Coup de Foudre

Coup de Foudre literally means "A flash of lightning" but is used in french as "love at first sight." 

As I've been so busy running around the city in high heels being entirely chic and eating croissants and sipping cafe au lait by the Seine and strolling the Champs d'Elysees at night I have not gotten around to the obligitoire abroad blog. And while cafe culture is slightly interrupted by the glaring modernity of a macbook, I do truly enjoy writing and reflecting on my experiences, so I am eager to get back in the habit. I have been here for a little over a week now, "settling in"--which is an excuse to take long naps and ignore nervous texts from your parents. I've only just started truly exploring the city with the intent of a habitant- finding my favorite cafes, more affordable grocery stores, cute boutiques, etc. It would be a pain (and not that interesting) to just regurgitate my minute-to-minute adventures of the last ten days, but here are a few highlights of my new lifestyle.

One of my favorite things about Europe is how close everything is to each other and how accessible it all is (kind of like how I felt when I moved to New England from Alaska). I'm really looking forward to taking weekend trips to Amsterdam or Barcelona or Prague to visit other friends and have friends come to me. It worked out quite nicely that my friend Will, who studied in Madagascar for the summer and is on his way to Morocco for the semester, had a week-long layover in Paris that happened to coincide with my arrival! Traveling and exploring with friends is always interesting because you learn things about each other and about the place that you wouldn't have otherwise. Will was traveling with a buddy en route to Ireland and we spent my first few days strolling through Montmartre and the Champ de Mars. We went to the steps of Sacre Coeur--the big white church on the tallest hill in Paris--one night. We brought a bottle of wine and were able to just sit on the steps with hundreds of other people admiring the Parisian skyline. It's a fairly touristy area and there are a lot of vendors selling Eiffel Tower keychains (4 for one euro, and then you can talk them down) and standard knockoff crap. They also have vendors walking around with a 12-pack of Heineken, selling beers! Mike and Will very effectively bargained them down to one euro per beer (they started at 3) and we chatted with the vendors who come from Bangladesh and all work together. 

However, there was a bit of a skirmish that must have stemmed from one vendor encroaching on the turf of another or something. All of a sudden, these guys are yelling, running down the steps, and chucking GLASS BOTTLES at each other, amidst dozens of tourists sheilding their heads from the falling glass shards. We're not entirely sure what happened but the guys ended up pretty bloody--one guy had a cut running from one cheek to his mouth to the other cheek. Ambluances came and treated them on scene, but it didn't really look like anyone was getting arrested...it was an entertaining way to end the evening! Paris is very safe though and there is very little violent crime, just apparently a lot of pickpocketers on the metro.

Shakespeare and Co. 

We spent the weekend relaxing and exploring a little. It is nice to get here earlier than the rest of the students on the program because we are in no rush to figure things out and by the time they get here we will be experts. I went to Shakespeare and Company, which is the famous English-language bookstore on the Seine where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and other ex-pats of the Lost Generation used to meet and talk literature. The lit nerd in me exploded, and i can't wait to get my hands on every book ever. Shakespeare and Co is a bit of a tourist trap now though, so all the books were exorbitantly priced and I will try to look elsewhere. I became addicted to Hemingway a couple years ago and took a class on the Lost Generation writers last semester with my favorite professor. So being here in the city where they lived and breathed and wrote is really magical. Yes, I'm currently channeling Owen Wilson a la Midnight in Paris. I'll let you know when I find the taxi that will take me back to the 20s.

We've had classes called "methodologique" at SciencesPo this week which is getting me back in school mode a bit. But with the bar crawls every night and classes for 2-4 hours every morning I've been spending my afternoons sleeping off my "jet lag." I'm eager to start having a real schedule and start to plan my semester here so that I take full advantage of everything both here in Paris and throughout Europe. I'm sure the time will absolutely fly by.

Paris, je t'aime

I know its been AGES  since I last blogged. I just got lazy. I'm back! I'm studying abroad in Paris for the semester, which seems like the perfect inspiration to get back to blogging! I've been here for about a week now. I'm studying with a Trinity program, so there are about 30 students from Trinity here and we all take classes together. I'm also taking one economics class at SciencesPo, which is a very renowned French university of political and social sciences. For the last week, only four Trinity students have been here because we have orientation for SciencesPo. The others get here on saturday and I can't wait!

Orientation at sciencesPo feel exactly like the first week of freshman year. There's a couple hundred international students "D'echange" (exchange) and luckily the Welcome Program is all in English! (So is the class, by the way). The other exchange students are taking full course loads at SciencesPo so I'm in a bit of a unique situation. We've been doing all the typical orientation activities: ice breakers, scavenger hunts, bar crawls, etc. We also have classes called "methodologique" which is basically teaching the international students how the academic exercises at sciencesPo work. It's pretty straightforward--oral presentations and essays--but I had to prepare a ten minute oral presentation on "Is art a public good?" on the second day of class!

We've been meeting lots of international students at the Welcome Program, which is really nice because I'm afraid the Trinity program will feel too small and too American. I'm also living with a host family-the Fermandois- here in Paris. They live in the 20th arrondisement right next to the Pere Lachaise cemetery (where Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, etc are buried). They have two kids who are in high school and speak very good English- Constance and Tristan. The parents speak no English, so I have been practicing my french a lot. Not as much as I should be, but at least every night at dinner.

I feel very comfortable with the family already- they have never hosted an exchange student before but they are very easy going and nice. I think their family dynamic is very similar to mine at home so it was easy to feel comfortable. I have my own room with a double bed and Valerie makes very simple, wholesome, delicious dinners most nights. It's nice to have some sort of family support because if I had chosen to live in an apartment I would probably be eating baguettes for dinner! (Not a bad idea...) It's also somewhat unique and a huge bonus that there are kids close to my age. The first day I arrived and had to go to the Trinity site to check in, tristan and Constance rode the bus with me there and then we walked around afterwards. I went out to a club with them last weekend, but after waiting in line for thirty minutes, they were turned away at the door because they were under 18! It was a very American experience. They are chic-er than I will ever be, but that is something I can live with.

I haven't started smoking cigarettes YET and the food is so wholesome and fresh that I feel very healthy. It makes me feel better about allllll the wine. (Which you can just drink in the streets, at the Eiffel Tower, on the steps of Sacre Coeur--wherever you damn well please. I will write more regularly now about the interesting things that happen here and that I learn. A bientot!