Racism in France

Today was fun! After class, my friend Wendy and I went and searched the town for iced coffee (super hard to find, by the way).  We eventually succeeded and let me tell you, the caffeine was tres necessaire.  We finished our coffees, went to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and pop, and headed back here to go swimming.  It was a nice, relaxing afternoon.  One of Mme.'s neighbors came over, who is about her age, and she was telling us how her 19-year-old daughter is dating a black guy, and I think she is living with him.  One of her sons is living with his girlfriend too, I think she said he was 26.  After lecturing Wendy on I on the dangers of living together prior to marriage, she proceeded to warn against marrying outside of our race.  She not only denounced dating black people, but also Arabs, who are "le pier" or "the worst."  Having had enough, I told her I was Arabic and climbed out of the pool.  She tried to ameliorate the situation by saying, not Arabs, just Muslims.  To make her more uncomfortable I lied that I was Muslim.  It was funny.  I brought it up at dinner, thinking Mme. Cottave would have a more a liberal stance on the situation.  She didn't.  She and the Polish lady began tearing into black people and Arabs.  Fortunately I was done with dinner and retreated to my room to work.  Tomorrow, I have to give a presentation on Le Musee Galliera, which is a museum on Parisien fashion, past and present.  I'm about to go practice for Mme. right now! Then bedtime for me.  I don't do so well with getting up at 7 a.m. on a regular basis.  Bon soir!

Staying Fit in France

I forgot to blog about it then, so I'm doing it now, but I went on a really long run (4 km - long for me, at least!) last week and noticed some strange stuff about exercising in France.  It's bizarre to them, I guess! Everywhere I ran people were staring and men were catcalling like nobody's business.  When I was about a minute from returning to Mme. Cottave's house, a man started shouting at me and asking me why I was running! Apparently, it's true what they say: French women don't exercise.  Unfortunately, they are not as skinny as they are made out to be.  However, I will say that while some of them smell terrible...some of them wear the best perfume!  Leaves me wondering how anyone can smell that good in this kind of weather!

Paris

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a swell weekend, because I know I did! I had a fabulous time with the Nassifs (my cousins) Thursday and Friday and had so much fun with Maureen on Saturday, Sunday, and today.  It was great to catch up with my cousins and spend some one-on-one time with them.  Now that we are all older it's so much easier to relate to each other.  I always feel left out on my mom's side of the family because there is no one my exact age and at the same point as I am in my life, but now it's so much better! Same thing when I go home and visit my siblings.  Anyway some interesting things we did together were eat a really nice seafood place where we met up with their cousin Catherine (Nassif side), who was sooo cute! She grew up in London and has a British accent. It's adorable!  We also went to Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame (both very old Cathedrals).  We also went on a little boat ride and saw some Parisian monuments like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.  Friday night we ate at an American-style restaurant called Hippopotamus.  We had sooo much fun! We ended up laughing a ridiculous amount--to the point where we had a major ab workout! All in all, I had a great time seeing them.  I think the best part was the old-school sleeping arrangement. We had two queen-size beds that were pushed together so we all slept in a row.  Brings back memories!  Because I had done some sight-seeing with the Nassifs, and with my own family two years ago, and also because I am returning to paris August 2- August 8 (probably), Maureen and I decided to make the most of the sales and do some serial shopping.  I got a lot of cool stuff and bought gifts for my brothers and sisters.  Saturday night, Maureen and I had a long, nice dinner in the Latin quarter in an area called St. Michel.  We didn't end up finishing til around 1 a.m.  We decided to go home after that because we were both a little drunk off the bottle of wine we shared and the metro stops running in Paris around 2 a.m.  The next day we had a late lunch at a cute little pizzeria in an area called St. Paul and then we explored the area for some boutiques that her friend recommended we visit.  I almost bought this pair of red jeans but Maureen talked me out of it, probably for the better.  At night we had a bottle of wine at a Moroccan restaurant across the street from Maureen's apartment, and I had a little snack of some appetizer with peppers and feta...it was delicious! Afterwards, we went to an outdoor bar/cafe and just talked and had some more wine.  It was sooo nice to catch up with her because we always have the best talks.  Also, she wanted me to include in the update about her that she has recently lost about 30 pounds, and she already has 3 or 4 French men calling her incessantly to invite her on up-close tours of Paris in their private jets and romantic home-made dinners in their Parisian penthouses.  A.K.A. she is adjusting well! Anyway. It's late for me these days (10:40 p.m.) I'm exhausted from traveling and the busy weekend.  I wanted to throw a shout-out to Anna, who wrote me a letter... A very long one! I loved it. I am writing you back tomorrow.  I love you & I miss you! The rest of you important ones I hope to video chat/skype with sometime this week.  Keep in mind that I have about 6 hours of class a day and a very heavy load of coursework! Not to mention my 7 a.m. alarm clock that goes off every weekday! Despite all these complaints, I am starting to get apprehensive about the end of the program.  While I want to see all of you again as soon as possible... I also feel like this trip is going by way too fast! I'm thinking about coming back here for a year between undergrad and grad school to sharpen my French skills. I don't think six weeks is cutting it! Anyway. Love you all! Have a fabulous week. XOXO.

I'm Baaaack & More Decaffeinated Than Ever Before!

Hey guys! I'm back.  It only took them about 3 days to fix my computer.  Apparently they put in a new logic board, whatever that means.  I got a cool blue plastic cover for it too, so it looks pretty sweet right now.

My schedule right now is super busy, so that's why I haven't had time to update.  For the rest of this week and next week I have class every day from 8:30-12:30 and every other day from 4:30-6:30.  Tons of class! Tons of work.  My two morning classes are vocabulary and grammar, and my afternoon class is the same one I've been taking (with Emily on La Haute Couture).  Emily's class is really the only class that is really hard for me and also, we have the most work in that class.

Fortunately, I get to skip her class tomorrow as I am going to Paris this weekend!!! Yup. I leave tomorrow after my morning classes at 1:20, which means I have to pack tonight and go straight from class to the train station.  It worked out this way because the trip tomorrow is way cheaper than the ones that leave later in the day or on Friday.  Also, I didn't want to get to Paris very late because I don't really know where the train station is relative to downtown.

My mom's sister Ninette is there with her husband and her three kids (my cousins, clearly) and they will be there until Saturday morning.  I'm going to stay with them tomorrow night and Friday night and then I'm going to pay Maureen a visit!!! Maureen arrived in Paris today.  I'm probably going to crash on her couch for Saturday and Sunday.  I can't wait to see her!  Monday is a national holiday here, so I'm not coming back to Grenoble until Monday evening.

Today was really productive.  I had class 8:30-12:30, lunch, bought my train ticket at the SNCF boutique downtown, went back to the University, wrote a 600-word paper in 2.5 hrs for Emily's class.  Yeah, I know we just had one due Monday, don't worry about it.  >:-| Then I went back downtown to pick up my computer.

While I was waiting for the tram to take me downtown, this guy sat next to me at the stop and asked me if I was married. I was like, no. He was like, oh do you have a boyfriend? I was so confused.  Since when do people stop you on the street and question your relationship status?  I put my iPod headphones in and stopped talking to him.  When the tram came he blocked the door and told me I was cute and he'd like to take me out sometime (props to me for understanding his French!).  I told him I was a lesbian (which I learned last weekend is the same word in French), and if he could please move because he was making me late for a date with my girlfriend...

Some thing I've noticed: there are two categories of young people here.  Those with multiple, painful-looking facial piercings who dress like punks and have really bad hair (think Pete Wentz), and those who are like 18 and married.  So, basically if you are under 25 and you live here, you are either a Joel Madden-wannabe or a Kevin Jonas- wannabe.  Just today, I sat on the bus next to a girl with a dyed black mullet wearing a Slipknot t-shirt.  It was all I could do to keep from wondering aloud...who told her that was cute?

Anyway, the life I've settled into here is drastically different from the life I have in Ann Arbor.  I've been going to bed between 10 and 11 and waking up at 7.  Yeah, I didn't know I was capable of that either.  Also, Paris better have a Starbucks, because I haven't had a coffee in like 4 weeks.  I don't like it hot and they don't do iced caffeinated drinks here.  Also, I've been going without my Diet Coke.  I feel like Amy Winehouse must have felt after her doctor told her she had to stop taking drugs or she would die within the month (she did stop, didn't she?)

DINNER TIME!!!!!!!!!!! later dawgz.

Montpellier + Pictures

Hi! It's a been a few days! I hope everyone had a great weekend and very happy 4th of July! I missed the West Michigan festivities but fortunately had a great Friday night nonetheless.  We arrived in Montpellier, a small southern French city that borders the Mediterranean Sea sometime late afternoon.  We took the tram to our hotel (Hotel Ulysse) which was only one stop away from stop from downtown Montpellier.  It was a small family-owned and operated hotel and we all got our own beds except for Stephanie and Alyssa, who had to share a queen-sized bed.

After settling in, we headed out with intentions of going to the beach and then out to dinner.  Unfortunately, we missed the last bus to the beach, so we just went straight to dinner (still in our swimsuits).  We went to this little Italian cafe with outside seating called La Piazza Papa, and I ordered a pizza au fromage. It turned out to be a wood-fired cheese pizza with black olives and olive oil.  It was DELICIOUS.  I woofed it down, as I was starving.  We drank white wine with our meal and shared desserts when we were finished with our entrees.  After dinner, we strolled around the downtown area, exploring and searching for something to do.  We stumbled across an empty retro/mod nightclub called Le Huit, or The Eight in English.

We were the only people in there for the first half-hour, but then we were joined by two women in their mid-twenties working on their PhD's.  I sat up at the bar with them and talked to them.  We asked them questions like what kind of music we should listen to and things we should do in Grenoble.  I also ordered a drink called "Blonde Ass" whose ingredients were listed like so: zubrowka (???), liquer de vanille, puree pomme verte, jus de mangue, et citron sucre.  We were intrigued by the name.  Most of us ordered it, and the bartender laughed each time we said the words "Blonde Ass" in our American accents.  We also tried some French beer and a Belgian beer called 1664 as the night went on.  We were actually introduced to 1664 by a French boy named Paul.  He stood next to me at the bar, and when he got his drink, I asked him what he ordered (I discovered this was a great way to make friends, as this was how we started conversation with two women in their mid-twenties).  He told us and then invited us to come and sit with him and his friends (William and Bertrand).  They were all cute but very young (just finished high school) and they had two adorable girl friends, Leopoldine (and I forgot the other girl's name).  We all got along great and we left the club with them and went to this huge public garden and sat around and talked while they passed around an enormous bottle of wine.  At this point, most of us were not interested in having more to drink.  The best part of the night was being in the company of actual French people who didn't speak English and wanted to be our friends.  We got back to the hotel around 1:30-2 a.m. and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up at 10 a.m. and headed downtown to pick up brunch from a grocery store.  Afterward, we hopped on a bus headed for the beach (!!!) and laid out/dipped in the Mediterranean all day long.  We bought a couple bags of interestingly flavored chips and a six-pack of Krotenbourg beer and shared it (which was perfect, since there were six of us).  When we decided we had gotten enough color (around 6:30 p.m.) we returned to the hotel and got dressed for dinner and everything after.  I wore a grey American Apparel tank top tucked into a pair of high waisted dark jeans from Urban Outfitters.  I wore my bangs down too, along with a vintage red leather bag with a chain strap a la Mommy, so I felt super French and stylin'.

For dinner, we went to a little outdoor cafe called Brasserie Chez Regis which apparently specialized in seafood.  To start, we all had some white wine called vin de pays de l'heruait.  Alyssa and I ordered two plates to share, tagliatelles de fruits de mer (seafood pasta with a cream sauce), and moules au pistou (mussels in a basil-garlic cream sauce).  Neither of us had ever tried mussels and we were really excited to but kind of scared as well! Luckily, they turned out to be AMAZING.  We polished them off in record time!

Afterward we headed to the garden to meet up with Paul, William, and one of their friends that we hadn't met the previous night.  They led us to a bar whose name I forgot to record.  The bar was really chic with huge mod black leather couches and really cool lighting.  Very sophisticated.  I ordered a gin and tonic and messed up the translation and was given a drink with MINT in it.  We all know how I feel about that!  I immediately grabbed a lemon and sucked on it really hard in order to get rid of the taste.  We sat at the bar and talked about how to say bad words in French and English and American movies that the boys had seen dubbed over in French.  We learned that basically very American Blockbuster hit is released in France in this manner.  We asked them if they had seen Mes Amis Mes Amours, the movie we saw last Wednesday, and they said that they hadn't and that no one likes French films. =(

After the bar, we headed back to the garden to meet our friend Michelle who took the same train as we did (she's in our program) but wanted to meet up with some French friends who did an exchange program in Madison for the weekend.  The boys bought beer on the way to the garden and they taught us this French drinking game called "Caps."  Basically, everyone puts the bottle caps on top of their full bottles of beer and uses another cap to try to knock other peoples caps off by throwing it.  If you knock off someone's cap, they have to drink a quarter of their bottle.  After this, we went home and went straight to bed.  By the time we were all tucked in it was 3:45 a.m.!!!!!!! We set an alarm for 10 a.m. and slept straight up until it went off.

We were supposed to meet the boys at a lake somewhere but were running too late and we decided to cancel.  Instead we went to a little cafe and got lunch and iced coffees and then went shopping at this store called Kookai.  It turned out to be a major hit with us, and we all walked away with a few items (sorry, parents! but don't worry, it was my first successful shopping trip in France).  I snagged 3 cute tops and an amazing brown taffeta NICE dress all for a very modest price.  J'aime les soldes!  I also found a really gorgeous yellow patent leather clutch with a pouch for coins (coins are used way more frequently in Europe, so this will come in handy from now on) at this store called Minelli, which is known for its shoes, or maybe just its leather in general.

Copy and paste (ATTENTION MOM! THIS IS EASIER THAN TYPING THE LINK LETTER-BY-LETTER) this address into your browser to view pictures of our trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003585&I=909&id=1263930046

Some things I noticed about France in general while in Montpellier:

-Loose dresses/tunics made of light material, worn with leggings, and belted liberally around the hip are very "in"

-Bathrooms are unisex.  I found this out the hard way when Paul followed me into the bathroom at the bar and I freaked out, thinking I was about to be abducted.

-There are lots of Arab people in France!  I met an Algerian girl and her boyfriend while swimming in the sea, and two guys (one Egyptian, one Moroccan) were harassing us while we sunned ourselves.  They even tried to find out what we were doing after dinner!

-French men are surprisingly more chauvinistic than we previously thought.  We were asked many times on our vacation for directions to the kitchen.

I arrived back at chez Cottave-Fabert around 7:20 p.m. this evening, just in time for a quick shower before dinner.  Apparently, there are two new people who have moved into the house in the place of Pierre-Eric who left early last week.  They are two Polish people, a kid and his mother, and they speak really good French.  I wonder where Mme. finds these people... does she put ads in the paper?

P.S. I sent you all postcards and you should all be receiving them within the next week or so! My parents have already gotten theirs!

Not My Day

After I updated earlier this  morning, I hung around campus with Christy (I flew here with her, Jennifer, and this girl named Sara who reminds me of Julia Giddy...maybe that's why I don't like her).  They ate lunch and I had already eaten so I just had a Diet Coke (only #2 in France!) and talked to them.  Christy was worried that she was turning into psycho girlfriend because she has been getting annoyed lately that every time she tries to call her boyfriend he either doesn't have his phone on, doesn't have it with him, or is "busy" with some non-life-threatening situation.  She was asking if it was okay to get mad at him.  We all agreed that it was considering we are on a really strict time schedule due to our classes 4 hrs+ per day, our eating schedules (dinner can take 2+ hrs) and our ridiculous amount of homework (4+ hrs per day), not to mention the time difference. We agreed that she should stop calling him, and should he get mad, she should gently inform him that she figured he would call when it was convenient for him, since the world apparently revolves around him... Sound familiar?

Anyway...after our rendez-vous, I met a bunch of other kids from our class at the Chavant tram stop and we went to a movie called Mes Amis Mes Amours which I understood surprisingly well.  Two single fathers who happen to be best friends and each have one kid (a boy and a girl) move in together in a house in London.  One of the fathers is a womanizer but he ultimately falls for this journalist who discovers his fear of heights.  It was interesting to me that all the songs on the soundtrack except one were in English!  The last one in French had a tune similar to L-O-V-E (last song in Disney's Parent Trap), but translated differently. I wish my iTunes were working so I could find it...

When we left the movie we were walking back to the train stop when Sonja noticed that I had sat on some gum.  Those of you who know me well know that I ironically have an oral fixation (cannot keep my fingers out of my mouth for the life of me) and also a phobia of anything that's been in or is going into anyone else's mouth - namely toothpaste and gum.  I FREAKED OUT! Especially since the blue Splendid sweater I was wearing was one I stole from Anna.  I tore it off and jumped on the tram.

I got off at Vallier-Jaures to switch to the bus that takes me to my neighborhood.  While on the bus, I spaced out and completely missed my stop and didn't realize it until about 5 stops later, at which point I was severely confused.  I knew I was going in the right direction and it took me forever to realize that I had just missed my stop.  I got off as soon as I realized and hopped on the bus in the other direction.  When I got back here, I asked Mme. where I could take my sweater to have it cleaned.  She pressured me into letting her clean it.  She started rubbing ice on it then told me to do it.  I pretended to take it into my room and do it (keep in mind my phobia) and she later barged in and asked me if I got it out.  I said yes, hoping she'd leave me alone and she asked me to see it.  So I just roughly asserted that I was taking it to the cleaner.  She can be REALLY pushy!  The ice wasn't working anyway.

Earlier this morning, as I mentioned in my earlier update, I spoke to my teacher (Emily) about the difficulty I was having with the text.  I feel like everyone in class is either A) smarter than me B) majoring in French C) had way more French classes than me D) lying about the degree of difficulty they are having or E) all of the above.  I told Emily that this is the second text that has taken me multiple hours to get through, and I can't even understand what it's saying, let alone write a paper on it (which is what we were supposed to do last night).  I've NEVER had so much trouble with a French class.  Every French class I took prior to this was difficult for me, I would work really hard and never ended up with anything other than a B+ in all three classes, which I was happy with.  This class, however, is RIDICULOUS. We have hours upon hours of homework and it's frustrating and time consuming and there's just no time to do it.  Emily promised that I would understand the text better after class and that's what class is for, etc.  She was right.  Between listening to other people's questions and breaking up into small groups, I realized that I actually understood the article better than most people.  Which is sad, because I didn't understand a lot of it at all.  We have a small paper due Monday (about three pages) on the article and then Thursday we have a big paper (about six pages) due.  It's just a lot of work and I feel like they aren't taking into account that a lot of us would like to see the country in between class and dinner...

I think I'm going to take it easy tonight, maybe plan an outline for the paper on the way to Montpelier tomorrow afternoon and write it Sunday evening when I get home.  I'll go in early Monday to talk to Emily about it and make sure that it's legit to turn in.  I need to do better than I did on my last one... Apparently she wasn't too impressed...  We have a placement test tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. and then after I'm coming back here to pack and maybe nap and then dropping my computer off at Apple before boarding the train to Montpelier.  Hopefully I will have time to post pics before things pick up speed again on Monday (I start my other class on Tuesday).  It's crazy that after next week we will be halfway through the program!

Okay...well shower and bedtime for yours truly.  I had to get up at 8 this morning and tomorrow I have to get up even earlier.  Mme. and Mme. Dosso got a kick out of that at dinner.  They think everything I do is funny... read in the pool, BBM Anna all day long, wake up at 10 or 11...  They are going to be rolling tomorrow when I show up for le petit dejeuner around 7:30 a.m.

Au revoir!

I'm Not Dead

My computer is just broken so I'm using one at the university with a French keyboard so don't mind strange mistakes like a "q" for an "a" or an "o" for q "p", etc. Fortunately nothing big has happened in the past few days. My computer breaking turned out to be a major French lesson. First I had to explain what was going on to Mme. Then she had me explain it to Bruno who called Apple support in France and had me listen (in French) and then respond to the machine accordingly. Mme. also had me explain the problem to Stephanie. The next day (yesterday) I went to the Apple store dowtown and explained my issue surprisingly well, because they seemed to understand. So I'm bringing it in tomorrow before I leave for Montpelier, a French city on the Mediterranean Sea, for the weekend with six girls i don't really know (Andrea, Alyssa, Kelley, Stephanie, and Michelle). I also had strawberry ice cream for the first time yesterday and I love it!!!!!!! Last night was also the night I promised to pose for Mme. and her artist friends...I had to sit still for two hours! I took pictures of all of their drawings though so I will post those Sunday night when I return from Montpelier if I have my computer back, which come to think of it I probably won't. Class is really really hard, I have never had so much trouble with French. Also, she assigns a ridiculous amount of work. I'm sick of typing like this so I'm leaving. Biii.