tour de lance...i mean france

Well, another Tour de France has come and gone and I was lucky enough to be in Paris for the final stage of the rigorous bike competition. It was fun to join the huge crowd waiting to see the cyclists make their final few laps around the Champs-Élysées (a fancy shmancy shopping street...think Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, etc.). And when I say huge crowds...I mean huge:

There was a sea of people that surrounded the streets, literally it went on for miles. My friends and I were pretty close to the action though with only one row of people between us and the street so we were able to see a lot. We got there pretty early because we weren't sure how busy it would be or how soon the cyclists would be in the heart of Paris - and we ended up waiting for a good four hours. We could see on a huge screen that they were on their way, but it just seemed like it was taking forever. But, who am I to complain after these guys have spent the last three weeks biking up, down and all around the country?! By the time they reached Paris, they had been on their bikes for three weeks (with only two days of rest) covering 2,200 miles - I could definitely hang around for four hours to see them finish. Here is this year's path:


This was Lance Armstrong's final Tour de France and he let some Spanish guy named Alberto Contador take the win this year. It would have been fun to see him win one last time...maybe he'll come out of retirement (again) and give it another whirl. I will definitely go try and see it again next year! Here is a picture - basically a blur of jerseys and bikes...


And here's a little video:

Some Like it Hot

Summer is in full swing here...and I seem to have missed the memo that you buy fans before it gets hot out. I got back from Germany on Sunday and moved into my apartment as soon as I got back to Paris. Buildings in Europe are so old and electricity is expensive that, consequently, air conditioning basically doesn't exist. There are some restaurants with AC - if they have it, they advertise it in writing on the windows - and there are some stores with AC...other than that, you're out of luck. The next best thing to AC, then, is a fan to avoid that point of heat stoke when it hits 93 degrees at 4pm with 99% humidity and no breeze. Ahhh, summer. Before I left for Germany it was getting pretty hot, but since I knew I would be moving apartments solo upon my return, I decided to wait on buying a fan until I arrived at my new place. Bad idea. In two days, I've gone into no less than twenty different stores of various kinds all over the city looking for a fan only to come back home empty handed! I've been asking if I could buy the floor models but quit after a string of dirty looks from the salespeople like I had just asked some horribly offensive question. Jaime tried looking online to see if I could order a fan on Amazon and have it shipped but what normally would take a week could now take up to 5 weeks - I'm sensing some kind of European fan shortage/crisis and I'm in the thick of it. The students I teach English to find my inability to cope without AC very entertaining. I asked one student if anybody here has window AC's like I had in my Minneapolis apartment and he told me "we would never do that, not unless you're using it to put in the window of a Chinese restaurant". Ok then, I'll wait it out. I'm lucky at the moment to have a little relief from the heat in the wake of some torrential downpours that lasted most of today, but I'll still be on the prowl tomorrow in search of the rare and elusive fan. Luckily, I'm pretty preoccupied with the new apartment. Pictures coming soon!

To Catch A Thief

The past month has been super busy, but I'm happy to report that as of Wednesday I finished my first semester of grad school! It feels good to be done...for now. You always think that not having much to do sounds like a good deal until you realize that it's more boring than it is fun. I still have work to keep me semi-busy though, so I'm not too worried. My group of friends, as expected, is dwindling. Everyone is wrapping up and heading back to the states. These three gems (from left: Libby, Peter, Kate) left in May and the rest of my non-school friends will be gone by July! Time to branch out...

This Friday I'll be traveling to Norway to see what Scandinavia is all about. Jaime is currently there for about a month taking a class so I decided this was a good excuse for me to take a little trip. Tickets were only $30...the joys of traveling with RyanAir! I think J will probably get sick of me though...a week after I come back from Norway I'll be setting up camp in her apartment for two weeks while I'm between homes.

A couple of weekends ago the girls and I were trying to have one last hurrah before Libby and Kate went back to the states. So one Friday, we went to a place in Paris where there's a great view of the city on the steps of a famous basilica called Sacré-Cœur. We camped out on the steps with food + wine along with many other people, mostly American tourists. The view is amazing during the day and the night so it's no wonder why this spot becomes sort of a tourist trap at all hours.

Here we are in the thick of it...

So this is the whole group, let's call this the before picture (from left: me, Hannah, Libby, Sara, Kate, Sarah).
Since this area attracts so many tourists, there are a lot of people trying to make money by entertaining the visitors. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for these things and usually find them pretty amusing. The entertainment on this particular night was among the best I've seen in Paris and we totally lucked out and ended up having really good seats on the steps to watch two crazy guys light sticks on fire and throw them around. So after the first "show" these guys did (see video of the maniacs below) it started to get dark and the crowd grew. I stood up and and very quickly noticed a guy sitting really close to where my feet were. One step up, I had my iphone (the love of my life) and my camera wrapped up in my scarf sitting by my purse. I went to go move my things because I didn't like how close this kid was to my stuff when I realized my phone was gone. I knew that these two things had both been by me and not in the bag I had with me so, like a crazy person, I immediately I grabbed on to the guy's shirt collar from the back in case he tried to move (I was a little worried that when I grabbed him he didn't move at all, actually - so now I was thinking "Great, I have a firm grip on some random kid's shirt and I'll look like a jackass when I find my phone in my bag"...but I didn't let go.). My friends were wondering what I was doing so I said "this kid has my phone!" and freaked out a little (a lot). So Kate told me to look through my purse quick to make sure it wasn't in there and so I let her take over the shirt grabbing responsibilities (the kid is still not moving) and Sarah was smart and called my phone really quickly (this whole situation really all happened in a matter of about 20 seconds) and sure enough his pants lit up and started vibrating...my phone! Thanks kid, for stealing my phone and shoving it down your pants. So he gives it to me and in the heat of the moment I might have kicked him in the back and smacked him on the side of face. Ok, I definitely did. I don't know what got into me. Surprisingly, this didn't phase him much so I made him get up and leave. Sarah got a picture of me making the guy leave and we'll call this the after picture...
Well that's only the first part of the story. Not very long after this, Sarah noticed him sitting above our group now and she saw that he had a wallet in his hands. It turns out that he had been digging around Sara's (not to be confused with Sarah with an h) backpack and he had her wallet! So we got her wallet back and he left. Again. Shortly after this, some guy came down to talk to us and it turns out he was an undercover cop and he wanted to make sure we had everything. Well we thought we did until Sara realized she didn't have her phone. So a few of the girls ran to find the police and in the meantime Kate had called Sara's phone and the police answered. And at this point, it's off to jail for Kate and Sara...the police needed someone to file a police report so that they had enough dirt on this guy to arrest him finally. So the rest of us headed home and the other girls got to hang out with the cops for a little while and were driven home in their squad car eventually. Unfortunately, Sara did end up losing some money but in the end everything worked out. This was my first time being robbed in Paris so I was surprised when it happened. I feel like Paris is pretty safe, but like anywhere, you have to keep a close eye on your things (especially in tourist areas).

Here's a video of the awesome pyro guys who were inadvertently keeping onlookers nice and distracted:

some serious cravings

Well, I hit the 100 day mark a few days ago...it sounds like a really long time when I think about it but it's been going by pretty fast. I'm one month away from finishing off my first semester and remembering what it's like to manage my time between research papers and final exams again . It's a different sentiment now that I'm knee deep in various projects from when I was sitting back at my desk at Target thinking about how fun it would be to go back to school. I have about 12 hours of actual class time every week...what have I been doing with the other 156 hours? I don't know. Any way you count it up, I've been enjoying school and my time here so I guess that's what really matters!

I do know where some of those hours are wasted...food cravings. For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting involved in various conversations with Americans where we just sit and talk about what foods we are craving the most. I'm craving things I didn't even eat that much of back home, but just knowing that it is unattainable until I go home in December makes it worse. As of today, I would give my right arm for:

a Chipotle burrito bowl
some nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips
chocolate chip cookies
hint of lime tortilla chips
mac 'n cheese*
Leeann Chin
a cupcake
dill pickles
bruegger's bagels
grilled anything
crunchy peanut butter

*the saddest mac n' cheese story: I currently have mac 'n cheese being held hostage by the French post office. I hope to get it tomorrow. Jaime visited in February and brought me three ziploc bags of m-n-c that I had actually brought to her when I visited Germany in November. She was kind enough to bring me three of the aforementioned packs that I have been rationing since February, only using them for the most severest of cravings. Skyping with her one night (for those of you who don't know skype - it's video chatting), she said she was going to make some for dinner and it sounded so good that I decided that I was also going to crack open the last m-n-c I had and eat it. I've never been so excited for this delicious .50¢ meal. Unfortunately, Jaime has a habit of using half of the noodles and all of the cheese packet for a more robust m-n-c. Unfortunately, my last packet was a victim of this habit, with half of the noodles and no cheese packet in sight. Word on the street is Jaime felt bad and convinced my mom to send me some replenishment, but like I said, it is currently sitting in the French post office. I thought I was picking it up last week when I went to get a package, and although the contents of said package were lovely, I couldn't eat it. So with any luck, I will be noshing on m-n-c tomorrow.

And no, I'm not pregant. Girl just needs some American food.

Anyways, April turned out to be a pretty busy month for me between school, work and traveling...or as it turned out towards the end of the month, not traveling - the volcano situation in Europe quickly put an end to a trip to Istanbul, Turkey that I was planning to take with a couple of friends. I was pretty bummed when our flight got canceled, but with two years in Europe I think I'll make it there eventually.

I did make it out of Paris, however, to do some sightseeing around the Loire Valley in France. Pictures are up if you want to check out some crazy big castles! We took the train to a city called Blois (about an hour and a half away from Paris) and stayed there for two nights. Saturday we got up and set off for the castles...at the end of the day we had biked about 40 miles! It was pretty exhausting to say the least mostly due to the terrain...it was hilly and we were riding our bikes around on gravel paths through the woods. Sunday was short and sweet...we picnicked outside, walked around the city and caught the train back to Paris.

As for the apartment I looked at, I signed the lease and will move in on July 11th! I got blacklisted from one rental agency in the process but in the end everything worked out. Agency fees here are beyond ridiculous, but it's hard to find apartments in Paris so you almost have to work with an agency find anything. Two different agencies had been working with me, but I was able to talk one into giving me 40% off of the fees whereas the other one wouldn't budge...so I figured saving 900 euros was worth having the other agency hate me. They had some choice words for me in an e-mail written in poor English...something to the effect of "Please never contact us again. We prefer to work with someone who is serious and polite." But alas, I do have an apartment lined up. I will, however, be homeless for a week between when I move out of my current place and when I can move into the next place, so I'll be escaping Paris between apartments and visiting Jaime in Germany. I have a feeling we'll be eating mac 'n cheese.

home sweet home

Sometimes it takes leaving for days at a time to make a place feel like home. Although I've been living here since January, coming back from my trip to Italy was the first time I felt like Paris is home. The familiarity of the city, my neighborhood, the comfort of my own bed and my own apartment were drawing me back home. Vacations are fun but it's always nice to come home.

Italy was a great time and I'll post pictures soon! I need a little time to organize and sort through all of them - you know how vacation pictures are...you look back at them and wonder why you took a picture of that tree or why you took a picture of that lizard. Cagliari felt a lot different from Paris - the streets are so tiny you can barely fit a car between buildings, which are all vibrant colors, the language is fast and the only word I knew was grazie (thank you). I went with two girls from school and in five days we ate and walked our way through the city. Lots of pasta and lots of gelato...and now lots of exercising! We met a lot of interesting people from around the world; it's always fun to see why people travel and find out what brings them to the same place as you.

Life got really busy today as I officially started a job! This has been in the works for a few weeks and I think it will be fun which isn't something I normally say about work. Tom (my step dad) sent me information about a job opportunity that he heard about through someone he knew from when he was getting his certificate to teach English as a second language. The hiring manager is in Minnesota which has made things a little difficult (like my interview via the telephone at midnight my time) but I think it will be a good fit. My job is to teach English over the telephone to French people that mostly need to learn English for work. Teaching over the phone is interesting but as I saw today first hand, it seems to work. Beyond speaking with them I can also assign my students lessons online for extra help - but I'm mostly there to correct their speaking skills and help with grammar. I had a wide range of people today - one girl kept referring to her son as she and could only speak in present tense (which was hard when I asked what she did last weekend), but then on the other end of the spectrum I spoke with a man who's English was nearly perfect but he is required by his company to take courses so we chatted for an hour on the phone about weird things like his recent eye surgery which had me cracking up - in his words "One of my eyes was looking out and one of my eyes was looking in. After my surgery, I don't have to choose which eye will watch tv anymore!" I'm excited to have something to do over the summer and even more excited that it can all be done from home!

This weekend I'll be in the Loire Valley with some friends - we are renting bikes and riding them around to visit famous castles in France. The pictures I've seen of the castles are amazing so I'm excited to see them in person. The friends that I spend most of my time with are in Paris to teach and their contracts are up at the end of this week (they have been here since September). Everyone will be leaving me to head back to the states in about a month so I'll be pretty bummed! There will be nine of us going and it will kind of be the last hurrah before everyone parts ways.

Well, next on my list is finding an apartment so i'm not homeless come July 1st. I'm looking at one on Wednesday so I hope it will work out...apartment searching in Paris is hard!

spring in paris...c'est si bon

Spring has arrived in Paris and there's no place I'd rather be right now (sorry, Minnesota)...people are out and about at all hours, the birds are singing, the flowers are coming back to life and I can break out the spring shoe collection!

When I first arrived in Paris it was gloomy most days, but within the last couple of weeks we've turned a corner and the weather has been really nice. I've been going to the Luxembourg Garden a lot lately to sit out in the sun and study (and take the occasional break to people watch). It's about a 15 minute walk from my apartment and it's right by my school so it's convenient for me to get to. Here's a couple of pictures from today...it's always this crowded now that it's nice out...sometimes I wonder why people aren't at work or in school at 2 pm...Today's studying in the garden was cut short...an older man sat down in a chair next to me and at first I was thinking "Good, he's just a solitary old man. He's not five teenage girls singing Elton John that have the potential to disturb me" (which happened yesterday). Well, the man sits there for probably twenty minutes and then decides he needs to clip his fingernails. I don't know why, but this is one of the most irritating sounds and it makes me cringe. When I was working, I would hear people clipping their nails from five rows over and it would drive me nuts. But, we were in the middle of a garden so I wasn't expecting anyone to have a fingernail clipper readily available for a manicure session. After about ten minutes he was still at it, probably down to the bone, but I was scared to look and so I had to leave. Clipping your fingernails is an at home activity - preferably in the bathroom over a garbage can...not in a Parisian garden. The whole way home I was wondering why people do that in public and how many stray nails I step on every day. I don't know what bothers me more...the actual sound or wondering if I'm stepping on them.

On a completely different note, school is going really well so far - midterms are already next week! Classes are interesting and everyone at school is great. Two girls from school invited me to go to Sardinia, Italy with them over spring break which was too cheap and too tempting to turn down so I'll be spending five days of break on the southern tip of the island in a city called Cagliari:


In other news, I did finally get internet late last week! Basically what's happening is that the two companies that need to work together to make my internet work don't like each other so my landlord told me that he would try to find a different internet provider. Well, that meant there would be at least another month of set up and arranging things so I said I would figure it out...and figure it out I did. I threw on a cute outfit and knocked on my neighbor's door at 9:30pm - internet problem solved. I think he's my age and his parents pay for his internet anyways so it worked out! Skyping people, emailing people back right away and catching up on tv has been amazing!

I'll leave you with one last picture that Jaime took when she came to visit me during the last weekend in February. We climbed 300+ steps to the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral - our legs hurt for days but the view was worth it!

Annoyed.

I've been really annoyed this week and last week with the French as I'm remembering and experiencing how slow, inefficient and inconsistent they can be. Every day, things take so much longer than they should and it becomes draining when you're used to living in a place where life moves fast and businesses/stores are open when you need them to be.

In France, I can expect to wait at least ten minutes in line at the grocery store at any given point during the day. The store doesn't even have to be that busy, but the cashiers and the whole check out process is painfully slow so there's always a line. Last weekend, I waited in line for 20 minutes to buy bananas and cereal. I could have left and come back, but I knew that the line would be just as bad when I returned. A different day, I waited at the US consulate to get something notarized...for three hours. I was directed to five different windows before I got the notarized stamp I needed. Why one person couldn't look at my passport, hand me a sheet to fill out, notarize that sheet and then accept the payment – I have no idea. It's a five person job apparently. Last Sunday, I went to Marie's to have lunch at noon and it ended at 5pm. Things taking forever is normal here, but hard to get used to.

Coupled with extreme slowness, there is the other problem that businesses aren't open when I feel like they should be. For example, my bank is closed Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. When they are open, their hours are 10:30 am – 6:00 pm, but they are closed from 12:30pm – 1:45 pm for lunch. Another fun thing about the bank is that although there are branches everywhere, they basically operate as separate entities. If I want to do anything other than get money from the ATM, I need to go back to the bank that first opened my account which, now that I've moved, is a good ½ hour away by metro. The banks here are really intimidating, too, because they are so secure. The French may be inefficient, but they are smart. You have to ring a doorbell before entering the bank and then the person at the front desk buzzes you in – if your face is covered you won't be let in – and everything is recorded on camera. I have had several meetings with my banker, that's right – I have my own personal banker that I work with (because they made me) – and her office is so secure we need a code to get in and a code to get out of the door. So basically, I have to be super efficient during the week with getting everything taken care of because come the weekend, most things are closed. Sundays are the worst because basically all stores are closed – grocery stores, clothing stores, restaurants, bakeries, etc.

My frustrations escalated last weekend when I was walking up the stairs coming out of the metro stop by my apartment and I was caught behind a few people going extremely slow (it's always something stupid that's the breaking point). But really, a child learning how to crawl could have climbed the stairs faster than these people. So I was doing the people equivalent of tailgating when I surfaced and had a reality check...an illuminated Eiffel Tower was staring me in the face and sparkling (it has a “light show” on the weekends at night for the first few minutes of every hour). At this point, I realized I have nothing to complain about – on the contrary, I'm a pretty lucky girl right now because I'm doing what I've always wanted to do. I came here for school and for a cultural experience...if I wanted easy access to everything all the time I should have stayed in Minneapolis. Slowing down isn't so bad. This picture doesn't do it justice, but this is the Eiffel Tower's light show at night:


And in case you're wondering...still no internet at the apartment. It's France!