found the computer lab!

Im writing this from the computer lab at my school. I was determined to find a computer to update my blog during my two hour breaks at school but Im starting to think that I might be faster using my phone since the french keyboard is different!

It really is almost impossible to type on this thing. It took me 5 minutes just to write this. Time to meet dorene. Au revoir!

I will update when I get home. I know everyone is dying to know about my school.

first full weekend

Saturday morning we slept in until 2. All the walking around versailles had hit us and we needed the rest. Once we got up we went to our favorite boulangerie to buy a baguette and then went to monoprix (its this supermarketish place right next to us) for another hour long shopping trip. We have a hard time deciding what to buy when we're there. Side note, once I get back to LA remind me to apperciate the fact that other people bag my groceries. Here, you have to bag your own groceries and I'm not fast enough and freak out because I need to pay at the same time. Its really a mess every time. Well I've only gone two times so far but still both times were super hectic.

We made some salami sandwiches and ate at home. I also had the best fat free sugar free yogurt ever. So good! Its only monday and I only have one cup left. Pretty sure I'm going to be living off this yogurt for the next three months.

After lunch we went to the monmartre area to go to the flea market. There were a lot of tourist crap selling booths from which I bought a pair of fake pearl earrings for a euro and a red scarf for 2.50 euros. About an hour in we finally found the type of flea market we were looking for. We found all the small stores selling vintage designer brands. Everything was so cute but sadly so expensive.

Saturday night me and dorene decided it was time to go to our first parisian club. Sabrina/google told us about this club called duplex near the arc d'triomphe. Our friend katie decided join and met us up at our apartment. By the time we got all ready to go it was 1:20am. Clubs here open around 11/11:30pm and stay open until 5-7am so we didn't leave THAT late in parisian standards. We knew we would have to get a taxi back but thought well we can take the metro there since on saturdays the metro is open for an extra hour. Turns out its not. Go me for calling another time the metro would fail us the night before.

The club was fun, as was the taxi ride around the arc d'triomphe. I didn't know whether I should be scared for my life or appreciating the fact that I was actually that close to the arc.  

We left around 4:30am because we were getting a bit tried. The club was still packed and going strong at that time though. Now I understand why everything is closed on sundays.
The whole city needs time to recuperate. We snacked on soy jerky when we got home thanks to dorene's grandma. Who knew soy jerky actually tastes okay.

Sunday we decided to bum it at home because we were tired and everything was closed. I finally asked dorene if we could go out to dinner, to feel like we did something that day. We decided to go to this restuarant dorene's "party europe" book recommended. We looked up the address, figured out the metro route, and walked a bunch from the metro stop only to find out that the restuarant we looked up no longer existed. So we ended up going to another cafe that we saw along the way. I was really craving a hamburger and that cafe had one so we decided to eat there.

I know that the french cook their meat rare but I'm picky and like my meat to be cooked thoroughly. I can tolerate a little pink but not much. So when I ordered my hamburger I made sure to say "bien cuit" (well done.) Well let's just say it was not well done. It was basically medium rare. Oh and the "cheese fondue" that was listed on the menu ended up being american processed cheese. Does france think their cheese isn't good enough for their undercooked hamburger? Note to self, leave the hamburger cravings for when I'm back in the states. 

Luckily, raw meat eating dorene came to the rescue and ate my hamburger and I ate her salmon, which was fully cooked thank god. Hers came with a side of mashed potatoes. Surprisingly, the french know how to make their mashed potatoes. After dinner I went to bed relatively early so that I wouldn't be tried for my first day of school, or what I thought was going to be my first day of school. 

first friday

Before I start talking about my first friday in paris I want to mention that I'm writing this blog entry using my blackberry in the middle of my school's courtyard waiting for dorene to get out of class. If this isn't blog dedication I don't know what is.

So on friday our program took us to versailles. When we got there I asked one of our program directors, gabriel, the same guy that set us up in our apartment to take a picture with me. He's one of those people who makes you laugh without even trying. His smile is funny, his laugh is funny, the way he talks and what he says to me is funny. Just trust me, he's funny. So dorene made me take a picture with him. Just looking at the picture makes me smile.

So me and my friends melinda, brittany, katie and dorene went around the palace part of versailles taking a few touristic photos or so. We had audio tours that we gave up on about three rooms in. If you ever go, save your money and don't get the audio tour.

Of course me and dorene did our pose every chance we had. Both outside the palace and a few times in the hall of mirrors.

After touring the palace and waiting in a long line for the bathroom we were ready for lunch. We went down to the garden area and got paninis to go and then found a little bench in the middle of the maze of bushes to eat.

After lunch we set out on our 5 hour venture. We walked to marie antoinettes guest house I think? Or maybe it was her actual house I'm not sure. It was cute.

Behind this house there was "the temple of love." I don't know why it was called that or what its significance was but we were bored and decided to have a mini photo shoot there.

Then we walked to the commoners village marie antoinette had built for her. She had wanted a fake small village built where she could pretend she was a commoner. Apparently they even had real commoners come and pretend along with her so that she could feel normal. I thought the "commoner" houses were beautiful. I would live in a commoner's house any day.

Around this fake little town area there was a pond full of the most disgusting fish ever. They had all somehow stuck their head out of the water as if they needed to bring their head out to breathe. I don't know what they were doing exactly but we were all super grossed out, but of course I took a picture to show everyone later.

After we walked through the fake town we saw a random farm full of animals. We saw chickens, bunnies, goats, sheep, donkeys, roosters, and turkeys.

On our way back towards the main general garden area we made a few random stops along the way. There were a lot of pretty gardens, random buildings and lakes everywhere. Once we got back to the main area we laid out on the grass and enjoyed the clear blue sky and sun. I couldn't believe how hot and perfect the weather was for it being the end of september. I kept telling all my friends how I couldn't believe how nice it was out. I'm pretty sure it got annoying after all but seriously you wouldn't have believed the perfect weather either.

On the way back to the RER (the metro/train you take to versailles) I saw a mcdonalds and decided it was time for a snack/dinner. I ordered a happy meal. I chose a "croq mcdo", the mcdonalds version of a croque monsieur, fries, pineapple (you also have a choice of a fruit in french happy meals) and a coke light. My meal was amazing. Dorene ordered a crumble mcflurry with caramel. I had a bite and have been craving it ever since. Best mcflurry, hands down. I guess the champs elysee mcdo is the only one with boring mix ins.

Another cool thing I noticed at mcdo this time was, if you order a meal, you have a choice of picking beer as your drink! They serve 1664, a french beer. Unfortunately my happy meal didn't come with that option.
At night we went out to bastille, this place with a street full of bars. We ended up at an americanish styled bar. Me and dorene knew that the metro closed at 1:20am but everyone else said it closed at 2. We asked the bartender, and he even said it closed at 2. Well we got to the metro around 1:30 to realize that me and dorene were right. It took forever to hail a cab and our apartment was literally on the other side of paris. During our 20 euro cab right I kept thinking how the metro is going to screw us over tomorrow night. 24 hours later I found out how.

first thursday

The next day, we met up with our group in montmarte for a walking tour. I had just been there with my mom the year before but this time we walked around the whole place, and got to see some cool things I would have never known about. The first thing we saw was the wall of love, I think that’s what it’s called. This artist asked people from all cultures how to say “I love you” in their language/dialect then he created this tile mural featuring 200 different ways of saying it.

We saw the outside of  this apartment building where van gough once lived. Our tour guide told us that they have just recently found out that van gough didn’t cut off his own ear. They say that he was fencing with some other artist friend of his (Gaugin) and the friend cut off a piece of his ear on accident. Van gough, being the caring person he is, decided to lie and say he cut his own ear off so that they wouldn’t send his friend to jail. I knew I always loved him for some reason.

Another interesting thing that we saw during our tour was this tiny little vineyard which was probably the size of my house. Our tour guide told us that they have a festival every year where they harvest the grapes grown there and turn it into a wine. The catch is that the small vineyard only produces 500 liters a year so they auction off the bottles each year to raise money for montmarte. Apparently the reason people like buying this expensive wine even though it doesn’t taste great is because it is only wine that is made from grapes actually grown in paris (vin du paris.)

Finally we ended at the sacre coeur, the famous montmarte monument.

I bought a really cute dog keychain made out of pipecleaners from this French guy near the monument. I requested that it look like the french flag. Coolest part was that me and my friend katie made our request in french. She did most of the talking but I understood some of it. Best part was when she was explaining how she wanted it to look and the guy kinda laughed as us and told us he knew what the french flag looked like.

At night we attempted to meet up with some of our new friends at montparnesse station for some drinks. Since me and dorene are still phoneless, we suck we know, we made plans before we left about meeting them at the metro stop. Who knew the metro stop had 5 different exit options! After 3 water filled blisters and an hour of looking around desperately we gave up and decided to come back home.  By the time we switched our first metro line I was officially about to give up. My feet were about to cry from the stupid heels I decided to wear and I truly thought I could not walk any farther.

As we were waiting for the next metro we heard an announcement over the intercom (its not usual for there to be announcements in the metro stations) and saw a few people leave. We continued to sit there until we heard another announcement and saw everybody around us starting to leave. By then we realized that maybe we should listen to the announcement and attempt to figure out what it was saying. Turns out there was a “grave accident” (dorene thought that meant someone died, my elementary three french knowledge knew that grave just meant serious), and that the metro line we needed to take home was closed for the rest of the night.

To be very honest I have NO idea how my feet made it home that night or how I asked the guy working in the metro station how to get home. We ended up having to backtrack to another line, go up and down more stairs than the number of times I complained that night and getting a 6 euro taxi ride back home. I like to think of it as the best “going out but not really going out” night so far.

 

first wednesday

Our oral placement exams were on wednesday morning. I went in totally confident, thinking that I will be lowered from intermediate (I literally laughed during the test I took online because I had no idea what was going on) to elementary level one (they have elementary level one, two and three.) Long oral exam story short, the lady wouldn’t switch me! She was this sweet old lady who I swear thought of me as the little train that could. I didn’t understand a quarter of the things she said and I swear I didn’t even say one complete sentence in French but for some reason now I’m stuck in elementary three. As my boss once said “challenges are the spices in one’s life” or something like that, well here’s to one super spicy semester.

For lunch our program took us to this college student only cafeteria in paris. Apparently there are a few places in the city where students can come eat a pretty cheap hot lunch, cheap in euro standards. For 2.90 euro you can get a main course, a piece of fruit and a dessert. In case you’re wondering I got a pizza, watermelon chunk and this like tomato salad instead of my dessert. I was going through a healthy phase at that moment.

At night me and dorene decided to put our metro pass to good use again and went to check out gallerie lafayette. I pretty much wanted every bag and shoe that I saw there. Not to mention  the super cute umbrellas they had.  I had never seen so many umbrellas being sold in one place before.

So in this department store (one of the biggest in france, I think, I’m totally making this up) they have this new shoe basement. It said it’s 3000 square meters of space. It basically was a museum for shoes. Every brand had it’s own little perfect section.  They had the cutest mannequin set up where it looked like she was walking all these different shoes as if they were dogs. I had to be a tourist and take a picture.

I controlled myself and didn’t buy anything, mostly because I couldn’t afford anything but that’s besides the point. I really want to get another longchamps while I’m here, even though my mom will yell at me. I wonder how many longchamps it takes to become a true parisian woman. So far I'm at two. 

first tuesday

I’m excited to say that so much has been going on this past week that I’m starting to lose track of what I actually did and when it all actually happened. So here’s a brief overview of all the noteworthy and some other not so noteworthy adventures since Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday me and Dorene didn’t have to be anywhere until 2:30pm so we decided to make breakfast at home. I don’t think many parisians eat breakfast at home given the number of people who grab a pain au chocolat on their way to the metro, but we decided to have a hearty homemadeish breakfast.  Being the true parisians that we are we had to go buy fresh baguette and just you know casually walk back home with it, as if it was the normal thing to do, because over here it really is. 

I had eggs (eggs here still have basically chicken poo and other crap stuck on the outside of the shell, at least the ones I bought did, but don’t worry I washed it), fresh strawberries (which are the smallest strawberries I have ever seen by the way, a bit a more sour than sweet but still good), borsin (a cheese I’ve had before and loved, it’s a white spreadable cheese filled with garlic and herbs, so good!) and our fresh baguette of course. Dorene had brie (her cheese of choice), apples (so she “doesn’t die of scurvy”) and baguette.

After meeting with our program in the afternoon we decided to have an afternoon crepe snack because there was this little box booth thing right next to the metro and we were hungry. I got a sucre crepe because I remembered my sister always telling me was her favorite, dorene got nutella. Of course I ended up not liking my mine. I think its because the girl didn’t put any butter in it and it just ended tasting like a crepe with sugar pieces in it. But yay for our first crepes in paris!

Later that day we met up with our program to go on a beyond touristy boat ride on the seine, on the bateaux moche. Moche in French means fly, moche in farsi means mouse, random side note I know, but it reminded me of this one day in French class in high school when our teacher said there was a moche in the room and romteen semi freaked out/was trying to realize where this mouse she was talking about was.

The boat ride was fun, besides the hundreds of other tourist. I took a lot of no sot great pictures with dorene’s camera but I figure when on a tourist boat do as tourists do.  Our luck, the weather was perfect during our boat ride, the sky was completely blue, the sun was out…as were the parisian sunbathers.

After the boat ride we made our way across paris to a store named darty, basically the france equivalent of best buy. Who knew that’s where parsians sell hairdryers. After that little adventure we decided to make dinner at home that night. I cooked chicken breast on my very own for the first time! Thank god I had seen my mom wash and cut chicken breast at least 100 times before. I probably wasted an eighth of the chicken cutting  off all the fat and white vein looking things but I blame it on our crappy knife.

I used this salt herb seasoning we had bought the day before at the supermarket which gave the chicken a great flavor. We also heated frozen vegetables we had bought which of course tasted better than any frozen vegetable than in America. And with a piece of another fresh baguette my first personally home cooked chicken meal was complete.  I’m glad paris brings the le cordon bleu chef in me!