it's over!

this blog never got a proper finish. whoops.
well, on july 31st i flew from france to venice and spent 10 days in italy, staying in venice for 4 nights, florence for 3, a day trip to pisa, and rome for 4 nights. it was amazing :)
some things that happened:

_we would have gotten totally lost right when we arrived in venice if it weren't for two people who happened to speak french, so we were able to talk to them in french and get directions from them. (not knowing much italian sucks but we survived.)

_we really DID get lost in venice one night, walking many kilometers out of our way (across the entire city, which is small) and only finding our way back only after people got off a boat nearby, who we followed back into town.

_after a crazy incident which involved me accidentally crying, we got into the vatican museum for free. :) more details if you ask. hehe

_MORE STORIES BUT I AM TOO LAZY TO TYPE THEM SO ASK ME IF YOU WANT :) :) :)

whoo! europe was fun! the end. til next time.

last week: GO

SUNDAY 7/25:
Out of all the possible things I was going to do (i.e. Cannes, Giverny, EuroDisney), I ended up waking up at 11:00 AM (oh it was glorious) and eating lunch at 日本町 with Mari. Our restaurant was called ひぐま(higuma) and it's very famous, at least according to yelp and google. I had yasai ramen (or as the menu spelled it, lamen) and Mari had miso ramen. YAYYYY for 日本料理! I missed it! While we were eating a little bug (ごきぶり) creeped out of the shadows, and we were almost gonna ask for our meal to be free, but didn't.
After we walked around the neighborhood for a little bit, looking at various Japanese (and some Korean) restaurants and bookstores. It's kind of interesting to get another culture's take on Asian culture. Asians aren't extremely numerous in Paris, so I think it's safe to say that there is less knowledge of Asian culture compared to Californians, but according to my host mom there are plently of Japanophiles who learn the language, eat the food, read the books, and can't wait to get their hands on the girls. (Okay, I added that last part. But it goes without saying.)

After that I was pleasantly surprised to find Tuileries a near stone's throw away, so I walked over there and joined mes potes waiting for the Tour de France to come through. It was boring waiting and my feet got really tired, but it felt cool because the whole crowd was there cheering, and apparently I saw Lance Armstrong zoom by eight times on those bikes. It was cool to be a part of it for this one year--I mean, I'm IN Paris the day of, so why not?!

Everyone left around 5:30, but I still had energy, so I went by myself to Le Marais and explored Place de Vosges, where I had always wanted to go. I didn't really find Victor Hugo's house, but I found Musee de Sully (which was basically two courtyards) and a lot of other cute places (including a cute, well-dressed harpist harping in the street for money) that I'm glad I walked by.

Later in the night we met up again and walked along the canal St. Martin which was very nice and I love it. Another Amelie moment. I wish we could do it again, have it become a regular thing...if we were staying a semester, it could be like that. My new dream is to bring my bf/fiancee/husband to Paris and show him everything and take him all the places I've been. <3

MONDAY:
Me and Analiese got a lot done today!! Very good day.
First we went to St. Cour Emilion which is an INFINITELY CUTE little village with lots of shops and restaurants. We got cheap sandwiches and ice cream and walked around and took pics. Adjacent to it is Bercy park, which was adorable with ducks and bees and plants and best of all, NO CREEPERS yelling at us! We finally found the little city-within-a-city, the little Parisian escape. I felt like I was in the suburbs again. It was so nice to explore the rather unknown portion of the 12th arrondisment.
We got off the metro intending to go to the Tuileries area but saw the Opera Garnier, decided tour it for 5 Euro, which I thoroughly do not regret! Of course I thought of phantom of the opera the whole time (this is where it's based on.) We got to see the whole stage area and the box seats, as well as every other part of the lobby/foyers area, but no secret creepy tunnels/innerworkings. Still, it was beautiful, and it was fun to imagine real operas going down in there. Now that I've done it, I can't believe it was ever optional or not on my list, music-phile that I am. I'm supposed to be super interested in opera...:P
Afterward we decided to go to the Musee L'Orangerie, where they have Monet's water lilies (nympheas) paintings. They were gorgeous, as was everthing else in the museum, but I'm never like TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY by art museums because I just haven't studied it and don't really know quite how to appreciate it. Photography, YES... other forms of visual art (especially pre-20th century), not exactly. But of course it was still a good experience.
After walking through Tuileries (which is next door) a little bit more, we went home, and I had about a 2-hour break for dinner. After dinner (way after, at like 10) we went out to Pigalle(oOo! again) to go to the museum of eroticism. I guess it was worth 6 Euro....LOTS and LOTS of sculptures and images of penises, vaginas, and sex, from throughout the centuries. My favorite part was watching 1920's cartoon porn and filmed porn from the 20's and 30's(silent with the little sentences you read in between scenes, the written dialogue.) It was hilarious. We stopped and took pictures at the Moulin Rouge (yay, I just happened to be there at night!) and other sex shops, etc. along the way. I decided I love Pigalle and think it is fun and happening and definitely not sketch. I haven't had a single sketch experience there, unless you count drunk guys seeing my camera and saying "prend un photo?" or hearing us and saying "speak english?", but that happens everywhere. I think I'd actually be more threatened by that in America than here, because there I wouldn't have the guise of being a tourist, of not knowing the language--I'd actually have to defend myself.

Just a few of the many possibilities which lay before me for these last THREE days:
_park Buttes-Chaumont with Carol! (<3)
_possibly top of Notre Dame with Carol
_park Belleville
_Marais (again) to eat lunch with Bpaul and Jchung
_UP the eiffel tower--at sunset!
_Sacre Coeur at sunset with ISA people :)
_Musee Rodin, Musee des Arts & Metiers
_Tour Montparnasse
_Galleries Lafayatte (yeah, never been!)

There's like 50 things I could add on there which I'm not because I don't want to disappoint myself at not doing every little thing I want to do. I've already done A LOT, including all the crucial attractions and everything on my bucket list. Yay <3 If only I could stay a whole month in EVERY place I go, haha.


OTHER THOUGHTS:
_Paris is somewhat keeping me from thinking negative thoughts/worries about next school year...student teaching, priorities/busyness, having a car, apartment stuff, boy stuff, money stuff...but these issues are IMPENDING and will be on me soon! But gotta get this freaking stressful Italy trip planning out of the way first.

_It's only in these past couple days that I've entered into a new state of comfortability with the city. It's maybe a halfway mark--if I stayed here twice as long, I could be completely 100% comfortable being in the city. But what sucks is that now I've hit that mark, it makes me not want to leave that much more. Whereas last week I was squirming at the seams, having hit the low of homesickness, this week I'm fine and just want to explore and travel more haha. POOP. POOP HOW IT WORKS LIKE THAT. :P

First (and last) Saturday night spent in Paris

...and I'm not doing anything. Haha. I "went out" last night to a Mexican (ha) restaurant and to a club in Pigalle, but ended up going home by 12:30 because I thought the last metro would come and I had to wake up at 8 this morning. And that's practically the craziest I've been here. It's ridiculous, really, but understandable. When I don't feel like an integrated part of the culture, I don't feel as comfortable with going out. Also, alcohol is more expensive here...instead of pregaming, people buy drinks in the club, which cost upwards of 6 Euros each. That's crazy. I LOVE drinking and partying and enjoy it immensely when I do it, but I don't need it to have fun, and I don't necessarily feel like I'm missing out by not doing it in Paris. Even though I am party person, that's not what I came here for.

FRIDAY:
Definitely made up for boring Thursday!!
After class, we:
1. Ate lunch at Luxembourg Gardens
2. Went to Musee D'Orsay (for free!)
3. Went to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed UP it (for free!)-- what an AMAZING view!
4. Went to Le Marais to hopefully poke around, but it started raining so we didn't do too much.
5. Went to La Bastille to get gelato, and then I walked home in time for dinner!
6. Ate dinner
7. Went out to a club in Pigalle

those are the kind of days I wish I had in Paris every day. I'm pretty satisfied with my experience here. If I had more time, I could explore even more, and travel to other countries gradually, but as it is, I've done more than my fair share of what any tourist will ever do here...and that's really what I wanted. Other cities I'm content to be a tourist in, but for Paris (and France in general) I had a a desire to get a more nuanced view. So hooray! C'est fait. Ce fut fait.

Today was practically the stupidest day of my life. No not really. But I'm sad because I didn't do anything. I have have A WEEK left. A WEEK. Really only 5 days, and only 2 of those days have long stretches of free time. I was planning on going to 日本町at lunch with Mari, but then she wasn't there and I decided I didn't want to go alone, so I just ate lunch at Luxembourg like always. Then after class at 5, no one was doing anything and I couldn't find anyone and didn't know what to do so I just went home. Sigh. It's okay, I'm still satisfied with my experience here and I only have a couple more MUST-DOS before I leave.


I never thought I would say this, but as I alluded to in my previous entry, the thought of going back isn't crippling or choking. I'm actually looking forward to it. It's a good feeling, like where you are AND where you are going. Usually I'm either hating where I am and wanting the future, or hating the future and wanting to stay paralyzed where I am. But this time I like both :)

Italy with Josefina and Iris for 10 days after the program, until Aug 11th. We planned it all ourselves! I've never been so independent. Oh money. The things it can do. I'm so lucky. Oh mother, I really hope you don't stay a chômeuse forever. :(

Lesson learned from this trip: traveling is better than not traveling, as long as money allows. If I had been smarter and thought about it/could have planned better, I probably would have planned to travel both before and after my program, to more countries/places. I would have researched more about the places I was going so I could be prepared with itineraries and lists. Also, I as I now know, the earlier you plan to travel, the better, even more than 6 months in advance to get the best prices. Sigh. Well this stuff will help me later in life :) I think I can deal with having a shitty small apartment, and budging food and necessities very carefully, in order to save money to travel. WORTH IT. <3

I want to LIVE in at least 3 different countries besides USA. France is one...even though I haven't really "lived" here...it's definitely crossing the line past tourist. Japan will hopefully be the second. And Peace Corps will be the 3rd. And WHO KNOWS! Who knows what opportunities will open up for me. I'm still very optimistic about all this.

day 23

Didn't do too much today except for go to Shakespeare & Co, which was amazing and surpassed my expectations. There's SO many books, and I started getting overwhelmed, because I want to read them all and know all of the knowledge within them, AND because I think about how I want to be cultured and read books and watch plays and movies, AND because I think about how I want my kids to be cultured and know 10 different languages and all about their world. I played piano upstairs too. :) It was nice to play. And I took pictures. There was this little area where people from around the world leave notes (lots of Korean ones for some reason!) and I left a note that was a mix of English, Japanese, and French. :)

Then I went home and took a nap for 2.5 whole hours. I kinda feel like I wasted time not doing anything grand, but then, it's hard when everyone has different agendas and can't get their shit together and plan stuff together. Plus I felt REALLY tired and wanted to take a nap, and I also felt inspired to write and was intending to write (but didn't and am writing now.)

I really miss singing and dancing here. You think it wouldn't matter but it does. I need the release. It's so weird not singing. Like, I can sing to myself, and that helps, it really does. But I can't dance to myself haha. I want to go clubbing or something so I can just let that shit out.

I also miss SPOP a little bit, not because I'm FOMOing over this year or anything (cause I'm honestly 100% not), but because it's summer and hot weather and my body remembers that the last time it was hot like this, I was spopping away. Call it temperature memory. Also how big dancing was to me that summer, with SPOP modern and SPo you think you can dance and SPaerobics. (Sorry this doesn't relate to France. tangent...)

I love the people here, for the most part. Everyone's so fun. I really do wish we had more time to just hang out and get to know each other better. I think that's one downside of not living in the dorms. I had to sacrifice some of my fun-hanging-out-making-friends experience in order to have the French home experience. (Is this what it feels like to commute? Ugh.)

One change is that I've started thinking about going back a lot more than I did the first two weeks. In the beginning I was always thinking about what I was gonna do the next day, what new things I was going to see, etc. I was immersed in my current experience, and my life in CA was pushed to the back of my mind. Now I think about things from CA all the time: the music I listen to, my friends, experiences from last year, thoughts about the coming year, etc.

I feel a little torn, because I love summer and don't want it to end (who doesn't), but at the same time I miss Irvine and people and so it will be good to return to them....BUT again at the same time, when I come back everything will be different. School will be 100% different. Some friends will still be in Irvine, but not attending school, some will be across the country in jobs/grad school, and some will be back at home. It'll be tricky to get used to. I'm not particularly excited for next school year at the moment (more like scared and dreading the stringent teaching cred requirements) but hopefully that will change when I go back to Irvine and get back in the flow of things.

I'm sorry, I guess this isn't much of a France blog, haha. I got led astray. But, at least, this is what's on my mind. More France blogging when I do some more interesting things (Versailles and Eurodisney this weekend!)

day 22: 10 days left in Paris!

Today:
another failed attempt to ascend notre dame today. LAME. apparently the line is 823043253 people long and you have to come super early to get a spot. it wasn't that way last time! foiled again. so all we did (maggie, kate and i) was walk around ile de la cité. we took pics with pt. zero, saw st. chappelle (but didn't go inside), saw la place de châtelet, and checked out the grand opening of paris plages. all in all not a bad day...even just walking around seeing random stuff is fun, because it's all new to me. i have most of the utmost essentials checked off my to-do list so the next two weeks will just be filling in the cracks. topping my list is: euro disneyland (sunday!), actually going up the eiffel tower (hopefully sometime SOON), le marais, and a couple museums that i would love to go to if i have the time...musée d'orsay, musée de rodin, musée de quai branly. (i feel that i should give museums more time than i do, because i feel stupid and uncultured if i don't go to them. but i'd rather be doing something outside.) also, if i had the chance, i'd like to go up the arc of triomphe, and tour montparnasse, and see bois de vincennes/bois de boulogne. let's see what i get done in the next couple weeks.

Planning my Italy trip is stressful as fck. Sorry, I keep bitching about it. But it's a great experience for me. I'll probably have to plan my own travel later in life, and it'll be great that I had this experience planning this. I already have a future trip in mind, once I meet a friend or LOVA with which to travel: go to Paris for a few days, so I can be back and show that person around, then go to the south of France (Nice, Cannes, Marseilles, Monaco, and maybe even Cinque Terre/Liguria!) for the rest of the time. SIGH. <3 <3 <3 I am going to prioritize traveling so much. I am going to fight for it.

I AM SO EXCITED FOR NIHON MACHI. I'm going this weeek!!!!!!!!!! Nihon machi!!! I'm so deprived here. Everything is European as fck. It's not like it'll be a magical world where I become transported to Japan, but I think it will remind me of home a little bit. I really miss my Mitsuwa runs and my Nihonjin <3 Saya! さみしいいいよ～！(that was just to show off that I figured out how to add Japanese to this computer's settings.) And the food will be a welcome break from all the freaking baguettes and SANDWICHES. No kidding, like, you think it's so stereotypical, but baguette is EVERYWHERE here. AND cheese. AND wine. Stereotypes have their origin in truth.

Mkay, that's all for now. I think things are beginning to crystallize a little bit! At Notre Dame today, it was one of the first days things felt real. I'm sure that I will leave before things turn entirely real, though, and my experience will remain the fleeting fantasy that it is. :) Paris. Me.

days 19-21: loire valley, marché des puces, and other randoms

Since I waxed at the world last time and didn't get to talk about my trip to the Loire Valley, here it is, along with today's update.

LOIRE VALLEY
-Chenonceau was nice, but a tiny bit of a letdown. This probably sounds uber spoiled and unappreciative, but it's not like I haven't seen a huge mansion before, faux-furnished and with a million gaggling tourists speaking in every which tongue.

-Wine tasting was OFF THE HOOK. That is to say, getting drunk for free was off the hook. I think I had about 6 glasses. (!) It was really fun to see everyone open up. I got to talk to some people really freely who I never normally would've talked to, like Natira and Kaylee. And it was nice. :) I wish we all had more time to get to know one another and party together. I really wanna get drunk with everyone.

-Chambord, by contrast, was brilliant and so much fun. This was mostly due to 1) the amazing double-helix spiral staircase which is made of white/taupe marble and amazingly fun to go up/down and also look at and 2) BOATING. I'll admit, me and Candace failed on our little bike trip à deux, but being on the boat on the river with Analiese, Candace, Jose and Iris was definitely the best part of the day. We made a really good group and the pictures were beautiful and the weather was beautiful and the breeze was blowing and I felt as relaxed as I've felt here in a long time. Compared to uber-urban Paris, being out in the country was freaking amazing.

-Tours was a nice little town, and it'd be nice to spend more time there. Our hotel bathroom had a shower you could actually hang above your head (SCORE!!) but there was literally NO shower curtain or barrier of any kind (what the fck?) so I basically made a flood in the bathroom. -___-;;

TODAY (Monday July 20th...my 23rd day here!)
-Class is SO BORING. I could not care less about passé simple. But it's good that we're moving onto prepositions...a nice much-needed and somewhat-never-learned review.

-We went to Marché des Puces! If you take line 4 all the way to the top (Porte de Clignancourt) you enter into a magical world where lots of different people are trying to sell you objects of every size, shape, age, color, and price range, on the street. Clothes, shoes, accessories, furniture, drug paraphenalia, ethnic things, modern things, antiques...it's like the UCI vendor faire x 10000000000. They have a lot of cheap vendor faire-esque clothes and items. Sometimes the merchants are little too aggressive...I tried to stay away from the hip-hop-blasting, loudly-shouting, overcrowded "modern clothes & shoes" section and drifted more towards the quite, cute, quaint, old-people-antiques section. MUCH more my thing, at least in this situation. (I'm such a marm! I never want to go out, and I'm tired all the time, and now I like old people antiques. Jesus.) I browsed a whole lot and ended up getting gifts for my freeeeends WHICH SHALL REMAIN SURPRISES. :)

-Me and Candace had fun playing FIND OBJECTS. We looked on the ground for things. I found a ripped letter from 1958, a coin from Finland, and basically a bunch of metal things (a spiral, a coupe-papier, a screw, some random sticks, etc.) While we were walking I looked around and we were in the outskirts of Paris, in the ZUP, and I was reminded of La Haine.

-Afterward, we did AMELIE TOUR 2010. If you haven't seen Amelie, you won't appreciate this part. We went to Gare de L'est, where she meets Nino, where she keeps seeing the phantom photo-taker, where she gets trapped at night, where they keep showing the clock, etc. Obvi it didn't look the same, but you could kind of recognize it. Then we did PHOTOMATON just like in the movie, except it was different cause it was all modern and not cute and antiquey. -_-; THEN we went to LES DEUX MOULINS in Montmartre, the restaurant where she works! Except there was no tabac and no glass sign! But other than that stuff looked pretty much the same! We got drinks there (RIDIC expensive) and took touristy pictures (I forgot my CF card and so took pictures on Beth's camera, much to her dismay.)


ANYTHING ELSE I'VE BEEN THINKING
-Good things about homestay: I get my own room (most share), my host mom is nice, she cooks dinner every night for us and listens to my preferences, I can improve my French by talking to her, she helps me or tries to help me when I don't know where something is, the cats are cute

-Eh things about homestay: it's pretty small and dingy and old, there is cat hair EVERYWHERE on EVERYTHING, my towel and clothes smell bad and kind of like mold, I think because she line dries them, she's sometimes weirdly demanding/not considerate (i.e. after I slept under just the comforter for just one night, she took it away and said I can't use it because it's not hygenic for me to sleep under it and she'd have to wash it.)

-I think I need to stop eating chocolate/ice cream and drinking Orangina every day. Did you know?! In the kitchen of every house there are two faucets: one for water and one for Orangina! It runs in the rivers here! :)


Oh, how I could go on, I have soooo many pensées, but I need to do my HW and upload my pics and OtHeR ShItZ.

just thoughts

I went to the Loire Valley this weekend, but instead of giving a play-by-play, I'll just get out some things that have been on my mind.

I'm encountering a lot of a new culture and a new way of life, more so than the average weeklong see-the-sights tourist, but because I'm around American people (the people on my program) all the time, and because I'm only here for about a month, it's hard to say that France is really changing me. It's a good experience, a good sneak peek, a tiny view into what it's like to live in this city/country, which in itself is legitimate and valuable. If I were to meet French college students and become their friends, if I were to walk down the street and converse throughout an entire day only in French, without having English to fall back on, if I were to go through daily life and think entirely in Euros for an entire year (or more) without unconsciously thinking of my stay as a countdown back to "regular" life, my experience would obviously be much different. I know what people mean, now, when they say they regretted staying only a semester and not a year. The longer you stay the more it changes you. (I mean, I knew that, but being here helps me more clearly realize and envision what that means.)

It's cool, because I feel like I'm feeling snippets of the immigrant experience: being judged for speaking my fluent language, struggling to communicate, struggling to understand cultural norms, etc. and these are things I'd never dealt with before. It's not like I really know, but I have a better idea. Except I'll go back home and they won't.

I'm starting to view language as not a barrier. It's hard to break that mindset, but it's starting. When someone speaks a language that you don't know at all, that doesn't make them any different from you, they were just raised differently. When I hear people speaking German at the chateaux, I shouldn't feel like I can't relate to them or that we are quintessentially "different" just because their version of home-language is different from mine. I know this seems like an obvious thing, something you can know intellectually, but it takes listening to it and experiencing and internalizing it for it to really sink in as a concept. Just in reading this, you probably don't know what I mean unless you've had a similar experience to mine, 'cause it's hard for me to say it in words.

And anyway, this is just the beginning. Well, the beginning was when I went to England and Wales. That was two weeks. This is a month. Japan, hopefully, will be a year. Peace Corps, 27 months. I hope it keeps going. I really do. There's almost nothing I want more than to understand and be understood by other cultures, to bridge the gaps that language and society can build up, like a crust concealing the fact that all humans are basically similar and want the same things.

day 18: catacombs and STAMPS CRISIS!

Let me preface this by saying that, this week and most especially these 3 days, I am experiencing what we females affectionately like to call P.M.S. More hormones than usual run through one's body during this time, making me more much on-edge and emotional than usual. I don't guys don't really want to hear this, but it's the truth. :) Sorry 'bout it.

Today was a good day. I skipped class in the morning for the first time (I know, right...and I ended up missing a lot too) and then went to the catacombs in the afternoon. Basically Paris has these networks of underground tunnels (even underneath the metro and the RER) where, during the 1700s, they exhumed all the bodies from the cemetaries of Paris and STACKED THE BONES in the tunnels. It's basically leg and/or arm bones alternated with skulls in layers....for miles of tunnel. There's a lot. And they're just loosely stacked so you can pick one up and hold it. I held a leg bone and other people dared to hold skulls. Aahhhhhh! And there's freaky quotes about death and mortality in Latin and French.

But anyhoo, after that and running some errands, it was time to get stamps(timbres) to send to all you lovely America-dwellers. (So, really, it's your fault.) I knew you could get stamps at a Tabac which is like a tiny counter of a store where you get cigs and lotto tickets, but I hadn't seen one near school so I decided to ask my host mom where there was one in our neighborhood. She specially instructed me that there was one just down the street, right next to a Monoprix. So I set out, and didn't see anything. Walked a little more, still didn't see anything. Finally, I see a Monoprix, but with nothing next to it. I walk a little further down and pass a news stand, and still don't see ANYTHING resembling a Tabac, so I decide the newsstand must be what she was talking about, and walk back. Confidently and friendly-ly I ask him if I could buy stamps there. Deadpan no. There's a post office somewhere around here. Bye. (It's the dreaded French unfriendliness that all the books talk about and that scares Americans, and Japanese.) I was so disarmed from his coldness and dismissiveness that tears welled up. I stopped them, but at the expense of a HUGE tight knot in my throat hurt like hell. I kinda got things under control and went into a stationery shop to ask them where the nearest tabac was. Again, uber polite, perfect French. This lady was a lot nicer and told me where one was...but my listening skills aren't super good so I was still kind of guessing. I saw a sign that said "Tabac" so I knew it had to be it. I went up and proudly asked the worker for 2 carnets of stamps. "Pour la France?" "Pour envoyer aux Etats-Unis." (to send to the United States.) He got the look of dismissal on his face and shook his head no. Something about hear no, when it was unanticipated, really shakes me up. So what, there's two different kinds of stamps? I can't get stamps today? I walked all the way over here for nothing? I could. Not. Stop. Trust me, I tried. But as I was walking back tears were just all over my face. It just rushes at me and I can't control it, even when I'm actually thinking logically and my head is in control. (I really don't know how you non-cryers do it. Cause I literally can't help it.) It wasn't a big problem, a little frustrating, but honestly not a big problem. I walked back home and she was like "YOU COULDN'T FIND IT?" I didn't want to tell her how off her directions were, and I did find it (or one) eventually, but I told her what happened and was still cryish and tried to explain in French about hormones and PMS but of course I didn't know any vocab so I don't think the idea really transmitted. I don't know why, but after about 2 minutes of talking to her another uncontrollable deluge came out, and I was so so embarassed and wanted to stop so bad, because obviously it makes her think that thinks are way worse than they are, that I'm really upset, when really it wasn't a big deal, it's chemicals in my brain causing salty water to come out through small holes near the bridge of my nose. She said that what the guy had said at the tabac was wrong, that I could send postcards using French stamps, I just had to put 2 or 3 instead of 1 stamp on them. She emphasized this over and over again, and told me she knew another place, and offered to accompany me there. So I cleaned up a little bit and we walked there and I bought stamps which were freaking expensive (14 Euro for 24, for 12 postcards and the postcards were 1 Euro each so 26 Euros which is like more than 30 dollars just to mail postcards...sheeesh!) But I got stamps! Finally. Now to write and send all 12 of them. I have about 2 unassigned ones so if you'd like one hit me up.


I'm super excited about Loire Valley this weekend! I love weekend trips! Especially when I don't have to plan anything. Hoorah seeing more of France!!! :)

I've been stressed this week about: finding housing for next year, planning my Italy trip (extra charges on my credit card, websites not working, everything's in Italian), teaching cred stuff for next year (b/c of France I'm late on my cert. of clearance stuff so I've been applying and re-applying online...again, more costs), and my self-imposed stress of uploading my pictures and writing my postcards, combined with living in a foreign country and having PMS. This was also the week I got a little homesick. Plus it rained 2 days. I have a feeling it will be better soon and I can ride out the last 2 weeks feeling a little better than I did this week.

belgium, fete nationale, & thoughts

AAAH i'm lagging on updating now! >_< school started and i got busy. i'm going to try and update quickly!

Belgium!
Last weekend, me and 3 other girls travelled to Brussels for the weekend! We spent most of Friday and Sunday in Brussels and Saturday was spent mostly in Bruges, which is about an hour trainride away. Brussels is more urban (and janky), Bruges is more quaint-cutesy. I will list out my remarks since it's easier to read that way :) (and I'm dead tired like I always am when I post...maybe I should try not being that way sometimes haha.)

Brussels
-Our hotel was in the jankiest part of town you can possibly imagine. Boarded-up windows, grafitti everywhere, trash in the streets, stinky, etc. But the hotel itself was actually pretty nice.
-The icon of Brussels is a statue of a peeing boy called Manneken Pis. We saw that, along with the girl version (a happily squatting little girl) called Jeanneken Pis.
-The Grand Place--the giant town square with the old giant church, governmental buildings, tourist shops, etc.
-Many statues, old churches, cute gardens, etc.
-We took the metro everywhere. Not only was it super useful and fairly cheap but it is much less crowded than the Paris metros and they play music at night.
_On Sunday we visited the Atomium which is a GIANT replica of an iron (or some metal) atom. There are 8 balls connected by tubes, which we went in via escalators and staircases. There were exhibitions and panorama vista points in the cubes. It was all very futuristic.
_Also on Sunday: CRAZY GOOD FLEA MARKET at which I did not spend a dime (err...10 euro cent piece.) Crazy overpriced bar...since when do they make you pay for water.
-Overall: Brussels can be kind of jank and ghetto, but it has a lot to visit/offer and it is a very interesting mix of old and new, traditional and modern. It has everything one needs, but I didn't think it was physically terribly attractive.

Bruges
-SO CUTE! Beautifully painted, traditional rowhouses with brightly-color doors and roofs on cute cobblestone streets. A river runs through it with little boats.
- There was a small market, (of course) a huge old church which I thoroughly enjoyed, gardens, a park in which we napped, and rows and rows of streets to walk.
_We reached the big town square (apparently of movie fame). We tried to get in the bell tower but we were too late but it was okay. Lots of pictures of very very very old historical architecture, monuments, signs etc.
_Bruges is so cute and romantic, very much more Dutch-seeming than French-seeming (which makes sense considering its location), less touristy than Brussels, and quite charming, but is only good for about a day's trip since there's not too much there.

So we worked it out perfectly with 2 days in Brussels and one in Bruges :) And now I've been to Belgium, and know a lot more about it, something I never thought I would do or would happen to me! A lot of people probably go their whole lives without visiting Belgium, since it is so small and kind of like a weird mix of French & Dutch, but it ended up being really nice and I'm glad I did it. It was pretty cheap being so close to France and all.

The next two days it was raining, and I didn't really do anything after school. Monday I spent almost the whole day either planning my Italy trip (which is still greatly in the process...) or attending our mandatory ISA meeting (which ended up being 2 hours long -__-). Tuesday was the Bal Pompier! Which brings me to...

Fête Nationale

Basically, July 14th is like their July 4th. Everyone gets it off work/school and nothing is open (but things were open.) The night before, many of the city's fire stations (casernes) turn into party houses! Wooo! We decided to go to the one near school, at St. Sulpice. I met Jose and Mari there and we waited in like for at least 40-45 minutes, but it wasn't boring or frustrating or anything. I was just happy to be there. Once we got inside (which was really an outdoor courtyard with lights and French flags strung up) there was lots of music and dancing and drinks available for purchase (for a hefty price, and we therefore did not consume.) I'm sure if I would have gone with the other more party people I could have pre-partied and would have danced a lot more and had a more rockin' time, but as it was I was glad to be there at all, and glad to be there with Jose and Mari who are also fun but in a non-partying kind of way. We listened to the music, kind of danced, made our way through the EXTREMELY CROWDED crowd, and watch slutty girls pole dance with wolflike pompiers (firefighters.)B/c I took a picture of him, we met and talked with this random French guy who looked REALLY French....red and white striped shirt, hair slicked back, black glasses, awkward looking really. He was nice and gave me a beer, and obviously I didn't drink it because I don't want a roofie cocktail, but he ended up getting mad and weird about the fact that I didn't drink it and after that I just wanted to leave. We left at around 11:45 and it ended up being good that we got there and left so early, because as we were leaving the line was still HORRENDOUSLY long, longer than it had been when we were in it, and we saw people from our program in line who it ended up didn't actually get into the ball. That sucks to wait in line for nothing :( So even though I didn't go crazy all in all it was a good night.

In the morning, I got enough sleep to wake up for the parade, but I decided not to go because it was POURING rain, I didn't have anyone to go with, and I could watch it on TV anyway. So I did that. At 1:30 we finally made plans and met up at the Louvre. We were gonna go to the Louvre since it's free on Nat'l holidays but it was JAM PACKED with every single other person in Paris PLUS tourists looking to escape the rain. So we braved the rain with our umbrellas (my Toms got freaking SOAKED--I mean, wearing canvas shoes in the rain is always a good idea right.) We walked all the way to the Champs-Elysees, walking down it (my first time!) to the Arc de Triomphe (also my first time.) They have an underground tunnel so you don't have to brave the crazy multidirectional traffic circle that is around the Arc. We took pictures and stood in solemnity, since it was Bastille Day after all. After we took a picture of us on a ledge, I failed to see a step and my foot rolled over onto the side (you know?) and I fell on my ass on the wet pavement. Great. -__-; my foot hurt the rest of the day (still does a little) and my dress got wet. But it wasn't that bad and could have been WAY worse!

After that we went to the Monoprix (who knew bougie champs-elysees had a freakin' Monoprix!) to get baguette, wine, and other supplies for the nighttime festivities. In the interim time, I visited Analiese and Colleen's homestay which is AMAZING because it is so light and so well-decorated. Like mine, it's pretty far from school, and I feel bad because their homestay mom is more negligent than mine, but they do get a better house. Much bigger too than this built-for-dwarfs apartment. I tried to dry out my shoes and magically heel my foot while watching French MTV (about jetsetters and models in Miami...I guess that's what French people are interested in.)

At around 6:30 we met up to go picnic on the Champ de Mars for the Eiffel tower/fireworks extravaganza (which wasn't until 11PM.) All of the normal roads were blocked off, and some metro stations too, so we had to walk all the way around to Pont D'Alma (which isn't really that far) and by the time we got to the Champ it was almost 8:00, but luckily there was still more than enough space on the grass for us to picnic on. A few minutes after we all popped the wine bottles some French cops come over and told us (in broken English...really, I could have taken the French) that it was forbidden to drink and we would have to put th bottles away. So we sneakily drank the rest the whole time, pouring it into plastic cups from our bags. I only got like half a glass of the rosé champagne I bought :(but there were LOTS of other good things: baguette, chevre, camembert, Doo-Wop (this generic brand pain au chocolat), raspberry cookies, strawberry tartelettes, Toblerone (fuck yeah), and prosciutto (which I obvi didn't eat.) It was good. :) We honestly didn't have to wait too long before the fireworks started.

A. FREAKING. MAZING. They were all choreographed to music and BEAUTIFUL with the Eiffel Tower in the front of them, siloutted...can you even imagine? It felt so surreal, kind of detached, but so alive at the same time. How many people does this happen to? WE ARE WATCHING FIREWORKS SILOUETTING THE EIFFEL TOWER IN PARIS FRANCE ON BASTILLE DAY. I got a lot of good pictures. It was a good time. But waking up for class the next day was not. :)

So that was my July 14, 2010. :)


Other thoughts
I always think of stuff throughout the day to add here and then I forget...
_I'm pretty good at the subway and navigating the streets now. As long as I have my Paris Citybook (praise Moleskines), I never get lost.
_I take stuff for granted, and I don't think it's possible for me to really appreciate everything that is happening to me until I am back in CA. It's a weird feeling, but I can't fully realize my experience except in hindsight.
_In class we are learning passé simple which is the most useless tense in the whole world. I would like to learn how to speak better conversationally, but no, we're gonna learn passe simple.
_I regret not studying abroad for a year, especially because of my friend and SPOP sister Connie, who studied abroad in Spain this whole past academic year, and as a result got to go to like 10+ cities in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland, Scotland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Morocco, and other countries which I am forgetting right now. Can you EVEN imagine?! Travelling is so much easier when you're already in Europe. I'll have been to France, Belgium, and Italy...but all those other countries! What a crazy AMAZING experience! I made a list of all the countries I want to go to in the world (on all 7 continents) and I WILL fufill the list by the time I die. >:]
_Right now I'm feeling: a little loopy due to tiredness, a little emotional due to PMS and that I skyped with my mom tonight, more than a little stressed due to housing for next year, teaching credential app stuff for next year (which I have to do here), and my Italy trip, and very excited for the Loire Valley trip this weekend. :)

days 9 and 10: normal life

well, i guess the touristic rush has died down and its now time to live the STUDY abroad life. i've had class for three days now. it's okay. it's tedious and my main teacher somewhat annoys me and each class is THREE hours long (which if you can't tell by the way i capitalized it is super long.) every day i have "regular" (grammar class), on tuesdays i have oral french, and thursdays i have phonetics, or how to pronounce french (my personal favorite but that which makes the other students gag.)

like i said before, i love having such an international class(es.) it's so fun, and also WEIRD that, even though the rest of the nationalities may know some english, the only language you really have in common is french. i made a breakthrough with a japanese girl today. she was actually willing to let me practice with her, which was nice. demo zenbu wasureteiru :( i'm forgetting everything :( the french-japanese accent isn't quite as pleasing as the english-japanese accent, because i have to strain even harder to hear and french is probably just about the opposite language that a japanese person would be able to pronounce. but they do it, and they do it fine. koreans too.

i went to montmartre in the evening today with jose and mari. it was really nice, and calm, and peaceful. very fun to people watch. there were people of all nationalities there. we were sitting on the grass watching a straight couple + a gay couple cuddle and kiss, and then later we sat on the hot concrete steps (along with 100 other people) watching a guy sing and play guitar. he was really rousing the crowd. just in the shadow of the basilisque. he was a really good singer. too talented to be begging for coins at montmartre. even though it was 8-9 PM, it was still HOT and the sun was just beginning to set. i desperately wanted the sun to set while i was there, but that will have to be for another time. the sun doesn't set until 10:30 or so, and it's not dark until after 11. freaking weird. you'd think that's sooo good, and it is, except days when i want to be out at night, i can't eat dinner, cause dinner is at 8-9. Oh, and I can't shower, because I have to shower before 10. basically i can't go out. homestay life :/ but whatever, i didn't come to france to get drunk and party. i'm actually quite scared of it.

brussels this weekend. i really have no idea what it's gonna be like. i'm excited though :)


there's a little two-story promenade a few streets down from my homestay, and ever since the first day i've wanted to go and take pictures there, but i'm always too rushed in the morning and too tired in the evening. i have to do it soon. i already sense a countdown til the end. the 2nd week is nearly over, and then there's only 3 weeks. by the middle of next week it'll be half over. i just want it to go as slowly as possible. i have too much to worry about when i get back. stupid teaching credential stuff...soooo stressful..... :/

day 8: just a normal day (and perhaps many more like it)

today i took the metro to school with emily. we walked to gare de lyon, switched trains at châtelet, and got off at st. sulpice. then we walked to school. we found out out placements. i got placed into intermediate 3. not bad. it's definitely the highest level i thought i could potentially get. i had my first class. it was fun. :) there are students in my class from japan (YES! TWO!), brazil, vietnam, romania, serbia, italy, ghana, ireland, and USA of course. there is also a korean boy. i sat next to him. we talked french. his french is better than his english. isn't that interesting and cool?! 'cause i'm used to speaking english with korean students...and not french.
then we (ISA students et moi) went to lunch. i bought a sandwich at the monop' and we ate at luxembourg gardens. (this is the third time we have done that.) we sat in chairs and talked about american college life.

then i went to my afternoon class--oral french. korean boy was in it too. (i shouldn't say "boy", because he's 30...-_-...but whatever.) it was too long though. 3 hours in a 90+ degree room listening to the same radio broadcast over and over again was too much. afterward i went to the computer lab with candace and beth and we booked our trip to brussels. then i took the metro home. i ate dinner with my roommate (emily) and our host mom. we talked about traveling, global warming, and how they filmed gossip girl in paris that day. now i am here.

that was my day :) a perfectly normal day.


sometimes (actually, oftentimes) it smells like piss in the subway. sometimes there are crazy people. always hobos. sometimes broken bottles or trash. people are busy and selfish and don't smile and push you and don't talk to you. but it's not france, pas du tout. it's all part of living in a big city. new york would be no different.

and girls can hold their own alone at night. it's not that bad. i've perfected the mean stare-straight-ahead. who's gonna mess with a girl with that face?!

i really liked class today so i'm excited for more. :)

just a normal day today. i brought my camera but didn't take a single picture. waste of 13 pounds.

day 7 (and another story)

another day over already. the days are starting to go by so quickly. and class hasn't even started yet. (officially tomorrow, and every weekday until july 30th.)

it's hard to plan stuff with everyone's differing class schedules, and because there are so many people, but hey, we'll work around it. i'll go do stuff by myself if i have to, i suppose, but i don't want to, except for a little bit of the time.

today we had our placement test in the morning. i think i'll get intermediate 1 or 2 but i'm not sure. in the afternoon we attempted to go to the catacombs but they were closed (since it's monday, surprise surprise) so we went to Père Lachaise instead. :) It was nice. There was a surprisingly high amount of asian graves (all Chinese except for one Vietnamese.) I saw the graves of Frederic Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde (whose grave is randomly very famous), and Jim Morrison, among others. I still want to come back for Maria Callas and Francis Poulenc. I wonder where Debussy and so many others are buried?

home for dinner, the first night in 3 days. I have a few qualms about my homestay but tonight's dinner was not one of them. It was very good.

I really want to see everyone's homestays. And the dorms. It seems so interesting. But I shouldn't, lest I compare and FOMO. :(

Anyway, on to the funny story, which involves me speaking a LOT of French, just like the last funny story (so apparently a story is only a funny story when I struggle through it in broken French. :))

So while we were walking around Pere Lachaise, Jose goes "can you call me rebecca? i think i lost my phone." such a stressful thing, right? so i called him three times but no one picked up and it obviously wasn't anywhere in his bag. So he left it on the metro. he was surprisingly easygoing about it, too, saying "there's nothing I can do." And it's pretty true--once you lose your phone somewhere (especially a roving subway train), it's hard to do anything to get it back. We shrugged and kept going.

About 45 minutes later, my phone rang. A call from Jose--quel étrange! So I answered it, and it was the person who found his cell phone, on the metro! HOW KIND OF HIM to actually give a damn and call the first person on his missed calls list! And the one who can speak French, at that! La gentillesse des étrangers. The kindness of strangers. Of course I couldn't hear very well and had to keep asking him to repeat and felt stupid, but after talking for about 15 minutes we decided he would leave it at the information desk of a metro station for us to pick up. I said n'import où--it doesn't matter where. So, he chose Les Halles, which, unbeknownst to us, is one of the biggest and most complicated metro stations in all of Paris, with connections to 7 different metro lines and all 4 RER lines. It probably has about 20 information desks.

Luckily, I guess this guy's plans changed, because as we were leaving the cemetary he called me again, saying that he would leave it at the "kiosk" next to the Fnac (a kind of electronics superstore) in and/or underground station of Les Halles. (one of the few things he said to me in English: "it's undergwound.") I went with Jose to accompany him, because my French is higher than his and because he is introverted and also gets lost easily. :) We didn't know, but Les Halles is not only Paris' biggest metro station, but also a GIANT mall attached with every store imaginable. We walked around for a good while, even using the directory, and still found it almost impossible to find a kiosk next to a store. Well, voilà. My phone rang again. Another call from Jose. Or rather, mysterious-mall-employee-who-has-Jose's-phone. Just in the nick of time, when we were tired and on our knees, we got another call. She was able to direct me to the location of the kiosk (about 20 feet from where we were) and Jose got his phone back. :) :) It was a miracle. Imagine! He would've not had his phone the entire rest of the trip, a recipe for disaster. He would've had to pay for the phone and the SIM card lost, and since he didn't get insurance, it would have been very expensive. So what a great day, thanks to the kindness of a couple strangers! :)


Right now, my host mom is chattering on the phone in French to her cousin. The television is playing a French TV show. People out in the street are speaking French as they pass. French French French French French. It's a fact that you take for granted, that you think you know and understand--the world has multiple languages, and English is only one of them. But English has always felt so central to my existence that it does take some insight and internalization to realize that entire cities and societies and countries operate entirely--for business, for academia, in the street-- using a language which I only have a passing understanding of. THIS is the language the little kids yell to eachother in the park, or say to their mamans on the train. It's the only language they know, the one that connects and makes sense to them. THIS is the language that the african moms on their way to work on the metro talk to each other in. THIS is the language that the businessmen are reading in their newspapers and muttering into their cell phones. It's French, and it's all French, and it's their world. Sometimes it's a little tiring and even fearsome to have such a weakness in you--I can't understand my host mom, or the TV, or the people passing in the street. I could get a weak jist at best. All this seems so stupid, like I already knew it, and I did intellectually, but it really does take this actual physical tangible sensory experience for it to become real to me. It's so interesting to be here and think these things.

days 5 and 6 (i think...now i'm losing track)

this weekend was Saint Malo & Mont Saint Michel.

Saint Malo is the most beautiful place I've been to in life thus far. It was seriously one of the most idyllic experiences I've ever had. I want to honeymoon there. <3 (don't know if it could trump Hawaii since I've never been there, but we'll see.) The quaint little town with cobblestone streets and buildings, but in a nautical-esque way...the beach, the island you can walk to at low tide with AMAZING 360 views of the bay...I can't even describe it. What a perfect vacation spot. Just wait til you see my pics.

Crossing the "bay" of Mon Saint Michel was similarly dumbfounding. Nothing but cracked, grey, muddy earth on the bottom and blue sky on the top for miles. (6 miles to be exact.) We were dead tired by the end, but I'd rather do something like that than stay cooped up in the big city. :) We jumped up and down on muddy water-clay to make quicksand and starting sinking!

What a beautiful weekend. Being back in the (STILL EXTREMELY HOT CITY) is a little more stressful (daily life as opposed to tourism), but obviously still exciting and fun. Class starts tomorrow!

Definitely used to people speaking French EVERYWHERE. It's funny...I feel like I know what it feels like to be a "minority" more now. I feel judged for being American. I feel somewhat hated on. I feel people's stares, and their judgement at my incompentence to speak perfect French. But, at least I get points for knowing some (unlike some people in my program) and for trying. TRYING. And having an okay accent. But in any case, those metro rides can get preeetty lonely when you have 8 stops to go and you can't look at anyone or hear a single conversation you really comprehend, all the while clutching your stuff like a madwoman.

I guess there are those little "lows" about this life, most of them homestay- or logistic-related, but I wouldn't say I'm experiencing angst or depression like they warn you. I'm still getting used to people and trying to figure out where I fit in, but I know for sure I won't want to leave.

There are no vegetarian sandwiches anywhere, but there are pizza, galettes, and salads. I'm a little sick of salads. There are A LOT of good desserts and ice creams which I always want to eat. My program has 3 other vegetarians so that makes it a little easier. Orangina is plentiful, which I LOVE. Customer service doesn't exist--the owner/worker (rather than the customer) is always right. There's nothing wrong about that, that's just how it is here.

days 3 and 4

yesterday two of my dreams came true. we went to the eiffel tower AND montmartre, neighborhood of Amélie fame. :)

while others in my group went up, i decided not to pay the 12 Euros to go up into the tower because it was an overcast day, and i wanted my pictures to be nice. :p colleen, jose and i walked around and took pictures. it was really nice and really fun. :)
there are tourists EVERYWHERE, left and right, so you hear all sorts of different languages. there are also vendors, solicitors and beggars left and right. among the most popular are: vendors with blankets spread on the ground selling metal eiffel tower souvenirs 5 for 1 Euro, men walking around with buckets of bottled water, and, of course, the poor Bosnian girls. they walk up to you and say "speak English?" as if they need your help. so of course you say yes (even though i didn't because i was skeptical.) no matter what you say, once they have you, they hold up a crummy piece of paper which say something like "I am an immigrant from BOSNIA and my daughter has the LUKYMYA please help anything please help" and they look at your with their sad eyes. it might be believable, but there are around 30 scarfed women and all of their poorly-written cards say the same thing. sigh. i feel kind of bad for not helping, but i just can't trust anyone or anything, especially in a city i don't know. i was also approached twice by a girl who was deaf (or pretending to be deaf) asking me to sign up or donate 1 Euro to the foundation for the blind, deaf, or without shelter. but even deaf people can talk and read lips. so you can't play coy with me girl.

the eiffel tower is BIG. BIGBIGBIG. and just as amazing as you think it is. but a little stressful that it was SO crowded, SO HOT and overrun by tourists and people who want your money.

montmartre was AMAZING and i definitely want to go back at sunset. unbelievably beautiful views of the entire city. a blessed panorama. relaxing fountain which we dipped our feet in. soft grass which we laid in. a beautiful serene quiet yet architecturally marveling basilique. not as touristy as some of the other places, thankfully. <3 we saw the amelie fountain, the amelie carousel, the amelie telescope, the amelie fountain. "monsieur quelcompoix!" now i just want to see les deux moulins (where she works). it's a real place

TODAY, after "shopping" along avenue de Rennes, we went to the Louvre :) it didn't seem like a real museum, since it was louder and you could take pictures and talk and it was crowded, but of course all of the greats were there. I saw the Mona Lisa...from like, 20 feet away. and Venus de Milo. not all that exciting if you ask me. (i know, i don't appreciate art.) the best part was when we went outside by the glass pyramids and sat and talked by the fountains and the sun was going down which reflected off the water and it was literally the PERFECT lighting, temperature and atmosphere. SO relaxing. then we walked around Tuileries where they had this little carnival thing and we had paninis and ice cream. :) a really good ending to the day.

paper towels and tissues are softer here.
stores are more inconsistent (they might be out of what they say on the menu, or it could be seasonal, etc. but of course it's not their fault when they don't have whatever you wanted, it's your fault for wanting it.)
even though sometimes people don't understand me the first time and i get embarassed, i'm still desperately trying to speak french all the time.

going to normandy tomorrow for our first weekend excursion!!
i honestly wish that i could organize these better, use correct grammar/punctuation, and add photos, but i am always SO DEAD TIRED (way tireder than i am in america) every single night, and i would rather write out a disorganized random stream-of-consciousness entry every night than a composed entry every few nights. i like staying current so my thoughts and impressions don't leave my memory.

day 2

sorry i can't photoblog these. i have to wait until i'm not 100% dead tired can-only-blog-the-bare-minimum. :) plus my computer sucks. you'll have to match them up to the photos i post on fb later.

another day of finding things out. and a funny story!

in the morning we had orientation. i wanted to meet everyone so bad but it was kinda awk and there's like 70 people on my program so it's not like i'm gonna meet everyone anyway...but i talked to a few people. we went into this room and just spent the whole time orientating. we had a lunch break so i bought lunch at a monoprix store (honey yogurt and fruit for around 3 Euros.) we ate it at luxembourg gardens. not gonna lie, it was kinda awk. the whole everyone-getting-to-know-eachother thing, i guess. but it was so peaceful there. after that we had homestay orientation and vie pratique and then were basically freed to do whatever. i don't know how i ended up with who i ended up with, but i did. who i hang out with feels kind of random, and there's still other people i really wanna meet more/hang out with, but whatever. anyway we just walked around and tried to find a place to charge our cartes navigos and realized we were close to the river and i was super excited and we saw the river!
AND THEN
out of the corner of my eye i saw the SPIRE
"IS THAT WAS I THINK IT IS....." i screamed.
IT WAS!
NOTRE DAME
I SAW AND WENT INSIDE NOTRE DAME.

HAAAAAHHH MAAAHHH HGAWWWWDDDD
and that was the first time i truly felt like i was in paris. on ile de la cite, with the river, and with notre dame.
(i'm gonna climb to the top! but later on.)

THEN we walked around some more and sat down and got Berthillion ice cream on ile de st. louis. everything was SO picturesque. after more walking we got dinner with everyone all together. again, it was kind of a game of who-do-i-sit-with and am-i-gonna-be-friends-with-everyone. sorry if i overanalyze this, but i do. i'm super glad they had vegetarian option :) yays.
also at dinner i met MARI who speaks japanese! HALLELUJAH. i think my brain was going to explode if i had to hold my japanese in for this whole trip. also i got to talk to two of the asians today, zhanjun (monica) and mengjie (iris.) SO GLAD. i know this is SO WEIRD but i feel weird if i don't get to talk to asians. -___-; but anyway.

MY STORY

a group of us took the metro home together, but i was the only one (besides my roommate who had already gone home) who had to take my particular line after the transfer. and it was already dark. GREAT. so i was scared and paranoid and watching my stuff VERYYY closely and hoping i did it right. well, i did it right. i was at the right track at the right time, going the right direction, and got off at the right station. yes, i did it! this metro thing isn't as bad as i thought. then i went up the stairs and out into the street.
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
this looks NOTHING like what i need it to look like. where was the picturesque little entrance i went in before? everything looked totally different. yet i was certain i had gotten off at the right stop. as it turns out, Gare de Lyon is BEYOND HUGE and i had gotten off at a totally different exit, across the block (or further) from where i needed to walk home. i had no effing clue what to do. i walked about a block down, realized it was fruitless, and started walking the other way. what do i do? it's night. i'm alone. this is the first thing they told us not to do. Oh fuck! Searching left and right, I saw a policeman. but he's a man. do i trust him? do i trust anyone? is my french even good enough to do this? finally, i didn't know what else to do. "excusez-moi pour vous deranger monsieur, mais j'ai un p'tit question...
and so it began. i told him i was lost and didn't know how to get to my homestay. he asked me a bunch of questions about why i was there, where i was from, etc. and eventually, seeing that i couldn't walk it on my own...got a police van to escort me. can you believe it? the kindness of a french person. oh, how i never expected to get ESCORTED home in a french police car! yet this was HAPPENING! his policeman friend was driving, him in the passenger seat, me in the back. i almost didn't trust them, since it's intuition NEVER to get in a car with strangers, but...they're policemen! they have to be honest...right? ironically enough, i think i trusted him more because he was hispanic/something non-white. while i was in the car, he was making smalltalk with me, and i ended up telling them that i sang. of COURSE, being pushy french dudes, they asked me to sing, and wouldn't stop, and kept pressing me. luckily, the song that came on the radio was "Hey Soul Sister" which i know and love.
so i sang for them.
apparently they really liked it, and were kind of rockin' out, and i have my suspicions that they were ignoring the GPS and taking a longer route until the song ended. at least they reached my house (THANK GOD, THIS IS WORKING OUT! I DIDNT GET RAPED!) then he said the words that all frenchmen say and that all girls sort of dread to hear:
on prend un verre?
it's like, do you wanna go out for a drink?
so i had to politely refuse (at least he accepted the refusal), THANK HIM PROFUSELY, and head up home.

PHEW! what an experience! and a really good day 2. starting to get situated. :)

day 1 addendum

(don't worry, the amount i write will get less and less as the days go on, i promise.)

showering was an interesting experience. the bathroom (which contains just a sink and shower, since there is another room which contains only the toilet) IS SMALL. like 4x4. maybe. the shower is attached via a flexible gooseneck thing (like in AV) except there's no place to hang it up. so you just hold it over your head when you need to and put it on the floor when you don't.

i was initially a little dismayed that i can't leave any of my stuff in the bathroom ("comme il est très petit chez moi" dit madame), especially since she has about 20 bottles and jars that she's not even using on the counter, but obviously in this culture that's what's considered correct and that's how rights are distributed. since she lives there, she gets all the counter space. and it's really not a big deal to have to carry in my shower + toilette stuff every time. :p

my dad's family will be glad to know that she is jewish.
JSA minna (and obvi me) will be glad to know that she and her son appreciate japanese culture :) there's a couple japanese artifacts in the living room. her son studied japanese and lived there. i'm still jealous of the girls with the japanese host family though. :p

because i'm only on the second floor, i hear people passing in the street speaking french all the time. men, boys, girls, teenagers, old ladies, etc. it's cool. :) :) i'm glad it's a pretty quiet neighborhood.

the sound of the sirens is so quintessentially european. it reminds me that i'm here. sometimes it's a tritone but sometimes it's a more pleasing interval like a minor third, always slightly out of tune due to the doppler effect.

the washing machine is in the (teeny tiny) kitchen. everything is line-dried, so my towel was hard and had no scent. it was interesting. i'm glad she gave me a towel <3 cause i forgot one.

that's about all i can think of for now. orientation tomorrow! life is gonna GET CRAZY soon!

day one

i am BE.YOND.TIRED. don't even ask me how i'm still functioning.
i've basically been awake since noon june 27TH and it is now 4:14 PM june 29th (france time.) i never want to sleep because i never want to stop taking it all in. but i will sleep well tonight.

on my first plane flight i sat next to an awkward indie white boy to which i did not say one word the entire time. on my NYC-CDG flight i sat next to the NICEST most HELPFUL expat ever named Taryn. she was from colorado and lived in paris to go to pastry school. cool! she told me some names and places and gave me her #.

i got off the plane and waited and met some people from my program. they were cool and i'm so excited to meet everyone. :) on the shuttle it was all american college exchange students (from different programs.) the french freeways have a serious graffitti problem, not that it's really a problem though. i got to use some french with the shuttle driver, initiating my comfort in speaking it. it's funny how scared i was compared to how i feel just a few hours later. i was the last one dropped off at my homestay. 8 rue emilio castelar, 75012. IT LOOKS JUST. LIKE. GOOGLE MAPS STREET VIEW. check it out. :)

smallest/cutest apartment i've ever seen. but that's just how they live! stack upon stack upon stack upon stack of tiny, cute apartments. every room has such a unique character. my host mom's name is veronique. she's so nice and relatively easy to talk to. i know more french than my roommate, emily (who's not really a roommate, since we both have singles) so i translate sometimes. the two cats, moustique and gala, are aborable. but hairy and sheddy. :p i'll post pictures soon! if my netbook can handle it...

there's one outlet in the entire room. so basically i have to keep on plugging and unplugging stuff and only charge/use one thing at a time. but that's not that bad, and this is how they live...all the time! so weird.

after i got to my homestay we immediately went out to have a look around the neighborhood. we walked to the train/metro station, gare de lyon, and to the marché aligre, one of the cutest open-air fruit and vegetable markets kind of like in NYC. (veronique's never been to america, so i tell her amusing anecdotes about my experiences in NY and CA. lul.) then we ate lunch at a corsican restaurant. i ate a salad but i started to feel woozy from fatigue. i still am. but i needed to write this first.

i'm actually pretty proud of my french. i'm not half bad at communicating, even if i make mistakes, i still get the point across. i felt like i gain more confidence in my french by the minute. it really IS just what i learned in school! it's not a magical mystery language, it's the same thing i've been learning for 6 years! chouette!

everything is SO. FUCKING. SURREAL. i feel like i'm not appreciating anything. here i am halfway across the world in a country i've never been to, living in this room, for a month. nothing has really sunken in yet. i've already experienced SO MUCH just in these 5-6 hours that i've been off the plane...i can't imagine 31 more days of this! aj;glakdgjf;adlfg

hopefully i will be better able to write and synthesize after a nap.


i hear the schoolchildren in the street. did you know, everyone speaks french here? :)

context.

*note: for every post after this one, the only computer I am guaranteed to have is my mom's netbook, which, if you don't know, is rather slow and laggy and does not have much memory on it...so I apologize if that affects future online communication. :)

anyway...

my program has about 70 students (a lot, i know!) who are mostly undergrad students from around the country + canada. we're placed into french classes by level. i got intermediate. some of the other students are taking fine arts classes, but i'm not. (i know, right?? but i didn't want extra class. i'm done with that ish.) i have class every day from 9:00-12:00 (yay for 7am metro rides!) and class on TuTh from 2:00-5:00. The other time is going to be spent traveling, exploring, etc! i have a long bucket list of all the things I want to do while in paris, and i'm sure i'll come up with many more! aah


a bit about my host "family." i live in the 12th arrondisement which is a little off the main drag but not too far from the ile de la cité. :) my host mom is a single woman, presumably middle aged, with 2 adult children who don't live there but who visit regularly. i don't know if she has or had a husband. she has 2 cats. :) i'm excited about that. i have one other roommate, but we both have singles. we get 2 meals a day. :)

a few weeks ago, when i was choosing housing, i was grappling pretty hard over homestay vs. dorm. while part of me still wishes i could be in the dorm to get to bond with people faster and have more freedom, i am still super excited for the food, care, and culture (and cats!) that a homestay will bring.

as for transporation, i can take the metro everywhere, but i still have to figure all that stuff out. in a bad way. i'm bound to get lost, but that's all part of the experience. :)

i bought a new lens for my camera. it is heavy and long compared to the kit lens. but i will tolerate it. :) i also brought my 50mm/1.8, and on lazy days i will have "50 days" with my uber-light and uber-close lens.

after my program ends on july 31st, i am going to attempt to travel to south france and italy for 10 days until i fly back on the 11th (which i had mistakenly thought was the 10th this while time.) the problem: i need someone to go with me.

i've been reading up on french politesse, such as french social customs, and what to do in certain social situations. it's pretty different from america. i hope i remember any of it, and that it helps me.


okay. i am going to update my ipod (new david guetta and chromeo yeayuhhh), go to bed, wake up at 5:00 am and get on the plane.


see you on the other side.

<3 rebecca "and they said i couldn't write a post using no capital letters" mesch

pre-trip

In 11 hours, I'll be on a plane going to NYC and then another plane going to Paris. Alone! In the middle of the country. I've changed planes alone domestically before, so I know what I'm doing, but I still feel a little nervous. The beauty and simplicity of the trip is buried under worry at the moment. But I'm pretty sure that once I get settled and meet everyone I will feel a lot better.

It's all surreal. This is really happening? So THIS is the study abroad experience, or one version of it. This is what it feels like? What will my LIFE be like?! How will I change?! I have no absolutely no expectations, only room to grow and learn.

Here it goes.

c'est la première

Ceci c'est le journal de mes jours à Paris, la ville lumineuse, la ville d'amour. Je voulais dire la vie de mes rêves, mais je ne peux pas mentir. En tout cas, je suis sûr qu j'aimerai la ville tellement beaucoup.