Nice classes and Nice Towns, not so Nice Beaches

Just a heads up, this post will have many many pictures at the end.

A few weekends ago, a friend of mine who studies abroad in Seville, Kendall, was in Paris for the weekend.  Another friend of mine, Sydney, just happens to be studying abroad at the Sorbonne.  On a Saturday night we all met up in la Bastille area to catch up as we literally hadn't seen each other since high school graduation. I took them to the speakeasy behind the pizzeria my Parisian friend showed me.  Sydney and I have gone to school together since preschool and Kendall and I lived several houses down from each other until second grade.  I was her first ever friend.  The 3 of us go way back.

The week before last was UNC-Chapel Hill's spring break and about a third of my graduating class goes there.  Two old friends of Sydney and mine, Sarah and Haley, came to Paris for a couple days to visit us.  Sydney and I met Haley in kindergarten and Sarah the next year.  After my class on Thursday that week I met them in Paris for lunch and to go sightseeing some more.  It was really nice seeing old friends again.  We ended the day with Sydney showing us the tea room in La Grande Mosquee (the Paris mosque).  You just walk in, sit down, and a waiter comes by to hand you a small glass of piping hot, deliciously sweet, mint tea.  The tea only cost 2 euros and the room itself was beautiful.

I'm a solid two weeks into my classes.  School here in very laid back.  The teacher walks in a few minutes late, the students finish trickling in a couple minutes later, and in about 5 more minutes class begins.  That's the rule, but of course this is a French school and, as with the French language, every rule has its exception that proves it.  The exception to this is my Mergers and Acquisitions and Private Equity class.  This professor starts class on time to the second.  However, we usually get out a few minutes early.  The classes themselves are only once per week, but 3 hours at a time.  Because they're so long, each class has a 15 to 30 minute break in the middle.  The length of the break depends on how the professor's mood, the students' mood, where we are in the material, and any other factors of the day.  When given the choice, the students typically opt for the 15 minute break as that means we leave class 15 minutes earlier.

After the first day I decided to drop my digital communications and strategies class.  The professor spoke in rapid colloquial French, so I couldn't understand him.  It also appeared, from the powerpoint, to be a primarily marketing class, which I don't enjoy studying.  I dropped the class and signed up for the Geopolitics intensive spring break course to fill the credit.  Geopolitics is taught in English but it will still fulfill one of my international business requirements.  It'll be the first three days of spring break, leaving me with only Thursday and Friday of the break off.  That's alright except I had already bought my flight to Croatia.  Thankfully, the flight was only $62.22 thanks to Ryanair.  That's cheaper than a class at USC, which I'd have to take if I didn't pick up this spring break course.  I'm not too torn up about missing Croatia since I still have plenty of other opportunities to travel this semester.

Digital communications and strategies was on Wednesday evenings and last week my other Wednesday class, international contract law, was canceled.  This meant I had the day free in the middle of my week.  A couple months ago, my friend Deborah reached out to me.  Deborah and I have known each other since kindergarten and she would be in Brussels for spring break.  She wanted to come to Paris for a couple days while her friend in Brussels was in class.  I told her she was more than welcome to stay with me and I'd be happy to show her around.  It just so happened that her only full day in Paris was my free Wednesday.

Tuesday after my class I headed to Paris to meet her at the bus stop.  Unlike my other friends visiting Paris, we had seen each other a month before, so our greeting was more of "Hi! How was the bus ride?" than "Oh my gosh I haven't seen you in years! How are you!?"  However, the greeting was no less happy since she's been one of my best friends for close to ten years.  

I showed Deborah Place de la Republique, where all the massive demonstrations take place, like the one for Charlie Hebdo.  We then had dinner at the Arts et Metiers cafe right at the eponymous metro stop.  I tried steak tartare for the first time while Deborah finally tried escargot.  We're both foodies and loved every second of our meal.  Deborah didn't have much baggage so we stayed in Paris for the evening so she could see all the lights.

The next day we got up around 9 and headed back into Paris to go sightseeing.  I showed her Montmartre and the basilica then we took the metro to Notre Dame.  From there we took the metro to The Invalides (Napoleon's tomb) and walked to the Eiffel Tower.  From my exchange in high school I'm very familiar with that walk in the 7th arrondisment (district).  It's very residential and a calm, non-touristy side of Paris most don't get to see.  It was Deborah's first time in Paris and I wanted to make sure she saw as much as possible.

After sitting at the Eiffel Tower for a bit we walked through Trocadero Gardens up to l'Arc de Triomphe.  From there we walked the entire length of the Champs Elysees, Tuileries Gardens, then through the Louvre.  I figured that way we were able to pack as much of Paris into one day as possible since her bus back to Brussels was the next day while I was in class.  

I decided to take her to dinner in the Pigalle area.  I knew of a very small, inexpensive restaurant that has one other location in the world, in the West Village of New York City.  The restaurant is called Buvette gastroteque (http://www.buvette.com/).  I've been to the NYC location twice and wanted to try the Paris one.  The food was delicious as we started with a braised rabbit terrine.  She had the mussels and I had croque monsieur (a fancy grilled ham and cheese with beschemel sauce).  After dinner we briefly explored the Pigalle at night.  It's Paris' red light district and we wanted to be able to say we did it.  After exploring we made it back by 11 and went to bed early since I had class at 9 and she had to get to the bus station.  She made it no problem thanks to my very detailed directions on the RER and Paris metro.  Needless to say, she had a blast her first time in Paris.

This Wednesday is my friend Shannon's 21st birthday.  She's in my program at USC studying abroad in Rome at LUISS and she decided she wanted to celebrate her birthday in Nice.  On Friday morning of last week I hopped on a train to meet her and our friend Kaleigh (studying abroad at St. Gallen, shoutout to swissmissbliss.blogspot.com) at a hostel near the beach the had picked out.  We had gotten a three bed private room with bathroom so the hostel felt more like a hotel to us.  There are a million things I want to say about Nice but my writing abilities are not up to the challenge of doing the city's beauty any justice.  We went sightseeing, dipped out toes in the Mediterrean for the first time, and went on a hostel sponsored pub crawl.  We had an amazing time and Shannon had an unforgettable 21st birthday experience.  I might not be able to put Nice into words, but I won't shortchange you readers,  I took as many pictures as I could these past few weeks and here they all are:

Old friends and GDS Bengals reunited in Paris

The tea room in the mosque

Inside Notre Dame with Deborah

L'Esplanade des Invalides

The Sunset over the Seine, Musee d'Orsay, and the Tuileries Gardens

My croque at Buvette

The Moulin Rouge lit up at night

The foothills of the Alps on the way to Nice on the high speed train

Nice's rocky Mediterranean beach.  Not very easy on your feet.  I recommend thick soled shoes if you ever go. 

Exploring Nice

Nice's central square, before reaching the old town

The port of Nice

The mountains behind the port.  If you look closely there's an old fortress of some sort to the left.

Kaleigh snapping some shots of the port

Shannon taking pictures of the mountains

The hill in the old town there the Chateau used to be

The Mediterranean and Nice from the top of the hill

The foothills of the French Alps

All of Nice laid out before us

I tried out the panorama function on my phone's camera.  Pretty good except the the random guy quickly walking away while I was taking the picture, which explains that odd anthropomorphic blur.

Another shot of the coast the took my breath away

Dipping my feet in the Mediterranean for the first time

#ParisProblems

Finally getting settled here in Cergy has been an accomplishment.  There have been countless bureaucratic hoops to jump through.  I tried 5 or 6 times to get a French SIM card at almost as many places and services.  The final conclusion was that I had to wait for my French debit card to come in.  I went to the bank Monday after school to pick it up thinking it was in.  Unfortunately it wasn't, of course.  I also didn't have my original passport with me so I wouldn't have been able to pick up my card even if it were in.  The bank teller told me my card would be ready Tuesday.

I had a half an hour break during my international negotiations seminar on Tuesday which was plenty of time to run to the bank and back.  (I'll talk about my classes so far in a bit).  A Canadian friend (there are A LOT of Canadian exchange students at this school) in my class, Katelin, went with me because she needed to ask a question about her account.  I remembered my passport this time and I finally picked up my debit card!

After school that day (about 5pm) Katelin and I went to the mall next to the train station to go to Bouygues Télécom to get French SIM cards.  I signed a plan for 29.99 euros per month with no contract.  It gives me unlimited calls and texts, 5 gigabytes of data, I can use data all over Europe (which will be perfect for travel), and I can call the US and over 100 other countries.  I had a little bit of a struggle with my Google account and my new SIM card (android phones run on your Google account) but I was able to work it out.  I finally have a French cell phone number!  Immediately I got into contact with my Parisian friends from my exchange in high school so I could see them at some point during my time in France.

Normal classes start this Monday the 9th.  Monday through Wednesday of this week I took an international negotiations seminar.  I took an English section since they told us to do that unless our French was amazing.  I feel pretty good about my French, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.  I had already learned the majority of the negotiations material in my principles of management class at USC (South Carolina, not SoCal), but the rest of it was pretty interesting.  

What I found the most interesting was just how laid back everything was.  We had an hour for lunch for our professor said to be back at 1:30.  I got back at 1:25 (I'm fairly type A and early for everything), the rest of the class got back at 1:35, and the professor sauntered in at 1:45 and we still got out on time.  It's kind of refreshing that school is so laid back here compared to US professors that count you late after 5 minutes and absent after 10.

Despite taking my first class in English, my French is definitely improving.  To finish up my international negotiations seminar we were assigned a group paper to analyze any negotiation.  My group consists of two Canadians, an Indian exchange student who grew up in Hong Kong, and me.  We're writing our paper on the Hong Kong student protests for democracy, coined the "Umbrella Revolution."  We met Wednesday night in one of the study rooms in our building (we all live in Les Hauts de Cergy) to order pizza and write our paper.  The only pizza delivery service that delivered out to us didn't let us order online, which meant we had to call our order in.  All four of us are native English speakers.  I took the challenge to call in our order and by some miracle, ordered in perfect French despite the guy's rapidity on the phone.  I didn't even have an issue speaking with the delivery guy.  My confidence in my French has been boosted thanks to that.

The negotiations seminar is over so I have a 4 day weekend.  Yesterday I met two other fiends to spend the day in Paris.  I met with Erika, a Canadian friend who I went into Paris with last week, and Veera, a Finnish exchange student who got here late due to exams at her home university, to head into the city.  We got off the metro in the Montmartre neighborhood at Blanche.  The first thing we saw when we got out of the station was the Moulin Rouge and the "We're in Paris!" excitement hit us again.  We got crepes for lunch and walked around in the Pigalle area for a bit.  Pigalle is the "red light district" in the Montmartre neighborhood.  It wasn't super sketchy since it was 1 pm on a Thursday.  We then walked up the hill to the Sacred Heart Basilica (Basilique du Sacré-Cœur).  I've been there before but it's so beautiful I just had to see it again.  On the way down from the basilica the peddlers and street vendors got aggressive.  We tried our best to ignore them but one of them actually had the audacity to grab me to get my attention.  I shook his hand off my arm and took off to get away from him.  Thankfully we got out of that tourist trap without getting our pockets picked.

After taking in the basilica and the view of Paris (The basilica is on a giant hill so you can look out over all of Paris on its front steps.) we got back on the metro and headed to le Marais district.

Le Marais is the gay district ("gayborhood" as they're sometimes called in America) that has the piercing and tattoo studio called Abraxas.  Erika wanted told me earlier that she wanted to get her ears pierced so I looked up the studio for her.  I saw that they were very good and worked with the nearby hospital to set the safety standards for tattoos and piercing.  Everyone at the studio was really nice and Erika got her ears pierced really quickly.

The studio was across from the Centre Pompidou just about ten blocks north of Notre-Dame.  Naturally, the only logical thing to do next was to see the cathedral.  After Notre-Dame we walked the Champs Elysee again,  It was my third time walking it, but Veera hadn't seen it before so I didn't mind going again.

After dinner, Veera and Erika had to head back to Cergy.  That day I reconnected with a Parisian friend of mine, Francesca, who I met on my exchange in high school and we decided to meet for drinks and to catch up.

I took the metro to the Grenelle neighborhood and met her outside the station.  She then had me hop on the back of her moped to go to a bar in la Bastille area.  I had never been on a moped before so I was both excited and a little scared,  It was crazy speeding through the streets of Paris and weaving in between cars.  She's an excellent driver so it wasn't scary at all after I got comfortable.  The kicker, however, was that my helmet didn't fit over my glasses, so I couldn't see anything on the drive to la Bastille (of course I chose to protect my head and put my glasses in my pocket).  I'm sure the ride over was beautiful, I just wouldn't have known.

We sat down outside at the Indiana, a café and bar, to have a drink and catch up (she got a non-alcoholic smoothie since she was driving).  We hadn't seen each other since June, 2009.  She's at a grande école (like a University, only better; ESSEC is a grande école) studying marketing and communications.  When we finished up at the Indiana she took me on a short walk to the next bar, which she really wanted to show me.  After walking for about 10 minutes we walked into a small pizzeria and kept walking through the back door.  After walking through another set of doors we were in a 1920's style speakeasy called Moonshiner.  I was absolutely blown away that an awesome bar was secretly tucked away behind a pizzeria.  The bar was tiny and crowded with young Parisian professionals, the drinks were delicious (Francesca had a non-alcoholic mix of fruit juices), and the bar tenders liked to put on a show with every order.  After getting our drinks we sat down in the smoking room so Francesca could have a cigarette we could talk to each other without yelling over everyone else.

We finished catching up around 11:15 and parted ways.  I had neither the energy nor the money to spend the night clubbing in Paris again and decided to head back to Cergy.

When I got the RER station I missed the 11:30 train to Cergy by literally second.  The doors had just closed when I got onto the platform, so I had to wait for the next train at midnight.  I texted Francesca what happened and she said "now you can say you have real Parisian problems!"  I found that much funnier and more apropos than she likely intended.

I got home last night at 1 am after an amazing day in Paris.  Today, Friday, I'm going the ball for the masters students at school.  Saturday I'm going clubbing with three friends of mine who I've known since elementary school or earlier.  They just all happen to be in Paris.  We haven't seen each other since high school graduation so we're all really excited to catch up.

I'm having an unforgettable time already and it's only been about a week and a half.  Class starts Monday and it'll be nice to get into something of a routine here in Cergy.  If nothing else it'll keep me from spending as much money as I have been settling in.  I took a few more pictures yesterday in Paris and I'll attach them below.

The view of Paris from the steps of the basilica

My favorite angle to see la Basilique du Sacré-Cœur

The basilica from the bottom of the hill

After seeing Notre-Dame we stopped into a cafe for a glass of wine.  I had the Bordeaux and that's Veera across the table from me.  Erika's hand is the awkward floating fingers on the left.

Walking along the Seine at sunset on our way to the Camps Elysees