maybe i dreamed these past four months?

i'm home.

home (hōm) n.
1. A place where one lives; a residence.
2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment.
3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household.

surreal
  [suh-ree-uhl, -reel] –adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of surrealism; surrealistic.
2. having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic: surreal complexities of the bureaucracy.

cinq jours jusqu'a los angeles

i feel like i'm breaking up with a city.

i have three finals to go. souvenirs to buy. bags to pack (how am i supposed to neatly zipper four months of my life away?). one last concert to go to. friends to say goodbye to. and then a plane to catch.

whirlwind?
YES.

one day late

i'm thankful for being where i am, and knowing who i'm not. i'm thankful for ma famille et ma soeur. thankful for these past four months in paris, for marie, wilson, janet, heather, and everyone else i've met in this paris program. for banane nutella crepes. for thai food. for in-n-out. for skype. for friends back home, for the drunken utopia that i'll return to in iv. for a few more days in this amazing city and a lifetime back in california.

il neige!!!

IT'S SNOWING!!! I'M IN PARIS!!! right now as i type there's little snow flurries falling. and as soon as there's a good layer coating the ground i'm braving the cold and going out there!!! ahhh!!




also, i have 21 days left here. what happens if i don't get on the plane back home?

p.s.

last night there was a showing of royal tenenbaums at a nearby cinema. they were doing a showing of movies by peter bogdanovich and wes anderson. so for the small price of 4.50 euros i and a friend got to watch the show and then hear wes anderson speak afterwards. (it was also interesting because he had a translator to translate his english back to french and you could tell she was completely overwhelmed when both wes and peter would talk or tell jokes to each other). i think i dork-ed out just thinking about the fact that i was in the same room, breathing the same air as wes anderson. but after the movie and discussion we went up to him afterwards to gush and well i'm still thinking about how surreal and cool that moment was. i know if wes anderson were to show up at a theater in los angeles, you probably would've had to have tickets for months in advance and it would have been a lot more difficult to say hello. gahhh. it was just a really amazing moment. you should really watch rushmore, darjeeling limited, or royal tenenbaums' if you haven't already. =]

Brrrrlin

Berlin lived up to its name (as spelled above). It was definitely the coldest I've ever been. I think I took the least amount of pictures on that trip because my hands were too frozen to click the shutter and take a picture.

I think I'm going to write this in list form because my brain's too tired to form full sentences:
easyjet. s-bahn. thai-food in the metro. five-star hostel. andy warhol exhibition with joseph beuys. tres bizarre. pommes frites with curry ketchup. east side gallery. remnants of the berlin wall. beautiful graffiti/stencil/street art. brandenburg gate. multi-level warehouse clubs. german techno. people who don't get mad at you if you speak english!! bars with their own fluxuating prices and their own beer stock exchanges. indian food. 4 hour walking tours. hot chocolate and coffee just so your hands could feel warmth. checkpoint charlie. holocaust memorials. seeing your breath everytime you spoke. paris became instantly warmer as soon as we were back because we had turned to human popsicles in berlin.

i guess the reason why i didn't know what to picture before going to berlin is that the city is really only 18 years old. only 18 years ago the wall separating east and west berlin was torn down. since the city is basically a newborn it makes it feel very clean, international, but at the same time everywhere you walk there is a memorial or reminder of its darker past.

back!

i have a computer again! sigh of relief. now i can update this blaaaaahg, erm blog.

ITALY was all in all a great trip.
MILAN: fashion capital maybe, but it was just too much of a big city for me. there were some guys who tried to hustle us in the metro, as soon as we arrived and were trying to search for our hostel, so i think i just started off on the wrong foot with milan. the duomo was pretty impressive, it looked more like an intricate sandcastle more than a church.
VENICE: was absolutely beautiful and i have far too many pictures of canals and bridges. it seriously looked exactly like every postcard i've ever seen of the place. i'm going to make some prints of my photos when i'm back home and hopefully get them poster size. the gondaliers wear black and white striped shirts and sometimes sing to their passengers. we stayed in a hostel that gave us dinner each night and then we'd head over to venice's only club and order bellini's. i was happy that i got to see st. mark's square, the grand canal, rialto bridge, and then we ferried over to murano where they do glassblowing. it was just really nice to be around that much water again.
FLORENCE: i was pretty impressed that we got into italian museums free with our paris art cards. we went to the uffizi gallery to see titians and bodacellis and then we headed over to accademia to see david! i'm sorry if i sound like such an art freak, but that was amazing to see in person. the sculpture is 14 feet tall, carved out of a single piece of marble, how can you not be in awe?
ROME: rome was probably my second favorite city. we saw the colloseum, the roman forum, paletine hill, trevi fountain (i threw in my centime!), the spanish steps, walked along the tiber river. we found a restaurant called miscellanea that had great prices and served strawberry wine, so we ate to our heart's content and then came back the next day. they had giant sandwiches for 4euro, salads and pastas for 6euros. and these were italian sized portions, not paris size. it was great!

ohhh and speaking of, i ate gelato everyday: here we go: caffe, tiramisu, straciatella, peach, rose, cinnamon (was suprisingly my favorite).

i'm leaving for berlin (brrrrrlin) tomorrow morning. more posts to come!

huit? ohh i can't keep track.

WED (10/08): Saw Jenny Lewis perform at La Maroquinerie. It was a pretty small venue so it was nice to see her up close, instead of from way back in section B at the Greek where I saw rilo kiley in june. After the show, we hung around (even though we weren't supposed to) and tagged along with these awful tennessee groupies who had latched on to one of the band members. We ran into Jonathan Rice and then just followed him up to the bar where the rest of the band/groupies/fans/random people were. We tried to blend in and ordered some drinks. Just as we were about to leave jenny lewis came in and all four of us (me, marie, silvy, wilson) got to meet her! I don't know.. i think it's pretty cool, getting to meet one of the singer's who has saved your ears. and weirder still, considering the amount of time i spend listening to her songs and rilo kiley songs and then actually being able to say hello. ahh, tres bizarre!

FRI - SUN: mes parents were out visiting me. they rented a pretty fancy car with a gps navigation which talked to us in french, and we drove around to chartres, fountainbleau, rambouillet. we stayed at some cutesy b&bs. it was nice to see them in person instead of just the pixelated versions of themselves on skype. haha, ohhh and the restaurant meals were great as well! but note to self: never order andouillette. (it's sausage made of intestines...SICK!!)

THURS (10/16): saw jazzanova at rex club. i don't know, but something about paris has made me start to like techno more. oh right, maybe because they play it everywhere! no but i really am liking it more than i thought i would. c'est bon!

TODAY (10/17): headed for Bois de Boulonge park in about dix minutes. it's supposed to be huge, and have ponds, and a bunch of us are going to have a picnic. yumm. tomorrow is giverny and bike riding, and sometime before next week i will cram for my midterms. AHHH!

(i'll probably edit this in a little bit, because i'm sort of in a rush to go catch the metro)

au revoir!

fashion week in paris

As we were waiting outside the location for the Alexander McQueen fashion show, Marie and I spotted: Devon Aoki, Santino Rice (from Project Runway), Naomi Campbell, and a bunch of other leggy, giraffe-like models.

Naomi Campbell was only about a cell phone's throw away from us! some male model came up to us and asked us for a light, i let him borrow my lighter and then he snuck us into the back door and we watched the entire show from behind the catwalk. ok, kidding about the last part. a male model did ask us for a light, but we just said no. that'll probably be the only time i'll kick myself for not smoking.

more updates later

seis

note to self: always book a hostel. train stations, unlike airports, close as soon as the last train has pulled in.

aside from the first 8 hours, bordeaux was a lot more fun than i expected it to be. after getting kicked out of the gare st jean, we tried to pool our money and just get a room in a hotel. every single one in the centreville of bordeaux was booked. eventually we wandered over to the fashion district and slept (sort of?) in the alcove of a window display with the store mannequin's watching over us. it was wayyyy too cold. sleeping out in the streets is something you do once in your life, and NEVER again. around 7am, we checked into our hostel and napped in a real bed for about an hour.

around 9am we wandered over to the office de tourisme and signed up for a wine tasting. we tasted 4 wines. since we weren't able to sleep the night before, we were all a little buzzed by the end of it. one thing that was nice about bordeaux was that the restaurants were much cheaper! we had a three-course lunch for only 13 euros. later on we headed out to bar du rock (or something that sounds equally lame) which was near the medical school for bordeaux university. the only reason i know this is that a group of about ten guys conga-ed into the bar tied together by their white lab coats and chanting some slurred french songs. it was ridiculous!

the next day we rented bikes and rode around the public gardens and the river. they have this really cool fountain. i think it was called mirroir d'eau or something close to that. you could walk on top of it, since it only filled up with about 2 inches of water, and then every so often the fountain would make clouds and clouds of mist. the weather was probably 70 degrees that day too, so it was nice to get some sun!

-------
for your amusement:
i bought my passe navigo (metro card) for october yesterday. it's sort of expensive (but since i use the metro often enough, it pays itself off) so i wanted to make sure that it worked right after i bought it. i tried to swipe it through the turnstyle expecting to go through but was greeted with a flashing red x. frustrated, i went back in line and tried to explain myself in french to the attendant. she told me "ahh, oui. il marche a mercredi, le premier de octobre." of course my card didn't work yet, it was only september 28.

also: copy and paste to see pictures: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2284167&l=e6cc7&id=3624618

cinq

technoparade (this past saturday) was crazy! it seemed like for that day the oh-so-proper french finally let go! it was great, there were thousandsss dancing in the streets all the way from the opera to the bastille. people climbed on top of bus stops and clung on to the side of traffic lights! i'm not sure how many floats there were, but at times it felt like a continuous mosh pit of bodies just dancing, and me awkwardly trying to figure out how anyone really dances to techno, (i think i'm getting better at it though!).

over the past few days i've been finalizing side trips and well, it suddenly hit me that my weekends are disappearing pretty fast. i'm finally starting to get into a groove and have met some pretty awesome people here and now i'm realizing how short four months really is. c'est la vie, oui?

this weekend i'm going to Bordeaux!

quatre

Soooo... brief (or not-so-brief) weekend re-cap

Thursday night I went to Paris Social club (un autre temp) and saw Steve Aoki. He's insane. I remember seeing him the tuesday before I came to paris at a club in LA, so it was sort of surreal being in a completely different place, going to a club, and seeing the same dj. oddly familiar i guess. Janet and I taught some of the frenchies around us how to make the "LA" sign with your hands and we helped Steve Aoki crowd surf. Haha, it was a good night!

Friday I started the day by meeting up with some friends to see the Catacombs. It was spooky. We climbed down a long spiral staircase to get underground and from then on it felt like we were winding through a maze of precisely arranged skeletons and skulls. In some parts the ceiling was so low you had to duck, and in other parts water would drip on your head. Creeeepy. We finally made it out, went to a japanese restaurant and then headed over to Montparnasse. Montparnasse is Paris' only skyscraper. It has fifty-six stories and from the top we were able to see the sunset and watch all of paris' lights turn on.

Saturday, I went to luxembourg gardens to get some reading done. Yeah, lame...we've reached the study part of "study abroad" booo. I still have 300 pages to go in "lost illusions" ahhhH! Afterwards we went to a cafe and ended up spending the rest of our time fantasizing over desserts instead of actually getting any work done.

Hier, I went to the marche and the boulangerie. At night I think I finally did the most touristy thing possible in paris by taking a night cruise along the seine river. But in my defense it was only 5 euros and ...well c'est tout!

I'm really excited because of all the trips I've been planning. In two weekends, I'm going to Bordeaux. During my semester break (10 days) I'm going to Italy. and in November, I'm going to Berlin. And possibly Barcelona squeezed somewhere in there too. That's all I have planned for now. Part of me feels like I should travel to as many places as possible, because I'm here and for all I know this might not happen again...and then the other part of me realizes that I'm also only living in paris for 3 more months, so I need time to relax and transform from a tourist to a local.

C'est tout!
Je vais ecriver plus tard!
<3

three weeks and counting

I'm 20 now! For my birthday dinner we (there were 8 of us) went out to a restaurant called le comptoir du 7eme near the eiffel tower. Since the restaurant is more of a brasserie that meant we had larger portions that were still pretty delicious. I had filet mignon for dinner and then profiteroles (pastries with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce drizzled on top) for dessert. A few of my friends here suprised me with a cute pastry, a small flower plant for my room, and a bottle of wine. It was a great night!

Friday, I took my intensive language practicum final. I don't know what I scored on that, but now that that's over i have 4.5 units out of the way already. This week I start my real content courses. Tomorrow I have french 2 and then later on in the week I'll have French Art (1715-1914), Paris in Literature, and European Integration.

Saturday morning, Hannah, Marie and I took the TGV train to reims for champagne tasting. We also just wanted to get out of the city and see a smaller, greener town. Reims (pronounced RENS..i think) is about a 45 minute tgv ride east of paris. Once we hopped of the train we went to the notre dame cathedral there and saw a really cool updated stained glass by mark chagall. We went to pommery champange house for our tasting (10 euros for a tour of the house/caves and a glass of bubbly). It was also interesting touring the champagne house because in certain sections there were artists installations. The one that i really liked was a room filled with electric guitars and live finches. The finches would fly around and occasionally land on the guitar strings and play. After the champagne tour we strolled around town, and then arrived back in paris around 7pm.

It was a strange feeling coming back into paris because as the train pulled into its station (maybe because i was so tired and we had just spent the entire day in a new town) it sort of felt like home. The more familiar i get with le metro, the RER, the curving streets, and the owners of the local boulangerie, it starts to sink in that that i'm acutally living here. tres bizarre!

Today (Sunday) Marie and I went to Versailles. What I especially liked about the visit (besides the fact that with our student id cards we get in free) was that there is an upcoming Jeff Koons exhibition within the Versailles palace. It opens sometime next week, but throughout some of the drawing rooms and foyers there would be objects covered up with sheets or folding screens. I don't know, I just think it's pretty fascinating juxtaposing a modern artist like Jeff Koons in an environment rich with french history and all its aristocracy. It's definitely a collision of two very different worlds. [For those of you who don't know Jeff Koons, he created the giant dog outside of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain....here's an article about the upcoming exhibiton: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people,,french-round-on-jeff-koons-versailles-show,42366 ]

Another side note -- I've been shooting pictures mostly on my pocket-sized canon and it has various settings depending on the scene. Today I just noticed that the night setting icon has a really tiny stick-figure with the eiffel tower in the background. C'est amusant, oui?

Emmm, I think that's it for now.

Not sure what my plans are for next weekend. But maybe the weekend or two after I might be going to Dublin, because there's some promotional air fare if you book within the next week...and well I want to see as many new places as possible!


PS: if you want to see more pictures copy and paste this address http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2276987&l=394be&id=3624618
(you'll see pictures from the pere lachaise cemetary, jim morrison and edith piaf are burried there...as well as pictures from the opera, the view from my window, and pictures from reims)

la 2em semaine

Hmmm...week in review

-- I finally started my French class (level two, woooooop!) this past Monday and I'm really enjoying it. It goes from 9am to 12pm then in the afternoons we have excursions. So far my class has gone to Villette/Cite de la Musique, Sacre Coeur, the Latin Quarter, and Jeu de Paume (which does not mean apple juice, btw) next to the Louvre where they had this really cool photography exhibit on Richard Avedon. Tomorrow I think we're going to see the Opera building and then Wednesday is Belleville/Pere Lachaise cemetery.

-- Thursday night I went out to the "Paris Social Club," I can't remember which arrondisement it's in at the moment but we went because 1) there was no cover charge (!!!) and 2) one of the girls was a huge fan of the dj's that we're playing there. It seems like all the clubs here only play techno, it'll take some getting used to but for now I'm convinced that everyone looks a little silly as they attempt to bounce around and find the beat. =]

-- Saturday my day got off to a late start but I met up with my friend Marie to hunt for some thrift stores that the people at ACCENT had made a list of. We found one of them right away, but sadly it was closed on Saturdays and then the other one we ended up in the Jewish/Algerian area of Paris and well that was the end of that. Still insistent on redeeming our efforts we met up with some other girls who we're headed to H&M. Along the way past the Bastille, there was some sort of immigrant protest going on (I was handed a leaflet, but I have yet to decipher it completely). There were so many police cars out to make sure the protesters didn't go too crazy.

After H&M, I split off with another two girls because the three of us hadn't made it to the Arc de Triomphe yet. I've made it to the Champs Elysees, of course, but the Champs is just incredibly long. So we metro-ed it to the Arc just in time for really good sunset lighting. We took some very touristy jumping pictures and then decided to wander around the area and eat at an actual restaurant (kind of a luxury since all of us are on a student budget, haha) and we found a nice cafe on a side street. I had poulet roti with frites and a side salad. Not bad for 12 euros, but I still bite my nails thinking of the conversions.

Our stomachs content, we realized that it was almost 10pm, right when they start the light show at the Tour Eiffel. A few more stops on the Metro and we hopped off at Ecole Militaire, right near the long grassy area before the Tour Eiffel and made it just in time. I think I could watch the light show every night and still be hypnotized. I realized that in California, we don't really have local parks where people actually go to picnic, drink wine, and relax. (Or if we do, I've never been to any.)

-- Today I've had a pretty lazy day. Went to the local boulangerie and bought pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant!), came back and did laundry, finished a composition/french hw, and said goodbye to my friends who are moving to their homestays. It's not really goodbye, I know, but it's still weird that they won't be just a floor or a hallway away...now it'll be a metro line or something like that. I like my room here though, my view is pretty impressive.

-- I'm turning 20 this Wednesday!! I sort of wish I was home to spend it with friends, but Paris is a present in itself. I think, if nothing else, I'll try to round up a group to go out for desserts/drinks. This weekend we're trying to plan a day trip to Reims, where all the champagne houses are...but it's a little more complicated than we thought it would be, what with buying train tickets and making reservations. I'm crossing my fingers that we'll get to go, because it would be nice to get out of the city for a day.

[post script]
For some reason, this site won't let me add pictures right now. But try following (maybe copy and paste it?) this link, to see some photos from the past week: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2274237&l=af711&id=3624618
[/post script]

une semaine a paris

I can't believe it's been a week already!

Last sunday I touched down at CDG with a few people from SB and we moved into our dorm rooms. The rooms are very small but when you get to live in a city like this you can't complain. The dorms are in a really nice location in the 12th arrondisement. We have a really cute boulangerie/patisserie as well as the marche d'aligre (open-air market) which runs from tuesay through sunday.

So far this week:

SUNDAY: plane ride. 14 hours. lovely airplane food. haha. LAX->Philadelphia->CDG

MONDAY: day of hailing taxis, hauling suitcases, learning how to shower in a 2X2 box. ate first croissant at cafe bastille. went with some friends to the eiffel tower.

TUESDAY: orientation at the UC accent center. afternoon was housing orientation//walk through the rue du faubourg/ledru rollin/daumesnil neighborhood.

WEDNESDAY: i found out that once the actual semester starts up (Sept 8) I will be taking French Art, Paris in Literature, French 2, and European Integration. It totals to 28 units (if you count the ILP, intensive language program that i'm in now) So I'll probably end up droping Euro Intergration.
At night a few of us went out to this restaurant called le refuge de fondue. The fondue was great but the best part was that they served wine in baby bottles...yes, actual baby bottles. It was in the Montmartre section of Paris where they filmed Amelie too. Later on we went to the Champs-Elysees to a club called Queen. Definitely a good experience, they played a lot of re-mixed american songs there as well.

THURSDAY: I went to the local pharmacy. Ever since I got of the plane, actually before too...I've been coughing/runny nose/sore throat...you know the deal. So it's been kind of hard adjusting to meeting all these new people, exploring the town when you feel under the weather. The pharmacist gave me cough drops (pastilles) and cough syrup. We went to Luxembourg Gardens for most of the day.

FRIDAY: First day of the language practicum. I think this is going to be a fun class. In the afternoon all 18 of us in the class metro-ed to Cite de la Musique//Villete (it used to be where all the slaughterhouses were, but now there are just museums and concert venues). There are excursions for the class three days a week. I made some other friends from SB and SD.

SATURDAY: Woke up and went to the boulangerie. I bought a croissant beurre and a muffin cassis. I think by the end of the four months I will definitely be a regular there. =] We wandered over to the marche d'aligre after. It sort of reminded me of a scene from Aladdin because there are rows and rows of fresh fruit and vegetable stands with vendors calling out all their prices. At night I went out for dessert (creme brulee!)

I think that's pretty much it for now. I'll try to update weekly and keep everyone posted.

I miss you ALL!!! (though I'm not really sure who reads this, haha)
Much <3

housing

quand j'arrive a paris, je vais habiter en une chambre d'une residence avec autres etudiants.

i just received an email saying that i'll be living in a single room in the student residence in paris. hooray! it's located in the 12th arrondisment on rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. 

View Larger Map

counting down

Je vais a Paris en vingt-neuf jours!

I think I should change my name to Eloise. ;)