Back in Boston. Yep. No longer in Paris. Nope.
Highlight of the trip: Being a terrorist threat at London Heathrow Airport. Just a couple suggestions to readers: don't ever leave your passport on an airplane during a connecting flight, and don't ever, EVER go through doors that are marked Exit Only. You will be interrogated by many security officials and you will have to be personally escorted through the airport by some very scary people.
But nonetheless, it does admittedly feel great to see all of my friends and family. And cheap mexican food. I can't explain how much I missed cheap mexican food. It just doesn't exist in Europe. For whatever reason, Europeans see mexican food as "exotic" and therefore can justify selling a burrito for 25 euro.
So, yeah, we'll see how being back goes. I'm taking my parents to the Sox game tomorrow which isn't a bad way to spend my second night back.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
south of france
Ahhhhhh, the French Riviera. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
But seriously. I'm in love with the French Riviera. It was easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. All I wanted to do while I was there was finagle some sort of boating job or something and live there forever. I would work during the day, fish at night, catch my dinner and breakfast and be perfectly content just living right on the pebbly beaches for the rest of my life. Growing up in Delaware where going to the beach, vacationing at the beach, spending the majority of the summer in the sand, etc is pretty much the extent of the lifestyle, I naturally felt very comfortable and at home at the beach. But the joy and content that I felt in the south of France was on a whole new level. Indescribable, even.
The Mediterranean was absolutely breath-taking. The water was a beautiful deep, azure blue color (hmm, I wonder why that part of France is called the Azure Coast?), and as crystal clear as I've ever seen water. I've seen the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean a couple times in my life, and I would even go as far as to say the water was even prettier in France than there. It was much colder as well. That was perhaps my favorite part of all. It reminded me fondly of all my summers at the beach in Delaware, swimming in the cold, cold, cold Atlantic Ocean. The Caribbean is much to warm for my taste. I hate swimming in what feels like gross bath water. Blech.
I'm happy to report that the vacation was an absolute success. As I think I've mentioned before, I had always planned on taking a trip to the South soon as the weather got warm, even if I had to take a couple days and go by myself. No matter what, it was something I was going to do. I casually mentioned it to a couple people, Arianna included, just in case anyone else was interested in laying on the beach with me at the end of the semester. As time went on, I figured out when I wanted to go, Arianna was for sure in too, and we'd even done a fair amount of initial research. We figured we'd send out a mass email to all of our friends here to see if they wanted to tag along and surprisingly, about 95% of our friends wanted to go! It was fantastic! Never would I have imagined that so many people would be up for the trip, but I suppose that when other people plan your entire vacation for you and all you have to do is show up with money in your hand, who wouldn't jump on board?
Highlights of the trip include the food, the weather, our hostel (we stayed at the Villa St. Exupery in Nice), and the people. As apparent as it was that the citizens of the South hated the tourists as much as Parisians do, it's always nice to get away from the Parisian mentality and just drop back a gear and enjoy life.
But seriously. I'm in love with the French Riviera. It was easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. All I wanted to do while I was there was finagle some sort of boating job or something and live there forever. I would work during the day, fish at night, catch my dinner and breakfast and be perfectly content just living right on the pebbly beaches for the rest of my life. Growing up in Delaware where going to the beach, vacationing at the beach, spending the majority of the summer in the sand, etc is pretty much the extent of the lifestyle, I naturally felt very comfortable and at home at the beach. But the joy and content that I felt in the south of France was on a whole new level. Indescribable, even.
The Mediterranean was absolutely breath-taking. The water was a beautiful deep, azure blue color (hmm, I wonder why that part of France is called the Azure Coast?), and as crystal clear as I've ever seen water. I've seen the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean a couple times in my life, and I would even go as far as to say the water was even prettier in France than there. It was much colder as well. That was perhaps my favorite part of all. It reminded me fondly of all my summers at the beach in Delaware, swimming in the cold, cold, cold Atlantic Ocean. The Caribbean is much to warm for my taste. I hate swimming in what feels like gross bath water. Blech.
I'm happy to report that the vacation was an absolute success. As I think I've mentioned before, I had always planned on taking a trip to the South soon as the weather got warm, even if I had to take a couple days and go by myself. No matter what, it was something I was going to do. I casually mentioned it to a couple people, Arianna included, just in case anyone else was interested in laying on the beach with me at the end of the semester. As time went on, I figured out when I wanted to go, Arianna was for sure in too, and we'd even done a fair amount of initial research. We figured we'd send out a mass email to all of our friends here to see if they wanted to tag along and surprisingly, about 95% of our friends wanted to go! It was fantastic! Never would I have imagined that so many people would be up for the trip, but I suppose that when other people plan your entire vacation for you and all you have to do is show up with money in your hand, who wouldn't jump on board?
Highlights of the trip include the food, the weather, our hostel (we stayed at the Villa St. Exupery in Nice), and the people. As apparent as it was that the citizens of the South hated the tourists as much as Parisians do, it's always nice to get away from the Parisian mentality and just drop back a gear and enjoy life.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
End of classes and more France/US contrasts
We’re honing in on our last few weeks as genuine Parisians and I couldn’t be sadder.
Saturday was Fete de travail, aka Labor Day, throughout France. Experiencing a French labor day was perhaps one of the biggest culture shocks that I have experienced so far. Labor Day in France is nothing like Labor Day in the States. For one, everyone actually has the holiday off, as opposed to businesses in States where only corporate industries, private industries, governmental industries and any other cushy white-collar jobs get to have Labor Day off. The laborers, on the other hand, are forced to continue to labor on what justifiably should their day of reprieve.
France, on the other hand, grants everyone the day off, especially the laborers. Having lived here for several months now I think I understand the system well enough to knowingly assume that if the government doesn’t allow everything the right to a day off all hell would break loose, most likely in the form of violent protests. While I was slightly inconvenienced this morning when I couldn’t find a boulangerie to get my sandwich crudités thon, a large part of me was really happy to see that all of my favorite bakers had given themselves the day off. Bakers have got to be the hardest working individuals within the borders of l’hexagone, getting up at the crack of dawn to begin baking bread and whatnot, and really not stopping until after dinnertime. So, for that, I am willing to get my lazy ass up to make my sandwich myself for once.
Taking my typical, Saturday afternoon lazy stroll through the Bastille, I noted something rather different from anything I had ever seen in Bastille: HUGE mass protests with thousands of protesters, spectators and the like. Every street that branched off of the round-about was blocked off to traffic, police were EVERYWHERE and anyone with a microphone was shouting some spiel about how the government doesn't control them, how the workweek must be shortened, etc etc. One of the larger groups of protesters even promised a social revolution come July 13 (France's 4th of July, for those who don't know). I think that group was the one that intrigued me the most. Their message and presentation of said message kind of came off as crazed radicalism, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm considering making it back to the City of Light for Bastille Day just to see what kind of hell these radicals can raise.
In other news, classes are finally over! Not that I didn't enjoy all of my classes (sort of, heh), knowing that it's the beginning of May and classes are still in session and finals are even further away is incredibly annoying. I didn't realize how spoiled I had become by attending Northeastern and having spring classes end so early, but I reeeeally don't like having to be in classes this late. My attention span and overall interest in learning has been slowly dissipating for several weeks now and it's getting harder and harder to pretend to be interested in class. Not to mention that my thoughts have recently been almost entirely consumed by my impending vacation-within-a-vacation to Nice in a few days! Words simply cannot describe how stoked I am at the anticipation of this short trip to the Cote d'Azur.
That brings up another interesting point: Reading Day. AUP gives its students a "Reading Day" before finals week starts. Except that it's not just one day, it's about a week. Yet AUP still calls it Reading Day.
I just don't get AUP sometimes. They try so hard to come off as a respectable institution of higher education and then they go and do something like pretend a week is just a day, or making spring break 2+ weeks so that we have "more time to travel".... Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to returning to normalcy, like, for example, a place where a day is just a day and a week is a week.
Who really needs a whole week to "prepare" for finals, anyway? Talking to friends and other students, half of their profs aren't even assigning real finals anyway. And all those term papers that snuck up on us towards the end of the semester are all due by the last day of classes, so really though, what does the AUP administration really expect us to do with that "Reading Day"?
I'll stop the fashionable AUP rant there because I'm almost finished dealing with their shenanigans and I don't want to put a damper on my end-of-classes good mood.
Up next: Nice and beyond!
Saturday was Fete de travail, aka Labor Day, throughout France. Experiencing a French labor day was perhaps one of the biggest culture shocks that I have experienced so far. Labor Day in France is nothing like Labor Day in the States. For one, everyone actually has the holiday off, as opposed to businesses in States where only corporate industries, private industries, governmental industries and any other cushy white-collar jobs get to have Labor Day off. The laborers, on the other hand, are forced to continue to labor on what justifiably should their day of reprieve.
France, on the other hand, grants everyone the day off, especially the laborers. Having lived here for several months now I think I understand the system well enough to knowingly assume that if the government doesn’t allow everything the right to a day off all hell would break loose, most likely in the form of violent protests. While I was slightly inconvenienced this morning when I couldn’t find a boulangerie to get my sandwich crudités thon, a large part of me was really happy to see that all of my favorite bakers had given themselves the day off. Bakers have got to be the hardest working individuals within the borders of l’hexagone, getting up at the crack of dawn to begin baking bread and whatnot, and really not stopping until after dinnertime. So, for that, I am willing to get my lazy ass up to make my sandwich myself for once.
Taking my typical, Saturday afternoon lazy stroll through the Bastille, I noted something rather different from anything I had ever seen in Bastille: HUGE mass protests with thousands of protesters, spectators and the like. Every street that branched off of the round-about was blocked off to traffic, police were EVERYWHERE and anyone with a microphone was shouting some spiel about how the government doesn't control them, how the workweek must be shortened, etc etc. One of the larger groups of protesters even promised a social revolution come July 13 (France's 4th of July, for those who don't know). I think that group was the one that intrigued me the most. Their message and presentation of said message kind of came off as crazed radicalism, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm considering making it back to the City of Light for Bastille Day just to see what kind of hell these radicals can raise.
In other news, classes are finally over! Not that I didn't enjoy all of my classes (sort of, heh), knowing that it's the beginning of May and classes are still in session and finals are even further away is incredibly annoying. I didn't realize how spoiled I had become by attending Northeastern and having spring classes end so early, but I reeeeally don't like having to be in classes this late. My attention span and overall interest in learning has been slowly dissipating for several weeks now and it's getting harder and harder to pretend to be interested in class. Not to mention that my thoughts have recently been almost entirely consumed by my impending vacation-within-a-vacation to Nice in a few days! Words simply cannot describe how stoked I am at the anticipation of this short trip to the Cote d'Azur.
That brings up another interesting point: Reading Day. AUP gives its students a "Reading Day" before finals week starts. Except that it's not just one day, it's about a week. Yet AUP still calls it Reading Day.
I just don't get AUP sometimes. They try so hard to come off as a respectable institution of higher education and then they go and do something like pretend a week is just a day, or making spring break 2+ weeks so that we have "more time to travel".... Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to returning to normalcy, like, for example, a place where a day is just a day and a week is a week.
Who really needs a whole week to "prepare" for finals, anyway? Talking to friends and other students, half of their profs aren't even assigning real finals anyway. And all those term papers that snuck up on us towards the end of the semester are all due by the last day of classes, so really though, what does the AUP administration really expect us to do with that "Reading Day"?
I'll stop the fashionable AUP rant there because I'm almost finished dealing with their shenanigans and I don't want to put a damper on my end-of-classes good mood.
Up next: Nice and beyond!
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