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!