Le Cinema

Last Saturday, Steph and I ventured out to IKEA. It was way on the other side of the city, but we were able to get there by taking the metro and then walking for about 10 minutes. Luckily, when we came up from the metro stop, there was a sign right in front of us that said IKEA, and an arrow that pointed in the direction of the store. Otherwise, we would have had no idea where to go. The Romneys had loaned us comforters and pillows from a bedroom in their house, but we wanted to go buy our own things. (I just found out yesterday that the Romneys have their own blog, where they write about all of their own fascinating adventures. They are amazing.) IKEA was crazy - but I loved that it only cost me 35 euros to buy a pillow, a duvet, a duvet cover, and a fitted sheet. Of course, that was after I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out the difference between fitted sheets, flat sheets, and duvet covers. They don't teach you words like that in French class. I finally looked at the pictures hard enough to figure it out. Now I can get rid of the sleeping bag I had on top of my air mattress and feel a little less like I'm at girls' camp. Ew.

It took us so long to navigate IKEA that we just took the metro from there straight to the movie theatre to meet up with a bunch of kids for Transformers 2. I mostly only went to prove Cameron wrong ... since he basically called me a wimp and told me that it was too intense for me after he saw it ... (So rude. And just because I sat with a hoodie over my eyes through the majority of Knowing, jumped every 5 minutes during Terminator, and dug my nails into his arm during the scary dog scene in Up!). The movie was 8,85 euros, but the theatres were really nice! The screen was way bigger than the usual ones in the U.S. ... or maybe I've just been spending too much time at the dollar theatres. We just won't mention the whole scene in the movie theatre where I lost my ticket in my purse, couldn't find it for 10 minutes, and made Sinoui and Christian go convince the girl at the ticket counter to give me a new one. Yeah.

Anyway, Transformers was actually pretty good. Except for the glaring geographical errors, which I (of course) feel that it is my duty to point out and will do so now. Look people, I have been to the pyramids, and I have been to Petra. They are nearly 500 km away from each other. (I looked it up.) But the movie makes it seem like it takes about 10 minutes to drive from one to the other. It also appears that Cairo, where the pyramids are, is on the ocean, when the distance to the Gulf of Suez is 150 km and the distance to the Mediterranean is even longer. The movie also completely disregards the fact that Egypt and Jordan do not share a border. They are separated by an Israeli city called Eilat. The characters traveling by car from one place to another would have had to wait in line for hours at at least 2 Israeli border control locations, just like everyone else. It is also very strange that the US military, while fighting aliens in Egypt, would have Jordanian helicopters come to the rescue. While the military did call an Egyptian general for help, whatever happened to the U.S.'s B.F.F.L. and the reigning military force in the Middle East, Israel? I'm not saying that I am full of righteous indignation that the makers of Transformers left out Israel or anything, it's just that the U.S. military asking the Jordanians and Egyptians for help before calling on the Israelis is completely unrealistic. Another note, the monastery in Petra (where the tomb of the Primes was found) does not go in as far as they showed. I definitely sat on the edge of that opening for about a half an hour and probably would have noticed if there had been paintings of Greek-looking gods and statues like the movie showed.

This week I am back to work. I'll try to blog more about what I actually do at my internship later. Ciao!