Things have been so HECTIC!

Like I said before schoolwork is taking most of my time. I think all my exams went pretty well. I went to the Pompiduo library to study for a bit, and it was gigantic and gorgeous. I like trying to blend in with all the other frenchies like that. What is weird is that I have been setting off alarms lately... at the library I did through the metal detector and when I was at the grocery store too. It was a little scary because I don't want them to think I was a criminal or something. I know at the library it was because of my watch but at the store I am not sure. Earlier that night I had been to this cheese tasting party at CEA and was able to take some stuff home with me. So in my bag I had some apples and cheese and so when the security guy was sort of looking through my bag I panicked, they do sell apples and cheese there afterall. But it was alright. He was more concerned with the ethernet cords I had in a plastic bag.
Last weekend we went to Loire Valley with CEA. It was a beautiful trip. It was an overnight thing and we were supposed to stay in a castle. It was a bed and breakfast place in a mansion, but I wouldn't call it a castle. Since there were so many people I wasn't even able to stay in the main house, I was in the "stables" which are just smaller rooms in the back. I am burnt out on castles though. I think we saw 4 in a two day period. We went to chateau de Nitray which has a vineyard and the owner gave us a small tour of his home and then we did a wine tasting. Very fun! Some of my friends thought it would be a good idea to drink some of the wine they just bought (this is at 11am) on the bus to the next castle. They were being loud and obnoxious, and it was embarassing for me. I just don't understand it I guess. But the other students were getting upset too so I hope they know they are being idiots and that being a sloppy drunk is not attractive. Anyways...along with Chateau de Nitray we saw Chateau d'Amboise, Chateau Chenonceau, and Chateau de Chambord. I really can't distinguish between the two, it was all a blur haha. Of course they were beautiful and helped me with my future interior design ideas for my home. I am seriously doing a 18th century themed room.

Last Thursday the retirement age law was put in place. Some people still want to strike, which I find absolutely ridiculous because it has already passed. I had a moment of panic though because a strike is schedule for this Thursday, when I am leaving for London. Last time there was a big strike the airlines ran out of fuel and the RER B train to get to the airport stopped working. I don't think it is going to be a problem this time though. But man would I have been one unhappy gal.

Thursday I am leaving for London/Dublin/Belfast/Lady Gaga concert and when we get back I have only a day in Paris before leaving for Italy. I probably won't be doing a post for a long time or chating with anyone. Wish me fun and safety please!

I miss you all so much,
L

Study Study Study

It is midterms week.  I have been trying to study for the past few days.  It is crazy how much I have to finish before Halloween.  So to catch you up on the past...

This week we had repairmen in our apartment.  Two were totally redoing the electrical work and the other was working on our water heater.  For the most part they are both fixed, except every once in awhile water will shoot out from the bottom of the heater all over our kitchen.  The man said it is because the water pressure in the building is too high, so those people need to fix it.  I don't know.

Last Saturday I went with CEA to Fontainebleau castle, known for its hunting forests back in the day and home to royalty before Versailles and the Louvre.  It was very pretty though and Versailles-esque.  On Sunday I went with a few friends to Mont Saint-Michel, which is located on this chunk of land like an island.  I think this place was more about hype, I wasn't too impressed.  I did try the famous Normandy cider though- delish.  Ooh I also went out to this bar which was supposed to be like coyote ugly, so I was excited I thought maybe they would play country music.  No, it was basically just a club with some ugly women singing cheesy songs in bedazzled bras.  Needless to say I left early that night. 

I have started cooking some really good meals!  I made chicken pot pie, shepherds pie, and crepes all in the same week.  Who needs Le Cordon Bleu haha.  The weather has been getting colder.  Yesterday I broke out my pea coat.  I almost feel like we skipped the nice October fall weather to the wet and cold November fall weather.

My Haute Couture class went to the Carnavalet museum again.  This time we had to go searching by ourselves for paintings we want to write a paper about.  I hope I do good on this one and my test next week...I have a reputation to withhold now! ;)  We walked around near Tuileries and Place de Vendome which are high fashion areas for an excursion, and I saw the first Chanel shop in Paris- the one with the curved staircase.

So for another project I have to do for that class, I am researching about the Burberry trench coat.  I emailed the IFM (Institut Francais de la Mode, french fashion institute) to see if I could use their library.  It said on the website you had to make an appointment and pay 5 euro to do it, but when they emailed me back the email just said the hours and gave a telephone number.  When I got there the librarian woman kind of chewed me out because I did not have an appointment, but she was like you emailed me in French (I had the student servies lady help me with that one haha) so I emailed you back in french, you must've not understood me.  Since I was a confused American she let me use the library anyways.  It was pretty cool sitting next to french fashion students and luckily they had a few books about my topic in english.  I probably won't be going back there since I had to pay money, but it was a interesting experience.

My roommate Rachel's parents arrived here this weekend.  They took us out for dinner, and paid for my meal.  It was so nice of them, and since her dad is from New Jersey I had a great time just listening to him talk.  I have kind of noticed a lot of people's family are visiting them here.  It's crazy, like how can people afford that.  There were more strikes this week too.  The french are very serious about this retirement age, and they want to be heard.  I haven't heard much more about the terrorist stuff, so I hope that threat level is going down.

Jean-Claude and the fat stub cat are doing great.  Still give their momma regular visits. ;)


From Paris with Love,
L

Well… I survived Oktoberfest. It went alright. I am glad that I at least went so that now it can be crossed off my bucket list. There were too many people, it was dirty, and I didn’t even get to have a beer in a tent. On Friday we were able to walk around inside the tents but there were no tables available, and on Saturday we waited for 2 hours outside the tent until the security people pushed everyone away. We even went at 9am which I thought would be early enough to drink beer, guess not. I had some good food though. There are these candied honey roasted almonds called Mandelns, which are basically heaven on earth. I also had a delicious chicken called Hendl, and a giant pretzel which wasn’t as good because their pretzels are more like bread. I really liked all the traditional Bavarian costumes that people were wearing. It was also quite funny seeing all the passed out drunk people on the big hill behind the tents. I also have a souvenir stein glass, which by the way equals about 4 beers. For most of Friday we walked around Munich. It is a nice city, but it was definitely weird not understanding a single word. At least in France I can sort of get by with my rambling. Anyways, we found the downtown area and basically just window shopped around there and on Saturday went back to have lunch and a big stein of beer. My luxurious lodging for Oktoberfest consisted of plastic and dirt. I stayed in tents at a campground through Stoke Travel, which is a partner with Bus2Alps. They only charged us 100 euro for 2 nights so it was our best option. I think I would be okay with regular camping, but I didn’t really like it there. It is basically a party camp. They played loud music all night long (seriously), the one dinner and breakfast they gave us was not yummy, but we did only pay 15 euro for unlimited beer and sangria all weekend which was a good deal even though it was cheap warm beer. To get to the tents from the campsite we took a city bus to the train station, and then the train took us to the main area. Getting to and from Germany was pretty easy, we just took the TGV train.


We did have a problem coming back though. Ughh. I went with my friends Allie, Rachel, Melissa, and Marcy. Rachel bought her ticket along with mine and Allie’s tickets, and I bought Melissa and Marcy’s because their cards weren’t working on the internet site. Before we left France Rachel went to the train station and picked up our tickets for the way back from Germany because she had some extra time to. I thought it would be fine to just pick up the other girls tickets in Germany before we leave. Nope! Turns out SNCF (the French train company) tickets can only be picked up in France. Melissa and Marcy were going to be stuck in Germany, and we had class at 9am the next morning. All the tickets were sold out except for 2 first class ones for 750 euro. We went into panic mode and had no idea what to do. We were walking around trying to find an information counter to see if they could look up SNCF’s number to see if they would send the tickets over to Germany. We finally found this Asian dude sitting in a Starbucks with a laptop and I tried to navigate my way through Chinese words to get to google. None of the phone numbers we tried were working, until I remembered that I had a receipt on my gmail account. So Rachel and Marcy were frantically trying to connect to the internet on their blackberries (remember we only had 15 minutes before the train was about to leave). Finally as I was boarding the train I pulled up the email and handed Marcy back her phone. They decided they would tear up and just ask the conductor guy if they could get on just showing him this. AND IT WORKED! He was like ok just go find an empty seat. I couldn’t believe it but was so relieved. Unfortunately, on our transfer train we didn’t have the same luck. The ticket checkers made them buy another ticket but said they could get their money back on the first set since we had insurance on them, we just had to go ask the people to cancel the tickets in France. Since the first set of tickets was on my card I had to go with them to get the money back, but when we went to do that the woman told us we couldn’t get all the money back. We did get like 80% though so I am ok with that, it is better than nothing. If we wanted to write in a request it would’ve taken 4 months and then MAYBE we could get all of it back but the woman was like yeah fat chance. So Melissa and Marcy just paid me the difference.

I didn’t shower for 3 days, and when I got back to my apartment all I wanted was a nice and long hot shower. Surprise! The water heater is broken. I was forced to take the worst shower of my life. Brrrr! So yesterday we had a repairman and our housing coordinator Devon at our apartment trying to fix everything that is wrong (did I tell ya’ll that we don’t have heat as well). We had electrical work done and a new water heater put in. Before Devon left she checked it over and was like yes ok it works you are good to go. Well this morning I tried to take a shower and oops don’t cha know it doesn’t work again. We are also still working on the internet situation. We even have a horrible connection when we are plugged in with Ethernet cords, so we are thinking it has to be something with the company. We are calling them tomorrow morning. It is just so ridiculous that it takes me 5 minutes to load an easy website like gmail, and I cannot skype with my family at all.

This is kind of a weird thing to say but I think this whole experience in France has made me want a phone with internet even more. Others’ have really come in handy. I went to the Hard Rock Café in Paris. It was pretty neat, just like all the others. I got this mixed drink in a hurricane glass called southern rock which was super yummy, and the best part was that I got to keep the glass when I was done. I ate a big hearty cheeseburger as well, mmm mmm mmm.

My classes are still quite difficult like I said before but I’m actually doing good in them I think. For wine class I got really good remarks on my paper about our visit to Lavinia and my own voyage to a local cave. For Fashion Marketing & Merchandising, I think my teacher just likes me, Melissa, and Marcy because we are Fashion Merchandising majors and so we kind of already know what we are talking about. For Haute Couture on our first quiz I got an A (somehow even though I totally messed up all the centuries), and for our first paper I got an A as well. My teacher Jean-Pierre was even like oh these papers were all so horrible, you guys need to write about portraits like your fellow classmate did, then proceeded to read my paper aloud! It was cool but when he called my name for me to come get my paper in front of everyone he was like you are so shy but you knew I was reading yours. I don’t speak up in class because I really don’t know what I am talking about haha. Yesterday we went to the Musee de Carnavalet which was the mansion of Madame de Sevingne, a fashionable aristocrat from the 17th century. The first portrait we looked at there Jean-Pierre comes over to me and was like the one who doesn’t speak, what can you say about this painting? I was like ahhh way to put me on the spot again, but I made some stuff up and he seemed to be okay with it. I guess I’m glad to be on his good side rather than his bad. But he is such a funny French guy that I don’t think he had a bad side. He has the best quotes in class, I have been keeping a page of good ones.
-We are cruel, we are French.
-When you have seen death, you remember that you are alive.
-French people are dangerous, don't move!
-Beauty isn't an obligation, but ugliness isn't an invitation.
-Fashionable people don't chew gum.

French sucks though. I really wish I didn’t have to take it. Maybe it would be better if our teacher didn’t give us so much homework, it is ridiculous. We have been talking about our class compared to everyone else’s classes and we honestly do have more work. For instance, when we got back our 8 page test that we had to rush through, we had to correct every mistake that we made, and then conjugate each verb twice that we messed up on. Plus for that same day we had two worksheets as well. I really want to say something either to her or to a superior but I don’t know what I would say. Like ohh we are getting too much homework? You can’t say that.

The past week was Paris Fashion Week. I didn’t get to go to any shows of course, but someday I’ll be front row! I was going to go stand outside the Chanel show and stalk it for awhile, but those plans feel through. I haven’t even seen any celebrities yet. I was expecting to see a lot actually, but I guess I’m not looking hard enough. Some people said they saw Michael Cera in a cafe, and another girl saw Miss Jay Alexander on a bike.

Yesterday I went to Pere Lachaise cemetery. It is where people like Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, and Frederic Chopin are buried. It was such a beautiful fall day, and it really made the rows and rows of gorgeous tombstones stand out even more. I also tried my first pomegranate, what a weird fruit. At Monoprix, a store like SuperWalmart, I was looking for nail polish and you’re not going to believe this 9 euro for a normal size bottle! I also bought this casserole dish so I can test out my chicken pot pie and shepherd’s pie cooking skills.

Today I went to the World Car Show with my business class.  It was really cool seeing all the different types of cars, and I even got to sit in a few.  By the way, dogs go everywhere here...even shopping! <3

Bisou, Bisou
Kiss Kiss

L