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!

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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)