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Published: January 29th 2011
Le Tour Eiffel
from the plane. It was still really far away.WHOA! It's been AGES since I've written. To all of my dedicated fans, I sincerely apologize. To be honest I have been going to a lot of parties trying to meet as many people as possible. It's been a great success so far. Most of this is due, in part, to my new friend Anna. She was introduced to me by guess who: Titou. He had met her at a party and she had told him that she loved America and that she also happened to be from Italy. Peeeeeerrfect. She only lives a floor above me and so I left her a note on her door and we've been hanging out a lot since then. A quick description of her: she's from Padova (near Venice), she's tiny (shorter than me), with long brown hair and green eyes. Her English is really good because she spent a year in Ohio as an exchange student for high school. She lets me practice my Italian on her and gives really good critiques which help a lot. Now on to more specifics:
Last Saturday (not today) me, Jonathan, Marissa, and Ellen went on a bus tour which was really a pub crawl of
Le Tour Eiffel 2
Another view. You can barely see the tower. Nice. It was so legit! We started at a bar in Vieux Nice called Jazz Rock (it was supposed to be an American bar...it wasn't) and then got on the bus to head to the next stop. The bus we were in was like a charter bus with t.v.s and everything. While en route to the pubs we got to watch American music videos (French music is not that great...even the French admit it) while that was happening we got free shots of vodka and punch. There was even a guy going around with one of those things you use to kill weeds full of a drink called sex on the beach. Then we got energy drinks. It was amazing....and FREE! WHOOP WHOOP! The next bar was called Mynthe (Mint spelled wierd in French) and there we went along with the name of the bar and got shots of this liqueur called Get 27 (it rhymes in French) that tastes like mint. It was really good and I HATE mint. We stayed there for an hour then went to the last place which was called L'Enfer (Hell) I think. This was a dance club and we stayed here until 3am.
Charles de Gaulle
the airport from the plane I danced my booty off and had so much fun!!! At 3 we all got back on the bus and headed home. We couldn't catch the bus at 430am so we went and got kebab for breakfast. It was literally the most delicious thing I've ever eaton. What it is is shaved halal (this is a special way Arabs prepare their meat) beef with lettuce tomato onion and white sauce all in a wrap. Greatest thing ever created is what they SHOULD call it. YUM! By the time we finished we could start walking towards the bus stop and caught the first one at like 630am. We looked like hell on the bus but didn't care because we had an amazing night. By the time I got home and took a shower the sun was coming up and it was really beautiful.
This past Monday was my first day of classes. Worst day of my life. I was really nervous to begin with and when I went into my first Italian class I quickly found out I was desperately unprepared for this semester. They only have 3 years for a bachelor's degree here and I thought I was about
La Neige
There was snow in Paris! EW at the level of a second year since I had had almost two years of Italian so far. WRONG! I was drowning in a sea of babble. Everyone could talk so much better and FASTER than I could. I mean I will one day be that good (duh) but it was not Monday for sure. So after I was really embarrassed I went on a quest to find the schedule for the year below me. Tuesday was no better. The classes were still too difficult. Let me give you an example: There is a two part class called theme and version. In these classes you translate texts from one language to another. Ok so the ones for Italian are from French to Italian and vice versa. This is really difficult for my brain because I think of these two languages as foreign languages so it takes me twice as long to compute from Italian to French or the other way around. To top it all off my vocabulary in Italian is very minimal compared to French so I never know what the Italian side is talking about...The litterature classes are even worse because the lady that teaches them talks faster
The Hostel
This was the door to my room in the hostel than a New Yorker. The majority of people in my classes are girls and they just don't get respect for the teachers. They seriously talk ALL THE TIME. So not only do I have to concentrate extra hard to understand the world's fastest speaker but I also have to drown out the constant hum of who slept with who and what this person is doing after class, etc. Craziness. I found small solace in a different theme/version class. This one was French to English and vice versa. It was laughably easy compared to any of my Italian classes. I guess I really like being a big fish in a small pond...but then again who doesn't?
Tuesday night Anna, Ellen and I went to Akathor for lady's night. Ellen had invited another English speaker too. Her name is Elsie and she goes to Yale but was born in Ghana. She's super cool and loved talking to her and asking her about what it's like to go to an ivy league school.
Wednesday I didn't have class and Marissa and I went to the French Wal-mart called Carrefour to get some pots and pans so we could get our cooking
View
The view from my room at the hostel on. It was so overwhelming. It was in some ways bigger than ours at home. It was wave after wave of stuff. I found the last Harry Potter book in French for only 11 euros. I was going to buy it when I got home but it's like $80 on amazon. So good buy....I also found the book Twilight in French. I just couldn't resist. I also got an all French dictionary which are surprisingly difficult to find at a decent price at home. I also got a French?Italian dictionary to help me with my classes. Marissa and I split the cost of a pot and a skillet which we share as well as some dish soap and sponges. We also got sharp knives and some wooden utensils for cooking. We only have burners to cook with so what we could get was kind of limited. If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned any plates or silverware, etc it's because we're "borrowing" that kind of stuff from the cafeteria. We intend to give it back when the semester's over. I mean what would we do with all of that crap anyways when we have to leave??? It's not REALLY stealing.
Don't judge. For food I bought some spaghetti and bolognaise sauce, two boxes of soup, cereal, milk, tea bags, jelly, olive oil and a huge tub of plain yogurt and honey to mix with it. It was cheaper than buying individually wrapped yogurt and I've heard it tastes good. I also got two bottles of red wine that were almost free and kind of tasted like red wine vinegar but were still good. Oh and we also split tupperware for storage. The real quest then began when we had to get all that crap back to our dorms that were 45 minutes bus ride away plus a walk up a mountain and up 4 flights of stairs. Yea, I'm slowly becoming the strongest girl alive. That night right outside our dorm there was a going away party for all of the people in the study abroad program ERASMUS that were going back home after the end of the week. It was really cool because I met a lot of people who were still going to be here this semester. I got to see my new friends Giulia and Alfio too whom I had met the first night I went out
Le Linge
bucket for close pins with Anna which was the Thursday before. They are both from Milano and were some of the ones going home soon. I was sad because they were both so nice! Giulia had to translate a lot for me to Alfio because he only spoke Italian so I would talk to her in French and broken Italian and then she would tell him what I said. Before we said good night she told me I needed to come visit her in Milano. I'm so there.
Thursday was an awful day of classes. I was still trying to find classes that fit my level of Italian and was having little success. The teachers were understanding but couldn't offer me much help. I just decided to take what I thought would be doable for me and be done with it. I can't take anything else like French because I won't get any credit for it since I already finished all of that back home. So I guess what transfers, transfers and what doesn't, doesn't. Tant pis (too bad). After class me and Anna went shopping and she told me what meals were good to make with out kitchen set up. I got
frozen cordon bleu and they're really easy to make/good. I also got nutella, peanuts (which I missed a lot!) and French ramen noodles. I definitely know how to make those. We also got more wine because that night was Giulia's going away party. We all went together to her house and it was packed with Italians (I was in heaven) and we had a great time meeting new people. I met these really awesome girls from Macedonia and this guy who was with them who was from Serbia. They were hilarious. We had to leave the apartment after a while though because the cops came to say we were too loud so we walked to the bars and hung out there until the last bus then went home.
Friday. AKA yesterday. I didn't have class and met up with Ellen downtown for kebabs. We just wandered around talking and laughing. We went to a book store to look for a book that she needed for a class. Then we went to Quick to get a drink and sat in there talking about 90s music. At around 530 I went back to my dorm found out there was yet ANOTHER
party for a friend of Anna's. Her name is Dora and she's from Iceland. She was having a party a her dorm for her birthday. It was really nice because there were more Erasmus people there but ones I hadn't met yet. I talked to Dora's friend Sara who is also from Iceland. She is SUPER cool! Her and I talked for a long time and she told me about how she's living in Denmark and going to school there to be a doctor. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor but she certainly is....she told me about this room of body parts at her school and how it's her favorite room. Ew. Sara decided she was going to bed so I went back to the main room and everyone was about to play this card game. It's called loup-garou which means werewolf. If anyone's played the game mafia before than you know the basics of loup-garou. It's basically the villagers against the wolves. The wolves want to kill the villagers and vice versa. Everyone gets a card that only they can see so no one knows who is who. Everyone closes their eyes and then the wolves
La jeunesse
More of the hostel open their eyes and silently pick someone to die and then after everyone else opens their eyes everyone decides who the wolves are and kill someone. It was a lot of fun and I got a lot of good practice with my French. In the wee hours of the morning I headed home and we to bed until around for 4pm this afternoon.
The day trip to Antibes we had planned never happened because Jonathan was sick then we just kept saying we would go then we wouldn't go. I'm sure it will happen eventually though. Tomorrow I plan to go with Ellen to something called Manda Lou Paillassou. It has to do with tossing stuff in the air with blankets. I hope it's interesting. After that at 15h we're going to a rugby game. I have no idea how the game works but I looked on the website and all the players for Nice look hot so I'm interested. Erin (my friend in Chile) is going on a week long trip to Argentina and Uruguay. Good luck girlfirend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As for me...I'm going to go watch a movie that my lovely boyfriend put on my hard drive and pass-out
The Bathroom
shared bathroom somewhere along the way. Good night to all of my fans. This one is for you ; )
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Galadriel
non-member comment
ummmmmm
Its really a good thing you are a neat freak!! Otherwise you would never fit in that tiny apartment. I am so mad that you get to go to far away lands and hang out with beautiful people. Thats ok when you are rich I will come to your parties and meet all the smart beautiful people and live vicariously through you. Hang in there and you will be just fine in your studies cause you are one of those smart beautiful people too. Love you