well the first fantastic news of the last week and a half is that i finally caved - i bought my ticket to go to paradise - a.k.a: l'île de la réunion!!! life couldn't go on any longer without danielle in it, so obviously a trip was in need. (and that fact that there are glorious beaches and sunshine doesn't hurt much either). i purchased my ticket on th 24th and i'll be taking off for my april break and will be posted up on this tropical remote island (which is located just a little to the east of madagascar) from april 1 until april 14. life won't be able to get any better im sure.
if you can't see where the arrow is pointing to on th map its because réunion island is so small and remote that it pretty much looks like it doesn't even exist. feel free to research this on your own so you can understand exactly how jealous you should be of me, but i will keep my lips sealed on all the glorious things i know about this place until i can tell you that i've done them first hand :)
on the 24th, i also managed to survive my first day of level 4 classes and i was able to understand everything that was going on and even participate a little, so needless to say i felt quite good about myself. to celebrate this and my big purchas, i headed to o'kils bar with phoebe and alicia for the international night they have every wednesday. the bar is super cool and its always really busy with people looking to speak lots of different languages. (literally, you can wander around the tables and find people speaking french, english, dutch, german, finnish.. you name it. it's pretty cool)
the following day was thursday. which has become my new day from hell school wise. i've got two hours of comprehension orale, followed immediately by another two hours of grammaire (easily my two worst subjects) so by the time they are finished i am more than ready to head home and crawl back into my bed. but no, i get a half an hour break and then i'm off to THREE hours of civilisation and familar french. luckily my professor is pretty sweet, and well francais familier is usually always good for a laugh or two.
that night we hit up chez nous for a pretty quite night with the crew, although there was a fairly interesting band playing which made for good entertainment!
i had my first glorious friday with no classes, so i celebrated by doing sweet fuck all for most of the morning. followed by my previously mentioned pleasent experiences at the prefecture/ofii/and of course, my favorite place, the bank. eventually i went over to katherine and antoine's place so antoine could help me translate my resume into french (oh yeah, that's right, looks like its time to get a french job - wish me luck!) and then after dinner katherine and antoine, and benjamin and kasia came over to chez anges to hang out for a bit.
saturday the 27th was an early rise, and we were off on a bus to the champagne captial of the world - epernay! (thanks to my buddy elias who donated his ticket to me and saved me the price of 50euros that it would have cost me!) the bus ride was torturous, but i managed to sleep for most of it. it took about three hours to reach the chateux mercier, in epernay;
and then we had a guided train tour of the champagne caves,
and after the tour, was the champagne tasting!
we had an hour to walk into the city of epernay and find some food for lunch and get back to the bus. so we strolled down the richest street in the world (avenue de champagne - thanks to all the bottles of champagne they have for sale) and found the classiest kebab shop we could.
then it was back on the bus for another two hours to head to a town called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. this is where general charles de gaulle lived for most of his life, so naturally we visited the charles de gaulle memorial museum, whre you can learn about every aspect of de gaulle's life, admire an incredible view and also see the cross of lorraine (which is a symbol of the liberation of france from nazi germany after world war II)
once again, it was back on the bus for another two hours to head back on home to the good old dij.
we made it back to dijon just before 8 and it was a mad rush to get everyone fed and ready and off to chez nous for 9 for regina's last fete before she headed back to germany the next morning. everyone piled into chez nous and we filled the entire back room. it was a great turn out and the night was hilarious, with few tears shed. we made sure regina had a good send off and finished the night marching down the street with her flag chanting les marseillais (the national anthem for france)
the night ended late and the morning came early when we all had to get up and sadly bid our farewell's to regina. jeremy and i decided to try and improve the day by walking to the park since it was so gorgeous outside. walked for almost an hour to get there just to find out that the fucking park was closed due to a heavy wind storm in france. bullshit. (although the park did look really beautiful from outside the gate, so i will definatly have to venture back again when its not so windy). i smoked my pétard that i had brought in anticipation for seeing all the crazy animal in parc de colombiere and we headed off to chez benjamin for a surprise visit. ended up visiting for a while and watching american histoire X, thats right, american history x en francais. pretty sure that movie would be fucked up in english, its a whole new level when its in french. eventually jer and i walked home and called an end to the day after dinner.
monday wasn't anything special but we were suprised with a dinner with a bunch of anges' friends - always a delight. if by delight you mean the longest, most dragged out, uncomprehensible time of your life.
the rest of the week was pretty chill and i didn't get up to much other than classes and all that exciting stuff. then all of a sudden it was march....
jeremy and phoebe have had some friends from back home stowing away in phoebe's room since wednesday (literally stowing away since we're not allowed to have friends over at all, and they've been here for about 3 days with anges having no idea about it - fabulous) so it's been a bit of an american/clark student overload for me, and i've definatly been outnumbered by far. but we've been having a good time regardless. we all went out on thursday night, starting off at katherine and antoines place for some aperatifs and then off to chez nous (of course). the night was hilarious and i managed to make a new pal with the young bartendar at the bar while he was off duty. and convinced him that it really wouldn't be so bad if we happened to drink our own bottle of wine we conveniently happened to bring to the bar with us. he did not disagree. hahahaha
obviously the night got sloppy and out of control and before we knew it, it was midnight and we were off to la salsa. it was pacckkkked since we showed up a little late and we couldn't all get in, but camilla and i managed. unfortunately it wasn't really as fun as usual and there were a lot of creepy old men hanging around, so before long i was heading off draggin my drunk ass home.
last night is a night to go down in my french history. i ate my first snail. can you believe it? needless to say, i ate one, and one was plenty.
(that's right, escargot here are essentially like chicken nuggets back home, buy them frozen, stick them in the oven, and they're ready to eat)
(oh, how appetizing)
everybody insists that they dont taste that bad at all and its really just like garlicy butter. this is true, until all the garlicy butter is gone and you're essentially just chewing on a slug. disgusting. something that had to be done, but i dont think its something that needs to happen again. next on the list, frog's legs.
after the snail eating experience a beer or two was in order so benjamin, kasia and ann came over to chez anges and off we went to chez nous, where it was far too packed for us all of us to sit down so we decided to relocate to bocadilla's for a pretty quiet night.
jeremy took off to london this morning and everyone else is off to paris for the day, so i've been taking advantage of having the apartment to myself - you know, walking around in the nude, doing as i please. and i think elias and ann are going to come over for a beverage or two (or a bottle of wine) and then we'll head to vieux leon where i get to be initiated by having to place our order with the nasty barman..... excellent. more on this later!
again, i apologize for the lengths of my posts lately. but procrastinating is so much easier than actually updating, i hope you understand.
a la prochaine fois mes homies, love ya's! xx
on the 24th, i also managed to survive my first day of level 4 classes and i was able to understand everything that was going on and even participate a little, so needless to say i felt quite good about myself. to celebrate this and my big purchas, i headed to o'kils bar with phoebe and alicia for the international night they have every wednesday. the bar is super cool and its always really busy with people looking to speak lots of different languages. (literally, you can wander around the tables and find people speaking french, english, dutch, german, finnish.. you name it. it's pretty cool)
the following day was thursday. which has become my new day from hell school wise. i've got two hours of comprehension orale, followed immediately by another two hours of grammaire (easily my two worst subjects) so by the time they are finished i am more than ready to head home and crawl back into my bed. but no, i get a half an hour break and then i'm off to THREE hours of civilisation and familar french. luckily my professor is pretty sweet, and well francais familier is usually always good for a laugh or two.
that night we hit up chez nous for a pretty quite night with the crew, although there was a fairly interesting band playing which made for good entertainment!
i had my first glorious friday with no classes, so i celebrated by doing sweet fuck all for most of the morning. followed by my previously mentioned pleasent experiences at the prefecture/ofii/and of course, my favorite place, the bank. eventually i went over to katherine and antoine's place so antoine could help me translate my resume into french (oh yeah, that's right, looks like its time to get a french job - wish me luck!) and then after dinner katherine and antoine, and benjamin and kasia came over to chez anges to hang out for a bit.
saturday the 27th was an early rise, and we were off on a bus to the champagne captial of the world - epernay! (thanks to my buddy elias who donated his ticket to me and saved me the price of 50euros that it would have cost me!) the bus ride was torturous, but i managed to sleep for most of it. it took about three hours to reach the chateux mercier, in epernay;
and then we had a guided train tour of the champagne caves,
and after the tour, was the champagne tasting!
we had an hour to walk into the city of epernay and find some food for lunch and get back to the bus. so we strolled down the richest street in the world (avenue de champagne - thanks to all the bottles of champagne they have for sale) and found the classiest kebab shop we could.
then it was back on the bus for another two hours to head to a town called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. this is where general charles de gaulle lived for most of his life, so naturally we visited the charles de gaulle memorial museum, whre you can learn about every aspect of de gaulle's life, admire an incredible view and also see the cross of lorraine (which is a symbol of the liberation of france from nazi germany after world war II)
once again, it was back on the bus for another two hours to head back on home to the good old dij.
we made it back to dijon just before 8 and it was a mad rush to get everyone fed and ready and off to chez nous for 9 for regina's last fete before she headed back to germany the next morning. everyone piled into chez nous and we filled the entire back room. it was a great turn out and the night was hilarious, with few tears shed. we made sure regina had a good send off and finished the night marching down the street with her flag chanting les marseillais (the national anthem for france)
the night ended late and the morning came early when we all had to get up and sadly bid our farewell's to regina. jeremy and i decided to try and improve the day by walking to the park since it was so gorgeous outside. walked for almost an hour to get there just to find out that the fucking park was closed due to a heavy wind storm in france. bullshit. (although the park did look really beautiful from outside the gate, so i will definatly have to venture back again when its not so windy). i smoked my pétard that i had brought in anticipation for seeing all the crazy animal in parc de colombiere and we headed off to chez benjamin for a surprise visit. ended up visiting for a while and watching american histoire X, thats right, american history x en francais. pretty sure that movie would be fucked up in english, its a whole new level when its in french. eventually jer and i walked home and called an end to the day after dinner.
monday wasn't anything special but we were suprised with a dinner with a bunch of anges' friends - always a delight. if by delight you mean the longest, most dragged out, uncomprehensible time of your life.
the rest of the week was pretty chill and i didn't get up to much other than classes and all that exciting stuff. then all of a sudden it was march....
jeremy and phoebe have had some friends from back home stowing away in phoebe's room since wednesday (literally stowing away since we're not allowed to have friends over at all, and they've been here for about 3 days with anges having no idea about it - fabulous) so it's been a bit of an american/clark student overload for me, and i've definatly been outnumbered by far. but we've been having a good time regardless. we all went out on thursday night, starting off at katherine and antoines place for some aperatifs and then off to chez nous (of course). the night was hilarious and i managed to make a new pal with the young bartendar at the bar while he was off duty. and convinced him that it really wouldn't be so bad if we happened to drink our own bottle of wine we conveniently happened to bring to the bar with us. he did not disagree. hahahaha
obviously the night got sloppy and out of control and before we knew it, it was midnight and we were off to la salsa. it was pacckkkked since we showed up a little late and we couldn't all get in, but camilla and i managed. unfortunately it wasn't really as fun as usual and there were a lot of creepy old men hanging around, so before long i was heading off draggin my drunk ass home.
last night is a night to go down in my french history. i ate my first snail. can you believe it? needless to say, i ate one, and one was plenty.
(that's right, escargot here are essentially like chicken nuggets back home, buy them frozen, stick them in the oven, and they're ready to eat)
(oh, how appetizing)
everybody insists that they dont taste that bad at all and its really just like garlicy butter. this is true, until all the garlicy butter is gone and you're essentially just chewing on a slug. disgusting. something that had to be done, but i dont think its something that needs to happen again. next on the list, frog's legs.
after the snail eating experience a beer or two was in order so benjamin, kasia and ann came over to chez anges and off we went to chez nous, where it was far too packed for us all of us to sit down so we decided to relocate to bocadilla's for a pretty quiet night.
jeremy took off to london this morning and everyone else is off to paris for the day, so i've been taking advantage of having the apartment to myself - you know, walking around in the nude, doing as i please. and i think elias and ann are going to come over for a beverage or two (or a bottle of wine) and then we'll head to vieux leon where i get to be initiated by having to place our order with the nasty barman..... excellent. more on this later!
again, i apologize for the lengths of my posts lately. but procrastinating is so much easier than actually updating, i hope you understand.
a la prochaine fois mes homies, love ya's! xx
ps. 25 days 'til réunion bitches! fuck yeah
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