Morocco!

I had an amazing time in Morocco, of course. I went with 5 friends from IES over easter weekend. We were mostly in Marrakech but also visited Casablanca during a long layover.

La Jardin Majorelle

A Monkey! In the huge, sensory-overload place Djemaâ el Fna

Orange juice! There were a lot of stands, still in the main square

Camel walking down the street. You know, like you do...

Baby camel! With our hotel worker/tour guide who wanted to marry me. Literally.

Caption not necessary :)

The beautiful area where we started a hike

The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca... third largest in the world (next to 2 in Saudi Arabia)

My apologies...

To all my loyal readers:

It's been a while. Too long to catch up, actually, so the next few posts are basically just going to be a photographic summary of my last couple of months around Europe (and a bit of Africa). If you want to know the stories -- and of course there are stories -- we'll talk some time.




You know the pictures are always your favorite parts, anyways...

Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Paris...

Where to start…

Friday 2 weeks ago I woke up early to go to my internship and spent 3 hours shelving yogurts and dairy products, then checking off which butters were on the shelves… and then ran home, grabbed my bags, and headed to the train station.

I made it just fine, but there was some sort of problem with the train that made the trip about an hour longer, and by the time I met up with my friend Becca in Paris we were the last two people to register for the flight (and ended up in the very back row). A couple hours later we were in Prague! Our friend Nicole came to the airport to meet us and bring us back to her apartment. She’s been living in Prague for a few more months than I’ve been in France teaching in an international preschool, and she is still going to be there for more than a year. She has family there, has found herself a wonderful boyfriend, and is very happy :)

Becca and I were really lucky to have Nicole, first to have a place to stay and second to have someone show us around the city for a couple days. Prague is beautiful; the architecture and the buildings are amazing. Nicole told us the Nazis left it pretty much alone because they thought it was beautiful. Unfortunately, even though they haven’t yet adopted the Euro, they’re getting ready to and Prague wasn’t as cheap as I was expecting it to be. Also, we had amazing weather. We got bundled up and ready to go explore on Saturday morning, and 10 feet out the door had to turn around and ditch hats, coats, etc.—it was like summer! Perfect for walking around the city. We saw the Prague Castle and Cathedral, Old Town Square, the Charles bridge, the Moldau (the river) the dancing house, etc. Becca and I really enjoyed seeing Nicole and hanging out with her and her roommate.

Prague Castle

Nicole and I

Monday morning Becca and I left and headed to the train station to catch our train for Budapest. We got there and on the train without any problems and stretched out and relaxed for a relaxing 7-hour train ride….for about 4 hours, before the controller passing through our car looked at our tickets and informed us rather off-handedly that the train was not going to Budapest because of “strike”. Other than that she had very little information for us and no suggestions of what we should do. After a couple seconds of panic I realized that there wasn’t too much we could do about it, and decided to wait and see what happened. At every stop we went through, the signs still said the destination was Budapest, and there were no announcements on the train to indicate any differently.
We heard some people speaking English in our car, and ended up going over to talk to them: two Brazilian students about our age, working in London and taking some time off the travel, and just as at a loss as we were about what to do if we didn’t make it to Budapest. We decided collectively to wait it out and then stick together until we had figured something out. A bit later, the train stops. It’s dark out, we’re somewhere in Slovakia (close to the Hungarian border) but there’s clearly not much around, and everyone got off the train. We waited a bit to see if anyone would announce anything, to no avail… we got off and after asking around a bit, and discovered some other English-speaking students. Luckily for us, they were Slovak (ian?) students studying in Budapest and had some ideas about finding a bus to get into the city. We waited a bit longer on the train, since there was still a chance it might take off again, and then got off all together to try for the bus idea. As we’re walking away, another kid sticks his head out one of the train doors and asks us in American English if we knew what was going on… we explained what we knew and what we were doing and told him he could come with us…

With the exception of the two Slovak students, none of us had any of either Slovak or Hungarian currency, and there weren’t any ATM’s to be found. The Slovak girls called us taxis to take us to a bus station across town and loaned us the money. We made it to the bus stop just fine, where the other American (who, as it turns out, was a soldier on leave from Iraq) got some money out and paid for my and Becca’s bus fares. (Sidenote: have I just been in France for too long, or is that a really grammatically complicated thing to try and say? Becca and I’s? my’s? anyways…) An hour or so later, we were all in Budapest! Our Slovak friends helped us find out where we needed to go to find our respective hostels, we exchanged emails in the metro and talked about meeting up, and Becca and I made it to our hostel a few hours later than we had planned…

I loved Budapest from the first couple minutes, and Becca thought I was crazy. I felt really safe in the area where we were, and Becca and I actually had an apartment all to ourselves in a really nice area down the street from the main hostel. We had a late dinner then got up the next morning to explore. We had beautiful weather again, and I couldn’t stop gushing about how much I loved the city, which we found to be cheaper than Prague. We saw the Palace and Castle Hill and walked around all over the place before we met up with Mike (our new soldier friend) and went to a really nice dinner (because we could almost afford it, in Budapest) and out to a really cool bar with him. The next day we got up, met with Mike again, and the three of us went to the Terror museum, a really interesting museum in what used to be the headquarters of both the Hungarian Nazi party and then the Communists. That afternoon we had some famous cake from Gerbeaud for lunch then headed to one of Budapest’s famous bathhouses for a bit before heading to the opera (we saw Carmen... with Hungarian subtitles) that evening. After that we asked where we could find a good restaurant, had someone walk us almost all the way there, and then later found a bar with live Hungarian folk music, which was actually really cool.

The Parliament Building over the Danube

The house of terror

The next morning we got up a bit later than originally planned to take our 3 hour train ride to Vienna—this time without any problems :) I felt a little more lost in Vienna. I don’t speak or understand any German, and we didn’t have “a Nicole” or the really helpful guidebook we had had in Budapest. We found our budget hotel to be much less friendly than the hostels we had stayed in previously, and were very much on our own to figure out something to do. We found something to eat and then rode the metro(/subway/whatever) to the center of town and walked around a bit. The next day, since it was raining a bit and windy, we signed up for a bus tour and saw a lot of the city before visiting Schonbrunn palace (the “Versailles” of Vienna). Afterwards we stopped in for some famous Sacher torte at the Hotel Sacher.

Schonbrunn Palace

Sachertorte!

Saturday we got up and braved the wind, rain, and actually a little bit of hail to visit Sigmund Freud’s old apartment. It was interesting to see, but I didn’t think it was set up very well in terms of a museum. Then we headed to the Succession building which is something of a modern-art museum with the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt before taking off that evening for Paris (we sat in the very front row of the plane, that time).

Freud's waiting room

We walked around in circles a bit looking for our hotel, then had a quick dinner before heading to bed. Sunday we went to the Musée de l’Orangerie to see Monet’s famous water lilies paintings, and then Notre Dame and around that area to pick up some souvenirs for Becca’s friends and family. After that, Becca and I split up in the metro and I was back in Nantes in time for dinner.

Monday morning hit like a ton of bricks, and I actually had two midterms this week before spending Friday again in Paris… I did ok on the first, but the second was a disaster… my mind was (still is) on vacation. Tomorrow I’m going to see a play, and then I’m going to GET SOME WORK DONE, because next weekend I’m going with IES to Normandy, the weekend after I’m going to Morocco for 4 days, I think I have a friend studying in England visiting either the next weekend or the weekend after, then I have 2 weeks of vacation (for which I still do not have plans) and then the last week of class! Ah!

BUT I did manage to quit my internship!

Age… Time

It feels like my time here is speeding up. The last time I updated, my year in France was half over. Now it feels like it’s close to the end.

I’ve been able to talk to some of the new students some more, and have heard from a number of them that the full-year students seem older: they were surprised to hear that I was the same age as them. As one girl put it, “you all seem so mature and put together!”

Funny to think about when I remember how lost and young I felt not so long ago…not long ago at all. But it’s true; we’ve come a long way. And now I have to start thinking about the reality of my life, post-France adventure.

The summer after I graduated high school I took a road trip with three of my friends from Sacramento to Vancouver, B.C. It was my first time “traveling” without adult supervision. I remember being amazed that I was old enough to just check into a hotel; to drive more or less wherever I wanted. Just over two years later (although it seems like less, in ways), I am here in Europe with relatively absolute freedom. A friend and I went to Stockholm for a weekend on a whim, not knowing anyone who had even been there, and got the hang of public transportation and found our hotel with little or no difficulty. Coming back we missed our train because our plane was late because of a storm… but we still made it back, safe and sound.

Earlier this week I bought tickets to go to Morocco over Easter weekend. AFRICA. It blows my mind that I can just take off with a group of friends and go to Africa. Winter break starts next week, and tomorrow afternoon I leave for Prague, Budapest, and Vienna. I’m a little bit nervous, not knowing a word of Czech, Hungarian, or German, but I know we’re going to be fine. It’ll be the longest trip I’ve taken so far since this time we have a full week off.

At the moment I’m loving being in Nantes. My frustrations with French are less and less frequent. I’m taking a bunch of really interesting classes and I’ve had virtually no homework—everything that I love about learning. (I’m having to start doing a little bit of work, now, so we’ll see if that changes things) My home here feels like home and I’m comfortable—at least for the most part-- with my host family. I have a few French friends and some wonderful American ones.

On a slightly less positive note: I started an internship two weeks ago, at a huge store that’s something like a SuperTarget or a Costco. I thought I would be learning about how the store functions as far as making purchases go, etc, but instead I’m learning how the store functions…by putting products on shelves. For 8 hours a week. Early in the morning. I was ready to quit after the first day and was told that wouldn’t be possible, so… we’ll see. I keep telling people I feel like I’m volunteering at a Wal-Mart. Because of it, I’m busier than I’ve ever been here and have been stressed out at times… but it’s an experience, and it’s all part of the adventure.
And what an adventure it is :)

Les Vacances

After my finals were finished and a couple days of mad Christmas shopping, I said goodbye to my friends here in Nantes and left my house here at 5am December 21st to head home for Christmas. There was a near-disaster when my host brother, who had kindly offered to wake up early to drive me to the train station, didn't end up waking up... until the last minute after I knocked on his door.

When I made it to the train station, a man waiting, seeing my bags, asked me if by chance I was heading to CDG airport in Paris. Since I said yes, he introduced me to his friend, a Russian woman in a full fur coat who didn't speak a word of French or English. She had a sign explaining where she was going and with her flight information, and the man asked if I wouldn't mind helping her to find her gate when we got to the airport. I said sure, since the train was getting in around 9 and my flight wasn't leaving until almost 1pm. Our single conversation on the train went like this:

her: New Ork?

me: no... California?

her: californieee! (nod of recognition)

When the train got in we set off running trying to get to her gate, which of course was in the terminal the furthest from where we were... To make a long story short, I think she made it, and when I left she gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, "gross gross mercy!" which I'm sure was her "merci beaucoup", but much cuter.

I then tried to find check-in counter, which of course was all the way back where I started, and when I got there was greeted by the longest line I have ever seen in an airport... it went almost into the next terminal and I was in it for over two hours. By the time I got to my gate the plane was boarding... oy.

On the way to Texas I watched no less than three movies on my handy personal screen, setting the tone for the rest of my break, during which I watched movies like it was my job.
(Sidenote: Texas is not the best place to rediscover American culture after 4 months away).

25 hours after leaving and one nasty customs run-in later (never declare anything when you have a connecting flight), I arrived in Sacramento. Luckily it was nighttime, so I woke up the next morning jet-lag free! Hurray!

I spent most of the next couple weeks hanging out with my family at home. I had my first hamburger after 4 months without, and ate plenty of real american breakfasts. I went shopping with my mom-- buying some of the things that I needed but had been avoiding because of the Euro-- hung out with friends, showed my parents some pictures... It was really relaxing and really nice to be home, and it felt almost like I had never left.

A couple weeks later I hopped on a plane yet again for my third trip halfway across the world since September, and when I got back to Nantes it felt like I had never left. I arrived a couple weeks before classes started, and since there weren't many people here I didn't do much: watched a few more movies, did a bit more shopping since France is in the middle of the winter edition of it's bi-annual national sales, and slept more than I've ever slept in my life (the return trip was, unfortunately, not jet-lag free): I went to bed around 11 and woke up around 9... and it was wonderful. I wandered around town and discovered a few things that I had missed first semester, including the beautiful trails that run along the river right by my house. I've since taken a long walk there at least once a week.

Classes started last Monday; effectively destroying my vacation-sleep schedule, but at least giving me something to do. So far I really like my classes, and there hasn't been any strikes to speak of! Well--at least not the kind that blocks my classes ;) It's a little strange that most of students from last semester are gone and that there's a bunch of "newbies" around, but it will be fun getting to know them and showing them around town.

More frequent and entertaining blog posts coming up soon...

Strikes, more Strikes, and Travel

I don’t even know where to start, it’s been so long since my last update—but if I don’t do it now, it’s never going to happen. Readers digest version of the last part of my Fall semester:

The Wednesday after I got back from Greece, I headed to my class at the university to find that the students who had been occupying the building and handing out information in opposition to a new law about university reform in the works had taken things a step further and were now going on strike and blocking the university. They pulled chairs and desks out of classrooms and into hallways and blocked the doors that they could. I found my professor (smoking outside, of course) and asked him what I should do with the paper I was supposed to turn in that day, dropped it off to the department secretary, and headed off.
The next morning when I tried to go to my history class, it was the same situation. And then the next week. And the next. The week after, I gave up on making the trip across town just to turn right back around, but I didn’t miss anything. Two weeks ago, classes had theoretically started again. Monday, on our way to translation, we ran into a group of American students from the earlier class, telling us to give up and go home. Some of the students on strike had come into their classroom while they were having class, and pulled their desks and chairs away from underneath them. They then proceeded to occupy the building, making as much noise as possible to prevent any classes from taking place. I hung out and observed for a while… then went home. Thursday, I went to class, but since there wereless than 20 students out of a lecture of a couple hundred, the professor decided not to have class.
This week, our last week, I finally had my classes again, but it was pointless. In my comparative literature class, we had met 4 times (4 weeks), and not met for 7, taking into account that the professor was gone for a meeting the week before fall break. We had only discussed one book out of the four we were going to read. This week we breezed through one more and started on the third… Thankfully, for each of these classes my grade was based on only one assignment, which I managed to get and turn in without too much trouble (and I passed, woohoo!).

Outside one of my lecture halls, décor à la strike

In the meantime, I still had my two classes at the IES center, except for that one time the transportation workers were on strike and my professor couldn’t get a train to come into town. Oh yes. And I ended up missing my Friday class two weeks in a row because of fantastic adventures…what can you do? Thanksgiving week, I headed to Florence to visit Ali, one of my best friends, who’s studying there for the semester. She even saved me a plate of Thanksgiving dinner from her school’s potluck :-) We went to Siena for a day (beautiful), hung out in Florence, ate pizza and pasta and gelato and had some cappucinos, and went to Pisa and took some silly pictures with the tower. Italy was beautiful, and it was so nice to see Ali and see her mad Italian skills, and to pretend to speak Italian myself as well. It was wonderful, and I survived all the traveling by myself with no problems.

Ali and I, and some more off-season tourists in front of the Ponte Vecchio in FlorenceYou all know what it is... doesn't it look fake?

I got back Sunday night, then worked like mad Monday through Wednesday to turn in two papers (aka, the majority of my work for this semester), and then left bright and early Thursday morning to head to Stockholm with a friend from IES. We had talked early in the semester about wanted to go to Sweden, and we found round trip plane tickets for less than 30 euros total, so we had to do it. (fine print: the airports were for low-cost airlines, so we had to take a bus from Paris to the airport and then the airport to actual Stockholm, each of which cost more than the one-way plane trips, and we had to take a train to Paris just to get there…the tickets for which I bought twice because the first ones didn’t come in the mail on time… oh yeah, there was a post office strike as well… but it was still a good deal). We were scheduled to land at around 4:30 pm, and I’ll never forget looking out the plane window when we started descending and seeing city lights from above and asking, “um, why is it nighttime out there?” Needless to say, by the time we landed it may as well have been the middle of the night. We caught our bus, got to the train station, bought transportation passes, and traveled to and found our hotel with almost no difficulty. (Swedish for travelers = English. We only met one person who didn’t seem to be completely fluent). Our hotel was lovely; we stayed in a “quick-sleep” room on the inside, with a bunk-bed and no windows, which had a flat-screen TV nonetheless. The only downside was the shared restroom facility, with locker room-style communal showers and no curtains to speak of. We managed to work in a shower a piece by going at off hours and blocking the door for the other person…haha. We also went in the sauna, which was nice.

The Vassa-- a Swedish warship from the XVII century that sunk and was discovered and brought to the surface 50 or so years ago

A Christmas market in old-town Stockholm

Stockholm by ... afternoon

I loved Stockholm, it’s a really gorgeous city, really clean… It was cold, but dry for the most part with the exception of one night (when we decided to take random busses around town with our transportation pass, then the wind broke my umbrella…) We left our hotel before 8 am Sunday morning to catch the train to the central station, and caught our bus to the airport, got on our plane, and about an hour after started experiencing some serious turbulence, which continued for at least an hour. My first time on record getting motion sickness on an airplane. The pilot announced a couple hours into the normally 2 and a half hour flight that we weren’t going to be able to land in Paris because the wind on the runway was too strong for our aircraft, so we got diverted to Lille – in northern France. We landed 45 minutes late, about 2 and a half hour drive away from our original destination, which still wasn’t even central Paris. Needless to say, we missed our train back to Nantes by a longshot. The airline bussed us to the airport in the boondocks, where we took another bus to Paris, where we took the metro to the train station, where I bought my third train ticket for the return trip from Paris to Nantes, for a later train because it was a bit cheaper, and I ended up home at about 1 am. We never even got to eat lunch. I think my travels that day deserve to be re-stated:

Train (hotel to central station)
Bus (to the airport)
Plane (to…Lille)
Bus (Lille to airport)
Bus (airport to Paris)
Metro (bus station to train station)
Train (to Nantes)
Tram (to the night bus station)
Bus (to my house)

Oy.

Fast forward to the present: I had two finals Friday and have another on Tuesday, then Friday I’m headed home for Christmas :-) It's hard to believe the semester is basically over already. It feels like the day I got here was forever ago, but it went by really fast at the same time.

I’ll come back to Nantes January 8th, and then who knows… classes don’t start again until the 21st.
Good luck with exams (if you have them), safe travels, and Joyeux Noël!

Athènes

I'm back from Greece, safe and sound... and I had a great time.

I miss the food and warm weather already!

We had a couple adventures getting there-- I took the train by myself (but ended up sitting right next to a girl from my program) Tuesday night and met my friends in the train station. From there we had planned on taking the metro to the airport and trying to sleep there a little bit, since our flight left at 6 the next morning. We bought our tickets and got on the metro, but when we got to our connection to the airport, it was blocked off. Apparently it closes at 23h00. There was another person standing in front of the gate with a couple suitcases, looking confused, and when we figured out that we were all in the same situation we decided to leave the station and try to work on it together.

We asked a woman in the station what bus(es) we could take to get to the airport, and in the Parisien tradition of customer service she replied that there were "no buses" and was done with the conversation. However, the other stranded traveler had a bus map that looked like it was possible, so we decided to try anyways. Our friend, who was from Brazil and was traveling in between a German program in Germany and a medical program in Serbia, spoke English and was good company to have while taking buses around the outskirts of Paris in the middle of the night. He watched out for us and also showed us some pictures from his travels.

As it turns out, the buses did work, and we arrived at the airport a little after midnight. We found some benches and soon after realized that is was FREEZING. Apparently they keep it cold so that homeless people don't sleep there... and I couldn't sleep either, even after putting on the majority of clothes I had packed. Needless to say, when we got on the plane the next morning, I was unconscious before takeoff.

3 hours later we were in Athens! We took the tram to get to our station closest to our hotel, got off, and promptly got lost. We walked around in circles for a bit before walking into another hotel and asking for help. Greek people were extremely friendly the whole time we were there and it seemed like everyone spoke English.

My first impressions of Athens weren't the greatest...basically, it looked old and dirty. When we walked around later that day, though, we discovered the Plaka, a touristy area below the Acropolis that was really cute. I had some Moussaka (yum) and we headed back to the hotel early since we were all exhausted.

The next morning we got up and headed to the Acropolis. It's really impressive and up on a hill in the middle of Athens, in sharp contrast to the city below. We got in for free (there and everywhere else) with our Université de Nantes id's, which was really nice. European Union students get in for free, but other students only get a discount, so it was weird saying "We're from France" everytime, especially since there were a lot of Americans around (we really are very, very easy to identify abroad). We ran into the two other girls from our program who went to Athens for the break, and exchanged info to be able to meet up with them later.

On the steps of the Theatre of Dionysus

Odean of Herodes Atticus

The Parthenon

Then we walked back down and headed to the Agora. I really liked it there because you could just walk around explore the ruins, and the more restored buildings were really nice as well.

Stoa (of Attalos?)

Temple of Hephaestus/Theseion

Our last day in Athens we got up and went to the National Archeological Museum, which was actually really interesting but we didn't have enough time to see everything. Then we had signed up for a tour to see the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion. I had my doubts, but it was definitely worth the price if just for the opportunity to drive along the coast--it was beautiful. The temple is really picturesque and the sky and the ocean were amazing... sigh.

Poseidon (in the National Archeological Museum)

His temple

My lovely travel companions and I :)

That night we met up with the other girls from our program, and went out to a fabulous dinner in the Gazi district, which was amazing. It was really pretty with a view of the Acropolis in the background, lots of really cute cafés and restaurants and bars and atmosphere and people.

Saturday morning we got up to catch our flight back to Paris. We were all pretty tired, so we hung out in our hostel for a bit, and then I decided to walk around by myself for a while. I saw the Panthéon (from the outside), Notre Dame, the Seine... I finally had to head back because I had to go to the bathroom!

The next morning we went and saw the Catacombs (really creepy... I read somewhere that there's about 7 million people's bones down there??) and the Musée d'Orsay, which was free because it was the first Sunday of the month. I loved it.

Lessons learned:

• Guidebooks are worth the investment. I would have liked to have known a little bit more about a lot of the places we saw, and also had more information about what to see, how to see it, etc.
• Talk with all of your travel companions before departure and have a general idea of what you want to do and how

All in all I had a great time. Hopefully I'll be able to go visit the Greek islands at some point!