Madrid, Here I Come... I Hope

Tomorrow afternoon, after my first art history exam, I'm heading to Madrid for the weekend! Well, that's the plan at least. In a very French fashion, air traffic controllers have gone on strike this week, causing a lot of flight delays and cancellations across the country. As of right now, my flight is still scheduled, so I'm just hoping nothing changes.

Appreciate Your (Host) Mother

Lucille, my host mother, is away for the week visiting family (I think). I usually do my own thing in the morning and then head out to school, so I don't really notice her absence during the day. Come dinner time, though, there's quite a big difference. Normally our dinner starts with soup, followed by a main course with meat, vegetables, and some sort of starch, then cheese and bread if we want it, and finally a dessert.

This week, though...

Nouveaux Amis

Last Saturday night, in lieu of going out with Tufts friends to some club, I spent the evening at home with Etienne and his friends. It was a low-key night, with a lot less going on than there probably was at Showcase, but I can pretty certainly say I had a better time simply hanging out with a bunch of French kids.

More about my night coming up!

Attention!

 

In French, "attention" means "caution," and I just wanted to put a little disclaimer on my "À quels points les français sont-ils fous?" posts.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Tonight, my host family had some friends from Ireland over for dinner. I'm not exactly sure how they know each other, but they were already visiting in Paris and accepted the invitation to come to the apartment for tonight's meal.

The food itself was great (although even some of the Irish guests commented that "the French like their meat rare"), but the best part about the night was hearing the Irish accent. They all spoke English with a heavy Irish brogue, but they also spoke French and it was really interesting to hear such a distinct, familiar accent in another language. I spoke both French and English with them and got along fine, but I really enjoyed just sitting back and listening.

They were very nice and also had four young kids running around, so it was a lively evening. And I think hearing an Irish-French was helpful in that it made me realize that, even if I never got the real French accent down, I could eventually speak the language as naturally and technically perfect as them. That's the goal, at least!

Awesome Day

 

So this doesn't really have much to do with Paris or abroad (although I did just sit through two straight hours of lecture about communism, socialism, and Soviet Russia), but I thought I'd use this space to share about my great news today anyway.

À quels points les français sont-ils fous?

 

Can you spot a cultural difference in the photo above?

Izis Photo Exhibit - Waking Up Before Noon

I only have one class on Mondays, from 3-6 pm, so I usually use the morning to sleep in and lounge around until I finally have to leave to get lunch and head to school. Today, though, I got up early (well, 10:30, but still earlier than usual) and went to a photography exhibit at the Hôtel de Ville with my friends Mo and Maddy.

A Series of Unfortunate Events - Paris Edition

 Photographic proof she was really here!

This weekend, Maya came to visit from Spain, where she's studying abroad in Sevilla. (You can read about it at her blog here!) She got in on Thursday night and then we spent the whole day Friday sight-seeing and just walking the Champs-Elysées. We hit some of the most iconic and touristy spots, including the Eiffel Tower, as you can see above, and the Arc de Triomphe, and everything was going great. But then she woke up Saturday morning and was very sick...

À quels points les français sont-ils fous?

Can you spot a cultural difference in the photo above?

Weekend in the Val de Loire - Châteaux Galore

To cap off our first week in Paris and of orientation, the whole group of semester students went on a weekend trip to the Loire Valley (Val de Loire). It was a nice way to spend the weekend together, even if it was tiring and rainy. The rest of this long-overdue post coming up!

It's Snowing

I guess not everything is that different in Paris right now, seeing as the U.S. East Coast is currently getting hammered with snow. I'm starting to regret not bringing a real winter coat, though...

"Le Quatuor" - Encore!

I just got back a couple hours ago from seeing a performance of "Le Quatuor," a very funny and entertaining musical play of sorts, at the Théâtre des Variétés. It's getting late and I still have a little homework to do, but just wanted to jot down some thoughts quickly before bed.

À quels points les français sont-ils fous?

Can you spot a cultural difference in the photo above?

Le Louvre - Not Just Hype

On our first Friday in Paris, all of the semester students went on a tour of the Louvre with Mme Bruneau (also our Art History professor). It's a huge, huge museum and we only had a couple of hours, so needless to say we didn't see everything. There were some highlights, though, which can probably best be shown through photos.

First Week of Classes - So Far, So Good

As I wrote in my first post, I'll be doing some catch-up blogging this week (I hope) about orientation and my early thoughts on Paris. For now though, I just wanted to do a quick rundown of my classes now that I've had at least one meeting for all of them.

Ma Famille d'Accueil - Home Away from Home

The view from my balcony

All TIP students are required to have homestays, i.e., live with a family in their home instead of in a student dorm or apartment. Although I'm sure it can be awkward and uncomfortable for some, I think it's a great requirement and really lets us see some French culture up-close, speak a lot more French with our families, and potentially make some friends through host brothers and/or sisters.

À quels points les français sont-ils fous?

Can you spot a cultural difference in the photo above?

A Belated Bienvenue

I wasn't really planning on running a blog this semester since I figured I would be too busy with school, sight-seeing, traveling, etc. It turned out that my expectations were met during the first three weeks: we had orientation meetings and trips, preliminary language classes, and, starting last week, "real" classes at Tufts-in-Paris (TIP) and the Paris universities (for me, l'Institut Catholique de Paris and Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne).

This weekend, though, I felt like I finally had some free time and since I had been looking at some other friends' travel blogs, I decided to start up one of my own. I juggled with the title, not wanting to make it specifically about Paris or France since I plan on doing some traveling elsewhere in Europe, and finally settled on "Cultural Thoughts" ("Cultural Learnings," a favorite TV blog of mine, was already taken).

So, in this space I hope to share some of my experiences, thoughts, pictures -- pretty much whatever I feel is worth posting. I doubt I'll be posting every day (it took me three weeks just to get this up) but I hope to do some catch-up and then start getting stuff up on a semi-regular basis. Hope you enjoy!