A Semester in Paris!

An Ending

2008-12-30T19:39:00.000-08:00

Oops! It has been quite a while.

Well I got all of my homework done and all of my things packed. I finished my exams, I said good-bye to Paris, and I jumped on a flight back home. I was lucky enough to fly home without delay or cancellation, something not many travelers enjoyed this holiday season. I had a movie moment with my family, got my luggage, and drove home. The end.

It would be nice to have some insightful closing words for this blog, but closing words are not something I'm good at. And my Paris experience isn't over yet. I'm still learning and processing trying to understand all of the things that this experience has meant for me. It's a whole lot to think about.

If any of you would like to hear more about my experience, feel free to ask me about it. As for this blog, it will end here. I have to go back to McKendree, debate, write a thesis, see my friends, learn and graduate. I have quite a bit to catch up on in my American life, and I couldn't be more excited. It feels wonderful to be home.

As I said to my friends in France, I don't do goodbyes. It's just too heavy a word. So - as I said to them and to Paris - see you later!

Too much school work, too little vin chaud

2008-12-13T03:30:00.000-08:00

I have been doing almost nothing other than schoolwork for the past week and a half, so I don’t have much to report. Oh! I went to a Christmas market last week. Christmas markets are apparently a very big deal in Europe. In most countries they go on for about a month leading up to Christmas. They are huge affairs where dozens of vendors line up in small tents along a street (there is one along the Champs-Elysee) or in an open square (there’s another one in the center of an industrial complex at the edge of Paris). The tents are interspersed with food vendors (tortellini, beef sandwiches with melted cheese, waffles with nutella, crepes, etc.) and hot spiced wine (vin chaud) stands. I’m told that the hot wine stands are the main appeal, for their talent at keeping friends warm and fuzzy around the edges. I visited a large market at the edge of the city last Sunday, and my friends and I are planning to return again this Sunday. Hopefully I will have enough of my work done to make the trip! It was beautiful.

Last night I visited the Louvre for the umpteenth time. Friday nights are free for students, so I have been spending a few hours there every Friday for the last couple of weeks. I think the Friday Night Louvre has become my favorite place in Paris. The outside of the museum is stunning, and at night the inside seems even more …whimsical? I’m not sure how to describe it. Imagine yourself walking around a castle, surrounded by wonders of the ancient world, priceless works of art and the comfort of nighttime. I don’t look at a map, just walk, and I have seen something new every week. The size of the museum is baffling, and every artifact or piece of art has something to say. I have a favorite painting I like to stand in front of every week – it’s not popular and not near anything noteworthy, so I usually have all the space and time I need to stare at it forever. Basically, the Friday Night Louvre is a dream. I will be sad to give it up!

I’m down to single digits. 8 days left! It is unreal to think that these months have gone by so quickly, and yet many weeks have felt so tortuously long. One of my roommates, who has become a good friend of mine, is leaving next Friday morning. She experienced her first Last Day (it was her last Friday in Paris) yesterday and I asked her how it felt. “It doesn’t feel any different,” she said. “Home still seems so far away.”

Part of this is the fact that we are in the midst of exams and have a whole lot of work to do, but I think part of this is the gap that exists between our last look at Paris and our first look at home. We will not just be crossing time zones and borders, but we will be crossing that invisible line which has divided our lives here from our lives back home. Our lives here seem to be happening in an alternate dimension of sorts – we were plucked from our individual lives, dropped into this collective home, and then told to continue on our way. It is impossible for us to even conceive of what life will be like when we get home, not to mention envision ourselves as a part of it. Our friends will have new inside jokes, jokes we aren’t a part of. Our classmates will have learned things we didn’t learn here. It’s not going to feel the same, but we don’t know what’s going to feel different. Yet. I’m giving it 8 days…

The year that won't happen

2008-12-10T10:25:00.000-08:00

I now understand why people say that you need to live somewhere for a year in order to fully experience it. My journey will total only four months when all is done, and that time can be described in segments:

Month 1: Learn neighborhood, school, grocery store and other essential locations. Work on not feeling like a tourist.
Month 2: Learn Europe. Learn people, learn friends, learn lessons.
Month 3: Miss home.
Month 4: Begin the simultaneously slow and lightning-speed countdown to departure day.

Where’s the “live life in Paris” part? It is distributed throughout, but not concentrated anywhere. It is always an option, never a priority. It is secondary to the other emotions, tasks and lessons that consume four months in a matter of blinks.

Though I feel a bit like I cheated, I think four months was just right for me. Maybe I never really “live[d] life in Paris”, but I also never really wanted to. There are too many things missing from a life for me here. Nobody to talk American politics with, nobody to debate, no local coffee shop featuring young heartthrobs on an acoustic guitar, no car for me to run to when I need to feel free from the world, no family, no old friends to keep me grounded. Maybe I only got a taste of the full helping that would be a year in Paris, but that taste taught me all I need to know. I don’t want to spend a year in Paris.

I don’t much want to spend a year anywhere else around the world, for that matter. This trip, unexpectedly, revealed to me that Home is more important than I thought it was. I always thought I could, and would, leave my family and my hometown behind. My family has been there for generations now, but I always thought one of my siblings would take up the reins and settle down while I was off traveling the state, the country or the world and making things happen. I can’t say for sure that I will never head off, but I can say that I will always come home. I have come to understand why my sister moved back home after building a new life a new life a state away. Our family is one of those lucky ones, one of those families where everyone has their own heart and their own life, but everyone has a piece of each other, too. We need each other. My life is a little less full without them around, and I’m ready to have them back.

I have loved so much about this trip and this place, and I have had experiences I will spend the rest of my life wishing I could have all over again. I am appreciative for every day that I have here and I am still struck by the beauty that is Paris. But it will all be over in 1 week and 4 days and I have to admit I'm a bit relieved. I will miss Paris, but...

A little late, but...

2008-12-08T04:26:00.000-08:00

Oops! It has been quite a while since I updated here…sorry about that! I got wrapped up in my school work and dwindling day count and forgot that people actually read my blog until my brother sent me an email wondering what was going on and why I hadn’t posted. My apologies! The update:

I have an insane amount of work to do. I think I have mentioned before that the French system is a little strange in that it does not assign any work until the end of the semester, at which point students are totally overloaded with assignments. Well, it is the end of the semester (last week of classes before exams in the first half of next week) and I am totally overloaded. I have a project and/or presentation in every class, exams in all but one class, and two 30-page research papers to write. Mind you, these assignments are the only assignments I have had all semester, so my grades are being determined based on my performance on these assignments. The system does not make sense to me. Not only is it ridiculous to expect that I will turn in stellar work when I need 2 months to effectively complete what I am being expected to do in 2 weeks, but I cannot figure out why these professors are making their own lives so miserable. Two 30 page papers? These are both assigned by the same professor. He is expecting a 30 page paper from every student in 2 of his classes, so we are talking somewhere in the vicinity of 1,200 1.5 spaced pages he thinks he is going to read in the one week between paper due date and grade due date. Really?? Why would you do that to yourself?

More than the stress of having way too much to do, I am dealing with the stress of an educational system I don’t understand. Did you know that in Europe, failing classes is normal business? Your final grades are based on either 1, 2, or (if your professor is generous) 3 grades you earn throughout the semester. This means that if you mess one thing up, you either fail or are stuck with a grade in the C range. One mess up! I don’t get it. And I am more than a little scared. My GPA is pretty solid right now, and although these grades will not go into my GPA, they will appear on my transcript. I can’t imagine having to explain a “C” to the law schools I want to get into.

As you may have guessed, this means that I will not be going on any more trips. I have too much work to do and not enough time to do it the way it is. The only weekend that I would be free enough to go anywhere is the last weekend that I am here, but I don’t want to take a trip during my last weekend in Paris. I want to spend the weekend appreciating the city and my friends and my experience here – AND finishing up the gift shopping I still need to do for my family. And myself. :)

I only have two weeks left! It is amazing to me to think that two weeks from today, right now, I will be on a plane on my way home. It is still more amazing to think that another two weeks after that I will be on my way back to McKendree! I feel so far away from that whole world right now – my whole world – and it is strange to think of myself back in it. Strange, but relieving. It will feel so good to be back.

London Pictures!

2008-12-08T04:12:00.000-08:00

Some overdue pictures!

Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

This year I celebrated Thanksgiving without my family for the first time in 20 years. I’d like it to be another 20 years at least before I have to do that again. I had a wonderful evening, but it just wasn’t Thanksgiving without my family and my mom’s pumpkin pie. If you’ve ever missed Thanksgiving with your family, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.

As it was, my Thanksgiving was not too bad. I met my half-American, half-Norwegian friend and her American friend who was visiting and we went to the Hard Rock Café. Very American! We didn’t have reservations so we had to wait a little more than an hour for a table but we didn’t mind. We sat at the bar and had cocktails, speaking English and savoring the feeling of being surrounded by other Americans. (The place was packed with Americans in Paris looking for a taste of home on Thanksgiving.) They were offering a Thanksgiving menu with turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie, but it was pretty pricey and I knew the pie would just be disappointing. So I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer and stuffed myself.

After dinner my friends went clubbing but I could not bring myself to spend Thanksgiving clubbing. I went back to my friends’ apartment and used their internet to call my family. Everyone was at my grandparents, so I got to talk to everyone and see everyone on the webcam and it was really great. It still sucked to be missing out on being there, but I felt better being a part of it via computer for at least a little while. I took the liberty of reminding my mother that there are a few Christmas traditions I will be expecting to enjoy this year, including decorating cut-out cookies and eating comfits on Christmas morning. She laughed. Of course she wouldn’t neglect these things, but she knows that I need to remind myself that home will still be home when I come back.

Home will still be home, and my life will still be my life. There will still be classes and debate and my friends and my car, but I know they are going to be different. Not tangibly, but in my mind something will have changed and I will no longer feel the same way that I felt in my life before I came here. That is a scary thought. I knew when I signed up for this that it would mean big changes in my life and my world-view, but I didn’t realize how unstable it would make me feel. Now I know why you are supposed to study abroad during your junior year. I am a senior, so I am making decisions about graduate school and my future, and all while in the midst of a life-changing experience. I feel like I’m not equipped to make any of these decisions right now because I don’t know how I’m going to feel about my life when I get back to America. And yet. I am forging forward with these decisions and trusting that whatever I decide when I get home, I will have had the foresight to leave that option open. This adventure is not going to end when I get on a plane on December 22nd.

Will this adventure ever end?

A Royal Weekend

2008-11-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

Another trip, another stamp in my passport – this one read “Londres” and featured a picture of a train. It, along with the postcards and brochures I collected, will be a reminder of one of my favorite weekends from my semester abroad. London was wonderful. I visited Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Tower, the War Cabinet Bunker where Churchill directed London’s WWII efforts, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Covent Garden Market and more. London felt good. It felt happy and safe and clean. I am a fan.

Highlights: I got to hear a performance of the Westminster Abbey Choir. I was entering the Abbey, lamenting the fact that I would not be around for the Choir’s Advent concert in two days, when I happened upon the fully assembled Choir about to start a rehearsal. The choir is composed of around 12 men and 26 boys. The boys are all the students of the Westminster Abbey Choir School, which is a boarding school located adjacent to the abbey. I hadn’t heard a live performance of a boy’s choir before and I can’t think of a better choir to hear first. It was pretty cool.

I saw Anne Boleyn’s burial spot, underneath the floor of the Chapel of the London Tower. I saw a castle that played home to Henry VIII. I saw a division of the cavalry ride through the street. I walked through a king’s old hunting grounds. I read a real newspaper! In English! Being the pretty huge nerd that I am, that was definitely one of my favorite things about the weekend. That and all of the Starbucks. They were everywhere! Normally I am not a fan of Starbucks and prefer to frequent locally owned coffeeshops, but in Europe Starbucks is a welcome sight because I know it means the only to-go coffee for miles. France does not believe in putting coffee in a paper cup. I think they call that sacrilege. A cup of coffee to get me going on the way to class? I call that heaven.

I woke this morning to a flurry of snow. More accurately, I woke to find a few lint-like objects floating around in the sky, but it was snow enough for me. My family has a strict rule about Christmas: It is not to be acknowledged, anticipated or decorated for until after Thanksgiving. This rule has no applicability in Europe, of course, because they do not celebrate Thanksgiving. As a result, I have been confronting Christmas for a number of weeks now. My local Metro station has been decorated with lights and tinsel, the street on which it is located has been spanned by giant snowflakes and stars, every gift shop I visited in London was playing Christmas music and my local Monoprix (like Target) long ago opened its display of decorations, chocolates and calendars to celebrate the season. It is earlier than I would normally approve of, but it is comforting. Though I sometimes feel uncomfortably far from home, these things remind me that I am not away from home – just in a different home. I have a bed, a school, a family of friends and a grocery store here. Like it or not, this is my Fall 2008 home. I have been struggling with feelings of homesickness and exasperation, but the snow today reminded me that my life here is what I make it. I may not have Target or McKendree or US Cellular, but I have snow and friends and a bed. What more could I ask for?

I really do love snow. How did I celebrate its brief appearance? I drank a Bud.

November 16th?!?!

2008-11-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

I had a great time with Nell! It was so nice to have a visitor to show around Paris. By now all of these things are losing their sparkle for me, so it was nice to remember how impressive everything is when you don't see it every day. We didn't have much time because she was only able to stay for two and a half days, but we saw a fair number of things. Unfortunately, this was the last time I will see her while I am here. I won't see her again until sometime next summer, (sad!) but I am so glad I got to spend this time with her in Europe. It was a lot of fun!

This Wednesday evening I am planning to attend an organ concert at the Cathedral Notre-Dame. I am hoping it will be as impressive as I am anticipating. Thursday morning I am heading out for a weekend in London. I have heard good things about London, so I am looking forward to it. Especially the shopping! :)

Tomorrow I hit the 5 weeks left mark. It feels a bit weird to be this far into it, but it still seems like December 22 is so far away. I'm sure it is going to fly by - I am already surprised to find that I am half-way through November. Being busy these last two weeks has helped move time along, and things will not be slowing down for me until next weekend when I stick around for Thanksgiving. After that it will pick up again with a trip to Rome and exams, so I think this time will be gone before I know it. It's weird to think that in 5 weeks and 1 day I am going to get on a plane and fly home with no idea when I will ever make it back to Europe. It is beautiful over here and I am really enjoying it, but it was not cheap for me to make this trip. I saved for a long time to be able to afford this and depleting all my savings now, plus paying for the three years of law school which are quickly approaching puts me in an unfortunate financial situation. I definitely want to travel a lot in my life, but I am thinking it will be a while before I have the financial clout (and vacation time) to make any trips. It is odd to think that things which are so familiar to me now will be absent from my life for 10, maybe 20 years and when I come back to them everything in my life will be different. I will remember the days when I was here and it will be like looking back on another lifetime. Nothing I’m doing seems all that memorable now, but when my life is a routine of work, eat, sleep, repeat, I am going to miss these nights sitting at the café sipping hot chocolate and checking my email.

5 weeks, 1 day to go...

Only 2 trips left...

2008-11-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

Amsterdam was great! It was such a cute little city. Small, smushed-together homes with huge, inviting windows, canals running through every other street, bicycles that wouldn’t end…and houseboats! It rained a lot, but that didn’t make it any less adorable. Among other things, I visited the Anne Frank house, the Heineken Brewery and one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. Everything was so neat.

I have concluded that I am not a Heineken fan. The brewery was cool and I enjoyed the tour quite a bit, but I’m not the biggest fan of the beer. They did left me draught my own beer at the bar at the end, and I did it perfectly on my first try (which I was pretty proud about – the man who tried after me messed up 3 before he got a decent one), but that did not improve the taste. Of all the beer that I have tasted on my travels, my favorite would be either Guinness or Leffe, a Belgian beer that comes in the tastiest blond. A note on American beer: I have a Parisian friend here who was an exchange student at McKendree last year and he fell in love with Budweiser beer. He had some imported the other week and let one of our German friends from Munich have a taste. Her verdict? “Tastes like a German beer! And you should be very proud, because we Germans know our beer!”

Nell is arriving today for her weekend visit. She will be my first and only visitor in Paris. I can’t wait to see her! This will be the last time I will see her until we are both back in the States again. I am hoping we will be able to visit everything that she wants to see, but it will be tight. There is so much to see in Paris! 3 days is not much time. I am glad she will be here, particularly because McKendree Debate is hosting a tournament this weekend (the first McKendree Invitational ever) and I am missing it. Nell was also a member of the McK Debate team, so I am glad I will have a fellow debater here to keep me company while our team runs a tournament back home. Go Bearcats!

It’s a beautiful, sunny day in Paris. It’s going to be a good day.

An International Affair

2008-11-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

I sat down to write a post and came to me that I have not written about my living arrangements. What a thing to neglect! So here goes:

I live in a large, 12-floor apartment building in a neighborhood consisting primarily of apartment buildings, a school and a couple of grocery stores. There is a big, beautiful park nearby where people walk and run on nice days. There are bakeries on every corner - my favorite is close to the metro station. There are a lot of children in the neighborhood and I am often woken up by their screams, which have little trouble passing through my big windows even when they are closed. I have never lived in an apartment building as large as this one and it is quite the experience. There is constant noise through the too-thin walls and more than once I have been woken at 9 a.m. on a Saturday by sounds of construction on the floor above me. Basically, it is difficult to sleep and I am learning to ignore even the loudest noises.

My apartment is on the third floor. It is a tiny 3-bedroom apartment with a kitchen, bathroom and closet to share. Two of the bedrooms are so small they just barely fit 2 beds and 2 desks. The kitchen is so small that a max of two people can prepare dinner at one time, and that is a very tight fit. I was one of the first to move in, so I was lucky enough to get a bed in the biggest bedroom. It has three large patio doors which open onto a balcony, though the balcony is narrow and the view it provides is just one of the balconies of about 100 other apartments facing ours. I have been to the apartments of a variety of exchange students and we have, by far, the smallest apartment, but we also pay the lowest rent. It is tight quarters!

As to the people in my apartment: the six of us represent America, Serbia/Malta, Holland, China, Italy and Djbouti. Quite the mix of cultures! We do our best to get along and be sensitive to each other’s cultural histories, but stick 6 girls in one small apartment with one bathroom to share and you are going to have issues! But we work through them as they come up and things are going smoothly. We talk about the different experiences we have had in our home countries and share stories about our difficulties here. I am jealous of my Dutch roommate who will be going home next week for a big event in her hometown, but I appreciate my arrangement when I think of my Chinese roommate who is doing her whole bachelors here and will not be going home to China until next summer. She will even miss the Chinese New Year, which makes me feel a little less bad about missing Thanksgiving.

This weekend I am going on a school trip to Amsterdam. I’m so excited! It will be good for me to go on another trip – I am getting restless in the city. I will be gone through next Tuesday and on Thursday Nell will arrive from Poland to visit. Busy is good!

Interesting note: All of the Starbucks around have introduced their Christmas drinks and are now playing Christmas music. While I subscribe to the “No Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving” rule, I can’t say that I mind humming along to “I’ll be home for Christmas”…

Halloween and election jitters

2008-11-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

Happy November!

This weekend I learned that the majority of Europe does not really celebrate Halloween. Instead they celebrate something called “Carnival” (in whatever native tongue, of course) in February. As I understand it, Carnival lasts for about a week and consists of people dressing up as crazy as they can and getting as drunk as they can. Or something like that. As you may have noticed by now, Europeans have a very liberal attitude toward drinking. In America, drinking is sort of a taboo issue. You can’t really even talk about drinking (except among peers, of course) until you are 21, and then when you do drink, it is supposed to be something you do with a great deal of caution, being careful to overindulge only very rarely. Here the Europeans compete like it is a matter of national pride. “I’m Danish! Danish people are always drunk! That’s what we do!” “Serbian people love to party! Our Carnival goes on for two weeks because we just want an excuse to party!” “I’m German – beer is like water to me.”

The interesting thing about it is difference it makes in their behavior when they have been drinking. In America it is quite typical for multiple people at a party to throw up or pass out. Here, if you throw up it is the grossest thing you could do. To them, throwing up is unacceptable because they were throwing up at age 14, when they first started drinking. It became legal for them to drink beer and wine at 16 (liquor at 18), so they have been drinking for 4 to 5 years at this point in their lives. They don’t throw up and they don’t get out of control. Of course there is always the odd person out – I have been out at pubs and seen people get a bit crazy, but it is much more rare here than in America. It is amazing how much the drinking age affects the drinking culture.

I also learned that Europeans are under the mistaken belief that all Halloween costumes worn in America are scary. They thought that you had to be a witch or ghost or vampire or something else sinister when you dress up for Halloween. I guess that is the spirit of the holiday, but of course you don’t have to dress that way. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever worn a scary costume. I have been an ice skater, leftovers and a Greek goddess, but nothing really creepy. Hmm. Maybe I’ve been doing it wrong all these years! Haha.

Two days to the election! Ahh! As I (hope I) have mentioned before, I do not have internet in my apartment. The time difference will mean that results are coming in during the middle of the night here and no café with internet will be open for my use. Luckily, my good friends have internet in their apartment and have offered me the use of an extra mattress in their apartment for the night. I am so excited! I don’t think I will sleep at all. And I have class in the morning! Hopefully the final results are in before my class in the morning. Sitting through a 3 hour class would be nothing more than torture. Ahh! So excited!

Castles and Rain

2008-10-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

The chateaux were beautiful! We saw Chambord, Chenoceaux and Blois. I fell in love with Chenoceaux, a particularly beautiful castle built across water. The day was beautiful and I had a wonderful time. As usual. ;)

I would like to apologize for my recent neglect of this chronicle. I think I have felt less inspired to write of late because I haven’t had anything of much note to say. I crossed the half-way mark this Monday – I had left home eight weeks ago and I was leaving for home in another eight weeks. I feel like I have finally settled into my life here everything is no longer shiny and new. I still look up at just the right time on my walk to the Metro to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, but it no longer seems so exotic. I still feel a sense of temporariness; my apartment does not feel like home, just a place with my bed and my suitcases. But at the same time that I feel this temporariness, I feel like I have been here forever – not eight weeks and 3 days. I get emails from my friends updating me on their lives and I feel like I have missed years. It is an odd feeling to be here and hear about their lives back home because I feel like my “real” life is on hold and I am here, just doing nothing. Meanwhile their lives are in full swing, and I missing out. It sucks sometimes.

I still have things to do – I am going to Amsterdam on a school trip next week, and after that I plan on visiting London and Rome. I’m not ready to be done traveling Europe, but I am ready to be done living in Europe. I know it is going to go so fast and I will be home before I know it, but ugh. The other day I had this indulgent fantasy that I could move my flight home up and get home a week sooner. It wouldn’t make sense, but still. I looked at my calendar the other day and realized that will only be home for 2 weeks before I have to leave for school again. Basically I will spend 2 weeks at home unpacking and then repacking. Gross! The upside, of course, is that I will be back with my friends and back into debate without much delay.

Gosh! Why do I sound so sad? It sounds like I am hating it here, but really, I promise I am not. I have great friends here and I have so many amazing days, walking around the city, hanging out at pubs with my friends, touring things, traveling…really, everything is so great. I think it’s just that it’s not home. I always wanted to spend some time living in Paris – as I have said before, I have always been in love with this city. For most of my life I have dreamt of living here for some time and I am so glad to have had this chance. My love and appreciation for not only my home and my school in America have grown, but also my love and appreciation for America. I am still so grateful to be here and so glad to be learning everything that I am. But today it is cold and rainy and I am missing my American life.

Ireland

2008-10-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

Ireland was amazing. It was the perfect combination of nice people, good beer and a beautiful landscape. I am in love.

My first day in Dublin was mostly walking around looking at cool buildings. We walked through the old Viking district of the city, which was pretty awesome. It’s not often you get to think to yourself, “Wow! A super long time ago there were some Vikings standing here!” We also saw a church which was built sometime in the 13th century, and it looked it. That is so old! I think it was striking to me because it was so small and normal looking that it felt really intimate. There weren’t any tourists around, it was just the two of us and a few locals sitting on a bench in the small garden. Churches were such a central aspect of people’s lives during the time this one was built, and when you’re there alone with the stones and the trees the history is almost palpable. I think that is the coolest feeling. We also toured the original Guinness brewery, which is still operational. Arthur Guinness, the founder of the brand, signed a 9000-year lease on the property. Crazy! So if the company continues to enjoy the global success it has seen so far, they could be there for a while. Anyway, the brewery was really neat and the beer even better.

Ireland has made me a Guinness convert! We went to dinner at a pub/carvery (place where they serve good food cafeteria-style) and I ate a cod fillet with chips (fries) and a Guinness. The next day we were on a tour where we stopped at another carvery and I had Guinness and beef stew and a pint of Guinness. It was one of the best meals I’ve had since coming to Europe, and that’s a pretty big deal coming from a girl who can’t remember the last time she ate beef in the States! I drank Guinness all night on the pub crawl we went on, and the Irish were quite glad to see it. As far as I can tell, if you drink Guinness or Jameson, the Irish love you. Or really, if you drink at all.

Our first night at the pub/carvery there was a duo of Irish men playing guitar and singing traditional Irish ballads (folk songs? I’m not totally sure what the proper term would be) and it was so neat. Everyone was clapping and dancing or singing along, the perfect embodiment of what I had imagined an Irish pub would be like. You don’t think that things like that could really happen because it is so cliché, but it happened. It made me wish I could sing along too!

The second day we took a bus tour out to the edge of the city (to the coast) and out through the countryside. I can’t put into to words the kind of beauty that I experienced at all of the different places we stopped. If you’ve never been to Ireland, you should put it on your list of places to see. It was breath-taking. I have included a few pictures, but they could never do the experience justice. I was astounded. Though that seems to be the story of my life these days…

This weekend I am going on a day trip to the chateaux (castles) of the Loire Valley. I can't wait!

A Story of Pride and Foolishness

2008-10-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

I am a little ashamed to publish this post because it is a story which revolves around my foolishness, but this blog is supposed to be a chronicle of my experiences, be they good, bad or evidence of my stupidity. So here goes!

As I said, I was having a rough couple of days before I left for Poland. Paris was finally starting to get to me. I started to feel incredibly crowded, nearly claustrophobic. I have spent my whole life in towns either suburban or semi-rural in nature and I was not at all accustomed to big city life. Big city life is apartments stacked on top of apartments stacked on top of shops squeezed into every spare inch of space. Big city life is a constant parade of cars and bikes and vespas in a street which you are desperately trying not to totter into as you are shoved around the 3 foot wide sidewalk you share with 30 other people. Big city life is crippled women begging, old men leering and more shit in the street, on the sidewalk and around the rare tree than you thought you would ever see in your life.

But Paris is not just any big city, it is Paris. Add a native population which is incredibly proud of its culture and language. The following is a true story: I was at a bar on the Champs Elysee with a bunch of other people from school when a guy I had seen around a couple of times came over to talk to me and my friend. He knew that we were exchange students so he started to speak English with us. As we were talking one of his friends came over, but once the friend heard us speaking English he got an angry look on his face and immediately turned around to walk away. The guy we were talking to looked over to see what was wrong and his obviously disgusted friend said (in French), “You are in France, you should be speaking French,” before stalking angrily away.

Add a foreign fashion culture. This is the one that surprised me the most. I knew that French people dressed in darker clothing than Americans typically did, so I packed accordingly. This was a little difficult because if you know me you know that I love to wear bright colors. But I stuck to my grays and black in an effort to fit in with the culture as much as possible – my biggest fear was that I would be that American girl who dressed loud and talked loud and fed every stereotype Europeans have of Americans. On a deeper level though (and this is where it gets foolish), I thought that I could actually be French for a semester. I thought I could dress like them, talk like them and live like them to fit seamlessly into their community for four months. And this is why it got hard. I am not Parisian!

I didn’t think I would feel culture shock – I thought I would feel like part of the culture. Basically, I was stupid. It took a few weeks to hit me at all, but then it all hit me at once. I always have been and still am in love with Paris, but it has its flaws. It is loud and crowded and dirty and it’s okay if I’m not in love with it every moment of every day. And really, I am not Parisian! I am American and I am proud of it. I have started wearing colors again and even that has made such a difference. Do you know how depressing it is to wear just black and gray all the time?? It sucks! It is not me. I feel like I am 12 again, having to tell myself that it doesn’t matter what other people think of me! Haha.

Like I said, I feel a little stupid admitting to all of this. I can’t believe I thought I would be the ONE person who didn’t feel culture shock. And I am ashamed that I came over here afraid to show that I am American! Of course it is difficult to be an American abroad (I have talked about this a little – I will write more on it soon), but that’s certainly not a reason to shy away from it. Especially not me! I can’t remember the last time I sought to avoid conflict. I have spent the last 7 years getting good at engaging conflict through debate. What was I thinking?? Ah well, it is all part of the growing and learning this experience is affording me. And I am grateful for it, however stupid it makes me feel.

I am leaving again tomorrow morning! I am spending the weekend in Dublin, Ireland, so I will post pictures from Poland and Ireland next week.

A bientot!

A Quick Hello

2008-10-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

Hello from Poland!

I am sorry my posting has been sparse lately. I meant to post again from Paris before I left for Poland but didn't get around to it. So today I will post some quick love from Opole, Poland where I am visiting my friend Nell.

I love Poland! Many good things have converged to make this an amazing trip for me. My experience in Poland has included a meter of beer at a pub in Krakow, delicious potato dumplings filled with cheese called pierogy, beautiful fall weather and plenty of time with Nell. Poland has a feel much different from that of Paris, of course - a more familiar feeling. Before I left I was in a bit of a funk; the French and I were not getting along very well and I was feeling very homesick. Maybe I will go into specifics later, but suffice it to say that I was not in a very good place. Time with a friend from home and a break from the city life have been just what I needed and I already feel refreshed. I have gotten to talk American politics and walk down a street where I have a full 2 feet of space in either direction, as opposed to the 4 inches I have in Paris. I saw some real countryside! I walked through a natural park and smelled fall. I sat around and watched American TV shows with a friend. As I said, it has been refreshing!

In my next post I want to tell you all about my pre-Poland realization that I was experiencing a little something called culture shock and that it was affecting me more than I thought. The most interesting aspect of it involved the least intriguing of things: my wardrobe. More to come!

A Gray Day

2008-10-06T12:40:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Two of my friends and I had decided to go to the Musee D’Orsay for the day because the first Sunday of every month admission is free. Well we didn’t get there very early (it was a late night!) and by the time we arrived the line was about an hour long. We decided to come back another day and just appreciate our student discounts and instead we spent the day walking along the Seine. The weather was so poetic – the clouds were brooding and everything was gray, but in a crisp, romantic sort of way. Paris looked the way that it does in all of the black and white postcards you see. The wind was sharp, but the kind of sharp that makes you feel cozy in your coat. It was so perfect, just a delicious feeling. I was in heaven. When it started to rain a little we went into a café and ate crepes with egg, cheese, ham and mushrooms. So good. It was one of those days that makes me so happy for every minute I have here.

I also talked to my family yesterday. My dad’s birthday is coming up but I will be in Poland when it arrives, so I wanted to call and talk to him before I leave. Conveniently, my entire family was home when I called and I got a chance to speak with all of them on speaker phone. It was wonderful to hear from all of them and to hear them all together, but it was a little bit hard. They were eating pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins my mom had made and were telling me about all of the fun things they had done together in my hometown. After I got off the phone I came back to my apartment and cried a little bit. It is a little difficult to explain – I wasn’t sad because I wanted to be home. I am only here for 4 months (less than 3 left!!) and every day goes by so quickly that I spend most of them thinking my time here is not enough. It was just sad because it is not often that everyone is together but they were and I wasn’t there. I was the only one missing! I am so close to my family and it was hard to know that they were all getting to be with each other and I couldn’t be a part of it. Ah! Such is life. I will back with them soon enough.

Yesterday my friends and I talked about how we are feeling here. We are all exchange students in love with Paris, so we are having pretty similar experiences. It is weird. Each day feels amazing and long and great, but the weeks feel like they go so quickly. Sometimes I get a little panicky – I feel like my time is going too fast and I have so much to do! So much of Paris to see and love and experience. I wanted to come here and travel a great deal, but now I am feeling like a homebody. I want to spend all the time that I can in Paris! And I am glad that I feel this way. It means my exchange is going well!

5 weeks down, 11 to go!

October (and congestion) arrives!

2008-10-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

I am really bad about taking pictures (hence the lack) but I did manage to take a few while on a random walk the other day. Here they are! It is amazing to me that these are all things I saw while on a random stroll through the city. Cool, huh?

All of my classes have now begun. Fortunately I only have class three days a week, so I still have time for travel and exploring. Unfortunately, each class is three hours long. The majority of my classes in the States are 50 minutes long and meet once a week, though there are a few that are one hour and 20 minutes long and meet twice a week. Three hours once a week is not easy to handle! We get only one break of 15 minutes, 30 minutes if the class covers lunch hours. It is not at all easy to stay focused for that long. Some of my professors have expressed that it is even difficult for them to teach for that long. I am not sure I understand the system, but it is all part of me exploring other cultures, right?

I have planned another trip to Dublin, Ireland. I was looking for another American to travel with but the only American I met was a married girl who is living here with her husband and I didn’t really want to travel with a married couple. Luckily, I met a guy from South Korea who is just as new to Europe as I am and wanted to travel a lot as well. We will be going together to Dublin and have tentatively planned to also take trips to London and Rome. I am looking forward to it!

In other news, I am a bit sick with what I think is a sinus infection. Nothing serious, of course, but it is really not fun to be sick in Paris. I am used to going on with life as usual when I am a little bit sick like this, but it is much harder here. Yesterday I had to go to class on two different campuses and in between I went to my friend’s apartment so I was walking for about 2 hours total, which is really exhausting when you are not at 100%. Getting into my car to drive to class for 50 minutes would be one thing – this is quite another. Yuck!

The weather here is getting ever more gorgeous. Paris has definitely entered fall, which happens to be my favorite season. Everything is crisp and clear and leaves are falling off trees throughout the city. Sometimes I catch a whiff of the fall smell, though in a city this big you rarely smell much other than …well, city. Exhaust or garbage or fish from the market you are walking past. Still, it is so beautiful. Hopefully I will be feeling better soon! I want to be out and about in this weather!

A few days on the beach...

2008-09-28T03:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-19T09:23:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-09-09T05:14:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

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!

Departure Day

2008-08-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

The day is August 31, 2008. My flight to France leaves tomorrow! My plane is not set to fly out until 1:50 p.m., but I will be leaving my house at about 7 a.m. in order to get to O'Hare with enough time to get through security and everything. It will be an early morning! I'm not too concerned, though, as I doubt I will sleep at all tonight.

I have been looking forward to this trip since the last time I came home from France, in the summer of 2003. That summer my sister and I took a 3-week school sponsored trip through France and I fell in love with the country. I loved the food, the culture, the people - everything. I know that I will have a very different experience this time around, but I'm sure it will be just as amazing!

I am going into this trip with 2 suitcases, a proficiency in French, and a feeling of restlessness. I spent the summer living at home and working a full-time job; it was a great experience, but I am ready to go! I am anxious for a new experience, even a difficult experience. I feel too young to be tied down, too young to lead a structured, controlled, planned-out life. I want to go somewhere I don't know anyone, somewhere I've never been. So off I go! I will carry my life overseas for four months and watch myself grow.

A Paris!