Day who knows which

Well hello to those of you who still check this!
This afternoon I finished my last final, and so I am done done done done done with the study part of this study abroad adventure! Sorry for the lack of posts in the past month, things got really crazy with traveling every weekend and getting into finals. Lets see, I have been to three other countries since I last posted: Italy (Florance and Rome), Spain (Granada), and Sweden (Stockholm). Italy was really cool, I visited a friend who is studying for the year in Florence so she showed us around there, it was amazing I actually liked it better than Rome. Rome was fun, it was a blur though because we only spent 2.5 days there and there is so much stuff to see. Spain was interesting, due to some stupid airline regulations I missed my flight from Madrid to Granada, ended up taking a metro to a bus station to get a bus to Granada and got pick pocketed on the metro. So I spent the night in Madrid, thankfully there was a hotel near the bus station that allowed me to pay with my mom's credit card number. I made it onto the bus on saturday and spent about half a day in Granada, which was amazing I really wish I had gotten more time there. Sweden was lots of fun too, it wasn't nearly as cold as I had expected given we were there in December. It was all decorated for Christmas and was very cute and festive. Other than travels I have been doing lots of work, writting lots of papers, and studying lots. But that has all paid off, and now I get to enjoy my last few days in Paris with my mom and Kirk (and my friend who is visiting from Florence) and then a few days traveling around Brittany, and than a few more days in Paris before I am home right before Christmas (assuming my flight on Brittish Airways works out despite the strike)
-Chelsea

Day 66: Provins

Hello again,
This weekend was unfortunatly my last free weekend in Paris (all the rest I will either be traveling or have visiters), so I spent a lot of it in my room doing the tons and tons of homework that was either due this week or will be due at the end of the semester. I did have some fun adventures on Friday however, when I went to Provins (a medieval city about an hour and a half out of Paris) with IES. Its not a huge tourist attraction, and the trip wasn't as "must see" as the other IES trip I went on (Normandy), but it was still lots of fun and it was really nice to be out of the city in a small town in the country :) The day started with a tour of the medieval walls around the city, which were of course how it defended itself. It was really cool, and we got to go inside the walls and look at the ramparts and such which was neat. Apparently the concept that in the middel ages they would drop boiling oil on invaiding armies is not accurate, because oil was too expensive and too precious. Instead they would boil pears down into a sauce and dump that on invaiding armies, tasty and deadly! Anyways, from the walls we went to a guard tower on a hill near the middle of the city, so on the way there we got to see most of the city which was really beautiful and looked almost exactly like the town where Belle lives in Beauty and the Beast. The tower was awesome, it was my favorite part of the whole day. We got to go inside and look around and than go up to the top where we had an amazing view of the countryside. France really does have the most beautiful countryside of anyplace that I have every been. After the tower we had a yummy french lunch at a restaurant and than went down bellow the city to take a tour of the deserted chalk mines/caves that run bellow the entire city. They were really cool, and apparently when you buy a house in Provins you purchase the rights to the caves bellow your house so people will use them as a sitting room, or formal dining room or something. After the caves, we went to see the city's church which was interesting in that it is not like any church you would see in Paris. It was never finished because the city ran out of money, so it is an impressive building but at the same time it had a very rough and obviously unfinished quality to it. After the church we got on the bus back to Paris. About 20 mins outside of the actual city (in the subburbs) the bus got pulled over! Apparently the cops saw the bus driver looking at his phone (even though he wasn't placing a call) and pulled him over. This whole ordeal took about 15 mins to sort out, during which time I was more amused at the french peoples inefficiency than anything. The bus driver took a 5 min smoke break on the side of the freeway where our bus was parked while the police tried to figure stuff out, which I just found absolutly hillarious...oh how french. That was the only exciting stuff that happened to me this weekend, but on Monday I had another play to go to for my theater class and unfortunatly I read the schedule wrong saying what time it was and thought it was an hour later than it really was! Thankfully I have fallen into the habit of arriving about 30 mins in advance when I have to be someplace using the metro, and the time we are supposed to meet for the plays is 30 mins before the play starts, so I managed to get there only about 2 mins late and only missed the first few lines of the play. It was really good though, I would say my second favorite play that I have seen here (after of course L'Avare at La comedie francaise). Tomorrow is the begining of fall break, so tonight I am getting on a train and tomorrow I will wake up in Italy :) I am going to Florence for Wednesday and Thursday and than on Friday morning we are going down to Rome until Sunday afternoon when we get on a train back to Paris. I am excited because a)its Italy, where I have never been and b) I will be visiting a friend from Tulane who is studying in Florence and she will come down to Rome with us :) One more class and than I am on my way to Italy!!!!

Day 60: Midterms and Visiters

Hello again,
Sorry it has been so long, I had a crazy past few weeks. First off, I had to move. My host family went on vacation to Rome and did a house swap with a family in Rome so I was kicked out of my house and moved in with my host grandma, who is 84 years old and Portuguese. She is probably my favorite person that I have met here, she is absolutely hilarious and very sweet. My move started off awkwardly because she did not talk to me when I first got there and didn't seem too happy. Once my host dad (her son) and my host brother left she got very nice and came over to welcome me which was nice (but also my first indication that their relationship is not great), however in the middle of making sure that I was comfortable she started crying. At first I was super worried about what I could have possibly done to make her cry, but than she came over and pinched my cheeks, kissed my cheek, and rubbed by back so I guess she was just happy to see me. Her apartment is closer to central Paris (right by the Eiffel Tower!) so it was really nice and convenient for me to have a 20 min commute to class instead of a 50 min commute. Also I have a GIANT, fluffy bed here which is always nice :) She is very nice and sweet, she gave me a bookmark of Portugal after we talked about how beautiful it is and how I have never been there (now I really want to go), and keeps leaving little presents on my bed when I am out (for example a box of Kleenex that she thought was pretty and a map of the world). She also lectured me one morning during breakfast about how I need to marry a french boy and have lots of french babies so that I can continue to practice my french skills. I think my favorite experience with her was when she asked me if I wanted her to buy me anything at the market that day and I asked for grapes. She asked me if I wanted white or black grapes and I said white. She than told me that she used those terms because my skin is white (hurrm ok?), after which she verified that I did not want grapes from Africa. I had not heard if grapes from Africa were worse than grapes from elsewhere so I said it didn't matter to me. She than informed me that people are black in Africa, and I had said that I wanted white grapes. Hahah, it was quite silly. Anyways, the week after I moved was midterms so I was absolutly swamped with work :( and very very stressed out. One of my midterms though is the hands down best midterm that I have ever had. It is for my commic strip class, we have to write a commic strip based off of one of 3 grim brothers stories. It is really fun, and it is actually pretty intense, we have been working on it for 3 days and it is due next monday. Thankfuly the artwork does not have to look good (mine is stick figures) but what is important is our stylistic choices in layout, and how that works with the story so it is a lot of fun and has given me more appreciation for commics as a letigamate form of art/literature. Anyways, my roommate from Tulane, Allison, who is studying abroad in Granada, Spain this semseter came to visit me this weekend which was a rediculous amount of fun :D We had missed eachother a lot and it was great to have a roomie reunion again even if it was just for the weekend. It was also just nice to have an excelent excuse to do all the touristy things that I had yet to do (like go to the top of the Eiffel Tower). I am going to get to go down to Granada to visit her in about 2.5 weeks and I can't wait! Sunday was the first sunday of the month (duh) and therefore all the museums were free, so we got to go to the Louvre (for the second time that weekend, its also free for students friday nights) and musee d'Orsay so that was a lot of fun. The best part of the weekend was Sunday night, when we were just walking around the Latin Quarter after dinner. We walked past Notre Dame and decided to take pictures of us pretending to be gargoyles, than we convinced my friend Joey who always has a mini-backpack in which he carries his stuff to put it on under his jacket and pretend to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame which was absolutly hilarious. Oh other random tidbit, last Tuesday I got to go to La Comedie Francaise with my theater class to see l'Avare by Moliere, which was a really cool experience. The theater is really old, and the troup that puts on plays there is basically where you aspire to work if you are a french speaking actor. The play was really really good, the actor who played Harpagon is a really famous french actor, and he was perfect, he was so funny and it was really an amazing acting job on his part. Everyone else was good too of course, but he really stole the show (which is appropriate because he is of course l'avare). Well that was the past couple weeks for me. I can't believe that in just a few weeks I will only have a month left here :( this semester has gone by so fast, in some ways I wish I was going to stay here for a whole year because I absolutly love it here, and I know I will be very upset when I have to leave. At the same time, I have realized that I am American and I miss being in the society that I feel I really belong in. I miss Tulane and I miss my family and friends and I miss California, so I guess its a good thing that I am not going to be here for a whole year, but I will miss Paris like crazy when I leave. It truly is the best city in the world.

Day 45: Sorry I haven't posted in so long!

Sorry I haven't posted in so long guys! I was busy traveling, and than with school. Last weekend was my first weekend in a while that I stayed in Paris which was really nice. I got to relax and get lots of homework done. I also got to buy food to prepare for myself at home since I knew it wouldn't go bad while I was out of town so it was nice to be able to cook for myself. On Sunday I found a great church, its called the American Church in Paris, and it has a contemporary service at 1:30 that is all in English. It was really great to finally go to church, and the service was fantastic. Lots of awesome worship songs, and a really great message about Job. It turns out that the church was only about a 10 min walk from the Eiffel Tower so I finally got around to seeing that :) after the Eiffel Tower I decided to go to the Place des Vosges which is a nice park (I wouldn't say that it has anything on le Jardin de Luxembourg). While I was over there I went to Victor Hugo's house which is right next to the park. On my way home I went to a few churches, St Pauls and Eglise Saint-Gervais Saint-Protais which were quite impressive and pretty. Other than that nothing too exciting has been happening, I have really settled into a rutine here of going to classes doing homework and the like that it just seems totally normal to be in Paris now. Oh I remember something fun I did, last Wednesday I went to a world cup qualifier game (France vs Austria) with some friends which was super fun. France won 3-1 so it was an exciting game. It was really fun to be doing something French that wasn't explicitly touristy, and since we had such cheap seats (we were litterally on the top row of this giant statium) we were with the "real" french. I wouldn't say either team was particularly impressive skills wise, but what was incredibly impressive was the french people's ability to pull of a fabulous wave. I swear, the first wave that they did went around the statium (which is the size of the superdome) 8 times before it died, it was so much fun! Last Thursday I saw another play for my theater class, which I didn't like as much as the first one. I actually liked this one better when we read it because it was funnier (although the way the first play was directed it was actually funnier), but the first play gave the french opinion of the EU which was really interesting for me, whereas this one talked about how we relate and view others, and the conclusions it drew were very much in the american mindset so it was not quite as interesting. I had an interesting experience Sunday night, I was in the kitchen making dinner for myself and was talking to my 11 year old host brother about nothing in particular. All of a sudden he started talkng about "the real religion" in reference to Catholicism. This didn't bother me at all, and we talked for a bit about our conceptions of heaven, hell, etc but then he started asking me if I was interested in converting to Catholicism and when i said no he started pestering me about why not and was saying a lot of (incorrect) bad things about protestentism in relation to Catholocism (like how 90% of protestents have converted to catholocism, and how protestents don't try to follow Jesus) which was really frustrating for me. It was probably the bigest homesickness moment I have had since I have been here because I feel like in the USA when I talk to Catholics they don't try to convert me and are generally more accepting of other branches of Christianity. I know that he was doing it out of a place of deap passion for his faith and love for others, but it was still frustrating and not the best situation for me, especially because I feel like I have been surrounded by nothing but atheism or catholocism here and I miss protestentism, especailly the methodists! Thats probably my biggest complaint about France so far. Oh well, c'est la France.

Day 30: Normandy

Well this is technically 2 days after I got back from Normandy but I didn't have time to write until now. The trip was amazing, it was a lot more profound and sad than I had been expecting. The bus ride was about 3 hours, which was not at all bad considering 1) the French country side is probably the prettiest countryside I have ever seen and 2) I had one of the 4 best seats in the bus, which was kinda like a 2 story bus in that where the seats were where above the driver so I sat in the very front right in front of the windshield and it felt like we were on a roller coaster. Before we made it to the beach where we were staying we went to Caen where there is a museum dedicated to promoting peace by documenting war, particularly WWII. It was really moving and very interesting, it gave a extremely detailed history of the war and since it was from the French point of view there were defiantly things that I didn't know before or hadn't considered before that were super intersting. There was a temporary exhibit about the jewish children that were killed during WWII and that was really hard to see after having gone to Dachau the weekend before, it brought up a lot of supressed memories. There was also a cold war exhibit which we all found pretty hillarious (in a very dark humor way), it showed a lot of American and Soviate propaganda videos which were quite amusing, and there was one video featuring a song called "duck and cover" which was about how if a nuclear bomb is dropped you should duck and cover under your desk, a picknick blanket, etc and you will be fine. After Caen we went to Gold Beach (on of the beaches the Brittish invaded) where we were staying and explored around a bit. The beach was very facinating, the history really weighs down on you when you go there, and you can just feel how many people died there. There are remnants of the Allies defense/suplise structures left in the water and they really look like giant scars. The next day we went to the Museume of the Disembarkment, which was a really cool museum. It is right next to Gold Beach and gives and incredably detailed history of all the planning that went into D-Day as well as the fighting that happened after D-Day to seize Normandy. I never fully appreciated just how complex it was, and if definatly blew me away. After the Museum we went to Omaha Beach where there is a graveyard of American soldiers who fell in France, the land of which was given to the USA by the French. That was the hardest part of the whole weekend for me, there was a memorial to the fallen soldiers and in the room around the memorial there were about 20 placards with pictures and stories of heros from D-Day, most of which died. It was incredably emotional and I was crying a lot when reading them, which apparently most people do because one of the French guards stationed there came up to me and asked if I was alright. Right after you leave the memorial you see Omaha Beach which is even more sad than Gold Beach. While there are no reminants left in the water at Omaha (that I saw), it was the beach that suffered the highest casualties (3,200 american soldiers dead) and it was impossible (for me) to look at that beach and not see all the death and distruction that happened there. When walking around the graveyard there were a few graves marked "here lies a fallen comrade at arms, known only to God" and it really hit me hard that I was looking at the grave of an american boy who died at Normandy, and whos parents, friends, and maybe wife have no idea where he was burried, and I of all people got to see his grave. It was very emotional, and the weekend as a whole plus my visit to Germany last weekend have made me view WWII so very differently. It feels so much closer to me now, and so much more real which is really hard but at the same time is very important for me. Like visiting Dachau, I think it will take me a while to fully process what I saw at Normandy.

Day 25: ICP & a play

Yesterday was my first day of my class at l'Instituie Catholique de Paris (ICP) and I was super nervous for it all day. I was talking to people who already had their first class at ICP and they kept saying things like they understood about 75% of what the teacher said, and how they thought that was good and I was getting really worried that my class would be too difficult for me and that it would be aweful. Also I was worried that the prof and the other students would make fun of my accent or just be really standoffish and rude. Well as it turns out I did have reason to worry but not about the class itself. Finding the actually class room was probably one of the most stressful and hardest things I have done since I got here. I had this lovely map printed out of where to go and had written directions down and got of the metro with 45 mins to find my classroom so I figured I was good. Wrong. First off, there are three ICP campuses, but they are all right next to eachother. I went to the one that my map said to go to and looked around and there were only 3 buildings: F, G, and H. My paper said my classroom was in building C so I said to myself, aha it must be in the other campus. So I walked around the main campus and coundn't find building C. I finally asked the information desk and they said it was in the third campus (which is on the same property as the main campus but you have to enter it through a different street). So I walked over to the third campus and found building C. Great! So than I looked and saw my paper said my classroom was on the 2nd floor room 23. I went up to the 2nd floor and there were classrooms 21, 22, 24, and 25. Hummmm. After wandering around this tiny floor trying to figure out where they hid classroom 23 I went back downstairs and asked a lady who was hanging up a flier on a buliton board. She gave me the "quoi? tu parle a moi" look and was very very rude, the first time this has happened to me when asking parisians questions in french. She basically told me she had no idea where my class was, and that she was locking up building C now so I had to get out. At this point I only had about 10 mins left before my class started and was starting to freak out about would I get there in time, what if I can't find it and miss the first day, will I have to drop it and take another IES class even though I would have already missed 3 days of that. I walked back to the information desk, and asked them where the class was for "The keys of Christianity". He gave me a blank stare and said there is no class by that name. At this point I was absolutly desparate and asked him if there was a class with a similar name at the same time. Turns out the name of my class was switched to "The basics of Chiristianity" between when i registered and yesterday and no one told me. Also my room was changed, and it was in building F where I had stared from. I ran over there and all the way up 4 flights of stairs and ended up getting to my class 5 mins early which was a miracle. And of course, right when the clock struck 7 (the time my class starts) a whole group of Parisians wandered in, knowing exacly what was going on and where they were supposed to be. I took this as a sign that I will never fully understand how Paris works, and I will always be the American. I think I am ok with this. Anyways, my class ended up being fabulous, since it is a review course for my major, I didn't learn anything but it was interesting to hear it from a different point of view. I had no trouble understanding the prof, which made me very happy I definatly got 100% of what he said. He, and the students in my class are much nicer that the norm of what I have heard from my friends, and I think it had something to to with the fact that it is a religion class and all the people in it are religious. I definatly think it will end up being my favorite and most interesting class so now I can't wait for next week!
This evening I went to the first play for a class I am taking called "Theater in Paris". We read 4 plays and go see them all (one we see twice, two different versions) and one that we don't read, and tonight was the play we finished discussing in class today called l'Europenne by David Lascot. Its a very new play, it opened in 2008 and it basically talks about the french peoples' point of view on the EU and what is going on in Europe right now so it was super interesting. It was also absolutly hillarious, much more in the production that in the actual script. It was a lot of fun, and afterwards David Lescot came out and talked to the few people who waited around for him, and he signed my copy of the play :) it was super interesting to talk to him, because he is also the director and he made some changes to the play since he origonally published it so it was really cool to get to pick his brain a bit about why he made those changes.

Day 22; Munich

This morning I got back from my trip to Munich, but I was so exhausted that I slept almost all day so I am only writing this now. We left bright and early Friday morning for Munich, we took the TGV which was lots of fun, its so much nicer than flying and we got to see the French country side which is absolutely gorgeous. When we got into Germany it was love at first sight for me, it is so cute and lively, for some reason I was expecting cold, gray and industrial. Anyways, we got into Munich around 1:30 in the afternoon, and although we were super hungry we went to our hotel first, which turned out to be a good idea because we got kinda lost (the metro in Munich is not quite as fabulous as the metro in Paris, the train we needed only came once every half an hour!). When we finally found the hotel we got ourselves checked in and everything, it was suprisingly nice for being the cheapest hotel we could find. After we droped off our stuff in the room, we grabbed some lunch at a market close by. We decided to get some cheese and bread and just make a lunch out of that, unfortunatly neither of us spoke much german, so we managed to buy one thing of cheese and one thing of butter (that looked like cheese). Definatly a nasty shock when I cut off a piece of the butter and tried that. It was pretty gross, so we basically just ended up eating the one cheese and a pretzel (which was apparently invented in Germany and they are obsessed with them). After lunch we went to the city square which was absolutly gorgeous, its such a quaint little area. Unfortunatly there were some right wing politicians with slogans a long the lines of down with Islam, and stop Islam. There were a bunch of protesters around talking to people, and I overheard some people explaining it in french and english. They were equating this party to the Nazis and saying that they need to get them out of germany. There were a whole lot of police/swat looking people around so we decided that it was probably not the best place to be and continued walking. We explored the city for a while which was quite fun, and than we went over to Oktoberfest. It was definatly not what I had expected, it was basically a huge state fair with tuns of rides, games, food, shops and the like. In order to get beer you have to go to "tents" which are basically beergardens where you can sit down and order a liter of beer (that is the only size). They are really hard to get into and to grab a table at but we finally managed and ordered ourselves two beers. They came in these giant stiens, which you weren't technically supposed to bring home with you, but we managed to take them as souveniers :) I was very suprised that I liked the beer, but I guess Germany is not a bad place to go to try it for the first time. I only drank about 1/5th of my stien, and my friend didn't drink much more of his so we gave the rest of our beer to these german kids our age who spoke english that happened to be sitting at the same table as us. They definatly were shocked that we weren't goinig to finish our beers and made fun of us a little bit, but of course they were more than happy to get beer for free. After Oktoberfest we went back to the hotel and slept like babies because we were both so tired. Saturday morning we woke up early and went over to Dachau (the first concentration camp in Germany, it was established in 1933 and ran until 1945). It was a very emotional and difficult experience of course; its right in this cute little normal town, and the landscapeing outside the camp was done so that it looked really nice and peaceful, definatly not at all how it felt inside the camp. I don't want to talk about it a whole lot because I don't want to think about it a whole lot, I feel like its an experience that is going to take a few years for me to fully internalize and react to, its just too hard to do that all at once. While I was tearing up almost the whole time, I managed not to cry until we went into the gas chambers and than the crematorium. Those were by far the worst places I have ever been in my life, even though the gas chamber was never used in Dachau. The crematorium was, and I personaly think it smelled really bad in there, I felt like I was going to throw up and had to go outside for air, although my friend said he didn't smell anything. I am glad that we went there, it was important but I don't plan on ever going back. I thing this trip to Germany and Dachau will make next weekend's trip to Normandy very interesting. We spent about 3 hours in Dachau and at the end wanted to get out and back to Munich as quick as possible. When we got back to the city we were very hungry, so we had lunch at this little outdoor market which was really yummy. I had schnitzel (I am sure I didn't spell that correctly) which was really good and very German. After that we decided to do some shopping for souveniers, walked around the city some more, and than went back to Oktoberfest. It was funny, on the metro to Oktoberfest we saw these people that we had met on Friday because they were speaking french in the metro and we were as well. We ended up hanging out with them at Oktoberfest for around 45 mins which was cool because one of them was German and so he knew what to do and how to do it. Anyways, after a while we left Oktoberfest and went to the train station to grab our night train back to Paris. We were in a compartment with a Parisian, a Colombian who spoke french, a drunk TGV conductor (french obviously), and a german (who didnt get on the train until about an hour after us). So we were speaking a combination of french and english and having many very interesting conversations. The TGV conductor drank about 5 beers in an hour, so he was getting quite drunk and it got really difficult for us to understand his french because he was slurring it a lot, which just made it all the more funny. He kept interrupting our converstations with random stories about himself that had absolutly no relevency to our topic of disscusion. It was definatly an entertaining night, but we didn't get much sleep and what sleep we did get wasn't very good since it was on the train, so when we got in Sunday afternoon we decided not to go to Orleans this weekend (because we don't need to buy tickets in advance with our eurails) but to go next weekend or someother time. It was definatly a fun weekend, but I am very happy to be back in Paris. It was frustraing not being able to speak the language with anyone and not really knowing how it was culturally appropriate to act so its nice being back here where I do speak the language and understand the culture (at least a little bit)!

Day 18: More classes

Last night I was too tired and stressed to post so this will again be for the past two days. Yesterday I had my other two classes at IES (translation and intro to french lit). Unfortunately the translation class is ridiculously hard, we did a worksheet in class and wern't allowed to use a dictonary, so there was a lot of random vocab that I didn't know (like "fast buck"). I think it will force my french vocab level to get a lot better though so that is good. My other class is super rediculously easy which will be nice, there are a lot of students in it who don't speak french very well so the teacher doesn't expect a whole lot from us it seems, at least I have one easy class. I signed up for my class at the Catholic Institue of Paris yesterday, I am taking a class called Keys to Christianity so it should be a lot of stuff that I have already covered in classes at Tulane which is good because it will be easier to do in french. Also yesterday a friend and I spent 2 hours trying to buy eurail passes to go to Munich this weekend and Italy in November. After going to 2 different train stations and getting pointed in the wrong direction by about 10 different people we finally found someone who knew what she was talking about and was able to sell us the eurail passes and book us seats on a train leaving for Munich friday morning and coming back to paris late saturday night, getting in on sunday morning. Since it gets in sunday morning we have all sunday to travel around france for free, so we are going to go to Orleans (since we both go to school in New Orleans). It was super stressful trying to find the eurails, but I am very happy and I can't believe that I am going to Germany in a day! We will be there for the start of Oktoberfest, which is supposedly one of the best times to visit :D I also found out that I got on the Normandy trip with IES so I will be going to Normandy the weekend after next and than the weekend after that I go to New York for my aunt's wedding, so the next 3 weekends I won't be in Paris :( but I get to see lots of cool places so thats ok. I spent today doing all of my homework for the weekend so that I won't have to worry about any of it in Germany. Since I spent about 5 hours strait doing homework when i was finished I majorly needed to walk around outside and relax so I found this cute park right across the street and walked around there and than sat and read my book for a while, which was a nice relaxing end to a very stressful 2 days.

Day 16: First day of real classes

Well, as you might have gathered from the title of this post, today was the first day of the real classes. My host family was shocked when I walked into the kitchen to get breakfast at 7:40 this morning, that is probably the earliest I have woken up since I have been here. I only had two classes today, but even that meant I was in class for 3 hours strait which surprisingly was not too bad. my first class was Theater in Paris, which seems like it will be really cool we read 4 plays and than go see all of them preformed which I am really excited about. I started reading the first play and it is really fascinating because it is a play about the European Union and how it is reshaping Europe from a french prospective, I feel like it is the first time that I have really gotten to see completely inside the french perspective. My second class is called Comic Strips and Society, and it is really different from any other class I have taken. It consists of analyzing comic strips (which are considered an intellectual art form in France) from both a literature perspective and an artistic perspective, I am super excited to get the book for that class and start reading. I got done at 12:15 so that was really nice, I had time to go buy my theater books and grab some lunch before I had a meeting at IES to check in about my homestay. When I got home I read the first play for a bit (it is called L'Europeenne) and than went to the kitchen to help my host mom prepare dinner, which was nice because even though I didn't help much we got the chance to talk more. This evening a friend and I tried to figure out how to get to Munich this weekend for Ocktoberfest and some sightseeing...quite frustrating until Nick (who I was complaining to on skype) found out where one can purchase a eurail pass in France, so we are going to go try to do that tomorrow. I have to say one thing that bugs me a lot about France is the lack of useful information they have avalible on the internet, apparently it is just a cultural thing for them, but I am definatly used to being able to find whatever I need on the internet. I found out that the postworkers are staring to strike tomorrow, which is kinda dissapointing because I put a bunch of postcards in the mail yesterday...oh well I guess they just will take forever to get to the USA. I feel like this is an important step to becoming more Parisian, experiencing a french strike! As my host mom said, it probably won't be my last.

Day 14: Rue Mouffetard

I had another fabulous day in Paris (I am beginning to think that it is impossible to have a bad day in Paris). Today I had a welcome lunch with IES which was really cool, we went to a kitchen and learned how to prepare our lunch and cooked it ourselves which was lots of fun, and it was really yummy. After that I went to the Senate with some friends because this is the one weekend in the year where it is open and free (along with a bunch of other things). On the way there we had to walk up this street where a Techno Parade was going by which was interesting so we watched that for a bit. My standards for parades is definatly pretty high after experiencing two Mardi Gras but this one was cool because the people (not on the floats but just the crowd) kept doing interesting things, like breating fire or dancing in fountains. It was really funny because the parade went past the Parthanon, La Sorbonne, Saint-Michel, and Notre Dame so it was all these old fabulously historic sights with this loud crazy young parade going by. Anyways we finally made it to the Senate which was really cool, it was so pretty inside. When we were waiting to get into the actual room where they hold the Senate the President of the Senate walked out and he literally walked right next to me which was pretty cool. After the Senate we went over to Rue Mouffetard, which is officially my favorite area of Paris (aside from walking along the seine). It is really vibrant and lively, and is also cheeper which is nice. There are a lot of french students there because it is near the Sorbonne and a lot of great shops and restaurants and a cute square. We did some shopping there and than ate dinner and got gelato (which they made into the shape of a rose) and at it in the square. It was a very nice finish to a great day, and I am definatly reminded of how wonderful it is to be in Paris! On a side note, today I finally decided to wear my comfy but not entirely stylish shoes, and my feet are much happier for it :)

Day 13: I love not having Friday classes!

Well again, this blog will be for the last two days because right after I turned off my computer last night I realized I hadn't bloged and was too tired to turn it back on. Yesterday was the last day of the "intensive" language class (otherwise known as rediculously easy language class even though it was the hardest one) and we had our "final' exam which took a whopping 15 mins. Needless to say I was really happy that it was so easy. After that I went to Rue Mouftard (which has just about the silliest name ever) where my friends and I had lunch at a very yummy restaurant that had curry chicken, I was quite happy. After that we took Rue Mouftard over to the Parthanon, there was some nice inexpensive shopping on the Rue so I finally found a cheap purse that I like that is big enough for me to put my school stuff in, and I am very happy because the previous purse I was using didn't have a zipper or anything at the top, it was just open so I was always paranoid that my stuff was going to get stolen without me noticing. Anyways, so we went in the Parthanon which was very cool, we saw the graves of such famous people as: Voltaire, Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Emilie Zola, etc which was really neat. Today was the first day of the three day weekend (I LOVE NOT HAVING CLASS ON FRIDAY!), and my friends and I took full advantage of it. We met at Saint-Michel and had lunch over there (near a mexican restaurant which made me really happy because everyone says you can't find mexican in Paris but clearly I did) which was super yummy. Than we went to Montmartre which was interesting. It was very touristy and the area is transitioning from being very trashy to being somewhat classy so its interesting. Like I said it is very touristy, so people have developed this trick of standing on the street with yarn for frendship bracelets and asking passer bys to hold the string for them so they can make the braclets, than right when they finish the quickly put it on you and make you pay 10 euro for it even if you don't want it, because they made it special for you and you have to buy it now blah blah blah. Thankfully we knew about this so when they hassled us we just kept saying no and walked away but I imagine many tourists fall for this trick. Anyways, we went to Sacre coeur which was fabulous of course. It was very beautiful and the view was stunning. After that we walked over to the Moulin Rouge (which was significantly less impressive that I had imagined) and on the way over there we walked through a small park where there were three americans playing jazz so we sat for a while and listened to it. It was really nice and reminded me a lot of New Orleans. After the Moulin Rouge we went to the Louvre, which is free for students on Fridays and Wednesdays after 6pm, so we got in for free which was really nice. Of course we only saw a very little bit of it, but we plan on coming back all the fridays that we are free to see more. One of the funniest things that we saw was a group of 10 construction workers putting up a portable stage right behind the louvre for something, they went about it in a very french way. It was entirely inefficient and uncoordinated which we found entirely amusing and we watched them for about 10 mins. After we left the Louvre night had fallen and I was absolutly struck with the beauty of Paris, and it reminded me of how happy I am to be here. I feel as though I had started to take the city for granted because I have been here for 2 weeks, but seeing it at dusk with the Eiffle tower in the background reminded me of how fantastic it is. We were planning on walking along the Seine to the Eiffle Tower and finding dinner along the way but that was expensive so we ended up just wandering around and finding a yummy pizza place where we shared a pizza. The cheese was brie which is AMAZING on pizza, they should definatly make pizzas like that in the USA. We have become very euopean in our eating habbits, we ate dinner for little over 3 hours (lunch was a little over 2 hours) so by the time we left it was time to take the metro back home. All in all it was a fabulous day in Paris, and I am very happy that I didn't have pesky classes to interfere with my exploring ;) The only downfall is my feet are quite sore right now so they are very content that I am laying in my bed writing this.

Day 10: I miss TOUR

I guess this blog post will be for today and yesterday since I forgot to post yesterday (oops!). Yesterday I had my meeting with my academic adviser. She told me that I was the first person out of everyone to sign up at IES for my classes (for which I was very proud) so I won't have any difficulty getting into them. She also recommended that I take a class at the Catholic Institute of Paris, so I am. Apparently however since religion is so taboo here, the only people who take religious studies classes are old people, so she said not to be shocked if everything in my class is of an older generation. Anyways, I spent today trying to decifer the nonsense that is the class postings at the Catholic Institute, and I think I have finally figured it out but I definatly appreciate and miss TOUR (Tulane's registrar system) a lot. Of course there are no classes that work well both time wise and subject wise so we will see what happens....I guess I need to talk to my advisor again. Right now it looks like I will either be taking Fundementals of Buddhism, The Keys to Christianity, or Introduction to Judaism. Anyways, today I went to L'Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont which is a gorgous church dedicated to the Martyr Stephen (who is incedently one of my favorite New Testament persons), it had some stunning hand painted glass windows and also is home to the tomb of Sainte Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris). I took the bus home from L'Eglise Saint-Etienne which I like much better than the metro. I hate going underground to take the metro, and since my communte is about 30-40 mins generally it means being underground with nothing to see for a while so I was very happy to take the bus where, although it is slightly slower (45 mins) I got to see a lot of Paris. I recognized the names of a lot of the stops as metro stops on my normal metro route, so it was nice to actually see what those places look like. The buses are a lot nicer here than in the USA, and are set up differently so there is a lot less room to sit but tons of space to stand.

Day 7: La Saint Chappelle

Today (or actually it was yesterday because I was too tired to write this last night) I had a nice relaxing day. I had a long lunch in a restaurant close to my house which was quite good, it was a little annoying though because I was speaking french to them and they were speaking french to me until I pulled out my english book to read while I waited and than.....they spoke english to me. So I asked them to speak french to me and after that they said everything first in english and than in French. So I went to a used book store and bought a french book to read so I don't look like a tourist and don't get spoken to in english. Anyways, than I went to meet a friend at Notre Dame, but the line to get in was long and the line to go up was even longer so we decided to go to la Palais de la Justice instead. We went and waited in a much shorter line there and when we got to the front we realised it was a line to go to La Saint Chappelle, but since we both like to see churches we decided to do it anyways. What a good decision that was, I can honestly say La Saint Chappelle was the most beautiful church I have ever seen, it definatly look my breath away. Lots and lots of beautiful stained glass windows and beautiful painted ceilings. It was phenomanal. Anyways after that I bought my french book, than I came back home and had dinner with my family after which we watched Grand Torino, which I have already seen but it is such a great movie that I definatly wanted to see it again. It was kinda confusing though because we watched it in english with french subtitles and I was listening to the english and reading the french and the version's wern't matching up exactly so it was really confusing me and I decided I had to pay attention to only one. I didn't watch very much of the movie though, because I had to go call my mom and than talk to nick on skype so the weird two language thing wasn't a huge problem.

Day 6: Its the weekend!

Well I had a great day in Paris today, I had class for 2 hours today and after that I was free! I had lunch with some IES friends at a yummy cafe close to IES and than we went to the Catacombes (the entrance to which is right near IES). They were really interesting, very dark and cold and wet. It would be a great place to set up a haunted house. Anyways, the Catacombes is where a bunch of bones from church graves were moved to in the 1700s ( I believe), and its very interesting and pretty in its morbid way (sometimes the bones make designes, often times crosses, but there is a heart made out of skulls). We were in the Catacombes for about an hour and a half to two hours, there was lots of stuff to see and there were lots of interesting quotes engraved on the wall about death, it was very morbid but definatly something to reflect upon. I was irritated because my camara couldn't take good pictures (you can't use a flash), but my friend's camara did so I will post those on facebook or piccasa when I get them from him. When we exited the Catacombes we had no idea where we were because the entrance was definatly not in the same space, so we just wandered around for a while before we realised were were close to IES but we sill didn't know exactly where. We did see a pretty church though and decided to go in it, which was really nice because it was very peacefull inside which was a nice change and was very refreshing after the Catacombes. After the church we decided to go to le jardain de luxembourge which is a very beautiful garden near Saint-michel that the parisians love. We walked around there and sat down and read and people watched for a while, it was absolutly beautiful there. Than we walked to Saint-michel, on the way there we saw the Parthanon and La Sorbonne. It was really cool to see the "old paris" the buildings are even prettier than the rest of paris (which is saying something), and they have tons of beautiful historic buildings that we saw like Notre Dame and La Palais de la Justice. We crossed over le Seine and kept walking for a while, the area is really beautiful and old but it is also more touristy than other areas in a not so pleasant way, there are much more neon signs, pizza huts, Macdos (mac donalds), and even a KFC so it takes away from the old romantic atmoshpere. It was still nice though, we had a good dinner at a very american friendly restaurant there (the entire menu was both in french and english) and all the entrees came with sides of fries, so it was not as good as more french places, but it was a good price and still fairly tasty. We were of course speaking in french, and there was a british couple sitting at the table next to us that we ended up talking to at the end of the meal, and they thought that we were french-canadian which we found rather amusing. They were a very funny couple and we had a long converstaion with them, they asked us about who is going to visit us and I mentioned that my boyfriend is because he can fly for free, the husband decided that ment i must be dating superman, and started doing really big flying motions with his hands, it was quite funny and I am suspicious that they were a bit drunk (they had finished a bottle of wine between the two of them). After dinner I went back to my appartment and got over my fear of taking the metro when it is dark out. Anyways, it was a very good day filled with lots of adventures and I feel like I got to see much more of Paris. I can't wait until tomorrow when I get to see even more!

Day 5: la vie est belle!

Today I made a fabulous discovery! It was our first day actually at the IES center today, and it was on my way there that I discovered that there is an Indian food restaurant right across the street from IES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This of course made me quite excited because I was sure that there would be no Indian food in Paris, yum yum yum. I haven't gone there yet but I plan to very soon :) Well, so as I said today was the first day at IES and I liked the metro communte there much better, I only had to switch trains once instead of twice. The street that it is on (Rue Daguerre) is amazing, it is so vibrate and beautiful. There is basically an outdoor market at the end of it, and it is full of these cute little restaurants and chocholat shops. The area IES is in has a lot of good cheep(er) shopping, and I was quite excited because I finally found a place where they sell unbrellas. I had lunch at a yummy greek place that was fairly cheep, and had really good fallafal, definatly a place to go back to. We had our first day of language review classes, and I was really happy I was in the later group so I got to sleep in a bit. The class was fine, just a lot of easy grammar review. I was happy because I tested into the most advanced class which means that if I pass the next test at the end of the 5 classes (which basically just confirms where you are supposed to be I think) I don't have to take a grammar class and get to take a translation one intsead which seems much more interesting. I am really excited for the weekend, after class on friday I don't have any more IES stuff until Monday so I will get to see more of the city. Hum not much else intersting to report, I am still geting used to french cuisine and am asking a lot of "qu'est-ce que c'est?" at the dinner table. I like almost everything, but it is very different than what I am used to, for example tonight we had zuckinie (humm i dont really know how to spell that) soup and rice. Than after dinner we had cheese, bread, and plums. It was all really yummy but definatly now what I would eat at home. hum nothing else terribly interesting to report, my french is improving drasticly which is good, and I am definatly having more and more converstaions with random french people (someone stopped me on the metro today to ask for help figuring out which line to take and i was able to tell her no problem, which made me really happy that i could not only speak french but I knew the metro well enough by now to direct her). Well I can't think of anything else interesting to say so I guess I will leave it here!

Day 3: Orientation

Today was my first day really interacting with IES (the study abroad organization I am with). They were all very nice and made everyone feel very comfortable right away. I had to take the metro to get to the place where the orientation was happening, and I was pretty nervous about that because it was my first time taking the metro by myself and I knew it was going to be rush hour. It was very crowded by not at all bad, and I made it to the orientation with plenty of time to spare. Most of the students didn't know anyone else so it was easy to make friends because everyone was in the same boat. I met a few really nice people that I didn't know, and met up with a friend from Tulane. It feels nice to have friends in Paris that, even if I don't know them very well yet, I feel comfortable calling up and asking if they want to do something with me. Orientation was not terribly exciting, it was a lot of information about saftey, immigration, getting around Paris, and other practical aspects. Absolutly everything was done in French which for some reason I wasn't really expecting, so it was really my first full day interacting with people all day in French (since I didn't talk to anyone for an extended amount of time except for my host family yesterday). Thankfuly it wasn't too overwhelming and I understood everything, at this point it actually feels natural to be interacting in French. I was really plesently suprised that all the students were trying really hard to converse with eachother in french, which is good because it helped me get in the hang of just speaking french and not being embarrased if what I said wasn't perfect. It shocked me how many Tulane students are at IES, when we were eating lunch I was talking to some guys sitting next to me and they were from Tulane which was funny because I had never seen them before and apparently one of them lived in the same dorm as me last year only on the 3rd floor instead of the 4th. I did have one moment of extreem panic and homesickness when they did a lecture on safety. I am so used to Menlo Park being extreemly safe and I know how to be safe in New Orleans that it is really scary to think about being in a big city where I don't know all the risks. It definatly made me want to hop on a plane home that instant because I was sure that I would be mugged on the metro home that night, but I eventually calmed down and decided that they tell us this stuff not to frighten us, but to make us aware of our surrounings and aware of how to proactivly protect ourselves. Other than that everything went well, and I am excited for the rest of orientation which will hopefully be more interesting. This evening was an interesting one, the 11 year old son through a temper tandtrum at his mother because he didn't want to do his homework. It wasn't a bad temper tantrum, but he was definatly still in a bad mood at dinner, and when his father found out why things got really awkward. I guess his father considered it completely unacceptable that his son had thrown a tantrum when I was home to hear it, even though I said that I understand and that its no big deal. Anyways the son got punished, and I felt a little guilty because I knew the reson he was in so much trouble was because I was there to witness it. I still definatly have some jet lag to get rid of, I woke up at 5 am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep so now I am completely exhausted. I can't quite bring myself to go to bed at 8:45 pm though so I think I will study some before I go to sleep, I have my language placement test for IES tomorrow morning and I definatly need to review le subjonctive!

Target me manque

Well today was my first complete day in Paris! I slept very very well last night after hardly sleeping at all the night before on the plane. When I woke up I was dreading going out and speaking french for some reason, but after I laid in bed for a while my hunger got the better of me and I went out to find breakfast and got over my temporary fear of speaking French. After breakfast I went out to do some shopping, my host mom had given me some recommendations and directions to l'Arc de Triomphe which is only about a 10 min walk from the apartment. I decided that the shopping could wait and walked over to l'arc. In that 10 min walk I went from a normal Parisian feel to a completely tourist feel, which wasn't all bad but I definatly liked the feeling of Paris without the tourists. It was quite exciting to be able to walk around Paris and take things in without having to worry about making sure that I cram everything into a short vacation. I ended up walking aimlessly down les champs-elysees until I bought a map. I then was very tempted to walk over to either the Louvre or the Eiffle Tower, both of which were about 20-30 mins from where I was. I ended up just finding a bench on les champs-elysees and people watching which was very facinating. I decided to leave the major tourist attractions to this weekend when I have more time and don't have to worry about getting my shopping done. I had a very good lunch in a little sandwich shop, it was a great deal actually everything else around was advertising lunch for about 15 euros ( about $22) and this place had a sandwich + drink + dessert deal for only 8.50 euros so I was happy. As I walked back to the appartment after lunch I went to the streets that my host-mom had recomended for me. I guess I should have told her more explicetly what I was looking for because everything seemed to be food and shoe stores which is great, but not exactly what I needed. After several unsuccessful stops I started to miss target very very much, all the stores that looked promising that I went into seemed to have only shampoo and maybe really expensive soap but none had conditioner, nailpolish remover, or hair blowdriers. I was shocked with the ration of shampoo to conditioner and I guess maybe the french are really into shampoo....in any case I finally asked a lady who worked in one of the shops if they sold conditioner, she looked at me like I was crazy and said yes. Than she asked what kind of hair I have to which I replied....uh normal hair? Apparently there are different types. Anyways long story short it turns out that they had about 50 types of shampoo and only one type of conditioner so I bought that. The toiletries were rediculously expensive and I definatly wish that I had just brought them from home but c'est la vie. When I arrived home I realized I had absolutly nothing to do. I was hesetent to head back out since I had just gotten in and my feat hurt a little so I just hung out at home until the kids got back from school. The 11 year old boy got back first and he chatted with me for a bit and than invited me to play a game of darts with him. Having never played darts before I decided to try it. After getting a bullseye on my second throw I proceded to suck the rest of the 3 games that we played so that he won all of them except the first. He was very nice though, and just came in to give me a kiss goodnight which was very sweet. At dinner the girl (who is studying english at school) had a fun time asking me words in english and than asking how to spell them and how to use them, which I thought was really funny. Her favorites were "awesome" and "freaking cool". It was a little bit reassuring to see that her and her parents also struggle a bit with english and it reminded me that I am trying to speak a foreign language and that it is difficult for (almost) everyone. Well tomorrow is my first day of actual IES programs. My host-mom showed me a great web site that shows you the fastest way to get somewhere using the metro so that helped me plan my commute. I have no idea what I am doing for orientation, but hopefully it will be fun! At the very least it will be nice to meat the other students. A bientot!

Day 1: Arrival

Well I made it to Paris. My first flight was pretty awful, it left at 6:50pm California time and got to London at got in at 5am California time (1pm London time). I think I slept an hour total, I was very uncomfortable and too excited to sleep. I did watch many movies and sit there with my sleep mask on for a while though. The best thing about the flight was when we flew over Greenland and I looked out my window and saw all these glaciers and icebergs, it was really cool. My second flight was better than the first, and I got so excited when we started our descent into Paris and I could see the Iffle Tower. Somehow I didn't have to go through customs when I got to Paris (which was really nice) and so it was just a quick hop out to where my host family was waiting for me with a sign so they were easy to find. My host family consists of a husband who is 45 and works in a bank, a wife who is 38 and stays at home, a 16 year old son who goes to boarding school during the week but is home on the weekends, a almost 15 year old daughter, a 11 1/2 year old son, and a 1 year old son (who took his first steps today!). They are all very very nice, not at all how I expected. They picked me up from the airport (which they definatly didn't have to do), let me stay here a day early (technically I am not supposed to get here until tomorrow), and are very nice and considerate of all of my possible needs. They are Catholic and obviously very religious so I will probably end up going to church with them once or twice which will be an interesting and difference experience. They have a beautiful (but kinda small) flat that is a 10 min walk from l'arc de triomphe. I have my own room which is tiny, it is just a little bit bigger than my closet at home, but it is nice and quaint, and supprisingly all of my stuff fits in it with lots of room to spair. I think I might have actually packed exactly what I need and not overpacked for once. The language barrier is hard, more for me speaking than for understanding them because sometimes I just don't have the vocabulary to say exactly what I want, but I am bumbling along. I am happy that I can understand almost all of what they are staying, and they all speak english too some degree and the kids are very eager to practice with me. I must say I really am enjoying living in the french language because I like it so much! All though I am sure it will get annoying at some point. Well I am exausted after my sleepless night last night and feel like going to bed.....A bientot!