Little Chats

I can hardly believe that it is almost Spring Break time. After we get back from vacation, we will be changing teachers, which is a real bummer, because my teacher now is so great. Yesterday, she went on and on about how much she liked our class and how great we were. She also said that she rarely gives out compliments, so it was pretty rad. Hopefully we will get this other professor, Sylvie who is supposed to be pretty good too.

My friends Jo (AKA Josie) and Andres are both leaving next weekend. I will be sad to see them go, I wish they could stay longer. I think some of my friends are going to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks and will visit Josie then. That's always the most difficult part of meeting new people: so often you have to say goodbye to them. As you get older, you have to deal more and more with the fact that you may not see them again, or it may be a very long time until you do. It's ok though, we you realize how you've changed or bettered yourself because you got to know them.
We were talking about the wat our views had changed since we've been here and met each other. It's funny the things that people never think about until they finally do. My friend Emily from Scotland, for example, told me that she never really thought about what a big deal it is for Americans to go to Europe. How much money it costs, the time, the planning that it takes for the average American to get to Europe, or outside of the country at all. I think once you get perspective about that, it makes it easier to understand shocking nuances of a culture, for example, how so many Americans don't even have a passport or how so few speak just one other language from their own. It doesn't excuse the culture ignorances by any means, but it does help to understand why things happen the way that they happen.

My friend Emily from New York is applying for transfer to the American University in Paris, and is waiting to here from them any day now. She wants to move to Europe and is very excited about being an Expat. I gotta say, I hope she gets in, because I know she'll really like it. I don't think I could do that--move away from the States to a foreign country to live there and take up the culture. It's just not in me to work that way. I think I'm just a little to American. That, and mom would not be down for it, lol.

Alright, enough for now, I'm finished rambling.

I Love Paris in the Spring Time...

So, on to Paris. I did a lot so first I will summarize:

Thursday:
7 am: Bus to Nice airport, flight to Paris
walked to ile de la cité and saw Notre dame and palais de justice
boat ride down the Seine
Cabaret the Musical in French

Friday
Walking Tour of Montmartre
lunch in Montmartre
walked past Moulin Rouge
Up Eiffel Tower
Louvre
delicieuse falafel for dinner in the Jewish Quarter


Saturday
Orangerie
Orsay
lunch in Latin Quarter
Façade of Notre Dame/inside Saint Chappelle
Rodin Museum
Angelina AKA the greatest hot chocolate ever
Strange dinner suggested by Rick

Sunday
Picasso Museum
Lunch
Flight from Paris to Nice, bus to Cannes
Home in time for dinner

Whew! Talk about packing it all in. I felt really good about everything we did, we managed to see everything we wanted to see and we didn't feel rushed by any of it. It helps that I've seen the big stuff already, so i could either bypass it or glance past it quickly if I wanted.

The Picasso Museum was a highlight--I never realized how prolifict of an artist he was. I found many of his more surrealist paintings to be rather inspiring.

Seeing Cabaret at les folies bergeres was exciting, especially since it was all in French and I understood what was going on! (it helped that I've seen the show in English, I must admit) The songs were great and the story inspiring.

My friend Emily and I went to Angelina, probably one of the most French places ever. They have renown hot chocolate that very much resembles a dark chocolate bar melted and called hot chocolate. It was incroyable, very very good. There was a line out the door, but the tables turned over quickly and the short wait was worth it. The decor was typically francaises, with tiny tables and pink and green aura that all these french places seem to have.

We went by the Jewish Quarter, La Marais, on Friday night (maybe not the brightest idea, seeing as how most things were closed) but nonethless stumbled upon a falafel stand that was awesome. It cost 4 Euro if you took away and 9 if you sat down. Suffice it to say, we ate our falafel on the side of the street. It was pretty fun.

That's not everything, but I m running out of time to write.

Hope life is good y'all. I hear it's warm in Sactown, I'm jealous, it's pretty freakin' cold here.

Quick Note

Hello all,
Had a fun time in Paris this weekend, will update about it in a day or two. Basically a fast-paced trip in which we crammed a lot of good stuff into a small amount of time. I really enjoyed!

Parentals: About Spring Break
Cinque Terre sounds good to me. We can do the South of France, too. I'm not really sure what, we might just take Rick's advice. Cannes is a one day place for sure, Monaco I think is one to pass up, Eze is cool, but only worthy of a couple of hours Aix might be worth a go. I don't know what you're really into either, we could also do more of Italy or Northern France. It will be chillier in Northern france though.

Also, we've had a bit of a cold spell, so if I were packing, I'd bring a little warmer weather stuff just in case. It is still a bit early for that though, so it may change.

Going to Paris

Demain, nous irons à Paris et puis j'espère qu'il serais très intèressant. (Tomorrow, we are going to Paris. I hope it will be very interesting). Did you know that the French don't have a word for exciting? At first it seems weird, but we've all pretty much decided that the French don't really get excited, so it isn't that difficult to not have a word for it. Moi, je suis amèricaine, puis je préfererais s'il y aura un mot qu'on peut utiliser (Me, I'm american so I would prefer to have a word that I could use for it.)

I can't remember what I have and haven't written about...so I'll just go for it. The wine tasting dinner was excellent: I had smoked salmon filet for appetizer, some other sort of delicious fish and vegetables for the main course, and rhum cake that wasn't my favorite, for dessert. For each course we learned about how to look at the wine, smell it and taste it. So watch out, y'all I'm a real sommelier now (haha).

I have my cours de cuisine class tonight and I think I recall him saying that we were going to learn how to arrange flowers with the floral arranging students. pas mal de tout. Should be informative.

Meeting about our Paris trip in a few minutes. Things we want to do: Saint Chappelle, Rodin Museum, Angelina's (best hot chocolate in the world, apparently), and general wandering/shopping. In addition, I believe we are also getting visits to the Louvre (mais, bien sur) and the Orsay.

Must go, running out of time. Hope home is loverly.

More photos

More random photos:

Here's Em and I in the Foyer of the collège with Tim who was a student here for about a month. The collège mostly caters to the younger crowd, but older 'real people' are here to. Tim is a really cool English guy who apparently is high powered and successful...cool. Note, Levant from Turkey is in the background.
Lis, me and Maryann

I just think this photo is funny. It's Kelly from utah (the first person I met on the trip) and Andrew from Minnesota who studied here a few years ago and met his girlfriend Elaina then. They are now taking time to study and work at the collège.

Not so sexy picture of me at the Carnaval. Enrique and Jon are in the background. They go to Chappy too.

Emily from Scotland, Andres from Ecuador

Photos

So I've been having difficulties with the photo uploading thing, hence no photos up on the blog. Instead I'm going to post some pictures that my friends got up, so you can have a bit of a look-see.


My friend Emily and I on a bridge in Firenze. Emily is from NYC, goes to school in Toronto and is applying for transfer to the Alerican University in Paris. She is also the best French speaker of the bunch, and by bunch I mean the whole collège.

My friend Maryann and I the second day we got to Cannes. They took us on a ride on the 'petit train' and this is us listening to it. Maryann goes to Hoard University in DC and is from New Jersey.

Our group on the steps of the Palais de Festival. We went to the Dance show there.

Some of the girls at the aquarium in Monaco

The girls in London. This was our second day there. The brunette on the far right is Lis from Reno, one of my good friends. Standing next to me is Fadila (aka D) who is from Ghana, but going to University in Conneticut.

Aix-en-Provence

Went to aix (pronounced 'aches') yesterday. It is a really cool French city known most specifically for being the hometown of Cezanne. We spent the day there yesterday and i really thought it was great. The city has a distinctly youthful feeling to it because of several schools and universities in its vicinity. There was also a great market where they were selling everything under the sun, including their specialty pesto, of which I bought two jars of after sampling. We spent most of the day wandering around, checking the city out. We stopped into a luseum and found that we had just missed the Cezanne exhibit by a few days. Quel dommage... Even so, we bought a café in the café that Cezanne used to frequent and it was all pretty cool. We go to Paris next week and I'm getting excited.

Scholarship Essay

So, I had the opportunity to apply for a little scholarship for my study abroad stuff. All I had to do was write a two page essay about why I was studying abroad and what I hoped to gain from the study abraod experience. Well kids I got the scholarship (yay!) and am going to post the paper below. Hope you find it interesting :)

I have seen children playing in the street, artists tuning their instruments on the roadside, mothers carrying their children home from a long day out. New York, Cambodia, Paris, Bangkok, or Mexico—I have seen these simple moments of truth everywhere. They are the moments when, despite our differences, our humanity shows through. It is the humanity in our everyday lives that help us to begin to see that we are members of the same planet Earth and our cultural differences are not wedges that divide, but rather enhancers that enrich our lives. We are as unique as the colors of a rainbow whose endless shades are not dulled by their sharply contrasting hues, but only made more beautiful by their intensity. It is this feeling, this indescribable change in the way that we see the world that is why I am going to study abroad and why the travel experience will always be a part of my life.

I have not yet found a traveler who was able to truly describe the ways that they had changed, but I have yet to meet a person who has said that they weren’t powerfully and immovably altered by the travel experience. Often the only way we can cope with the unique moments that we’ve had is through stories that we’ve accumulated from them, as if in this way, by sharing them, we can describe the morsels of our experiences. And by sharing these tidbits with one another, we are able to paint the canvas of our experience for others into a vibrant landscape.

I have often felt that our purpose as members of the community and as people is to contribute to making others lives better through pursuing our own passions. In essence, we must do what we love to help change the world in a positive way. With this belief I have chosen to study Broadcast Journalism and French. Through these focuses, I hope to either pursue travel journalism, or to work in Higher Education Administration in the Study Abroad field. Either way, I hope that I can help strengthen the ties of cultural understanding that are so desperately needed in today’s world through telling the stories of others and helping them find their own niche in the world. It is with these goals that I continue to live by a mantra: the more I understand the world, the more I understand myself. The sooner I see the ways in which my own country faults, the sooner I can help change it. The better I know the scenery of the land, the better I can teach it to others and they can begin their journey of making the world a better place.

While studying abroad, I will continue to hone my French language skills that have left me impassioned to explore many other cultures through the study of language. It is my goal that French will be just the first in a long list of languages I hope to learn.
My study abroad experience is going to help me on the way to becoming the person that I seek to be. As I indulge in the study abroad experience for myself, one day I will be able to help others find their own study abroad experience. As I continue to study Broadcast Journalism, I will be able to help others try to tell their travel experiences. I will be able to incite in others an inkling of interest to go to uncharted territory; it is my hope that I can let others know the life-changing effects of traveling.

After I finish my study abroad program, I will continue to travel throughout Europe for two months with a good friend of mine who is also studying abroad. We are excited to see new places and accumulate new stories. We will backpack throughout Europe and visit places that are the roots of our heritage. As we set out to discover the distant lands that so many have traversed before us, we will write our own stories, from our own experiences; and the places that others have traveled before us will hold a new meaning because we will have seen them through new eyes.

Beach Day

We officially had our first beach day this weekend. Nothing quite like lounging by the Mediterranean for a few hours. The best part is that it takes about 3 minutes to walk from school à la plage. The beaches are very nice, they are sand, not rock like in Nice. We also walked around the centre-ville later in the day which was very relaxing... Yesterday we started our seminars. I am taking an art history class en français bien sur and it's going to be pretty sweet because it will count both as a GE and as an upper division French credit. Cool! The professeur is cool, if a bit talkative, but that's ok. She showed us some slides of different styles of paintings and I'm excited to go see them for reals at the Musée d'orsay and the Louvre when we go to Paris next weekend!

Fancy wine tasting dinner tonight, Aix-en-Provence excursion this weekend.

Note: I am not a sweaty smelly American, the weather has gotten cooler again and I am indeed in the process of getting some other warm weather clothes. They will be very chic and francaises, comme moi. ;)

Ma Vie à Cannes

Happy March, friends. One month in and the fun continues. It's interesting, I can feel myself getting more and more comfortable in a different country, but at the same time there are definitely things that I miss about the US. Today I went shopping (the window kind, really) on the rue d'antibes, which is Cannes famous shopping boulevard, and found that my favorite store amongst them all was espirit. hmmm, not exactly stretching there when it comes to trying to be très françaises et très chic. oh well, they had my size and some really cool stuff. Apparently when I was packing, I was sure it was freezing here, so I packed about 3 warm weather shirts. I have found, it is not, in fact, freezing here and that, come summertime, I'm going to be warm and toasty. Oh well, ce n'est pas grave. In general, when you try to fit your life into one suitcase, you are bound to get tired of wearing the same stuff all the time. Pretty much everyone here feels that way at this point.

Went to the theatre again the other night. It was a really strange dance performance that was supposed to be an "around the world" theme, but was actually a lot of the same type of dancing in different costumes that were sort of "around the world-esque." Oh well, it was part of the program, so I didn't have to pay for it. That, and I managed to get in on the crepe soirée that was at the collège au meme temp, which was pretty sweet.