Paris

A few things happened between my last post and Paris, but for now, they will be put aside because, well, it's Paris. And it's a million times cooler than anything I have seen so far or will see again!

I have been in Paris for about two and a half days. Each day, we walk till our feet fall off from the early morning until very late at night, yet there is still so much we have not seen and won't be able to see. (I am not exaggerating about the feet falling off part. I even said yesterday that I wish that they would fall off so the agonizing pain would stop.) We only have about four full days in Paris. Montpellier, it's been fun and all, but I don't really want to come back to you. Paris is the place for me!

Paris is my dream city. It always has been. And I really can't even comprehend that I am here right now. It is even better than I thought it would be. I had it on such a high pedestal, that I thought surely there is no way it could live up to my dreams. But it did. And then some!

Our group arrived Sunday afternoon, and as soon as we put our suitcases in our hotel rooms, we began a tour of the city. I just kept repeating, "This is not real! Am I seriously here? I'm just so freakin happy!" about a million times. I just kept turning my head, trying to catch every detail of a place that was even more breathtaking than I could have imagined.

Here is a picture of me the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower from far away. I was ecstatic.
We went on to see some gardens, cathedrals, and lots of pretty monuments. Also ate some amazing ice cream. I took about hundreds of pictures, but I don't want overload this blog with all of them.

  

These pictures sum up day one. Notre Dame during the day and night, beautiful!

Day two began at 9 am with a walking tour until 1:30 p.m. (During that last hour, I could have seen the world's most unbelievable site, and I would have just yawned and dreamed about sitting in air conditioning.) Here are just a few of the things we visited yesterday:

Luxembourg Gardens. 

  The Louvre.

 The Tuileries Gardens.

Then, the highlight of the day! When I was 14, a French student named Marion came over with her school to study abroad for two and a half weeks. She was my family's student, and we instantly clicked. We became good friends, and technology like Facebook and email has helped us keep in touch over the years. I remember saying goodbye to her, and I told her that someday I would go to France to visit her. I wanted this so badly, but in reality I didn't know if it would ever happen.

Well last night, it happened!! She invited me and a few girlfriends out to dinner and then a bar. It was surreal, being in this magical place and seeing someone that I didn't think I would ever be able to see again. And it was like no time had passed. We immediately ran to each other and hugged (which is very American) followed by the bisous (the French cheek kiss). Then we began talking and laughing as if it was 8th grade again.  She took us to her favorite restaurant in Paris, her boyfriend's clothing store and a little sidewalk cafe for wine. I didn't want the night to end!

 7 years later but it happened!

A lot has happened in 10 days!

So France continues to be pretty freakin awesome. I realized yesterday that it has been ten days since I have blogged. It feels like I'm in some weird time continuum where everything is happening so fast! I have already been here for over two weeks, and I cannot believe it. I don't want it to go this fast; I, along with all my friends, can't believe that in a flash our trip will come to an end.

Another reason I haven't posted in a while is that I am very busy all the time. For real. I wake up at 6:40, it takes an 45 minutes to an hour to get to class from my house, I then have class (with a lunch break) until 4:30 in the afternoon, another 40ish minute haul home, a two hour dinner, homework and finally bed. Seriously, I can't find a spare minute in my day for simple tasks. I am definitely not complaining though. Being busy here is kind of awesome.

Like I said, I have been here a little over two weeks. And sometimes I forget to notice what is around me, but every once in a while something takes my breath away. And I stop and think, is this real? Am I really here? I hope that France never stops surprising me!

 

After class two days ago, three girls and I decided just to wander the streets and head toward this park area. We just sat and talked/people watched. It's funny how close and open we all are after only knowing each other for such a short time. These are the views that took my breath away and jolted me back to the reality of being in France. Can you see anything like this in the US? I don't think so!

Ok, trying to catch up on two weeks worth of not blogging. Well, being in France during the World Cup is pretty cool because the World Cup is huge here, and everyone is obsessed. For the first game, I went with my friends to a public park that had a huge screen of the France game. We were very French and drank our French wine in the road while watching the game. (side note- good wine is only 3 Euros here. Often, it is cheaper to get wine than soda in restaurants.)

           

                                           

Then we went out to bars. It was really fun, except many of us girls got harassed by awful French men. (My friend Margaret who I will probably mention often in this blog actually threatened a man with an umbrella, yelled at him to go away and called the police on him. Sadly, the French police didn't understand what she was saying, and promptly hung up on her.)

                               

 On the way home from the bars, I was in a taxi by myself for the last 20 minutes of my ride. I was pretty nervous considering I had no idea what route he was taking me, and I was all alone. I remembered Oprah once said to make your captors remember that you are human and to engage in conversation, so I decided to talk to him the whole way. (He spoke no English, and he was not a captor, but hey, I was nervous and it was late.) He asked me if I was from England, and out of my mouth came, "No, I'm from Canada." Why did I just say that?? I thought that maybe he was a French person who didn't love Americans, so I thought it best to pretend to be Canadian. He then asked me all these questions about Canada, and I had a whole conversation about Canada's weather, university system and towns that I completely made up.

So I also visited a city called Aigues Mortes, which is a medieval city surrounded by walls. It was awesome and very beautiful!

 My class and I also took a boat cruise to see the wildlife around Aigues Mortes, in an area called Camargue. There was a kind of cowboy demonstration with bulls. 

 Here I am with one of the cowboys. This is Margaret's future husband, according to her. Apparently, according to Margaret, he is the right mix of "French, cowboy, and tough guy with Fedora hat.

We also visited a chateau (which looked a lot like the house/grounds from the move Pride and Prejudice!). We had a tour of the chateau and then a wine tasting!

This weekend, we have two excursions, so more photos/stories to come!

Fun stuff so far

Now I would like to share some funny and/or memorable stories from my four days here so far:

-After our first full day in Montpellier, a large group of us decided to go to a bar to see the nightlife of the town, which is supposed to be great. We found a cool bar that was very popular called The Egg that was owned by an Irish guy. Well, we had fun drinking and getting to know each other, but the interesting stuff comes when we left to go home.

I live really far out from town, and the bus that takes me straight into town stops at 8:30 at night. So, when I go out at night, I first have to take a bus for about 25 minutes, and then I have to walk 30 minutes on random French roads to get home. Kind of sketchy, but luckily the student from Texas who is also staying at my house to study French was with me.

Anyways, we take the bus, and almost finish our walk, when my friend Margaret calls me. It's about 1:30 in the morning, and she is freaking out because she can't get her key to work for her apartment building. She had been trying it for almost 30 minutes, pushing it every which way, but she couldn't get it. Well, she didn't have the phone number to her French house, and she was all alone on the street, so I had to call my French parents and wake them up to ask them to help Margaret. In about a second Christian pulls up next to us on the road, and we go to her apartment.

We get there, and in about two seconds he opens the door for her with the key. We leave, and then I get another call. She now can't get into her actual apartment, so we turn around and Christian opens that door too! Needless to say, she had had only one beer about two hours before this. She is just door-challenged.

-Well, the beach is topless. And although we knew that going into this experience, it's fair to say that none of us were prepared for what we say... literally boobs everywhere!! People kept saying, "I just don't know where to look! No place is safe!"  I didn't feel uncomfortable wearing my entire bathing suit, but I (along with my group of girls) was very much not the norm. My dear friend Margaret noted jealously, "They're just so big here! Yet they are still so perky!" She said this while first making a hand motion near her chest to suggest largeness, followed by another motion for perkiness. What I learned from this event was that boobs come in all shapes and sizes. Also, when sunbathing topless, women must lather their whole boob, as well as under. It was quite a sight!

-Tonight at dinner, my French parents asked my German house brother Alex what his last name is. He said Klein, which means "small" in German. So then they asked him what "big" is in German, and he says something that sounds like "dick". I immediately burst into laughter because all I can think of is big dick. Needless to say, I am not very mature. I cannot stop laughing, and Steven from Texas can't either.

No one else understands why it is funny, and then the dad Christian says, oh, it's inappropriate, right? Like the word "phoques"? Phoques means seal in French, and is pronounced like our lovely four letter cuss word beginning with an f. He then proceeds to sing "F- you, F-you!" while laughing! It was awesome.

Stephen, moi, Alex

Bonjour!

Where do I even start? I'm in France, the place that I have always dreamed about. It's hard to put it all into words, but I'm going to try!


This is my first day in France, but I'm going to start at the beginning... the pretty awesome flight over here! I flew AirFrance overnight from Atlanta to Paris, and the flight was much better than any American airline I have ever been on. First, they served free alcohol, second, the food was delicious and third, I had t.v. on the seat in front of me and was able to watch Sex and the City, Friends and Grey's Anatomy. 


Margaret (the only person I knew coming on this trip) sat next to me, and our plan was to force each other to sleep on the plane since we were flying all night. Sadly, our plan did not work. I slept about 3 hours, and she slept 1 hour. There was a lot of turbulence on the flight, but one time it get extra scary. Seriously, it felt like I was on a roller coaster and my stomach jumped right into my throat. Instinctively (though not sure why this is my instinct), I grabbed and then clenched the arms of both people beside me while yelping. So I had one hand on Margaret, and one hand on... uh, the random lady next to me. I then proceeded to let go and mutter, "I should introduce myself now. I'm Jamie." 


Making our way through the Charles de Gaulle airport was insane. We had to find our connecting flight to Montpellier, but the gate was not listed on the ticket or the t.v. screen. We were forced to ask for help, and a man told us to go to Gate 21- he was wrong. Gate 21 was for Italy. Then, we started our search all over again. 


My "house father" Christian was there to meet us at the airport when we arrived in Montpellier, and he drove us into the centre-ville (main downtown area) called La Place de la Comedie. We walked around, admired, ate lunch and then he treated us to ice cream! It was Haagen Dazs! Apparently Americans make the best ice cream.

At home that night, I met my wonderful house mother Collette and my house brother Steven, a college student from Texas. Another American! Dinner here is nothing like in America. It's a 4 or 5 course meal, starting with appetizers, then bread, then vegetables, then a meat with something starchy, then cheese and finally dessert. It takes over 2 hours, and we just sit and talk and relax. We usually finish dinner around 9:45! I don't know how my dad would survive- he goes to bed at 8:30!


The next day, my study abroad group had our orientation/tour of the city. 

There are 18 of us, and I don't know how, but we all just clicked! We all hang out together in big groups all the time and it's just so cool how we all get along. I have so much more to write, but I've go to go now! 


I'll update later with how our trip to la plage (the beach) went and other fun stuff!