La fin... de la premiere partie

So here I am almost on the other side of my first study abroad experience. I'm looking at a month at home, a week in DC, and then six months in Argentina. And then life goes back to normal (or what passes for normal...).
Exams are over, my bags are mostly packed, and I have a couple of euros in my wallet for one last pastry. And I have realized that I both really don't want to leave and really really want to be home. Aside from the things I have done very well without but miss all the same (dryers, Chipotle, Target), there's a comfort in living in the culture you grew up in that I always took for granted. It's tiring living day in and day out where your instincts, reflexes, and ingrained knowledge don't really mean anything. That said, there are things I've really come to love about France (the accessibility, the abundance of fruit, the absence of cheap consumerism). I also think I've come to realize that it's a place and people with pluses and minuses like any other, which is a realization that comes from really knowing somewhere (that may seem like a very obvious conclusion, but I think I used to put France on a pedestal because I enjoyed my vacation here and cultural allusions back in the States--I've got a more realistic view now). I've also found myself being really proud of my own country--when we talk about democracy or separation of powers in class, I find myself nodding approvingly in a "yeah, that's right, we're awesome" sort of way. So I guess the point of that long ramble was that I have developed a more realistic view of both cultures.
Right now I'm just looking forward to sleeping for a while, but I have a hunch it's going to take a bit to wrap my head around all I've seen and done.
Still, no regrets. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Which is lucky, since I'm off on another adventure soon (which still doesn't seem real).
I updated a photo album. The link's in the last post, I'm feeling too lazy to search for it and repost it...
Just a few more Christmas presents to buy, a farewell party, and hours and hours on a plane until I'm back in the 3 oh 3.

Procrastination method #137: New Blog Post

Hi all!
Thought I'd take some time out of my busy schedule to let you know what's going on in my life (What I should be doing: an essay outline of the first scene of Moliere's Le Misanthrope. What I am actually doing: reading The Cider House Rules (after having finished the 6th Harry Potter in French), cleaning my desk, meeting friends for sushi, discovering the genius thing on itunes, walking around Paris in the cold to do all the touristy things I never got around to, etc-the list goes on).
As you may have guessed, it's crunch time in Paris. I finally have assignments due that are actually going to be graded, and of course they hit in the last three weeks of the semester. It is insane to me that three weeks from today I'll be on a plane headed home. It's a bittersweet thought--I really miss everybody at home and I feel disconnected from everything going on there, but at the same time I am finally comfortable here and don't want to leave. I've decided the solution is for you all to up and move to Paris. Take a week, get your affairs in order, and head on over. I'll even meet you at the airport (a very generous offer, considering transport to/from there is 8.5 euros one way--highway robbery). Thanks.
I had intended to take another trip, but a look at my planner and bank account has convinced me that living it up and enjoying my last few weeks in Paris is the better option. I may take a day trip or two, but those are TBA.
Notable events since my last post: I had escargot! (I know you hear it all the time, but it really did just taste like the garlic sauce, with the chewy texture of calamari or mussels). So perhaps it didn't really merit the exclamation point, but those of you who knew me as a picky child unwilling to try anything will appreciate it.
I saw some lady rolling a cigarette in the metro. I used to think the French smoking stereotype was crazy, but I have since realized that while not always super obvious (especially since the smoking ban in restaurants) and exaggerated, it's definitely there.
I went to a French soccer game (France v Uruguay). We expected a little more excitement, but with a final score of 0-0, there wasn't much to fight about.
Harris and I made Thanksgiving dinner for our host families. It was a grand success, although the day in the kitchen was exhausting. They seemed to really like everything, although I don't think they really understood the American tradition of stuffing yourself silly :)
I don't know whether it's because I'm becoming used to all the little differences, stopped pointing them out to myself, or whether they weren't that large in the first place, but at this point I'm not coming up with many big cultural differences to report.
Final news, I sent in my deposit for the program in Argentina next semester, so that's definite. I have a month at home, a week in DC, and then off for my next big adventure (ooh another procrastination technique: planning a semester in South America...)
ps I added new pictures to a previous album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2122365&l=82d97&id=7412579

The one I know you've all been waiting for.

Sorry it's been so long since I updated! Time has been flying by.
Classes have been the same old same old, for the most part. I go. I write notes and stare off into space when the professor goes on a tangent (but I can get away with it because I'm that American kid...). The workload is different, and it kind of freaks me out that we have yet to have a graded assignment, but I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have to work as hard to follow anymore.
In fact this month has been marked in general by greater comfort in my surroundings. Coming back from my various and sundry journeys (read on for more information!) has been like coming home. I find I don't need a map all the time anymore, and I instinctively know which way to turn in the metro when transferring. During the long metro rides to class, I eavesdrop and understand with greater facility. I say "pardon" rather than "sorry" when I bump into people.
And I have for the most part stopped being a tourist in Paris. While I still intend to do more touristy stuff (I have yet to eat escargot, for example, and I haven't been to the Musee d'Orsay or the Centre Pompidou), I'm really enjoying the feeling of being in the flow of normal life here.
We did visit Mt. St. Michel (a very very long day trip on the bus) with my program, which was quite enjoyable. Pictures of that trip and the last month in Paris:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2122365&l=82d97&id=7412579

We got a week off for Toussaint (all Saint's Day), so I headed off to Spain with Harris and then went on to Italy. It was kind of a whirlwind trip, and I don't think I was properly dry for the last five or so days of it, but it was fantastic. It's scary to see how much Spanish and Italian I'd forgotten, but it was definitely coming back. Highlights of the trip included:
Beach and Basque culture in San Sebastian and Bilbao.
Seeing Gaudi's architecture in Barcelona, which is both way out there and absolutely fantastic.
Bocadillos in Spain (although I was pretty sick of the lack of vegetables by the time we left) and pizza in Italy.
The life and history of Rome. Also, going to the theater completely soaked from the rain and only understanding the very basics of what was going on
A group of Italian people who burst into song on a vaporetto in Venice.
Planning and executing a trip by myself--it's very empowering to know that I'm traveling through a foreign country on my own and knowing that I can handle anything that comes up.
Pictures can be seen here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2124479&l=474dc&id=7412579
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125134&l=061f2&id=7412579

I was glad to get back, however. Moving place to place to place is exhausting, especially if you take night trains and/or buses.
Plus, I wouldn't want to have missed the elections! All the Americans I know were super excited and stayed up till 5 am to watch the results come in (we had quite a trek that involved going from a campaign party too packed for comfort to a bar that closed around three to my friend's kitchen, where I waited until the West coast results came in, cheered faintly, and made my way back to collapse into bed). However, the French reaction surprised me a bit. As much as they were excited about Obama and as much as the US elections took over the news here (they even broadcast from New York for a week), I didn't really hear much the next day. I think because Obama's victory was predicted for days in the polls they saw it as a foregone conclusion and just moved on. It probably would have been different if McCain had won.

Finally, I just got back from a trip to visit my brother Craig, who's rocking the Scottish educational system in Edinburgh. We visited a castle, had scones and some crazy diabetes-inducing desserts only the English would think up, and climbed a very tall hill (as steep as it was, I can't on principle call it a mountain...). It was good to hear English (of a sort) and have a connection to home. Pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125159&l=ad0fc&id=7412579

Overall, it's been a fantastic month and I can't believe I only have 1 and 1/2 to go. I do miss home, though, and the people especially. Keep sending emails!

Spoiler alert: this post will be random

I have finally settled into a routine, which is both good and bad. Good, because life is a little more predictable, and bad because it means I have very little in the way of interesting doings to report, as I tend to spend the times I don't have class (Wednesday mornings, for example) catching up on my sleep, my homework, or my neglected laundry rather than doing anything noteworthy.
I have however, bought a couple of sets of plane tickets: I plan to spend the week-long holiday for Toussaint (all Saint's Day-November 1) in Spain and Italy, and am going to visit Craig in Edinburgh for a weekend in November.
Classes are going well, I'm starting to get into the rhythm of things. It's a strange mix of easy and difficult. My classes are not necessarily more challenging than in the US, and since I'm mostly taking introductory courses there is a lot of time spent on procedure and introduction. What makes it difficult is that I have to pay attention. Every single second. Sounds easy enough, but what you don't realize is that when you take classes in your native language you tend to tune stuff out, let words just glide over you while you doodle or whisper to your friend or check the time on your cell phone. Or, you know, take a nap. Here I have to pay attention to every single word, because you can get lost and it's much more difficult to get back on track since you don't have the same familiarity, the same anticipation of where the phrase or the sentence or the train of thought is going to go. And that gets tiring.
Observations of French society: They are relaxed. They take their time, even in the city. Even when my host mom is running late, she sits down and eats her breakfast. Classes don't start exactly on time and nobody seems to really care. And yet they still get done what they need to get done without any difficulty. I knew already most things in France are expensive: restaurant food, nail polish, clothes (they have huge sales like twice a year but not otherwise), etc, but strangely not books or random things like qtips.
Things I miss: certain foods: things with cinnamon (french toast, pumpkin pie, cinnamon rolls), spicy food, peanut butter (although I did recently buy some), bagels, fried things (ie clam cakes). Libraries and stores that are open on Sundays (and Mondays. And before 9 am. And after 7 pm.) A campus bookstore that has the books you need. Tennis. The sun. You people (sappy, I know, but I had to put it in there).
Things I do not miss: the constant, repetitive election coverage all over the newspapers and TV. Loud Americans on their cell phones. SUVs. Subdivisions. Crocs and sweatpants as acceptable formal attire. Supermarket bread, fruits, and vegetables (as opposed to the fresher ones found here at the little stores). Jello. Kraft American cheese. Expensive textbooks.
One of my goals for the semester: try every French pastry I can find.
Other things that may astonish you: I have discovered myself to actually kind of like coffee, peaches, and ham.
Final note: I have given my address to many of you, but I'm afraid I haven't given you all the information. On the off chance you send a package, you must write "air mail" or "par avion" or "prioritaire" AND "no commerical value" (and then do not declare any value when sending the package). Do not send electronics (or food, either, I don't think. I'm checking up on that).

Ben, oui!

So, some more notes from Paris. Mostly in the past week or two I’ve been running around being touristy: I went to Rouen and Giverny last week; Rouen to see the famous Cathedral, the place Joan of Arc was burned, which is now marked by a very nice tall cross and a church that feels like the inside of a ship. But a nice, light, airy, colorful ship, and Giverny to see Monet’s house and gardens. Let me tell you, the guy had it good. I would definitely live in that house—it made me want to buy a summer house in France, actually, and the gardens are full of all kinds of beautiful flowers. Thankfully we were there in the sunshine.

Then this weekend, after a few days of orientation at the Institut Catholique, we decided to take a break before classes started and head to the beach. So we caught at TGV to Nice Thursday morning and came back late last night. Nice is very sunny and slightly touristy in areas, but I loved the Mediterranean feel of Vieux Nice and I especially want a house with a red tile roof. The beaches are nice too, even though they’re rocky and I didn’t have a bathing suit with me (too cold for swimming, anyway). The middle of Nice looks very futuristic, the place has checkered tiles and there’s a tram that runs through it. You know when you look at the designs of buildings and things and they’ve drawn in plants and people and colored it all in? That’s what it looked like. The hostel we stayed at (my first hostel experience, guys!) was Petit-Prince themed, which brought back nice memories of high school French, but was run for the most part by Australians, so I was immersed in English for the weekend.

Yesterday I took a day trip to Eze village, a medieval castle about 20 minutes outside of Nice and way up the hill. It was gorgeous, especially from the top of the hill, where the ruins are set into an “Exotic Garden” with cacti and goddess sculptures. But the French Riviera is amazing, guys, and the water is very very blue. I then started a hike down the hill but had to come hiking back up when I realized I no longer had my camera. Which I never found. RIP.

On another note, I started classes today (after a horrific registration process that took two days, countless trips to the boards to look up schedules, and appointments made with the secretary—you people in the US university system, thank your various deities), and it looks like I’m going to vaguely enjoy at least one of them. I am taking Geography of the EU (which I had today), Introduction to Linguistics, Comparative Literature, Language and Expression (focusing on a novel by Balzac), and History of Political Ideas in Europe. All of which I am quite looking forward to, except the four hours of Comparative Lit. in a row.

Other random things:

In the train station, there’s a waiting room with a bathroom (which they charged you 50 centimes to use), and while I was waiting an hour for my train yesterday, I’m pretty sure the lady cleaned the floor three times. Life must get boring if all you do is take people’s money so they can pee before a long train ride.

The title of this entry is my favorite French phrase, I think. Pronounced (for you Anglophones) bah, we!, it is used all the time in daily conversation. More than just a “well, yes”, which is what it means literally, the French manage to add a connotation of, “well that’s obvious” (there’s also “ben, non”, which can invoke a sense of, “obviously not, what were you thinking, idiot?). But the real reason I love this phrase so much is that even the little kids use it. The two-year old I baby-sit cracked me up one day when she showed me a drawing and responded, when I noted that it was pretty and asked whether she did it herself, “ben, oui!”

My internet is finally fixed!!! After a month of struggle. And I have put up pictures.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119715&l=7cb7b&id=7412579

Chiche!

So when I left you last, I was enjoying free bread on the terrace of an idyllic café. Well, I’m still there.
Just kidding. Instead, I’ve discovered the marvel that is the university restaurant. Let me tell you, the French know how to do food right (something that may not come as a surprise to many of you). For 2.85 (Euros, naturally, so about $4.25 with the exchange rate the way it is), you get a main dish (meat, vegetable, and a grain), an appetizer or yogurt or fruit, and a small dessert. Or a main dish and a large dessert. Plus the ubiquitous free bread and water. It is perhaps not haute cuisine, but let me tell you, TDR has some things to learn about cafeteria food. Furthermore, we have spent long hours of conversation discussing why the amazing packaged mousse (made by such commonplace companies as Dannon and Yoplait) does not exist in the US. Epic fail.
My food rave temporarily over, except to tell you that surely heaven has crêperies and patisseries on every corner, I can now move on to a short explanation of my life here and what I will be doing for the next few months.
The past week and a half I have devoted three hours a day to an “intensive” French course, where we review basic grammar and French culture. It has not been particularly challenging, but I have learned a few things. For example, the title of this post, “chiche,” means basically “go on, I dare you” (i.e. as a response to something along the lines of “I can eat this entire cake in the next ten minutes”). We have also done some neat cultural activities, such as visiting a cabaret (no girls doing the can-can, sorry guys, just people sitting around singing old French songs, but fun nonetheless) and a guided tour of the Louvre. In any case, we have one more week of that, after which we head to our universities, which we (or at least I) have now chosen. I will shortly be enrolled in the Institut Catholique de Paris, a small(ish—it’s about the size of AU) private school with a beautiful campus in the middle of Paris. There’s a week of orientation starting the 22nd, and then classes start the 29th.
It may be worthwhile to take a minute to say that the whole process has been extremely disorganized and explain a little bit why. The French university system is very different from the American one. First off, it is state sponsored, and everyone who passes their baccalauréat at the end of high school may enroll. Costs of enrollment are under 500 euros a year. Secondly, the French enroll as part of a strict degree program, where the course is basically planned out for them with very few electives (they also get the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in 3 years). So they basically get told what classes to take when and so they show up. We American exchange students get to pick really any classes we want, but they don’t have the same mechanism to deal with that kind of choice, so it’s a rather frustrating administrative mess. Long story short: I don’t yet know what classes I’ll be taking.
Finally, in addition to hopefully traveling the continent, I will be doing some babysitting on the side to earn some pocket money.
Other updates/random trivia:
I still have no internet at my homestay. And now my battery charger has decided not to work. Technology is the bane of my existence.
My dad came to visit this weekend and we walked and walked and walked. Paris is enormous. Also, Sunday is a very interesting day because at least half, perhaps three quarters, of the stores are closed. Walk to the next corner to get your baguette, you lazy bum. (Oh and the Parisians walk a lot a lot. And there are stairs EVERYwhere).
Notes on French domestics: the washers are smaller and there are no dryers. Europeans sleep not between two sheets under a comforter or blanket like most Americans, but on top of one sheet and under a kind of comforter that has a washable cover that you change like you change sheets. Oh and the pillows are square.
Everything is super efficient. My family has a thing that hangs on the wall that dispenses not only paper towels, but also tinfoil and saran wrap. And there are jump seats in the metro (you pull them down to sit on them) to save space and allow for more standing room in crowded situations. Again, why do we not have these things in the US?
I’m still having a great time, still missing everybody lots. Hope everything is going well at home despite bank failures.
A bientôt!

Ca commence...

I'm here! And it's crazy!
I got here Friday morning and made my way to the housing center by metro, which is a lot like the DC one, except it's like 3 times the size. Oh and you have to push a button to get the doors to open, apparently to save energy. And they have vending machines on the platforms.
I've mainly been doing the touristy things with a couple other people in my program: walking up the Champs-elysees, checking out Notre Dame, having a pique-nique at the Eiffel tower, walking, walking, walking. We've found a large ethnic neighborhood where everything is really cheap
I'm in a host family in the 10eme arrondissement, in the Northeast corner of Paris. It's pretty amazing, I have a host brother and sister at home in addition to my host parents. My room has a window that opens onto a beautiful courtyard, and although my window doesn't have flowers, most of those in the courtyard do, and my host father has a veritable jungle on one of his balconies. I've been talking to my family a lot. For example, the other night I explained the electoral college, which seemed to confuse the heck out of them. We also had a conversation yesterday at lunch about Crocs, which seem to have had a several year delay and are now coming over to Europe (one of the only things that was trendy in the US first--everybody here is very chic). My host mom thought they looked really comfortable, but her daughter was telling her they weren't classy. Her response was that she didn't need class for her shoes, she was a classy person whatever she wore.
As for the whole studying part, I took a language placement test this morning, have an oral interview tomorrow, and start my intensive French class on Wednesday. So more updates on that later, because we haven't been placed at our universities yet.

A few other things that have really struck me: they give you baskets of free bread at meals. I. Love. Bread.
I am an idiot, and though I know that the French 1st floor is our 2nd floor, the first two days I instinctively hit the 1 button on the elevator instead of the 0.
There are ads for English language lessons everywhere. And most people have at least a rudimentary command of English.
I need a lesson in French slang. They have this weird thing where they invert parts of words. So "American" becomes "ricain" and also "cainri"

More updates to come. Hopefully I'll figure out how to get my wireless to work at my host family's house and be a little more reachable. But continue to send me emails! I love hearing about what's going on at home!