The City That Doesn't Know It's a City

I feel like I've cheated study abroad.  Half the joys of travel is getting lost in a new city with little knowledge of the language left to your own devices.  Everywhere I've been everyone was able to communicate in either English or French, especially in Oslo; EVERYONE there spoke English.  In Madrid even all the club promoters on the street spoke English.  I also never once got lost thanks to French cell phone plans.  My 5 gigabytes can be used all over Europe during 35 days every year, so no matter where I went I always had Google Maps to tell me how to get back to my hostel or where to meet my friends to go clubbing.  (French cell plans are pretty great because I get unlimited talk and text, that 5 gig data deal, and I can call the US all included in my thirty euros per month.  That's $33.60 at the current exchange rate.)  However, do I feel like this really detracted at all from my study abroad experience?  Not one bit.

Monday night I got back from a weekend in Madrid.  Before leaving I knew absolutely about Madrid or Spain in general except for it's a former dictatorship, they speak Spanish, everything starts and ends late, and I wanted the paella, tapas, and sangria.  On the flight over I was blown away by how beautiful, tropical looking, and small everything was.  Madrid is the capital city but it didn't feel like a city.  No matter where in the city I was it felt like a moderately small town.  I went to visit Ricky, who I met in the Paris-Beauvais airport on the way to Venice.  It was my first time traveling and staying in a hostel completely alone so I'm grateful he was able to show me around.

One of my friends from ESSEC is actually from Madrid, a student at IE, and was home after his exchange.  What's more, three more of my ESSEC friends were also there for weekend.  I got to hang out with them and Manuel, the Madrileño, showed us around the historical part of the city.

I stayed at OK Hostel which I'd highly recommend to anyone traveling to Madrid.  The whole place was very clean and the staff was cool, for lack of a better word.  Every night a tapas chef came in and cooked a three course meal that came with unlimited Tinto de Verano (a sweet red wine drink similar to sangria) and beer for ten euros.  I took advantage of that on two of my four nights and it was actually really good.  

The stereotype of Spain is that everything is late.  This is 100% true.  The hostel said dinner started at 9.  People would sit down at 9 but the first course usually wasn't ready until 10.  Then before going out I'd meet my friends at midnight to hang out and drink a little wine before heading to the club,  We wouldn't get to the first bar until about 1:30 and finally we'd arrive at the club between 2:30 and 3.  This all sounds unreasonably late, but we were usually among the first to show up to the club.  We'd usually leave between 5:30 and 6.  I thought it'd be hard to make it to 6 am but when everything else starts so late it's surprisingly easy.  That being said, my mornings were at 1 pm or later the whole weekend.

I'm back in Cergy now.  My aunt, Dad's youngest sister, gets in tomorrow and is staying in Paris through Sunday.  When she leaves I have a solid two weeks to work on (read: start) my thesis and application to the Masters of International Business program before meeting up with my family in London.  This will be my final blog post.  I hope you've enjoyed reading about my international experience at least half as much as I've the experience itself.  Of course, pictures from my last side trip are below.

From left to right Elisa from Italy, Gonzalo from Chile, Manuel from Spain, and Andrea from Ecuador

The Royal Palace which was designed after and to be bigger than Versailles...and Manuel's head

An ancient Egyptian temple that was gifted to Spain on display in the park next to the palace

My friend and my significant other: The friend is Ricky who I blogged about meeting on the flight to Venice.  The significant other is that gorgeous plate of paella.

This was all the ham hanging up at the same place where the paella picture was taken.  It was at a tapas bar called El Tigre.  I'm certain this is what heaven looks like.

The pond at Retiro park

That first paella and I broke up so that I could chase after this one, even though it's way out of my league.

Churros and Limón on my last night.  Fried dough with chocolate sauce and a sweet lemon slushy.  What's not to love?

This pint of tinto and these four delicious sandwiches cost me 3.50.  Madrid is a beautiful city.

Omelette du Fromage

If you're reading this I really hope you caught the Dexter's Lab reference in the title.  That show was definitely in my top 5 growing up.

France's number 1 industry is tourism, so naturally, walking around Paris I hear a lot of different languages.  I hear people speaking rapidly in French, English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and more.  Most communicate with sales associates, waiters, etc. in English if they don't speak French.  If you're in Paris and you don't speak one of those two languages you're pretty much out of luck (note: the irony that if you didn't speak English you wouldn't be reading my blog in the first place).  Most of the time, if your accent while speaking French sounds foreign they'll switch to English talking to you. 

While out and about in Paris (no, I will never get tired of saying that) I hear lots of really bad attempts at French.  There are a lot of "French expressions" we learn and hear about in America that the French haven't used since the 1950's.  Since this is a blog about my study abroad experience, I figured I'd dedicate a post to clarifying some of these.

Omelette du Fromage

If you ever watched Dexter's Lab on Cartoon Network you know this is supposed to mean cheese omelet.  However, when it comes to food the preposition "à" which means "at" or "to" is used when describing the flavor or preparation.  "Du" is a contraction of "de" meaning "of" and "le" meaning "the."  The proper translation of "cheese omelet" would be "omelette au fromage."  The same goes for "pain au chocolat" or "tarte aux fraises" (strawberry tart).  "Au" is a contraction of "à" and "le."  The "x" at the end is used when the noun it's modifying is plural.  Unlike in English, contractions are not colloquial speech devices.  It's grammatically incorrect not to use them in formal writing.  The French language LOVES its prepositions.

Pardon vs. Excusez-moi

Both these expressions are used by native French speakers, but in different contexts as I've learned from my experience.  "Excusez-moi" literally translates to "excuse me" and is used in the context of, "Excuse me.  I need to ask or tell you something or get your attention in some vaguely significant way."  "Pardon" on the other hand means "pardon me."  But in context it's typically used as, "I'm coming through.  Let me off this train now," or "Oh my gosh you are walking so slow move over and let me by before I eat you."  My favorite use of "pardon" is, "If you almost hit me with your selfie stick one more time I swear I will snap it over my knee and throw it into the Seine."  But of course, both phrases are considered to be relatively polite.

Sacré Bleu!

This phrase, literally meaning "sacred blue," is supposed to mean "oh my gosh!" but no one says it...ever.  It'd be like exclaiming "Well I declare!" in the middle of New York City.  The antebellum southern belle has been dead for quite some time now.  No one says either of these expressions anymore.

Oh là là!

I first heard this expression said by Pepé le Pew, the lovesick harassing skunk.  He used it as an expression of, "Oh my isn't that nice!"  Consequently, many Americans, myself included, came to think of it in that context.  French people still say this, but it literally means "oh there there."  In conversation people use it to say, "Wow that's too bad.  I'm glad I'm not you," but in a sympathetic way.

"Voulez-vous choucher avec moi, ce soir."

We get it.  You've heard the song "Lady Marmalade" or seen the movie "Moulin Rouge."  You're not funny. 

I hope this cleared something up for you.  If not, I at least hope it entertained you for however long it took you to read this.  

I'm still hanging out in Paris and Cergy.  A week from today I leave for a weekend in Madrid.  The American guy who Shannon, Katie, James, and I met in Venice is doing a summer term there so he's going to show me around when he's not in class.  36 hours after getting back to France my aunt (my dad's youngest sister) is coming with her best friend for 6 days and I get to show them around my favorite city in the world.  Two weeks after they leave I hop on the Eurostar to London to meet my my mom and her side of the family and I'm traveling with them for a couple weeks.  We're doing a week in London, a couple days back in France in the Loire Valley, and then a week in Paris.  After they leave I have just 4 short days to pack up, move out, and board my flight back to Charlotte.

My last final at ESSEC was this past Tuesday.  I feel really good about how my classes here went.  I won't find out my grades until next month, but as long as I got a 12/20 (what would be a C) I get credit for the course.  Thankfully, my grades don't affect my GPA so it's just a matter of getting credit.  I'm really excited for my summer to begin.  Even though classes are over, I'll keep updating this blog until I get back to the states.

Not All Crêpes and Croissants

I have been having the time of my life during study abroad so far.  However, there have been a few downsides:

First of all, every single class has been assigning group projects at the same time.  Group projects are great for splitting up the work and all, but scheduling and communication (especially when there are language barriers) make them a lot more work than anticipated.

For my Strategic Management class my group can't seem to do better than our OK grades on the case studies.  We worked even harder on the last one than the first.  But it appears our professor doesn't like critical thinking or anything that isn't explicitly in the text.  What little feedback he gives is in handwriting so atrocious I wouldn't understand it even if it were in English.

My Mergers&Acquisitions and Private Equity class is the most uncertain I've ever felt about an upcoming final (a week from Thursday).  We've been doing the same two things all semester (company valuations and leveraged buy-outs) and yet every time we review the homework in class she tells us "the correct way" to find the answer that either completely contradicts what she told us the previous week or is based on corporate finance and accounting concepts that are not covered in those previous classes (all the students from the Western Hemisphere in this class are as lost as I am so the learning gap is not just with USC).  When we ask her why her response is usually, "You must revise accounting and finance!"  I did revise.  I've gotten A's in all my accounting and finance classes so far.  It hasn't helped.  At least this class is taught in English and almost over.

A downside of not school, but living here in France is Sundays and public holidays.  Nothing is open.  I've lost track of the number of times I've realized I was out of food in my apartment and the grocery store was closed.  Plenty of cafes in Paris are open on Sundays (they're technically categorized as tourist attractions) but those are an hour away and I need to save money.  And if you need to get something printed, work something out with your French bank, or go to the cell phone boutique to up or downgrade your plan on a day that just happens to be one of the many, many, MANY public holidays, may whatever deity to which you pray have mercy on your soul.

This past Sunday, my friend and I wanted to go to Giverny to see Monet's gardens.  My train ticket was just under fifteen euros because I had the fifty euro Carte Jeune discount card...or so I thought.  I bought the card online from the railway company's website, but it turns out I have to have it printed from the boutique to show to the train conductors when they check tickets.  AND there's only a two month window to get them printed.  No one told me this and I couldn't find it in any of the fine print.  Therefore, on the train to Giverny I got charged an extra 35 euros for not having my card with me.  When we got back to Paris I went to the information desk and they were able to refund the fee for me.  However, since it was past the two month window by like a week, it cost me 10 euros to print a duplicate card and another 15 in random fees.  To quote the woman helping me, "It's ridiculous how they take money from people like this and they shouldn't be allowed to do it.  I'm really sorry.  Welcome to France."  THANKFULLY, the desk was open in this particular Sunday.

Monet's gardens were beautiful, at least I think they were.  Cameron and I didn't really get to see them.  The line to get in was about a quarter mile long and there was only one ticket window.  Consequently, it took two hours to get into the gardens.  Once in the gardens, the paths were narrow and there were people in every bit of walk-able space.  We eventually shoved our way to the water garden where the crowd was even worse.  Instead of still trying to see things, we sat down on the first bench we could find and ate our picnic of cheese, baguette, duck pâté, and dried fruit.  The endless line of tourists were amused and jealous at our spread.

A fair warning to anything looking into studying abroad at ESSEC or France in general:

Don't take Mergers&Acquisitions and Private Equity.
Don't go to Monet's gardens on a weekend or holiday unless it's raining.
Don't even bother trying to run errands on Sundays.
And finally, don't buy your discount rail cards online.  Buy them at an official desk or store (anywhere with the SNCF logo) so they can print them for you and tell you all the little rules that aren't listed anywhere but apparently can cost you lots of money for not following.

My whole life converges on Paris

One of my French friends from my high school exchange has a house at La Baule in Bretagne, essentially the Hilton Head of France.  He was going to take me there this weekend but he and his family decided to go to the South to visit his girlfriend's family instead.  That means I HAD to stay here in Paris for the weekend.  Aw shucks!  (I really hope my sarcastic tone is clear enough in those last two sentences.)

Sitting in my room at 5 pm on a Sunday afternoon I've realized my entire life converges on Paris.

First, Shannon came to visit me from Rome.  She and I have been friends since sophomore year a USC. 

This past summer I went up to Philly for my cousin's bar mitzvah.  My friend, Rachel, happens to live outside Philly so I invited her to crash the party.  She wound up meeting more of my family than I ever have at one time.  Fast forward 10 months and I get a message from saying that she and her mom are in Paris for one day and want to see me.  I get up at 11 am after getting home at 7 (the trains stop at 1:30 am so if you go out clubbing in Paris you're essentially committing to staying out until the first train at 5:30) to meet them in Paris as their tour guide for the day.

Just a couple days ago I got a snapchat that my friend, Erin, who I cheered with freshman year at USC, is spending a week in Paris with her mother.  The next day I see on instagram that my friend, Lauren, another cheerleader, is on her way to Paris too.

Late March some ESSEC friends and I were out clubbing in Paris.  Standing outside one of the clubs a guy came up and asked us if he could borrow a lighter (Mom, I promise I didn't have one and I don't smoke).  We're speaking French but I recognize his American accent.  It turns out he's from Delaware and graduated from the performing arts school, where my only cousin on my mom's side went to middle school, that shares a building with the nationally ranked charter school, where my cousin went for high school.

Earlier in March my good friend Deborah was in Belgium visiting her boyfriend who did an exchange at her school outside Boston.  He had class for a couple days and wanted to let him study so she hopped on a bus to Paris to come visit me.  

This past Friday I saw on Facebook that one of my 22+ cousins, on my dad's side, who I've never met before was in Paris for a couple days; so on Friday we met up to have lunch and actually meet for the first time.  At the end of June my aunt (the youngest of my dad's two younger sisters) is coming to Paris with one of her best friends for 6 days.

One of my other really good friends, also friends with Deborah, is studying abroad in Prague for the summer.  She's coming to Paris the weekend of June 12 to visit.

Tomorrow, Monday, my best friend since kindergarten is moving to Paris for a month to do an internship at the Paris Astronomical Institute.  He goes to Columbia University in New York so I don't get to see him often.  Once he told me when he was landing I emailed my professor for my Monday classes (I have the same prof for both classes) and told her that I wouldn't be in class since my best friend needed help moving into his apartment.  We, just a couple days ago, had an long conversation about existentialism and experiencing your life so I'm sure she understands.  Regardless, I'm allowed two absences in all my classes; this will be my second absence in French and my first in French Civilization.  After all, your best friend only moves to Paris once.

This Wednesday is my 22nd birthday (cue Taylor Swift in the background) and it just so happens that a lot of USC people will be in Paris.  The only logical thing to do is to have a picnic under the Eiffel Tower on my birthday to celebrate and have a Gamecock reunion.  That will be a really chill (for lack of a better word), fun way to celebrate my birthday and old and new friends.

Finally, since I'm abroad, my family has taken the opportunity to make a vacation out of things.  On July 11 I'm taking the train to London to meet up with my immediate family and my aunt and uncle (mom's side) as well as my aunt's son from her first marriage and his girlfriend.  We're staying in London for 5 days then flying to the Loire Valley or 2 days before staying in Paris for another 5.  They leave on July 26 and I'll have another 4 days back here in Cergy to pack my stuff up and move out.

It's serendipitous just how significant Paris has been in my life and relationships.  I'm still here for another two and half months and I can't wait to see what else comes my way.

36 hours in Norway

I receive a text message from Catherine saying flights to Oslo, Norway, are fifty euros round trip.  "I'm booking right now so tell me immediately," the next message says .

"I'm in."

Fast forward a month and we're on our way to the Paris Beauvais airport 4 and a half hours before our flight leaves.  We knew it took a while to get that airport (55 miles from Paris) so we wanted extra time.  Just before the RER (commuter rail) stop where we get off for school, Catherine realizes she forgot her phone charger.  We turn back and are on our way again 20 minutes later.

We're doing fine on time; we just don't have time to stop at Chipotle on the way.  Two stops before we have to switch trains, the train slows as stops for a few minutes on the tracks.  This happens all the time on the rail, but we're running low on time now.  Our bus to the airport leaves in 20 minutes.  At the transfer station we sprint from the RER to the metro, our over stuffed backpacks swinging from side to side on our backs.  There's a train there waiting for us.  We jump on it before even thinking about how good that timing was.  Three stops later, where we need to hop on the bus; we sprint through the station to the airport buses, our bus leaves in five minutes.

We reach the bus station, panting.  We made it in time, but our bus in full.  Our only chance is the next bus, which leaves 15-20 minutes later.  We should still make it in time.  Well, that's what we thought.

The bus sits in traffic for an hour, doubling the ride to the airport.  We finally make it to the airport 45 minutes before our flight leaves.  We have to get our visas checked at the Ryanair desk and that desk closes in 5 minutes.  We make it the desk, but they're not letting us check in.  They tell us our flight is in the other terminal.  Our boarding passes don't even say anything about a gate or terminal.

The other terminal is about a quarter mile away.  We take off running as fast as we possibly can in our bulky shoes, large jackets, and backpacks; shin splints flaring up.  We make it to the desk 2 minutes before it closes, but there's a line.  "Excusez-moi, notre vol part en trente minutes.  Pouvons-nous aller avant vous?"  We manage to skip to the front of the line and get our visas checked.  Flight leaves in 30 minutes, boarding begins now.

There's no line at security.  Somehow, I manage to set off the metal detector, which warrants a full pat down.  We're panicking about making our flight now.  Getting out of security we see our gate is right there and the line is moving at a snail's pace.  We are ravenous, it's 7:35 pm and we haven't eaten since noon.  By the grace of some benevolent higher power, we have time to get a sandwich before getting on our flight.  

Two hours later, we land in Oslo...well, Moss, a suburb of Oslo.  At 10 pm, it looks like a nice dusk outside, still plenty of light to see.  We reach our airbnb at midnight, barely able to keep our eyes open.

The next morning our minds are blown.  Oslo is the most beautiful place we have ever seen.  We wander the city, exploring fortresses, museums, restaurants, and palaces.  Everyone speaks English.  Everyone is nice and happy to help us.  Everything is expensive.  For lunch I get a glass of house prosecco and a bowl of pumpkin soup, which costs 188 Norwegian Krone. That was about $26 or about 22 euros.  One tram ticket was 50NOK, or nearly 5 euros.

We decide to cook dinner ourselves back at the airbnb.  Figuring out prices and goods in a grocery store in a truly foreign language is no easy task.  Our dinner was some adulteration of fusilli carbonara; it was cheap and easy to cook with pasta, cream, onion, bacon, salt, and pepper.  

After dinner, we decide to go out, despite our alarm being set for 8 am to make it to our 9:50 airport shuttle in time.  We go to trendy little wine bar around the corner from the apartment where we're staying.  The entire 12 page wine list is in Norwegian.  I manage to pick something out that we're both happy with.  This gives me hope for the wine tasting course I'm taking next year.  We then try to go to a club we read about on Yelp.  However, it was a 150NOK cover, nearly 18 euros.  We turned around and go to another bar with free entry and bumping top 40 dance remixes.  Everything there is still pretty darn expensive.  Sitting at a table a few guys come up and ask if they can sit with us.  At least they said it again in English after I said I didn't speak Norwegian.  They were very nice.  Students our age.  One of them, William, was doing an exchange semester at the University of Virginia in the fall.  After talking to them for a bit they leave to dance and meet some girls.  Another group of older Norwegians, older than the students but still seemingly in their late 20s or early 30s, sit down at our table and start talking to us.  They're a teacher, a software designer, and a financier.  Before they leave  they tell us about supposedly the best view in Oslo.  "It's about 300NOK each way, not bad at all."  Right.  That's about 36 euros each way.  We go to McDonald's for a 3 am snack instead.

Our heads hit the pillow around 4 am and the alarm goes off 4 hours later.  We're too exhausted to even open our eyes, but we drag ourselves out of bed and to the bus terminal.  9 hours later we're back in Cergy, unable to believe that we just spent an unforgettable 36 hours in Oslo.

Our room in the airbnb was perfect for the two of us

The national theater

Some cute little walk through with shops

Nobel Peace Museum.  I didn't get any pictures inside.

Making dinner to save money

End result of our adulterated fusilli carbonara

Successfully navigated the Norwegian wine list

The royal palace

The palace guards

The palace from the grounds

Oslo from the palace

The harbor

The fortress in Oslo

Our lunch

Catherine enjoying our one nice meal in Oslo

Panorama view of Oslo from the top of the fortress

Statue of FDR in a park

The tulips were in full bloom

This was the sky at 11 pm

Flying in

Parisian Stereotypes

Debunking French and Parisian stereotypes has been done many times on various blogs, but I've wanted to write a similar post from my own experience.  Here are 7 stereotypes about Parisians and the French in general evaluated from my life here so far.

1) The French are extraordinarily rude.

The French are like people everywhere else.  They're rude to you if you're rude to them.  If a tourist saunters in to a boulangerie (bread shop), screams at the top of his or her lungs, ignores the cashier, then demands to be spoken to in English, said cashier has every right to be a little curt.

2) The French hate to speak English.

This is not true at all.  When I'm out in Paris I speak French as much as I possibly can to everyone I meet.  If I don't understand their reply because they spoke too quickly or with lots of slang (which I'm still working on), I'll politely ask them to repeat themselves and they'll more than happily switch to English.  Only in Cergy do I encounter people who don't speak English.  If you're going to Paris and don't speak any French, simply learn the phrase "est-ce que vous parlez anglais (ess-ke voo parlay onglay)?" and Parisians will switch to English without any arguments.

3) The French are all super stylish.

Ok this one is true so far.  The French know how to dress.

4) They're smelly and hairy.

This is not true.  The French I've encountered are no smellier or hairier than in any other big city.  Yes some people on the metro haven't appeared to have discovered deodorant, but I've encountered that problem in New York, DC, and even Columbia.

5) They're lazy and don't want to work.

This stereotype is debunked by my school alone.  ESSEC requires years of hard work and studying to even apply to.  If the French were lazy, Champagne, these business schools, half the luxury goods in the world, and some of the most amazing wine would never have been created.

6) They hate Americans.

Typically, those who experienced any sort of anti-American sentiment in France were the loudmouthed, annoying, ethnocentric people at the boulangerie I spoke of earlier.  As soon as someone learns I'm American they're instantly fascinated and ask me questions about where I'm from, how I learned French, and more.

7) Paris is the city of love.

Paris is the city of lights, pee smelling metro stations, amazing food, and strikes.  Not as much love here as you would think.  However, I still wouldn't trade it for anything.

Doing My Own Thing

There's something oddly tranquil about wandering Paris alone.

My friend, Shannon, came to visit this past weekend.  Sunday afternoon I went with her to the airport to catch her flight back to Rome then I had the rest of Sunday already in Paris.  I had no idea what to do.  I made plans to hang out with a guy who lives in my building, Anton, in Paris but it would be several hours before he got there.  I decided to explore the city on my own for a bit.

My parents and my aunt and uncle are coming to visit in mid-July.  My aunt has rented us an apartment in the 17th arrondissement (district/ward) wanted me to check it out before everyone arrived.  I started off my afternoon alone by taking the metro up to the apartment.  It took about 30 minutes by metro.  On one of the trains had a street performer playing reggaeton on the accordion.  

I checked out the apartment location and neighborhood.  It's in a really quiet, cute area just north of l'Arc de Triomphe.  After looking at the apartment I had another hour to kill so I decided to do something I had never done before.  I went to a cafe alone, sat down, and had afternoon coffee.  This seems fairly innocuous, people in Paris do it all the time, but it's something I had never before fathomed doing.  To my surprise, it was actually very enjoyable.

It was about 4:30 pm so the cafe was mostly empty.  The servers were really nice to me and it was very relaxing to just sit alone and sip my cafe au lait.  

I sat at the cafe for about an hour and then met up with Anton who's from Russia.  Neither of us had a plan so we just wondered the parts of Paris we had never seen before while talking about school, life, and the cultural and political differences between the USA and Russia (What can we say? We're international business nerds).  

While exploring we found ourselves in Parc Monceau in the 8th.  It was a very cute neighborhood park with almost no tourists.  We felt like we were finally seeing the real Paris, not just the tourist attractions around the Seine.  

We walked around northern Paris for a couple hours and then determined it was time to find some semblance of dinner.  We decided to get a little group together so I sent out a few texts.  About an hour later we were seated in a park on the left bank of the Seine with some more international friends in our program eating bread, cheese, and drinking cheap French wine (cost about 7 euros, so it would have been about $50 back in the states).  

All in all it was a day of doing n'importe quoi avec n'importe qui (whatever with whoever).  There was no agenda and there were no time limits.  It was possibly one of my most interesting and fun days since arriving here in France.

This coming weekend will be the exact opposite.  Tomorrow evening (Thursday, April 8) I leave for Rome.  It will be my first time in any European country besides France.  I love how travel is so cheap and easy over here.