StephanieNicole.com

This last post is just to inform anyone still reading that my travels around Europe ended on a fantastic note and that I had an amazing three weeks. After flying back to France to spend one last night with my host family, I finally flew back to LA. I spent about a week at home in Pasadena catching up with friends and family, and am now back in Claremont at CMC. The semester has started off well and it’s great to be back (though I miss Paris). I won’t be updating this site any more, but I appreciate everyone who took the time to read about what I’ve been up to the last six months or so. Keep in touch!

Hello, hello!

I apologize for my lack of posts, but the end of the semester ended up being extremely hectic. Between writing multiple research papers in French, taking finals, and trying to finish seeing all of the sights on my list, I was pretty busy. But my time in Paris ended on a fantastic note, and I was very sad to leave.

On December 16, I left for Amsterdam, where I met up with my friend from CMC, Jamie, who was studying in Spain. We spent about 5 days in Amsterdam and had a great time. For the most part, the city was incredibly cute; the architecture of all the houses combined with the canals everywhere really made it pleasant to just wander the city. We saw Anne Frank´s house, the Van Gogh museum, and took a paddle boat out in the canals (nearly ending up in an industrial shipyard), among other things. Since we had so much time in such a small city, we had a lot of time to sleep in and relax. On the whole, it was the perfect way to start our tour of Europe.

We then set of for Vienna. Nice, pleasant, charming, Vienna that was only a short train ride away. Or so we thought… (more…)

Hello Everyone!

New pictures are now up, so check out the photo gallery. And for those of you who are unaware, if you look at the pictures individually (as opposed to just the group thumbnails) you can even see the brilliant and witty captions I’ve included.

The last four weekends I’ve had friends who are studying in other parts of Europe come to visit me, so that’s how I’ve been spending most of my time. I’m still getting along really well with my host family, despite the fact that the list of bad action movies I’ve seen with my brother continues to grow and that I now dread family dinners when the dad is present because I inevitably get stuck listening to a lengthy discourse in rapid French (usually with a topic of “history of the world from the beginning of time to 1900,” or something like that).Throw in classes, an opera, a France/Greece soccer match, and the leaves changing colors, and that just about sums it up.

I’m still having a blast but definitely miss all of you! Ciao!

Hello everyone! I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but I’ve been traveling a lot this month, so it’s been hard to find the time to sit down and write. Anyway, here goes…

Three weekends ago I took a trip with a friend from my program to Southern France. We left on a Thursday night and took the train from Paris to Aix-en-Provence (often called simply “Aix”) and made our way to the hostel we’d booked. We were actually quite proud of this accomplishment, considering it was late at night, the walk took about 30 minutes, we had no map, it started to rain, and there was some desperate running after buses involved in the process. We spent all of Friday exploring Aix, which is pretty much the cutest little French town you can imagine. We walked all around the tiny streets filled with vendors, relaxed in the sunshine at a pretty park (the weather that day was absolutely gorgeous), stumbled across an open air market (fruits, spices, vegetables, etc.), and visited the Cathédralel St-Sauveur, described by our guidebook as “incorporating architecture from every major period from the 5th to 18th centuries stuck onto one another.” It was a great day, despite the fact that we had to drag our suitcases around with us the whole time. That evening, we took a bus to Nice, located on the coast of the Mediterranean. Three other girls from our program were staying in the same hotel as us, so we all went out to dinner in “Old Nice,” a lively maze of streets filled with restaurants and vendors, with scattered gorgeous buildings. Saturday morning we woke up early to take a short bus ride up the coast to visit Monaco. Yes, the Principality of Monaco, where the citizens are ruled by a royal family, have their own flag, and don’t pay income taxes. We got to see the changing of the guard at the Prince’s Palace, and even caught a glimpse of the Prince himself. The view was gorgeous, especially from the palace, which is on top of a 60m-high chunk of rock overlooking the port. Monaco was really fun, but the atmosphere was extremely weird; it was sort of like Disneyland… except real. The fact that there was some kind of Oktoberfest celebration happening (in which a horse-drawn carriage carried musicians dressed like the Matterhorn ride operators playing Disneyland-type music) also added to the creepiness. We also visited the Musée Océanographique de Monaco, a pretty cool aquarium. After spending a few hours in Monaco, we set off on what turned out to be quite an adventure to find the town of Eze, an extremely tiny medieval village tucked away high up in the hills somewhere along the coast between Nice and Monaco. (more…)

In hope of appeasing those who have sent me emails demanding more information, here goes…

I’ve been pretty busy lately, but in a very good way. To sum up the last week and a half or so:

-I went to see a ballet at le Palais Garnier, an incredibly beautiful monument located at la Place de l’Opéra. The exterior and the interior of the building were nothing short of majestic, and I really enjoyed the ballet, which had three parts. The first part was a very traditional segment, white tutus and all. The second part was modern, and although it was weird at first, I ended up really liking it. Its funky set and weird costumes came together to give an interpretation of the story of Icarus. The third part told a story that involved multiple characters and had a (fairly) clear plot. A spectacular evening.

-I had my first class at an outside university. (At the last minute, I found out this was a CMC requirement and scrambled to find an interesting, relatively easy class that worked with my schedule… thus, I enrolled in an Intro to Buddhism course.) Except for three other Americans and a couple young French students, the rest of the class is between the ages of 40 and 55. It’s actually pretty weird. But the professor is really nice, the material was interesting, and I understood most of what he was saying, despite the fact that I don’t really have the vocabulary to discuss Buddhism.

-Last weekend I went on an overnight school-sponsored trip to Normandy. We spent Friday at Caen, where we visited a really cool museum that had tons of cool stuff… soldiers’ uniforms, packs, weapons, and personal letters; short movies, one of which was a montage of actual footage from D-Day; a peace memorial; and segments dedicated to the holocaust and the resistance movement. (John, David, and Michael: the whole time I kept thinking about how you would have loved it… I wish you had been there with me!) We spent the night in an adorable little city and our hotel was right on the beach. The next day, we drove to Arromanches and visited another museum, where we had a guided tour and learned all about the man-made Mulberry harbor of Arromanches (there are lots of fun facts that I’m more than willing to share if you really want to know). Then we went to Omaha Beach and visited both the American Cemetery and the actual beach. We had beautiful weather the whole time and the whole atmosphere was both wonderfully tranquil and appropriately somber.

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I’ve now officially been in Paris for a month. Even though I’m tempted to write a super long post raving about how spectacular this city is, I think I’ll try something new.

A few French quirks:

• When you’re sitting at the table during a meal, it’s considered rude to put one or both of your hands in your lap at any point (even if everyone is done eating). It doesn’t sound like much, but try to go a whole meal without letting either one of your hands leave the table… it’s a bit tricky.
• You go to the grocery store every day for your food. Buying food in bulk is rarely done, and it’s impossible to buy a pack of sandwich meat that has more than 4 slices in it.
• Never put your bread on your plate. Even if there is no tablecloth, always keep you bread on the table.
• French people don’t own clothes dryers. Many, like my host family, have large drying racks. In my home, the rack hangs from the kitchen ceiling. (Read: if you don’t time it right, your host dad and brother get to stare at your drying underwear while they eat breakfast.) (more…)

I’m currently in week two of classes at my program center. I’m taking five classes, and after lots of thought I’ve decided not to take any classes at an outside university. Even though the experience would be valuable, the good courses offered don’t work with my schedule or require five to six hours a week (when I could take program classes instead that meet only three hours a week). I currently have no classes on Fridays and am enjoying taking fun politics and culture classes that really don’t have anything to do with my majors (I’m not getting any major credit while abroad, so my classes are pretty much just for fun). All of my classes are entirely in French, and even though it’s difficult I can tell that language ability is improving a lot. Most of my classes are pretty easy, but I have one or two that are going to be a little intense (multiple oral presentations and writing a long research paper in French = frightening). Unfortunately, I have to wake up at 7:15 every day for class because of early classes and my commute. But I don’t go out very late during the beginning of the week, so it’s not too bad.

As far as my host family goes, they are still very nice… my host mom is very good about helping me improve my French and always tells me how nice I am. I bond with the son over action movies and rap music (I don’t blame you for laughing, but that’s pretty much all we have even remotely in common). I think I now understand about 10% of my host dad’s political lectures (as opposed to the 5% that I understood before) and he’s always friendly to me (even though I periodically overhear him ranting about things when I’m in my room… I think he has a bit of a temper). There’s a good amount of awkwardness that comes along with being in a homestay, but after swapping awkward stories with other students in my program, I know I’m not alone. My family has also had lots of relatives visiting the last couple of weeks, which has meant lots of big formal dinners that are both fun and terrifying.

In between classes I’ve been getting to know the city and spending time doing homework in various parks and gardens while the weather’s still nice. We’ve had a little bit of rain, which made things kind of miserable, so now I’m determined to make the most out of days with good weather. Our program just delivered the free Louvre pass we get for the whole semester, so I know I’ll be starting to spend a lot of time there. I also am going on two program-sponsored trips to Versailles and Normandy, so life will soon get pretty busy.

Oh, and I posted some pictures in my photo gallery from the first couple of weeks here, so take a look!

Last Friday thankfully marked the end of my week-long intensive French course. Even though we didn’t have homework and I spent all the afternoons and evenings doing cool things (exploring Paris, Seine River fancy dinner cruise with my program, seeing Paris by open-air buses, etc.), I’m glad it’s over. And with the weekend came a whole bunch of cool things that kept me very busy. The title of this post pretty much sums up my weekend, but for more details, read on…

Once a year France hosts “Les Journées du Patrimoine,” a nation-wide heritage celebration in which many government buildings and private homes that are usually closed are opened to the public. Museums and other public buildings are free, and many set up special exhibits. It lasts for two days, and I spent a good part of Saturday and Sunday running around Paris trying to see the best sights. I went with friends the first morning to “le Sénat,” the huge government building located in the Luxembourg Gardens and walked through some of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever seen. It was awesome to see the actual rooms in which the French government conducts its business. We then set off for another site, but happened to stumble across a gigantic technoparade in the process. Yes, technoparade. Apparently once a year Paris has a huge technoparade that draws tens of thousands of people and lasts for about six hours. The parade organizers claimed 600,000 attended this year, the police countered that it was only 15,000. Either way, there was a mass of people. Now you might ask, what exactly is a technoparade? A technoparade consists of a series of trucks, each of which holds about 30 super-excited teenagers dressed outrageously while continuously dancing to the techno music that’s blaring from their individual truck. Every truck has its own DJ, plays its own music, and is separated from the truck behind it by a mass of about 100-150 people who are marching/dancing/going crazy as they follow the truck in front of them. The sidewalks are equally packed, and groups of intoxicated and/or body-painted shirtless guys climb onto the roof of every available phone booth, parked van, or recycling dumpster to dance and shout and enjoy the glory of techno music. The noise is deafening, the neon-colored hairspray is abundant, the police clad in riot gear maintain their vigil, and the whole thing is so amazing that it makes you temporarily like techno so much that you’re just compelled to join in for about an hour. Hey, when in Paris…

After our fun but somewhat exhausting technoparade experience, we eventually made it to l’Hôtel de Ville and got to see a whole other set of government officials’ offices, council chambers, and assembly rooms. Part of me now wants to be a French politician just so I could go to work every day in these ancient, ornate, beautiful buildings. (more…)

[I apologize in advance for the length of this post...]

Just in case you were wondering, I haven’t fallen into the Seine or off of the Eiffel Tower or anything… it’s just that my host family doesn’t have an internet connection at all right now (they said something about something being broken, but I couldn’t understand). There aren’t any internet cafés near me in my suburb, the IES center computer lab was closed until yesterday, and my laptop is way too heavy to lug around downtown Paris.

So pretty much the short version is this: The trip here was fine, but it was a bit of a language shock when I arrived; I only spoke French with my host family, pretty much all of our orientation was in French, and the program leaders want us to speak French with each other (a rule that we actually follow a good portion of the time). So, if I don’t come back with decent French, there’s something wrong with me. The sister who welcomed me was really nice (she invited me to lunch with her and her daughter the first day), and the son with Down syndrome who lives here is cool. We watch action movies together, but it’s really hard to understand him because of both the French factor and his speech impediment. I haven’t met my host mom yet because she comes back from a trip this Thursday. The 30-something daughter who’s staying with us is nice, but we don’t talk that much. The house isn’t the most social atmosphere, but the family is friendly and the area is really nice.

I live just outside of Paris in the suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. It’s about a 45 minute commute to where I have class, which is a little annoying, but it’s shorter than it could be. Because of the commute, I’m getting to know the Metro system pretty well and have even been mistaken as Parisian a couple of times (until I spoke, of course ). I have a wonderfully clear view of the Eiffel Tower both on my way into and out of Paris, which is awesome. Sometimes after wandering around for a few hours it begins to feel like I’m just in some big city, but one look at the Eiffel Tower and I remember, “Wow… I’m in Paris.” (more…)

After coming back from Africa, I spent a couple of months this summer working at Elizabeth House, a shelter for pregnant, homeless women. The internship was through a program CMC has in which the school pays me to work for a non-profit. It’s a really cool idea, considering most non-profits can’t afford to hire paid interns. My official title was “Development Intern,” and I spent most of my time doing grant work (research and report-writing) with the Elizabeth House grant writer.

My internship ended about halfway through August, and now I’m getting ready to study abroad in France! I leave for Paris on September 5 and will be gone through December. I’ll be living with a host family and all of my classes will be in French. I’m really excited about the next couple of months and will be posting (fairly) regularly on this site about my time in France. Also, feel free to send me emails… I love getting them and will definitely respond to you!