Ça Plane Pour Moi

Big Long Update

2011-09-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

9/8
we drove about an hour and 20 minutes to Erding to go to the disneyland of waterparks! I was so impressed. They had a ton of huge waterslides (including the longest one in Europe) and a kind of oasis with a bar in the water and really good food. I had vegetable and cheese Spätzle and it was amazing. The weather wasn't too great and therefore the place was really, really crowded. We only had 4 hours there, but I definitely could have stayed longer cuz it was so cool. We went on this one slide where there's two slides next to each other and you race the other person down. I hit both of my elbows on the sides of the slide as I started down the slide. That hurt. We drove back and Michi went to Dany's. I stayed at the house and hung out with Cezanne and talked to Luke and Andy on facebook.

9/9
Michi and I were gonna bake cinnamon rolls but out of no where he had to go see Dany because she was having an emotional issue. But when he came back we went outside to play with Cezanne and Sandra (Michi's mom) and I had a beer. There were a lot of bugs outside that day and I got bit several times on my neck. Then we got ready to go to Munich to go to a club called Nox for hardstyle (at type of hard techno music). There were very few people there, but Michi told me it would be that way. It was fun tho. We went with Michi's coworker, Bela. And when we went outside for a breather, I ran into couple of australians who i think were drunk and looking for their next club/bar. They tried to get into Nox but after a few minutes of conversing with the bouncer, they weren't allowed in because they told me he said they were too drunk. Earlier I had a big beer and for the rest of the night my stomach felt a little weird. I think drinking a large amount of alcoholic liquid and then moving around a lot isn't exactly a combination for well-being.

9/10
Can't exactly remember when we went to sleep the night before, but we woke up around 2 pm. Sandra made this awesome apple strudel thing which we ate some of before going to the store because I needed shampoo and toothpaste and stuff. Later that evening we went to an all-you-can-eat joint called the Nudelbar in Augsburg with Dany and Andy. It wasn't a buffet but rather a menu with numbered items and you just said what number you wanted and they bring it to you each time. Each item is pretty small, and I was scared that after we ordered 1, that's all everyone would eat except me, and I didn't want to look like a fatass and keep ordering more stuff when everyone else wasn't. But that wasn't the case. Andy ordered 4 different things. When I tried ordering something myself, the waitress thought I said 210 when I said 215 or something like that. So they brought the mistake before what I actually wanted and it turned out I liked the mistake better than the one I originally wanted. Then Andy and I went to Rockfabrik while Michi went to Dany's. I brought my stuff beforehand and stayed the night at Andy's after we went to Rofa.

9/11
Michi picked me up in the afternoon from Andy's house and Michi's sister Silvia and her boyfriend came over. Michi and I went on a lovely walk with his parents, Silvia and her boyfriend, their little dog, and Cezanne in the fields behind their house. When we came back we had ice cream and more apple cake that Sandra made a few days earlier and chatted. In the evening Michi and I went to the bowling alley with Dany, Andy, Bela and his girlfriend. Then Michi drove me back to his house and went to Dany's.

9/12
I called Gloria, my homestay mom from 2005 and had a nice conversation. She told me to give her a call in the next week when I knew more of my plans so we could arrange a visit. We then figured out the ingredients we would need to make cinnamon rolls and went to the grocery store. We came home and made the rolls which turned out pretty well considering it was my first time baking with the metric system. Michi's parents liked the rolls, but thought they were really sweet, which is very true. But they went pretty quickly haha Then we went to free pool night again with everyone from bowling the night before. I learned a new german phrase Bela made up: Hammergeilscheisse :D And i learned to play snooker, although I don't really like it because you constantly have to remember which color ball you need to hit: either red or colored, and I easily forget.

9/13
This day was Neuschwanstein day! We woke up a lot earlier than usual and stopped in Landsberg at a grocery store so we could pick up a few snack things. The weather was so gorgeous and it was warm until about right before we left. Plus the drive out there was beautiful as well. We decided to do both castles (until recently I thought there was only Neuschwanstein) but I thought I should see both. So we saw Schloss Hohenschwangau first. We first bought the tickets down the road and made the walk to the castle. By the time we got to the gate, we had about 45 minutes before our tour, so we just hung around. Fortunately for me we took the tour in english but Michi said he could understand pretty much everything. After that tour we made the long walk to Neuschwanstein. First we thought we'd take the bus up to the castle, and now I wish we would have, but we read that it was only a 15 minute walk. It felt longer than that, and it was quite uphill. Not to mention that there was horse poop all over the road with tons of flies (which i despise) and Michi would get embarrassed everytime we would be walking and i would make a B-line to the other side of the road, away from the mass swarm of flies around a huge pile of poop. I told Michi that he could get friendly with the poop but I'm getting as far away as possible. We finally got to the castle and there were (unsurprisingly) many tourists but it wasn't as bad as I could imagine it being on a weekend or during summer (because this day was the first day of school). There was a man up there in lederhosen which I thought pretty awesome. We waited for 30-45 minutes for our tour, and I bought a small book of pictures from inside Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau because photos inside weren't allowed due to copyright. The castle was pretty sweet, but the tour was only 30 minutes, and I think they could show you so much more of the castle if they wanted to. Michi wasn't too impressed with it and liked Hohenschwangau much more. Then we made the walk back down the hill/mountain, again avoiding horse poop.

9/14
This day was pretty chill. I went with Michi to his work and met his co-workers again and they had a little meeting to discuss when they would start having their once-a-week english discussion to practice english. They made their planning decisions and then they asked me to speak about myself. It was pretty fun, but I tried my hardest not to speak too fast or use weird/uncommon vocabulary. I think I was pretty well understood for the most part. After the meeting, I stayed at the office waiting for Andy to finish work while Michi went to Dany's. Then Andy and I went to the grocery store to get ingredients to make chili sin carne from scratch. It was delicious and very healthy. Practically nothing but veggies, tomato juice/base, and a couscous-type wheat product (can't remember the name). We ended up making an entire huge pot full. When we were done Michi came to get me.

9/15
We went to Sealife, an aquarium in Munich. There was a card you got when you entered that was a quiz with answers you scratch off, because inside there was plaques with questions. For some reason I didn't see them all as we walked through, but I got most of the ones I did see wrong. After sealife, we walked around the Oplympia Park and saw a guy on a nearby lake wakeboarding, although there was no boat. Instead he was being pulled by a kind of zipline. Definitely something I wanna do next time I'm in Munich and it's warm. We almost went up the giant "Fernsehturm" (TV tower) for a great view of Munich, but it cost something ridiculous like 4 euros. So we just looked at the gift shop. Then we went to the BMW showroom that was nearby. I was in heaven. We saw some people getting in the cars and taking pics, and I wanted to have one taken in a yellow convertible. Michi asked an associate and they said they had to get the keys to open it because at the moment no one was watching it. I had to do it quickly because they didn't really want everyone to see me in it and then have them all want a picture in it. I felt special :) Now if I only could have discreetly driven it away... They even had floor cleaning robots. It was crazy. You can rent a BMW at 40 euros an hour lol. I just want to rent one for a little while so I can drive it on the autobahn at 200+ mph. But I don't nearly trust my driving skills for that. Then we hit a little bit of a traffic jam (a "stau" as you commonly see displayed on signs in Munich during rush hour). On the way home we went through Fürstenfeldbruck, and Michi showed where he used to live and grew up, and we stopped to buy some pizzas for dinner. When we got back home we chilled out and watched "Remember Me".

9/16
In the afternoon Michi and I went out again to practice snakeboarding. I really feel like I could do it if I had a decent amount of practice. I never even fell on my butt!! (Although I almost did a few times, and I did fall on my palms once, but I didn't hurt myself). Then we picked up Andy and Dany and went to the mall in Augsburg because Michi and Dany needed to get a birthday present for Dany's dad. We went back home and got ready to go to Rockfabrik. This night was pretty sick because it was hosted by Captain Morgan (got a couple free Captain and Cokes). Once I had to sing something to get one, and then the next one I had to talk in a low man-voice, as guys had to speak in a high voice. The bartender guy asked me what I wanted and I had to say "Captain Coke" nearly like a sailor lol. It was hilarious. Not to mention that it was also buy 1 drink, get 2. Michi was in a corner with Dany somewhere most of the time so I didn't get to hang out with him there as much as I wanted, and at one point Andy had to meet with a girl (and ended up having to drive her home, so I didn't see him for a while) so I thought what the hell, and ended up drinking something like 4 jager shots, and 2 beers, in addition to the captain cokes i got for free. It helped pass the time while Andy was away... When we were on the dancefloor, at one point I got a face-full of someone's dreads, which was pretty gross, but being drunk helped me deal with it. Then Captain Morgan came on the stage and they were doing a limbo game to get a free captain morgan hat. I went up there but didn't do the limbo, but Andy did. One of the captain morgan guys gave me an awesome flashlight shaped like a captain morgan bottle, and on the dancefloor we ended up taking a picture with Captain Morgan and he gave me a dog tag with a key on it. I guess it was for some treasure chest but I think it was gone before we realized the key was for it. Then Captain Morgan threw out the rest of the hats into the crowd and I caught one. When we left, I went with Michi and had to say goodbye to Andy. I may or may not get to see him again before I leave, which is sad because we had a lot of fun together and he was a good source of support for me.

9/17
We got home around 5 am from Rofa and crashed. The next day I said goodbye to Michi's parents and gave them the cheese board made from oregon red alder. Sandra cried a little. Earlier she said she was sad because I became kind of like another child to her :) But she said we'll see each other on skype. Then Michi brought me to the other Andy's house and we said goodbye for now. I'm hoping to see him again before I leave. Andy was at handball so just Heidi was home. She's so adorable, and I was surprised at how much I can understand her. Either that or my German has somehow magically improved since last year. But she's also used to speaking to people who don't speak German well. So we went out to do some grocery shopping and we stopped by a couple of dirndl stores and I tried a few on. There was this black and pink one I absolutely fell in love with at a clothing store we went to, but it was 130 euros (not including with blouse that goes underneath... generally another 25-30 euros) and Heidi and Andy said that because it's a clothes chain that doesn't specialize in dirndls, the quality isn't as good. But I didn't buy one because Andy wasn't with us and I promised him he could take me dirndl shopping. Later on we went to the sports center where Andy had finished training/hand ball game. We had dinner with his teammates in the sports center restaurant and I had schnitzel and spätzle (which i absolutely adore), and a weissbier. When we left I asked the waitress lady if I could have my schnitzel to go, and she kinda scoffed, but gave it to me wrapped in tin foil. I guess asking for food to go in Germany is as bad as in France. When we left we went to Andy's friends apartment and had a little get-together and played a soccer game on xbox. Then we took a taxi back to Andy's.

9/18
In the morning we had Weißwurstfrühstück, which is white sausage (I have no idea why it's white, and that scares me a little) with pretzels and white beer (typically), but they had no beer. Then Andy's friend picked us up to take us back into Landsberg to get the car. Then we drove to Kempten, where Andy studies. When we got to Andy's little flat, we hung around a little while then we went to a handball game a little bit outside Kempten. In the past, Andy had played for both teams so he wasn't really cheering for one or the other. Then we went back home and had pizza and I hung out while he went to meet a friend to give him some stuff.

Zoo in Munich!

2011-09-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we went to the zoo in Munich. It was a perfect day to go too. We took the autobahn to get there too and that's always interesting. I think at one point we were driving 111 miles an hour. Spent the day at the zoo and hit a bad traffic jam leaving Munich on our way back to Michi's. Then a little later on Michi went to Dany's and I hung out.

Today we woke up around noon and the weather wasn't great so great and we thought about going rock wall climbing but decided against it. Instead we had a kinda lazy day and played video games. Then I finally showered and got ready to go to Rockfabrik, a rock club in Augsburg, with Andy while Michi went to see Dany. It was gothic night so we danced with the goths, which was kinda funny. And I tried a special beer that's only made in Augsburg by "goblins". I think we'll go there on a normal night next friday.

Deutschland!!!

2011-09-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

Friday morning I thought waking up 3 hours before my train departure would be enough time. I was so wrong. I didn't get myself organized nearly soon enough and we left Sev's place at about 12:10 when my train was supposed to leave at 12:26. And we had traffic on the way to the train station. Needless to say I was freaking out. Sev helped me run my suitcases to the elevator and said goodbye. Thank god that my train was 10 minutes late. It really ended up being about 20 I think. I wanted to see a friend at the train station and she was trying to call me but at this time my french phone decided to quit working and I couldn't answer her calls or read her texts. And I couldn't find her once I was on the platform. I felt really bad about that because she made the effort to come say hi/bye to me. The train ride to Strasbourg was pretty pleasant and I was surprised that we didn't even go through Paris. In Strasbourg I could hear french, german, and english. I wish I could have been able to see more of the city. Fortunately my second train left from the same platform that my first train arrived at. Shortly after the train left the station I got my meal of some kind of sliced beef, potato salad, a shrimp cocktail, and beer. I still can't even believe paying $40 more for my train ticket from Poitiers to Augsburg got me 1st class all the way, absolutely no hassle in Paris, and a meal. Michi picked me up and we went to McDonald's. When we got to his house, I met his parents and his german sheppard, Cezanne. I was too excited to give Michi his late birthday/thank you presents. One present of which I've waited 4 years to give him.

Saturday: We went to Augsburg and first picked up Dany. We walked through the mall and went into a dindl store because Michi needed shoes for his lederhosen. I took a look at the dirndls and most all of them would have been 100 euros or more with all the pieces you need. Then we walked around the streets some more and went to a cafe where I drank a Becks. We went to the city hall, a nearby church, and the tower of the church where we had a great view of Augsburg. Later that night we went to a mini-oktoberfest and walked around and sat in a beer tent. Then we went to a night club which was super great. 11 euros entry with 5 drink tickets (most drinks being 1 ticket).

Sunday: My eating habits in Germany are terrible. Actually it's fantastic... but I feel like I eat the whole farm everytime. Eggs, meat, milk, cheese... Michi had to take Dany's ID back to her from the night before, so I stayed at the house and got ready for the day while he was away. When he got back we went out to ride his snakeboard and I got a little lesson. I still suck at it but I think we'll try again in the next few days. Then we had dinner of amazing Spaetzel that Sandra (Michi's mom) made. I gave them my oregon picture book and showed them some of my videos from college on youtube. I also played their piano some and there was a ginormous storm outside. Sandra is hilarious. She kept offering me more beer :D and said "you could tell your parents we made you drunk" hahaa Then we watched a couple movies before bedtime.

Monday: Today we went to Michi's work because he needed to talk with some colleague and I got to meet them. Then we came back home and had lunch of leftover Spaetzel and talked with Sandra. Then we had a great drum lesson :) Around 7:15 we left to pick up Dany and Andy and we went to a pool hall where we had a beer and played a lot of pool games, because it's free on Mondays. Then Andy and I split a pizza. Andy and I won most of the games against Michi and Dany.

Many Days' Update

2011-08-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

Been busy and super tired at night to update the blog everyday.

Sunday: At Sophie's we went in the afternoon to go buy our train tickets to Poitiers and then we came back and played halo and guitar hero with her dad and little brother. We took the TGV to Poitiers, but we had to sit in the awkward place between the cars because there wasn't any more room for my suitcases where you put the suitcases so we had to keep them in front of the doors, so we sat there. Plus someone was sitting in our seats, although we could have asked them to move. Sophie's boyfriend Guillaume was late picking us up so we sat in front of the train station. But out of nowhere this drunk old man sat near us and started talking to me. I didn't know what he was saying but I just said "ah oui?" just to replay with something, but Sophie told me he was saying really mean things about some of the people around us so now I wish I hadn't acknowledged him. We finally decided to get up and move to the other side of the front of the train station. Guillaume arrived and we drove straight to their new apartment because they were late in meeting the landlord to sign the papers and do the damage inspection. Then we went to Guillaume's to drop off some stuff and then we went to meet Sophie's friend from Tennessee who just arrived in Poitiers to study for the year. We had dinner at Quick (pretty much a french mcdonalds). Then we walked around downtown Poitiers a little and then we went bowling. I did pretty well actually. Then we got back late and went to bed around 2 am. The sleeping situation was a little tight because Guillaume only had 1 twin bed so they put the top part of his mattress on the floor and slept on that, and I slept on the bottom part.

Monday: Woke up early so Guillaume and Sophie could drop me off at Severine's before they went back to Niort because Sophie had to go to work. Severine wasn't there yet because she was getting her phone fixed but Sophie helped me get in her building and I just waited until she got there. Severine took me to meet her downstairs neighbors who are going to the U of O in a couple of weeks. Then we had lunch in the mall downtown and I was stupid and at the register I set down my tray with my sandwich on it and I lost balance of it when I was trying to pay and I dropped the tray and my sandwich on the floor. Fortunately the lady behind the counter gave me another, but I think she was a little annoyed. Then we went to the french walmart (Leclerc) to get some groceries since Severine was out of town for the weekend and didn't have much food. We ran to the university after and we saw Sylvie (my on-site coordinator from last year) and that was nice. I got to her office just as she was leaving to go somewhere and she saw me and said "Well I know you!" Had to remind her of my name though haha. She said the new students from Oregon were in their meeting with the bank lady and she brought us to meet them and a few of them asked us questions. During that time we met a girl from Portland who's looking for a permanent place to live and Severine was interested because her sister is looking for a roommate. When we left the university, Sev dropped me off downtown and I just walked around for 2 hours just being nostalgic. I ended up walking really far. But it was quite nice. Sev picked me up and we had dinner and then went downstairs to watch a movie with her neighbors. But before we watched the movie, I helped them call the electricity company in Eugene to help them get that set up. Unfortunately they wouldn't talk to me alone and put a useless translator on the line.

Today, Tuesday: Went to the mall with Sev to just do some window shopping, and looked into getting my nails filled, but they told me exactly what I was expecting: that they would have to redo the whole thing because "it's not the same product". Plus it's nearly 50 euros. Went back home for lunch because I wanted to save money. Later we met Melanie at the university to bring her to Thomas and Yasmine's so she could bind her report like Sev did a few days before. Then we returned to the university to pick up Ashley to show her Sev's apartment, and afterwards we were gonna drop her off in downtown but instead we went to roche d'argent (where I lived last year) to see if they had anything available. We had to leave her there because Melanie called and was waiting for us. A couple of Sev's friends were also in town to drop off their reports, so both of them and Melanie all stayed at Sev's overnight. We walked to Leclerc to get some stuff for breakfast and alcohol. Then we had a little soiree :)

Wednesday: Sev took everyone to the fac in the early afternoon and I stayed at the apartment. They were gone for quite a while. I still had a headache from the night before and was feeling tired so I took a 2.5 hour nap. In the evening we went to McDonald's with Thomas, Yasmine, and Maxime. McDonald's is a lot better in France than the US, and much more expensive too. They're amazed at the idea of a dollar menu. Then we went to the grocery store to get beer and went to Maxime's place to play pong.

wednesday: not much

Limoges to Poitiers/Niort/La Rochelle

2011-08-26T15:36:00.001-07:00

Updates for the last 2 days since I was too tired/lazy to write a post for yesterday.

Friday:

Melanie took me to the train station in Limoges and I took the train to Poitiers. I first sat down and then came along 2 smelly backpacker-looking and their dog who sat next to me. I kinda couldn't handle the smell and the dog constantly in my space so I finally moved away. Fortunately they got off at the first stop. Arrived in Poitiers and drug my suitcases down and up the stairs to the main lobby to see what platform I needed to be on for the train to Niort. Which sucked because it took me like 2 seconds to look and I had to turn around and repeat the suitcase-stairs process again and I think the second train arrived on the same platform as the train I was on before. On the train to Niort, there was this other backpacking smelly man. He was asking people around him to use their cellphones, but what's weird is that before arriving in Niort, he starting talking very loudly on a cellphone I believe was his. It went something like this:

"OUI JE SUIS DANS LE TRAIN.... EHHHHHHH.... NAN JE VIENS CHERCHER MA FEMME... EHHHH..." and so on. Unfortunately he was getting off in Niort like me.

Sophie and her dad were at the train station to pick me up. We got home and had tea and cookies with her mom after sharing awkward greeting kisses. I have a tendency to do the 2-cheek kiss going right side-left side. But everyone else wants to do it left side-right side. So I don't know how many times I've almost accidentally kissed people on the lips.

Then Sophie's boyfriend Guillaume came over to pick us up to meet some of her friends to have dinner at a nice pizzeria. Unfortunately it was rainy and quite cold. Guillaume is pretty adorable and hilarious. We had a good time at dinner. Everyone ordered a pizza except me because I knew it would be huge and covered in cheese. It's what I would have preferred at first, but I ordered a salad with raw salmon and avocados on it. And it was delicious, so I'm actually glad I didn't order the pizza.

Today I woke up at 9 to get ready to go to La Rochelle for the day with Sophie and her mom and brother. In La Rochelle we rented bikes and rode through town and out towards the shore and along it. I saw where I stayed in 2007 too. We stopped at a food stand out away from town and had chips (french fries) and sausages. I was worried about the weather on the way to La Rochelle because it started raining when we were in the car, but it ended being absolutely beautiful and not too hot. After we returned the bikes, we walked around La Rochelle a bit because there was a lot of market stuff going on. Sophie and I stopped to watch a dog trick show that made me want to die because it was so cute. Then we got ice cream and sat by the harbor. At 5 we met back up with Sophie's mom and brother and came back home. We had a lovely dinner of lamb and watched the french version of who wants to be a millionaire.

Last day in Limoges

2011-08-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

Today we left the house around 2 to go to Melanie's brother's house to watch her niece and nephew while her brother went to an appointment. Unfortunately la petite Marie was with her nanny and wasn't feeling well, so I didn't get to see her again. But Camille and Alexandre are both very sweet kids. I think Camille is 10 or so and Alexandre looked about 8. We swam in the pool and then we spent the rest of the afternoon eating snacks and playing a few games of jungle speed and a couple games of "devine-tete" where you wear a card with the identity of a famous person on your head and ask yes or no questions of the others to guess who you are. After we left, we went to the mall to walk around a little while. We had lunch at home and hung out for a while before we went to downtown around 9:30 to have a drink.

Limoges again

2011-08-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

Melanie and I got ready at our own pace today and we went to Leclerc (giant French grocery store) where I bought my favorite soup, and we went into this clothing store connected to the grocery store that sells this French brand of clothing called Little Marcel that I fell in love with... but sadly, it's pretty expensive. 10 euros for just a tiny change purse. 60 euros for a decent-sized purse. Then we went to the train station so I could buy my ticket to Niort for Friday. And then we drove around Limoges for a while because we had a hard time finding a place to park. But then we walked around Limoges and visited the cathedral, the botanical garden, the river, and this really old house that's leaning. We made friends with a very beautiful and quite friendly kitty. On our way back home we stopped by the cemetery which is enormous, with 40,000 graves and 200,000 people buried there. Many think it's the biggest in France but I read that it's not. But it was still very impressive. We got home and ate, watched tv, and then we watched French Kiss. Tomorrow we're going to babysit Melanie's nieces and nephew. Excited because Marie (the 2 year old) is especially adorable.

First full day in Limoges

2011-08-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

Slept in and we left the house around 3 to go shopping downtown. Walked around and went in various stores and I bought a new bath scrubbie thing because mine was starting to unravel. We went to a bakery where I bought my favorite raspberry tart and also to Monoprix, where I bought my favorite cheese, pasta, and sauce that I can't get in the states. I also bought a new sim card for my french cell phone since my old one expired. Around 5:30 to go back to the house, and stopped by a bakery so I could get some baguettes. We ate a little bit at the house, picked up some stuff and, we left to go pick up Melanie's mom from work. Last night her car got broken into and I'm pretty sure I heard the sound of shattered glass in the middle of the night. And it wasn't even her car, she was borrowing it from her boss I think. Then we went to Melanie's brother's house to visit. Melanie has the cutest niece I've pretty much ever seen. She's 2 and absolutely adorable. I think we might even be baby-sitting her and her 2 older siblings tomorrow or thursday. We came home and had leftovers from yesterday, and I had to say goodbye to Melanie's mom because she's leaving for a trip to the south tomorrow. Then we watched a french romantic comedy, which I really liked.

From Marseille to Limoges

2011-08-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up in enough time to get ready to go to Limoges. Stephane had to work this morning so Sebastien took me to Marseille to see me off at the train station. Took the train from Marseille to Toulouse, which went pretty well. When I arrived in Toulouse, I was waiting to see which platform my train would arrive at, and this random guy walks by me and says "Do I know you?" and I was like umm no. I was kinda stumbling over my words, because I hate it when guys do this and it catches me off-guard. He wanted me number and I was I said I didn't have a mobile phone, and I said I was leaving Toulouse soon anyway. But I wanted to say "in your dreams"... these sleazy guys who always target me in France... it never fails. I don't even remember making eye contact with him. I think he finally got the message and walked away.

On the train to Limoges, I sat next to a lady who had her little girl who sat on her lap, and they kept moving between their assigned seat and open seats as people boarded the train. So naturally I was constantly having to get up to let them out and so on. Kinda annoying. Not to mention the trip seemed to take forever and it was burning up in the train. I was also starving, because I'd only eaten a sandwich I bought in Marseille and refused to buy another on the train because it's highway (railway?) robbery.

But it was great to finally arrive in Limoges. Melanie was there to pick me up and drove me to her place where I met her mom and the three of us had an excellent salad, wine, bread and cheese, and ice cream.

Tomorrow it sounds like we're just gonna chill and Melanie will show me around Limoges, since I've never been here before.

Updates for the last 2 days

2011-08-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a little hard to update the blog daily since I've been doing so much stuff and it's all been going so quickly. Yesterday I kinda accidentally slept in til around 1:15, and I thought Stephane and Sebastien were still asleep so I took my time, but it turns out they were up before I was and were already outside having lunch when I finally emerged. So we had breakfast/lunch with their parents (consisting of an excellent quiche made with mushrooms that they picked in the Alps on their vacation) and freshly made apple juice from apples they picked in the Alps too. Then Stephane and I went to La Ciotat to the beach were we met his friends. It was absolutely gorgeous. After we swam we had a drink at a restaurant nearby (more specifically, we drank Pastis). Then we went back to Stephane's were we all showered and got ready to go out. Of course it didn't take the boys long to get ready, whereas it took me at least an hour and a half. We left Stephane's and drove to Marseille, had some dinner, and then we had several rounds of drinks at an outdoor cafe. Then we walked to The Shamrock, which is an Irish dance-bar on the old port in downtown Marseille. I had a Guinness on tap for the first time in a long time, because I refuse to drink it that way in the US. I also had several glasses of rosé and we danced a ton. I always wanted to sing along to the music because a majority of what they played was America music but the boys kept telling me to be quiet hahaa. But they thought it was funny. Then we went down the street to the Trolleybus, which I actually really liked. Unfortunately Stephane wasn't feeling well around this time and didnt stay long with us in the Trolleybus and I was a little worried about him, and his friend Alex went to get his car so he could rest. I got tired too and probably headed back to the car around 5 or 5:30. We had a little bit of problems when we left because Stephan wanted to drive, and we wouldn't let him. So Stephane went home with Sebastien (because Seb met us in Marseille), and Alex drove me back to Stephane's in Stephane's car. I have to mention also that I was so sad because when I was walking back to the car to rest, I slipped and scuffed up the one of the sides of my brand-new stilettos. Hopefully I can have them fixed. We got back to Stephane's at around 7 am. In France you go out around 10 or 11, even midnight, and don't get home until as late as 8 am. The sun was definitely rising by the time we got back home. But that's completely normal. I wish Americans partied that way.

Then I crashed until around 2 pm. Today was a relaxation day. Around 4 or so, Stephane and I went to his friend's house to lounge in his pool and then we came back and Stephane got ready to go to a soccer game. While he was gone, Sebastien and I went to his friend's girlfriend's house, who also runs a pizza stand, and we hung out with her family, ate a lot of baguette, sausage, amazing dried tomatoes in olive oil, and had awesome pizza... and drank a lot of rosé and had a great conversation with the girlfriend's family and we watched the soccer game that Stephane was at. Unfortunately no one won and the score was 0-0. They asked me if it was hard for me to talk in French so much and I said no, because it's good for me. Seb and I got back around midnight.

I had to say goodbye to Stephane because he has to get up early for work and Sebastien will take me to the train station tomorrow and it's off to Limoges.

photos here

Les Rencontres d'Arles Photographie

2011-08-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

Today started rather comically. It was such a beautiful morning and Stephane has a magnificent view from his room, so I wanted to open the window and the shutters. But as I tried to open the shutters, I set off this crazy security alarm to the house, waking everyone up. It was embarrassing but hilarious. I had no idea or else I wouldn't even have touched it. But they told me it was completely fine. I joked in saying that it was an "American wake-up call". hahaha Then Sebastien and I had breakfast with his parents and we drove to Arles, taking a little detour to drive through Aix-en-Provence, a town I was in in 2006 and absolutely adore. We arrived in Arles and bought our tickets to the exposition and I think we may have visited about 10. The expositions were located all over downtown, so we did a lot of walking. We met up with Stephane after he finished work and saw another big exposition. When we finished, we had a beer, and then went looking for a place to have dinner. Seb told me had a place in mind, but I think they didn't have a place to sit outside, so we ate at a really good Italian place, but before we went to get another drink because there was an hour wait. That's when I had a conversation with a woman from New York and her husband (I forgot where he was from) because I heard them speaking English and they saw me having some difficulties with the mosquitoes that were biting me, and they offered me (first in French) some mosquito repellant. I told them I was from Oregon and the husband called his friend who lives in France because he was from Pendleton and we talked on the phone, because the man was so stoked that he ran into another Oregonian. Dinner was fantastic and I felt like it was really authentically Italian because the employees were Italian. I had tiramisu, which wasn't cake like in the US, but more like cream with cinnamon on top and a little bit of a cake part underneath. We drove back to Peypin. Tomorrow we plan on going to the beach, maybe meeting Milena at some point, coming back to Peypin to get ready, and then going to a night club either in Marseille or in Toulon... not sure yet.

photos here

Back to Europe

2011-08-18T01:07:00.000-07:00

Today started quite nicely as both my parents and Luke and his family came to say goodbye to me. Although I went through security a little late on the other side of the airport and had to slightly rush to get to the side where my gate was located. Turns out I had to wait on the side because if you check in online, you have to have your documents verified by an agent at the airport. So I basically tried to avoid waiting in lines, just to end up waiting at the gate while everyone else boarded and the people at the gate desk took their time to verify my documents.

Arrived in Amsterdam after a pretty decent 10 hour flight. I made a new friend who sat next to me, and he was happy to have someone to talk to since he was flying for the first time and was a little nervous. The food on the flight wasn't bad either. When I arrived on Amsterdam I couldn't see any screens to know where the boarding gate for my next flight was. So I tried to use this kiosk which only printed me a piece of paper saying the service wasn't available and that I needed to find a service desk. None in sight. So I just walked until I finally found the screens. Then security for whatever reason thought it would be hilarious to scan my carry-on suitcase about 3 times and make me open it up and take stuff out for them to inspect it. I've never had this problem before, and they said it was just because I had things they normally don't see. But still, I absolutely hated watching them take my stuff out and put it in those disgusting bins that everyone put their stuff in to get through security.

Paris went pretty smoothly. But once again I had issues printing my boarding pass. And security was much better too. And I'm so thankful I landed and departing in the same terminal, because with only one hour and 15 minutes between flights, I was kinda stressing.

Arrived a little late in Marseille, and Sebastien was there to pick me up. We drove back to Peypin. We spent the afternoon hanging out by their pool. Stephane came home later in the evening and we had dinner of roasted goat and ratatouille, which was delicious, with their parents.

Tomorrow Sebastien and I are going to Arles for a photography exposition and I think Stephane will meet up with us when he is off work. And I think we'll spend the rest of the evening there as well.

Quick update before heading home

2010-06-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

I flew into Paris yesterday from Munich and made it alright to my hotel. This morning I woke up at 6:45 and left by 8, only to get to the airport to discover that my flight had been canceled, because of technical difficulties, or so I heard. I was very NOT happy. But that's my life. I found a small group of other passengers on the same flight who were with an airport rep who had US Airways on the phone, and one by one we talked with them to reschedule our flight for tomorrow. I feel kinda bad because an older french woman on the flight asked me to talk to US Airways for her, which I was fine with, but the person told me to tell them that they had to wait till sunday to fly to Charlotte. I don't know why the rep didn't just say to take the flight for tomorrow. The others (a couple women, and a father and daughter) waited at the airline desk and they gave us all a voucher for a 4-star hotel (usually like 300 euros a night) and lunch and dinner for today, and breakfast for tomorrow. And we had a personal shuttle to the hotel, although we had to wait over 30 minutes for it and it's less than a 5 minute drive away. We each got our own room and I'm pretty impressed. We all had lunch and dinner together, and earlier in the day I went for a swim and had a bath after dinner. Tomorrow we're meeting at 8 am to take the shuttle back, because they said to be there between 8 and 9. So it hasn't been too bad. I just really, really don't look forward to tomorrow.

Mehr Deutschland und Rock im Park

2010-06-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was RIP. What a great weekend it was. I woke up at 1:30 am on thursday and we were on our way to Nürnberg by 4 or so, after stopping in Munich to pick up some people in our group. It rained the entire day. And when we arrived we had to park a little ways away, then we stood in line to get in for about 2 hours I'd say. It took us a while to find the others in our group who arrived before us saving our camping spot, but we finally found them. Then we had to get the rest of the stuff and set up. The rest of the day was spent trying not to soak and keep warm. I was so scared it was going to be like that for the whole weekend.
That evening when the rain finally stopped, we went and saw Rage Against the Machine. The next day we saw Bullet for My Valentine, In Extremo, Rise Against, and Rammstein. Rammstein was absolutely monumental. Best concert I've ever seen. I feel like I could have paid the 150 euros I paid for my RIP ticket, just to see them. It was that good. I think during either BFMV or Rise Against, there was a few guys who got on the stage and ran across it, and you could see it on the big screens... them and a security guard or 2 chasing after them. It was hilarious. I actually saw/heard many, many interesting things at RIP. The first night I was woken up by someone very loudly and very drunkenly singing a German partying song with a ghetto blaster. I saw one guy running around in nothing but a thong made of tape. And another guy in a green Bruno-bikini. I was asked several times if there exists a festival like RIP in the states. There's none that I know of, but I do know that a festival like RIP in the states would absolutely not fly. EVERYONE drinking publicly and many people running around nearly naked could only be done in Europe. And it's not like there were no cops. Cops were all over the place. On saturday we saw Cypress Hill, Jay-Z, and KISS. We pretty much slept in the grass between acts. When Jay-Z came on, it was totally without any warning and it scared the living crap out of me. I really didn't care about the first 2 acts that much, but KISS was cool to see, although their music is a little too old for my taste, but they're classic so I had to see them. Plus I had to get some pics and videos for mom, who was a fan of theirs when she was my age. The next day we saw As I Lay Dying, Gossip, 30 Seconds to Mars, Volbeat, and some of Muse, although not as much as I would have liked. They were the last band to play on the center stage and we wanted a little bit earlier to beat the people and the traffic. But I'm so glad we didn't stay another night, which was possible. Since the first day, the weather was wonderfully hot, but that last night, all this wind and cold and light rain came from no where. It wasn't too pleasant leaving as the garbage of 60,000 people was blowing all over the place. There was a ridiculous amount of garbage. It made me really sad. But I know that they probably have a lot of people who come in after RIP to clean. Somehow a toilet seat made its way near our tent as well. When we were at any concerts, we mostly just sat at our sight relaxing and drinking beer. The Germans don't mess around with their beer. I saw people bringing cases upon cases of beer. One of the days, we went to the waterpark nearby. I wasnt sure if I was going to swim because they told me it was a swimming hole or something, and I thought gross... I dont want to go swimming in a big puddle of dirty water. But it actually was a nice park with 3 pools. We swam a little then soaked up some sun. We left a little earlier than I wanted to, but it was alright. I'm just so glad we went, because I never showered when I was there. It was 2.50 euros and there was always a line. And I was gonna get super dirty anyway. On sunday, Andy and I got back to his house at about 2 am or so. I wanted to shower but was just way too tired. The next day went to Andy's girlfriend's house and the his friend's house to hang out. Then I got my stuff together and we went to Munich. I checked into my hostel, and I was pretty bummed because according to the website I booked on, I was supposed to have a single person room for 25 euros a night, but I'm in a 6 person room. I guess there was a problem with the website, is what they told me. But at least I get free breakfast every morning. And I got a free welcome shot too. Today I woke up early enough to just eat breakfast, then I fell back asleep and took some time getting ready. I went to my friend's house who I haven't seen in 4 years, and she had no idea I was coming, nor that I was in Germany, so she was quite surprised. Unfortunately we couldn't go out for a drink or something because she was working on a big presentation. Then I went back to the area of my hostel and looked around in the shops. I saw a dirndl store and wanted to buy one sooo bad. Then I found a grocery store to get some snacks, since I didn't want to buy dinner. Tomorrow Andy's girlfriend is supposed to come to Munich to show me around since she went to school here and has some free time. I'm looking forward to that.

more pics here

Many an Update

2010-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since my last post. Of my to-do list, I did get a french Guinness in Poitiers, and Marseille too. I never paid my hospital bills, which was only about 90 euros or so. But I didn't have any checks... Got 3 huge bags of stuff to Sylvie. Went to see Baptistère St. Jean, but didn't make it to Musée St. Croix. Last week I went out to La Grande Goule with Sophie and Marie and a random guy bought us each a glass of champagne. Twice. Sweet. The next day I went to the apartment of a few of the french girls who are coming to Oregon next year. The weekend before last, I spent in Niort with Sophie and her family, which was very enjoyable. It was fun to hear her family speak english and french all the time, since her mother is english and her father is french. Me, Sophie, her boyfriend Guillaume, her sister, and brother, all went to La Rochelle to spend the day and see the aquarium. Another day I went with her family to the "Marais Poitevin", where we rented a paddle boat and floated through these beautiful canals. The day before I left I tied up some loose ends with my insurance and bank and stuff, and went bowling with Sophie and Marie, which was really fun... but I lost both games haha, but it's been a long time since I last played. The next day I woke up pretty early to finishing cleaning and packing my bags, and I had to go through the room with mumble mouth. It was a stressful morning. Fortunately Sophie and Guillaume came and picked me up to take me to the train station, which was super nice. I appreciated the help, and I also liked not having to leave all alone. It was hard to say goodbye though, that's for sure. I made it to Paris ok, and I decided to take a taxi from Gare de Montparnasse to Gare de Lyon, which only has less than 3 miles between them, so I thought a taxi couldn't cost that much. But last Thursday happened to be the day that everyone decided to strike and the traffic was terrible and all the intersections were crowded and/or blocked, and the cops absolutely sucked at directing cars. So it took an hour to get from one place to another, and I paid 32 euros. I was not happy. Normally I would have taken the metro which is super easy, but with what's probably pushing 80 lbs. of luggage, and stairs, and people... taking the metro would have been extremely difficult. I made it to Toulon and spent the next 2 days at Milena's. We spent a lot of the time shopping and her boyfriend was really nice and bought me a new pair of flats because the soles of mine have become very unglued. The day i went to Stephane's, he asked us to meet in a town about an hour from where Milena lives, which was fine, but we didn't quite match up on a meeting time, so we waited for an hour, which didn't make her very happy. I felt pretty bad. But when I met up with Stephane, we went to the beach, and fortunately it was really hot, but the water wasn't. That night we went to his friend's house where we were going to stay the night because his parents are out of town. We left around midnight to go to an cool irish pub in Marseille with a dancefloor. I don't know what happened, but when we left the pub, we went back to Stephane's friend's house, got my stuff, then went to Stephane's house. I think what he told me is that is friend gets violent when drunk and Stephane didn't want us to stay there. We got to Stephane's house at around 7 am, slept till 12 pm, and Stephane, Sebastian (his brother), and I went to Cassis to look at the rummage sale they had going on. Today Stephane took me to the airport, and I flew to Munich, where I met Andy. I was soooo glad Lufthansa didn't charge me extra for my bags being heavy. According to their website, if a bag weighs more than the limit, it costs 10 euros each additional kilo. I was prepared to pay 100 euros or so more, but the guy at the counter didn't charge me. Maybe because I was just going to Munich and from Marseille it's only a 1.5 hour flight. It was really great to see Andy after 4 years. We drove through Landberg to go to his house. We were there for about an hour, and then we went to the grocery store to buy some beer and pizza, and then went to his friend's apartment which was right next door, and we played some PS3. His friend is coming with us to Rock im Park. I also got to meet his girlfriend, who is very sweet. We went into Landsberg all together to a few bars. It's sooo nice to be back in Landsberg after so long. I've really missed it. It's been a little difficult putting my brain in german-speaking mode after speaking french for so long. Tomorrow I'm going to town with Andy's mom and brother, because he had to go back to his university town because he still has classes. His mom is very nice as well, but she speaks very little english, so I'm going to really have to push my german-speaking abilities. But I think it will be easier after a few days. For the moment, I still automatically want to respond in french, and I kinda throw french words in my german sentences randomly. But I'm not too worried about communicating. Most people here speak very good english, and for those who don't, it gives me a good opportunity to practice. On wednesday, Andy will come back and we'll get together with everyone else that's going to RIP to guy more food and stuff and get better organized. I think on thursday we're leaving super early, like at 4 am, so we can drive the 2 hours to the RIP town and find a good place to camp, because there's going to be a lotttt of people.

photos to come

Getting ready to say au revoir to Poitiers

2010-05-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

I leave Poitiers in almost a week. I'm not feeling it yet, but I foresee my stress level as being on the rise. It doesn't help that yesterday during my appointment at the bank (to discuss closing my account), they destroyed my debit card. This makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable. This whole time I thought I could just tell them to close my account on a certain date, and I could keep my card to use until the account had been closed and then the card wouldn't work anymore. Non... ça ne marche pas comme ça. It doesn't work like that. Because of the fact that I'm moving out of the country, it's no longer even legal for me to have an account, because I'd be without an address. So now I just have to hope to god that the transfers from that account to my bank of america account will work, because I'm expecting close to 1000 euros in reimbursements. And I have to carry cash practically from now on. I received another letter in the mail from the CAF requesting a copy of my birth certificate. This would be fine, but the birth certificate can't be any more than 3 months old. I believe mine is pushing 20 years. I really don't understand what it's for, but now we have to order a new one. It just doesn't make sense to me... if it's legible and valid, whoooo caresss? I got a check today from Alena (Sylvie's assistant, who goes to UO) as a reimbursement for the excursion I couldn't go on with the rest of the kids because I was stuck in Ireland. That made me pretty happy.

On Sunday, I went to Bryan's party, which was a very nice way to spend the day. There was a lot of people there, even some of my professors. At one point we did have a little talent show with "spectacles". There was a man there playing a viola with an accordion that I believe was a friend of Brigitte, Bryan's host mom. I told him I played violin and was wondering if I could have a shot at playing his viola, even though I might not be able to do it. He actually happened to have a violin there too. So I played Ashokan Farewell for everyone. I didn't suck too badly. I probably could have played it by memory, but I chose not too, since I didn't get much time to practice, and I didn't feel like messing up.

Monday I had my last exam for professional translation. I think it went pretty well. I'm just glad it really was at 9 am, since I only knew that it was in a different room. The professor sent me an email telling me the room but not the time. So I just assumed it was at our normal class time. I was going to be very upset if it had actually been later in the afternoon or something and I would have gotten up and out of bed early in the morning for no reason.

So here's the rest of my to-do list:
-figure out how to pay hospital bill, because I can only send a check
-get a Guinness at a bar downtown... need to try the french Guinness and see if it's up to par
-give Caroline the bedsheet she let me borrow, and get my scale back so I can weigh and send another box of stuff home
-start bringing stuff that I wont be taking to Sylvie for kids to use next year
-see Baptistère St. Jean and Musée St. Croix
-make a page for Sylvie's scrapbook we're putting together for her

I may also go to Niort this weekend to stay with Sophie's family. That should be fun :) No official plans yet though. I went to Buck Mulligan's with Sophie last Saturday to try and get a Guinness... but they DIDNT HAVE IT. I can hardly call them an Irish pub now. They had Murphy's, which is similar, but it's no Guinness. Hence the part of my to-do list that mentions getting a Guinness. I found a bar that actually sells it... finally.

On Thursday I'm going to go to the Fac to help Séverine fill out her apartment application and show her how to navigate the online class registration system. She's a french girl I met who goes to the Université de Poitiers with me, and is coming to Oregon in September to study abroad at the UO. It feels good to help her out, because Caroline did the same thing for me and it made my life a lot easier. So I know how it feels to be overwhelmed with and trying to understand all this study abroad stuff.

That's pretty much it until I leave Poitiers on May 27th. My train leaves for Paris at 12:20 (from Paris I'll go to Toulon). At 10:30 that day, I'll have to do my "état des lieux" with a cleaning lady... I don't remember the term in english, but it's when you go through the room and look and record any damages. I'm hoping I'll have time to run to the Fac to give Sylvie a few extra little things like a hairdryer and stuff I'd give to her earlier, but would want to use right before I leave. After I leave Poitiers, there should be updates about Toulon, Marseille, Landsberg, Rock im Park, Munich, and right before I go home.

Life Update

2010-05-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write a little update since my Ireland post. A lot has been going one since I got back. At the moment I'm finishing up my exams, which have been going pretty smoothly, and the only one I actually have to know anything for is Wednesday. At the forefront of my thoughts is that I'm stressing out a little because I've got so many things to pay for, like my rent, therapy for my finger, hospital bill, and then paying to ship stuff home and for travel once I leave Poitiers. I'm still waiting to (hopefully) be reimbursed by Ryanair, but by the beginning of June I'm supposed to get a nice 400-500 euro check from the government for housing aid.

On May 27th I'm moving out and leaving Poitiers, and I'm going to Toulon to spend a few days with Miléna and then a few days with Stéphane in Marseille. Sometime before then, I need to make time to take a bunch of stuff to Sylvie, things like dishes and blankets, to give to students who will be here next year. I really appreciated getting free things when I got here, and I've got quite a bit of stuff that will make someone happy. Yay recycling. On May 31st I'll fly from Marseille to Munich, where my friend Andy will pick me up. I haven't seen him for 4 years. He still has a few days of school before we go to Nürnberg for Rock im Park, so I'll be staying with his family in Landsberg and he told me his mom is taking a few days off to show me around. That was so incredibly nice. It's not necessary at all... really, all I need is a place to sleep. But I'm excited for this. I haven't been to Landsberg for 4 years and know it a little bit, but it will be really nice to get a memory refreshing tour. I believe around wednesday June 2, we'll head to Rock im Park and get our camping site set up and such. I still have to get myself mentally prepared to see Rammstein, Rage Against the Machine, Rise Against, Slayer, Bullet for My Valentine, Lamb of God, As I Lay Dying, and HIM, among many others. I also have to prepare myself for potentially not decently showering for 4 days and getting very little sleep... because I already know that people are going to be partying 24 hours a day. After RIP I'll stay in Munich for 4 days just hanging out. I may try to get in touch with some old friends. The day before my flight back to the US, I'll fly from Munich to Paris CDG and stay the night in a hotel there. I could have flown into CDG the same day as my flight to the US, but with landing at CDG at 8:05 from Munich and taking off from CDG at 10:45, with having to pick up my luggage from the first flight, check it in again, go back through security... it may have been do-able but I would have had a chance of missing my flight home and would have been very stressed.

I'm a little bummed I wont get to go to England or Italy, but I know I'll make it there someday. There were other Americans who went to like 5 different countries during our vacations... I just don't know how they could afford it. I think they had friends studying wherever they visited, so that probably helped.

The fall catalogue for classes went up on April 30th. I'm pretty sure I get to register on May 19th. I've done what I think is the correct math, and I'm supposed to earn 28 credits from being abroad, which is half of what I needed before I came here. Meaning, I have 28 credits left, 8 of which are French classes, 8 are general education, and that leaves 12 credits of electives. So I basically have 2 terms left until I graduate. I've broken it down like this: 14 credits per term with 1 required French class (4 credits), 1 Psychology class (for gen ed, 4 credits), one 4-credit elective class, which for fall term will be "The Psychology of Gender", and then 2-one credit classes. For fall term, these are probably going to be a weight training/body sculpting class and a salsa or tango dance class with Luke. For winter term, I'm planning on taking my last required French class and another Psychology class, German 312 as my 4-credit elective, and perhaps yoga and another weight training class as my 2 one-credit classes. Organization and efficiency are my friends.

On sunday, Bryan (a guy in my program who goes to school at PSU) is throwing a big BBQ at his and his host mom's house for all of us in the Centre Oregon program. There's also going to be a little talent show. His host mom has a friend who will be there that has a violin that he said I could play if I wanted. I'd be happy to, but I have no music and I'm sure I absolutely suck. I haven't legitimately practiced in over 6 months. We'll see. I think I may try to look up online some sheet music I know and try to mentally practice.

That's pretty much it for the moment. This month is going to be an exciting/complicated one, so there will be much more in the way of blogs to come. I just know it's going to be such a relief when I'm finally on that plane back home. A bittersweet relief, but a relief nonetheless.

IRELAND

2010-05-03T11:43:00.001-07:00

I think I've finally worked up the stamina to write this post. So here goes: On wednesday, april 14th, I woke up at approximately 3:45 am. It was too early for me to take the day bus, and the night bus didn't come by my place at right time to take me to the train station. So I walked there all alone, which took me about 20 minutes or so and I took the 6:20 regional train to La Rochelle. When I arrived there, I walked from the train station to the bus station and took the bus to the airport. The La Rochelle is so pathetically small. I've never been to the Salem airport, but I can imagine the one in La Rochelle is smaller. As I was waiting at the gate I could hear people speaking with Irish accents, which made me excited and happy. Flying with Ryanair was kinda irritating to be honest. It wasn't too bad since the flight was only 90 minutes, but they CONSTANTLY were trying to sell you stuff, from scratch cards to smokeless cigarettes, which I'd never heard of before. I don't understand how a cigarette can be smokeless. I arrived and went through customs and it was a little funny because they asked me when I was leaving, and I told them that saturday, but this was when I was completely unaware that I would be leaving the FOLLOWING saturday. As I walked outside of the airport, I quickly realized they drive on the right side of the car and the left side of the road. The Dublin bus system is impossible to understand. All I knew was that I wanted bus 16a. Which I did find, but not because of the unhelpful info I got from a grumpy bus driver... not the best first impression of the Irish for me. On the bus, an older man sat next to me, and we talked a lot of the way. I told him I was a little confused about where to get off at, and he told me to get off 2 stops after he got off. Dublin bus stops don't have names, so I had nothing to watch for. I found my hostel pretty easily and checked in, put my stuff away, and updated facebook. I took a little tour of the Christchurch Cathedral across the street from the hostel, and had my first meal in Ireland at a mexican restaurant. I was super hungry and just wanted something familiar... even the price at 10 euros was something I was used to living in France. But I decided I'd splurge this one time, which turned into a few more times, and spend nearly $14 on a meal. I did a tour of Dublin Castle and did some more walking around, down to the riverfront. There's this souvenir shop called Carroll's which was huge. I found the Hard Rock Cafe and bought a shirt there, since I sorta collect them. Couldn't afford to eat there though. That night I ate at the bistro next to the hostel because a lot of places seemed closed. When I went to bed that night, my room was freezing. Day 2 there were still no other people who had been placed in my room of 6 beds. At breakfast, I learned how to use the weirdest toaster I've ever used in my life. It was like a box that got warm with a conveyor belt you put your bread on. That morning I walked to a hotel near St. Stephen's Green (a big park in Dublin) to meet my bus for my Wicklow tour. As I walked there I realized how incredibly nice it was to be in an english-speaking country. My bus was late, and it had me worried, because I'm just the type of person who would be unlucky enough to wait for a bus, and never see it, but it fact it came and went, but was around the corner and out of my sight. We stopped along the coast and drove out of Dublin and into the mountains. We went through Dalkey, which is where Bono and Enya both either live or have houses, can't really remember. The tour guide was telling us random things like how there was a blood drive called "a pint for a pint"... and for every pint of blood you donated, you got a pint of guinness. That's Irish motivation for you. I also learned that anything with "National" in its title is free to see. We stopped for coffee at a place called Avoca Handweavers, where I almost bought an amazing Irish wool scarf but didn't. When we were in the mountains, we went over the bridge that's in the movie "PS I Love You" which made me incredibly happy. We drove past Guinness Lake too and had a complementary shot of Jameson Whiskey. I should note that from the beginning of the tour, the tour guide told us that the previous day, there were about 10 people who talked the entire time, and he told us that if we needed to talk/translate, to do so quietly. Fortunately (sarcasm) I was sitting next to a bunch of French women who would never shut their traps. Apparently they didn't know that every time the tour guide told people to be quiet, he was talking to THEM. I almost wanted to tell them to shut up myself TAISEZ-VOUS MESDAMES PARCE QU'IL VOUS PARLE. But whatever. We stopped at a little village for lunch, and that's when I noticed for the second time that soup in Ireland has the consistency of apple sauce. We drove to Glendalough (Valley of the 2 Lakes) and saw the cemetery and monastery there. On our way back to Dublin, the tour guide told us some history about things like leprechauns and banshees. The Irish love to talk/tell stories and history, he said. But I also noticed this by myself. He said that the irish people believe the Kennedy Family had the curse of the banshee, since they were irish and so many of their men died. Then we listened to traditional irish music. I got dropped off at St. Stephen's Green and went to the nearby mall. I wanted to shop sooo bad. But didn't for the lack of funds and the fact that Ryanair only allows carry-on baggage to be 10 kg. I needed to buy toothpaste, and had to get cash from an ATM. The homeless in Dublin are pretty clever. They sit next to convenience and grocery stores and ATMs. Way to go making me feel like an awful person pulling 20 euros out of a machine while you beg for 20 cents. Food is SO expensive in Dublin. OMG. It was so hard not spending more than 5 euros each meal. I did finally find a place that did these chicken fillet roll sandwiches for 2 euros. When I went back to the hostel, and was waiting to cross the street, a man came up behind me and started laughing the most retarded, scary laugh I've pretty much ever heard. He walked away, and I turned to the women next to me and asked if he was drunk, and she said yes, but that this was Ireland. True... but it was also only 5:45 pm. Later that afternoon I went to St. Patrick's Church and the Guinness Storehouse, the most visited tourist attraction in Ireland. Unfortunately it was closed. I walked to what was labeled on my map as James Joyce's house of the Dead, which I thought would be something cool, but it was just a run-down brownstone. I later realized that this was probably just the setting for the last chapter of his book "Dubliners", which was called "The Dead". I read it in high school. I walked to a 24 hour convenience store thing for dinner, and that's when I first heard about the volcano explosion on the news playing on their TV. Craaaap. When I went back to the hostel, I noticed there was a place where you can get your own table with 2 taps in it, one being for Guinness, and you can just sit there and pour your own pints. Pretty cool. That night Lucas, a guy working in the hostel I met, asked me what I was up to, and I said not much. He told me he was going to be playing with some friends who asked him to practice. He plays the drums. So I went with him, and actually unfortunately didn't stay to listen to him play much, since they sent me and his irish friend Murph (Lucas is from California) to get beer. We got to the store 1 minute too late. So Murph and I went to "The Church" for a Guinness. This was my first one and it was like love at first sight. The Church was also super cool. An old church renovated with a huge bar in the center of the sanctuary and a restaurant and club. Pretty much the coolest church I've ever seen. By the time we were done with our beer, the guys were done practicing. Lucas, Murph, and I went to another pub and they bought me another Guinness. That was fun... I slept well :) The next day I got up purposely at 9:15 for breakfast which ended at 9:30, came back and slept some more, and ultimately got a late start. I did a hop on/hop off bus tour and got off at the Storehouse. I almost didn't do it, because I felt like at this point I'd spent enough money, but I'm so glad I changed my mind. It was a very cool place, 7 stories high and shaped like a Guinness Pint glass, with the "Gravity Bar" at the very top with a 360 degree view of Dublin. Included in my admission was a pint of Guinness, which I could have at the Gravity Bar, but I decided to get it from a another bar that let me and taught me how to pour my own pint of Guinness. There is a ton of very exact science that's behind the making, pouring, and drinking of Guinness. You don't do it right, then it doesn't taste right, or like it should. I even got a little certificate saying I poured the perfect pint. I took the bus again, this time to the National Museum with the intention of seeing the Bog Bodies. My tour guide told us about them, and they're bodies found in the bogs around northern Europe that are over 2000 years old, but very, very well preserved due to something in the soil in the bogs. But the museum closed right as I got there. That night I did a musical pub crawl, which was entertaining, but not as wild as I was expecting/wanted it to be. It was a group of about 20 people with 2 irish musicians and we were at 2 different pubs where they played for us. I was probably the youngest person in the group. Most of the people were Americans and my parents' age. Although there was a young married couple who I ran into on two separate occasions around Dublin. I only bought 1 pint the whole time, when I easily could have done 2 at each place, but at around 5 euros a pint, that really wouldn't have been very financially responsible. Day 4 I got another late start. It was weird because the day before, I came back to my room at some point and saw that someone had checked in and left their stuff. That night I went to bed and they still weren't there. I figured they were probably a couple of American girls who were going to stumble in drunk at 3 am. Actually no. These people came in at about 7:30 or so... I know since I heard my phone drop from my bed and I checked the time. They slept for a few hours and checked out. Weird. I never talked to them... just pretended I was asleep the whole time. Didn't want to have to socialize. The next day, day 4, I had to go to the airport and re-book my flight. At this point I'm pretty sure I had rebooked it for monday. But I eventually had to go back and book it a second time to fly out on saturday, a week after I was supposed to leave. Three north Ireland girls checked in that day. They were really nice. I went to Carroll's again and searched forever for cheap food. That night I had a failed attempt to find a bar for cheap Guinness. I pulled a Luke when, during my search, a woman standing outside a restaurant asked me if I was looking for somewhere to eat, and I told her no, I was looking for a bar. Something Luke would totally do... give people like that unexpected, honest answers. The next day I woke up and chatted with the irish girls. Went to the grocery store for lunch. Afterwards I went to the mall, and had to pay 20 cents to use the bathroom just because I wanted to wash my hands. Never done that before. I walked around some more, and that night when I got my usual chicken fillet roll, an arab/north african-type guy who worked there notice i was back. I told him, yeah I'm kinda becoming a regular. Then he kinda asked me out for pints. I was like, ummm. He thought I was being shy. Hardly. I was just not comfortable with that, and talked my way out of it. I was sly the next times I went back to that place to get food. That night I went for Guinnesses with Murph at the Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest pub, established in 1198. I ran into Murph quite a bit, since he's a tour guide and was also staying at the Kinlay House (my hostel). The next day I went back to the airport to once again rebook my flight. I went to the tourist office just for something to do. Came very close to buying a super cute pink Guinness shirt with a crown on it. I talked to Luke on Skype and finally found a really cheap grocery store on the other side of the river someone told me about, and just bought a loaf of bread, PB and J, orange juice, butter, water, bananas, and rice pudding. This was pretty much breakfast and lunch for the remainder of my time there. Day 7 I had a long get-go. I walked to the other side of the river, and found a super cheap clothing store, called Penny's. I had absolutely nothing to do, so I decided to see a movie, and took advantage of the fact that I could see a movie in english and saw "Remember Me", which I highly recommend. In the evening I walked to this pub where there was supposed to be live punk music. I walked there but there was a dude with a foot tall mohawk, and thought I'd stick out and feel awkward if I went inside, so I didn't. Day 8 I went to the bookstore next to the super cheap grocery store, and then went back to the super cheap grocery store to get a few more things. The Dropkick Murphys were in town and playing at a theater right down the street from my hostel, but I didn't want to pay 25 euros for a ticket, didn't want to go alone, all my cameras were dead, and I was down to my last set of clothing and didnt want to get all sweaty in a moshpit. I didn't mention yet that I wore the same clothes for about a week... I absolutely refused to pay 7 euros to do a load of laundry at the hostel. I also sent home my shotglass I bought, since I didn't think I would be able to get through security with it, since you know, I totally look like the kind of person who would break it mid-flight and try to kill someone. Psh. Around day 9 or so, I walked to the Jameson Distillery for absolutely no reason, just because I wanted to see it at least. I talked with Joe, a guy from California who was also stuck in Ireland like me. We talked with some german girls too. That night I went to a nearby bar with Joe, Murph, and Lucas. The morning of day 10, 4:30 am a guy from reception comes into my room asking if I was going to the airport. I said no. The reason for this was because I told Lucas to call the shuttle to come pick me up at 4:30, but they messed up on which morning I wanted, so the guy came looking for me. I didn't realize this at first, but after he left, I looked at the time and that's for sure what happened. I had to change rooms that day, and I switched to a 4-bed room that had an old lady staying there already, which I was completely fine with, I've just never seen old people stay in a hostel before. I guess she was touring by herself like I was. I bought some postcards and mailed them off. And I bought a day-pass and took the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) along the coast out of town and got off at any stop that looked interesting, walked around, took a picture if my cell phone would let me, and got back on. When I got back, I met up with Murph and we went to the same bar we went to the night before, and I ended up singing 2 karaoke songs, after about 3 Guinnesses, a couple of Bailey's and a Baby guinness. It was my last night in Ireland. Had to go out with a slight bang. By the way, the thought that the Irish are alcoholics isn't entirely a stereotype. I saw a lot of advertising for responsible drinking and for as much as Murph told me he liked to drink and the guy I encountered at the cross-walk, it makes it even less of a stereotype. The next day sucked. Plain and simple. I took the shuttle which came to pick me up from the hostel at 4:30, which was incredibly convenient for the 7 euros I could have paid for a bus I would have had to walk to. When I got to the airport, I started putting on a lot more of my clothes and stuffing my pockets with as much as I could, in an attempt to lighten my suitcase, because I wasn't sure if they were going to weigh it or not. Anything over 10 kg has to be checked and there's like a 40 euro fee to do so. But I went through security without being weighed. I think they were just so busy and backed-up from the delays and cancelled flights that they just didn't care. I flew back to La Rochelle, and re-traced my footsteps to the train station. They wouldn't refund my train ticket I bought before I left, that I couldn't take because I was stranded, so I bought a ticket for the next train to Poitiers, which was leaving about 10 minutes later. I could have gotten a train ticket for later at a cheaper price, but I didn't care. I just wanted to go home. I arrived in Poitiers, took the bus, and finally got home at 12:30. During this time I was missing the excursion that all the other Centre Oregon study abroad students were on. Sylvie sent me an email with some options for maybe catching up to them the evening after I got back to Poitiers, but it really wasn't worth it, and I was dead tired. Now I've had to worry about getting compensated for expenses from Ryanair. At first they said they wouldn't pay anyone anything, but the European Union requires them to. They've said they'd reimburse the cost of the cancelled flight. But I plan on sending an additional thing to the EU requesting about 200 euros to pay for my accommodations and food, like Ryanair is supposed to pay for by law.

So all in all, I learned a lot about traveling alone. I know I love Ireland, and how I totally should have been born Irish, and could almost live in Ireland and it would feel like Oregon. Except I know I'd probably die, when I stand at a cross walk and step out in front of an oncoming car because I have the tendency to look in the other direction for an oncoming car. No wonder they print "LOOK LEFT" or "LOOK RIGHT" on the street at crosswalks. But I think what I realized the most is that I don't particularly like traveling alone. While it was more peaceful than traveling with someone, it was also incredibly lonely and I felt really vulnerable. I think that outweighs the peacefulness and makes me think if I travel to another unknown country again, it shouldn't be by myself. Because you experience too much to not be able to it share with someone.

Pictures from album #1 here

Pictures from album #2 here

Ireland post coming soon

2010-04-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

I got back from Ireland finally on saturday, and having been there for a week and a half, I have quite a bit to say, thus requiring a good amount of time to write a proper blogpost. But I'm pretty sure I'll finally have enough time to do it this weekend. The rest of this week is going to be a busy one.

My new favorite song

2010-04-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

Much belated updates

2010-04-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

Sooooo... I've been wanting to make a post since Luke left, but have just been too occupied to write anything of quality. Luke's time here was a great one, but packed full of things to do. I left Poitiers to go to CDG the night before he arrived. I was easily able to find my hotel shuttle and I had dinner in a restaurant right next to it, which was insanely overpriced for a small piece of slightly cold chicken breast, green beans, bread, and dessert... like 11 euros. But you gotta eat. Or else it would have been a baguette and apple I brought along. I had a hard time sleeping that night. One of those nights where you think you just lie in bed all night just with your eyes closed. I think I woke up around 3 or 3:30 because Luke was supposed to land around 5:30. I got a text from him around 5:00. I headed to the airport and found him pretty easily, which was one thing I was concerned about. I probably got some stares in the airport when I practically attacked him right after I saw him as I walked around the corner. They don't really hug in France. Or jump on people in over-excited joy. Usually the most you get is the famous two-cheek kiss, which I gave him also. We went back to the hotel and I let Luke take a little nap before we went downstairs to have a buffet breakfast for less than 5 euros, which was very reasonably priced in my opinion... compared to the hotel we stayed at the night before he left, which was 20 euros for breakfast (I'll express my disappointment in this hotel later). After we checked out, we went back to the airport, where we got RER tickets (the region Paris train) and took it to Gare Montparnasse. From there we took the métro to our hostel, which had me a little confused because we had to find it from the opposite side of where I found it the last time I stayed there. We couldn't check into St. Christopher's yet when we got there, so we left our luggage in their extremely small luggage room. After ditching our idea to go to Versailles (because it would have easily taken half the day, is a trip to get to, and Luke didn't even really know what it was anyway), we went to the L'arc de Triomphe. We walked down the Champs-Elysées some. I originally planned to walk all the way down to the Place de la Concorde, but that was much further than I knew. So we just went into Louis Vuitton and walked past the Maison du Danemark, which absolutely necessitated a photo with Luke since he has Danish ancestry. I think by that time Luke was pretty pooped, so we went back to the hostel, checked in, and took a nap. That night we went on the Bateaux-Mouches, the boats which go up and down the Seine. I hadn't done that since 2006, and it's a nice way to see a lot of Paris' most famous landmarks. The next day we walked down some of the Canal St. Martin, which our hostel sits right next to. We just so happened to stumble upon a super cheap grocery store, which was pretty much a miracle for Paris. Luke bought a thing of juice and was drinking out of it as we walked. Very not french. Very Luke. Ha. Oh well. We made our way to Parc des Buttes Chaumont, a really beautiful park I happened to find out about during my research of what to see and do. After that we took the métro to the Canal St. Martin location seen in one of my favorite french films, Amélie. Unfortunately we weren't able to go stand on the exact canal bridge. We did get to see a long skinny boat make its way through the canal, and the guys having to run around opening dams in the canal and flooding sections of the canal so the boat could pass. It was hilarious to watch this duck who was obviously very confused when the boat began to sink with the water level. We went to Pigalle, walked past the sex shop in the film, and went to the erotic museum. Needless to say, that was a unique experience. Only in Pigalle haha. We stood outside Moulin Rouge and took some pictures. We couldn't afford the 90 euros per person show. Sad. Someday when I'm richer and older. We walked up the hill right beside it up into Montmartre, where we went to Café Les Deux Moulins, the café from Amélie, and had crème brûlée. I was in heaven. If you've seen the movie, you should know why. When we were done we booked it to Notre Dame to try to make it in time for the last group to go into the belltowers. Since I've never been able to find where you go for the belltowers, I ran inside to ask where to go, and the lady was actually pretty rude in saying "it's outside and around the corner but you're too late". I ran out there and it was pretty much right at closing time, and they'd already cut off the line. I was livid. Mostly because it was kinda my own stupid fault for not managing time better, and also since I'd always wanted to see it and had never been able to. And I really wanted Luke to see it since he loves the Disney movie. I felt bad for Luke afterwards having to put up with my adult temper tantrum, but I just wanted it to go right and this kind of stupid stuff happens to me all the time. So we just went inside and I could let the solemnness of the church calm my nerves. Luke helped a little bit too :) After that we booked it again to the Louvre. I read online that it closed at 6. We made it there by 5:15. When we got inside, I noticed none of the ticket booths were open. I asked information what was going on and they told me they w selling tickets at 5:30. I checked my phone, which had the exact time, and it was 5:20. I could have bitched and complained to them, but that would have done absolutely no good. I've just learned that in France, things close before they close, at which point I just broke down. I hate crying in public. Thank god for big black sunglasses. At least Luke got to see the lobby. Oh boy. The Eiffel Tower was next. I wanted to go up all the way to the top so bad. They stupidly had only TWO pillars open, one being the elevator, the other the stairs. Of course, the elevator line spanned the entire bottom width of the tower, and easily would have been a 3 hour wait. At this time of the day, my feet were killing me since I was wearing flats with 0 support. I almost convinced myself to suck it up and take the stairs but Luke talked me out of it. We stood beside it and I took pictures of him in his halloween french costume. Unfortunately he FORGOT his béret. We walked across the street to the crêpe shop and got a lemon one which we ate on the side of the river. On our way back to the hostel, we went back to the cheap grocery store and got some dinner food. We had every intention of going back to the hostel, taking a nap, waking up around 10 and going to a club next to the L'arc de Triomphe until around 3 or 4 am, but Luke passed out. I did too eventually. And I knew it would be complicated taking the night buses getting back and the next morning we had what should have been a train at 11:45 to go to Nice. The next morning we checked out, took the métro to Gare de Lyon, and when we arrived, we saw that our train wasn't posted on the departure board. I stood in the information line and asked what was up. The guy told me the train had been "annulé"... cancelled... and for unknown reasons. Maybe not enough tickets sold, but 9 chances out of 10 it was because of some sort of strike. That's how you get things done in France. The next one was in 5 hours. Thanks God... glad to know you don't hate me. So we sat for a little while trying to figure out what we were going to do. We decided to ask if there were lockers since we couldn't go back to St. Christopher's and expect them to hold our stuff after we already checked out. We paid almost 10 euros for a locker for our luggage and went back to Notre Dame, where we waited for I don't know how long... maybe a little less than 2 hours... to go up to the belltowers. We almost gave up on it, but we finally made it. I was pretty excited. The bells rang right when were on the crossing between the two towers, which I have a video of. Loud. I was just so glad we did actually have another chance to see it. That's pretty much the only good thing that came from a cancelled train. I got some pictures of Luke with the gargoyles and I got a video of him singing the song from Notre Dame song from the movie without him knowing haha. Precious. When we were done we walked past the birdman, who's always standing outside Notre Dame feeding the pigeons. And then we went around the outside of the church to admire the architecture. We tried the Louvre again. Went there with all these hopes of having another chance to see that too... but I forgot that it was closed on tuesdays. And didn't remember this fact until we got there. So tell me why there were so many people just chillaxing outside and what seemed to be people going in? Luke and I sat around the fountain around the pyramid for a while, then went back to the train station. By then it was almost time for our train. It was a little nerve wracking since we were told to just find a place to sit since we no longer had official reserved seats. But come hell or high water I was determined that we were going to get first class seats, since that's what I booked. Fortunately for the whole ride, no one got on the train to wave their ticket in our faces and say we were sitting in their seats. Luke slept most of the way, which was fine. He still wasn't used to the time difference I think. Meanwhile I had to call our hostel in Nice to tell them that we were going to be arriving after the reception closed. Thank god I took the time to print out the hostel info from the website I booked it with. We arrived at midnight, basically cutting us short of precious Nice-time by about 7 hours. The walk to the hostel wasn't bad at all, about 15 minutes. We had to use a code to get into the building and then a code to get our room key out of a safe. The hostel was very old, but charmingly so. I was happy with it. We got our stuff into the room and then took the 2 minute walk down the street to the beach and the Promenade des Anglais. There was NO ONE. Much deader than what would seem normal to me for France. People start to go out at midnight. The next day we basically just walked around. Went to the beach again and near the water, where I almost lost my flip-flop in the tide. We went to "Vieux Nice" (the old part of Nice) and walked through the streets. Bought 3 baguettes at a bakery, and Luke had one entirely eaten by the time we found a grocery store to buy things to make sandwiches. We bought ham, grated Emmental cheese, crème caramel things, and a cheap peach champagne which was delicious. We sat on the stairs going to the beach and had lunch. When we were finished, I took Luke to the park with the carousel which was right next to the hotel I stayed in the last time I was in Nice. I think after that we walked around some more then went back to the hostel where we took a nap again. In the evening we went back out for another walk. Found a decently priced grocery store where I made Luke buy a reusable grocery bag for his mom, because I knew she'd love it. That night we were going to give going to a club another go, but again we were too tired. The next morning we took the train back to Paris so we could go to Poitiers. This time Luke could see the Cote d'Azur coastline since last time it was night. In Paris we had to slightly hurry to take the métro from Gare de Lyon to Gare Montparnasse. As our train left Paris, it started to pour rain. That's another thing (one of the few) that went in my favor. Not being rained on in Paris. When we arrived in Poitiers, we took the bus back to where I live. And we had dinner in the RU ("Restaurant Universitaire"), which I think Luke was pretty impressed to get a decent meal for under 3 euros. We also met up with Caroline, a little reunion between fellow Ducks, which was nice. The next day we kinda had a late start, but went to Leclerc to get some groceries because I had almost no food, and later in the afternoon I took him to the university where we met up with Sophie and I introduced them. That went pretty well. We had the intention of going to Futuroscope after that, but it continued to be rainy and cold and I figured we'd try the next day. That night I took Luke around town some, near the river and such. I wanted to take him to La Grand' Goule which is a really awesome club very very close to where I live, but again we were tired and it was windy and rainy outside and it sounded like a better idea to us for me to just cook dinner and watch Amélie. The next morning we thought we could get up early and get to Futuroscope when it opened and get back by around 2. Yeahhh no. Way too tired and it was still rainy and cold. So we went to take a walk in the afternoon. I took Luke to Cathédrale St. Pierre and we went to this café Caroline recommended that had excellent hot chocolate. It cracks me up how they serve sugar with it here. Always... and despite being american and being used to everything being packed with sugar, I actually like it the way it is. We caught our train around 4:15 back to CDG. Got to the place where our shuttle was supposed to be, and it came, but it sort of pulled up, and as I walked up to it to get on the driver kinda of waved me away, turned around, and then parked on the side of the street for about 15 minutes. Then he let the people off the bus. I walked up to some people, a father and teenage daughter, and asked them in french what was going on with the bus. They were actually american and I sort of intimidated the poor girl at first haha. I actually can't remember the reason why he pulled over and just sat there, but then he came for us and we got back on the bus. Luke and I talked with the father and daughter on our way to our hotel. When we got there, there was only 1 girl at the front desk checking people in and answering the phone. Once we finally got up to the desk and checked in, we found out the pool closed in 20 minutes. I should note that the ONLY reason I booked this hotel and decided to pay the 20 or so more euros to do so was BECAUSE it had a pool, and I thought that would be a nice way to relax and spend the evening. Also, I swear I booked a non-smoking room, which was completely booked, so we had to take a smoking room. Nice. We got to our room, which had the air conditioning on (trying to air out the room maids?) The smell wasn't too bad but it was noticeable. We opened the window but that didn't help much. We decided to have dinner in their Irish restaurant downstairs with its ridiculously overpriced food. But we hadn't spent much on food the entire trip. I got some mexican thing and Luke got some chinese thing and we shared. I was not impressed. The quality was pretty horrible and the portions were tiny... but I guess you have to compare the american and european definition of portion size. I was surprised that the vanilla crème brûlée was decent sized. Later that night, Luke needed to try to get his tickets printed, so went to see how much internet was. EIGHT euros for THIRTY minutes. I've never ever seen internet prices that high. He found out he could just print it at the airport. I probably looked like a dumbass when I asked them if we were charged to even watch TV, but honestly I felt like we were going to be charged for everything we did in that hotel. The next morning there were 2 people at the desk both with lines, so Luke got in a line and I got in the other. I would have reached the desk first, but then as the guy in front of me finished, this indian guy came out of absolutely no where and cut in front of me. I figured maybe he was in front of me but standing to the side and I just didn't notice him, but Luke said he definitely cut. All he wanted to do was do a currency exchange for like a ridiculous little amount which took about 20 minutes. During this time the shuttle came and left. He saw me getting anxious and said "don't worry i'm taking the shuttle too" i said "yeah but it's gonna leave". I said to the guy at the desk that we were in a hurry and just wanted to check out. I felt bad for him because he was going as fast as he could and looked a little flustered when I said that to him. I didn't want to look like a total elitist bitch, but I was PISSED. I should have said something, but it caught me off-guard. So Luke reached the desk from his line first. They tried to charge us for our dinner again. We paid for it the night before. She kept listing the things she thought we had at dinner, none of which was ours. Luke showed her the receipt and it was ok, but still. Seriously, get your S together. Never ever staying there again. To catch the shuttle we had to run to a neighboring hotel and it almost drove off as we were running up to it. When we got to the airport, I found out that because it had turned to daylight savings time the night before, we were there an hour earlier than we should have been. I changed my phone's clock because I figured all the clocks in the room and the hotel hadn't been changed yet, and that my phone wouldn't automatically switch. After that things went pretty smoothly. I was just a little mad though because we got to security and of course it was packed but the line looked like it was going pretty quick, but Luke insisted that he go. But it was 2 hours before his flight. So we disputed that for about 15 minutes. After a difficult goodbye, I found a wifi center and paid 3 or so euros for 30 minutes of internet, which timed out and I didn't check my email to get the password to sign back in. So I paid 3 or so euros for about 5 minutes. Lovely. Then I went to the train station in the airport. And sat for about 4 hours. Got back to Poitiers and basically cleaned and felt alone for the rest of the day. Despite all the difficulty, I'm so glad Luke got the chance to come see me. I'll try to get videos posted after vacation when I can upload them from school with a fast internet connection. It takes me about 1.5 hours to upload about 30 seconds of video with my internet connection. Feels worse than dial-up.

But here's the link to all the photos on my facebook... my photos and Luke's photos.

Other news: Starting today, I have 2 weeks of vacation. I originally wanted to go to Italy for a week and then the UK for the next week, but quickly realized I absolutely do not have the funds for that right now. So I'm staying in Poitiers this week, so I can get some homework done, start going to physical therapy for my finger, and keep my hospital appointment for next friday. Now I'm thinking the second week of my vacation I might go to London and hopefully Dublin. Unfortunately I have to go alone, but that's ok as long as I'm not dumb about it. I've talked to a lot of people who have traveled alone and they say it's fine and sometimes even better than traveling with someone. I can't just sit in Poitiers the whole time and do nothing. I think I could maybe go to Italy after I get done with school in mid-May. Go visit my friends in the south of France, then go to Italy, then up to Germany and then go home. I will be completely satisfied at this point in my life if I can see England, Ireland, and Italy while I'm here.

Tomorrow I wanted to go with Lucie to Bordeaux to do some vineyard touring and wise tasting. But unfortunately I called to late to try to reserve a place and the woman told me she "believed" it was full. Bummmerr. So I'll just have to try again sometime before I leave France. A little spendy... 60 euros for the tour and the round-trip tickets to get there, but I think it would be a neat thing to see.

I'm officially legal. On the 31st I finished the process of getting my visa finalized. It included getting my lungs scanned to check to tuberculosis (yay for healthy lungs... something not so common in France), and then a nurse and doctor exam, where they did the normal stuff and asked me about my meds, past illnesses, family medical history, and pricked my finger for a blood sugar sample. Then I just gave them all the paperwork they wanted and they glued another thing into my passport. With that I've opened a CAF file, which is a thing with the government which will subsidize my housing, paying like 100 euros a month. I'll get a nice reimbursement check when I leave I think.

I had a german test yesterday which went a little better than I planned, but I think I really sucked at the whole "translate from german to french" part. The prof allowed me to use a dictionary, which helped a little. But translation from german to french is soooo hard. I told the prof I was considering dropping the class since everyone in it has been studying german for about 8 years... about the same amount of time that I've studied french. She told me to take the test and see how I do and then decide from there. So I don't know what's going to happen with that.

I start physical therapy for my finger on monday. Truth be told, I probably should have started it the week I got back from the hospital, but I got busy, then Luke was here the next week, and then this week just took some time to get Sylvie to call for me to get it started. It's healing pretty well though. All the stitches are gone and I think the scar is going to be pretty small. The problem now is that I can't bend it like I used to. I can write pretty well though. But that's what the therapy is supposed to fix. They said it would take 6 weeks to heal anyway. I'm supposed to wear the stupid brace thing they gave me, but I haven't been because I literally could do nothing with it on. And it's dumb to sleep with it on because my finger falls out of the little sling it sits in. I'm thinking that, like my hospital stay, the treatment has been a little over-done. I never got the pain medication, bandages or anti-biotics like they told me too. They said I would need a nurse to come to where I live every 2 days and redo the bandages. Not necessary. And I never had any real pain that would have made me need a prescription pain killer. And I kept it very clean.

Last night I went to a surprise birthday party for a thrown by a french girl for a french girl I met. They both are going to UO for a year in september. Meet a lot of french people and it was a pretty good night. I swore I wouldn't be there very long, but I ended up staying there till about 2:30 or 2:45 and walked home with Caroline. We got approached by a north african guy who I think asked us to get a drink, and we were both thinking hell no. Who honestly just sees people walk by and asks them to get a drink? You yourself have got to be drunk.. he probably was. Whatever... as long as you don't pursue us... do as you please.

So that's pretty much it for now.

"If not a tattoo as a lifelong souvenir, why not a scar?" or, "Why God created plastic cups"

2010-03-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

These past 2 days have not been fun ones. It all started around 9:15 pm on Sunday. I was washing my dishes after dinner, and as I was washing my glass, it slipped from my hand and as an automatic reaction I tried to grab it before it broke. I guess it hit the sink and broke before my hand reached it and that's when I cut the top of my middle finger of my right hand, from my knuckle all the way down to where my finger meets my palm. It didn't even really hurt when it happened. It started bleeding ridiculously and I was concerned that it was like a situation of a cut wrist, loosing a lot of blood quickly. But after it happened, I did feel like I was going to pass out. I called Caroline and she came over to help me. She asked if there was any french student on my floor who we could ask what to do. I said the girl across the hall, so she knocked on her door, and it just so happens that her boyfriend was there, who is in medical school and had a car, so he took me to the hospital. I was very lucky, because if there hadn't been anyone, I would have either had to call Sylvie, which would have made me feel really had since it was late and she lives really far outside of town, or I would have had to suck it up and wait until the next day to go to the hospital. Once I was there, I had to wait maybe 20 minutes or so before I was called back. They started by what they said would be 10-15 minutes of soaking my hand in an antibiotic, which turned out to be longer than an hour. Then a nurse guy came in and hand me flex my hand, which made it continue to bleed like a faucet. Then bandaged it up and left me in the room. It was maybe between 12 and 2 am when they took me back for an x-ray to see if there was any glass in my hand. The x-ray showed nothing. Then I waited some more, and finally around 4 am, another nurse came and put an I-V in my arm and finally I was wheel-chaired to my bed where they said I would spend the night. The next I woke up to them taking my blood pressure (which they seemed to do every single hour I was there), then I was accompanied to the shower, and had to wash with this weird iodine-looking stuff. I did not feel clean after that. Not to mention that I hadn't even brought any clean underwear. I didn't know when I left my dorm that I'd be at the hospital for 2 days. Then around 11 or so, I was taken to the anesthesia room. They injected some hard-core numbing medicine in my arm which completely deadened it. I also felt like loopy too. But I wasn't put out. The surgery lasted about 20 minutes. I didn't see or feel a thing. Thank god, because I didn't want to. I was hoping I would have been able to have this done the night I came in, but the surgeon wasn't in at that time. After that I just chill-laxed in my room, reading magazines a library lady came to lend me and TV channels in french, german, spanish, italian, and arabic. The only 2 channels in english were BBC and CNBC, which were both extremely boring. All they talked about was stocks. They'd taken out the old lady I was sharing the room with for her surgery I guess, so it was nice to have the room to myself. Sylvie came and saw me for a while and brought me crispy M&Ms and mint mentos, which made me happy. Eventually the lady from Social Security came to talk to me about how I was gonna pay for all this hospital stuff. This was a conversation I wasn't too excited about. She kept asking all these insurance questions I didn't know jack about and kept asking me about how much money I was receiving and stuff. It was just annoying and I gave her Sylvie's number and she said she'd be back the next day. Last night I would have slept pretty well, but I swear the nurses were coming in every 10 minutes to take my stupid blood pressure and waking me up every single time. I'm pretty sure my blood pressure isn't gonna change between then and the other 50 times they came in to check it. And I hated the I-V. I guess it was for an intense pain killer, but geez... this whole thing seemed like a bit much for a finger cut. It was actually a little more than that though. I cut it so deeply, I sliced a tendon as well. It was sick, I could literally *lift* the patch of wrinkly skin that covers my knuckle. Before I left, I was taken to the place where they make casts and stuff, where they made me a sort of brace for my forearm and finger. It's to hold my finger in the right position so the tendon heals the right way. The Social Security lady came back. Oh joy. Thankfully she got there the same time Sylvie did, and they figured out that they would send the bill directly to my parents and they could take it up with the insurance company, because I didn't want to deal with it. I hate dealing with this official financial business when it's in *english*. Everyone seems to think that I wont be able to do anything now. They were all concerned if I was going to be able to dress and feed myself, do my grocery shopping and cleaning. Please. It's one finger I can't bend and I have 9 others that work fine. Granted it's not easy. But the stitches are the kind that will eventually fall off within 15 days and the brace I'm supposed to wear for 6 weeks. Today when Sylvie took me from the hospital, we kinda sorta forgot to, check-out? The nurse called me about 6 times to tell me that I left without signing papers, getting my pain killer prescription, and my bandages. I called her back and I think she was kinda pissed, maybe not so much at me, but at Sylvie. She tried getting me to come back there this evening by asking me if I knew anyone who had a car and could drive me back there. I told her no, because I don't. And honestly I'm not gonna die if I don't have liquid vicodin in my body for 24 hours. They're so insistent here, and it's kind of annoying. After I get my stuff from the hospital tomorrow, I hope they leave me alone. Unfortunately if I do end up starting to hurt really badly before tomorrow, I can't take the ibuprofen that I have because she said it would make me bleed. Ok? Never heard that one. So the lesson I've learned? Plastic from now on.

Soirée à Toulouse!!!

2010-03-11T10:18:00.001-08:00

I received a CD in the mail a few weeks ago that Stéphane sent with pictures from our "soirée" in Toulouse. I was pretty excited. Here's a few:

More pictures here

Mein RIP ticket ist angekommen!! :)

2010-03-04T12:33:00.000-08:00

I got my RIP (Rock im Park) ticket in the mail a few days ago. I received a slip in the mail saying they tried to deliver it to me and that I needed to go get it from the post office, and I didn't really know what it was I was picking up, so I was surprised when I read that it came from Germany. I was surprised they sent it with an "envoi en recommendé". I don't know how to say it in english, but it's when you pay extra to send something so there's a guarantee that it gets there. Maybe because it was international mail... I don't know. But I am so super stoked now!!!

Some new songs I'm in love with

2010-02-23T15:04:00.000-08:00

Vacation and News

2010-02-23T13:08:00.001-08:00

This past week was vacation week. I really don't know why, because we have only been in school for a little less than a month. Mais bon. On the 15th I left Poitiers to go to Toulouse. My friend who lives in Marseille was going to be there visiting his brother. I got packed and can never seem to do so lightly... it's just impossible. I got to the train station just fine, but I looked at the departure board and saw that my train was 2 hours late. This was a problem because I had to change trains in Bordeaux to go to Toulouse. So I talked to someone at the desk and he told me to take the next train to Bordeaux, which was also 2 hours late, but I only had to wait an hour and a half or so. I was kinda bummed because I could have gotten some more sleep. When I got to Bordeaux, my original ticket said I had 10 minutes to get from one train to the other. Before I left Poitiers, I was told to just take the next train to Toulouse. So I found someone who worked at the train station on the platform and he happened to be standing next to the train I needed to be on. They were aware about the connection issue and gave me a 1st class ticket for the Téoz train, which wasn't the TGV, but still fine. I sat next to a man who told me why the trains were 2 hours late. Someone at a train station in Paris was trying to commit suicide on the tracks, and since most trains come from Paris, most all the trains were late, causing a big fiasco with the police, fire department, etc. Way to go. Someone told me that there's really only 3 reasons why the trains are ever late: 1. someone was trying to commit suicide, 2. someone committed suicide, or 3. snow. So I arrived in Toulouse 3 hours later than planned, and Stéphane was there waiting for me. His brother lives about 5 minutes away from the train station. And omg his apartment was the most quintessential french style ever. Old wood floors, tall skinny windows that open like doors with shutters, and antique doorknobs. I meant to take pictures but forgot. Stéphane's twin brother Sébastien had 2 roommates, both named Zoé, and one of them plays violin, and one night she showed me her violin and I got to play it some. The day after I arrived, Sébastien took Stéphane and I on a little tour of Toulouse. We went into the town hall and some art galleries and did some shopping. Toulouse is known as the "Pink City" because of all its brick architecture.
That night Stéphane asked me if I wanted to go to a club, but it was like 11. I forgot that people go out here around midnight. We didn't go because I was just too tired and not really prepared. The next day we just hung out and got ready for the little "soirée". They invited about 20 friends over and we played beer pong, which was so much fun to teach them. I think I went to bed around 5 am that night and slept till 2 the next day. Thursday Stéphane and I rented bikes and went on a little ride around one of the rivers. The weather wasn't the best, but it was still nice. The next day I woke up at around 6 because Stéphane and I took an 8:00 train to Marseille, where he lives. After we arrived in the station, we waited for his friend to come and pick us up. We were randomly approached by some undercover "policiers" (cops) who searched Stéphane for drugs. It's so prejudiced in my opinion that they just pick out people who look a certain way to see if they have anything. I was in shock for most of it and didn't really know what was going on. I think they could tell by the look on my face that I was foreign and innocent. They searched my purse because I was with him, but they went through his entire bag and patted him down. They asked me if I smoked "le shit" (seriously, that's the word for weed). Stéphane told them I don't smoke, and I told them that as well. It turns out Stéphane did have a little bit of weed on him but he wasn't arrested. They just took it from him, thank god. I had no idea the police did stuff like that. After his friend picked us up, we went to McDonald's for lunch. I think they think it's weird that I'm American and will not willingly stuff my face with Big Macs and french fries. I had a salad, yogurt, and water. His friend then took us to where Stéphane's car was parked. We drove around some and we went up to the Notre Dame de la Garde, which is a basilica looking over the city. We drove around town some more and we picked up Stéphane's friend Max and went to Cassis, which seemed like a quiet little town. But I'm sure it's very busy with tourists in the summer. We walked around there for a while and had a beer. Around 5 we left to drive to Toulon, where I met up with Miléna, my french homestay sister from 2006 who I hadn't seen for 2.5 years (the last time being the summer of 2007). I said goodbye to Stéphane and her boyfriend picked us up from her university where I met her, and we went back to her house about 30 minutes outside of Toulon, in the country hills. We got there and started to get ready for a dinner party at Miléna's friend's boyfriend's house whose parents were out of town. It wasn't a crazy party or anything. We went to the grocery store beforehand to get some wine and desserts. The house was amazing. It's 200 years old. I decided to be a creeper and take a few pictures. I couldn't help it. I had a good time seeing some of Miléna's old friends. The next day we went into town to go shopping. I didn't buy anything. I hardly bought anything the entire time. I'm desperately trying to save money for when Luke comes. Anthony (Miléna's boyfriend) picked us up and we went to some odd store that reminded me of some sort of craft store, but with home stuff, among other things. When we were trying to get parked before we went in, Anthony almost backed out into a car that was passing behind us. I kinda jumped and screamed out of reflex. He said I was right because he didn't see the car. He asked me if I was scared and I said yes because I was in a bad car accident when I was younger and now have a permanent fear of them. When we got back to her house, we watched the rugby match between Toulon and Toulouse on TV. That was the first time I'd ever seen a rugby match. Quite a weird sport, like a mix between football and soccer. Toulon won. We ate dinner with her parents afterward and then went to see Sherlock Holmes in the theater. They were worried that it would be no fun for me if I couldn't understand but I told them no, I understand the gist of things and listening to it is good for my ears anyway. It was a pretty good movie. I didn't think I was going to like it, but now I want to see it in english. The next morning I got up and ready for my 11:30 train. Miléna and Anthony took me to the train station and waited to wave goodbye to me on the platform. Odile (Miléna's mom) was so cute and gave me a lunch before I left with a ham and butter baguette, 2 fruits, and water. I hope I can come see them again before I come home. Daniel (Miléna's dad) said I should come back when the weather gets nicer. Provence was decently warm (compared to what I was used to in Poitiers). I was basically going from the San Diego of France to the Alaska of France in one day. Someone tell me whhyyyy I didn't study on the Mediterranean??? There isn't a train that goes directly from Toulon to Poitiers, so I had to take the train to Paris (a 4 hour ride), which brought me to Gare de Lyon. I had to take the Métro to Gare de Montparnasse, which was really easy, I just needed a map, which I got from the information desk. While I was on the Métro an older man started talking to me asking if I was coming back from/going on vacation. I told him I was going home. I don't know why he started talking to ME. I wasn't looking blatantly foreign at all. The only give-away is my blonde hair. I was wearing a black coat with a scarf, skinny jeans, and heeled ankle boots... very french. I always get kinda apprehensive when people (especially men) talk to me randomly like that. I made it fine to Gare de Montparnasse but had to wait for the platform number to be posted, which they post 20 minutes before the train leaves. I swear I suffer from an acute form of dyslexia. On several occasions while driving with Luke he'll say "go left" and I start to go right. My point is that on my ticket it said my car was number 19, but somehow I read 16, and that's the car I went to, and didn't understand why someone was sitting in my seat. And then I realized... looking like a dumbass. I made it to my seat and realized that I had put above what I thought was my seat the birthday present Miléna gave me. And had to go back and get it. Did I mention that I also have a short-term memory problem and am very forgetful? I didn't mention before, but Miléna gave me a bath set from Sephora and a Marilyn Monroe shirt, which was super nice. So I made it to Poitiers, waited for the last bus that would take me home as planned. While I was going home, on the train and such, I realized I couldn't immediately find my dorm keys in my purse. I like to make sure something is definitely missing before I start to panic and freak out. So I called Caroline (my friend from high school who lives in my dorm too) and told her i might have possibly lost my keys and if I could crash with her for the night if need be. She said that was fine. It wouldn't have been too bad since I had all my stuff with me. But I discovered I had left my key in my door when I'd left since I was all stressed about getting to the station in time. So they key was sitting in the door lock for the whole week. I wasn't too concerned that someone came in and stole my stuff. I live on a floor with a bunch of girls who seem really chill and keep to themselves. I'm just sooo glad I didn't loose them. I know the residence would have charged me some ridiculous amount of money to replace the lock in my door and my mailbox since the keys are together.

So that was my vacation in a nutshell. More pictures here.

In other news, I have a cold again. Not so awesome. And it doesn't help that I was exposed to a considerable amount of second-hand smoke over the vacation, much to my dislike. It literally makes me feel sick. School is going pretty well. I have to give a small speech this week in my oral expression class about a tradition unique to my country. So I think I'm going to talk about thanksgiving. Since everything in the US is pretty much everyone else's business, it's kinda hard to find many traditions which are unique to the US that people from other countries don't know much about. Stuff at school has finally smoothed out I think. I've finally got a concrete schedule and in a couple of weeks we have mid-terms. I looked online today at the UO website and it says that for registering purposes I'm technically a senior, which is exciting. But I only have 124 credits, and you need a minimum of 135 to be a senior. I think it has something to do with study abroad. A girl came knocking on my door this morning as I was trying to get ready for class trying to sell me books for France Loisirs. I didn't know what she wanted at first and she asked to come in, so I let her. She asked me if I liked to read, and I said yeah... and she asked me what I liked to read, and I really couldn't tell her. I like to read but I dont do it so much for pleasure because I do it so much for school. She ended up trying to sell me books in the Twilight series. I told her honestly that I don't have a lot of money right now. I think she got the hint and left. That was irritating. I bought my ticket for Rock im Park today. So stoked. It's long been a dream of mine to go, and this year is the 15th anniversary, so it's 4 days long!! Better buy me some earplugs. One concert I can handle... but 4 days of them? I know I'll walk away deaf. Once I have more money I need to buy my train tickets to Germany. Most likely I'll be in Germany until I have to come home. It just sucks I can't change my plane ticket to leave from Munich rather than from Paris. It would save me a considerable amount of time and money. Later this week there's a dinner party at Sylvie's house (she's our director for study abroad and kinda like our "mom"). It's for all the kids in the Centre Oregon program and their host families. She asked me to bring veggies so I gotta go to the big grocery store tomorrow and hopefully find a pre-made veggie plate of some sort like the kinds back home. On saturday some of us kids in the centre oregon are having a cake party where I live, I'm pretty sure. Everyone's just gonna bring cake and drinks of some kind and french friends they invite. Should be fun. Other than that I'm just looking very much forward to March! :)

Snow Snow Go Away... But otherwise, YAY!!!

2010-02-11T13:48:00.001-08:00

So we've been experiencing some weird weather in Poitiers. In the last few days we had a few little flurries of snow, but then yesterday as I was taking the bus to Leclerc (which is like walmart only bigger) it started to become a full-blown blizzard outside.
And then I woke up today to see that it had snowed even more during the night. I mean I like the snow and everything, but I'm going on vacation on monday and I'll be super upset if everything gets messed up because of the snow. I'm so tired of it being so fricking cold here. I'm too ready for sping and summer.

Speaking of spring, guess who's coming on the first day of spring?? March 20th Luke will be arriving in France to spend his spring break with me! :))) I'm so incredibly excited. What's basically going to happen is that on the evening of the 19th, after I get out of class, I'll take the TGV to CDG where I have a hotel room booked. The reason I had to do this is because Luke's flight gets in at 5:30 am, and the earliest TGV from here to CDG leaves at 8:30 on that day, getting me there at 10:30, which means Luke will have had to wait in the airport for me for 5 hours. And I'd feel awful if he had to do this. I could have also taken the last train on friday, get to CDG around 11 pm and wait for him for 6 hours. Then we'd have to wait even longer till we could check into our hostel at 2 pm. So doing what I'm doing, it makes commuting a whole lot easier (staying next to the airport vs. in paris), and it's actually cheaper than booking a hostel room in paris. Plus check out isn't till 12 from the hotel, so Luke can come back and take a nap and a shower if he wants. So we'll be in Paris for 3 days, staying at St. Christopher's. I stayed there when I went to Paris in January. It's really new and nice.

Then we'll take the TGV to Nice. I've booked us 2 nights at a hostel that's a minute's walk from the beach. I hope it's decently warm.

After that, we'll take the TGV to Poitiers, which entails going back up to Paris and then down to Poitiers. While we're here, I'll show Luke where I live, maybe take him to the school (however I will NOT be attending class this week... it's not going to kill me at all), and I'm hoping to make it to Futuroscope. Maybe we'll take a day trip to La Rochelle. I was there in the summer of 2007 for a music festival, and it's a really nice little town on the Atlantic coast. Luke loves mussels, and they have great seafood. I hate seafood for the most part, but I think he'll be in heaven.

On the night of the 27th, we may have to take an evening train to CDG and stay the night at a hotel because his flight leaves at 11:30 the next day and since it's a sunday, the train doesn't leave early enough for us to get there at least 2 hours before his flight. We'd get there 45 minutes before his flight if we took a train from Poitiers to CDG the day of his flight. Not a good idea. But this part is still being figured out.

I just hope he's ready for the best spring break of his entire life!!! I am.

2010-02-05T10:01:00.001-08:00

Behold the new crêpe pan I bought for myself a few days ago!! This will make much better crêpes than a stupid frying pan. Much more "à la française". As you can see it's a lot flatter and has a much wider diameter. I totally didn't need it, but I don't see crêpe pans like this at home. And it's a pink-ish color. I just couldn't say no.

I also made a couple new French friends at school today. I met Sophie in german class. She came up to me and started to talk to me because she knew I was american and she speaks practically fluent english because her mom is from the UK. Then I met Thomas in my interpretation class. Somehow in class we got to talking about sports, and after class he asked me if I ever watched the superbowl. I said occasionally, and he invited me to watch it with him on sunday. The only bad thing about this is that it's on TV here from midnight to 4 in the morning. I have a 9 am class on monday. So when/if he texts me, I'll have to tell him I can't. Plus if it were only going to be us 2, I really wouldn't feel that comfortable. I have absolutely no intention of dating while I'm here. And I went to Monoprix after I got out of class so I could print my train tickets for my vacation. I'm super excited now. I guess I didn't explain the whole story yet. The funny thing is, I feel like I've hardly gone to school at all, and we get a vacation this month from the 12th to the 22nd. Just randomly... I don't know. School hasn't even been in session a month. So I'm taking advantage of it and going first to Toulouse to meet my friend Stéphane who will be there visiting his twin brother, then after a couple days, we'll go to Marseille where he lives. Then come friday night, Stéphane will take me to Toulon, where I'll stay with Miléna and her family for the weekend. They were my french homestay family during my first trip to France in 2006. I haven't seen them in 2.5 years. There's no way I could have stayed in Poitiers. It's a nice town and everything, but I need to get out.

Monday is not my friend... and other realizations

2010-02-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

I decided that mondays are the worst they've been for me in a long time. At least I have no classes on wednesdays and 1 class on thursdays that only meets 2 or 3 times a month. But still... Today I woke up at 7:00 and this is what I saw
I don't like being up before the sun is. Then I was at the Fac for 9 hours straight today. I had 4 classes with about an hour or so in between each. All of them were pretty good EXCEPT my last class, which was medieval literature, that I was going to try to take so I could get the requirement of taking FR 317 (medieval lit) here instead of at home. I was told it was easier to do it here. But those people must have taken a lit class that was for exchange students. This class was a regular class for actual french students, and I tried so hard to understand and take notes, etc. But by this time I was tired and my comprehension level had gone wayyy down. Basically the teacher went on and on about the stories and the types of prose we would be reading, with a ton of what seemed like technical vocabulary I didn't know. Towards the end she started throwing out all these page numbers and apparently there's a book I would need to buy and I honestly didn't catch what exactly we had to do for homework. The teacher seemed nice and everything, but I just don't think I can survive in this class. I know this would be the one class I would absolutely loathe throughout the entire semester. I hate literature classes like this anyway. So I think the final verdict is just to take it at home. I'll hate it equally as much, but I'll have to do a lot of reading either way, and I'd prefer to not be clueless. I feel kinda bad because I happened to sit next to a girl from Canada, who obviously wasn't from Quebec, because I totally thought she was american. If I drop the class, I'm pretty sure she'll be the only foreigner in the class, but she seemed to have a handle on it. She was taking all these notes on her computer and wasn't scared to ask questions.

This all being said, I've come to another conclusion. After 8 thorough years of study I can neither understand nor speak french as well as I thought I could. And I feel like a idiot. I can speak and understand retard/baby french. Where it's slow and uncomplicated. Not everyday conversational french between two native speakers. Not such an awesome feeling after you've devoted so much of your time and energy into it. It's very depressing.

And my last conclusion for the day: my degree in french will be practically useless, because I am realizing more and more that i could never do professional translation for a living. I enjoy doing it, but I don't believe I possess nearly enough grammatical/lexical knowledge to do it right and trust myself in doing it. I've never been good with either of these things. And teaching is out of the question because i can't do that either.

It's kinda sickening knowing that everything you depended on for your future success has practically been annihilated.

Some funny pictures

2010-02-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

These signs were above the washer and dryer in the laundry room. You don't even need to speak french to know how awful this is haha

This was written on the sign at the bus stop. at the top it says "The rich are going to pay". Sounds like some sort of political thing. I thought it was interesting.

Funny weather we're having...

2010-01-30T14:13:00.000-08:00

Today I woke up to pull back my curtain and see that it was snowing outside. That was quite a shocker. Unfortunately it all melted before i was able to take a picture. It started to snow again later, and i'll post a video i took. But today I saw snow, rain, clouds, and sun. It was really weird. The weirdest thing about it is that Poitiers is like Salem, it hardly snows. But there was snow on the ground when I got here and snow again today. This picture is just of the sun going down.

beaucoup plus compliqué que nécessaire

2010-01-29T14:13:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't been doing any blog posts lately, but things have *slightly* evened out to the point where I don't need to write about me getting up, showering, eating, and going to school everyday. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened lately... except for a few days ago when I was walking downtown with two girls from Slovakia who live in my residence. We walked past a bar and there was a full blown band (the type with horns and drums and stuff) and a bunch of people dressed in very weird costumes. I tried to ask one guy what was going on, and I really couldn't understand him. It would have been a lot easier to if it hadn't been so loud around there. What's funny is that that was the ONE day where earlier I thought to myself "I don't need to take my cameras in my purse today... I won't see anything worth bringing them along" and this ONE time that I don't, I run into this. That's my life. But I was able to take some pictures and some crappy video with my french phone (my iphone doesn't take video). I'll eventually upload it and add it to this post.

Besides that I've just been trying to get my class schedule figured out. How it works here is that every student already has a "path" of study, and all their classes are pre-set for them. For us, we get to pick and choose whatever we want to take. That's just fine and dandy but the problem is deciding WHAT to take, and all the other logistical factors, like if it's the right level, what kind of credit will I get back home for it, etc. This process has NOT been fun or easy. I was about ready to lose it monday. All week any class I've attended has just been a test run. That's what they suggested we do. It's just so different than home. At home it's so nice and easy and organized. You go online, see all the classes with their times, locations, descriptions, etc. and register. Here I've been kinda deciding what to take by word of mouth. As far as I know, the classes are not posted online. You need to go to a specific bulletin in the school to find the schedule, and finding the stupid thing has been half the battle. And then there's knowing what you're looking at/for once you get there. Since there's so many different year levels, and types of study (I'd try to explain, but it's seems so complicated, and I really don't even understand it). I've had so many questions this week, and it's been tough because I'd really like to go see Sylvie (my director lady for the Centre Oregon) but she's always so busy and I don't want to bother her with my stupid questions everyday. I know that's what she's there for, but still... I feel like a nuisance. I still feel like I have so many unanswered questions. And here's another little challenge: they like to change class times and room numbers. This wasn't so awesome for me when I was 30 minutes late for my german class. What happened was that last week, when Sylvie suggested the class, she told me it was either in 1 of 2 rooms, but she couldn't exactly remember which one. So today I tried both, and I got there early for this reason. I went to one of the rooms, and there was a class going on inside. I waited until 4 (when my class was supposed to start) and no one left the room, so I figured that whatever class was going on in there was going from like 3 to 5 or something. So I went downstairs to the other room. Locked. So I got Sylvie and we went on this big chase asking all these people where the room ought to be. Turns out it was in the first room I was at the whole time, which made me look like an idiot. And then I get there half an hour late. Because they changed the time.

So this is one of the seemingly numerous examples of pretty much everything here being much more complicated than necessary. I could go into the whole situation of me moving into my dorm, and the money situation with my french bank account, but I can just make a few long stories short and say that these situations both were also much more complicated than necessary.

Ever since I got here, I feel like someone who's skiing, being dragged by a boat, and just can't get up on the water. I hope I can get on my feet soon though. I think I will enjoy life a lot more. I didn't expect this to be easy, but i also didn't expect to nearly have to lose my sanity over it either.

Day 14- 1/22

2010-01-22T14:59:00.001-08:00

Today I got to sleep in until 10:30... when a guy from Orange knocked on my door. Basically long story short, my cell phone quit working. I went to the Orange store and they gave me a number to call. I went to Sylvie's office to ask her to call for me but she wasn't there, but her husband was. Leo was really nice and called for me and they said they could have another one delivered to me the next day. I left my old phone at the concierge just in case I wasn't here and there they could swap and I would pick up the new phone later. The guy went to the wrong concierge I guess, they gave him my room number, and came up to my room looking for the phone. I told him it really was with the concierge and i went downstairs with him and exchanged phones. I'm so glad to have a new one because before i got my own internet cord and not having a functioning phone, i felt really disconnected. When i got back to my room i fell back asleep and dreamt that i slept in till like 6:30, but i only slept in till about 1. For the rest of the day I just kinda chilled because this was the first day in quite a while since i've been here that i could just do whatever i wanted and had no plans. I thought about going downtown to look for a black scarf, but really didn't feel like going anywhere. At 6:00 pm my time Luke got online and I was able to talk to him through skype. I had a webcam in my computer so he could see me but I couldn't see him, but he's gonna get a webcam next week hopefully. My parents are probably going to get one set up too. After I talked to Luke, I went to the kitchen to get my milk from the fridge for my cereal (dinner) and ran into 2 girls from Slovakia that have only been here a few days and don't speak any French but really good English. There here on the Erasmus program and they said their courses should be taught in English, but other than that I really don't know how they're going to survive. There are French people who speak English, but a majority of them don't speak it well, if at all. In my opinion they should have gone to England or Germany, or really any other Germanic-language speaking country. After talking to them and having dinner, I went back to my room to upload more photos and finally got photos from day 7 on picasa (see day 7 for the link). At 11 my time Luke got back on after going to classes. We haven't talked in a while so there was a good amount of stuff to talk about. As for tomorrow, I plan on sleeping in and maybe going shopping.

Day 13- 1/21

2010-01-21T06:18:00.000-08:00

I really didn't want to get up this morning. I got up and all nice and ready and actually sort of dressed up because I decided I wanted to look more French today. I got all the way to the university, went to where I thought my german class was, and the door was locked and there was no noise coming from inside. This is the part where I remember that there's only CFLE classes this week. Crap. But this was a good opportunity to go see Sylvie. It turns out Sylvie wasn't there, but her husband was. I actually needed some help because my cell phone hasn't been functioning correctly. It's a touch screen and although I can press the side buttons and make it light up, it does nothing when I touch the screen. it's like it quit sensing when it's being touched. I went to the Orange store the other day to ask them what to do and they basically gave me a help line number that I needed to call from a landline, so I asked Leo and he talked to them and explained the problem for me, for which I was very grateful because while I think I maybe could have managed talking to them myself, I also ran the risk of not understanding and not being understood. And this is kinda important. Like everything else, getting a new phone is unnecessarily complicated. I can't just go to the Orange store, show them the phone doesn't work and my receipt, and get a new one. I had to make an appointment so that someone from Orange comes out to where I live to pick up the old phone and give me a new one. This is a tiny problem because I'm pretty sure I'll be at the fac when they come, so I left my phone with the concierge (as Leo said they said I could do). They made me write a note saying that they could accept it and if anything happened to it they weren't responsible. While I was there I told them I still needed a femme de menage to come and inspect my room for me. But mumble mouth was there and came with me to my room to do it for me. He's getting slightly easier to understand, but I know I will never ever understand him perfectly. I went downstairs afterwards for lunch. I'm still out of the loop as to when exactly meal times are around here, and there was no one in the cafeteria but they told me there was a pizza place upstairs that I could eat at. There wasn't anyone there either, and they didn't have pizza at the time so I had a kabab and fries. Now I'm just chilling out in my room and trying to get caught up on photo unloads. I might go out tonight with some of the girls, but I don't know yet.

I should take the time to describe where I live now. I live in Roche d'Argent, which is a "Residence Universitaire" or university residence. It's only 2 bus stops from downtown, which is really nice, and about 15 minutes on the bus to the university. I live on the third floor, which is a 6 flight of stairs climb, but thats ok. It's warmer up here. And the view is awesome.

As you'll see in the pictures, I have a big long desk, a twin size bed with huge drawers underneath, a ton of shelf space, a good sized closet and window, and my own bathroom, which is teeny tiny, no bigger than a train bathroom, but it's my own bathroom and I'm glad to have one. There's a nice kitchen on every floor and I have my own little space in a refrigerator that I lock with a padlock. For laundry I have to go down this really old castle-like corridor. I actually have to go through one end of it to take another door to go upstairs to the main lobby, and at night it's really dark and scary. I think I said this before, but I live near Cathedrale Saint-Pierre (construction begun in 1162) and Baptistère Saint-Jean (construction begun in 360... yes, 360 years after Jesus). I think I also live next to a museum of some sort. I should visit it sometime.

more pictures here

Day 12- 1/20

2010-01-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

Today I had no classes so I went to the bank for my 11:00 appointment to set up some sort of renter's insurance. That took awhile. One thing I've learned is that I hate signing important papers when I don't know what I'm signing in English, let alone French. I've been doing what seems to be a lot of that sort of thing lately, which I feel like is something that should have already been taken care of by the Centre Oregon. It just makes me really uncomfortable. I checked my mailbox before I left and found that my pin had arrived so I took that with me and got my card while I was at the bank. Unfortunately everyone in France is 1) always stunned that my name is Mackenzie, because they always thought it was a last name, and 2) they think it's spelled Mackensie, so that's how it appears on my card. Awesome. After that I took the bus out to god knows where to the art school to possibly get into a sculpture class, and I got to the building(s) but had no idea where I needed to go, and every door I tried was locked. It was almost 1, the end of the time that I could talk to them, and just gave up and took the bus back to Roche d'Argent. I came back to my room and got a little cleaning urge so I washed my dishes and swept the floor. I wanted to go shopping with Caroline, but couldn't get ahold of her. I've been having real problems with my phone. It's a touch screen and right now it's been deciding when it wants to actually work and do anything when I touch the screen. It did at one point work, and I called Caroline but it went to voicemail. Before I left I dropped off the rest of my papers to the secretary I can barely understand. That went ok. At one point in the conversation I think he was trying to tell me that I needed to pay more than the 70 euros I was giving him (which is what he told me to come back with during our first encounter). He looked at his records and turns out he was just being retarded. Surprise surprise. Then I went to Leclerc myself. This place was kinda strange actually. It was a huge wal-mart type store, but it was also connected to a mini-mall, but it's all like the same store, I don't even know. There was so much stuff, it was overwhelming. I probably spent over 2 hours there. My biggest accomplishment there was buying an ethernet cord so I can have internet. The past 2 days I've been borrowing Caroline's. When I was checking out, I had picked up some apples, but the register lady said something about me having to go back and get the price. So I did and came back and told her it was 1 euro and some-odd cents. But she said what I needed to do was put the apples on a scale and then I guess it gives you a slip that you give the cashier. So i was just like, I'm sorry I'm new in France. Like they couldn't tell. I just told her to keep the apples since I was not going to run back a second time. I took the bus back home, and was excited to have internet. I went on facebook and saw that Emily, one of the american girls I went to Paris with, had a blog. So I went there and started reading. Turns out she posts a whole ton of crap about me behind my back. Like, really, really mean stuff. I could go off on a tangent right now, but need to keep this blog readable for certain people. I just told her that I couldn't believe how two faced she was, and that it was kinda sad because I had really liked her and thought she was a hilarious girl to be around. It wasn't long before the other girls started sending me apologies on facebook, because they were there too and Emily mentioned them talking about me too. Apparently Emily had told them all that I'd read the post. I'm not mad at them. I mean, I could have been incredibly annoying, ditzy, and blonde during the trip. But Emily was the last person I would expect to rant on me like she did. I did see that she took the stuff off her blog, but I haven't heard from her. And I honestly don't ever care to again.

Pictures

2010-01-20T13:27:00.001-08:00

I know this is like the 3rd time I've said this, but I'm still in the process of uploading pictures. I've added some to my earlier posts but I've decided that from now on I'm only going to add a few of my favorites to the post and then add the entire day's worth of pictures to Picasa (an online photo album for those who don't know) and then just add the link to the album in the post. In time, every post should have an album link with it, so if you want to see earlier pictures go back to my earlier posts and find the link.

Day 11- 1/19

2010-01-19T15:15:00.001-08:00

Today I had to go to the Fac at around 11:30 because I needed Sylvie to sign and stamp a “caution” form which is basically a co-sign form. I took the bus back downtown to get 70 more euros that the secretary needs. I went back to Roche d’Argent to give the guy all the papers and the money, but the office was closed and didn’t reopen until 2, which is when I had class. So I left in time to go to my “Comprehension Orale” class, which was actually pretty good. We worked on identifying different accents of French within France and the world. That was difficult. It’s a small class. The class was 2 hours then I had about a 30 minute break so I went across the street to a cafeteria and got a sandwich. It was pretty dead, which is weird to me for it being a college campus cafeteria. It was really weird to me that they served beer there too. My second class “Les Visages de la France”, which is a French culture and society class, started at 4:30 and was 2 hours. We did an activity where for each letter of the alphabet, we had to try to come up with something that’s specifically French that wasn’t a person/place, for instance for B a lot of people put “baguette”. When the class let out I went home and started to thoroughly unpack. I feels so good to not live out of a suitcase anymore. Caroline came and visited me and let me borrow her internet cord again. We were going to go shopping today, but we’ll go tomorrow afternoon.

Day 10- 1/18

2010-01-19T15:02:00.001-08:00

Today was an extremely exhausting day. I woke up at 7:30, had breakfast, then had to throw all my stuff in my suitcases because check out was at 10 and I had to be at the Fac at 10. I went to the Fac for the class orientation. That was interesting. I basically found out that I can pretty much take whatever I want. Although if I wanted the “Diplôme” I’d have to take specific required classes. I decided not to because I’d rather take about half CFLE classes (classes for foreign students) and half direct exchange. I went to lunch with Caroline and Lucille. We had crepes for super cheap. That’s a nice change after the weekend in Paris. I met with Sylvie afterward to discuss what classes I’ll take. I’ll take an oral comprehension class, a French culture class, a speaking class, a German class or 2, translation classes, and hopefully a sculpture class. Caroline has been a godsend today. She took me to the bank to get some paperwork for moving into Roche d’Argent. We went to Roche d’Argent, and I had to sign a lot of papers with this secretary guy that I could hardly understand. He has some sort of speech impediment or just mumbles terribly. This did NOT put me at ease as I was trying to sign important documents in another language. He mumbled something then said something about paying either 400 euros or 900 euros, and I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I had assumed I had to pay nothing since it all should have already been taken care of. Caroline called Sylvie and she talked to him and set him straight. It was like magic. He was ready to make me pay a full month’s rent plus deposit. I needed pay a little more than 300 euros, which was deposit and half month’s rent. This was a little unexpected and Caroline helped me about in paying and I absolutely intend on paying her back as soon as I can. He also gave me an “état des lieux” form, where I need to go around my room and mark anything that’s damaged. I’ve done that before and I forget what it’s called in English. The problem is I don’t think I posses the vocabulary to be able to effectively fill out the sheet, so I need to have a “femme de ménage” (cleaning lady) go through it with me. I found out I needed some sort of proof of something from the bank, so we went back. It also turns out that I couldn’t yet get my bankcard because they sent my pin to Roche d’Argent before I arrived, and Roche d’Argent didn’t have it. I had to re-request it, and in a few days when I receive it, I’ll have to go back to the bank and give them the pin and they’ll activate and give me my card. So much more complicated than necessary but I’m learning that’s pretty common with anything in France. We went back to the Espace Kennedy where I got my stuff (they kept it locked in a room for me during the day until I could pick it up). With a lot of effort, we brought my stuff to my new place. I really really like it. I have a huge long desk, and nice big window with a really nice view, and closer, lots of shelves, and my own bathroom, which is unfortunately no bigger than a train bathroom. It literally seems like it’s about 3.5 x 4.5” big, maybe even smaller. But I’ll live. The bus that comes by here fortunately goes right to downtown (only 2 stops away) and in the other direction goes directly to the university, so getting around is very easy. I live next to Cathedrale Saint-Pierre, which I wasn’t aware of when I was there the other day. I also live next to Baptistère Saint-Jean, a church that was built in 360 (no, that’s not a typo… not 1360… 360). I need to go visit it sometime. Once I got back, Caroline let me use her Ethernet cord and I was catching up on internet stuff till 2 am.

Day 9- 1/17

2010-01-19T15:01:00.000-08:00

I packed up after breakfast since checkout was 10 and called Luke. It was so nice to hear his voice. We went downstairs to hang out a while since we had all day to do stuff until our train came. We ran into Stephanie, the other girl in our room, and she said she was going to the catacombs and we decided to go with her. It was only 4 euros but it was pretty creepy. We took so many steps down, and there were tons and tons and tons of bones.
Afterwards we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower and looked at it from a distance for a while then went looking for food.
Every café we saw was so expensive and I said that most likely we would have to get food from a grocery store but they wanted a place to sit down. We eventually found a decently priced Italian place. We went back to the Eiffel Tower when the sun went down and those merchant guys are trying to sell key chains and light up Eiffel Tower statues were everywhere. We went underneath it and that was cool. As we were walking away across the bridge towards the metro stop, the light show started at 7. It only lasted about 5 minutes, which isn't long enough in my opinion.
We went back to where we were earlier in the day and got crepes and sat for a while and enjoyed the view. And the merchants kept trying to get us to buy stuff. Nearby there was this girl who was just dancing for no reason. We thought it was pretty funny. She was really breaking it down. We ran into her in the metro station and she was dancing there too. Kinda weird but we say that she had an ipod on. Went back to the hostel and hung out a while. I chatted with a guy from Argentina. He didn’t speak hardly any French and didn’t speak English well, and I know no Spanish. But it was still interesting talking to him. When we left the hostel we took the metro to the Gare Montparnasse and then the TGV (Train À Grande Vitesse, or High Speed Train) to Poitiers. I was so pooped and was pretty much knocked out the whole 2-hour ride. I think I woke up at one point to find myself drooling on myself. In pubic. That was embarrassing. We arrived at about 12:45 and it wasn’t until we had all dispersed to go home that I realized that the night bus doesn’t run that late on Sundays. So I was forced to walk an hour back to where I was staying. Alone, in the dark. I’m SO thankful that I had ridden the bus enough times to know where I was going and I followed the bus stops.

more pictures here

Once again more pics to come

2010-01-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

So I apologize for the lag in blog posts, but I've been so incredibly busy every day and had little internet access. I'll get it caught up tho, and with pictures.

Day 8- 1/16

2010-01-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

Today I woke up and showered, and their water pressure wasn’t so awesome but oh well. We ate breakfast of baguette with butter, jam, and nutella, cereal and orange juice. We left at about 11:30 for the Champs Elysées. We took the metro and when we came up from the underground the L’arc de Triomphe was right there. That was pretty cool since that was the first time I’d ever been right up to it.

We took some pictures there then walked up the street. We went into the Disney store just for fun and to get out of the cold, because today it was cold, rainy, and windy. Then we went into this other store where I bought a fabulous pair of studded ankle boots for 30 euros when they were normally 90 euros. Dad said to slow down on the money, but honestly this is the first thing I’ve bought here that wasn’t food or a living expense necessity. Then we walked down a side street to a café where I spent 4.5 euros on hot chocolate made from powder and half of which was whip cream. I got the “Chocolate Viennois” which is hot chocolate with whip cream of course. Lauren got just regular hot chocolate and actually about half more hot chocolate than me. That was really a rip off, but it’s Paris and a café and it’s undoubtedly going to be pricy. Everything’s expensive here. France is one of, if not the most, costly countries in Europe. Then we walked up the street and went to Louis Vuitton. Here’s the bag I got from Louis Vuitton… and it was free! Actually, no. I’m trying to be funny. They gave this to us immediately after we walked into the door for our umbrellas. I would have taken pictures inside, but I was scared to since I figured I’d get yelled at for doing so. I wanted to cry looking at all those bags. I couldn’t even afford a dinky little keychain (which was 250 euros… pocket change I guess for anyone who can afford to shop there). We walked back down to the L’arc de Triomphe and took the underground passageway to go underneath it. It’s so much bigger in real life than I had imagined. They had some sort of Paris museum underneath it, but we didn’t go in because the others assumed it would cost something although a lot of museums will let you in for free if you’re a student. We took the metro again to a place that was actually quite a walk to the Musée d’Orsay.
We had to walk across this really large courtyard and then across the Seine where there were a lot of padlocks on the side of the bridge. We waited a really long time in the rain because there was so many people. I was expecting to get in for free but it cost me 7 euros to get in. In order to get in for free you have to be a student for a least a year. Well crap. The museum itself is really cool because it is an old train station. I was excited because I got to see some of Monet’s and Cezanne’s original paintings which I’ve seen a lot in school and elsewhere. One of Monet’s paintings I swear is shown in Titanic. After the museum we were all really tired and came back to the hostel for showers and naps. I went downstairs to work on my pictures and blog. Courtney and Emily came down to have dinner and I ate with them. I had a Croque Madame which is basically and toasted ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on top. I’ve been sitting downstairs waiting for pictures to upload to facebook and this guy from Tunisia starts talking to me so I talked to him in French for awhile. Then I said that at 10 my friends and I were going to go out (this gave me an excuse to leave). I came back to the room and the girls were just drinking wine and talking. We went back downstairs to the bar because no one felt like going out since it was a really cold day and we were tired. We eventually started chatting with Australians and I hung out until about 3. They were so funny to talk to.

more pictures here

Day 7- 1/15

2010-01-16T09:14:00.001-08:00

Woke up at 4:45 this morning to get ready to leave by 6:00 to go to the train station. The train ride was seemingly very short, much shorter than the one I had from Paris to Poitiers last week. I guess that’s because I was with other people and since the train was going to and not from Paris, I think it took and different way since it was going to a different train station anyway. It was dark the whole way so we couldn’t see any of the countryside. When we got to the train station we had trouble buying tickets for the metro because the trains wouldn’t take our cards.
We eventually get to our hostel, which isn’t very far from a metro stop. It’s actually very nice, new, and contemporary. The room has 10 beds and a sink. There’s 6 of us and then there’s a girl from Vancouver, WA and another girl from I think some where in south America. There’s no one in the other 2 beds. The girl from WA told us that they usually don’t book rooms full until summer. It was only about 9:30 and we couldn’t check in until 2, so we had their free breakfast and left our stuff in the luggage room.

We went to the Louvre and on our way there, there was evidently a man who was sitting next to Lauren who had his penis sticking out of his pants. She was so freaked out the whole way until he got off. Don’t blame her, but I didn’t even notice. That was freaky. You see a lot of weird things in Paris I guess. The Louvre was amazing as usual.
Didn’t look too much around in it. That would take like a solid week to see everything. So we saw the staples, like the Mona Lisa of course, which nowadays they let people take pictures of, with the flash too. They weren’t letting people do that the last time I was there. Went to Notre Dame, which is always cool.
They still had some of their Christmas stuff out. People were allowed to go up into the bell towers, but it cost like 10 euros or something, and they only let 20 people up every 10 minutes and there was a line, so we decided not too. I was kinda bummed since they had it closed for construction the last time I was there. Maybe I’ll see that with Luke when/if he comes. We walked around some more and went across the bridge to I believe the right bank to a British bookstore called Shakespeare and Company. On the way over the bridge we saw a homeless woman with 2 sleeping puppies cuddled to her chest. It broke my heart. You see a lot of that in Paris. And there’s not much you can do. After the bookstore we basically walked in one giant circle looking for food. We eventually ended up at a falafel place. One thing I’ve noticed in France is that in food preparation they don’t like to wear gloves, nor do they wash their hands after handling money before handling food again. I hate it and I know my dad would have a cow but that’s another thing you just gotta ignore. From there we went back to the hostel and I went downstairs to do more internet stuff. It wasn’t long before I was approached by another greasy immigrant French guy. Thankfully it was almost 6, when I told him I had to go back upstairs to get ready because we were going to happy hour at the bar in the hostel and then out. When we were drinking beers, the greasy guy was in the room and I could feel him staring at me. It sucked. Then the parents called my French cell phone and mom was all pissed because I hadn’t gotten ahold of them in a while. What she didn’t realize was that I’ve been EXTREMELY busy, my internet access is limited, and every time I’ve been online, that’s when I’ve been alone and in the hang out place of greasy guys who I have to deal with when they approach me instead of doing important things like sending emails. We left and went back to the Notre Dame area. Went to a quiet bar (but then again it was only about 8pm) and had a mixed drink half price. I almost got a white Russian because it reminds me of Luke, but that sounded a little too heavy for me at the time so I got a Mimosa instead. Walked around some more. The guys who stand outside their shops and try to get you to buy their stuff or eat at their café are so incredibly annoying. And you have to ignore them as well, which is kinda hard for me cuz I guess I’m too nice and want to acknowledge them in some way even if it is to say that no I don’t want to buy your stuff, or no I don’t want to eat there. We ended up at a pretty cool pub that had live music and I got a small beer and a sandwich. It took forever for us to pay. We thought the waiter was annoyed with us because we were American. We took the metro back to the hostel and at one stop the train had to stall because in the next car over from ours a big fight broke out. We had no idea over what. As we were walking back to the hostel I got the crap scared out of me because I walked past a guy who leaned over and said “vous êtes charmante” (you are charming) and I thought he was leaning over to steal my purse. When we got to the room the other two girls were asleep and we made a lot of noise. Tomorrow I’m waking up in time for breakfast and a shower.

MANY MANY more pictures here

Day 6- 1/14

2010-01-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

Went to centre ville at noon today. Only Emily and Lucie were there at the time, since the other girls were running late again. So we went to a nearby café for something warm to drink instead of wait for them in the cold. Once the others got there, we went to an internet café to book our hostel. It took us awhile to find one that worked, and actually I don’t think we even booked a hostel because there were none left that worked for us. I think we’re staying in a 2-star hotel. There was a hostel perfect for us, but it booked up like the second we found it. Then we went to Monoprix where I bought some cups for when we drank our champagne I bought. And I bought a sandwich to go while the other girls went and got kababs. While waiting for them in the mall, I saw Monsieur Un Dent’s friends walk inside. We were sitting at a table a ways away, but I hid behind my big bag.
Instead of walking all the way to the river and up the hillside to get a great view of the town, we took the bus. The view was great, and I wanted to go up to where the statue was but the door was locked to get to the stairs.

While we were up there we ate our food and drank my cheap raspberry and peach champagnes. Apparently there was a school nearby that let out because little elementary-aged kids walked by us and were laughing at us, especially when Emily was taking the cork out of the second bottle and it exploded off the bottle and flew into the air. We took the bus back downtown and went back to the mall where we could sit in the warm without buying anything. Although we did get yelled at for eating my galette. We decided to go to the train station to buy our tickets to Paris tomorrow instead of waiting for tomorrow morning. It was a little more expensive than we anticipated, only by like 12 euros, but it was very last minute. Then I came home and took my computer downstairs to do some internet stuff. Here comes the most fun part of my day (this is a complete and total exaggeration). This guy comes up to me and starts talking to me, gives me his number, etc, etc, wants like 3 pictures with me, and finally leaves. I get a little peace and quiet when this other guy comes up to me and talks to me for about a sold 45 minutes and wont leave me the hell alone, even when I told him I was “engaged” (which I’m not, but I thought at least having a ring on my finger and telling them that would make them leave me alone). This didn’t work whatsoever. He basically was trying to get me to sleep with him for the entire conversation DESPITE BEING “ENGAGED”. They don’t care here obviously. He kept telling me “Ah but you are in France. You gotta live. He is there, you are here” blah blah blah. And how beautiful and unique I was with my blue eyes and blonde hair and how every other guy in the room wanted to be in his place talking to me at that moment. Don’t think that I was lost in translation and getting the wrong idea, because I wasn’t. I couldn’t understand everything he said, but I got the gist of it and I know the intentions of guys like this. It hasn’t been this bad with a white French guy. Not to be racist, but I’ve been told that the immigrant men from North Africa are the worst for this sort of thing. I wanted to scream at him to leave me the alone. In the meantime I was trying to talk to Luke and update my blog, which I’ve had very little time to do. And I wasted all that time because this guy wouldn’t stop talking to me. I finally told him that it was bed time for me, and as I went up to my room I told the nice old guy at the reception desk that if someone comes saying my name and asking for my room number to not tell them. He told me not to worry and that he wouldn’t give out any of my information. Then I came back to my room and just cried. I don’t really know why. Maybe it was because I didn’t feel completely safe, because I wanted to be left alone, because I wanted to just sit there and do my thing without being sexually harassed, because it hasn’t even been a week and already I’m so tired of being approached, but I think most of all is because I miss Luke so much and wish he was here to protect me from all this. I swear I feel like I’m gonna have 1000 restraining orders here before I go home. And for hardly ever being approached at home, I really don’t know how to deal with it, and it doesn’t help that everything is in different language.

On the bright side, tomorrow morning I’m going to Paris with the girls and I’m excited.

more pictures here

Day 5- 1/13

2010-01-13T15:36:00.002-08:00

Today was an interesting day. After I got off the bus and was walking towards l’hôtel de ville where I was going to meet the girls again, a mother and her little 3 or 4 year old girl were walking behind me. Apparently the girl had stepped on my heel, tripped, and fell to the ground and started balling. I felt sooo bad. What made it worse it that I could still hear her crying all the way I walked. Then I walked past a group of guys who I think saw my pink coat and were saying something like “pink, pink” and being stupid. I need to get a new coat I think because my pink one makes me stick out SO much. It’s getting to the point of being ridiculous. And I can’t go without it because it’s too cold. After we met in front of l’hôtel de ville we went looking for the Café Bleu, which is owned by one of the girl’s homestay sister. In the process of doing this, we walked past a French guy who said I was beautiful and I said merci and we talked for a little while. I told him I was a student and he asked me twice where I lived. I didn’t tell him. He was actually kinda gross. He had very much a smoker-type face and yellow teeth with a missing front tooth. When he left, and was walking away across the street, he yelled my name and said he loved me. EW. It was nice to go to the Café Bleu because I’d been there before and already had a free wifi account there. We all had Chocolat Bailey’s, which was hot cholocate with Bailey’s Irish Cream. After we left there we kinda “explored” the town a little more. We continued and saw what I think is the Palais de Justice (like where the government is), which was beautiful.

We finally went to Notre Dame La Grande, the church that Poitiers is famous for.

It’s there that we ran into “Monsieur Un Dent” (Mr. One Tooth) again. Ugh. This time he was with all his little greasy smoker French guy friends who all thought we Americans were “belle” and was trying to get our cell phone numbers so we could “fêter plus tard” (party later). I told him I didn’t have a cell phone (which I do actually) and he ended up exchanging numbers with another girl in our group. I felt bad for her but she thought it was funny.

Walked more around the town and the streets.

This is for Luke

We ran into the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, which is this HUGE cathedral that I took a ton of pictures of. It’s construction began in 1162 and it has the oldest choir stalls in France, which were carved between 1235 and 1257.

Very near by was L’église Sainte-Radegonde. It was founded by the Queen of the Franks, Radegonde, who died in Poitiers in 587. They began building it in the 11th century.

We kept walking and eventually came to the river. We were going to climb the hill which will give us a great view over the town, but decided to do that tomorrow. There were a lot of ducks in the river and it was funny to watch them. They thought we had food.

We stopped by a little place that sold bread and pâtisseries. I bought this braid-thing that was filled with raspberry. It was amazing. Then we came back to centre ville and decided to part ways until tonight where there was supposed to be a “cake party” outside of town. I went back to La Brioche Dorée and got a sandwich again, because it’s cheap and very tasty. Then I came back to my place and did some texting on my new French cell phone, which took a while because it doesn’t have a full keyboard and the screen is very little for a touch screen. At around 7:30 I went to Carrefour to by more galettes des rois and some cheap champagne for the party. I lugged it downtown where I met Emily and Lucie at 8. Turns out the rest of the girls couldn’t make it or something because of dinner with their host families. And we waited and waited for the bus that was supposed to take us outside of town to the dorm where the party was supposed to be, but it never came and it was getting late. So we decided to go get at drink at the “Fruity Club”, this café that’s decorated entirely of fruit, even the floors are clear with fake fruit underneath. They got some expensive drinks (like 8 or 9 euros) and I got a little tiny cup of hot spiced wine, like Kim (Luke’s mom) makes. It made me miss them ☹ Then I took the night bus back and got online to do some thorough blogging for the first time in ever. I’m gonna be tired tomorrow.

more pictures here

Day 4- 1/12

2010-01-13T15:36:00.001-08:00

I forced myself to get up at 8:00 this morning so I could catch breakfast before it was done at 8:30. At 11:30 I took the bus to the centre ville where I met the other American girls in the OUS group in front of the hotel de ville and we spent the day shopping. We actually got a lot done. The first thing we did was go get cell phones at Orange, which is what I believe to be France’s largest cellular carrier. I tried to just get a Orange SIM card and put it into my phone, but my phone wouldn’t accept it. So I bought a cheap cell phone that I’m pretty happy with. It was 49 euros and has a touch screen like my iphone and is really little. We actually were there a while because as I was trying to put the other girls’ numbers into my phone, I found that I couldn’t add a name to the number in the address book so I asked them to help me figure it out, and then it took them even a while to figure out. They finally came up with some kind of solution but I eventually figured out a better one. Before we went into Orange we checked out this "palace" thing across the street.

Then we went looking for somewhere to eat. Some of the girls wanted to go to a certain café but first we went into the mall and saw Brioche Doree which is a great place where you can get a sandwich on baguette, a dessert, a cold drink, and coffee or tea for about 7 euros, which is practically a steal. Then we went to Monoprix because the girls had to get a few things like toiletries and such. I just bought a fork, knive, tablespoon, teaspoon, bowl, and a glass. After that, Emily and I went to get our bus passes. Most of the girls got theirs yesterday. Then we lost them but found them again in the mall. Here's some pictures I took along the way. OMG WEDDING DRESSES!!! I love wedding dresses.

We agreed to meet tomorrow to go shopping again at the same time and place. After we separated, I went in search of a hair straightener. Emily and I passed a salon while we were out getting the bus passes, and they had them, but every one they had was more than 150 euros. I think I’ll be wearing my hair up for a while. I might invest in one, but I don’t know. They aren’t very common in France. I went walking around the streets downtown and went into a store in which everything is 2 euros, and got a cute cover for my passport and a little tiny sock with a clasp on it that’s for small change. I took the bus back to L’espace Kennedy, put my stuff away, got more money (I spent a lot today…) and went to Carrefour for a few necessities and dinner. Unfortunately I can’t buy anything that needs to be refrigerated, but I did buy cheese, which at this moment I have taped outside my window so it stays cold. Something interesting I’ve noticed and think is quite weird is that the French don’t keep the eggs and milk refrigerated in the grocery store. That’s something I just don’t understand. While they keep the cheese cold, it’s common for them to not refrigerate that either. I was amazed to see that they sell pretty much any kind of hard alcohol in a grocery store. I guess the reason might be because grocery stores here aren’t open very late, and none as far as I know are open 24 hours. I bought a bottle of crème de framboises (raspberry cream) that is really good but strong. It also feels really good to buy alcohol and not be carded. The French and Europeans in general are very lax like that. That’s one thing I love about this place. People actually enjoy life it seems. It makes Americans look so anal about everything. People don’t really seem stressed. As one of the girls was telling me about Sylvie, Sylvie was really tired after all the stuff going on with us at the fac yesterday, and Lucie (the girl) told me that she was thinking “That’s like my life everyday, and that’s normal”. The French just aren’t used to the high-paced lifestyle of Americans, and I wish we would adopt that style of living. I think, or actually know, that I would like and appreciate life a whole lot more. I could be wrong though. The French complain a lot about life. But I think they do it mostly for the sake of having something to complain about. They love to complain and argue, and appear pretty pessimistic but in my opinion are just being realistic and on the very extreme, exaggerate, because they like to do that too.

Anyway, after shopping I waited for a long time to see the guy I thought would set up my computer to receive the wifi here. It was actually the wrong guy. I went next door and finally got my computer configured and came downstairs to have my computer connected for a little while, but then it was being slow and I messed with one thing too many, screwing something up and deleting a password so I lost internet. I have to go back to the guy tomorrow and have him enter whatever it was I deleted. It’s been really annoying not having internet, but when I get to Roche D’argent, I’ll have internet in my room. It wont be wireless, but at this point I couldn’t care less.

more pictures here

Day 3- 1/11

2010-01-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

Woke up early enough for breakfast this morning, which consisted of French bread slices with jam and butter, applesauce, and hot chocolate in a bowl, because that’s how they drink it here. Went to the bus stop at around 9, but the bus didn’t get there until about 9:15 since it was late. When I got to the centre ville where I was supposed to meet Sylvie and the others to go to the fac (university), I saw no one. Although my bus was late I still got there in enough time for the 9:37 bus that Sylvie said would take us to the fac. I called Sylvie twice and texted her, but it was no good. So when the bus came I asked if it was actually going to the fac just to be sure, and it was. I got on and was a little freaked out that I couldn’t find the group. Then along the way the ticket “controlleurs” got on the bus to check for tickets, which freaked me out because 1. I was never ever expecting to actually see anyone check for tickets and 2. I wasn’t sure if I did the whole stamping the ticket thing right. I heard some girls on the bus speaking French with an accent that obviously wasn’t French so I thought they were American. When we passed part of the university I got off at the “faculté des letters” which is where I knew my test would be. After getting off the bus I asked the girls if they were American. They were actually English, but were going to the same placement test thing I was. I followed them and eventually found the test and my group. I asked where were they and they said they were on the bus, but what actually happened was that there was a leader girl helping Sylvie who saw a group and decided to leave on the bus that left right before mine, and when they got to the fac, that’s when they realized there was someone missing… me. Forgotten again. Whatever. The test was actually pretty easy. Before it started, I thought I didn’t have a pen and I asked the prof if they had one and she looked at me like I was an idiot, but fortunately I found one in my purse. Apparently the French never use pencil on tests, either, because someone said they only had a pencil and the prof was practically astounded. The test was just a picture of two women, Madame so and so and Madame such and such, and we had to describe each of their backgrounds, how they met each other and are friends, and because they were old, we had to explain why old people are important in society (all in so x-amount of sentences). Then we had a little oral exam interview where I went in and a lady asked me things like how long I’ve been studying French and what I study at the university in the US and what I did the last time I was in France, etc. It was easy. So I think I’ll score pretty high. Then I waited for the other American girls in my group to finish doing the same thing and we went looking for lunch. We eventually did find the “Restaurant Universitaire” and had an amazing meal for under 3 euros. Then we went back to around where Sylvie’s office was and hung out until about 1:30 when she talked to us about home stays, finances, classes etc. and two women from Le Credit Lyonnais (the French bank where we’ll have our accounts) to help us sign papers and open our accounts. It was confusing and had hardly any idea what I was signing. After that was finished, the girls and I found the bus back to the centre ville (downtown) where we got more bus tickets and passes. Here's some pictures of L’hôtel de ville (city all) and the surroundings. Unfortunately I have to upload them all to here because my Internet isn't accessing the Picasa website correctly.

Then we decided we’ll meet tomorrow in front of the hotel de ville (city hall) where we’ll do some shopping, because in France there are sales in the stores only twice a year, and now is one sale. I caught the bus back to L’espace Kennnedy and went to Carrefour (a supermarket) and got some things for dinner. Around 7:00 my friend Caroline who’s studying here for a year and whom I’ve known since high school and go to the UO with, came to visit me and fill me in on what’s going on from the perspective of someone who’s been here a while.

more pictures here

Day 2- 1/10

2010-01-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

Slept in today which felt amazing, after a pretty good night’s sleep after taking some sleeping pills to really help my sleeping schedule adjust. I ended up missing breakfast. Yesterday I got so much information thrown at me, all I could remember about breakfast was that it had something to do with 10:00. I couldn’t remember if that meant it started or ended at 10:00. I figured that since it was the weekend that it would begin at 10:00, but it turns out it ended at 10:00. So I bought breakfast from the vending machine, which wasn’t too bad. I called my parents after I received a message saying they wanted me to call them then I fell back asleep for about an hour. I took a shower and right after one of the other American girls here knocked on my door saying that she and her sister were having lunch soon and that I could join them if I wanted, and I did. After that we took the bus downtown to a café with free internet access. This really helped me to see where I have to be tomorrow when I meet Sylvie to go to the university to take my test. I didn’t take my computer to the café because I learned that on Tuesday some manager or someone will be here to provide me with the username and password for wifi. I don’t really understand why the people at the front desk don’t have it, but I don’t want to ask. At the café I just used my phone to check facebook and send emails. It was dark on our way back to the bus stop and all the lights from Christmas were lit. That was really cool to see, and I’m sad that they will probably be taken down in a few days.

When we got back to the hostel I went across the street to see if I could get pizza for dinner but they only sold whole pizzas and the place next door only had desserts and no sandwiches at that time. Everything else was closed. On Sunday either stores aren’t open or those that are are only open until 6 or so in France. But the two American girls had leftover stuff from lunch and we ate dinner together in one of their rooms. I didn’t mind. I was just hungry. Then we started to watch a movie, but I realized it was getting late so I left and tried to get on a computer in the computer lab but as I said before, I have to wait until Tuesday to get the codes to use the internet. I bought dessert from the vending machine and went back to my room. Now I think I’ll go to bed soon because I need to get up rather early tomorrow for my test. I hope I do well.

more pictures here

Day 1- 1/9

2010-01-13T14:14:00.000-08:00

1/9
The flight to Paris was ok. About 7 hours, and like the first I feel asleep off and on. Can’t stay asleep too long before the position you’re in starts to hurt when you’re scrunched up in coach or a baby starts to scream. I was impressed by the in-flight entertainment. Now they have a pretty good selection of movies, tv shows, and music you can choose to watch or listen to when you want to. They had about 4 movies I hadn’t seen but wanted to. And I could have, but my earbuds were buried somewhere in the depths of my huge “personal item” and nowadays they charge you $5 or 4 euros for a headset. I only had $4 and I thought 4 euros was a rip off. So I just slept a majority of the time.

When we landed in Paris, I discovered it’s snowy here and so cold. For the first time in my life I got to see those tiny kinds of snowflakes that have designs in them when they landed on my window, which was cool since I could see them up close. We got off the plane and did the usual go through passport control sheep-heard style and picked up luggage.
I’m so glad mine got there ok. I would have been so screwed if I didn’t have it. Then I kinda sat there for a few minutes wondering how to get to Aerogare 2, which is where the train station is. So I asked, and it all came back to me pretty quickly about how the airport is set up. It’s actually quite a ways away, but that’s why there’s a shuttle train. I get to the train station and immediately remember the joys of hauling 100+ lbs. of luggage onto escalators and up and down stairs. When I got to up where tickets were being sold, they were being sold either by machines or at counters, but I didn’t know which to do so I called Sylvie, and stood for I don’t remember how long in the line for the people at the counters, because I needed to buy a student discount train pass too. Speaking of which, I had to use the other 1 of my 2 passport photos I used for my visa, which has to be the absolute WORST picture taken of my of all time. Wouldn’t have used it, but I had misplaced the 6 sets of actually good passport pictures somewhere in my suitcases and wasn’t about to go digging through them when I had that ugly picture handy. When you get documents made in France that have your picture on them, you generally need to provide them with the picture unlike the US where we take it on the spot usually. Had that been the case, or if I had had the good pictures where I could get to them, I would have had no problems. But it’s impossible to me to be that organized of course. I get my ticket and there’s no platform printed on it, so I didn’t know where to go. That’s when it’s so fun to get in line for the information desk for one simple question. Basically you don’t know where your train’s going to be until about 15 minutes before it arrives. OK…. So in the meantime I got my first sandwich on baguette at a café place in the train station. Ham and Gruyere was the cheese I think, and it tasted like long-forgotten heaven. I also forgot how even though you’re hardly wearing make-up, are dirty, and stink, French guys will still manage to call you “belle fille”. That’s one good thing about today... the one and only time I’m glad the French as a culture don’t care that much about BO after I’ve been travelling for nearly 24 hours and neeeeddd a shower. I didn’t feel so bad about it.
I’m going to the train and this French guy comes up to me and asks me something like if the train that was coming to the platform I was going to was going to a certain city or whatnot. I felt bad that I really couldn’t help him. Speaking French for now makes me feel like a child that can’t express much. That will get better with time though. Waiting outside for the train to come while my toes froze. I couldn’t believe how cold it is. When I think of France I wrongfully always think of warm since every time I’ve been here in the past it was summer. The train ride was really relaxing. The TGV is so smooth and quiet with comfy seats and a much better allowance of legroom than a plane by far. This is a picture from the train. I got off at Poitiers, and when I got off the train, a man offered to help me with my luggage, and I also thought at the time he might have tried to find out where I was going, and I said non merci (because I’ve seen “Taken”) and I think he looked at me a little funny and walked away. Then I realized why. There was 2 flights of stairs ahead of me before I could actually get from the platform to the train station, one down under the tracks, and one up into the station. Ugh. That was fun. But I found Sylvie and her husband and at almost the exact same time I ran into this brat kid from OSU who’s here to study abroad too who I met at the orientation in November and the whole time did nothing but complain about how he was going to miss the football game in Corvallis that day because he was at the orientation. I don’t like him and hopefully after we take our language evaluation tests, I’ll whip his butt at it, we won’t have the same classes, and I’ll never have to see him again. I doubt that last part though. They took the two of us in their car and pointed stuff out about the town to us as they took me to the Espace Kennedy, where I’ll be living for the next week. Here's pictures of my room. Sylvie brought me in, made sure I understood, and left. There’s a lot of information to digest (in French too), but fortunately she gave me an envelope with all the info. So now I’m here in my room and feeling a little lonely, although Sylvie introduced me to some American girls who are a couple floors down from me. I might go say hi again to them tomorrow, especially since one of them has been here for a while and could really give me some good information. I didn’t go out once I got here because it got dark so fast and I’m super tired. I’m just trying to stay awake until sort-of bedtime so I can maybe get my sleeping schedule adjusted. Luckily tomorrow I have nothing going on. Everything starts on Monday, so tomorrow I can relax, do a little shopping for things like toilet paper (there’s none in the room) and such. And take pictures of course.

more pictures here

Limited Internet Access

2010-01-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the blog. But I had to wait until tuesday to talk to the multimedia guy here to get my computer configured for the internet, and then when i finally did last night, I messed something up and then I couldn't get back online. I've been going out and doing stuff every day since I've been here (as you will read) but I plan to update the blog tonight/tomorrow with entries and pictures. I would now but I need to be somewhere at 8. My friends and I are having a cake and wine party :)

Kinda sorta half way there

2010-01-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

Now I'm in Philadelphia and have about an hour and a half before my plane begins to board. The last flight from Seattle seemed longer than I was expecting. Fortunately I was so I tired that I slept off and on a majority of the flight. We didn't leave Salem until about 10:45 last night and arrived in Seattle at around 2:30. I work up at 5:15, and as usual it was a fiasco getting out of the hotel room and to the shuttle. I also forgot to lock my checked suitcase. It's not like there's anything in there really worth stealing, but with my luck... It was harder than anticipated saying goodbye to my parents, but I'm glad for my little stuffed Ty beanie baby that resembles my cat that they gave me. My seating arrangement was nice because there was no one in the seat between me aisle seat and the guy sitting next to the window seat. Along the way the flight attendant asked of there was a medical professional on the plane. I didn't know what was going on but I assumed if someone needed medical attention it was going to be someone old having a stroke or something. But it was weird because when we landed some medical guys boarded the plane and escorted off a girl who looked about my age. So I don't know.

Random thought but: I'm in Philadelphia and you'd think there'd be a bunch of cheesecake places in the airport, but I haven't seen any and I'm bummed. I'd be all over that, despite my refusal to eat a cheesesteak for dinner because of too many calories before sitting of my butt for 7 hours. Yeah I know it makes a lot of sense.

Not looking too forward to the next flight. Hopefully everyone, including all the little kids running free in the aisles, will pretty much fall alseep after a few hours. And then there's getting there and hauling 100 pounds of luggage (not even kidding) though CDG to the trainstation, onto, in, and off of the train and to wherever I'm living in Poitiers. I guess it just have to take it as a workout.

I couldn't resist... this is my cat. He is French.

2010-01-07T20:15:00.001-08:00

Freak-out mode is nearly reached

2010-01-07T00:23:00.000-08:00

For almost two years I've loathed this moment. This is the last night I get to sleep in my own bed. My cat seems to know I'm going away for how love-y he's been since I've been home from seeing Luke in Eugene. Saying goodbye to him wasn't the easiest either. I still have about a million things to do before leaving for Seattle, where I'm taking off from. As of now both my suitcases are empty. I don't feel prepared at all. I guess one thing that has eased a little bit of my stress is that I actually know where I'll be going to sleep at night (a whole four days before leaving) and it's actually the place I wanted to live. Right now I wouldn't recommend this experience to anyone. I know I won't be saying this in 5 months, but up until now, actually up until I finally unpack my stuff in the place I will be "permanently" residing, this whole thing as been the biggest pain. But I just need to keep reminding myself that I'm going to FRANCE and I'm sure I'll be a lot happier about this whole thing once I'm there, or I'd better be at least. One shall see. I'll be trying to put up posts as I travel, but if I don't, there'll be one whopping post by the time I get there and settled down. Travel can give you a lot to talk about.

I just couldn't wait

2009-11-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

So this is the start of my travel blog for FRANCE. I was just too excited to wait to start it until I leave in January. For anyone who doesn't know, I'm going to France on January 8th to study abroad in Poitiers, a small medieval town in the province of Poitou-Charentes, which is on the western coast of France, only an hour and a half train ride to/from Paris (omg!). Here is a picture to give you an idea.
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I really don't know much yet as for the detail of my trip, like where I'm living, the classes I'll be taking, etc. But after my orientation today I'm officially excited. I've started to get back into that old French mindset, the one that I've experienced before my other two previous trips to France. By the time I leave it will have been almost two and half years since I've been there, and while going to a completely different country with a completely different language is like jumping into a cold pool I don't think it will take me long to get "warmed up" again.

In case you're wondering what the phrase in my URL is, it comes from this song

The meaning of the phrase is almost impossible to translate. But it kinda means "it's going good for me". That's the best way I can put it.

So, until January I'll just have to say à bientôt!