In Europe Part 1: Paris & Brussels

I've been wandering around a few major cities in Europe this past week and a half. I started off with Paris. I have been to Paris a few times before however, this time was particularly awesome since my Dad was with me. We visited all the important sites: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. We also made our way to a few other sites like Baby The Stars Shine Bright, Jim Morrison's grave, and The American Legion in Paris. Sadly our first few days there were rainy. I naturally used this as an excuse to buy myself a BTSSB umbrella... I also grabbed myself a pair of socks and a little bag.



Once the lack of umbrella problem was fixed, it stopped raining. I'm certainly not complaining about that. While there was a lot of new things discovered for my Dad in his first days in Europe, Paris provided me with no new culture shocking experiences other than French Pizza not being all terrible. I suppose the one thing that really did surprise me the gigantic crowd around the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.



Across from the Mona Lisa is a huge painting probably 100 times the size of the Mona Lisa. It was strange to see so many people flocking around such a small painting while behind them there was a great painting that most people wouldn't even be able to fit in their homes. While the paintings were great and all, I really prefered the statues and the basement where you could see some of the original infrastructure of the building dating back to 1100 AD if I remember correctly.


How Shocking!

From Paris we went to Brussels. I was rather surprised at how small the place was. We saw just about everything in one afternoon. The Grand Place was very beautiful, especially at night.



Brussels is also home to the best ice cream I have ever had. I had Speculoos, vanilla, and straciatella ice cream. While the vanilla was amazing, the fact that Speculoos ice cream had Speculoos in it made it my favorite. While straciatella is one of my favorite candies, I was disappointed by the ice cream because while it was still great, it just didn't compare to the other two ice creams or actually eating straciatella. We also made our way to the Manneken Pis which was sadly not dressed up. I heard a tour guide telling its group that when it is dressed up it pees beer instead of water as usual.



While in Brussels, we also went to Autoworld. While I'm not a big car person, it was a really neat little museum. Everything was in chronological order. As someone who alphabetizes anything with text, I appreciate order. They also had prototypes and working models of several more recent cars such as those adorable little smart cars you see everywhere (at least in Europe). They also had a few old carriages such as Napoleon's wedding carriage. It was quite an impressive collection of cars and motorcycles (among a few other vehicles). My personal favorite was the Amphibicar from the 1970's that you could actually use as a boat in addition to driving it on the road. I've seen the tour bus/boats that do this too, but I think the idea that this car being available to the general public was really neat. I wonder if you needed a boating license to go cruising in the water with it...



As someone who doesn't eat mussels or drink beer, I was quite fond of Brussels despite it not having a whole lot to do outside of bars and museums. It's a nice little place although the variety of languages being spoke can be confusing. I, myself, was never sure whether to speak to people in English or in French. I did get to see a man that was too drunk to move sleep in the middle of a somewhat busy street. I thought he was dead at first... Then the driver got out of his car and moved the drunk man to the sidewalk and continued on his way. I loved how none of this seemed to be anything but commonplace here. In part 2, I'll be talking about the second half of my trip through Europe to both Amsterdam and London.

1600 Pandas Manifestation in Besançon, France

One of the coolest things I've seen while here in France surprisingly took place right in the very town I'm staying in. I'm talking about the 1600 Pandas Manifestation that is taking place this year throughout France. As I'm sure we all know, the French love to go on strike. Everyone loves Pandas. Leave it to France to combine the two. On April 1st 2010, La Place de Revolution in Besak was the home of 1600 little panda statues and I loved it.



So many pandas!

The "Panda Strike" is meant to raise awareness for wildlife preservation. The 1600 pandas, which were all hand made with paper maché and sponge painted (also by hand), represent the estimated 1600 pandas remaining in the world today. This campaign is being put on all throughout France, obviously including the city of Besançon where I am living right now. It was definitely quite the sight to see.




Panda Love!

You were also able to buy the pandas at 50 euros each. While I really wanted to take home a panda, I really was curious if they had extra pandas to replace the ones that were bought... Now I didn't count them, but if someone buys one you don't have 1600 pandas anymore...I suppose we will never know. While I didn't buy a panda (I'm not even sure I'd have been able to return to the USA with it) I did buy a t shirt and a "I Panda my Planet" bracelet. Sadly, the bracelet is really just a ribbon, but it still claims to "panda" its planet.



These guards are the real reason I don't have a panda statue in my life right now.

In actuality, I really wanted to pull the "cute American girl" card to get a panda to take home. I never actually tried although I did get them to let Amy, another American girl, and I to take pictures in with the pandas. And while I'm currently writing from Brussels, and have spent the last three days in Paris, this event still stands out as one of the very best I've seen in my time here.



Come to the USA for me sometime little Pandas!

Il ne reste que 1600 pandas dans le monde. Moi inclus!

Gotta Catch 'em All...

I find it strange how much I like to collect things. I don't think I would ever call it a hobby or anything, however I've been coming to terms with the fact that I almost subconsciously collect things. Even as a kid, I enjoyed my coin collection, was jealous that my sister had a stamp collection, and had quite the Pokemon card collection too (I know I was and probably still am quite the melvin). Thinking back to it though, there were several occasions where I was offered great rare cards if I would have been willing to part with several of my cards. It was probably quite stupid to say no, but I couldn't bare to get rid of cards that I only had one of. I've noticed that this is something that has carried over into my Magic playing. On occasion I've taken a crappy rare over an okay common simply because I didn't have that one yet. I originally started playing Magic to actually play. While playing is still a lot of fun, I don't buy packs so I can build decks, I build them in hopes for something new. You can imagine my disappointment when I pulled two of the same rares at this last pre-release. They were pretty sweet rares, but I didn't care... I wanted something new... I'm glad I've got some sort of self control or this would carry over into lolita... I'm pretty sure I'm getting at least one set of eyes rolling at that statement but I'm serious. Every time I see cheap brand on EGL_Comm_Sales I want to buy it just so I can have it. It doesn't even matter if I like it or not. I'm trying to employ that whole "Only buy it if you LOVE it" rule, but it's hard.

My studying in France has brought along a new bump in the road as far as collecting goes. Not only do I want to buy every book that sounds even remotely interesting, I have also come across easter eggs with Hello Kitty figures in them. I am always disappointed to be unable to find decent reading material in French while in the States but really when it comes down to it, I realize I don't want to read shit in French... Reading in French feels like work, whether it's easy or not.

After opening my first box of Hello Kitty eggs, I thought to myself how I'm in a way lucky to not be studying in Japan instead. Gashapon toys would probably be my weakness. As if readily available lolita clothing wouldn't have been a big enough drain on my wallet. There were 24 different Hello Kitty figurines to collect inside these little chocolate eggs. If Monoprix hadn't sold out of them, I'm sure I'd have more than 15 figures right now... I did however see the Transformers version of the eggs today... I walked away though... I've never even watched Transformers, but something about finding Megatron inside an egg was just appealing.


Picture very much related. (It's my Hello Kitty Army. Be scared.)

Breaking the Silence

It's been quite some time since I've done an actual blog post. I'm currently studying in France and it's been quite the experience so far. I don't really know where I want to start, but it only seems logical to start at the beginning.

I got here on the 11th. Aside from some minor annoyances caused the other Americans not wanting to take my advice once we got to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris the trip to the Gare de Lyon cost a bit more than I would have liked it too. It also took 3 times as long as my methods but that's not what this is about, however, it took me 3 1/2 hours to get to JFK by car and then 8 hours to get to CDG by plane so I wanted to minimize any further travel time as much as possible... I suppose this is where I will start complaining about my program through SUNY New Paltz. While I was still in the US, their study abroad office was just inches above useless. I only say inches above because I did actually get the papers I needed in time, but with absolutely no time to spare. I drove 2 1/2 hours to their campus for the 3 hour orientation. That is something I regret somewhat. While sitting there for 3 hours with nothing to show for it, the other Americans told me more in 5 minutes than I had found out from SUNY New Paltz during the previous months. They weren't even able to provide us with an address where we would be staying before we left. As a matter of fact they told us to ask a cab driver to take us to Batiment Stendahl, they should know where it is. No address. No description. Luckily my cab driver knew how to get here but the other Americans weren't as lucky which tacked and additional few euros on to their trip. Once we got their, the people at that building weren't even sure who we were. It took some explaining before they finally figured that we must be the people on some tiny list they had. I'll spare you the nightmare that getting my visa was for now but getting here was a bit of a nightmare.

After going through two weeks of orientation to learn about the town we had to take a placement test at the CLA. The test consisted of three parts: Written comprehension and expression (grammar was also in this section), oral comprehension, and an interview. From this test they would place you in either level A,B1,B2,C1, or C1+. The test isn't too difficult. I felt that I did poorly on the interview out of some slight nervousness. I also know I made some mistakes on the oral comprehension part due to a confusing answer sheet. Too bad, so sad though. I ended up in B2. More specifically B2.5. I was hoping for C1 and just missed it but I think that everything turned out fine since I ended up with mostly awesome teachers which doesn't seem to be everyone's luck. The classes as a whole seem to be quite easy. Oral comprehension always seemed to be my weak point though, which is what I think kept me from getting into C1. While I can understand people perfectly fine, I can't understand recorded speech to save my life. I suppose that's why I'm here though. If it weren't for that I may have tried to go up to C1. While they say that changing levels is uncommon, there have been many people who have switched up and down levels. Our class had at least 3 switch out and 3 people switch in. I suppose I've decided to let myself enjoy the break though. I'm used to working on top of a much more busy schedule than I have now. As long as New Paltz doesn't manage to screw up putting the grades into my transcript correctly, all will be well. I don't have my fingers crossed though. Anyway, I suppose that's the beginning. I'll try to make this a more regular thing...

My French Hospital Experience

I feel like I've been keeping extremely busy lately. I've just gotten back to the US after spending two weeks in France. My France trip was great although I did get to see a portion of France that one generally does their best to avoid while vacationing, the hospitals. I think the reason I ended up in the hospital are best summed up by the words of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. "I fell down some stairs." In the end, I blame the Doc Marten's that I was walking down the stairs to retrieve. I hurt one of my toes and thought it may have been broken. Knowing that a hospital can't really do anything for a hurt toe, I simply asked my host family for some ice and maybe something to tape it up. They however insisted that we go to the hospital. After telling them it was really not necessary, I finally gave in a went to grab my wallet and coat. Sadly, I forgot my camera. French hospitals are quite different from hospitals in America.

According to my host mother, this hospital was a quite old and a new one was being built to replace it, even so, it was still rather surprising to me being used to the hospitals in America that are so shiny and clean that you could probably eat off the floor. The first thing that caught my attention was the lack of any sort of parking lot. We parked around the block and walked to a closed gate where we had to page the nurse. The gate was already opened a bit so we came in and the nurse met us at the door. I'm not sure if this is typical of the daytime shifts as well or just the night shift. She escorted us to a room where she asked me for my information. Rather than attempting to explain my life story in French I just handed her my driver's license. She filled out her bit of paperwork and then said the doctor would be in momentarily. Being used to the American system I expected to see the doctor at some point in the next hour...not the next two minutes. I was pleasantly shocked when the doctor really did show up in just a moment.

Unlike the nurse, the doctor wasn't the friendliest of people... I suppose this is typical of American doctors as well. He decided I needed to have x rays. The nurse then escorted me to the room with the x ray machine where there were some chairs to wait in. I started to sit down and before I landed in the chair the x ray technician had already come out to get me. The strangest part about this whole trip was not that that I was not told to use a wheelchair, they let me walk to have my x rays taken, but that the x ray room had thin walls. Here, I believe they need a certain ridiculous amount of steel in the walls, floors, and ceilings of the rooms where the machines are. I was also not given one of those lead aprons to wear. No complaints there ...I don't want kids anyway ...But it was still an odd moment for me when he just turned around to snap the photos. He didn't even have to leave the vicinity of the x ray like they do here. A few moments later he handed me the x rays and sent me back to my room and within seconds the doctor came back too.

The doctor took a few glances at the x ray and told me that my "finger" was not broken in English which was cute considering it was my toe we were there for. He left and sent the nurse in to wrap it up and then sent us on our way without any sort of charge. I must say that I agree with the French medical system. It would be nice if we jumped on that bandwagon pretty quick. From what I understand, government run health care is not as nice in places like England and Canada but if our system would take a few tips from the French I think it would be a huge step up from our current health care predicament. It was nice to walk into a hospital for the first time ever and not have to think about how I (or my parents) will be able to pay for this when its all done and over. Once again, I look forward to the day America can do the same for its people.