Au revoir, Lyon!

I leave in a couple of hours for Edinburgh, and then I will be off to Dublin and London. I will be back in exactly a week, hopefully in one piece and not too smelly (In order to avoid costs of luggage, I'm only bringing my backpack with like 3 outfits, ha ha)

Get excited for the photos!! Yay

Paris, Take 2

Soo I am back from Paris in one piece and getting back in to the swing of things (not for long, since I leave for vacation on Sunday!) The weekend was really fun, and I think I can say that I have seen almost every touristy thing there is to see in Paris, so next time I go, I can simply go and have fun without feeling obligated to see tons of things (and spend tons of money...Yuck). One frustrating thing, though, was the fact that even though I can speak and understand French fine, upon hearing my accent, all the French vendors, hotel people, etc always reverted to English! When I got back to Lyon and chatted with my roomie in French for like 20-30 minutes, I think I spoke more French then than the entire time I was in Paris! How frustrating.

Thursday- Arrived at Gare de Lyon (one of the train stations in Paris is named Gare de Lyon...confusing, no?) around 8:30 PM, found the hotel, which was 2 metro stops away from the N°1 Metro line, which is the main line through all the tourist attractions, which was really convenient! Then we walked around, checked out Hôtel de Ville (city hall) and Notre Dame at night...

Friday- Saw Notre Dame, Sainte Chappelle, Le Palais de Justice, I went to Musée d'Orsay while the boys were at the Louvre since I had already seen it (OH MY GOD Mom I can't wait until you come here and we can go to art museums together...I bought a couple of postcards for you from Musée d'Orsay cuz I couldn't just choose one!!!), then la Tour Montparnasse, which is the only skyscraper in Paris where we got to go to the roof and got an awesome view. Next, Tour Eiffel picnic and eventually went up to the top after the sun had set!

Saturday- Took the RER to Versailles and saw the Chateau! Now, this one has to be explained. First off, it was really expensive...13€ to get access only to one part of the palace. Second off, it was crowded, and we waited in line for about the same amount of time that we were in the castle. Third, there was an exhibition in the palace of Jeff Koontz, a sculptor who I'm sure I would have liked...if his SUPER modern, metallicy sculptures (like this one) weren't in the middle of hundred year old decorated rooms in a royal palace. Im sure the contrast was intentional, but I thought it was bizarre! It kind of took away from the experience. However, the castle was DEFINITELY beautiful, and I did enjoy it, despite my complaints :) We headed back to the city after that, and went to Montmartre, where I got to see.....le Moulin Rouge!!! and many many sex shops. Then, we spent a long while at Sacré Coeur at the top of the hill...it was AMAZING! I really enjoyed the atmosphere and street performers there!

After that, it was a nice dinner in a neighborhood that ended up being the Gay quarter, ha ha. I was definitely one of the only women in the restaurant. Still not too sure what we ate, but it was delicious!

That's basically it, I returned home via TGV around 1pm and it took an hour for me to get home after that, then I went to Robert's apartment where we helped Thierry and his friends with English homework, ha! Thierry cooked dinner, so I got to eat yummy French cuisine 2 nights in a row, and I headed home.

SO here's the pictures!! There are lots lots more but I would say that these get the point across.

Me and Michael at Notre Dame

Sainte Chappelle...full of stained glass windows, or "Vertraux" en français

Musée d'Orsay

Not only did I get to see the famous Degas ballerina paintings, but there was also a Pastel exhibition that had his ballerina pastels!!!

At the top of la Tour Montparnasse

I showed the Michaels what one eats when one dines in France!

Michael and I à la Tour Eiffel! This would be a winner for most adorable picture ever...if we were dating, ha.


Hall of Mirrors at Versailles
Moulin Rouge!!!!
Sacré Coeur

The view from Sacré Coeur

This guy was the BEST street performer ever. Notice the soccer ball he's holding against his leg...and the small surface he was sitting there juggling the ball on for hours on end!!
He also climbed.
So I took a picture with him! The ball is spinning, by the way. Awesome.

Getting Ready to do some Traveling!

So it is past 6pm on a Sunday afternoon and I am proud to report that I've been sitting on my bed since I woke up at noon, on my computer. However, I have been quite productive, and I finally have everything settled for my trip to the UK for my Toussaints vacation, for which I leave 2 weeks from today!

On Thursday, though, I'm heading up to Paris to meet up with Michael, which will be really fun. I'm excited to do the things I didnt get to do when I flew in to Paris in August, like actually going up the Eiffel Tower, going inside Notre Dame, seeing the Moulin Rouge (!!!) and Sacre Coeur, and going to Musée d'Orsay! We'll have 2 full days and 3 nights, so hopefully it will be enough time!

Then, the next weekend, I'm flying out of Lyon on Sunday afternoon, stopping at London Stansted, and continuing on to Edinburgh, Scotland that night. I'll be staying there with a buddy from UCSB, Brio, until Tuesday night, when I fly to Dublin. I am staying at a hostel in the heart of Dublin by myself on Tuesday night, then Brio is coming on Wednesday and I'll have some company. Thursday night, I leave Dublin for London, and will be staying with Meghan, my really good friend from UCSB! Meghan is one of the girls I lived with in the Res halls my 2nd year at UCSB, so I'm really excited to see her. She has tickets to see a Chelsea soccer game, so I'm hoping she can get another one for me...if not, I'll be satisfied to hang out and enjoy the city in the meantime!

But I'm really excited to do some traveling...by myself! I'm not really too nervous, I figure it can't be too bad, since everything will be in English!
If anyone has been to the UK and has recommendations of what I should do and/or see, let me know! I have never been, and I have no plans! Leave me a comment at the bottom of the post :)

This weekend was really fun. After doing nothing except the excursion last weekend, I actually went out Thurs-Saturday nights this weekend (although I caught the 12am bus home the past 2 nights). Went to a lounge/bar on Thursday night with Robert and his roommates and some of their friends (finally, a group where Americans were the minority!), and I couldn't make it back in time for the last bus, so I stayed at Roberts apartment. Don't worry parents, Robert is gay...Ha ha. His 2 roommates, Thierry and Laura, are super nice, so I'm excited to hang out with them more! The next morning, Robert and I went downtown and ran some errands...That night, we went to a Spanish style bar with some Californians. Yesterday, Eva and I went to IKEA to pick up some stuff for our place...that was INTENSE! I'd never even been to an Ikea in the US before! And last night I watched the French football team's game at Roberts place and hung out...Good weekend for sure!

Here are some photos, just to keep everything exciting...

Yes, yes...this is me drinking an alcoholic beverage that I purchased -- legally!! But as you can see, the small size of the drinks (and their large price) makes the whole "study abroad binge drinking" thing that I thought was so typical of European students pretty preventable...

After an overwhelming trip to IKEA, my roommate and I arrived back at Place Bellecour to find a bunch of trinkets...also featured were circus dancers, tigers, and a huge hot air balloon!!! Still have no idea why it was all going on...as per usual

I think I may have a future as a European car model, no? The cars are generally petite here in France, as you can see...

Some of the more tame DVDs that my friend Robert and I found at FNAC, a mainstream electronics store here in Lyon. His says "Penis: A question of size?" and mine say "Big boobs: Living with a huge rack" and "Little tits: Mini, pointy and sexy", respectively.

Have a good week!

Je commence à parler français couramment!!

So I've recently realized how amazing the power of immersion is. Like, thinking back to how horribly I spoke when I came here, I really don't know how I managed to find someone to offer me a place to live! I must have sounded like a complete idiot! But now, in less than 2 months, I think I can truly say that I am already somewhat fluent in the language!

I realized this after last night...My friend Robert, from Riverside invited me to hang out with his roommates (Thierry, French, and Laura, German) so I did, and you know what?? I don't have to think before I formulate each sentence! It's amazing how much I've improved - how much all of us Californians have improved!

It's super. And it just makes me excited to think about how much better I will get, and how much easier all my French classes will be, not just next semester, but next year when I go back to SB! Also, I really want to learn another language sometime soon (it seems like a lot of people here speak German, but I still think it would be more useful for me to learn Spanish) because everyone here speaks AT LEAST 3 languages! It's crazy!

Anyway, nothing new going on on this side of the world. the exchange rate is awesome right now because apparently in this worldwide economic crisis, Europe is sucking the most, so the Euro is dropping rapidly.. when I checked yesterday the rate was $1.36 for 1€.. it was $1.50 or so when I got here!! I'm thinking I should probably convert all my money to Euros cheaply now before they figure out some way to fix it! ha ha. Anyway, I'm pretty excited because I'm going to Paris next weekend to meet up with Michael, a friend from UCSB that I've known for the past 2 years, and one of his friends...Michael is studying in Madrid for the semester and his friend is in London. I'm going on Thursday night and staying until Sunday morning, so I'll get a lot more time this time to spend seeing all the stuff I missed last time!

Une autre grand excursion

So EAP outdid themselves again and we got a super cool excursion yesterday!! All I knew going into it was that there were grottes (caves) involved, but it was actually a full day. We met up at 830 in the morning (yikes) and drove for about an hour until we got to the little village of Cerdon. Once we arrived, we had about a 5-10 minute walk through this BEAUTIFUL little town.. seriously, if it had been a sunny day, it would have been Beauty and the Beast status...it was like that! Unfortunately, it had just rained so it was cloudy and wet. Anyway, we ended at a Cuiverie, or copper mill.

We had a tour of the different rooms where cuivre, or copper is made...It was pretty interesting, most of the machinery they use seems really outdated. I wonder if that's because it was such a quaint little factory, or if that's how all copper products are produced nowadays. I'm not exactly a copper expert, soo...Haha. In all honesty, this part of the day was a little boring, but parts of it were still kind of cool.





Afterward, we walked to a little restaurant looking place and tasted some wine slash cider slash champagne sort of drink, with some snacks that came with a pâté that looked like tuna but tasted like chicken! After that, we walked to ANOTHER restaurant that served us a huge meal, just like in Beaujolais...except this time, I made sure not to over-eat! We started off with a salad topped with salmon, then had what we thought was scalloped potatoes and chicken but ended up being some other kind of bird...then, we had fromage blanc with crème (the waitress made a point to tell us that it wasn't exactly good for the régime, or diet, haha) AND an ice cream sorbet sort of thing, all topped off with some delicious café!


Man, these monthly delicious meals that we get from EAP sure are good...makes up for the crappy meals I make at my apartment, although I'm becoming quite the ham and cheese omelette conoisseur, and my bread-cheese-salami lunches are to die for! After lunch, we got back on the bus and drove to the grottes, where we took a little tram to the entrance of the cave. Now, for any one who has ever seen a million year old cave, I guess you could say that the grottes de cerdon were just your run-of-the-mill caves. However, I had never seen million year old stalagtites and stalagmites in person, so it was pretty amazing for me! Unfortunately my camera battery ran out right after our meal, so I stole some pictures from a buddy to post. At the end of the cave, there was a staircase that led to a freaking fantastic panoramic view of the Cerdon Valley!




Time to hit the sack...back to the grind tomorrow. Have a good week!

Beaucoup de travail!

Man, have I ever felt the need to know the correct translation for "Thank God it's Friday", haha! It was a difficult week, but this time it had nothing to do with culture shock, broken computers, or normal study abroad woes...this time, it was just me and my procrastinating that gave me a tough time!

The UCers all had a dissertation, or "essay" due on Wednesday morning at 8am...It wasn't too difficult, 3 pages written on whether or not work=freedom. However, I had class until 8pm on Tuesday, then it took me an hour to get home, due to bad luck with the bus schedules. Also, Eva and I had been invited to eat dinner at our landlady, Sabine's house, so when I arrived home, it was straight to dinner, where Sabine made us a really nice meal, complete with salad, bread, wine, dessert, and what seemed like hours of chit chat. I finally arrived home to work on my essay at 11pm, just 8 hours before I'd have to be out the door ready to catch the bus! Yikes.

I finished it....eventually. But my lack of sleep on Tuesday night seriously messed me up for the rest of the week, which was bad because I had another assignment to work on for Thursday! My friend Sarah from Santa Barbara and I had a presentation on Thursday about Forrest Gump. It went alright, I forced myself to go to sleep at midnight since I had class the next morning, but even so, I felt pretty ill during my French History class (a combination of lack of sleep & too much caffeine in the morning with not enough food!) so I decided to go home after the halfway break, and I relaxed until I had to make the trek back out to IEP. The presentation went well, but the professor kind of cut us short because class was almost over (the film clips that he picked went a lot longer than we thought they would).

Since then, I've been relaxing and using the internet! I can't decide if it's a good thing that I figured out how to connect to internet at my apartment..I think being able to access Facebook makes me miss all my friends a lot more, which is kind of what I was afraid of when I decided to come here. I can definitely say that I'm homesick, but not in such a way that it makes me want to cancel everything and go home, just that I want to live my 3rd year at UCSB vicariously through everyone! As long as I don't let it inhibit my experience here, I think I should be fine. :)

But for now, I'll just appreciate my lazy day (which I've spent thus far trying to figure out how I can conceivably add an Education minor to my Global Studies/French double major...looks like summer school is in my future!)...maybe fill out my Absentee ballot for the Presidential Election, clean up the room, and make myself a nice dinner tonight! We have another EAP excursion early tomorrow morning...I honestly have no idea where we're going, but apparently it involves caves! SWEET!

Bon week-end!