the beginning of our first two weeks here. DAYS ONE AND ZERO.

So at this point and time I’m not even sure where to begin with this story. This story that actually takes up a week and a half of my life back here in fine EUROPA. Well so I suppose I’ll start at the beginning.

Day One: Sam and I arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport. I get in an hour before sami and wait in the airport baggage claim in some back terminal somewhere. American airlines gets some back ass terminal, clearly getting the shaft because they’re not European. OOOH I FORGOT SOMETHING.

Day ZERO: so I get on the plane from Madison to Chicago, and there’s literally no one on the plane with me. it’s about half full. Which is nice. So I’m sitting looking at my ticket and all of a sudden I realize that the transfer between my flight in Chicago is only 45 minutes. So I’m like oh no. but the flight goes on and the flight attendant woman reads off where everyone’s gate changes are and PHEW I was only just a few (or so I thought) gates away. So I get off the plane and am walking to my gate, and I see a starbucks, and immediately think, oh no, I’m going to be in Europe for a really long time (where starbucks just really isn’t as good) so I had to get one last American starbucks drink. So that was pit stop one. Then I make it almost to my gate, and decide that I best be peeing before I get on that tin can thing we like to call an airplane where you can’t even turn around in the bathrooms. In any case, I do that, and I make it to my gate finally. I literally sit down and they start boarding the plane. Not 30 seconds after I sat down. RIDICULOUS. And yet totally amazing. No waiting. When does that happen in Chicago? Yeah, that’s right, never.

Anywho, I get on the plane, and I’m one of the last ones on the flight because I’m in the section right behind first class, so we’re the last to board. I get on and see that I’m seated next to a nice lady. Except in my section of about 50 seats, there are about 12 of us. literally. Totally amazing. I got 3 whole seats to myself. Which would have been amazing had I been able to sleep at all on the airplane, but even one sleeping pill couldn’t knock me out. So I sat and listened to a fuzzy French version of Ratatouille. Ahh, the joy of airplane flying.

BACK TO DAY ONE: so sami and I reunite and have a wonderful reunion. Get her bags and then proceed out of the terminal to go find her cousin who is supposed to come pick us up. We find her and then she tells us that we need to go back to her Chinese restaurant in the suburbs of france, a terrible, horrible place called Vaujours, that sami and I will later in this blog get to know better than we ever wish we had. Enough of that nonsense though. We go back to the Chinese restaurant. Where we then wait for TANTIE (sam’s 47 year old cousin who we have endearingly named tantie) to work the lunch shift. TON-TOHN (sam’s cousin-in-law) was with us too. Later in the story you will also meet sam’s real aunt who we call grand-mère (grandmother in French).

In any case, we go back to the Chinese restaurant, and all sami and I want to do is go back to her apartment, put all our traveling stuff down and take a big ‘ol nap. But we wait for tantie to finish her lunch shift, eat some Chinese food, and do some much needed internet surfing/apartment hunting. Sami and I have some luck with apartments and actually get one woman on the phone who tells us that we can go see it later that night. So sami and I hurry our little butts up and get on the RER to go back into paris. Make it in to paris with just a little bit of time to spare. We go see this cute little apartment right in the 1st arrondissement (section of paris). Right near the big shopping center called les halles. Adorable little place. We’re immediately in love. But we have to talk to the other girl who’s gonna live with us and see what she thinks. Well, so we call her, and set up another showing. But that’s another day. This day continues by us going back to sam’s old apartment. (note: we’re under the impression that we’re going to be staying in this apartment until we find a new apartment) We’re walking up on the sidewalk and of all people who do we run into? Sam’s old landlord, who proceeds to tell us we need to give him the set of keys that we had and that we should be getting our bags out soon. To which sami and I respond with, oh no. So much for that plan. So sami and I go into the apartment and quickly pack a bag with her landlord PIERRE watching our every move. Scary I tell you. So sami and I leave with a small bag packed, and no place to go, and no idea what to do. So to solve issues we go to McDonalds to use their free Wifi. Off we go.

(see photos below for our feelings on our situation...starting with hope and fading to despair)

At MacDo we buy two beers and proceed to search hostelworld.com to find a place to stay. We find this nice hotel, only issue is that it’s all the way at the end of line 12 waaaay down south in paris. Literally not near anything, to the point that it takes 45 minutes just to get to school. so awful. But that’s all done for day one, we went to the hotel and went to bed.

i haven't fallen off the face of the earth!

hello all.

so its been ages since i've blogged. sorry for that. its incredible how fast things get going at the end of the semester here. school is super different from at home, because at home, yes finals are busy, but its just a couple of exams. here, its exams, presentations, papers and everything, piled into two weeks (mostly one). so i've been working my butt off on getting all that done. but i'm almost done now (TUESDAY!)

i'll be posting more frequently now, and i'll write some past blogs so that everyone can know all i've done over the past month. : )

off to the land of karfu and ramses. of cleopatra and king tut.

So perhaps my most exciting tidbit of information that I have to share with the masses is that this Friday, in precisely 105 hours, 21 minutes and 2 seconds, I will officially be on my way TO EGYPT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For a 10 day vacation. Complete with pyramids, mummies, a bazaar, camels, sand, and 80 degree temperatures. (do I need to mention again just how truly excited I am)

I checked my schedule and that week it turned out that all but one of my classes was going to be cancelled so I figured that I’d take a long vacation to somewhere that required that much time spent. Contemplated Dubai as well, but then when I was looking at prices for hotels dubai came in at around 70 dollars a night whereas Egypt clocked in at about 3 dollars a night. I was sold. So booked a flight. Going with my friend Jason. Cannot wait. I’ll write all about it once I’m back….. but here’s a preview.

(pretend that’s me in the photo)

menagerie

So I went to the zoo the other day. Of all the amazingly cultural things I can do in paris, I go to the zoo. Very apropos. Well lets just say it was one of the absolutely coolest things I’ve seen here so far. I mean besides amazing museums and grand architecture. It was the weirdest zoo I’ve ever been to. I walked in and the first thing I saw was a bunch of red pandas, which I’d never seen before so I was off to a good start to begin with. Continued walking and encountered loads and loads of birds and little deer like things. I swear the one thing about the zoo is that they pick the 30 things that they want to exhibit and then elaborate on those indefinitely. If they had one species of macaw they had 10 different species. For example they had 6 different types of owls, and 5 YES 5 different species of vulture. I didn’t know that many types of vultures existed in the world.

One thing that was equally as thrilling about the zoo is that all of their exhibits that need tanks (such as amphibians and reptiles) were all housed in these buildings that looked like they could’ve been old science halls. It was like something out of a 1950s movie. (see below, you’ll understand) also, they didn’t feel bad at all about housing two different types of animals in the exact same cage. A python and turtles for example.

Also, I think the entire 20 other people that were at the zoo must think that I’m totally mental, but I kept walking around and cracking up hysterically at the things that the zoo deemed necessary to exhibit.
EXAMPLE: they have a bunny rabbit and guinea pig exhibit. LITEREALLY guinea pigs. And their pen was bigger than the goats’ pen. Needless to say when I saw that I laughed so hard out loud that people openly stared. Guess they don’t have guinea pigs as house pets….

EXAMPLE TWO: they also have a raccoon exhibit. Again, I was laughing so hard I was in tears.

After it was all said and done I had spent a brilliant 3 hours at the zoo, and I had taken over 450 photos. Nothing like paying 5 euros for an entire afternoon of entertainment.

le tournois du rugby

Hello all.

So after a big long week of school off I suppose I’m ready to start blogging once again. I’ve had a couple of rugby matches now. And its absolutely brilliant. After the last game I was bleeding from my right knee and my left knee looked like someone took a mallet to it and just beat it. It was purple and green and blue. Totally ridiculous. But rugby really is loads of fun. We had a tournament on Thursday and it was an all day thing. 6 different schools. And each school brought a girls rugby team, boys rugby team, boys and girls soccer. In any case, we tied our first match and won our second and then ran out of time to play our third. Which was lame. But in any case, ESCP wound up winning the entire thing, the whole gosh darn tournament. Needless to say there was much celebration both on the bus ride home (the games are an hour outside of paris) and afterwards in the school bar. Very fun. Oh, and some famous track star was there too, but alas, my French culture is a bit rusty. Apparently he can run fast. Much other than that I’m not sure who exactly he was.

ahhh amsterdam

I headed off to Amsterdam last weekend on an impromptu sort of… well, everyone is leaving except me, so I might as well go somewhere….kind of a thing. This girl that I know from school Martha and I went. We arrived and put our stuff down and immediately went off in search of all many things that Amsterdam has to offer. We passed the rest of the weekend in a sort of hazy state of consciousness.

And I think that perhaps the most quintessentially ‘amsterdam’ moment we had was the first night that we were staying in our hostel. Our roommates came home at 6 and 7am. The first arrivee managed to get into his bed, and then he began the oh so noticeable sounds of vomiting. On himself, in his bed, right next to me. I think he managed to hold it all in until he got to the toilet though. And it was histerical trying to listen to him getting back up into his bed. There were no ladders for the bed, so it was hard even when you were sober. Needless to say, it took about 4 tries. And one or two falls. But he made it. Then the other roommates got home at 7ish. One of the guys started talking on his phone to his ‘mate’ back in Australia. The conversation went as follows:
‘oy, dude, I can’t come downtown, I’m in Amsterdam.’
‘no, I’m in Amsterdam, but dude, the walls. They’re eating me.’
‘okay, I’ll talk to you later, I’m gonna go find a place to hide so the walls can’t find me.’

Hilarity I tell you. I wasn’t even upset that I hadn’t gotten any sleep. Met everyone the next morning and actually wished that they would’ve stayed for another night. They were super nice, and cute. So lame they had to leave. Anyways, only in Amsterdam…..

le foot!

We went to a proper ‘football’ match the other day. Meaning soccer for all the folks back home. It was a France vs. Tunisia match. We all piled on the RER (metro thing) and it was absolutely packed with people all heading to the game. It arrived at the station and it was just exactly like a mass migration to the stadium. We got out of the maylay and over to the side. Prepared our beverages (vodka mostly) and began the duty of preparing ourselves to be with a bunch of really really drunk football fans cheering for two teams that we really know nothing about. It was brilliant. We showed up a bit late for the game. Made new friends outside the stadium that wound up sitting right exactly in front of us by one row. Totally fun. Oh, and did I mention we were in the 9th row right behind the goal? And also that it only cost 10euro. Because, we were, and it did.

It wound up being just exactly like an American football game back home. I got really drunk, barely watched the game, and socialized a whole bunch. Although, I never missed a goal! Tunisia went up first, and then I realized that the entire stadium was for Tunisia. Literally, there were about 500 France fans, and the rest 19500 were all for Tunisia. We were a minority for sure. In any case, we cheered for Tunisia, we cheered for France, we pretty much just cheered when we got to. France won though, so we got bragging rights in the end. It was chaos back on the RER afterwards too. It was absolutely packed to the gills, I don’t think another person could’ve fit on the train. Seriously, I have lost any semblance of personal space here. Well, after arriving back in paris it was off to the bars to celebrate the win. And then off to bed come 5am when I realized that it was still Tuesday and I had 6.5 hours of class the next day. That was fun. I even seem to remember something about dancing on a table with a girl from ohio. But I’m not sure how accurate that is……