Mon jour favori à Paris (pour l'instant)

Vendredi

On Friday, as an end to our orientation, we had a cruise on the Seine!  Ashley and I headed over to meet up with everyone in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The cruise was not a relaxing affair, however.  We were split up into four teams and had to complete a worksheet which included trivia questions and I-Spy tasks.  This was not some trivial worksheet - it required effort.  Roberto, one of the Stanford adults, created it and was very serious about it.  It was kind of nice thought, because we had to actively engage in our surroundings.  Roberto and Fabienne provided commentary on what we were seeing and the packet provided more opportunities to pay attention to landmarks, bridges, islands, and the people on the shores.

My two worlds collide

My team, the green team, was very close to winning.  We tied with the red team and the tie breaker was for one member of each team to volunteer.  Then, they were told they had to name everyone on our team.  Our team's person got two wrong and the red team's person got all of them right!  (Props to you Travis).

After the cruise, I got a nutella crêpe and sat in the park in front of the Eiffel Tower.  Then I went back home to rest up before dinner.  I made plans with three other girls from the program - Anna, Melissa, and Andrea.  We went to a French restaurant Anna found on Yelp, where I had a steak and fries (not very French, I know).  Since it was on Yelp, there were a lot of foreigners there - in fact I don't think there were any French patrons while we were there - but it was still very good.  It was kind of funny because all of us speak very quietly.  I probably speak the loudest out of the four of us, so it was a struggle to hear a lot of the conversation.  But I still had a lot of fun and they're a great group of girls.

After dinner, I met up with Ashley at the Eiffel Tower.  It was actually really funny because we were coming from different places, but I managed to walk right into the same car where Ashley was sitting when our paths merged!  Once we got off the metro, we went to Monoprix (a general/grocery chain here in Paris) and bought a single serve bottle of wine and a bar of chocalate for €3.  Then we sat on the Trocadero and watched the Eiffel Tower (including two rounds of sparkling lights on the hour) for almost two hours!  A little before midnight, we headed back to our apartment building.

Today was definitely the best day I've had in Paris so far!

Ma première semaine à Paris

Here's and overview of my first week in Paris:

Lundi

Jardin du Luxembourg

• This was our first day of orientation!  We had a lecture for about two hours in the morning by Estelle, the directrice of the program.  It was just general information that we had mostly heard before, but it's always good to have reminders.
• Afterwards we were free for lunch.  I hung around awkwardly for a little bit after the lecture and then attached myself to another girl named Anna.  We wandered a while until we eventually found a little pâtisserie.  I had a quiche lorraine, she had a sandwich, we both had Oranginas.
• Then we walked a little more until we ended up at le Jardin de Tuileries.  There we sat and watched lots of kids playing with boats in the big fountain.
• That afternoon, I had my first French class.  My teacher is amazing and so funny!  There are 8 people in my class and I can already tell it's going to be super fun.

Mardi

• Today was our second day of orientation.  Estelle talked about more academic details.
• During lunch time, I went over to the Free Mobile store again because my real phone had officially been unlocked by AT&T.  However, the original SIM card I got for the small phone was the wrong size so I had to get a new one.  So I'm down about €30 (€10 for the new SIM card and €20 for the mini-phone, but it might come in handy again).
• One of the classes I have to take is Introduction à la Société Française (ISF) and part of that was listening to a lecture today.  It was a 2 hour overview of the history of Paris, which gave some context to some of the beliefs and customs in French society.  So it was interesting, but the lecturer was very strange.  She's american and had a very disorganized style.  She would go go off on tangents and then loop back when she had forgotten things from her notes.  Idek.
• In the evening, the grand kids returned so it was a more lively dinner time.  However, it wasn't as roudy as before because Martine let them watch the TV while they ate.
• After dinner, Ashley and I met up with a few other Stanford people at a bar 2 metro stops away.  However, the drinks were super expensive - €9 for a small cocktail and €5 for a tiny beer.  So we didn't stay there long and instead wandered the streets for a while, but it was pretty dead so we weren't out for very long.

Mercredi

• Today was our first official day of class, which for me, didn't start until the afternoon.  So after breakfast I casually walked over to Notre Dame.  I did some reading from the spot where I took the picture above.  There were a lot of tourists, though, so I left rather quickly.  Then I walked along the Seine for a bit until I ducked onto one of the side streets.
• For lunch, I found a crêperie and got a jambon, oeuf, fromage galette.  Then I walked with my galette and wound my way back towards the Stanford center.
• That afternoon, I had architecture and french class.  Architecture is taught by Estelle and seems pretty interesting.  Usually on Tuesdays we have a lecture to give us a little context and then on Wednesdays we have a walking tour.  But since this was our first day, we just had a normal lecture.  It was kind of similar the ISF lecture from the day before - she went through the history of Paris and commented on how the city limits and style of architecture changed.  **Raci from the future here - I ended up deciding to audit this course.  This means that I don't do any of the papers or readings, but sit in on the lectures and walking tours and have more opportunity to hear French.

Jeudi

• Today I woke up rather late, so there wasn't much time to do anything before my classes for the day.  My first class of the day was film.  This class is taught in English by the visiting professor for the quarter, Jean Ma.  She usually teaches film at Stanford, focusing on Chinese and Chinese-American films.  For this class, we will be going through the history of Parisian film and it seems like it will be super fun and interesting!
• My other class for the day was French, which was fun as usual.  We all have to give short presentations on daily French newspapers and mine was Libération (or just Libé).  It was co-founded by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1973.  Initially it was associated with the extreme left, but now it is just reasonably left leaning.  However, it does seem to support Melénchon for president, who is extreme-left. 

*** Sorry if these posts are a bit lengthy/boring, but I'm also using this blog as a sort of journal for myself.  So I want to put down all the things I want to remember! ***

Mon premier weekend à Paris

Samedi

On Saturday, we had to be at the Stanford Center between 9 am and 2 pm.  We had a small breakfast at our hotel and then headed over around noon.  The Stanford Program is located on the sixth floor of ISEP (Institut Supérieur d'Électronique de Paris), which is one of Les Grands Écoles (more selective and specialized than regular "universités") in Paris.  We were greeted by Sofia, one of the adults on the Stanford in Paris "team."  First, we had a meeting with Roberto, who is the head of academic related things in the program.  Then we hopped over to Fabienne, who told us about how our money would work during the quarter.

Next, I had to wait around in the student lounge for a while because Elizabeth, in charge of housing, could only meet with us one at a time.  While I was waiting, though, I got to meet some of the other students in the Program.  I sat down next to one girl (Ashley) and it turned out we had the same address!  We assumed that we would be roommates, but we learned later that we just lived in the same building.  So eventually I got to meet with Elizabeth and learned that I would be staying with Martine Cholet!  She's retired and lives alone.  However, she has a daughter and grandchildren who come over to visit often.

So after the meeting with Elizabeth, we had a brief meeting with Estelle, the program director.  She just gave us some friendly words and encouragement.  Then Ashley and I took an uber to our host families' apartment.  Our Uber driver was very talkative - he was from Turkey and only spoke about 5 words of English - but luckily we could understand most of what we were saying.

After arriving at our destination and struggling to find the correct entrance, we were greeted by Martine and her granddaughter, Joy.  We were welcomed with bisous and managed to not make complete fools of ourselves.  We went up to the first floor (floors start at 0 in France) and dropped off my stuff in her apartment.  Then she took Ashley up to meet her host mom.  Meanwhile, I met Martine's other two grandchildren, Lenny and Evan.

For the rest of the night, I settled in by unpacking my stuff and having dinner with Martine and the kids.  We soon got onto the topic of how much of a picky eater I am.  So a lot of the dinner was them listing foods and me saying yes or no - including Joy repeating pâtes? (pasta) a bunch of times.


Dimanche

Rue Roquette with Tour Montparnasse in the background

On Sunday, I had breakfast by myself and lunch with Evan, Lenny, Joy, and Martine.  Afterwards, they went to a park to meet up with the kids' parents - Martine's daughter and son-in-law, while I decided to explore the neighborhood a little bit.  I wandered along some of the side streets and didn't find anything too exciting, especially since most places are closed on Sundays.  However, then I came to La Cimetière Père Lachaise.

The entrance to Cimetière Père Lachaise

 

SpOoKY

At first I was a little hesitant about exploring a cemetary.  I thought it would be creepy and seemed like a rather odd thing to do in general, despite there being many other people doing the same thing.  I also have a (somewhat) irrational fear of dead bodies - like, I just never want to see one ever - but it turned out not to be creepy at all.

Family Saligny from 1824 to 2002

Well, this family was rich

Okay, this was kind of creepy...

The Crematorium

These mini-graves surrounded the entrie Crematorium

What I noticed was that, despite it being a graveyard which is associated with death, there was so much life in it.  Aside from the many human visitors, there were also lots of birds and all of the plants were in full bloom.  The man-made part was mostly stone, but everything else was bright green!

The Chapel

Well, that's all for now!

Ma première journée à Paris

Free and I arrived at Charles de Gaule just before noon on Friday.  We took the RER B (a train) and then transferred to line 6.  It was very cheap to take public transportation (€10), but it was quite difficult lugging our bags up and down the stairs. But nevertheless, we arrived at our hotel - Hotel Delambre - around 2 pm. We relaxed there for a little bit and freshened up before we decided to head out to get me a cheap phone and SIM card.

I found out that I could buy a cheap phone at an electronics store chain called Darty.  We went to the Madeleine metro stop (named after the beautiful Église de la Madeleine). We found a Darty sign over some stairs leading undeground, but it was a restricted entrance.  So we decided to just wander around and follow whichever streets interested us, hoping that one would eventually lead to Darty.

L'Église de la Madeleine

So... we wandered around the streets of the 8th and 9th arrondissements.  Here are some cool architecural finds:

Freedom

He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders

Painting of a building on a building

We stumbled upon this very cool street (Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré) with a lot of cool private Art Galleries and artsy bookstores. I must remember to return there and explore it more in-depth!

Back of the US Embassy, maybe?

After wandering for quite a while, we made our way back to the area where we started and found a sign for where Darty was.  It was underground in what could have been a metro station, except it was only a couple of stores.  Anyway, I eventually chose a small phone and bought it using all French, which I was very happy with.  Then I headed over to Free Mobile with Free to get a SIM card for my new phone.  They have a bunch of kiosks with screens and all you had to do was follow the instructions on the screen.  No talking required, which pleased me as an introvert, but was kind of disappointing as a French student.

Next, we were very hungry so decided to hunt around for a restaurant.  Unfortunately, it was only about 5:30 and none of the places we went into were serving food yet.  There were lots of people sitting at tables outside drinking coffee or wine, but no one was eating dinner yet.  However, we eventually stumbled upon a larger restaurant on a busier street called Pépinière that was serving food.  Our waitress was very kind and patient with us as we struggled through ordering in French.  I got a Breton sausage with mashed potatoes and Free had duck for the first time.  I also ordered a glass of Rosé just because I could. :)

After that, we were utterly pooped from a long day of travel and exploring.  So we went back to our hotel and called it an early night to prepare for our first official day on Saturday.

WOW Air

**Woah this turned out way longer than I expected, but I hope someone finds it useful or at least interesting!**


Last week, I took WOW Air from Boston through Reykjavik and on to Paris.  I first heard about WOW a year or two ago, when a friend of a friend went on a trip to Iceland just because the tickets were cheap.  It seemed like a very random and somewhat sketchy way to take a vacation, but I was intrigued.  So a few months ago when I heard about this flight from Boston to Paris through Iceland, I was very excited to try it out for myself.  So here are my thoughts:

• The Aesthetic™

In contrast to most other airlines' dull blue/red color schemes, WOW boasts bright fuschia accents on their planes.  It was a bit childish, but I thought it was very fun and brightened up my day a bit.  Plus, they also had some fun extras, like the vomit bag and text on the wings below:

"Enjoying the View?" on WOW's wing

The Luggage Rules

The luggage rules are very strict.  For example, you must have a tag on all of your bags including your carry-ons.  Furthermore, there is a distinction between a carry-on that goes under the seat in front of you, which is free, and a carry-on that goes in the overhead bin, which is $40-50.  Then you can check up to 3 bags with a maximum of 44 pounds/20 kilograms per bag (not 50 pounds like domestic flights - I was at 19.7 kg for each of my bags!).  These cost $50-70 each.  So, it's quite a steep price, but I think the system works very well.  So often on my Delta flights, the plane runs out of overhead bin space and our departure gets delayed with so many people having to reshift bags or check them though to their destination.  WOW's boarding process, on the other hand, went very smoothly...

The Seats

... Except for the fact that there were at least two cases where two people were assigned to the same seat.  WOW has an interesting syst
em where you can optionally choose your seat ahead of time for $7-10.  Otherwise, it is assigned randomly to you at check-in.  Luckily, there were still enough seats for everyone on board, but they clearly need to sort out their computer system a little bit more.  I opted into choosing a seat because I cannot fall asleep unless I have a window seat.  It was definitely worth it for me, but I don't think you should have to pay extra just to get your seat number ahead of time.  Although there is also the choice to choose a seat with more leg room, which costs about $40-60 and it makes sense for there to be a fee for this.  As for the physical seats themselves, they were pretty average compared to other airlines.  However, there were not any entertainment screens on the backs of the seats, which was a little disappointing for such long flights, but I just slept the whole way.

Pretty clouds over England

My virst glimpse of France!

 Overall, I really liked WOW Air.  I obviously can't use it for all of my flights because it only goes between the US and Iceland and Iceland and Europe.  Another drawback is all of the added-on fees.  Checking bags can add up quickly and it's pretty annoying to have to pay to simply choose your seat.  There were also no in-flight meals included, which was really annoying but you could buy food in the terminal or during the flight.  In all, it cost me about $400 to fly one-way from Boston to Paris.  However, it would have probably cost me upwards of $600 to fly on Delta or another major airline one-way so it was worth it for me since I still didn't know my return dates or cities before I left.  In conclusion, WOW Air is great for specific kinds of trips, but not as a general-use airline, which is not what they are trying to be anyway!