Pont des Arts

Ok after the 'Learn it or Die' post with the fascist picture, I think its time for something more light hearted or I'll lose some readers :P

Let's talk about residence/people in the Welcome Program. I arrived to Cite U (Cité Universitaire International de Paris) Sunday night with Gilles and Marie-Pierre. Right when I was checking in I saw Sam, a guy from UBC that sat next to me the whole semester in Poli Sci last year. Such a good surprise! We decided to unpack and then met for a night stroll around the city, I told him I had some real artisan cheese (the one I got from Lille) and that we should just find a nice bridge and go eat it.

And so we did...! I finally got to fulfill my dream of eating with friends (anither guy Louis from Vancouver joined us) at the Pont des Arts. This is a bridge I crossed before going to Lille one night that just amaaazed me. There are like dozens of bridges in paris crossing the Seine river, but this one is special. Its in the eastern entrance of the Louvre and it is a 'walking only' bridge (péatons), so in the nights, its full of groups of friends sitting on the floor drinking wine, playing the guitar, etc... its awesome!

There are also hundreds of locks locked (?)... attached? Whatever, locked to the sides. I told Louis it most be some cheesy "I'm locking myself to you" Paris tourist activity and then he said he thought it was actually for a political reason. i thought that was interesting but then we asked and some one said lovers lock the lock (damn, its candado in Spanish) and then throw the key to the river.

*woosh, romantic music*

Yeah, I was right... I was being a realist and Louis extremely romantic in thinking the locks were symbolic of a political cause, of our oppression by the system, chains that me must break freeeee!!!!!!! Hahaha

This is the night view of the Pont des Arts, there's just a great moment when all of a sudden it gets dark and all the lights turn on, its beautiful!

So I just realized I did not talk at all about the Welcome Program people but its just cause there's nothing much to say. Everyone's nice, asks where you're from, have the same questions about cel phones/banks/insurance/apartments as I do, etc. I'll write more about that when I actually have something more interesting to say!



Viola, the chain pictures...




Boats crossing the Seine


Sam and Louis from VANCITAYY

The Formula... Learn it or Die

So "school" has started, yesterday we had a huge welcoming meeting in an amphiteatre where they gave us some useful contacts and... pretty much went over and over again at how awesome Sciences Po is.

Let me tell you something, I come from propaganda machine UBC "place of mind" where "from there" great and minds are forged in a global community (oh how they love to use the words international/global and community right next to each other)... but UBC porpaganda is nothing compared to this people. Boy they really take some pride on their stuff! Not so charmant, a little over pretentious and arrogant, but I sort of knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up for a school that defines itself as "an institution to train the French elite".

Be right back, I'm gonna puke.


We are receiving a special program for international students (Jump Startish) where we get one week of French and methodology classes. Sciences Po works with a very specific methodology for essay writing that's completely different from what's generally used in North American universities, and well I think all over the world actually.

There's a very specific "formula" on how to approach an exam question that requires knowing the "code" in order to organize an essay. The teacher explaining this to us used all these words, and some other that came up to my mind after learning the Sciences Po precious formula (which apparently other universities are now using because, again for them, ScPo is... da shit) were over-rationalization, schematic, formal, restrictive, and a big image of a boring grey wall.

So basically for them writing an essay is dividing your problem/thesis into two parts, both of these parts divided into two subparts. Each subdivision must be the same size, and the large parts as well. You just CAN'T ADD A THIRD POINT just... because... because it doesn't follow the formula. You can't add an extra line because it messes up organization. When I asked what was the point of this formalities the answer was along the lines of "you are here being taught how to think in a certain way, and for knowing this you'll be payed shitloads of money and be a rich politician so basically be happy an shut up".

...?

Indoctrination much? I continued to be unsatisfied with his argument to support the use of the formula and then he said: "Well, you like French philosophy? Like Foucault? Well they all learnt the formula and look at the books they wrote".

...?

Still NOT CONVINCING, but I'm just gonna learn the freaking formula... Now I understand why someone was telling that French society is extremely coded, that you have to learn the codes and work with them.

Fascist prick, I'm just hoping profs/essay writting methods are not actually this restrictive and that I'm just having sort of a bad experience with this prof. I may not have explained well how the formula works and it may not look that bad on my desscription abova BUT IT IS!! I just couldn't communicate it effectively.

I have nothing clever to say because I'm actually very tired and frustrated by the essay writting recipe, haha ok maybe I'm mking a big deal and I just dedicated a whole post to this, its just aaaaghhhh this type of mentality makes me sick... I'm really hoping not everyone, specially French student, are all these young-liberal-careerists-Sarkozys-in-the-making, cause it well looks like a production plant for this sort of specimens.

Photos: Belgium

So much beer.........
and chocolates in Belgium, even asparagus ones.



Coldest, windiest beach ever, beats Vancouver windy beaches!

Photos: Lille

A little bit of the 100s of picture I took in Lille, around the Old City and family dinners, as well as bike rides along the canal and museum visits.

Oh! And the last two are when Gilles and Mp helped me move in and basically left me with a full fridge and supplies :)

Vieux Lille

Palais de Beaux Arts...
got to see some Manet, Courbet, Delacroix, Chardin, Monet and other Frenchies!

Antique market, these three girls showed me around town: Ombeline, Lilou and Syrianne

Diner chez les Armand, the owners of the cheese store..
we went down for dessesrt and chose aything we wanted! Also tried a 2yrd old cheese which was surprisingly delicious

Dinner at another friend's place close to Belgium, beautiful brick house with a cute chimney and full of homemade art!

Bike ride along the canal just behind the house

Move-in picninc!!

Photos: Versailles

Rowing, beautiful garden and a picnic at Livia's house: the day we ran off to Versailles.

Memoirs from the North

No, this is not a Danielle Steel book, its just a melodramatic way of introducing my adventures in Northern France.

So I spent the past 5 days in the North, living something completely different from what I experienced in Paris the past few days (wondering alone, walking the streets with no clear destination, just observing, holding my bag real tight in the sketchy metro lines, etc.)

I stayed with Lucia's French family, les Gaspard, which live just off Lille, which I think is the biggest city in the north. Marie Pierre and Gilles were extremely nice to me the whole time, treated me just like one of the family (details on this later, they're honestly too adorable), planned a whole schedule of activities for me haha, and finally and very important... they were so attentive and dedicated to help me improve my French, which until now SUCKED... now I honestly fell like I can communicate things. For example, I will no longer be intimidated by restaurant bitches, and I can order the freaking panini I want!!!!..... Had to get that out, one day in Paris a girl traumatized me.

Gilles picked me up at the train station in Lille, and we spent the whole first day together; he speaks just a little English so we basically had to communicate in French the whole time (I was practicing with my French book in the train what I would say: "Il fait beau!" And then it started rain, fuck, and the negations are so hard: "Il.. ne... fait... PAS... beau" No, I sound like a retard.

In the end, I just gave up cause I would always would sound like a retard and I might as well learn something while humiliating myself, so I started speaking and speaking in French until I got stuff right. I'm telling you, Gilles is so nice he had a lot of patience with me, even when I asked him for the fifth time how you could say "remember" (se rappeller) or conjugate "I need" (avoir + besoins + de)... By the way this could be totally wrong cause I just learnt everything phonetically and have to check the grammar in all my newly acquired super vocab.

Im so cool, honestly, I CAN SAY STUFF!!! Even Jero (daughter of Gilles and Marie-Pierre's friends whose my age and who i went out with last night and thanks to whom I have a real headache right now for returning home at 5am and making me try the famous northern France-Belge beers. Phew long story that I'm not telling right now, I'll just say at some point it involved me and three friends from Lille in a Bar called La Latina with "La Bomba" in the background)

Okay you may have realized I'm a little over the place when I write. I make this "parenthesis" that are not really parenthesis but whole paragraphs of stuff that follows a completely different train of thought than what I was trying to follow at the beginning. I don't I guess that's just how my mind works, or most people's. I'm not trying to coherently compose anything on this blog, just trying to write as fast as I can so my thoughts of the moment won't be let unwritten!! Phew exhausting, for, example, I write that like, really fast but of course you can't tell. Maybe I'm lying and you'll never know HAHA! (Talking about parenthesis that have nothing to do with the story, hm, good example right here)

OKAY, so..

My French is better, that's point one. Point two I guess you could say its what impressed me about the city's I saw in terms of exteriors, architecture, land use, etc. North France is so... cute. 80% of the houses are made of red bricks (Gilles explained they produce them in the region), so they look very pretty. Unlike Paris, this is the "campaigne" (again, could totally be wrong with this spelling cause I only know how to say it), so house have big gardens, they are spacious, there are lots of little villages instead of city conglomerations. It really looks like there is a very low density of people relative to the land. I was strange but extremely cool the be in Paris in the morning and then seeing cows and horse along a river (well, it a canal) just behind Gilles and Marie-Pierre's house.

The other point is not about exteriors but more about the warmth of the people. I had dinner each night in a different house: at Gilles and Marie Pierre's with the whole family, at les Armand (they own an artisan cheese store, la fromagerie, hmmmmm!), at Thierry and Louise's, I even went to a wedding haha, for real. Everyone was extraordinarily nice to me, talking slowly, translating, offering me things to try, etcetc. Let's break some stereotypes, not all frenchies are a pain in the ass (Bien sur, I said "not all".. fucking panini girl). I'm sorry if I course a lot when I write. Well, I'm not sorry but: I am aware it is very un-lady like of me.

So overall I had such a great time, I am a little tired cause I did a lot and listening to French and trying to talk 24/7 can be exhausting, but I had such a fun time... and I am soso fond of Gilles and Marie pierre now, they relly make me feel like I have a family here. Oh here is the time when I tell you the details of how nice they were. They brought me back from Lille to Paris today (2hr car ride), we went to Livia's house to pick up my luggage and then they helped me move in at the residence. Once we put everything in they showed me some boxes they had brought, one with towels, cutlery, pots, tea pot, glasses, a blanket.... Another with cheese (that Jero's parent gave me from the fromagerie, they also sent two chocolate mousses and quiches because they knew I didn't have a kitchen), bread, nutella, green tea (because I always asked for some), crackers, bottled water, yogurt, fruits, some nuts from their son's garden...

That's the kind of people they are! We also did a "picnic" here at my room with some stuff Marie-Pierre brought, we ate and then we said good-bye. I already have an invitation to go next weekend to Lille to either their house or Jero's house beacuase there is the Braderie (apparently the biggest outdoor market in Europe, everyone was talking about that in Lille).

Bon, merci for the ones that got to this point. i know its a long post but it was also long since I wrote my last post! This is cool, it makes me feel like I'm actually telling all you guys the things by skype or something.

OFF I GO! Until the next,

Peace out.

Uhhh

A little feedback would be nice, so make me happy and comment!!!!

Peace out.

Off to Lille

So Livia’s mom woke me up real early today so she could drop me off at the RER station on her way to work. Said and done (“Dicho y hecho”)…


*Okay I have to make a good parenthesis here, I was taking to Livia yesterday about how funny it is to literally translate expressions from one language to another. For example, in France, when someone tells a real story buts spices it up to make it more entertaining/shocking, what I would understand as a bullshit covered fact, they say he or she just told a “crunchy” story… hahaha!! I’m gonna start using it, it sounds more classy and yesterday I went to Versailles so I’m still feeling like a lady, not.
Okaaaay so, said and done, I was at the RER station super early, then transferred to the TGV line that would take me to Lille. While waiting for my platform to be announced, something quite interesting happened to me. This guy from Canaduh started talking to me and asked me where I was from blablabla…



After asking each other the entire generic traveler repertoire: Where are you from? Where are you going? Oh, that’s so cool… What do you recommend to do if I go here? Yeah man, that place is great isn’t it! You get the point. He told me he had wanted to go someplace green cause he had been in the desert for four months.


A very naïve me said: Oh, that’s so cool, where were you?!... Afghanistan.


Eeek. He was really nice and told about it, he was cool about talking but I didn’t ask anything, just let him say whatever he wanted to share. Basically, he said it SUCKED. He also said he had sailed around the world, almost everywhere except Chile-Argentina because gfdgddtgtgh (he talked really fast and I couldn’t figure out what he said, my English is not as sharp here). He said he had been to Haiti before the earthquake and showed me pictures. He told me in Colon in Panama you can’t get off the boat because you’ll be robbed 10 seconds after you set foot in land (Que reputacion la de nuestros vecinos!) or you’ll get beaten up by a pack of 11 year olds like it happened to his friends… Haha.


He also showed me pictures from Fleet Week, which is done every year in New York and its just a week where they have some Gala activities and they have to wear their formal all-white uniform. We both laughed and I said “Sweeeet!” then he replied “Not sweet! I was so nervous cause people would just stop me and ask me to take a picture with their girlfriends and shit”.


I also saw from pictures from Kabul, and damn, he told me he has to do some sort of area patrol because they (the ‘others’) put bombs in rocks next to the street and blow them up when cars go by. He’s seen cars explode, and bullets go through his car window. I bet, no, I am SURE he thinks this war is ridiculous just like everyone else does. He just looked so fed up with the whole thing, well, who wouldn’t be.


FYI this happened in approximately 20 minutes so the guy was pretty chatty. He told me he’s used to being with 6 other guys, who are like his family and they go through all that hell together… so it was weird for him to be traveling all around by himself now. He’s on a break now but I think he said he would go back to Afghanistan on Sept. 1st, I hope I understood wrong and he can go back to Niagara Falls where he’s from.
When my platform was finally announced I got my stuff and said bye, he told me if I go to Belgium while in Lille I should shoot him an email and handed me a little paper:



The Train Station Guy
ewart.andrew@***.com

Photos: First Days Sightseeing

So here are some snapshots from my first days cruising the city (when it was sunny and nice, and not cold and windy like tonight)

Viola!

Versailles

What a GREAT DAY!! And it's only 2:30 pm :)

We went to Versailles really early in the morning, playing Armin van Buren all the way there in the car, got stuff for a picnic in the garden, gas, all set...

We decided to just go to the gardens today and not inside because the line was insane (100m long line of roaring tourists was just not worth it) so we just strolled through the gardens: AMAZING. They're apparently closed on the winter so I had to see it now during summer, I can come back in the winter and shelter in the castle interiors, which I'm sure are going to be just or even more beautiful.

Overall, Versailles is just like over-the-top crazy luxuriously beautiful, but of course Marie Antoinette fucking lived there, what else can you expect...! It was so funny, the have like hidden stereos playing this 18th century music with violins, and you're just strolling through the flowers and statues pffff ridiculous but of course very enjoyable. You actually feel like one of the madames from the court (not really, but you wish just a little bit... I mean even though I hate the Versailles pretension and love that the Revolution got rid of this royal life bullsh*t, you can't avoid feeling like you would have loved to be part of the court life in this castle! C'mon!)

We rented a boat and paddled through the lake, we kinda sucked but then got the hang of it; and for this, my former training as an official member of the UBC AIRPIGS longboat team really helped ;)

turururururururu......... AIR PINGS, OINK!!!!!!

(Just remembering a really fun night at The Pit after the day of the longboat for my fellow dear Vancouverites!)

We then came back and decided to have our picninc at Livia's house's garden which is super cute: salad, rice, cheese, pain grilles and vin rose... mmm.

Overall, great day, now I'm happy use I have an afternoon off tourist sightseeing and I can chill and post in my supercoolawesome new blog, or as Livia says posh girls in London say, FANTA-BULOUS new blog (are you kidding fo real?)

Stay tuned, pictures soon to be uploaded!

The Beginning

I have been in Paris for four days now and I have so many impressions flying around that it is hard to organize my thoughts... that's probably why I was trying to avoid this first post!

Everyday I come back to Livia's place and after HOURS of walking and doing stuff starting to write doesn't seem that pleasing, but it was about time to start this thing cause I promised myself I would do it so I WILL! (That's me tying to cheer myself up to continue adding lines)

I had quite some prejudices about this city before coming, I thought "Paris" was just an inflated ideal so I had my expectations in control and just wanted to see what the big deal was about.

I've been mainly extremely impressed by the amazing buildings and architecture, its just plain in-your-face fucking beautiful, but after I would say 1-2 days of seeing everywhere the shock value goes down and there are so many more things that are far more interesting.

I have spent three full days walking, and walking, and walking, and walking a little more and its greaaaat. Each neighborhood has so much personality that I can now tell which ones I love and which ones are either tourist traps or too pretentious. There's just a place for everyone here and that's pretty cool.

Right now I'm in love with the Latin Quarter, and the area around Sorbonne (that should be MY university!)... little bookshops, small parks, narrow streets with all types of food, cheapER stuff (hell I got a small sandwich, pain au chocolat and bottle of water for 3,60 which is insanely cheap!!), etc.

Here are some interesting stuff I've found so far:

-There are public free cabin toilets in almost every main boulevard, and they wash themselves (floor included) after every person.. Ha! robot toilets, but they take too long, while waiting in line a really nice old man from Martinica had time to tell me his life (studying Law, being a judge, retiring, his daughter just opened a clinic, Milene is a name in France... you get the point)

-Every homeless person has a book and they're always reading! So cultured, seriously I never see homeless people reading in Costa Rica (I asked Livia why they don't beg or harass you for money and first, she told me that I had just been lucky, and second she said homeless people or single mothers can get around 900 euros a month from the government WTF I want 900 euros)

-Where are the Chinese??!! I guess after living in Vancouver, everywhere else I go I'll feel like something's missing on the streets.

-I made a list on my mind while walking today and now I don't remember. Duh.

OKAY I got extremely tired now, Ill post some pictures and continue writing later..