i have just mentally planned the best summer picnic/barbecue/pool party menu in my head. If only I were home, if only it were July, if only it were hot, and if only I could eat things other than bananas, apple sauce, rice, potatoes, and tea. (current gastroenteritis diet of great variety and fun. not to mention, i hate bananas.)
but anyways I will make this summer bbq menu happen when im home in CA and hanging out with friends in my backyard, since my parents told me they just got patio furniture! finally! our last set either a)broke in the 94 earthquake, b)was just too ugly and got thrown away in 94, or c)otherwise disappeared before I hit first grade, or d) some combinations of the above. i'm a touch homesick right now because i'm sick, it's not warm enough here yet, and i can't eat anything, and monique keeps making me eat bananas.
enough moping! planned menu:
-grilled corn
- delicious salad with avocado, edamame, cherry tomatoes, and jicama, and whatever other veggies join the party with my blackberry avocado vinaigrette.
- grilled veggie burgers mexican style with guac and salsa and cheese (meat eaters can have whatever they want, i'll let them figure that shit out. but no cheese on their meat, not at my parent's house! soy cheeze acceptable, but gross)i might even home bake the buns for these babies!
- balsamic marinated berries, probably over either lemon sorbet or vanilla ice cream.
- fresh lemonade! or some alcoholic version thereof depending on where the parents are. i still feel awkward drinking in front of them even through im 21. maybe the red wine fresca combo plus chopped up citrus fruits that is delicious and frowned at by adults, ie- poor man's/college student's/sandra lee's (jahahahahaha) instant sangria! my god fresca sounds so good right now. too bad a) it doesn't exist here, b) i'm forbidden to eat anything citrus.
i will continue to dream about this elegant and fun backyard soiree as a distraction from the lingering stomach aches of this stupid sickness. next step: mentally planning the decor of course! when (not if, but when) this party actually takes place, i will document all the cooking for the foodie part of this blog. i know this blog is supposed to be 1/3 me talking, 1/3 crafts, and 1/3 cooking, but umm i can't really cook here in France sadly, and i haven't crafted all that much. so those other two sections of the blog will get kicked off in july when i go home! normally when i think about leaving i get really sad and don't want to leave, but right now, it seems like i just can't wait. i think it's just cause im under the weather and sick of the weather here!
anticipating the glorious summer months! let this stomach sickness be a kickstart to my summer weight loss goals?! yes? no? funny?/not? whatever, i want to be toned this year is the bottom line, i say that every year, and of course gastroenteritis is not the way to lose weight. it's all the tylenol and other french meds gone to my head!
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
oh my word
the most recent episode of bones!!! oh my goodness. finally!!! gaaaaaggghhhh!!!!! bones is such a damn fool! and my stomach flu is half better after getting a ton of medicine from a doctor. still not really eating solids, or feeling like im at full energy, but getting there!
i think ill take a nap. i missed out on the trip to the chateaux de la loire this weekend because of being sick, which sucks, but i need the time to recover. now you should go watch bones!!!
i think ill take a nap. i missed out on the trip to the chateaux de la loire this weekend because of being sick, which sucks, but i need the time to recover. now you should go watch bones!!!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
oh me oh my
i have the stomach flu. i am miserable. ive never vomited more in my life. yuck sorry. the flu made me say that. oy vey.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
blargghhhh
ooooh my stomach hurts! twisting and turning and folding in upon itself. whenever my stomach hurts like this, i imagine it's like the inside of a clock, with all the gears turning in different directions and twisting around each other. i just tried brioche for the first time at breakfast, and i hope this is not the reasoning for painful stomach, because it was delicious and i want to eat it again sometime. it was like a softer, slightly sweeter version of challah.
other news: midterms and assignments are finally upon me. this whole semester was coasting by with barely any hw, just a weekly grammar worksheet in my french class which i would do the day of french class in the hour before hand, or on the metro, which Pascale, my teacher, thought was an excellent use of our commute. She'd be like, yes yes! metro is very parisian place to do homework!!! But then last week real assignments started coming in to play. I had an oral presentation last week on Berthe Morisot, that I completely over researched for, as is my curse, and then had to stay up late writing it after the night of the first Passover seder. Passover in France was very very interesting, but very exhausting and starvation-inducing.
Ok, so I didn't starve, but it was way harder to keep passover here, even with eating corn and beans and other seeds (kitniyot) which western european jews (sephardim) eat and eastern european jews (ashkenazim) do not eat. My family is ashkenazic, since my origins include Poland, Latvia, Belarus and maybe Germany (no one can remember where that one great grandfather was from, but it wasn't Latvia or Poland like the rest of them), so obvioulsy my family is very very Ashkenazic. I've been known to throw around yiddish words like others throw around a Frisbee! It's my mommaloshen, what can I tell you? And this little pisher loves to kvetch, ain't it the truth!! But since I was in France, obviously Western, I decided to be sephardic and eat rice and corn this year. Even so, passover was hard to keep with baguettes and croissants all around me. I went to my cousin's house for the seders, her name is Irit and she is my dad's second cousin from the Israeli branch of our family. My grandpa's family came to the US in between the two wars, or right after WWI (thank goodness), but then at some point one or two of his first cousins moved to ISrael to support the new state. So Irit was born in Israel, but then moved to France when she was a young adult, married a French Jew, and had 3 kids who have my hair color. I had always wondered where the blonde came from, now I know, it's from my grandpa. Whenever I asked him, Grandpa what color was your hair when you were young? (He's very very bald now and what's left is white and puffy like a cotton ball) he would just say, Yes dear I used to have hair! How about that!? But what color was it Grandpa? Did I get my blonde hair from you? This would always somehow segway into him telling me, for the zillionth time, about how I'm named for his mother and how she (Sarah Eisenberg Bresler, or Sarah Bresler #1) would have been an engineer if she had been born in a different generation. I love hearing the stories about her, she really was an engineer without the degree of course, but he never gets back to me about the whole hair color issue, and all the pictures of my grandpa when he's small are a) black and white, and b) there are only 2 such pictures. He's old, my grandpa is, his name is Arthur and he was born in 1922 I believe! Wow!
So anyways, I went to the seders at Irit's house, who is dirty blonde herself, and her three kids are also varying shades of dark blonde, so now I finally understand! Her kids are Talia (22), Keren (20), and Dan (15) and her husband's name is Simon. The seders were basically the same, a few different melodies here and there, and a few other differences, like sephardic charoset, eating lettuce as maror instead of horse radish, and eating radishes as karpas instead of parsley. For those of you reading who aren't Jewish, this makes no sense I'm sure but I don't want to take the time to explain the whole seder, that's wikipedia's job if you're really that curious. Oh, and the matzah ball soup was different/weird.
Ugh! My tummy is still twisting and turning and ouch! I have an exam tomorrow that I'm not ready for, and thus I am not going to my first class today so I can study, but I think I'm having an anxiety stomach ache! Bah! Gregghhhjjkklll!!! Mmmpph! Gadzooks!
other news: midterms and assignments are finally upon me. this whole semester was coasting by with barely any hw, just a weekly grammar worksheet in my french class which i would do the day of french class in the hour before hand, or on the metro, which Pascale, my teacher, thought was an excellent use of our commute. She'd be like, yes yes! metro is very parisian place to do homework!!! But then last week real assignments started coming in to play. I had an oral presentation last week on Berthe Morisot, that I completely over researched for, as is my curse, and then had to stay up late writing it after the night of the first Passover seder. Passover in France was very very interesting, but very exhausting and starvation-inducing.
Ok, so I didn't starve, but it was way harder to keep passover here, even with eating corn and beans and other seeds (kitniyot) which western european jews (sephardim) eat and eastern european jews (ashkenazim) do not eat. My family is ashkenazic, since my origins include Poland, Latvia, Belarus and maybe Germany (no one can remember where that one great grandfather was from, but it wasn't Latvia or Poland like the rest of them), so obvioulsy my family is very very Ashkenazic. I've been known to throw around yiddish words like others throw around a Frisbee! It's my mommaloshen, what can I tell you? And this little pisher loves to kvetch, ain't it the truth!! But since I was in France, obviously Western, I decided to be sephardic and eat rice and corn this year. Even so, passover was hard to keep with baguettes and croissants all around me. I went to my cousin's house for the seders, her name is Irit and she is my dad's second cousin from the Israeli branch of our family. My grandpa's family came to the US in between the two wars, or right after WWI (thank goodness), but then at some point one or two of his first cousins moved to ISrael to support the new state. So Irit was born in Israel, but then moved to France when she was a young adult, married a French Jew, and had 3 kids who have my hair color. I had always wondered where the blonde came from, now I know, it's from my grandpa. Whenever I asked him, Grandpa what color was your hair when you were young? (He's very very bald now and what's left is white and puffy like a cotton ball) he would just say, Yes dear I used to have hair! How about that!? But what color was it Grandpa? Did I get my blonde hair from you? This would always somehow segway into him telling me, for the zillionth time, about how I'm named for his mother and how she (Sarah Eisenberg Bresler, or Sarah Bresler #1) would have been an engineer if she had been born in a different generation. I love hearing the stories about her, she really was an engineer without the degree of course, but he never gets back to me about the whole hair color issue, and all the pictures of my grandpa when he's small are a) black and white, and b) there are only 2 such pictures. He's old, my grandpa is, his name is Arthur and he was born in 1922 I believe! Wow!
So anyways, I went to the seders at Irit's house, who is dirty blonde herself, and her three kids are also varying shades of dark blonde, so now I finally understand! Her kids are Talia (22), Keren (20), and Dan (15) and her husband's name is Simon. The seders were basically the same, a few different melodies here and there, and a few other differences, like sephardic charoset, eating lettuce as maror instead of horse radish, and eating radishes as karpas instead of parsley. For those of you reading who aren't Jewish, this makes no sense I'm sure but I don't want to take the time to explain the whole seder, that's wikipedia's job if you're really that curious. Oh, and the matzah ball soup was different/weird.
Ugh! My tummy is still twisting and turning and ouch! I have an exam tomorrow that I'm not ready for, and thus I am not going to my first class today so I can study, but I think I'm having an anxiety stomach ache! Bah! Gregghhhjjkklll!!! Mmmpph! Gadzooks!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
updates:
Amanda visited this week! She arrived Saturday night and we fetched her from Gare du Nord (sketch as shit at night- this is a term I've come to realize is essential for life in Paris, where half the metro stops are SASAN) and then we had crepes! miam miam! and then we had an amazing bottle of wine, me, manderz, tay and caryl. it was called brouilly something and it was so good! then manda went to sleep at carolyn's and we all went home. the next few days were full of fun stuff, intermittent with working and studying, eating pastries and showing Amanda around, and for her, sitting through some of our classes in French and hunting down a hostel. She left today and I miss her already!! But I'm already guaranteed to see her at least twice more this semester, if not more. She's coming back to Paris at the end of the month, on her way to Italy, and I shall see her then. (Right now she's in the South of France, and then in morroco, such a traveller) and then carolyn and i are going to go to England, Ireland and maybe Scottland for our break. We need to plan that!
i ate a violet flavored macaron on Tuesday and it was HEAVEN. if this sounds weird to you, you are insane, violet and lavendar flavored things are some of the tastiest stuff around! lavendar ice cream anyone?
i need more peanut butter. withdrawal getting tougher.
black current jam = revelation of yum.
spectacle tonight was classical music, Stravinsky and Bruckner. I was keeping the classical feeling alive listening to Bach's organ works on my LONG ASS metro ride home, but then an accordian player came onto my metro car for like 5 stops playing horrible horrible polka and i couldn't hear the bach even with my volume up almost to max! i hate this about paris, people playing violin and accordian with backround music from an amp they wheel around with them, disrupting everyone's commute and taking up precious footroom on the metro. Then they walk up and down the aisle and ask for tips? Some say, un petit piece pour la musique? (a small piece/coin/change for the music?) but others are like "mon salaire?" excuse me, your salary??? you have to be kidding me!!! this is not your job, go away! and they're always like regular looking people who don't look that destitute or sometimes they are "gypsies."
white chocolate with hazelnuts = HOLY CRAP YUM
think im getting fat here, judging by all the food i've been blogging about
mm food
bah fat
whatever. old man asked me if i was a ballerina on the metro the other day, i was like what? he was like, ballerina?! you dance? ballet? you dance ballet! and i was like oh no, im not a ballerina. weird interaction but made me feel like maybe i'm not gaining as many kg as i think i am, cause ballerinas aren't often chubsters and they are graceful like birds. i take this as a complement. from an old tiny wrinkled man wearing a beret. what's up france?
spring weather is lovely and makes me happy. unhappy sidenote: must begin shaving my legs again after winter haitus.
ate indian food today, veg samosa and aloo gobi. and garlic naan. at our usual indian restaurant. was delicious!!
have a ton of work coming up. like an actual metric TON. TON TON TON. including; presentation tomorrow in france d'aujourd'hui, stupid silly class about nothing at all, presentation on tuesday in impressionism about a painting by berthe morisot, essay due end of march on a painting by emile bernard also for impressionism. Swamped from now till Tuesday, et en plus, Monday night starts Pesach! I'm going to ask impressionism teacher if i can turn in the essay on emile bernard maybe april 1 or 2 because of passover, monday and tuesday nights I won't be able to finish my work.
blegh passover. don't know how i'm going to survive eat here. might be sephardic and eat corn adn beans and rice. otherwise will die for sure, france = land of carbs. will look for some matzah in the market, however this seems unlikely.
Amanda visited this week! She arrived Saturday night and we fetched her from Gare du Nord (sketch as shit at night- this is a term I've come to realize is essential for life in Paris, where half the metro stops are SASAN) and then we had crepes! miam miam! and then we had an amazing bottle of wine, me, manderz, tay and caryl. it was called brouilly something and it was so good! then manda went to sleep at carolyn's and we all went home. the next few days were full of fun stuff, intermittent with working and studying, eating pastries and showing Amanda around, and for her, sitting through some of our classes in French and hunting down a hostel. She left today and I miss her already!! But I'm already guaranteed to see her at least twice more this semester, if not more. She's coming back to Paris at the end of the month, on her way to Italy, and I shall see her then. (Right now she's in the South of France, and then in morroco, such a traveller) and then carolyn and i are going to go to England, Ireland and maybe Scottland for our break. We need to plan that!
i ate a violet flavored macaron on Tuesday and it was HEAVEN. if this sounds weird to you, you are insane, violet and lavendar flavored things are some of the tastiest stuff around! lavendar ice cream anyone?
i need more peanut butter. withdrawal getting tougher.
black current jam = revelation of yum.
spectacle tonight was classical music, Stravinsky and Bruckner. I was keeping the classical feeling alive listening to Bach's organ works on my LONG ASS metro ride home, but then an accordian player came onto my metro car for like 5 stops playing horrible horrible polka and i couldn't hear the bach even with my volume up almost to max! i hate this about paris, people playing violin and accordian with backround music from an amp they wheel around with them, disrupting everyone's commute and taking up precious footroom on the metro. Then they walk up and down the aisle and ask for tips? Some say, un petit piece pour la musique? (a small piece/coin/change for the music?) but others are like "mon salaire?" excuse me, your salary??? you have to be kidding me!!! this is not your job, go away! and they're always like regular looking people who don't look that destitute or sometimes they are "gypsies."
white chocolate with hazelnuts = HOLY CRAP YUM
think im getting fat here, judging by all the food i've been blogging about
mm food
bah fat
whatever. old man asked me if i was a ballerina on the metro the other day, i was like what? he was like, ballerina?! you dance? ballet? you dance ballet! and i was like oh no, im not a ballerina. weird interaction but made me feel like maybe i'm not gaining as many kg as i think i am, cause ballerinas aren't often chubsters and they are graceful like birds. i take this as a complement. from an old tiny wrinkled man wearing a beret. what's up france?
spring weather is lovely and makes me happy. unhappy sidenote: must begin shaving my legs again after winter haitus.
ate indian food today, veg samosa and aloo gobi. and garlic naan. at our usual indian restaurant. was delicious!!
have a ton of work coming up. like an actual metric TON. TON TON TON. including; presentation tomorrow in france d'aujourd'hui, stupid silly class about nothing at all, presentation on tuesday in impressionism about a painting by berthe morisot, essay due end of march on a painting by emile bernard also for impressionism. Swamped from now till Tuesday, et en plus, Monday night starts Pesach! I'm going to ask impressionism teacher if i can turn in the essay on emile bernard maybe april 1 or 2 because of passover, monday and tuesday nights I won't be able to finish my work.
blegh passover. don't know how i'm going to survive eat here. might be sephardic and eat corn adn beans and rice. otherwise will die for sure, france = land of carbs. will look for some matzah in the market, however this seems unlikely.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
i really am terrible terrible!
terrible, horrible, no good, very bad girl! that's me, because i havent updated this blog in over a month! for some reason i thought it had only been like 2 weeks, barely even. Time is flying SO extremely fast here! can't believe how quickly this semester is passing! i'm giving up on that whole catch-up recap thing because shit, at this point i'm 2 months behind and want to talk about the present!
It is FINALLY FINALLY warm here! I am so relieved because the coldness and never-ending winter were really making me depressed, and I hate my big winter coat which is 2 sizes to big on me and makes me look like I have on a football uniform under my coat- as in HUGE shoulders. For a while I thought the big coat, tiny girl phenomenon might look cute and retro, but I'm not that tiny and that coat was just fucking annoying. Also, the zipper breaks about 3 times a day and I have to get Carolyn and Taylor to help me with it. But now, all that is done with because IT'S SPRING!!!!! I've been wearing a short sleeved shirt, sweater/cardigan, and my spring-ish white coat which i bought this autumn for 25 dollars at forever 21. It's cute but gets dirty easily and it's made out of polyester, but it feels like fleece! The jardin du luxembourg is amazing, totally my new favorite place to just hang out and absorb the sun! paris is really so much more pleasant when you don't dread being outdoors! and when you can wear your flats without socks underneath!
Also, AMANDATRON is coming to visit this weekend! I'm SO SO SO SO SO EXCITED!!!!!!! We're going to finally catch up, drink tons of coffee, go to museums, get drunk on red wine, sit in the garden, and basically, have an awesome time. and eat cheese. I cannot wait!!!
I've eaten eggs twice more since last blogged about eggs. dying slowly. hatred of eggs growing as i see them more and more and more because it's easter-season. this is unreasonable and silly because the eggs i keep seeing are chocolate filled, and i don't even eat chocolate, but it makes me hate eggs even more just to see their shape in front of my face in every market and patisserie. BLARGH!
OH MON DIEU I also have to blog about my trip! Two weeks ago (end of feb/beginning of march) we had a one-week-long break from school, for no reason as far as I can tell other than that France hates working and going to school. (35 hour work week envy!)SO, me C & T jetted off (well, really we took the train) to Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne!! It was such an amazing trip and made me feel so incredibly lucky to be in europe this semester nad have opportunities like this! We bought a eurail pass for 3 countries, which have to be bordering, for use of 5 travel days over 2 months. We went from Paris to Brussels, changing stations in the middle in Lille and one other town in Belgium (Mouscoux maybe? Mouscraux? Kinda sounded like moscow in a french accent) since there were no direct trains from Paris to Brussels because of the acciedent a few weeks before. We stayed in Brussels for 2 nights, and it was lovely. GORGEOUS city! Andrea had said there wasn't too much to see, but she is a big liar and I wish we had stayed longer! Flemmish is a funny sounding language! DETAILS OF GRAND ADVENTURE IN THE BAYS-BAS:
-26.02.10
On the train from PAris to brussels, the woman across from us had a 2 year old son, a 4 year old son and a baby. the two year old was adorable, he kept pulling off his hat and saying "Tapo!!" which was his baby approximation of "chapeau" or hat, in french. and the best part was that when the mother went to put her luggage on the rack thingy, she asked me to hold the baby for a minute. the new, tiny, squirmy little itty bitty infant baby! it was one of the best things EVER in my entire life. i want to have 400000 of them. Then we arrived in Brussels after train from Paris, stayed at Hostel Van Gogh. Arrived in the evening, settled in, had a kriek! and a framboise! in the bar in the Hostel lobby, smoky smoky little bar, but fun and great music playing! Kriek, which doesn't really have an exclamation point but which i love and was excited to write about, is a special sort of Brussels beer, called geuze, flavored with cherry! Cherry beer may sound weird but it is SO DAMN GOOD! geuze is only made in Brussels because it gets its unique taste from a bacteria that is only in a valley around Brussels, and within which the city is located. Kinda like sourdough bread in San Francisco, which I also love. Framboise is the same thing but flavored with raspberries, is shockingly pink, and not as good as kriek but still awesome. then we went to bed and KONKED OUT!
-27.02.10
after a meager breakfast at the hostel, i felt like i was going to die. you see, i got a visit from my aunt flo in the night, and well, i had the worst cramps of my entire existance. i really thought i might die. C & T had concerned faces on, because apparently I also looked like death. Then we walked to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, and I felt a bit better for some reason. In the museum, I was far too distracted by all the BEAUTIFUL AMAZING GREAT art to even think about my uterus, thank god, so then the cramps got better. I freaked out in the museum because of all the Broodthaers pieces they had there! Entire installations from his fictional museum of modern art and eagles! He is my favorite Belgian artist, I adore him and his big piles of mussels. After the museum we went shopping/hunted around for vintage goodness. Then for lunch we had felafel and BElgian frites! We all got different sauces on our fries, even though the traditional one is mayonaise, i find that to be a disgusting thought. I got mustard, Carolyn got curry ketchup which was SO good, and Taylor got "samurai sauce" which was an odd shade of neon salmon/pink and we think was mayonaise mixed with sriracha or some other hot pepper sauce, but it wasn't as spicy as T wanted. The fries were so good though, adn the felafel had this lemony cabbage salad with the felafel balls. Yum! Then we were exhausted so we went back to the hostel and rested for a while, napping until dinner. For dinner, we knew we wanted to go to this special beer place afterwards, that is a bar but also a brewery, so we headed over there and then found a restaurant near by. After debating hte rude waiter, we ordered our food. I split a warm camembert & honey salad as well as pistou pasta with Taylor. Both were very good, the salad was delicious and the pasta had a ton of pine nuts and arugala leaves in the sauce. Then we went to the beer hall, called La Morte Subite, or the Sudden Death, and had some beers! I tried peche geuze this time, which was so sweet and tasted like peach soda, peach pie and beer all rolled into one, and faro which is just geuze that's a little sweetened (our map said, "faro used to be for the ladies. now though, it's more excepted for anyone to try it.") leave it to me to only drink bitch drinks, even when they're actually beer. After La Morte Subite, which was so fun and really was like a huge cafeteria with long tables where the only thing going on was happy people drinking beer, we went back to the hsotel and slept.
-28.02.10
this was the day we left Brussels and took the train to Amsterdam. First though, we hunted like MAD CRAZY GRUMPY HUNGOVER BITCHES to find a belgian waffle, because we hadn't tried one yet. We were trying to avoid the touristy, sugar covered, strawberry-laden, whipped cream covered variety because we wanted to experience the real mccoy. Finally we found a place that was a)open (it was Sunday adn everything closes down on SUndays there just like in most of Paris), b)served waffles, c) not too touristy. Too bad our waiter was actually the BIGGEST ASSHOLE OF THE WORLD, didn't want to take our order even though we were each ordering lunch, coffee and a waffle, which is therefore a lot of business, he kept walking away after each one of us ordered one thing, and we kept having to be like, "excusez-moi monsieur, mais est-ce qu'elle peut commander une boisson aussi?" (excuse me, but could she please order a drink also?) it was ridiculous. the food was like, eh whatever, another tomato and mozarella sandwhich is is always my only choice, and the waffle was actually bad. and there was a piece of paper inside carolyn's coffee, like when she finished it, there was a little bit of paper in the bottom of her cup. way worse than coffee grounds! i mean wtf, clean your dishes much!??? obviously, not a restaurant that was remembered fondly. we wrote a nasty note on the receipt and i contemplated peeing on the side of the building, but i didn't really have to pee and it was raining, so this seemed like it might've been a bad idea. then we got on the brussels metro to the train station and on to our train to amsterdam! we all crocheted a TON!!!! (i've taught both C and T and made them addicts! crochet monster zombies! woo!)We got into Amsterdam and took a cab to the hostel, during which I had this lovely gem of a conversation with the taxi driver.
Sarah- What is the best Dutch foor for us to try?
taxi-driver- bus? there are no bus, is tam!
S- what?
TD- bus? what you want?
S- dutch food?
TD- you take the tam maybe, you go to Sintum?
S- ok! (i had no idea what he was saying, clearly)
TD- ok? i don't know what you say!
S- it's ok! no problem!
TD- ok! ok!
it was funnier in real life.
then we got to the hostel at like 4:30, settled in, decided to nap till dinner. Before I napped though I planned some shit out with our europe guide book and the map. Travelling is exhausting though, so then I passed out. For dinner, we didn't really want to figure out the tram thingy to get into the city center and we didn't know what time it would stop running, so we decided to stay around the hostel. We ended up having dinner at an amazing and very cheap Turkish restaurant where we were pretty much the only diners, so they totally doted on us. It was amazing. We shared a humus appetizer with delicious crusty bread, and then T and I shared a veggie pizza which was pretty good and C had some turkish stew stuff that came with free rice pilaf! then we got free little mini baklavahs and cups of sweet turkish tea....many cups. we all peed like 3 times haha! it was awesome! Then we walked around the area our hostel was in and explored inside the hostel, then we went up to our room and crocheted a bit and then went to sleep.
-01.03.2010
We went to the Noordemarkt, a big flea market, and had a ton of fun. It was absolutely AMAZING! I bought a tiny little antique pillbox with flowers painted on it, for only 3 euro!, and T got a red blazer/jacket and a skirt, and C got a flannel shirt and a mexican style woven purse. I was sad none fo the clothes I found fit me or were worth the money being asked. I found a great cardigan but the woman wanted 25 euro, and it was acrylic so like.....not worth it. Then we went to this bakery called Lanksroon, upon recommendation from designsponge, and it was AMAZING!!!! We had these traditional dutch cookies called honingwafel, which are like 2 flat cookie discs filled with honey. Amazing buttery sweet goodness! And there was an adorable cat just chilling out on a chair in the bakery. Then we went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was expensive to get into, but so worth it! It was a great great museum, though it took us forever and a day to find the place. We went to a "coffeeshop" and had some "coffee." cough cough wink wink puff puff pass pass. fun! legal! awesome! Then we walked around a lot, got hungry eventually, and asked a girl in a souvenir shop where a good Dutch restaurant was. We followed her recommendation and ate at some place called Stoop and Stoop, which was kinda like a pub/restaurant. Kinda reminded me of this place called Tombs I went to in DC once when I was visiting my friend at Georgetown freshman year. I had tomato soup and bread with herb butter, more of that delicious light crusty bread like we had had the night before with the humus. we headed back to the hostel, ate some mint coated licorice from the vending machine and crocheted and talked for a long time.
-02.03.2010
we went to the Nieuwmarkt, pretty central kinda town square, to see the Waag, a 15th century building. it was a little disappointing because we were expecting a great medieval architectural edifice, and it was pretty cool architecturally, but you couldnt really go inside it because inside was an expensive touristy cafe. figures. Then we went to Cafe Latei, another DS recommendation, and had coffees, which were good but damn that place is CUTER THAN CUTE! There was a sign on the door that said "Thank you for you purchase, I missing you already." SO adorable and the decor was just like, what dreams are made of! And of course, another pretty, adorable lounging cat. Then we walked forever and ever to get to ARCAM, the architecture museum, which was like, ok. it was small and not that interesting, but there was a timeline of the development of the town of Amsterdam throughout its history which was neat. Then we went to a place called Foodism for lunch, yet another DS recommendation, which was delicious. Me and T split the mexican bean soup, the only blackbeans or bean anything i've yet had in europe, so so sad, and then I had a tomato, cheese, avocado sandwhich on tasty brown bread, along with a fresh mint tea. Then we hit up a store we passed by called Zipper, where I bought adorable flower printed sneakers to replace my olive/moss green fake ked sneakers which are dying slowly. Then we went to a place called Boekie Woekie which is an art book bookstore, all books about art, by artists, about artists, etc. It was nice but too expensive to get anything. We went to another "coffee shop" because we wanted to try edibles while we were in Amsterdam, but they contained chocolate so I actually just had a coffee. Taylor and Carolyn each had only part of one "space cake" but then they both ended up having TERRIBLE TERRIBLE trips that lasted ALL DAY! DISASTER! And all night! and part of the next day! we tried to find somewhere to eat, but they were both starting to really feel it, and not in a good way, so we went back to the hostel, got a felafel from nearby, and ate it in our room, along with more licorice. then we chatted and went to sleep, me and the two weird little space cadets- they talked about nonsensical, strange things in their delirium, i laughed and listened as T told me all about her grandparents and shared many odd stories.
-03.03.2010
we went to Dam Square to see some medieval architecture, and it was beautiful, but most of the cool buildings were under construction for some reason. Then we went to the Rijksmuseum,or state art museum, which was also under construction, so they had only a selection of their permanent collection up which was supposed to include all the masters. I saw Rubens and Vermeer, one Vermeer that is, and lots of Rembrandt, but no Van Eyck! Lots of Bosch, van Dyck and Hals, but only one Rogier van der Weyden. Art snob Sarah wasn't entirely pleased but ti was nice nonetheless. Then we went to the Negen Straats, or the Nine Streets, which are nine little streets full of vintage and funky and cute stores. It was lots of fun and we hit up a ton of vintage places! We then went to Kitsch Kitchen, THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD! It is the absolute most amazing store full of adorableness and kitsch and fun and cuteness and color and baaahhhhhhh i want to live there and own everything they have! I bought a little change purse and an ipod cover made out of yellow floral oilcloth, BIG BIG score!!!! Then we walked around a ton, "ate from the wall" which is to say in Holland there is this fast food place where it's like a vending machine, you put money into the wall and there are all these different choices, and then you open up a little drawer that's basically like a microwave/heating tray and pull out whatever you've purchased, thus pulling it out from the wall = eating from the wall. This was the most disgusting experience of my life i wanted to die and will never speak of it again. Then we walked around some more, and then had dinner at a Dutch restaurant where i had vegetarian hotchpotch, or mashed potatoes with other veggies smooshed in (endive and onions in my case, yum!) and it came with cheese croquettes which I didn't love but the potatoes were good. and we had some heinekins with our dinner, since we were in holland! then we just chilled at the hostel, crocheting (noticing a pattern here?), and decided not to go out because we were too tired adn we were leaving Amsterdam the next day. I am so sad we left, I LOVE that city and truly miss it. I want to live there. I am obsessed! Everyone rides around on adorably decorated bikes, the city is built on water so there are just a billin canals and bridges which are gorgeous and the architecture is so quaint and the people are nice and i want to learn dutch adn there was so much vintage and great fashion adn i really really want to live there! (for a little while at least, a year maybe?)
-04.03.2010
we had breakfast at the hostel as always, took the tram to the train station, and off we went. we were excited to be going to Cologne but so sad to leave Amsterdam, we all really loved that city! We got into Cologne around 4 pm, took a taxi to our hostel, which turned out to be a random ass house that some dude had made into a "hostel" that wasn't really in the center of the city. we had to pay in cash which the website didn't warn us about, so therefore which sucked and wiped us all out of cash, and the place was clean and all, but it was weird that it was just someone's house. i guess he was trying to make it b&b like, but it wasn't at all like that, quaint or cute or comfy, it was german and odd. we settled in, walked around the area around the hostel, had disgusting sandwiches for lunch that were so mayonaise laden i wanted to die, and then went back to the hostel and chilled since we didn't want to head into town yet. we napped for so long that we didn't leave the hostel until like 9:15 pm, and then went into the city center area to find somewhere to eat, but it took us so long to find the right palces and figure everything out that it was too late and all the restaurants were closed, so we just got felafel for dinner (at like 11 pm) from a stand on the street that was not very good. in fact, quite bad. sadface. then we went back to the hostel adn slept.
-05.03.2010
we went to Dom Cathedral, the 15th century cathedral in Cologne, and took a zillion pictures. It was gorgeous!!! Then we went to the Romanische-Germanische Museum, or the Roman-Germanic History Museum which was about the Eastern provinces of the Roman empire and how they were a mix of Roman Empirical culture and the celtic culture/vikings? of the area. it was interesting but man i was starving. there were many statues of penises which we found funny, and there were lots of unknown objects that the label would say "possibly related to the practices of a secret oriental mystery cult." we then decided to form our own secret oriental mystery cult. no you can't be in it, don't even ask. it's a secret that's why! We went to EngelbertstraSe, an area our guidebook said would have good cheap restaurants. We found a crepe restaurant, of all things, but they were crepes with very interesting fillings so we thought, why not? Mine was ratatouille, cheese and chili sauce, T's was sheeps cheese, spinach adn capers and C's was curry chicken and banana. Yeah. forreals. and she liked it! looked like a yellow mess to me! we walked around some more and checked out lots of little shops in that very studenty area and had fun, C bought a pair of blue leggings which she is in love with. Then we went back to the hostel to nap before dinner, getting coffees and a apple pastry to share on our way from the metro. I ordered in German adn apparently my accent was perfect, "tzvei koffee und eine apfelberliner," I have no idea if that's spelled right, but the woman was like nice german! everyone throughout the trip in cologne assumed i was german, slightly unnerving but makes sense. Later we went back into the town and found a German restaurant/pub for dinner, we had kolsch, Cologne's own special beer which only exists there and is DELICIOUS, little salads and schnitzel. I had vegetarian schnitzel, which it turns out meant breaded and fried cheese, served with potatoes and a lemon wedge. Was divine and oh-so-fattening! T and C split some giant chicken schnitzel monster! then we went to a small club/bar called Museum where we had another round of kolsch, our thirds, and then i had a passoa orange (passoa is like crack), T had a gin and tonic, adn carolyn had a few shots if i remember correctly, which i don't because i got drunk. then we happy drunks full of potatoes went back to the hostel.
-06.03.2010
we decided to sleep in and miss breakfast at the hostel, which wasn't missing much, since we were so exhausted and had been tired the entire trip. travelling and moving around, while amazing, is also quite exhausting, and there wasn't that much else to do in Cologne so we figured it wouldn't hurt to sleep in. Then we had lunch at some German restaurant, where I had coffee, french onion soup, and we all shared an order of riebekoochen, which the guidebook said were a cologne specialty. turns out they are latkes, served with apple sauce and all! so funny! delicious, but nothing i hadn't had before. as my mom said, there is a lot of overlap between host and minority culture, which of course i already knew, especially with Germany, since yiddish is mainly german. we went to the train station just to see what time our train would be the next day and find out if we needed a reservation or not, since sometimes you do adn sometimes you don't with the eurail pass, it just depends on the trainline. Turns out, all the trains leaving the 7th were completely booked and we had no other choice but to go back that night! Change of plans!!! We bought reservations for that afternoon's train, for 32 euro! on top of the price we paid back in PAris for our train passes, aggravating! We hurriedly did some other stuff in town, then went back to the hostel, packed up, explained it to the guy whose place it was, got our deposit back but not our money for that night which sucked because it wasn't enough notice. grrr! frustration! we then hung out in the train station for a while, waiting for our train to get there, eating soft pretzels and buying other food for dinner on the train. I got a little loafy thing of cheesey bread that was delectable! and a diet coke and a pastry, not exactly a balanced meal, but a) i bought it in a train station and b) it was delicious and c) it was my only option for food, the cheese bread i mean, not the coke nad pastry haha.
Well, then we got on the train to Paris at like 7:15 pm adn were back at Gare du Nord by like 10:30, not bad at all! Then I went home to my apartment, where I expected to find M&M,who had been gone the whole week before my vacation and the week of my vacation, spending the time in Toulouse where they have their other house and all their family. I hadn't seen them since before C's bday (a night of crazy drunken antics) which was Feb 19, and yet they weren't there still! I then saw a note from Monique that they had to go back to Toulouse because her mother was in the hospital! poor thing! she's pretty much ok though, she'd very old and frail and had fallen and is still recovering, but is doing alright. M&M came home that Monday and life has been back to normal since then! Classes are fine, life is good and spring is here!
Long post! Goodnight!
It is FINALLY FINALLY warm here! I am so relieved because the coldness and never-ending winter were really making me depressed, and I hate my big winter coat which is 2 sizes to big on me and makes me look like I have on a football uniform under my coat- as in HUGE shoulders. For a while I thought the big coat, tiny girl phenomenon might look cute and retro, but I'm not that tiny and that coat was just fucking annoying. Also, the zipper breaks about 3 times a day and I have to get Carolyn and Taylor to help me with it. But now, all that is done with because IT'S SPRING!!!!! I've been wearing a short sleeved shirt, sweater/cardigan, and my spring-ish white coat which i bought this autumn for 25 dollars at forever 21. It's cute but gets dirty easily and it's made out of polyester, but it feels like fleece! The jardin du luxembourg is amazing, totally my new favorite place to just hang out and absorb the sun! paris is really so much more pleasant when you don't dread being outdoors! and when you can wear your flats without socks underneath!
Also, AMANDATRON is coming to visit this weekend! I'm SO SO SO SO SO EXCITED!!!!!!! We're going to finally catch up, drink tons of coffee, go to museums, get drunk on red wine, sit in the garden, and basically, have an awesome time. and eat cheese. I cannot wait!!!
I've eaten eggs twice more since last blogged about eggs. dying slowly. hatred of eggs growing as i see them more and more and more because it's easter-season. this is unreasonable and silly because the eggs i keep seeing are chocolate filled, and i don't even eat chocolate, but it makes me hate eggs even more just to see their shape in front of my face in every market and patisserie. BLARGH!
OH MON DIEU I also have to blog about my trip! Two weeks ago (end of feb/beginning of march) we had a one-week-long break from school, for no reason as far as I can tell other than that France hates working and going to school. (35 hour work week envy!)SO, me C & T jetted off (well, really we took the train) to Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne!! It was such an amazing trip and made me feel so incredibly lucky to be in europe this semester nad have opportunities like this! We bought a eurail pass for 3 countries, which have to be bordering, for use of 5 travel days over 2 months. We went from Paris to Brussels, changing stations in the middle in Lille and one other town in Belgium (Mouscoux maybe? Mouscraux? Kinda sounded like moscow in a french accent) since there were no direct trains from Paris to Brussels because of the acciedent a few weeks before. We stayed in Brussels for 2 nights, and it was lovely. GORGEOUS city! Andrea had said there wasn't too much to see, but she is a big liar and I wish we had stayed longer! Flemmish is a funny sounding language! DETAILS OF GRAND ADVENTURE IN THE BAYS-BAS:
-26.02.10
On the train from PAris to brussels, the woman across from us had a 2 year old son, a 4 year old son and a baby. the two year old was adorable, he kept pulling off his hat and saying "Tapo!!" which was his baby approximation of "chapeau" or hat, in french. and the best part was that when the mother went to put her luggage on the rack thingy, she asked me to hold the baby for a minute. the new, tiny, squirmy little itty bitty infant baby! it was one of the best things EVER in my entire life. i want to have 400000 of them. Then we arrived in Brussels after train from Paris, stayed at Hostel Van Gogh. Arrived in the evening, settled in, had a kriek! and a framboise! in the bar in the Hostel lobby, smoky smoky little bar, but fun and great music playing! Kriek, which doesn't really have an exclamation point but which i love and was excited to write about, is a special sort of Brussels beer, called geuze, flavored with cherry! Cherry beer may sound weird but it is SO DAMN GOOD! geuze is only made in Brussels because it gets its unique taste from a bacteria that is only in a valley around Brussels, and within which the city is located. Kinda like sourdough bread in San Francisco, which I also love. Framboise is the same thing but flavored with raspberries, is shockingly pink, and not as good as kriek but still awesome. then we went to bed and KONKED OUT!
-27.02.10
after a meager breakfast at the hostel, i felt like i was going to die. you see, i got a visit from my aunt flo in the night, and well, i had the worst cramps of my entire existance. i really thought i might die. C & T had concerned faces on, because apparently I also looked like death. Then we walked to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, and I felt a bit better for some reason. In the museum, I was far too distracted by all the BEAUTIFUL AMAZING GREAT art to even think about my uterus, thank god, so then the cramps got better. I freaked out in the museum because of all the Broodthaers pieces they had there! Entire installations from his fictional museum of modern art and eagles! He is my favorite Belgian artist, I adore him and his big piles of mussels. After the museum we went shopping/hunted around for vintage goodness. Then for lunch we had felafel and BElgian frites! We all got different sauces on our fries, even though the traditional one is mayonaise, i find that to be a disgusting thought. I got mustard, Carolyn got curry ketchup which was SO good, and Taylor got "samurai sauce" which was an odd shade of neon salmon/pink and we think was mayonaise mixed with sriracha or some other hot pepper sauce, but it wasn't as spicy as T wanted. The fries were so good though, adn the felafel had this lemony cabbage salad with the felafel balls. Yum! Then we were exhausted so we went back to the hostel and rested for a while, napping until dinner. For dinner, we knew we wanted to go to this special beer place afterwards, that is a bar but also a brewery, so we headed over there and then found a restaurant near by. After debating hte rude waiter, we ordered our food. I split a warm camembert & honey salad as well as pistou pasta with Taylor. Both were very good, the salad was delicious and the pasta had a ton of pine nuts and arugala leaves in the sauce. Then we went to the beer hall, called La Morte Subite, or the Sudden Death, and had some beers! I tried peche geuze this time, which was so sweet and tasted like peach soda, peach pie and beer all rolled into one, and faro which is just geuze that's a little sweetened (our map said, "faro used to be for the ladies. now though, it's more excepted for anyone to try it.") leave it to me to only drink bitch drinks, even when they're actually beer. After La Morte Subite, which was so fun and really was like a huge cafeteria with long tables where the only thing going on was happy people drinking beer, we went back to the hsotel and slept.
-28.02.10
this was the day we left Brussels and took the train to Amsterdam. First though, we hunted like MAD CRAZY GRUMPY HUNGOVER BITCHES to find a belgian waffle, because we hadn't tried one yet. We were trying to avoid the touristy, sugar covered, strawberry-laden, whipped cream covered variety because we wanted to experience the real mccoy. Finally we found a place that was a)open (it was Sunday adn everything closes down on SUndays there just like in most of Paris), b)served waffles, c) not too touristy. Too bad our waiter was actually the BIGGEST ASSHOLE OF THE WORLD, didn't want to take our order even though we were each ordering lunch, coffee and a waffle, which is therefore a lot of business, he kept walking away after each one of us ordered one thing, and we kept having to be like, "excusez-moi monsieur, mais est-ce qu'elle peut commander une boisson aussi?" (excuse me, but could she please order a drink also?) it was ridiculous. the food was like, eh whatever, another tomato and mozarella sandwhich is is always my only choice, and the waffle was actually bad. and there was a piece of paper inside carolyn's coffee, like when she finished it, there was a little bit of paper in the bottom of her cup. way worse than coffee grounds! i mean wtf, clean your dishes much!??? obviously, not a restaurant that was remembered fondly. we wrote a nasty note on the receipt and i contemplated peeing on the side of the building, but i didn't really have to pee and it was raining, so this seemed like it might've been a bad idea. then we got on the brussels metro to the train station and on to our train to amsterdam! we all crocheted a TON!!!! (i've taught both C and T and made them addicts! crochet monster zombies! woo!)We got into Amsterdam and took a cab to the hostel, during which I had this lovely gem of a conversation with the taxi driver.
Sarah- What is the best Dutch foor for us to try?
taxi-driver- bus? there are no bus, is tam!
S- what?
TD- bus? what you want?
S- dutch food?
TD- you take the tam maybe, you go to Sintum?
S- ok! (i had no idea what he was saying, clearly)
TD- ok? i don't know what you say!
S- it's ok! no problem!
TD- ok! ok!
it was funnier in real life.
then we got to the hostel at like 4:30, settled in, decided to nap till dinner. Before I napped though I planned some shit out with our europe guide book and the map. Travelling is exhausting though, so then I passed out. For dinner, we didn't really want to figure out the tram thingy to get into the city center and we didn't know what time it would stop running, so we decided to stay around the hostel. We ended up having dinner at an amazing and very cheap Turkish restaurant where we were pretty much the only diners, so they totally doted on us. It was amazing. We shared a humus appetizer with delicious crusty bread, and then T and I shared a veggie pizza which was pretty good and C had some turkish stew stuff that came with free rice pilaf! then we got free little mini baklavahs and cups of sweet turkish tea....many cups. we all peed like 3 times haha! it was awesome! Then we walked around the area our hostel was in and explored inside the hostel, then we went up to our room and crocheted a bit and then went to sleep.
-01.03.2010
We went to the Noordemarkt, a big flea market, and had a ton of fun. It was absolutely AMAZING! I bought a tiny little antique pillbox with flowers painted on it, for only 3 euro!, and T got a red blazer/jacket and a skirt, and C got a flannel shirt and a mexican style woven purse. I was sad none fo the clothes I found fit me or were worth the money being asked. I found a great cardigan but the woman wanted 25 euro, and it was acrylic so like.....not worth it. Then we went to this bakery called Lanksroon, upon recommendation from designsponge, and it was AMAZING!!!! We had these traditional dutch cookies called honingwafel, which are like 2 flat cookie discs filled with honey. Amazing buttery sweet goodness! And there was an adorable cat just chilling out on a chair in the bakery. Then we went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was expensive to get into, but so worth it! It was a great great museum, though it took us forever and a day to find the place. We went to a "coffeeshop" and had some "coffee." cough cough wink wink puff puff pass pass. fun! legal! awesome! Then we walked around a lot, got hungry eventually, and asked a girl in a souvenir shop where a good Dutch restaurant was. We followed her recommendation and ate at some place called Stoop and Stoop, which was kinda like a pub/restaurant. Kinda reminded me of this place called Tombs I went to in DC once when I was visiting my friend at Georgetown freshman year. I had tomato soup and bread with herb butter, more of that delicious light crusty bread like we had had the night before with the humus. we headed back to the hostel, ate some mint coated licorice from the vending machine and crocheted and talked for a long time.
-02.03.2010
we went to the Nieuwmarkt, pretty central kinda town square, to see the Waag, a 15th century building. it was a little disappointing because we were expecting a great medieval architectural edifice, and it was pretty cool architecturally, but you couldnt really go inside it because inside was an expensive touristy cafe. figures. Then we went to Cafe Latei, another DS recommendation, and had coffees, which were good but damn that place is CUTER THAN CUTE! There was a sign on the door that said "Thank you for you purchase, I missing you already." SO adorable and the decor was just like, what dreams are made of! And of course, another pretty, adorable lounging cat. Then we walked forever and ever to get to ARCAM, the architecture museum, which was like, ok. it was small and not that interesting, but there was a timeline of the development of the town of Amsterdam throughout its history which was neat. Then we went to a place called Foodism for lunch, yet another DS recommendation, which was delicious. Me and T split the mexican bean soup, the only blackbeans or bean anything i've yet had in europe, so so sad, and then I had a tomato, cheese, avocado sandwhich on tasty brown bread, along with a fresh mint tea. Then we hit up a store we passed by called Zipper, where I bought adorable flower printed sneakers to replace my olive/moss green fake ked sneakers which are dying slowly. Then we went to a place called Boekie Woekie which is an art book bookstore, all books about art, by artists, about artists, etc. It was nice but too expensive to get anything. We went to another "coffee shop" because we wanted to try edibles while we were in Amsterdam, but they contained chocolate so I actually just had a coffee. Taylor and Carolyn each had only part of one "space cake" but then they both ended up having TERRIBLE TERRIBLE trips that lasted ALL DAY! DISASTER! And all night! and part of the next day! we tried to find somewhere to eat, but they were both starting to really feel it, and not in a good way, so we went back to the hostel, got a felafel from nearby, and ate it in our room, along with more licorice. then we chatted and went to sleep, me and the two weird little space cadets- they talked about nonsensical, strange things in their delirium, i laughed and listened as T told me all about her grandparents and shared many odd stories.
-03.03.2010
we went to Dam Square to see some medieval architecture, and it was beautiful, but most of the cool buildings were under construction for some reason. Then we went to the Rijksmuseum,or state art museum, which was also under construction, so they had only a selection of their permanent collection up which was supposed to include all the masters. I saw Rubens and Vermeer, one Vermeer that is, and lots of Rembrandt, but no Van Eyck! Lots of Bosch, van Dyck and Hals, but only one Rogier van der Weyden. Art snob Sarah wasn't entirely pleased but ti was nice nonetheless. Then we went to the Negen Straats, or the Nine Streets, which are nine little streets full of vintage and funky and cute stores. It was lots of fun and we hit up a ton of vintage places! We then went to Kitsch Kitchen, THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD! It is the absolute most amazing store full of adorableness and kitsch and fun and cuteness and color and baaahhhhhhh i want to live there and own everything they have! I bought a little change purse and an ipod cover made out of yellow floral oilcloth, BIG BIG score!!!! Then we walked around a ton, "ate from the wall" which is to say in Holland there is this fast food place where it's like a vending machine, you put money into the wall and there are all these different choices, and then you open up a little drawer that's basically like a microwave/heating tray and pull out whatever you've purchased, thus pulling it out from the wall = eating from the wall. This was the most disgusting experience of my life i wanted to die and will never speak of it again. Then we walked around some more, and then had dinner at a Dutch restaurant where i had vegetarian hotchpotch, or mashed potatoes with other veggies smooshed in (endive and onions in my case, yum!) and it came with cheese croquettes which I didn't love but the potatoes were good. and we had some heinekins with our dinner, since we were in holland! then we just chilled at the hostel, crocheting (noticing a pattern here?), and decided not to go out because we were too tired adn we were leaving Amsterdam the next day. I am so sad we left, I LOVE that city and truly miss it. I want to live there. I am obsessed! Everyone rides around on adorably decorated bikes, the city is built on water so there are just a billin canals and bridges which are gorgeous and the architecture is so quaint and the people are nice and i want to learn dutch adn there was so much vintage and great fashion adn i really really want to live there! (for a little while at least, a year maybe?)
-04.03.2010
we had breakfast at the hostel as always, took the tram to the train station, and off we went. we were excited to be going to Cologne but so sad to leave Amsterdam, we all really loved that city! We got into Cologne around 4 pm, took a taxi to our hostel, which turned out to be a random ass house that some dude had made into a "hostel" that wasn't really in the center of the city. we had to pay in cash which the website didn't warn us about, so therefore which sucked and wiped us all out of cash, and the place was clean and all, but it was weird that it was just someone's house. i guess he was trying to make it b&b like, but it wasn't at all like that, quaint or cute or comfy, it was german and odd. we settled in, walked around the area around the hostel, had disgusting sandwiches for lunch that were so mayonaise laden i wanted to die, and then went back to the hostel and chilled since we didn't want to head into town yet. we napped for so long that we didn't leave the hostel until like 9:15 pm, and then went into the city center area to find somewhere to eat, but it took us so long to find the right palces and figure everything out that it was too late and all the restaurants were closed, so we just got felafel for dinner (at like 11 pm) from a stand on the street that was not very good. in fact, quite bad. sadface. then we went back to the hostel adn slept.
-05.03.2010
we went to Dom Cathedral, the 15th century cathedral in Cologne, and took a zillion pictures. It was gorgeous!!! Then we went to the Romanische-Germanische Museum, or the Roman-Germanic History Museum which was about the Eastern provinces of the Roman empire and how they were a mix of Roman Empirical culture and the celtic culture/vikings? of the area. it was interesting but man i was starving. there were many statues of penises which we found funny, and there were lots of unknown objects that the label would say "possibly related to the practices of a secret oriental mystery cult." we then decided to form our own secret oriental mystery cult. no you can't be in it, don't even ask. it's a secret that's why! We went to EngelbertstraSe, an area our guidebook said would have good cheap restaurants. We found a crepe restaurant, of all things, but they were crepes with very interesting fillings so we thought, why not? Mine was ratatouille, cheese and chili sauce, T's was sheeps cheese, spinach adn capers and C's was curry chicken and banana. Yeah. forreals. and she liked it! looked like a yellow mess to me! we walked around some more and checked out lots of little shops in that very studenty area and had fun, C bought a pair of blue leggings which she is in love with. Then we went back to the hostel to nap before dinner, getting coffees and a apple pastry to share on our way from the metro. I ordered in German adn apparently my accent was perfect, "tzvei koffee und eine apfelberliner," I have no idea if that's spelled right, but the woman was like nice german! everyone throughout the trip in cologne assumed i was german, slightly unnerving but makes sense. Later we went back into the town and found a German restaurant/pub for dinner, we had kolsch, Cologne's own special beer which only exists there and is DELICIOUS, little salads and schnitzel. I had vegetarian schnitzel, which it turns out meant breaded and fried cheese, served with potatoes and a lemon wedge. Was divine and oh-so-fattening! T and C split some giant chicken schnitzel monster! then we went to a small club/bar called Museum where we had another round of kolsch, our thirds, and then i had a passoa orange (passoa is like crack), T had a gin and tonic, adn carolyn had a few shots if i remember correctly, which i don't because i got drunk. then we happy drunks full of potatoes went back to the hostel.
-06.03.2010
we decided to sleep in and miss breakfast at the hostel, which wasn't missing much, since we were so exhausted and had been tired the entire trip. travelling and moving around, while amazing, is also quite exhausting, and there wasn't that much else to do in Cologne so we figured it wouldn't hurt to sleep in. Then we had lunch at some German restaurant, where I had coffee, french onion soup, and we all shared an order of riebekoochen, which the guidebook said were a cologne specialty. turns out they are latkes, served with apple sauce and all! so funny! delicious, but nothing i hadn't had before. as my mom said, there is a lot of overlap between host and minority culture, which of course i already knew, especially with Germany, since yiddish is mainly german. we went to the train station just to see what time our train would be the next day and find out if we needed a reservation or not, since sometimes you do adn sometimes you don't with the eurail pass, it just depends on the trainline. Turns out, all the trains leaving the 7th were completely booked and we had no other choice but to go back that night! Change of plans!!! We bought reservations for that afternoon's train, for 32 euro! on top of the price we paid back in PAris for our train passes, aggravating! We hurriedly did some other stuff in town, then went back to the hostel, packed up, explained it to the guy whose place it was, got our deposit back but not our money for that night which sucked because it wasn't enough notice. grrr! frustration! we then hung out in the train station for a while, waiting for our train to get there, eating soft pretzels and buying other food for dinner on the train. I got a little loafy thing of cheesey bread that was delectable! and a diet coke and a pastry, not exactly a balanced meal, but a) i bought it in a train station and b) it was delicious and c) it was my only option for food, the cheese bread i mean, not the coke nad pastry haha.
Well, then we got on the train to Paris at like 7:15 pm adn were back at Gare du Nord by like 10:30, not bad at all! Then I went home to my apartment, where I expected to find M&M,who had been gone the whole week before my vacation and the week of my vacation, spending the time in Toulouse where they have their other house and all their family. I hadn't seen them since before C's bday (a night of crazy drunken antics) which was Feb 19, and yet they weren't there still! I then saw a note from Monique that they had to go back to Toulouse because her mother was in the hospital! poor thing! she's pretty much ok though, she'd very old and frail and had fallen and is still recovering, but is doing alright. M&M came home that Monday and life has been back to normal since then! Classes are fine, life is good and spring is here!
Long post! Goodnight!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Terrible Terrible
Ok, I am a terrible blogger, in that I never blog! But all that is about to change, because here I am on a Sunday afternoon- not hungover, well-rested, and sitting at my now clean and organized desk ready to blog away. I was planning on blogging yesterday but a)woke up at 2 pm, b)was more hung-over than in a long time, c)was exhausted and head-achey, d) desk and room were a mess and it was distracting me, and e) i really wanted to watch the most recent episode of Bones.
But now that all that other stuff is taken care of, I'm ready. It's been a long week, and it seems like each week gets longer and busier than the last! I'm still going to go through my little run-down, but now that I've been here about 3 weeks and have classes to discuss, I'm going to limit myself to 5 sentences per day until I catch up to this past week.
Alors, on y va!
January 21, 2010:
-Still at FIAP, slept in, first purchases in France were then an espresso and a petit pain a l'orange (orange flavored roll with bits of candied orange rind) at a bakery for breakfast with Taylor, Carolyn and Shelby.
-returned to FIAP for series of long meeting with Mme Suraqui and Blandine, who gave us 3 zillion things including more maps, a free admission card for the Louvre (h e a r t a t t a c k), and Blandine told us about all the aspects of French daily life- cell phones, bank accounts, metro, transportation, internet, flying, trains, etc etc.
-entire group headed out after the meetings to buy cellphones, was a touch confusing, but then we all got the same pay-as-you go french cellphone, with 10 digit numbers that all begin identically. success.
- Dinner at Apollo, a restaurant, with the APA group and the APA teachers, me Carolyn and Taylor sat at a table with Mme Suraqui herself and tried to explain what quilting was and talked about a ton of random ass shit. Mme Suraqui it turns out, has a son who lives in Israel and she knows a little Hebrew, sababa! newsflash- I ate GOAT CHEESE at this dinner, it was fresh adn creamy and didn't have that goat cheese tang like usual, and it had dried fruit in it and was delicious. main course for vegetarians was a little weird, but good, and then creme brulee for dessert, which I tried but did not eat much of because I hate custard.
-went out for the first time in Paris! We all trouped out in a group of like 15 to St. Michel and hunted around for bars, difficult since we were such a large group and bars here are so tiny, eventually we split up and half of us ended up in a winebar with a not too shabby carafe of vin blanc. Got back to FIAP a little buzzed and packed up our bags a little since the following day we would be leaving the FIAP.
January 22, 2010:
- woke up at 7 am after going out the night before = stupid, last shower in the weird FIAP showers, mediocre breakfast in the FIAP cafeteria (worst coffee of my life), put bags in the baggerie (ie luggage room), meetings with Mme Suraqui and Francis at 9 am, received another 3 billion handouts, learned about adopting to French life and living with our homestay families, then went over the cultural program for the semester.
- Blandine arrived (she rides around on a purple razor type scooter, which are still cool in France) and gave us our host family assignments, I found out I'd be living with someone called Monique Guillet in the 13th arrondissement.
-lunch provided by APA/FIAP = monster sack lunches with 2 cheese-filled sandwiches, an apple, bag of chips, granola bar, tomato salad, and a pastry. I ate about half of what was in there, saved the apple and pastry for later and gave one of the sandwiches to Liz.
-bus tour of Paris with Mme Suraqui= 3 hours, was exhausted and hard to stay awake/alert, but great because we saw so much of the city and learned a lot. Got out and took pics at the Eiffel Tower, also saw the Sorbonne, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the iles on the Seine, les Invalides, and more more more more more! Overwhelming.
- back to FIAP, went online for a while, killed time until 7:30 when we went upstairs to meet our host parents at a little reception- !!!! Nervous and excited! I met Monique and Maurice, her "compagnon" ie/ boyfriend/partner who lives with us but they're not married. They were nice and talking fast and my head was spinning, the cocktail didn't help either, but it was fine, then crammed my GIANT bags into their TINY car and drove 10-15 min to their apartment, elevator struggle with big bags, and then, I was home!
- room is nice but tiny, apartment is nice but fairly small, Monique and Maurice are nice but I was only understanding half of what they were saying. We ate dinner; soup (squash, carrot perhaps?), quiche but it was full of cheese and veggies so it wasn't that bad, but the texture was ARGH!, bread and cheese (i tried more goat cheese, was disgusting), Monique asked me lots of questions about what I do and do not eat, Maurice said I eat like a bird (recurring theme here), dessert was supposed to be a chocolate cake, but for obvious reasons I just had a yogurt. After dinner I gave Monique the book about LA (host gift) which she loved and loooked through for a long time saying "Ah, c'est tres gentille! Ah, je n'ai pas vu ca! C'est quoi? Oh, c'est genial!" They showed me their album from when they visited LA, but of course they'd only gone to touristy places (Mann Chinese Theater, Hollywood walk of the stars, Santa Monica Pier, etc).
went to sleep after longest day of LIFE!!!
January 23, 2010:
- woke up at 8 but continued sleeping off and on until like 10:15, was still so jetlagged. Got up finally, M&M weren't home, had coffee and a weird cracker thing, got dressed and unpacked/moved in.
-Carolyn and I arranged to meet at Denfert-Rochereau around 12:30, but I first had to find a money exchange place which was confusing, since the one M&M directed me towards was in Chinatown and somewhat hard to find. I got lost like 400 times attempting to find it, finally did and changed over my monnaie, which is the word in French for currency and for cash/change, which cracks me up, monnaie sounds like mo-naayyyyy. Finally I succeeded but also realized I couldn't get to Denfert without transferring like 3 times so Carolyn and I changed the meeting place to Place d'italie, which I walked to.
- Met Carolyn and Taylor at Place d'Italie (which has a GIANT mall yet to be explored) and had lunch at a little brasserie cafe; gruyere sandwich and a cafe au lait. I was starving so I was v. excited to eat.
- attempted to find the exchange place for Carolyn, got a little lost again, decided it was getting late and all went home to our host-parents, I walked again and now have that route/area committed to memory.
- M&M weren't home still so I called my mom and dad and talked to them for a while, which was nice, they were glad to hear from me and ensure I was alive.
-M&M came home eventually and we had dinner, I can't remember what but it might have been the night we had curry rice and braised endives, so good!
After this point I stopped writing in my journal (again terrible person, terrible journal-er and blogger) so i probably won't have as much to say about all the next days.
january 24, 2010:
- Went for a walk around the quartier with Monique, she showed me the metro stop, the best bakery, some groceries, the laundromat, some restaurants, etc etc, we ended up walking around for over an hour and crossed the Seine to see a little park just on the other side in the "village" of Bercy which is not really a village.
- I ate lunch later on at the little bakery right next to my apt, had a subpar sandwich and a subpar cafe au lait, but was very hungry so did not care.
- Don't remember the rest of the day, I think I just walked around and checked out the neighborhood, I might have gone some where? peut-etre?
January 25, 2010:
-Monday = first day of Orientation classes, starting off at 10 with a French language test to place us in our levels, was both hard and stupid, weirdly phrased exercises, made me feel like an idiot. Then we had an hour break for lunch, bought a sandwich at some place that made us sit outside in the FROZEN weather because we were only getting sandwiches and not real foods, then had "conseils pratiques" were we learned about the French university system from Mme Suraqui who bored us to death, she's getting more and more annoying at this point.
- went somewhere after, with Taylor and Carolyn, probably had coffee and a pastry as this was becoming a pattern.
January 26, 2010:
- class from 10-12:30, learned more about the French education system and our academic program
- lunch, found a better sandwich place, had a panini with mozarella, tomato, basil and eggplant (took out some eggplant)
- from 1:30-3:00 the two APA professors who teach APA classes presented them to us, first the theater teacher who was a young woman with blond hair and huge ears, sounded interesting but a literature class won't do shit for me credit wise and I don't like reading plays that much, and then the art history professor, who's class goes to museums once a week which is awesome, but whose curriculum was identical to French Modernist Painting which I took last year with the Tumanator!
- then me, C and T went to rue Moufftard, upon recommendation from Mme Suraqui, and it was the cutest little area, full of little shops and cafes, including one called "Charme et Fantasie" where everything was dirt cheap and C bought a very cute plaid book bag for like 6 euro.
- I was overjoyed to buy a plug adaptor, which upon use the next day would crack in half and blow out the circuit in my apt, and Taylor bought an alarm clock and a tiny pot to make tea in her room, since she lives in a little guesthouse and has a stove. (jealous)
- M&M were out for dinner, Monique had made something for me and put it in the microwave for me to reheat- turned out to be creamed spinach with hardboiled eggs. I hate eggs, and I really really hate hard-boiled eggs. I ate some of the spinach and some bread, didn't touch the eggs. Later had to explain to Monique that I don't like hardboiled eggs, which baffled her because oeufs florentine always delights the French people. gross.
january 27, 2010:
- class from 10-12 was our first French class with the adorable, chic, amazing, lovely Pascale who I want to be when I grow up. I love this woman, she is so much and silly and told us all the best clubs and restaurants to go to in Paris. She has amazing style and truly AMAZING hair.
- lunch from 12 to 1, had a crepe au fromage at a little creperie near the foyer where we were having all our Orientation classes. Was delicious! the cheese was either gruyere or emmental, both of which I adore and can't get enough of, even though I hate swiss cheese in America, it's so good here, tastes completely different.
- from 1 to 2 we had a very boring class with a tiny little troll woman named Sophie who taught us about french politics and bored us to death. I already knew everything she was saying since I took History of Modern France last year with Todd, one of my favorite professors ever who had an end of the semester party for our class with wine, cheese, bread, and potatoes au gratin (ie potato casserole in a wash of cream and cheese and cardiac arrest. drool.)
- from 2 on some people had to go to the APA office to consult the brochures to pick out their classes, but my timeslot wasn't until the next day, so me, T and C went somewhere and did something. hmmm?
- our first spectacle! but first, I went home to change and relax for a bit, but when I plugged in the plug adaptor that I bought the day before, it didn't work, and when taking it out it broke into two pieces and I heard a loud POP CRACK and the lights went out. None of the lgihts in the entire apartment would turn on, and I was going nuts. I thought I broke M&M's apartment. I was seriously freaking out, but also running late to meet everyone for dinner before the spectacle (ie cultural outing, a concert in this case)
- wrote frantic note explaining electricity issue to M&M, dashed to metro, had to take RER to get to the meeting place, was running soooo late and very stressed out, had to take RER C which I had never taken before and is very confusing. Finally figured it out and made it to the place where we were meeting, couldn't find the restaurant forever, got lost several times attempting to, finally did and ate delicious lebanese food. and drank some wine, much wine.
- then we all walked to the concert hall which was further than we thought, we crossed through the jardin du luxembourg and it was freezing! finally made it to the place, heard lovely concert by the Ochestre de Paris, four pieces the last of which was weird and experimental and involved 2 twin sisters playing a twin double-sided grand piano. Bizarre but interesting.
-went home passed out.
january 28, 2010:
- 10-12 French class with Pascale. love. She told us weird stories about Mitterand having two families, a wife and children in the public eye, and a secret other wife with another child! This would never ever fly in America, if it came out that a president had two families. French people were like, oh ok whatevz, that's his private life. I live near a giant library named after him. Pascale also told us some Carla Bruni gossip.
- lunch was another good sandwich from the Purple Place and an orangina if I remember correctly
- second part of French Politics with Sophie tiny troll woman, bored to death again.
- went to APA office to consult the brochures for class selection, liked 400578 classes, but eliminated all that were a) at Nanterre or Saint-Denis because those universities are far away and I don't want to pay for the more expensive metro pass, and spend an hour commuting each way, and b)all that were level 2, which means second semester of first year, because I know Hopkins only accepts advanced classes. All my classes must therefore be 4 or 6, 3 and 5 being first semester choices.
- filled out the table with my class choices, later would be forced to re-do it because all the classes I chose were from Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, which it turns out, APA doesn't have an agreement with except for like 4 classes. Why would they give us the course catalog for that school then? GREAT QUESTION.
- begin hating Mme Suraqui at this point, who is not very organized at all and just enjoys being in charge.
- was too exhausted to do anything, went home and took nap before dinner. APA office is TINY and therefore not fun to cram into with 16 others, but did get to use the internet there which was exciting because at this point we still hadn't figured out how to get M&M's french wifi onto my American computer.
january 29, 2010:
- french class with Pascale from 10-12, lovely as always. Begin noticing how Michelle, girl from China on our program, peels and eats grapefruits during class like they were oranges. She puts the entire section into her mouth at once, and then chews it like a little squirrel, she does this very stealthily and thinks no one notices. Everyone notices because she's eating grapefruits in class, and taking HUGE bites, cannot understand this girl's logic but it is very amusing to watch.
- had hour for lunch, had another cheese crepe happily, then had to go to the APA office to have my appointment with Francis to finalize my class choices/create my schedule. It was then that I was told I had to redo my schedule, along with Taylor and Carolyn since we'd all picked the same classes. Hurried to redo my schedule with Paris IV Sorbonne classes and only the Paris I classes that APA had an agreement with, still came up with more than enough classes. Traded appointments with Anabel so I could have more time to redo schedule, then had apt with Mme Suraqui and was signed up for 6 classes, which I would take the next next week and then choose 3 from them to keep.
Classes:
L'impressionnisme- Impressionism
Art du Moyen Age- Art of the Middle Ages (need this for Medieval requirement)
Arts Decoratifs Contemporains- Contemporary Decorative Arts
Techniques Artistiques- Artistic Techniques
Histoire de la Photographie Experimentale- History of Experimental Photography
XIX-XXe siecles, Mondrian et De Stijl- Contemporary art of Mondrian and De Stijl
- Friday! went out to a club at night called Le Wagg, which we got into for free with internet coupons, turned out to be weird and not very fun. Music was "carwash" ie-actual disco music, people were old, guys were gross, still, was drunk and fun. Then, because the metros stop running at 2 on weekends, and it was 3:30, we decided to stay out till 5 when the metros start rather than attempt to figure out the confusing and sketchy night bus system.
- that was a stupid stupid idea. we found a car/cafe and sat in there, ordered some frites and teas, were exhausted and frozen, starts snowing which we know we'll have to walk through soon, and we sit in this bar exhausted and french fry eating until about 5. Walk over to the metro, is not yet open. Wait and wait and wait, end up waiting till like 5:35 for it to actually start. We are completely frozen and zombied at this point, standing outside no longer drunk un the snow desperately waiting for the metro. Eventually got home and piled into bed just after 6 am. ridiculous.
ok that's enough for now. I'll blog more later tonight if I have time, but I have to get ready now because I'm having lunch with Andrea in a little while.
But now that all that other stuff is taken care of, I'm ready. It's been a long week, and it seems like each week gets longer and busier than the last! I'm still going to go through my little run-down, but now that I've been here about 3 weeks and have classes to discuss, I'm going to limit myself to 5 sentences per day until I catch up to this past week.
Alors, on y va!
January 21, 2010:
-Still at FIAP, slept in, first purchases in France were then an espresso and a petit pain a l'orange (orange flavored roll with bits of candied orange rind) at a bakery for breakfast with Taylor, Carolyn and Shelby.
-returned to FIAP for series of long meeting with Mme Suraqui and Blandine, who gave us 3 zillion things including more maps, a free admission card for the Louvre (h e a r t a t t a c k), and Blandine told us about all the aspects of French daily life- cell phones, bank accounts, metro, transportation, internet, flying, trains, etc etc.
-entire group headed out after the meetings to buy cellphones, was a touch confusing, but then we all got the same pay-as-you go french cellphone, with 10 digit numbers that all begin identically. success.
- Dinner at Apollo, a restaurant, with the APA group and the APA teachers, me Carolyn and Taylor sat at a table with Mme Suraqui herself and tried to explain what quilting was and talked about a ton of random ass shit. Mme Suraqui it turns out, has a son who lives in Israel and she knows a little Hebrew, sababa! newsflash- I ate GOAT CHEESE at this dinner, it was fresh adn creamy and didn't have that goat cheese tang like usual, and it had dried fruit in it and was delicious. main course for vegetarians was a little weird, but good, and then creme brulee for dessert, which I tried but did not eat much of because I hate custard.
-went out for the first time in Paris! We all trouped out in a group of like 15 to St. Michel and hunted around for bars, difficult since we were such a large group and bars here are so tiny, eventually we split up and half of us ended up in a winebar with a not too shabby carafe of vin blanc. Got back to FIAP a little buzzed and packed up our bags a little since the following day we would be leaving the FIAP.
January 22, 2010:
- woke up at 7 am after going out the night before = stupid, last shower in the weird FIAP showers, mediocre breakfast in the FIAP cafeteria (worst coffee of my life), put bags in the baggerie (ie luggage room), meetings with Mme Suraqui and Francis at 9 am, received another 3 billion handouts, learned about adopting to French life and living with our homestay families, then went over the cultural program for the semester.
- Blandine arrived (she rides around on a purple razor type scooter, which are still cool in France) and gave us our host family assignments, I found out I'd be living with someone called Monique Guillet in the 13th arrondissement.
-lunch provided by APA/FIAP = monster sack lunches with 2 cheese-filled sandwiches, an apple, bag of chips, granola bar, tomato salad, and a pastry. I ate about half of what was in there, saved the apple and pastry for later and gave one of the sandwiches to Liz.
-bus tour of Paris with Mme Suraqui= 3 hours, was exhausted and hard to stay awake/alert, but great because we saw so much of the city and learned a lot. Got out and took pics at the Eiffel Tower, also saw the Sorbonne, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the iles on the Seine, les Invalides, and more more more more more! Overwhelming.
- back to FIAP, went online for a while, killed time until 7:30 when we went upstairs to meet our host parents at a little reception- !!!! Nervous and excited! I met Monique and Maurice, her "compagnon" ie/ boyfriend/partner who lives with us but they're not married. They were nice and talking fast and my head was spinning, the cocktail didn't help either, but it was fine, then crammed my GIANT bags into their TINY car and drove 10-15 min to their apartment, elevator struggle with big bags, and then, I was home!
- room is nice but tiny, apartment is nice but fairly small, Monique and Maurice are nice but I was only understanding half of what they were saying. We ate dinner; soup (squash, carrot perhaps?), quiche but it was full of cheese and veggies so it wasn't that bad, but the texture was ARGH!, bread and cheese (i tried more goat cheese, was disgusting), Monique asked me lots of questions about what I do and do not eat, Maurice said I eat like a bird (recurring theme here), dessert was supposed to be a chocolate cake, but for obvious reasons I just had a yogurt. After dinner I gave Monique the book about LA (host gift) which she loved and loooked through for a long time saying "Ah, c'est tres gentille! Ah, je n'ai pas vu ca! C'est quoi? Oh, c'est genial!" They showed me their album from when they visited LA, but of course they'd only gone to touristy places (Mann Chinese Theater, Hollywood walk of the stars, Santa Monica Pier, etc).
went to sleep after longest day of LIFE!!!
January 23, 2010:
- woke up at 8 but continued sleeping off and on until like 10:15, was still so jetlagged. Got up finally, M&M weren't home, had coffee and a weird cracker thing, got dressed and unpacked/moved in.
-Carolyn and I arranged to meet at Denfert-Rochereau around 12:30, but I first had to find a money exchange place which was confusing, since the one M&M directed me towards was in Chinatown and somewhat hard to find. I got lost like 400 times attempting to find it, finally did and changed over my monnaie, which is the word in French for currency and for cash/change, which cracks me up, monnaie sounds like mo-naayyyyy. Finally I succeeded but also realized I couldn't get to Denfert without transferring like 3 times so Carolyn and I changed the meeting place to Place d'italie, which I walked to.
- Met Carolyn and Taylor at Place d'Italie (which has a GIANT mall yet to be explored) and had lunch at a little brasserie cafe; gruyere sandwich and a cafe au lait. I was starving so I was v. excited to eat.
- attempted to find the exchange place for Carolyn, got a little lost again, decided it was getting late and all went home to our host-parents, I walked again and now have that route/area committed to memory.
- M&M weren't home still so I called my mom and dad and talked to them for a while, which was nice, they were glad to hear from me and ensure I was alive.
-M&M came home eventually and we had dinner, I can't remember what but it might have been the night we had curry rice and braised endives, so good!
After this point I stopped writing in my journal (again terrible person, terrible journal-er and blogger) so i probably won't have as much to say about all the next days.
january 24, 2010:
- Went for a walk around the quartier with Monique, she showed me the metro stop, the best bakery, some groceries, the laundromat, some restaurants, etc etc, we ended up walking around for over an hour and crossed the Seine to see a little park just on the other side in the "village" of Bercy which is not really a village.
- I ate lunch later on at the little bakery right next to my apt, had a subpar sandwich and a subpar cafe au lait, but was very hungry so did not care.
- Don't remember the rest of the day, I think I just walked around and checked out the neighborhood, I might have gone some where? peut-etre?
January 25, 2010:
-Monday = first day of Orientation classes, starting off at 10 with a French language test to place us in our levels, was both hard and stupid, weirdly phrased exercises, made me feel like an idiot. Then we had an hour break for lunch, bought a sandwich at some place that made us sit outside in the FROZEN weather because we were only getting sandwiches and not real foods, then had "conseils pratiques" were we learned about the French university system from Mme Suraqui who bored us to death, she's getting more and more annoying at this point.
- went somewhere after, with Taylor and Carolyn, probably had coffee and a pastry as this was becoming a pattern.
January 26, 2010:
- class from 10-12:30, learned more about the French education system and our academic program
- lunch, found a better sandwich place, had a panini with mozarella, tomato, basil and eggplant (took out some eggplant)
- from 1:30-3:00 the two APA professors who teach APA classes presented them to us, first the theater teacher who was a young woman with blond hair and huge ears, sounded interesting but a literature class won't do shit for me credit wise and I don't like reading plays that much, and then the art history professor, who's class goes to museums once a week which is awesome, but whose curriculum was identical to French Modernist Painting which I took last year with the Tumanator!
- then me, C and T went to rue Moufftard, upon recommendation from Mme Suraqui, and it was the cutest little area, full of little shops and cafes, including one called "Charme et Fantasie" where everything was dirt cheap and C bought a very cute plaid book bag for like 6 euro.
- I was overjoyed to buy a plug adaptor, which upon use the next day would crack in half and blow out the circuit in my apt, and Taylor bought an alarm clock and a tiny pot to make tea in her room, since she lives in a little guesthouse and has a stove. (jealous)
- M&M were out for dinner, Monique had made something for me and put it in the microwave for me to reheat- turned out to be creamed spinach with hardboiled eggs. I hate eggs, and I really really hate hard-boiled eggs. I ate some of the spinach and some bread, didn't touch the eggs. Later had to explain to Monique that I don't like hardboiled eggs, which baffled her because oeufs florentine always delights the French people. gross.
january 27, 2010:
- class from 10-12 was our first French class with the adorable, chic, amazing, lovely Pascale who I want to be when I grow up. I love this woman, she is so much and silly and told us all the best clubs and restaurants to go to in Paris. She has amazing style and truly AMAZING hair.
- lunch from 12 to 1, had a crepe au fromage at a little creperie near the foyer where we were having all our Orientation classes. Was delicious! the cheese was either gruyere or emmental, both of which I adore and can't get enough of, even though I hate swiss cheese in America, it's so good here, tastes completely different.
- from 1 to 2 we had a very boring class with a tiny little troll woman named Sophie who taught us about french politics and bored us to death. I already knew everything she was saying since I took History of Modern France last year with Todd, one of my favorite professors ever who had an end of the semester party for our class with wine, cheese, bread, and potatoes au gratin (ie potato casserole in a wash of cream and cheese and cardiac arrest. drool.)
- from 2 on some people had to go to the APA office to consult the brochures to pick out their classes, but my timeslot wasn't until the next day, so me, T and C went somewhere and did something. hmmm?
- our first spectacle! but first, I went home to change and relax for a bit, but when I plugged in the plug adaptor that I bought the day before, it didn't work, and when taking it out it broke into two pieces and I heard a loud POP CRACK and the lights went out. None of the lgihts in the entire apartment would turn on, and I was going nuts. I thought I broke M&M's apartment. I was seriously freaking out, but also running late to meet everyone for dinner before the spectacle (ie cultural outing, a concert in this case)
- wrote frantic note explaining electricity issue to M&M, dashed to metro, had to take RER to get to the meeting place, was running soooo late and very stressed out, had to take RER C which I had never taken before and is very confusing. Finally figured it out and made it to the place where we were meeting, couldn't find the restaurant forever, got lost several times attempting to, finally did and ate delicious lebanese food. and drank some wine, much wine.
- then we all walked to the concert hall which was further than we thought, we crossed through the jardin du luxembourg and it was freezing! finally made it to the place, heard lovely concert by the Ochestre de Paris, four pieces the last of which was weird and experimental and involved 2 twin sisters playing a twin double-sided grand piano. Bizarre but interesting.
-went home passed out.
january 28, 2010:
- 10-12 French class with Pascale. love. She told us weird stories about Mitterand having two families, a wife and children in the public eye, and a secret other wife with another child! This would never ever fly in America, if it came out that a president had two families. French people were like, oh ok whatevz, that's his private life. I live near a giant library named after him. Pascale also told us some Carla Bruni gossip.
- lunch was another good sandwich from the Purple Place and an orangina if I remember correctly
- second part of French Politics with Sophie tiny troll woman, bored to death again.
- went to APA office to consult the brochures for class selection, liked 400578 classes, but eliminated all that were a) at Nanterre or Saint-Denis because those universities are far away and I don't want to pay for the more expensive metro pass, and spend an hour commuting each way, and b)all that were level 2, which means second semester of first year, because I know Hopkins only accepts advanced classes. All my classes must therefore be 4 or 6, 3 and 5 being first semester choices.
- filled out the table with my class choices, later would be forced to re-do it because all the classes I chose were from Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, which it turns out, APA doesn't have an agreement with except for like 4 classes. Why would they give us the course catalog for that school then? GREAT QUESTION.
- begin hating Mme Suraqui at this point, who is not very organized at all and just enjoys being in charge.
- was too exhausted to do anything, went home and took nap before dinner. APA office is TINY and therefore not fun to cram into with 16 others, but did get to use the internet there which was exciting because at this point we still hadn't figured out how to get M&M's french wifi onto my American computer.
january 29, 2010:
- french class with Pascale from 10-12, lovely as always. Begin noticing how Michelle, girl from China on our program, peels and eats grapefruits during class like they were oranges. She puts the entire section into her mouth at once, and then chews it like a little squirrel, she does this very stealthily and thinks no one notices. Everyone notices because she's eating grapefruits in class, and taking HUGE bites, cannot understand this girl's logic but it is very amusing to watch.
- had hour for lunch, had another cheese crepe happily, then had to go to the APA office to have my appointment with Francis to finalize my class choices/create my schedule. It was then that I was told I had to redo my schedule, along with Taylor and Carolyn since we'd all picked the same classes. Hurried to redo my schedule with Paris IV Sorbonne classes and only the Paris I classes that APA had an agreement with, still came up with more than enough classes. Traded appointments with Anabel so I could have more time to redo schedule, then had apt with Mme Suraqui and was signed up for 6 classes, which I would take the next next week and then choose 3 from them to keep.
Classes:
L'impressionnisme- Impressionism
Art du Moyen Age- Art of the Middle Ages (need this for Medieval requirement)
Arts Decoratifs Contemporains- Contemporary Decorative Arts
Techniques Artistiques- Artistic Techniques
Histoire de la Photographie Experimentale- History of Experimental Photography
XIX-XXe siecles, Mondrian et De Stijl- Contemporary art of Mondrian and De Stijl
- Friday! went out to a club at night called Le Wagg, which we got into for free with internet coupons, turned out to be weird and not very fun. Music was "carwash" ie-actual disco music, people were old, guys were gross, still, was drunk and fun. Then, because the metros stop running at 2 on weekends, and it was 3:30, we decided to stay out till 5 when the metros start rather than attempt to figure out the confusing and sketchy night bus system.
- that was a stupid stupid idea. we found a car/cafe and sat in there, ordered some frites and teas, were exhausted and frozen, starts snowing which we know we'll have to walk through soon, and we sit in this bar exhausted and french fry eating until about 5. Walk over to the metro, is not yet open. Wait and wait and wait, end up waiting till like 5:35 for it to actually start. We are completely frozen and zombied at this point, standing outside no longer drunk un the snow desperately waiting for the metro. Eventually got home and piled into bed just after 6 am. ridiculous.
ok that's enough for now. I'll blog more later tonight if I have time, but I have to get ready now because I'm having lunch with Andrea in a little while.
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