College night at the Louvre!

Last Friday was college night at the Louvre. They stay open late on Wednesdays and Fridays, and Sciences Po organized an outing of international students there. It was fun but I'll need to go back at least 5 more times to see everything worth seeing there before I leave. It's a little strange that I went to all these touristy places about 5 years ago and now I'm visiting them all over again, but it feels completely different to go to touristy places in a city you live in instead of a city you're just visiting. After the Louvre, everyone went to an interesting bar where I saw a lot of international students I hadn't seen in a while. We had brought a bottle of wine but no corkscrew, so we sat outside by the river for a while trying to figure out how to open it, then we eventually had success with my keys and a pen.

I went to a movie theater on the Champs Elysées last Saturday to see Valentine's Day, and the movie wasn't great but the theater was gorgeous! Only 8 euros to get in, and it was really fancy. It looked like a real theater with dark purple carpet and artistic black-and-white pictures of famous actors and actresses on the walls, then the inside of the theater was really ornately decorated and the seats were ridiculously comfortable. The previews were probably for half French, half American movies and the movie we saw had French subtitles. If you've ever seen a movie in a language you understand with subtitles in a language you understand, then you know it's really interesting to see how they translate weird expressions or jokes. It was a fun way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon. That evening, I went to a dinner party at my friend's apartment and met/caught up with a bunch of people while eating lots and lots of food. My friends and I are discovering that dinner parties are much, much more economical (and usually more fun) than going to restaurants and bars, so we've all been alternating hosting get-togethers every few days lately.

On Sunday, I went ice skating! It was well above freezing, so the ice was a little melty but it was fun anyway, especially since a couple of our friends from Egypt had never ice skated before and we got to teach them. Afterwards, we went to a cafe (of course) and on the way we saw a secondhand store that looked interesting. A friend and I went back the next day when it was open and had a lot of fun there. Huge piles of scarves for 1 euro, lots of dresses for 5-10 euros, and racks and racks of fur coats for 30 euros, but only one tiny dressing room so we just went to a deserted corner and tried everything on over our clothes and ended up finding some buried treasures.

I had a debate in my comparative legal systems class on Monday, and it went really well! I got to know the girl I was partnered with while working on it, and she was great to talk to and fun to work with--not at all impatient that my French wasn't perfect. It's always fun to make more French friends, and I'm starting to pick up things that French young people say, slang, abbreviations, pronouncing things certain ways, etc. and I feel a lot more comfortable now making French friends than I did when I first got here.

Sciences Po has an international student buddy system and a French-American student buddy program, and my buddies have been so great to get to know and to get advice from. My French is getting much better already and it's nice to have lots of people to practice with. Sciences Po has so many great resources for international students that I'm starting to think Northwestern could learn a thing or two from them about welcoming and integrating exchange students.

My class and orchestra rehearsal were cancelled on Tuesday, so my friend and I decided to wander over to the Musée d'Orsay. We didn't spend much time there, but who cares? It's free! It's a small museum, but I could easily spend all day there. I'll probably start hanging out there in between classes soon because I'm running out of neighborhoods to explore. After the museum, I had a bunch of friends over and we cooked a delicious dinner of braised leeks, mashed potatoes, and rice and beans. And of course lots of wine and cheese and baguettes. My "host sister" is living here for the moment, and she hung out with us and shared her Paris knowledge and advice, which was really entertaining. She's wonderful and we have a ton of common interests (like fashion law!?) and we already started planning her trip to Chicago to visit me.

We've had four weeks of classes, so next week is winter break for Sciences Po, and I'm going to Brussels! I'll be there for 3 1/2 days, and we'll probably go to Bruges too. Five of my friends and I got really cheap bus tickets and we're leaving next Wednesday for a little vacation. I'm really excited to do some traveling, and especially to get a little break from classes.

Tonight, I went to the Opéra Comique to see Béatrice et Bénédict (based on Much Ado About Nothing) with a bunch of my friends. We had a yummy dinner at my apartment beforehand, then we all headed over and watched the opera from our 6 euro, obscured-view seats. I could only see about half the stage, but at least the music was nice! The opera was very cute and funny but it's hard for me to understand operatic singing in French. Afterwards, the obligatory pit stop at a cafe, then home to update my blog.

It's a lot warmer here now (mid 50s most days) and I can't wait for spring! Everything will be so beautiful and green, and wandering around outside will be much more pleasant, so I'll finally be able to appreciate the beauty of this city. When I get home, i think I'll blow up a picture of the view out my window at night and frame it. I think that will be a much more subtle and personal souvenir than a ton of obnoxious Eiffel tower postcards all over my walls. When I look out my window at night, the lights that are the farthest away look like they're wiggling or twinkling. It's kind of bizarre and probably the effects of pollution or something, but it's really beautiful. The lights here and the way they reflect off the limestone really does look different from anywhere else. If you've ever been here you know what I mean.

La France est terrible!

("Terrible" in French can mean either terrible or it can be slang for awesome.)

I went to a restaurant the other day called Le Faitout with the two other Northwestern girls studying at Sciences Po, and it was there that we met the best waiter in France. He was very nice, and refilled our water and bread baskets before we were even done during our entire meal, which is unheard of. I felt like I was at TGI Friday's! The food was reasonably priced and fantastic. I had lasagna with squash, goat cheese, and zucchini and kir for dessert (white wine with flavored liqueur/syrup) and everything was amazing. If you ever come to Paris, go there. It's in the 19th. Do it! Paris has so many cute, trendy little bars and cafes where students hang out, and they're great for making friends with fascinating people with really exciting lives.

The metro feels very safe, even fairly late at night since everyone in Paris stays out so late every night. It's safe, but there are a lot of characters who like to ride the metro around (accordion players even though it's illegal for them to ask for money on the metro, drunk teenage boys doing flips between the rows of seats...)

I'm calling it right now. These are the French fashion trends that will be American trends next season or next year: fur/faux fur, big bulky coats, Longchamp bags, sequins on tote bags, stacked wooden heel knee-high boots, short skirts and dresses with tights, messy hair, neutral toned clothes, ugly masculine boots, shoes that look like men's shoes, really high heels, ankle boots, and pointy shoes for men.

Of course, the fashion/luxury industry is a huge part of the French economy, and Sciences Po had a "luxury forum" last week where the HR directors from Louis Vuitton, Prada, Chanel, L'Oréal, and Jean Paul Gaultier spoke about what it's like to work in fashion and what it takes to get a job in the industry. It's a fascinating, innovative, fast-paced industry that shapes our daily lives and our entire culture and I know even more than I did before that I'd love to work in luxury/fashion someday. My dream job is to be an intellectual property lawyer for one of those companies. Their marketing strategies are really different and their brand images are so strong that it would be fascinating to work to protect that. But we'll see...

I miss my friends and family, but I really don't miss home other than that. It's different and unfamiliar, but (sorry Chicago) Paris is the best city in the world. They made a movie about this whole study abroad thing! It's called L'auberge espagnol and it's about a French college student who studies in Barcelona for a year. At the beginning, he has to go to meetings and fill out lots of paperwork, then he says goodbye to his family, has trouble carrying all his luggage around and finding his temporary apartment, doesn't know anyone and tries to convince himself he's having a good time, goes to classes, finds another apartment, and finally makes friends and has an amazing time. When he goes home, he can't really explain what Barcelona meant to him and his life is totally different. The movie does a really good job of capturing the weird emotions you feel when you leave home and start to get comfortable in a completely new place.

Most of the differences between France and the United States stem from the fact that France is so much more homogenous, in my opinion. The French like to blend in, and Americans love their individuality and uniqueness. A lot of the French people I've met think French people are too snobby and superficial, and that Americans are more accepting of differences, but sometimes French people seem more mature and sophisticated to me than Americans. I was talking to a French person who was complaining that there's a lot of pressure to be well dressed and good looking, but along with that comes an appreciation of beautiful things that Americans just don't have. So here's what I'm taking away from this: cultural peculiarities have good and bad aspects depending on your perspective.

In one of my classes, we had to read some English texts, and the professor told everyone that it might be difficult to read in English, but read through them a few times, don't look up every word in the dictionary, and just try to get the general idea of the text. HA! All the classrooms are beautiful, like they used to be gorgeous, ornate buildings but now no one's using them so they decided to turn them into classrooms.

I had a presentation today (my first one here!) and I had to analyze three pictures of World War I memorials and I explained that they show how France wanted to remember the war, in contrast with how they chose to remember other wars. It was pretty good, but it's hard to get stressed out in Paris. Less pressure, less competitive, less homework I heard about a study that decided that people in France are the happiest in the world, and it's easy to see why. French people keep their work and stress in perspective and don't let themselves get overwhelmed by it, and I think Americans could learn a lot from that. When I go back home, I'll have a lot more perspective on stress which will help me a lot. Another one of my observations: it seems like there are a lot more girls than boys at Sciences Po. Woohoo!

It's snowing today!

My dinner party was last Friday and it was really fun! 13 or 14 people came so I finally got to introduce all my friends to each other, and we ate baguettes and cheese and drank wine, then had eggplant/roasted pepper/goat cheese salad, delicious French onion soup and madeleines with strawberries and whipped cream. Almost everyone brought a baguette or two, and at one point we had eaten a ton already and we still had 8 left! Cooking is so much fun here and I made a TON of food but we still almost ran out. Everyone had a good time, and one of my "host sisters" came home and joined us after a while. Once it was over, we wandered along the Seine and sat under the Eiffel tower for a while, then went home. The family I live with is fantastic. They're so friendly and accommodating and they always take the time to make sure I can understand what they're saying, teach me slang words, etc. After the dinner party, I was washing dishes and I broke 2 wine glasses. I felt terrible that she let me have one party and her things got broken, and I wrote a note apologizing profusely and saying I'd of course buy replacement glasses, but the woman I'm living with just kept saying "wine glasses break themselves" and wouldn't let me pay to replace them. She's so fantastic!

It's a really beautiful walk from the metro station to class since Sciences Po is in a really nice neighborhood. I love walking past really fancy boutiques and art galleries on the way to class and seeing them change their window displays every few days. Fun fact: Christian Dior went to Sciences Po! (So did Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac, François Mitterand...) I'm really lucky I got the chance to come here. My classes are fascinating (all in French: 2 law, 2 history, 1 French language class) and they're mostly about things I've studied a little bit before, but French law and the French perspective on history are really different from what I've studied. I expect I'll learn more about French culture by seeing how these subjects are taught than about the subjects themselves, which is fine with me. French people have trouble with Hs and "ei"s, so on the first day of each class, I was the weird foreign girl with the funny name. French people usually say "eye-dee" if we're lucky or "ee-dee" or even "eddie". One professor asked me my name, looked on the attendance sheet for a while, then said she was having trouble finding it "because of my accent".

The headquarters of Radio France is right outside my window, and I finally started listening to their stations. They have a pop music station, a classical music station, a news station, a "culture" station that's kind of like NPR, and a couple more but I'm not sure what they are. You can listen to all of them online, probably anywhere in the world. Here's a picture of the view out of my window:



Young people like to hang out and drink wine under bridges along the Seine. It's really beautiful and when tour boats go by, you get to wave and pretend you're French. Host mom and host sister #2 taught me the word "potes" the other day, which is a French slang word that means your group of friends, and I've been using it a lot since then. On Sunday, I went to my friend's apartment to eat pancakes with some of my potes, and I have to mention that her apartment building has a really funny elevator. Most elevators here are tiny. Like really tiny. At her apartment, there's a 3 person limit and in order to fit 3 people you would need to be squished together and standing a certain way, touching all the sides of the elevator. After we had pancakes, we headed to the Centre Pompidou (the modern art museum) but we kind of got lost so naturally, we took a break and stopped in a cafe. French coffee is what Americans call espresso, which I love! If you order coffee from a cafe, they'll bring you a tiny cup with a shot of espresso and a cute little sugar packet or sugar cubes. Most of the Americans miss drinking huge cups of weak coffee, but I love espresso so it's fine with me! I'm definitely buying an espresso machine when I get home. Then we finally got to the museum. I'd been there before, but it was fun and they had an interesting exhibition on women artists and feminist art. Later, some of my potes went to a Canadian sportsbar to watch the super bowl, and I wanted to go but it started at midnight and I had class early yesterday morning.

A bientôt!

Discover Everything

I went to Versailles on Sunday! After taking the wrong train to Pontoise (an hour and a half in the wrong direction), we had to take the train back to Paris and take the right train to Versailles. I know from experience that there aren't any buses or taxis in Pontoise on Sundays, since I had to walk/hitchhike from the Pontoise train station to get to Van Gogh's grave with my brother and my dad once. On the almost empty train, we met this awesome old French woman who didn't want to sit by herself and came and told us she wasn't going to bother us but just wanted to sit near people. We ended up chatting with her a ton and she helped us figure out where we had to go. Versailles is absolutely amazing and if you ever go to Paris you absolutely must go there. AND it's free instead of $18 for French students (that includes me) so I'm planning on going there a lot on weekends when the weather gets warmer. It's crazy to think about everything that's happened there, from the crazy French court days to the treaty of Versailles and the millions and millions of visitors over the years. When my friends and I got back from Versailles, we watched Marie Antoinette while eating macarons and drinking wine, which is probably the most frenchtastic thing ever and made me so happy to be here. If you've never had French macarons, you're not really alive yet. They're a totally different thing from American macaroons, and the French ones are like two buttery, crispy cookie/pastry things with creme in the middle, with a mix of like 5 different textures somehow. So basically the best thing ever. Fun fact: macaron displays at the French cafe Ladurée were Sofia Coppola's inspiration for the color palette of the movie Marie Antoinette! By the Versailles train station was a McCafé restaurant, McDonald's' latest attempt at competing with Starbucks, and they sold pastries and macarons there! At McDonald's! They weren't very good.

I also recently discovered the joys of madeleines. They're little cake things that are way too buttery and delicious to be real. I bought a big value pack, store-brand bag full of them from the grocery store and even those are fantastic. The first time I came back from grocery shopping, the woman I'm living with told me to never buy baguettes from the supermarket since they're so much better from a bakery. I still thought they were fantastic compared to American bread, but now that I've eaten so many fantastic bakery baguettes, I'm becoming a bread snob and I can definitely tell the difference. Tonight I had dinner with my "host family" which consists of her, her boyfriend who's here a lot, and her 19-year-old daughter. Now that all of my friends are settled in their apartments, we've all been taking turns hosting dinner parties every few days, which is really fun and way cheaper than meeting at restaurants. Lots of people come and we usually have wine and cheese for a while, then we all help cook, eat, then sit around for several hours talking. I'm hosting a dinner party on Friday and I think I'll be a nerd and serve French onion soup. And some madeleines.



I never thought I'd say this, but it's nice to finally have class. I'm mostly taking law classes, and they're fascinating and really going to improve my French since I decided not to take any in English. For such a famous school, the classes are surprisingly laid-back and the professors and other students aren't intimidating at all. I'm playing in the Sciences Po orchestra this semester too! It's really small and the rehearsals are very chill but I'm so happy I get to play in an orchestra again. We're playing the Marriage of Figaro overture right now and it's fun and easy, so we should sound good by the time we have our concert in May. Apparently 3 weeks straight of classes is too much for the French, so we have a winter break in 3 weeks and then a spring break in April. My friends and I are trying to decide where to go and what to do during our breaks, so does anyone have suggestions for places in Europe I have to see? We're thinking probably Barcelona or Milan.

The other day, we went to an all-you-can-eat pizza place with the international student club where they brought out pizzas with all kinds of flavors and toppings to your table. At one point, a German girl asked to trade pizzas with our end of the table so they could "discover everything", and that quickly became the catchphrase of our stay in Paris :)