Thoughts on Paris

I left for Paris on the 4:30 train on Friday afternoon. The train was of course packed and when we got into Gare de Lyon there was mayhem. Easter weekend in Paris. Here are some thoughts:

- It rained the whole time. Except for a 2 hour window on Saturday when we went to the Eiffel Tower.

- The city is not quite in Spring mode. It was a little too early to visit as the gardens are not in bloom yet, but when I go back at the end of the month they are going to be spectacular.

- I liked the Rodin museum the most. Probably because the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre were absolutely packed. Annoyingly packed. With hugely enormous lines that were not adding to my experience in the least. I actually really detested the lines and it majorly hindered my enjoyment of the places. Here's an example of a line at the Louvre. It was free on the first Sunday of the month. So that contributed I'm sure. The Rodin though was much smaller and part of it was outside. I thought it was the perfect size for a small museum trip and had some really really cool works.

- The whole city was packed and it really made me not enjoy the trip as much. I need a better mindset next time, so I am going to prepare myself.

- The food was truly amazing. Sadly the people I was traveling with had a bad main course on Saturday, but mine was spectacular. I first had Ratatouille in honor of my brother Then I had sea scallops which is one of my favorite meals that I haven't had since I came to France. Then I had this for dessert.

Look at that strawberry goodness. The thing on the left was lemon and strawberry sorbet in a lemon. The thing on the right is a little tart type thing with graham cracker crust on the bottom and creme on the top. The little cookies on the top were soooo yummy as well.

- Of course I spent way too much money on one weekend, but it is Paris, and I figured, why not?

- The Eiffel Tower was really neat, we tried to stay until the lights came on at night, but there was more rain coming in so we didn't.

- There are tons of Americans in Paris. I heard more American English than I have heard in a long time. Strange because I heard way less French.

- There are tons of museums in Paris. When we looked at the guide book it was the major sites and then museums. At some point museums become very similar and having seen the same type of art for more than 3 hours is not condusive to keeping me involved and energized.

All in all a good short weekend in Paris. I came back on a 2pm train on Sunday, and made it to Easter Sunday mass. Then made myself a little dinner and the Easter Bunny brought me a gift (as in brought, I mean, I bought it at the patisserie and brought it home). Looks yummy huh? It was.

Jinxed

Last week at some point I saw someone limping around on crutches. The crutches here aren't like the ones at home that go up under your arms, these are ones that you just use your hands with. I guess they are called forearm crutches. They look a little more painful to use to me, but thankfully I have no personal experience. I made a comment to someone though that it would really suck to hurt yourself here because there is really no way to get around walking. We don't have a car, and there really would be no way to get anywhere with one anyway. Well I ran on Tuesday a little more than I have been lately and woke up Wednesday morning hardly able to put pressure on my left foot. It was something under the ankle bone. I had fine mobility in my ankle joint, it felt like under the bone was bruised and swollen. With no choice, I hobbled around all week and then remembered I was going to Paris for the weekend. Bollocks. I hobbled 6 miles around Paris on Saturday and wanted my foot to just fall off and be done with it. The problem with it was no only that my ankle hurt, but walking funny to try and take pressure off of my ankle made the rest of the muscles in the leg not very happy either. Apparently the whole jinx for mentioning the crutches actually occurred. Thankfully it is starting to feel better and I am hoping it is 100% by the time I go on vacation next week.

Small Update: I did not at any point need crutches. Didn't mean to scare you. Just thought I would clarify.

Jeu d'entreprise

Last week we spent the entire week playing a simulated game online. We had to make groups of 5 students and then the groups were put into groups of 8 teams. Well I got lucky and someone asked me and my roommate to be on a team. So I spent the whole week essentially doing nothing because I didn't really get what we were doing. I set it in English, but it was all financial and stuff, so I really didn't take the time to figure it out. It is hard to communicate in the first place, but it is even more difficult when trying to propose things that I don't really think are right. Anyway, the entire week I went to every session and just kind of lended my moral support. Well it came to the end of the week and our team ended up winning not only in our subset of groups, but the whole thing! Really the two people on my team ended up winning it for us, but we had to go down in front of the entire third year and accept diplomas and gifts. I felt a little guilty, but sometimes it is about being with the right people at the right time.

Languages

This post has been marinating for some time and I think it might be lengthy so, be prepared. I'm not exactly sure how it is going to go, but...here we go.
Yesterday we went to a Brazilian lunch with a bunch of the international students. At the table were 3 Americans, 3 Brazilians, 3 Finnish, 2 Germans, 2 people who have lived in various countries in their lives. I have to say, that as someone who can only speak one language fluently and can kind of speak another, Americans are WAY behind with respect to language abilities. (While I am no expert, I feel pretty comfortable saying Americans in general, sure there are many out there who can speak other languages, but in general, I think we're behind) Now I understand that these international students are probably only here because they have had extensive training in other languages, but it is still amazing to meet people who can literally go from speaking English fantastically to busting out Portuguese with the waiter and then speaking to the other person of their nationality at the table in their home language. There is one student who literally is fluent in German, English, Portuguese and French and can speak and understand Spanish, some Italian and is working on anything else that might come up. Of course languages are similar, so once you get one in the group, you can muddle through the others, but whoa.
My roommate asked one of the girls at the table, who can speak French, German, Swedish and a little bit of Dutch, what language she thinks in. She said she thinks in pictures. Interesting huh? I thought about it and I think in pictures a lot too, but not always.
I will have to say though, while I am not able to speak French that much, when I do start speaking it, I really do start thinking in it. Then I sometimes default to it and have to remind my self that some of the students don't speak French, so I need to speak English. It is a weird feeling having to pick which language to speak.
This of course got me thinking about the educational system for teaching languages in the States. I think I have decided that we can't effectively learn language in the states for many reasons. The major one being of course the mindset that everyone else in the world is learning English, so us learning other languages isn't vital to our survival. Other students need to learn English to compete in the world, but us? We get off easy because everyone is learning our language.
We also have the problem that we get to pick from the language we learn, but all of our friends are learning other languages. Sure I can take 6 years of French, but if my friends take Spanish and German, I can't really practice with them now can I? And, in all my years of French education at home, I was immersed in it in class, but after that, if I didn't look for it, it wasn't in my face to see. Makes the external stuff that isn't taught in class harder to learn. I don't know what the solution is really for kids from the states learning foreign languages. I don't think it will ever be as stressed as it is here, and I know that the general population of the States will not be hiring private tutors for their kids to go to each day to learn another language like many of the students here do to learn English. Kind of sad really that we are so limited, but maybe in 50 years everyone will speak the same language anyway, who knows.
I'm still jealous when I'm at dinner with people and they can bust out a language that no one else at the table can speak to talk to their friend from home. They have the ability to tell secrets and talk about people without them knowing. Americans have to get creative when we talk to eachother and we don't want other people to notice. That's when we bust out the slang and Americanisms. Ha. So take that.

Ferme la bouche!

The phrase above means "shut your mouth" and I so wish I could go outside each and every morning and find the dumb animal (I'm not sure if it is a bird) that makes the most annoying sound ever every morning of my existence. I can't explain it here obviously because I can't do the sound effects for you, but I'm convinced it might be an owl. Here's the rough estimate of how I would write the sound in words. Wooo - Wooo- Wooooooooo and not like WOO! fun, like wooo more like you are saying ahhhh but wooo. This post is just funny to write because there is no way for you to experience with me the annoyingness of this.... thing. I'm glad I am amused trying to describe it to you, but I'm definitely not when I'm in bed trying to sleep. The nice sounding birds outside are ok. I don't mind, I can sleep through them, this....thing though? SHUT IT ALREADY!!! :-)

Lipdub

Everytime I think I run out of blog topics something random happens. Take yesterday for example. I was sitting in a room in the library in the morning when I got a text from a French friend that said "Can you help me at 6:30 at school with something really fun?" I replied, "well sure, pourquoi pas?" I show up at 6:30 and of course no one is really there. So I wait until 6:50 when we are finally ready to do whatever it is that we are going to do. There are lots of students there dressed funny with crazy wigs and costumes and umbrellas and such. I'm thinking, what the heck? Then a girl starts handing out lyrics to a song and tells me which line I am going to sing. WHAT?!?! Well apparently there is a lip synching competition among schools or something so we were making a video for that. Quite random huh? It was fun, but I was starving hungry and you know how I am when I'm hungry, so I wasn't entirely in the mood, but I did it anyway and looked like I was having a great time. I don't know how else to describe it, so I am just going to post a link. This is not our group, but it is the song we sang (thank god not really) and danced to. If I ever see the real finished video, I will, of course, pass it along.
http://techno.branchez-vous.com/actualite/2009/09/lip_dub_uqam_etudiants_communi.html

April Fool's Day!

I can't believe it is April. I mean sure it feels like it could be April, as I feel like I have been living here for quite some time, but really, time sure does fly by. Things are starting to get a little crazy with school as most of the semester is based around year-end projects or papers and then of course there is the looming Grand Orale. Basically there are three subjects picked from a list of 327 potential subjects. You pick one and get one hour to prepare a 15 minute presentation in front of a panel. Then they have 15 minutes to ask you questions. You pass? You graduate. You don't? I don't want to think about it. Thankfully I get to do mine in English. I'm not thinking it will be that hard, but something that takes a little preparation.
There is also the internship search. I haven't exactly been burning up the internet lines with applications so I'm not surprised I haven't heard anything yet (ha). I have my resume and cover letters finished so the goal for April is to find an internship so I can have fun in May traveling and exploring France. I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, if you know anyone working in Western Europe, I'm their gal!
Mother Nature isn't helping us out with the weather here really either. It got semi-cold again and I had to bust out the winter coat again. Ugh. Thankfully it is sunny and seems warmer and I hear it is coming since at home it was 82 the other day. We'll see what happens.
Finally, no one here has any idea what April Fool's Day is, which just makes things very enticing for pranks and jokes. The problem is that sometimes our idea of funny doesn't coincide with theirs. So I need good, harmless ideas for an April Fool's gag. Hmmm....