But you stay here with us…? (Paris Day 1)

So, Paris Day 1, where to begin… well we ate breakfast and headed to the airport around 8:30 am to catch our flight to Orly Airport in Paris. It was a very easy check in and we had plenty of time to sit around, touch up our nails (worst nail polish ever!) and people watch. Well it was St. Patty’s day, so of course there were the “hot shots” in the group who decided they needed to go and buy themselves an entire bottle of alcohol to drink at 10am, needless to say, Jennifer and I did not partake in that, and Aude (one of the AIFS directors) wasn’t too happy to see them drinking straight out of a liquor bottle at 10 am either, but enough about that… We were sitting next to this cute little old man who was talking to someone about buying them a couple bottles of duty free Chanel No. 5 and trying to figure out what gate he needed to go to. He asked us a question and so we responded to him and he was so excited to hear English and he said we had perfect English, etc. Well he ended up needing to go to the same gate as us, so we sat by him at the gate as well. This is when we found out that he was actually an extremely racist cute little old man. He was telling us about how he didn’t know French because he always relied on his wife and how now that she’s dead he’s been trying to speak French, but it’s really hard for him and he lives in Monaco, and the perfume he bought was for his secretary, etc. Well then he starts to tell us about how he used to be a United States citizen and how he fought in WWII, but he gave up his citizenship and regrets serving in the military because we are letting all of these immigrants come in and take our jobs and we are ruining our country and us young people need to save it, and he just went on from there. He wasn’t talking about just Mexicans like you usually hear in the States, he was pretty much saying that about anyone living in the U.S. that is not Caucasian. I stopped listening after that and just kind of shook my head (to myself), because you can’t do anything to change the mind of an 80 year old something man.

After that conversation, we were able to start boarding. I was really excited because I finally got a window seat for a flight! It was a gorgeous day, so I had a really good view of the mountains while leaving Nice, as well as a view of Paris upon arrival. Our flight, however, was not the best. I’ve never been on a flight with so much turbulence before! It was a little scary, and the landing was extremely rough. Maybe I’m just spoiled by some of the other companies, but I was not impressed by AirFrance.

Once we landed at Orly Airport, we boarded our bus that would be taking us into Paris and then on our 3 hour bus tour of the city. When we met up with the tour guide, I was really surprised. I have this thing with the appearance of teeth and hers were clearly stained from too much Coffee, Cigarettes or something and it was really hard for me to look away; but back to the tour… It was a pretty good tour and It reminded me how much I truly love and had missed Paris. Just being back in that city filled me with so much happiness and excitement!

During the bus tour we stopped at the Notre Dame and were able to walk around inside and outside of it. It was really surreal to be back in the same place I visited almost four years ago. I feel like I was able to appreciate the artwork in the cathedral much more, whereas last time I was mainly concerned with picture taking. It really is a magnificent place. Words cannot do justice (especially since I am forgetting proper English!) to the view you see upon entering the cathedral with it’s rose and other stained glass windows; it is absolutely breathtaking.

After the Notre Dame, we went back to the bus, finished our tour and then headed to the hotel to get ready for our dinner provided by AIFS. We went to this chain restaurant, Chez Clement, and I got a fresh salad (not really the type of salad I was expecting, mainly cabbage), salmon and potatoes (DELICIOUS!) and crème brulée (to DIE FOR!!). It was a really nice dinner, in my opinion, but some of the others were a little disappointed in the ribs they ordered, so I was glad I went with the salmon, because it really was some of the best salmon I’ve had in a while.

Once we all finished dinner, Jennifer and I went with our other two roommates for the weekend, Megan and Adrianna, as well as some of the other girls from the program to this street near our hotel that had a lot of different bars and food places since it was St. Patty’s day. We ended up finding a cozy little pub (not Irish though, because all the Irish bars were PACKED!) and Jennifer and I ordered a green margarita without thinking that we should have gotten beer since tequila isn’t really considered an Irish drink.

I was sitting next to this small group of Parisians, so I decided to ask them if there was anywhere to dance nearby because some of our group wanted to go dancing. We ended up talking about how I was studying in France and one of the guys said, “Oh you should practice your French by speaking with French people all the time” and we were just talking about that when one of his friends snapped a picture of us talking. Naturally, I was a little creeped out, so I said bye and turned back around. Then, one of the girls in their group decided to come over and talk to me as well. She was asking me questions in English and then wanting me to respond in French, so I was a little confused by her. When we went to leave I said “AuRevoir” to be nice and she leans over and says “They are leaving, but you stay here with us?” so I said, “No, I’m leaving with them.” and pretty much ran out the door after that to explore the rest of the street we were on.

We ended up running into the guy named David who had just gotten off work, so he saw us about to go into this one bar and he said it was “rubbish” and pointed the one he recommended out. He was British and had been living in France for five years, so he stopped to talk to us and recommended places to visit for our weekend in Paris. Along with this dance club that he said he would call his friend to get us to skip the queue, so we started to head back to the hotel, thinking we would go there.

On our way back we ran into this man selling flowers, but there was another man with him offering us the flowers, and so we asked if they were free and he said yes, so three of us got pretty roses and it was pretty exciting, because it’s always nice to get flowers! Once we were back at the hotel, we decided not to go to the dance club and a few of us just went out to get our one beer for St. Patty’s Day since we forgot about that earlier. Overall, it wasn’t a too eventful night, but it was a nice and semi relaxing night in Paris. =)

PARIS!

I will be returning to Paris for the first time in almost 4 years tomorrow and I CANNOT wait!!! I’ll write back upon my return about how much more I love Paris after spending the next four days there! Hope everyone is doing well!

More Carnaval Celebrations, Art in Antibes and Glass Blowing in Biot…

This week has been pretty busy for me! On Tuesday we were all assigned to our new classes and I am with a lot of the same people, but Pascale is now our official teacher and I moved up two levels, what what! So I was pretty excited about that! Then I was supposed to have my first French Civilization class, but I had to go to the doctor with half of the AIFS group in the afternoon since I am unfortunate enough to be at the end of the alphabet. The doctor visit wasn’t too bad, although the whole having to take my top off for the chest x-ray, and having the nurse push me against the machine because I wasn’t close enough to it, was just a littleeeee awkward to say the least; but I guess it’s her job and I ended up getting an awesome souvenir of an x-ray of my lungs. Just what I’ve always wanted!

On Wednesday I had my first Organizational Administration class, it goes from 1:30 to 5:20, and I was really looking forward to this one and I am sad to say I am almost 100% positive I will be sorely disappointed this semester. The professor has a slight lisp and a heavy accent and so he’s hard to understand. It also doesn’t help that his teaching style is not very exciting since we were going over historical dates like when the OEEC was founded and then when the merger treaties occurred and all sorts of fascinating things like that. We only had just enough people to open the class, so we had to sign a sheet saying we wouldn’t drop the course, well there were five of us and literally FIVE minutes into the class, one of the other girls stands up and walks out. I thought that maybe it was because she needed to use the restroom seeing as how she had just rudely finished a gaufre (waffle) covered in Nutella while Francis was introducing himself and the course, but she didn’t come back for a good 15 minutes. When she did return, she grabbed her bags and just started to walk out the door. We asked if she was okay and she said, “Oh yeah, I’m not in this class anymore.” and just walked out. Needless to say, I wasn’t very impressed and am now curious as to what will happen with my seminar now.

Thankfully my French Civilization seminar is going to be WONDERFUL! I have it on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 1:30 to 3:35, and I already love it. The teacher is really interesting and knowledgeable and I definitely prefer her style of teaching over Francis’. Right now we are just going over the Education system in France and we also covered French Nationalism and Citizenship.

After my class I did my final work out of week 3 of Insanity by myself since Hanna and Jennifer have class until 5:50 on Tuesday and Thursday and then got ready to head to Nice to watch them set the King on fire and send him to sea as well as the fireworks display.

I wasn’t really able to see the burning of the King and sending him to sea, but it was still cool to listen to the music and see the flames from far away. The fireworks, however, were really awesome. Fireworks in France are very different than fireworks in the states. They break the show up into different segments and tell part of the story between each segment and then play music to the theme of what they just discussed and the fireworks go along with the beat and theme of the music. It was really interesting to see and, like last time, we were attacked by people with confetti and silly string. They think it’s great fun to cover people in one or both of these things.

I was leading the way back to the train station and somehow got separated from Hanna and Jennifer about two minutes into our trip back, but we eventually met up again. They stayed where they last saw me and I tried to find them back but figured it was hopeless with the crowd and so I went to the train station and they made it back there before the train we wanted to take back to Cannes arrived, so it was all okay. It was funny, because had I been separated in the states, yes I would have my phone, but I feel like I would have been more upset; after realizing they weren’t behind me anymore I tried to look for them really quick and then just headed back to the train station and I wasn’t even nervous at all. I don’t know, I feel like even though there are some questionable people here I still feel completely safe walking and finding my way around. I may have been a little less comfortable had there not been a crowd, but I still think it would have been fine.

Today we took an excursion to a glass blowing factory in Biot as well as the city of Antibes. I really enjoyed the glass blowing factory because we were able to watch the artisans making the glasses and they make them so fast and with so much skill that it is just amazing to watch.

In Antibes we visited the Picasso museum which was very cool. I spent a long time going through the different floors and galleries because I thought it was really interesting to see all of the different styles of art Picasso used. Some of his paintings were really striking and haunting, except for the death of nature ones by whatever he decided to paint because there were at least 10 different “death of nature by…” paintings. However, one of my favorite ones was the one titled “We are not the last”. It wasn’t in your face images of people being persecuted, but when you look closer you can make out people who are clearly suffering and are eerily reminiscent of the images we see from the Holocaust. It was a very haunting piece and I automatically thought of Darfur and Rwanda and the Balkans and I think that’s what makes it so haunting is that even when we know genocide is occurring like during the Holocaust, we still do not do enough to stop it in time to save people from being tortured or murdered.

But enough about that… onto a lighter note! After the museum, Brittany and I walked around Antibes, and despite it being a grayish and dreary day, it was still absolutely stunning. Hanna, Jennifer and I want to come back one day when it is much nicer so we can get the full experience.

It didn’t really hit me until today how lucky I am to have this opportunity to live and study in France for an entire semester until today. I was walking along the sea front in Antibes and it just clicked “I’m LIVING in France… for a SEMESTER!” Maybe it’s because I have less than three months left, but I was just hit by an overwhelming sense of gratitude to my parents, so I just want to say thank you Mom and Dad for helping me experience the French culture and to even have this opportunity! I hope one day I can help you travel to Germany or the Vatican or somewhere you would love to go to in Europe. I truly am grateful. Whether it’s because of the realization of how unexpected life can be  after the awful earthquake and tsunami in Japan today or because I was up late last night planning out my courses for my second to last semester at IC, I just really want to make sure you know how thankful I am for this opportunity and how much it means to me!

I hope everyone is doing well in the states and is thinking about all of the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. My heart goes out to all who are affected.

 

“For the first time tonight ladies, I can’t hear you!” -Zen

Salut! Well we are officially halfway through week three of Insanity, and it sucks! haha but I cannot wait for week 5 when we change up the discs because it’s starting to get repetitive! This past Saturday we took a day trip to Aix-en-Provence, and I loved it! We went to the market and it’s a good thing I only brought 30 euro, because they had A LOT of cute clothes and I haven’t been shopping for clothes since before I left, so I bought a shirt for myself and then a couple souvenirs (I figured I would start early so I don’t have to do it all the last week!).

Aix-en-Provence is known for it’s fountains and they have a thermal fountain that’s covered in moss, so that was pretty cool to see. They also have so many stores and food places and so we were all really jealous since it’s a big university town full of les gens jeunes (young people). The famous painter, Cézanne spent the last years of his life in Aix-en-Provence, and despite everyone thinking he was crazy while he was alive, he’s gained a lot of popularity since his death and you can now find his name all over the city. For example, there is a movie theater called the Cézanne.  We went to see his studio, and it was really interesting because it’s the house he lived in and his studio has a lot of the original objects he painted while he worked there.

Cézanne was really interested in painting on large canvases, so he actually had to cut a slit in his wall with a metal hinged door to get one of his paintings out of his studio, because it was too large to be brought down the steps and out the front door. After seeing the studio we were able to explore the grounds a bit before heading to one of his favorite painting areas with a wonderful view of the Sainte Victoire mountains; unfortunately some fog started to roll in, so I wasn’t able to capture the real beauty of it with my camera, but despite the fog, it was still a gorgeous sight.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day in Cannes, so we decided to head to the market after brunch and we bought some strawberries and flowers before it shut down at one. I ended up buying some yellow daisies and they are very pretty, but unfortunately I had to go borrow some bottles to use as vases because there were too many of them to fit in just one. So now I have three lovely vases of flowers to look at for the next week! =) After our walk back to the college, we decided to lay out on the solarium because it was sunny and a high of 60, and after the half cloudy days we’ve been having for the past week and a half, we definitely needed some vitamin D in our lives! We even did Insanity on the terrace because, one, there were people playing ping-pong in the  “gym” and two, it was just a nice day. We got some puzzled stares like usual, but we didn’t mind. Apparently work out DVDs are an American thing, so everyone here from Switzerland, France, and Italy, etc. find it really weird that we work out with a DVD, but we try to explain to them that it’s Insanity, not just another easy work out DVD and that if we had an actual gym, we would just use that to work out!

Last night we decided to attend ladies night at Morrison’s again, but it was just Jennifer and I and a couple other people from the college, because Hanna didn’t feel like coming out. Our band from the other night was playing again, and we actually got to meet and talk with the lead singer, because he came up to where we were sitting on the balcony during his break to tell us to shut up lol. Apparently he could hear us talking the entire time he was playing and so he said, “Excuse me ladies, I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but can you shut the hell up?” haha he was really nice about it though and made fun of Jennifer for still yelling while she was talking to him despite him being less than a foot away, but in her defense, it is kind of loud in there. I told him we would try to keep it down if we could get a picture with him, so now Jennifer and I have a picture with our favorite ladies night singer and we also requested “Wonderwall“, so he dedicated it to us. Jennifer thinks he’s “SO AWESOME!” and it was overall a really enjoyable night.

We didn’t do much today, there is a huge group of Italians and Mexicans that just arrived and so they all had to do their placement testing so we had different teachers today since the usual teachers were  giving the tests. Tomorrow we will find out about our new classes and since Annick broke her leg, we will definitely be having a different teacher because Annick has to get surgery. If I do get a new teacher, I hope it’s Pascal, she was the French boot camp teacher, because I feel like I learned so much in just one week! Tomorrow is also the first day of seminars, but since I have to go to Nice with AIFS for a doctor’s appointment to receive permission to travel, I’ll be missing my first class, which I’m really not happy about. Luckily, Hanna is in the seminar with me and she doesn’t have to go since she’s a minor so I can just copy her notes. We also had to pay 55 euro for a special stamp that the doctor has to put on our passport, so I’m not too happy about that either. I’ve been doing really well about budgeting, but that expense was unexpected and it made a lot of people unhappy.

Well I think that’s all for now, Corey is in Germany right now, and so I would love to go visit him this coming weekend, but unfortunately traveling to Germany is a little too expensive for me! I know he’ll have an awesome time though, and I’m super jealous! I’ll write back again soon once there are new developments in the life of Jessica! We are taking a trip to Antibes and Biot on Friday, so I’ll probably update you all on that! Bonsoir!

ps, I almost forgot that there was a super creepy guy in Aix-en-Provence when we sat down to try and eat our sack lunches near the statue of Roi René. Hanna and I were already sitting down and he was making eye contact with us, so we stood up to pull Jennifer away because she was facing us, and he ran into her and just kept looking at us as we scampered off. It was so weird and I still don’t know what it was all about, but he was kind of old, so maybe he is just senile? Who knows!

“My friend is turning 19 soon… that’s SO OLD!”

Bonjour! Well Jennifer really enjoyed her birthday decorations and the Maccaroons that Hanna and I bought for her birthday celebration, so that’s good! However, the cleaning ladies didn’t appreciate the streamers and balloons we decided to leave up just for fun. Hanna said she heard them say “Deux cent onze” on their walkie talkies as they left the room… très drole (very funny). We cleaned it up later on Monday, and everything is fine, so they can just cheer up!

Our Lovely Decorations for Jennifer's Birthday!

We ended up going to Morrison’s ladies night for her birthday, but we didn’t stay too long since she’d had a long trip to Florence that weekend. For ladies night, Morrison’s has a live band and offers a ladies night special where you pay 8 euro for all the beer and wine you want for the night. Hanna decided not to buy the special and Jennifer and I split it since we weren’t planning on staying too long. While we were sitting there talking, Hanna said “My friend is turning 19 soon, that is SO OLD!”. Jennifer and I just looked at each other like “Really?!?” and started bursting out laughing. I said, ” Hanna, we are out right now for Jennifer’s 21st and I’m 20, turning 21 in June… what does that make us? Ancient?!” It is just really funny to think about the fact that Hanna finds 19 old… I really am starting to feel like an old lady… (Enough with that side note, back to Morrison’s.)

The band that played was AWESOME. They played some of my favorites like “Wonderwall” and “Use Somebody” and some of their own music as well. What I liked best was that they are actually really really good! We also met their managers or whatever and sat and talked to them for a while. They said they met them by chance and listened to them and decided to help them out. They were really nice and enjoyed hearing about what our classes are like at the college and the different activities we have planned, especially the Paris trip, since the woman is originally from Paris, “the city of lights”. I can’t believe that’s two weekends from now!

The band from ladies night! LOVE them!

When we were getting ready to head back, we ended up running into the rugby team from Antibes by the door and someone mentioned that Hanna played rugby, so we ended up talking to them for a while. They were pretty funny and we said we may try to make a game sometime since Antibes is really close, but we were just saying that so that we could leave faster, although it would be interesting to go to a match, so maybe we’ll find a different team to go watch!

The next day I went to class and we were waiting a few minutes for Annick when another lady came up and told us to follow her because Annick hurt her foot and couldn’t make it to the college. Well I have now been in French boot camp for the past three days. She gives us a list of activities to do and once we finish those she gives us more to do, so the first day we were writing for almost the entire 3 hours of class, pausing only to hurriedly check the exercises together to make sure no one was making any mistakes. Then yesterday and today we write for the entire first hour and a half and then discuss the second half, which isn’t as bad, but my hand is still throbbing after class every day. I like the other professor, because I feel like we have covered a lot of ground, but I don’t exactly like the stressing first half of class and practically run out of the room when the break is announced. She seems to like me though, so I guess all the different exercises are helping because I definitely know the futur simple and the different forms of si backwards and front. Which is good since we’ll be having a test on those, plus passé composé, imparfait, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and hypotheses. So tomorrow will consist of me studying, A LOT!

I applied for my pass to go to the screenings during the film festival, so I’m pretty excited for that! It’s two months away! That just seems so crazy to me! I also cannot believe I have already been here for an entire month! I am feeling more and more French as the days go on. I watched “La Miracle Sur La 8ième Rue” the other day, otherwise known as “Batteries Not Included” and I watched it in French with French subtitles. I also have been trying to look at French quotes that have the English translation underneath and I try and figure out exactly what the quote means before looking at the English sentence. There are some long ones that I don’t fully comprehend, but I get a pretty good idea of most, so it makes me feel semi-accomplished! haha

Well that’s really all I have to write about for now. Hanna, Jennifer and I will be finished with week two of Insanity tomorrow, so we’ll get a nice day off before our day trip to Aix-en-Provence this weekend. Tonight we had to do Insanity in this larger part of the hallway on our floor because we don’t have enough room in our bedroom and the people here are ping-pong crazy, so we couldn’t use the gym. Well we did it during everyone else’s dinnertime, so at the end everyone was heading back to the rooms after dinner and we were just finishing the cool down and they were all like “Did you go running before doing that?” and we were literally dripping in sweat and “We were like no… this is all just from Insanity, and it was worse before we did the cool down”. So now we have like 4 other people who want to join our workouts because they clearly saw how intense they are! So we’ll see how this goes…

Also, on a less happier note, I was catching up on the news today and I read a report that I would like to share with you all. I hope you are as disturbed by this as I am and that you choose to share it with others to increase awareness on the need to withdraw military forces from Afghanistan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html