A few days on the beach...

Salut! I returned last night from trip to the south of France with about 500 other people from my school. The trip was translated into English as an “Integration Seminar”, which just means that people from all the different sections of the school got together and competed to prove which major was best. There was finance, marketing, accounting, international business, etc. The competition consisted mostly of these students just chanting songs about why their major was better, but everyone was very serious about it. I have never seen people fight so competitively about business majors!

Note: I am not a business major. I am a political science major with a philosophy minor, planning to pursue a career in law. In France I am attending the Paris Graduate School of Management (the larger umbrella school) and taking courses in business and finance. I am doing so because as I have mentioned before, I have been in love with Paris for years and it has always been my dream to live there for a while. PGSM is the only partner school McKendree has in Paris (I pay tuition to McKendree but attend PGSM and their students can do the same), and the McKendree Business Department was kind enough to accept me into this exchange which is normally reserved for business students.

The trip was a lot of fun, of course. We were all living in a little resort community on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. They had a pool, eating facilities, a dance club, and of course a huge expanse of beach. Everyone paid a flat fee which covered food, bed, and an almost 24/7 open bar. I got to know some of my fellow exchange students a lot better and made some friends among the French students. It was quite the hike – we drove about 10 hours both ways, but I enjoyed the highway driving. It was the most American thing I’ve experienced in a while. :)

I got home last night to find that another of our roommates has arrived. Her name is Beatrice and she is Italian, but she had a friend over so I did not get a chance to learn much more. We now have 4 people living in our little 6 person apartment, and I am hoping that others move in soon. Our landlord is unable to provide us with any information as to who might be moving in or whether someone actually even will move in because he just doesn’t know. I have met a lot of international students who are still without housing, including two Mexican girls I met this weekend who have been living in a hostel for 3 weeks. That would be so miserable! I feel bad because they need a place to live and we have a place for them to live, but for some reason they are not getting moved in. It is a little confusing. Hopefully everything will work out!

This week I start the rest of my courses. I am looking forward to meeting the rest of my professors! I can't believe it is almost October already...

Weekend Firsts

I have planned another trip – this time to Poland. My flight back cost only .49 cents! Okay not really because taxes take the total up to 30 euros. But still! A round-trip ticket for only 60 euros is pretty awesome. I will be heading out on the 9^th of October. I am also in the process of planning a trip to Ireland with a girl I met at a party the other night. Exciting stuff!

I made my first call home this weekend. It was good to talk to my parents and not as hard as I thought it would be. It’s sort of weird – I thought it would be really hard to call home because I am going through this odd homesick thing that I don’t really understand. It’s not that I’m homesick, really, it’s…hmm. Well I think it’s that being so far away from home and from America is making me appreciate a lot of the things that I have when I’m there. For example: I miss being able to call my brother and leave him a voicemail when something really funny happens to me, I miss driving my car around with the windows down, I miss walking across campus to go to debate practice, I miss the feeling of being only 7 hours in the car or a phone call away from home. Not to say that missing these things is lessening the enjoyment I feel every day that I am here, rather it is that noticing I miss these things is making me appreciate both my time in the States and my time here all the more.

I also missed my first debate tournament this weekend. I think it is probably a good thing that I don’t have internet in my apartment because if I did I would have been watching for updates every hour. As it was, I checked for updates while at a café on Sunday and got the results through Saturday night. I was there with some friends and they thought I was crazy because as I was reading the results from each round I was grunting or shaking my fists in the air with joy. Hahaha! If you are also thinking I’m crazy, let me put this in perspective: I have been debating for the last 7 years; I have spent the last 2 with one partner. It feels weird to know that he is debating and I am not, and weirder still to watch the world of debate turning while not being a part of it. If I had graduated, it wouldn’t be so odd. It is just weird to be a Bearcat, but a Bearcat half-way around the world unable to help her team win stuff. It will be good to get back to them!

Other weekend firsts: first party on a boat, first time seeing a blue Eiffel Tower (to honor France's current presidency of the EU, I'm told), and first interaction with French children.

Actually the story about the children is funny, so I will end with that. My friend Martina and I were at the park sitting on a hill in the sun and talking when we heard something hit the ground behind us. We looked back to find a large chestnut had landed, and it wasn’t from the tree near us. Another one landed and we looked around to find children hiding behind a bush and throwing chestnuts at us. After a few more I got a little annoyed (their aim was bad, but if they had hit one of us it would have hurt) so I got up and chased after them. They ran away and hid so I let them go, but they knew we were mad. Their solution was to come back and shout the only English phrase they knew, “You are beautiful!!” We couldn’t be mad after that – who can resist flattery?? :)

Berlin Pictures and Student Food

The Bundestag



















Me drinking beer at the hostel!














A portion of the Wall (at the East Side Gallery)














The Brandenburg Gate


Just a sampling of the wonderful sights in Berlin! Soon I will put up some other pictures from the area where I am living. The weather has been so beautiful - a crisp fall feel but plenty of sun. Yesterday I took the metro to a random stop and walked around for a few hours. I happened upon all kinds of beautiful fountains and churches and sculptures. It is such an experience even to just walk around here!

I have been eating mostly just bread and cheese every day. I walk down to the boulangerie (bakery) down the street and buy a baguette for .85 centimes and spend the day chewing on that and whatever cheese and apples I have in my fridge. Food is so expensive! I was walking past a McDonalds today and they were advertising one of their burgers for 4.65 euros. That is more than $6!! Just for a burger! It is a little difficult for me to pick out cheese, though. Being from Wisconsin, I thought I was a regular cheese connoisseur. Not here! Every time I go to the grocery store I walk up and down the cheese aisle (yes, a whole aisle) trying to figure out what I can buy that won't taste like mold. One time I thought I was getting something really exotic but it ended up just being Swiss cheese. Haha! My student diet is so sad! But the bread here is so great and the less money I spend on food, the more money I will have to spend on shoes! ;)

Berlin and Beyond

It has been less than a week since I last posted but it feels like much longer. So many things have happened!

1. I had to move out of my apartment. Michel (the landlord) came by one night to tell me that two Russian boys were moving into my apartment and I needed to get out by the morning. This was at about 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night, mind you. I had to move upstairs to an apartment for 6 which has 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen and a washing machine. I was a little unhappy (I had already cleaned and settled into the apartment I was living in) but what can you do. I am happy to have a home and reasonable rent in Paris - complaining seems a bit rude. So far I have 2 other roommates (Nina from Serbia and Riane from Holland), but Michel tells us that there are more coming soon. We shall see!

2. I had my first class today! Classes here meet just once a week for 3 hours. It is nice to meet just once a week, but 3 hours is pretty lengthy. It was a little rough! The class was International Finance and today we just went over basics which I have studied before. I have another class tomorrow, but the rest of my classes don't start until September 29th. It is a weird system I will explain some other time.

3. I went to Berlin! Definitely the coolest of the things that have happened. I flew out at 5 a.m. Friday morning (after staying out at a club until 2 - OOPS!) and met my friend Nell at the train station. It was so great to see her! We spent the first day walking around, seeing the city and shopping. We stopped at an authentic looking restaurant because I wanted to sample some real German food, and I think the place was pretty authentic because we could see the old German woman cooking in the kitchen and we were surrounded by locals (who ate piles of food and drank beer like it was their job, by the way). For those of you who don't know, I don't really eat meat. It's not that I have a serious problem with it and I'm not really a vegetarian, I just usually avoid meat because I don't really like the taste. So we were at this restaurant and I ordered schnitzel because I was under the impression that it was some kind of doughy-noodley stuff. Of course it came and it was just a giant slab of fried meat - meat I couldn't identify except to say that it tasted like chicken, but wasn't. Haha. Luckily the plate also came with a heap of potatoes and salad, so I just ate that. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I was thinking of streudel. I think. :)

Beer in Berlin was crazy cheap! Nell and I were trying to save money so we just went to a supermarket to buy bread and cheese for dinner, but of course we had to sample German beers. So we bought 6 half-liters of beer and only paid about 4 euros! I couldn't believe it! At the pubs here in Paris, beer is 4-6 euros a pint. So we ate and drank beer in our room at the hostel, which felt very nomadic and cool. ;)

The next day we took a tour of the city, putting names and stories to all the buildings we had seen before. It was an interesting city - not as ornate as Paris, but beautiful in a "gritty" way, as Nell put it. We saw the Brandenburg gate and old Nazi buildings and of course the wall. I have some pictures I will put up soon. That night we hit up happy hour at the hostel's bar (giant mugs of beer for only 1 euro!) and then went on a pub crawl through the city. We started out with a group at our hostel and grew to about 200 by the end of the night! It was great to meet people from all over the world and see everyone having fun together. I talked to a ton of people, one of whom was an American soldier currently on leave from Iraq. I started asking him about the situation in Iraq and (insert an image of me looking sheepish here) I ended up talking politics with him for about 2 hours! Ridiculous, I know, but talking politics is my weak spot and he had such interesting things to say!! It was great to hear his perspective. That's a lot of why I'm here - to get different perspectives and experiences, so I was glad to meet him. Even if I felt a little silly discussing protectionism on a pub crawl!

Well, Berlin was great and I was sad to leave. And it was sad to leave Nell! It was such an odd feeling to be coming "home" to Paris. But at least here I speak the language! I feel downright fluent in French after spending 3 days in Berlin speaking ZERO German.

A Bientot!

Oh, to be American...

I have planned my first trip! This weekend I will meet my friend Nell in Berlin. Nell is a friend from McKendree who has been teaching English in Poland for the last year (she is just starting her second year there) so I have not seen her in a year and a couple of months. I am so excited to see her! And to see Berlin.

We have our first school meeting this week. I am really enjoying hanging out with the girls I have met, but I am hoping that I meet some other American students to travel with soon. I want to travel around Europe but all of the students I have met ARE European and can travel whenever they want, so are not too interested in venturing out much. That or they have already traveled everywhere and don’t want to spend the money to do it again. I had thought that there would be tons of American students here, but apparently that was pretty ignorant of me.

I am finding that being American makes me feel ignorant of a lot of things! Our culture is different from European culture in a few BIG ways, ways that make me feel left out of this community Europeans have made for themselves. Of course I am left out, I am not European, but it is weird to contrast what my country has taught me with what my European friends have been taught by their countries. It seems like they have been trained to think of the world as more of a global community than we Americans have been. One of my friends was saying she read a statistic that only 27% of Americans have a passport, and she was really freaked out about this. All of the other Europeans in the room started freaking out too, saying, “Oh my gosh! I have had my passport since I was born!” and stuff like that. I was not surprised! There are lots of Americans who have not left the country and don’t ever want to (this doesn’t seem weird to me, it is just how some choose to live) but to them it was shocking, almost horrifying. We talked about it and concluded that it is a bit of a different situation for Americans because if we want to take a vacation and see the beach, or ski, or shop, or climb mountains or whatever, we can just travel to another part of the US to do it. Most Europeans have to leave their country to find alternative recreation. But still, it was interesting to see their reaction. I am learning so much about the way Europeans think…it is interesting and crazy and helpful.

Of course there has been a great deal of political talk, but I will leave the rest for another time. Suffice it to say I am getting quite the perspective! I can’t believe it has only been a week and already I have learned so much. Stupid me, I thought I was so worldly before!!

I have been here for only one week, and in only 15 weeks I will leave again. Today it seems like such a short time, though I’m sure some days it will feel like a very long time. Being an American girl in Paris is quite the adventure!

Some Observations

Bonjour! Wow, there is so much to say about Paris. A few observations from my first few days here:

I am one of the only American students spending the semester at my school (PGSM). All of the people I have met so far have been other Europeans, from Austria, Denmark, Norway, etc. Of the two American girls I have met, one has lived in Norway for the past 10 years, and the other one has her home in America but goes to school in Norway. For them it is normal to be abroad – most of them have already spent a semester somewhere else, like Australia or England. Compared to them, we Americans seem like homebodies. And they all speak English. Oddly enough, they speak almost perfect English and almost no French. We all speak English when we hang out because it is the only language we all have in common. I am the only one who is not bilingual. It is very different! We have talked a lot about how our cultures differ – they all live in countries where health care is free, college is free, and you get money for nearly every life occasion, like giving birth, studying abroad, etc. They complained a little about the tax rate necessary to provide such services (40-60% of their total income) until I told them how much it costs for me to go to school and what hospital bills are like in the US. Then they were very happy to live where they do.

American music is EVERYWHERE here. The French MTV stations play all kinds of American music videos, in fact the video I have seen the most since being here is “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. Next popular is “So What” by Pink. I went to a dance club the other night and the songs they were playing were remixes of Weezer and Nirvana, and at a pub I was at before that the live band was playing Oasis and DMB. It is so weird! The funniest part is that the French sing along, though they have no idea what they are saying most of the time. It is a really bizarre experience because to me all the music seems outdated and out of place (Weezer at a techno dance club??) but to them it is really hip.

Did you know that Starbucks is in Paris?? I didn’t, until I saw one today. Also, there is a store in France called Monoprix (it is like a Target or Walmart) and I was trying to explain in to my European friends. They had no idea what I was talking about until I said, “It is like Walmart.” Then, of course, they all knew what I was talking about. Other funny things: they have McDonalds all over the place but because the city is so packed together, instead of drive-thrus, they have walk-up windows. They put it all in a bag to go, like in a drive-thru, only you walk up to the window. Haha. Oh and yesterday we were in a mall and there was an underwear store called “Undiz”. Get it? Undies! Haha I love the French.

Today I went to the Sacre-Coeur, then walked along the Champs-Elysee and around the Louvre. It is an odd feeling to be walking around such notable monuments on such a normal day. I think eventually I will become used to it (like all Parisians) and then it will be weird to be home. Hahaha.

Arrival Day (Sleep Day) and Day 2

Bonjour!

I have arrived. I do not have internet in my apartment, so I had to wait until I could get to campus to post anything. I had quite the day yesterday! My plane got in about an hour late but thankfully Deniz (the French student who was to pick me up) was still there waiting for me. Unfortunately, the man who was supposed to let me into my apartment had left Paris for the morning, so we had to wait for him to come back to get the key for my apartment. I was exhausted and really just wanted to go to bed, but we had to wait so we got coffee and then trekked for what seemed miles around the city trying to get me a metro pass, which ended up not happening because I am not a resident of France, which you need to be to get the one we were trying to get. And of course we found this out too late. So I hadn't eaten or slept for more than 3 hours in 2 days and I was running around the city with my suitcase (Deniz had the other) and it sucked. Ha ha. Deniz started to get worried about me because I did not look very well, so he bought me pain au chocolat and made me eat it. So nice!! When the man with my key finally came to town, the lock on my flat was broken so I had to move to a 6 person flat upstairs for the night. By this time I was sweaty and exhausted. Deniz offered to go buy me the card I needed for my french phone while I showered (again, so nice!) so I showered and he came back a little later with the phone card. After that he left and I slept from 130 that day to 9 this morning. I needed it!

Today my landlord came by and moved me into the new apartment (he didnt fix the lock, just told me to be sure not to lock the handle or I will not be able to get back in) so I finally have my stuff in my own flat. I walked around a bit this morning and my neighborhood seems nice - there is a big park right by me, as well as a fruit stand and grocery store. I wanted to buy fruit today, but I was nervous about my French! Not good. I will try soon.

Sorry for the awkward writing! The keyboard I am using is set up different from American keyboards so it is taking me a while to type things. They have set up my laptop for wireless in the school buildings, but it will not be active for 24 hours. Once that is working I will be able to write much faster.

Tomorrow I am going to a party for new international students. I am looking forward to meeting new people! I will also meet Charles, a French student who came to McKendree last spring. It should be fun! If I can find it, haha. Paris is definitely larger than Lebanon!