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 :)