alexyacoub.com

Hello hello. Seasons Greetings. It’s been well over a month since I’ve written – I’ve kind of disappeared off the face of the Earth to some people. What a time it’s been — the past few weeks of school were pretty hectic with me tying up all the loose ends and finishing up all my exams before everyone else in the final week (I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but the semester here ends in late January, so I had to take exams early). Of course, I’ve still managed to experience an enomous amount of things outside of school, and I can’t even begin to tell about all the cool things that can happen. I’ll wait until the pictures go up and I can describe some of the things I’ve photographed.

About those pictures…. I’ve taken well over 2500 snapshots since I left the US. That’s easily more photos than I’ve taken the rest of my life. Digital is very liberating — it lets you experiment like only someone with a lot of money to spend on film could before. I have lots of sessions where I’ve taken 10 shots of the same mundane thing just so I could see what would come out. None of the photos are up on the Internet yet, at least none since before my fall vacation. I have excuses, though. Firstly, my website broke for a while and I couldn’t upload photos — I think that’s fixed now. Secondly, I just don’t have the time to upload and catalog all the photos. Computer time here in the labs is precious enough that I used it for schoolwork, mostly. I will, however, get the pictures up when I get back. And for the sake of those of you who probably don’t want to wade through the thousand shots that actually do make it up, I’ll put up some of the best ones on their own.

So what have I been up to these past few weeks? Lots. It’s been so long that I can’t even begin to write about it all. Some of the highlights? Well, Thanksgiving dinner was fun — we went to a restaurant and had a French-style meal, but made with things like turkey, pumpkin, and yes, even cranberries. I went up to Paris a couple times and also over to Strasbourg with about 50 people on another Esperanto trip.

This last week though, was the busiest of all the weeks. Of course, school was a big culprit, besides all the little things one needs to take care of when leaving a country for good. The worst part, however, was that from Wednesday on, people started leaving school for break. While everyone else was going to be coming back, I wouldn’t be seeing any of these people again, and many people had become pretty close friends of mine over the past four months. We all said our goodbyes and promised to make the attempt to keep in touch, but everyone knows that gets harder and harder as time passes.

I’d say that, overall, I had a blast here in France. I learned a great many things about culture and life, and I can even speak French pretty well now. However, four months flies by, and I can’t help thinking that it wasn’t enough to really immerse myself.

On the other hand, I’m really really looking forward to being back in the US again. I miss a great many little things. I also miss the big things — I’m really ready to see my family and my friends again after this long hiatus. I arrive back in the US before New Year’s, on the 29th — coming in at 3:35 to RDU, actually (from London). I’ll see you all soon.

Leave it to Alex to show how smart he is. As I just found out (and as Olivia has noted as well), Thanksgiving is not the third Thursday of the month as I thought it was, but the FOURTH. Well, happy Thursday anyway.

Hey hey. I’ve got a couple other longer entries that I’ve been working on, but I figured I’d just write something quick and short today. Thanksgiving is coming up tomorrow, and while the whole of the US will be celebrating, this holiday does not exist in France.

That being said, everyone here has heard of it. I brought it up a couple times and everyone gave the the “Oh yeah! You guys eat … turkey, right?” Yep.

There’s some kind of Franco-American group here in Compiègne that do a Thanksgiving Dinner every year, and all of us Americans here at UTC are invited. I’m pretty excited about that. What’s even better is this group has ties to Compiègne’s sister city: Raleigh, so there’s going to be something special involving Raleigh.

I’ve also been looking into making a Thanksgiving Dinner myself for some of the people here that I know. This is a lot harder than you might think. First off, I made a list of the people I’d invite and it ended up being at least 15, with a lot of room to grow. That means a lot of food. Secondly, the residence doesn’t really have much of a good place to hold a dinner, but we can work around that by stealing some tables and desks and making everyone stand… I’m thinking of having everyone chip in some money and maybe bringing a drink or a side.

In terms of the kitchen, I can probably go early to the kitchen and hole up in there for a day, and I can probably borrow some hot plates and cooking utensils to get all that I need. There’s even a microwave. However, horror of horrors, ovens are very hard to come by in this city. I’m working on finding a way around this.

You can’t buy whole turkeys at the grocery store. A butcher shop probably has it, but I don’t know if I’m up to the task of cleaning, preparing, and cooking a turkey in substandard conditions as a first try. I’ll probably go buy some pre-cooked rotisserie chickens.

Other ingredients are also hard to come by. Cranberries just plain don’t exist in France. Corn on the cob doesn’t either, unless you look for in the “organic foods” section. It costs 2.50 for two not-so-fresh packaged ears of corn. Baked beans don’t exist, but this I can make myself if I cook up some BBQ sauce. I did find sweet potatoes, but I don’t know if they still have them in the supermarket.

Please send me ideas and recipes. I’d like to cook up a good Thanksgiving dinner this weekend.

As for me, I give thanks to friends and family, wherever in the world they may be.

Holy cow. I just wrote 4 pages by hand. In French. About art.

My first exam ever in France and it had to be about a subject I could barely figure out even in English. I’m still shaking from the adrenaline.

I think I did alright. We had to write an analysis of a painting by Fragonard, the name of which loosely translates into “Lucky Chances by the Swing”. It dates from 1767.

If you’re interested, Fragonard uses bright yellow hues contrasted with the dark greens and grays of the nature to generate light that fills the scene with emotion. The red and pinks that make up the woman bring the attention to her and show that she is the object of love and lust of all the admirers around. That includes us, the voyeuristic spectator. The whole painting seems very similar to fête galante paintings by Watteau and Fragonard. Did that sound good or what? Let’s hope the professor thinks the same thing. I wrote about 3 and a half pages on it, and I even wrote small.

The format was pretty normal for a humanities class. I had two choices of subject. One was the analysis, and the other was to explain how the entry of new kinds of art dealers into the fray in the 18th century changed the medium. I hadn’t studied that part in the notes enough to write anything cohesive about it.

In true humanities form, I spent one hour brainstorming and creating an outline (and wondering why I was there at all) and the other hour writing the paper. I think this is more important in France than in the US, because here they tend ot place as much emphasis on organization and style (basically, presentation) of writing as they do on content. The French have a philosophic and literary tradition that’s very rich and storied, and they place a LOT of valor in that tradition. It permeates everything that goes on in schools here, especially for me, since 75% of my courses are in what we would consider as humanities.

Anyway, just wanted to let that out. Let’s hope I did well!

Hey there. I know I’ve fallen really really behind on writing and also on updating photos, and believe me, there’s a lot that’s happened. However, I do have some pretty good excuses. The first is that for most of my vacation time while I was in Compiègne, my website was down. Apparently, the server had some major problems, but things are back up and I’ve fixed all the little glitches that pop up when you migrate machines. In fact, this is the second time I write this entry since it was lost last time. My second excuse is that I have lots of exams coming up, and this is also the point in the semester when different things start being due. In fact, I should probably be studying for my art exam right now, but I need a break and it seems a lost cause anyway.

That being said, I’ll probably split this up into a couple updates over the week, and in this one, I’ll be talking about stuff that happened as far back as the weekend of my birthday. As I mentioned in my last update, I spent the weekend in Lille. Esperanto, the foreign students association here, organized a trip to Lille for the weekend. In fact, we only spent a few hours in Lille and spent the rest of the weekend doing various other things.

On Saturday morning, we headed out to the school to get our charter bus at 7:30 in the morning and slept our way to Lewarde, a city that used to be a mining town. We spent the morning there taking a guided tour of the mining museum, built on the site of a former mine. The whole structure was converted into a museum, including a part of the underground mine shaft in which we got to see three generations of mining. The tour was pretty interesting and it was really neat to see how mining worked and how it evolved through the ages. We even got live demonstrations of all the tools and equipment (VERY loud). The commentary was also very enlightening. Did you know, for example, that horses were used down in mines, and that they would be sent down there when young and would live in stables underground, never seeing the light of day until they were retired after about 12 years?

Our next stop for a picnic lunch and for the afternoon was Cambrai, whose claim to fame is its cathedral which houses the diocese for the region. To tell you the truth, this city was not all that exciting, and even the cathedral lacked the quality and beauty that other churches and cathedrals in France seem to have. There’s some interesting architecture and history in the city, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a stopping point for a tourist.

That night we spent the evening in a hostel that Esperanto bought out for the evening that adjoins a small farm. The hostel is run by the family that owns the farm and opens up into the area where all the animals are. We spent some time petting and feeding horses and admiring the bunny rabbits and all the other animals — it kinda reminded me of the state fair, since the weather and the date matched perfectly. The way the hostel is organized is that there’s a great hall on the bottom floor with a big kitchen adjoining, and the rooms are on the floor above. That evening the Esperanto kids cooked up dinner for us and the Spanish kids were called upon to make sangria for the party that followed. I was hanging out with the Spaniards, so I watched and learned the art of making sangria, and it’s definitely a skill I will bring back with me to the US.

The party was pretty crazy. We had all kinds of different cultures and groups there, and everyone had their music there and we basically danced most of the evening and night into the morning. By the time I went to bed at (only) 2am, I was dead tired.

The next day, we spent most of our time in Lille. MacKenzie insists that it’s an ugly, rainy town with nothing to do, but I found that for a day’s visit, it was actually a pretty nice place. Freezing cold, but nonetheless a nice place to visit. The center historic city has a lot of neat sites and places to visit. Unlike Compiègne, there seems to be life in the city even on a Sunday afternoon. One interesting site is the cathdral of Lille, which originally dates back as a gothic cathedral, but whose front was remodeled in the 1990s, and now has a modern facade. Once you get over the strangeness of the outside of the church, it’s actually very beautiful, both outside and within. We arrived just in time to catch the last few minutes of mass and then tour around the church. We then spent the rest of the day touring around the city and caught a parade of the students at the university there.

That afternoon we left Lille and stopped at a distillery for a tour on our way back to Compiègne. It was a very fitting way to end a trip on my birthday, and I had no idea that it was part of the itinerary until that morning. Somehow word that it was my birthday got out that morning (I think I had told Monica sometime in September) and people offered me congratulations. I also got Happy Birthday sung to me in about 4 different languages. However, people here didn’t quite catch the significance of the fact that we were visiting a distillery on my 21st birthday. When I explained that Americans can’t legally drink until the age of 21, people barely even believed me.

The distillery itself was pretty neat. We got to see the entire process of making the spirit, which is a digestif similar to whisky in its taste, in this original distillery where it was created. We also got a tasting session in the shop afterwards. They didn’t give me a birthday discount though…

Anyway, that was my weekend. I was pretty tired when we got back, but I certainly enjoyed myself. I’m sure I skipped over a lot of the more interesting details, especially since it’s been so long. I promise I’ll catch up. The photos (which I promise to get up soon as well) will tell all, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Ciao!

Hey everyone. I’ve gotten quite a few comments recently that I’d like to respond to, so I figured I’d put it all into one update. First off, I’d like to thank all of you who sent me a note on my birthday. There were a lot of you! Secondly, a whole lot of congratulations go out to Olivia who is newly engaged to be married.

Justin wrote about the crazy pencil pouches that all the French students have. Justin, I don’t think people realize how right you are. They’re not specific to the French — all Europeans seem to have them, but the French pouches tend to be packed more tightly. And yes, everyone has a candy cane pen. The only thing you forgot is the fountain pen. The scary part is that I felt left out and I went and bought myself a pencil pouch too, though it’s not stocked with anything more than what I brought with me. It’s amazing how much more seriously people take you when you take notes like them. People didn’t think I was serious about my classes until I got a pencil case and started writing in a couple different colors and underlining things in my notes every once in a while (I don’t use a ruler though). Now, the French students offer me help when it looks like I’m falling behind in the notes, or they’ll let me copy a phrase I missed here and there. Professors also expect you to have all the stuff you mentioned. The other day in class, a professor actually asked us to do something in six different colors. Even with my highlighter, the best I could do was four.

Andy, the weather here is still pretty good. We’ve had very little rain, surprisingly enough — maybe three or four days of rain per month. Compiègne is starting to get cold. I’m wearing a scarf when I go out these days, and at night it’s pretty close to 0C. Right now it’s bright and sunny and it feels like a nice automn day. In terms of climbing, I’ve been going twice a week, indoors, and also playing ultimate once a week. Ultimate is funny in French. But Compiègne has it’s downsides. The residence sucks. We went eight consecutive days without hot water in the month of October, and two weeks after, we went over two days without water — no sinks, no showers, no TOILETS. We make the best of it. Other than that, things are generally good.

Chethan, I don’t know what Omaha Beach you went to, but the one I visited did not have much of anything. The cemetery near by was already closed when we got there though, so I bet that’s what you’re referring to.

In terms of French rudeness, I also think you and I visited a different France. I’ve experienced very little in terms of anti-American sentiment. The French are very protective of their culture, that much is true. They tend to treat you like they think you are treating them. But I’ve found that even if you speak no French, if you start off with a simple “bonjour” and don’t assume everyone speaks English (even though they do), then you get treated very nicely. No one has been offensive towards me here, even when I give them a blank stare and ask them to reexplain themselves.

People here, however, don’t have any problems with dissing the American government, and they don’t even bother to worry about offending Americans. As one French person explained to me, “We know that Americans and the American government are two separate things, and we don’t judge you by that just as we hope you don’t judge us. ” (Loosely translated from French). French people will get into huge political arguments without any personal offense in the end though, which is a grand difference between us and them. I think Americans are much more easily offended on many levels than the French, including in politics. This leads to the French unintentionally offending the Americans every once in a while.

Other than that, life is pretty good here. I’m on vacation right now, but I’m opting to stay here a couple days and catch up on some work, the main task being to register for classes next semester at NCSU. I had a wonderful weekend, and I’ll write about that later today, when I get the chance. I’m falling farther and farther behind in updating the photo galleries. As a group, we take so many pictures.

Yesterday, we had the day off, and I cooked up a nice American breakfast for lunch for myself, Martin, Silvia and Giulia. It was good stuff. I’m also working on finding some good music for the American night at the Picolo, which is the first Tuesday after vacation (I have next week off).

That’s all for now. I hope all is well wherever you are.

Hey everyone, I’m back with a much quicker turnaround than last time, and with the story of my action-packed weekend. As you all know, winter is fast-approaching, and this is pretty clear in Northern France. One of the places I’d wanted to see here in France is the abbey atop Mont-St.-Michel, so I suggested to a few people that we go this weekend before it gets too cold to go. I had heard it was much cheaper to go by car, and since no trains go straight to Mont-St.-Michel, it was an easy decision. I found four other people (Manuel, Emily, Maria, and Giulia, who is a newly-arrived Italian) and we planned to head out on Friday evening.

On Friday afternoon, Manuel and I went out to Avis to find a car to rent. Since I couldn’t drive a stick, Manuel was going to be the assigned driver. We went to Avis instead of the student travel agency that people recommended, because we figured it would be cheaper to go straight to the source. After they quoted us a price of about 375 (before taxes) for the weekend, we decided to go back to the travel agency, where we were able to rent the same car for 150, including all taxes. The ironic part is that the agency rents its cars through Avis, so after we got our reciept, we hiked back across town to the same Avis office to pick up our car.

We left that Friday night and headed up to Rouen, which is the city where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the English and is halfway between us and Mont-St.-Michel. We left Compiègne at about 8pm, so we didn’t get to Rouen until 10pm. We got lost when we arrived in Rouen since we didn’t have a map, but we asked a pizza guy on a motorcycle, who told us to follow him and led us wildly around the city until he dropped us off at the street we were looking for.

The next morning, we toured around the city, which is very beautiful, and thus overrun by tourists. If you keep out of a few strategic main squares at the right times, though, you can avoid them. In Rouen we saw, among many other neat things, the tallest church spires in France, the site where Jeanne D’Arc was burned, and the tomb of Richard the Lion-Hearted.

That afternoon, we left Rouen and continued on to Mont-St.-Michel by way of some country roads. The French countryside is very beautiful, and in certain places, the hilly landscape reminded me a lot of western North Carolina. One of the big things I miss here is the ten different shades of leaves as the trees change color in the fall. They tell me the trees change here too, but I have a suspicion that it’s not as colorful as back in NC.

On arriving at Mont-St.-Michel, we were pretty amazed. Even at 50 kilometers away, it has an amazing silhouette over the flat ocean landscape. Arriving there and seeing the tide coming in was even more awe insipring. The abbey was already closed when we arrived, but the city was open and you could tour around the grounds higher up on the mount as well. We stayed for a couple hours and toured around and got to see the rising tide and the sun setting before we left to go eat. After a wonderful Normand dinner, we headed back to the Mont to see it in the evening. The weather was a bit brisk, but seeing the ocean completely surrounding the place and seeing the Mont lit up at night made the trip worth it.

The next morning (Sunday), we went back to take a tour of the abbey, which is itself a pretty wonderful place. The history of the abbey and the architecture are all fun to experience and learn about. What amazes me is how they built the entire city starting in the 8th century, even though the mountain is so steep and the tide comes in twice a day and envelopes everything around but the modern-day road leading to the Mont. In fact, they say that back then, then tide could stay high enough for days on end to prevent travel to and from the abbey. The abbey itself was constructed and reconstructed through different centuries, and you can see architecture from both Roman and Gothic periods, and even some leftovers from when it served as a prison after the revolution.

After our tour, we headed about 50km farther east to see St. Malo, which is another age old city. The city of St. Malo is port town whose old center is surrounded by a wall which you can walk around to see the wonderful rocky beaches and the beautiful city. We all agreed that it was one of the more beautiful cities any of us had ever seen. We spent about five hours there walking along the wall and out on the beach. Manuel decided to go off on his own and swim in the ocean (”How many times can you say you got to swim in the ocean in France?”) but the rest of us all agrees that it was too cold, and I personally had already had the opportunity to swim on French beaches.

On our way back to Compiégne, we went up to the Normandy coast to tour the D-Day beaches, which are a pretty sombering sight. Our first stop was the Pointe Du Hoc, which is a point on the French coast strategically overlooking both Omaha and Utah beaches (where most of the troops landed). Here, a 225-man Ranger force landed and took the point until reinforcments arrived. When they did, only 90 of those Rangers were left. Upon arriving, we found out that we were actually on American soil! The French government had given the thirty-acre site to the American government to take care of as a WWII monument. It was pretty weird seeing signs where the English was above the French. In all, the monument does a great job of showing the horror of war without trying very hard. The area itself is beautiful, but when you contrast it with concrete bunkers that are blown apart or with the artillery holes large enough to fit a few cars in, you realize how terrible war is. Our next stop was Omaha Beach, where the biggest allotment of the troops landed. Other than a few monuments, there isn’t very much to see there.

We finally arrived in Compiègne at about 11pm, after getting lost going through Rouen again. Also of note for the weekend is that I finally learned how to drive a manual car well. I’ve been able to drive manuals before, but I used to stall out a lot. Along the trip, I practiced in a few places, including an empty parking lot at Mont-St.-Michel, and one of the hotels we were at. The hotel was pretty funny because a police car came into the parking lot on its nightly patrol just when I started to practice. Of course, once I saw them, I froze up and kept stalling, and they stopped and watched me, no doubt suspecting some foul play. I finally got the car going and they finally drove off. That night in Compiègne after we got back, I took the car out with Manuel in the passenger seat and I drove all around Compiègne and went out on the highways for a bit. I managed to drive almost perfectly through all kinds of stop-and-go situations. In fact, I feel good enough now that if we rent a car again, I’ll go pick it up. You should all be proud of me. Rental cars are the best way to go when practicing.

All in all, the weekend was a lot of fun, and I had a chance to see some pretty amazing sights in France. If you come here, I do not hesistate in the least to say that Mont-St.-Michel and St. Malo are must-see sites. In fact, the whole of the Normandy and Brittany countrysides are wonderful places. I hope all is well in Raleigh!

Well, I’ve been falling farther and farther behind with this travelogue business. Mostly it’s because I’ve been focusing on getting photos up, since that’s what people here keep asking for. So this time I’ll just cover everything I’ve done the past few weeks, in a quick overview.

Three Saturdays ago (September 27), I headed out to the Château de Pierrefonds by bike. The chateau is about 16 kilometers away from us, and the original plan was that Alvaro and I would bike down to Pierrefonds with Pablo and Mikel meeting us there by bus. Unfortunately, nothing went quite as planned. Alvaro and I got off to a pretty bad start, which included us leaving late, me losing a couple things, and a flat tire. After what was a pretty hefty bike ride, we got to Pierrefonds with the rest of our group nowhere to be found. It turned out they had missed the bus (there’s only one) to Pierrefonds, so we were on our own. Not only that, but Pablo had in his bag the lunch we had bought, as well as all of Alvaro’s money and ID.

Nevertheless, we decided to make the best of the afternoon, so we toured the town and then hiked up to see the château. Pierrefonds is kind of out of the way, so it doesn’t get the kind of tourist traffic as other destinations. Nevertheless, I was amazed at the beauty of both the town and the château. We got to the château just in time to join the organized tour that they put on every hour. Since it was in French, we quickly lost interest and lagged behind the group. Everytime they would move on from one room to the next, we’d have the room literally all to ourselves. We had a lot of fun with that, taking all kinds of crazy pictures and doing all kinds of weird things, like sliding around on the floors, and at one point, climbing up a banister and opening a stained-glass window so that we could get a good set of pictures of the palace.

All in all, I felt that the château, while not at lavish as Versailles, was much nicer and had a lot more to offer, including a museum with history of the region and all kinds of other little perks. If you’re in France and you like going off the beaten path, I recommend this as part of a day trip, and you can get to Pierrefonds without a car, though you have to take a train to Compiègne and then catch a bus from here.

The next day — Sunday — Monica wanted to make lunch for all of us. Saturday evening, I went grocery shopping with her in preparation for a large meal with the main course of “Risotto à la Milanaise”. And what a wonderful lunch it was. About 4 of us spent 2 hours that morning cooking the lunch, and then 11 of us spent 4 more hours eating, drinking, and just having a great time. I made crepes for dessert, and, if I do say so myself, I did a damn good job.

Cooking in the residence is a hit or miss affair, with a lot of rushing back and forth to get things from the room that you’ve forgotten, or to search for a utensil that we need that only one person has. Eating isn’t much easier, with no real places to sit down and eat, except in the courtyard, which is closed now. After a little elbow grease and a lot of manual labor, including moving a table from one floor to another and getting a chair from everyone’s room, we managed to transform the elevator area of the fifth floor into a dining room. We were a pretty comical sight to everyone who got on and off the elevator, but we had a great time.

The Thursday after, I also went to a floral show that was being held by the students at UTC to raise money for one of the student groups. It was a strange experience that I can only compare to a dog show. They had professional florists who made bouquets while an emcee spoke, and each time a bouquet was finished, people would clap. After that, there was a kind of fashion show featuring the students, each wearing their featured clothing or whatnot and carrying one of the bouquets.

The next Sunday (October 5), Manuel and I went to Paris, because the first Sunday of every month, certain museums in Paris are free. This time we caught the train with plenty of time to spare and had a later start on the morning. We got into the Louvre fairly easily, and started touring around the place. You don’t have to stay very long in the Louvre before you realize its sheer magnitude. Over the course of the day, we spent over four hours there, in two separate trips, and by the time we left, we had seen about half of the museum and were pretty tired of museums. The Louvre is, to me, not a tourist-friendly museum, unless you know that you want to see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo and then you leave. And that’s exactly what a lot of people do. The lines at the Mona Lisa were insane — I took pictures into the crowd instead of at the painting. The funny thing is that there is so much that is so great at the Louvre, and the Mona Lisa just isn’t that amazing when you compare it against everything else. But what do I know? I’m not an artist. All I know is that we saw some of the more amazing things in the rooms that had only a few people in them.

We also met up that day for a short while with Simone and his girlfriend Erica who was visiting for the weekend. While in the Louvre, we ran into a few other people from Compiegne, including Rudolf, a Venezuelan, and André, the Brazilian with whom I went to the Techno Parade. Manuel and I took a lunch break and ate sandwiches in front of Notre Dame, and then visited the achaeological crypt, which was also free that day. It’s pretty neat to see the history of Paris over thousands of years. After our second trip to the Louvre, we went out walking around Paris for a while, and then decided to see the Arc de Triomphe in the evening. It’s a pretty amazing sight, and the visit to the top also happened to be free that day.

I started writing this last week, and I’m finally putting it up. I haven’t written about the past weekend, which was also packed with adventure. I’m falling pretty far behind in my writing, since I also want to start writing about life in Compiegne. Needless to say, there’s been enough happening here (both good and bad) to break the monotony. I promise I’ll start to catch up this week. I hope you’re all doing well, and feel free to write — it’s nice to hear news to Raleigh and the rest of the world.

Hey everyone. I’m playing catch-up now since I’ve been lazy about writing. The weekend before last (September 20 and 21), I went down to Paris with a group of people to take advantage of the “Weekend du Patrimoine”, which translates into Weekend of Patrimony. During this weekend, all French sites and monuments are supposed to be open and free of charge, even if they are sites that are usually closed to the general public. We had heard that the Palace of Versailles was going to be free and that every room would be open, whereas usually only about a quarter of the palace is open to viewing. Our group consisted of myself, Pablo, Alvaro, Mikel, Manuel, Silvia, Emily, and Jessica.

Armed with this information, we woke up very early on Saturday morning to catch the 7am train to Paris. Unfortunately, getting onto that train wasn’t easy. First, the bus was five minutes early and the bastard bus driver drove right by us as we waved to him and ran to the stop to catch the bus. Then we jogged all the way across town to the train station and bought tickets with seconds to spare, hopping on the train as the doors were closing. With our daily exercise taken care of, we plopped down into our seats and napped for most of the train ride. We did, however, manage to catch the sunrise about halfway through our train ride.

A couple hours later, we finally made it to the Palace of Versailles, strolling in just before 10am. We took some pictures and roamed around the courtyard for a while before getting in line to actually get into the palace. This is where we found out that contrary to our belief, Versailles was neither free nor more open than usual. We argued for a while, but didn’t manage to get anywhere, so we paid for our tickets and went in.

Versailles is pretty big. We spent the whole day exploring the main palace, the “vacation homes” that the kings likes to escape to (which were free that day) and the gardens, which were beautiful. By the time the day was over, we were dead tired. We managed to hike at least 15k that day.

The palace is very beautiful, but if you visit Paris, I don’t recommend going to Versailles unless you have a lot of extra time, or you really want to see the Hall of Mirrors. It really isn’t that much better than any other château in France, and it’s more expensive to boot. If you’re in Paris, there’s much more to see and do, and Versailles can’t be visited in less than a whole day. Save your money and see a few châteaux in the Loire Valley of France.

That evening, Emily left to return to Compiègne, but we met up with quite a few other people in Paris. Simone showed up with a friend of his, Julia. Maria and Gabriela also came that afternoon. We had booked two hotel rooms for three people each, but ended up fitting eleven people into the rooms. We also ran into a few other UTC students over the weekend, including the Swedes, Kira, Monica, and some of the Brazilians.

The next day in Paris, we ended up not doing very much, but we still enjoyed ourselves. It turned out that everyone expected someone else to have a plan, and all we really had was a vague idea of a few things to do. In the morning, we headed over to the city center and saw Notre Dame. It doesn’t matter how many times you see that cathedral, it’s sheer magnitude, beauty, and quality cannot cease to amaze you. We also tried to visit the crypts under the church which house the ruins of the original city. We decided not to bother when we found out that it wasn’t free either.

In the afternoon, we had lunch and chilled in the park before heading up to the Palais de l’Elysée, which is where the French president resides. On our way up, Silvia and I fell behind the group and we ran into a pair of Italians who were lost. Since I had a decent understanding of the area and the metro, I attempted to help them with Silvia translating. Let me tell you, trying to communicate like that when you’re in a rush and in a busy area like a metro is a crazy experience. We finally managed to get them on their way, and continued our journey to the palais.

During the weekend du patrimoine, the palais is open to the public. On arrival, however, we were told that there was a four-hour wait. We made use of our time instead by napping in the park across the street. After our nap, we walked around a little bit, but ended up heading to the train station to catch the 6pm train back to Paris. After two days, we were all rather tired.

In some sense, our weekend was a flop. We didn’t take complete advantage of the weekend du patrimoine, but part of that was just because we were misinformed. When we told our French teacher the next week that Versailles and the Crypt weren’t free, he freaked out, and spouted out all kinds of things about robbing the public of its rights. It’s at least good to know that someone agreed with our analysis of the situation.

Even so, we all had a great weekend. We’re only an hour away from Paris, so I’m sure we’ll be going back a lot more. I think we all need to invest, however, in some more comfortable shoes.

I have even more great news. Almost all the photos I’ve taken so far are finally up on the internet! This is the first time I’ll be able to publish an update along with the photos that go along with it. The photos for this trip are available here. The contrast and brightness of the photos on the computer is less optimal than I’d like, but I’ll have to fix that when I get home. In Compiègne, I’ve been taking a whole lot of photos, and just trying to figure out the limits of the camera and playing with light in a lot of shots. A lot of those shots turn out to be pretty bad, but some are pretty neat. They’re mostly night shots and people shots. There’s also a black and white section in the Compiègne album. Enjoy the photos and let me know what you all think.

After a long hiatus, I’m back with all the news of last two weeks’ adventures. I’m finally starting to fall into a schedule, with all my classes in order. Things are becoming as “normal” as they can be, considering the situation I’m in. This is probably the last time that I’ll actually do a summary of what I did. In the future, I’ll probably just write whenever I have something to rant about or just something to say. I’ll still write about my weekends. In fact, I’m leaving last weekend out of this update and I’ll write about it separately.

I’ve been sick these past couple of weeks. There’s a pretty contagious cough going around — everybody seems to have it. I thought I just had a simple cough at the start of last week, but then I woke up one day with pounding sinuses. After that day, things have been getting better, but this thing refuses to go away. One thing you’ll learn about living in a foreign country is how hard it is to find simple things. I searched for almost a week to find cough drops before finding them packaged as candy in the checkout of the local supermarket.

Last time, I mentioned that I thought my classes were going to be difficult. Well, they are. I have two courses that aren’t so bad. One is French, which was designed for foreigners. The other course is ergonomics. Here in France, ergonomics is a technical course, taught as part of the mechanical engineering department. The teacher doesn’t talk too fast, and he also uses Powerpoint, so I’m able to follow along AND take notes pretty easily. In that class, our main project is to do an ergonomic analysis of a product of our choosing. I’m in a group with two French kids and we’re working with an Archos MP3 player. We’ll see how that goes.

My other two courses are pretty hard. Both are “general culture” courses (which is basically CHASS). The problem with these courses is that the professors lecture for two hours straight nonstop. Literally. The teacher has a few notes and he manages to talk for the length of the class period. The teachers stop every now and then to write a word on the board that they don’t think students can spell, but otherwise they just talk. It’s very hard for me to understand without concentrating really hard on what the professor is saying. I can’t take notes and listen at the same time. Even then, I only get about half of the meaning. French students, however, don’t have this problem. If I have already told you about how French students take notes, then you’ll hear it again. They take pretty insane notes, with multiple colored pens and highlighting. They even use rulers to underline things. And they do this all in real-time, while the prof is talking. I wish I could take pictures. You have to see it to believe it. I’ve started talking with the French students, and I think I might find some who will let me read their notes so that I can follow along in class.

In my philosophy class, I’m less worried now. In most French classes, your grade depends on a major project, a final exam, and maybe a midterm. Rarely are you graded on more than two or three items. In my philosophy class, our major project is to do a group presentation on a text that the professor assigns. The group I’m in is one of the groups working on an English text. I’m now the language expert.

I’m more worried about my art and society class. Our teacher talks really fast. So fast that the French students have trouble keeping up and following his phraseology. He puts up a slide of a piece of art and just talks and maybe writes the artist’s name on the board. I’m trying to keep up, but I’m really just hopelessly lost. Things seem to be getting slowly better, but I will have to take up the students on their offers for a little help.

My schedule though, is wonderful. I couldn’t have asked for more. I don’t have any class on Thursday and Friday. I have a class early Monday morning, but I think I can live with that. For French class we have to attend a couple sessions of lab on Friday afternoon, but I think we just watch French movies. All the Europeans are required to take 6 or 7 courses. Being an NCSU student is wonderful, even though it means I’ll be working my butt off when I get back to the US.

Now that classes have finally gotten going and things are settling, I’ve been taking care of the other things I enjoy doing. Of course, near the top of that list is climbing. I’ve finally managed to find climbers and get out to the wall here in Compiègne during the hours that it’s free for students. I think I’ve gained a couple pounds since arriving and I know my muscles have lost a bit of strength since I left the US. Both of these have taken a toll on my climbing, but I think I’ll get back to my end-of-summer form pretty quickly. I’m a lot less sore this week than last. Climbing here in France is different from that of the US. I would explain a lot more, but I think I’ll save my climbing stories and explanations for another update. Suffice to say that I’m enjoying myself immensely at the walls.

I’ve found a lot of people to hang out with since I got here. All of them are foreign students. It’s not that I have anything against the French, but they all have their own friends and they can easily communicate amongst themselves. I’ve found a few good acquaintances who are French, but no one that really hangs out with us for any extended periods of time. The foreign students are all in the same situation, and most of us live together. That all makes it easy for us to become good friends quickly.

I’ve been mostly hanging out with the Spanish and the Italian kids, besides Martin, the German. The other Germans tend to keep to themselves. I see the Swedes a good bit, and of course the Brazilians and the Mexicans are everywhere. All this means that I’ve been learning a lot of other languages in addition to French. As of late, I’ve been picking up a whole lot of Italian and Spanish, which are very similar. It’s really weird watching an Italian and a Spaniard communicate while each person speaks his or her own language. They can hold decent conversations like that.

We’ve been cooking a lot of dinner together, since the dining hall has pretty restricted hours. I’ve learned from an Italian the perfect way to make pasta, while I passed on some tips on making better omelettes. All this in a kitchen that would make Lee Hall look wonderful.

And finally, I’ve found computer labs with both Internet access AND working USB. All my pictures are up on the internet now, though only about half of them are currently viewable. I’ll get the others taken care of within a week or so.

A few tips: one thing you learn quickly when laundry is expensive is how to wash clothes in the sink. It’s a good skill to practice before you end up in a foreign country, especially with a tiny sink like mine. Getting a bicycle grease stain out of a pair of pants in a sink this size is pertty hard to do without making a mess.

Secondly, to save space when packing, it’s nice to pack travel sizes of all your toiletries. When you arrive, you can buy bigger versions of almost everything you need, and then you can pack up your toiletry kit so you have it ready to go for the weekend. It works really well, and while you spend a bit more, it’s worth it. However, DO NOT do this with contact solution. Pack it all. I paid 22 freaking euros for a bottle of contact solution. 22 euros! And with the dollar as it is now, that’s close to 30 bucks.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for the past couple weeks. You guys have all been pretty bad about writing, even those of you to whom I’ve written emails. No worries, though: I’m having a blast here, though I miss NC State and all the fun that goes with it. I hope all is well for everyone in Carolina and I hope that Isabel wasn’t too mean to you. Ciao!