"There is never any end to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease it could be reached. Paris was worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it."

I once heard a saying that life is like a toilet paper roll – the closer you get to the end of something, the faster it goes. That sure has been the case with my study abroad experience. I can’t begin to express how mind-blowing it is that I am leaving here tomorrow. I really feel like I just got here.

This semester has been the most challenging, most frustrating, most fun, and most rewarding experience of my life. I feel like I have learned so much about myself, the French, and human beings in general and yet I feel like I know nothing at all. If you’ll indulge me, I want to share some things I learned while I was here:

• Any dish whose main ingredient is the blood of an animal is just a bad idea. Period.
• Men are eternally confusing, regardless of the continent they hail from.
• Consistently looking like a slob not only shows that you do not have respect for yourself, it shows that you do not respect the people around you. My French civilization professor explained it to me this way – when the French see an American walking into Notre Dame dressed in a 49ers football jersey with the sleeves cut off, a backward baseball cap, and sweatpants, they take it personally. When you don’t make the effort to at least look somewhat put together, it tells the people around you that they are not worth the time it takes to put on a clean shirt. Some people may see this as snobbishness on French people’s part, but I for one respect that theory very much. (That’s not to say we’re not entitled to a grubby sweatpants-wearing day every now and again. Just don’t go to any cathedrals.)
• Nothing is quite like the high you get when you are able to communicate clearly and effectively with someone in a foreign tongue.
• But muffins, with the right ingredients, can get you pretty high, too.
• Our way is not always the best way. Different does not mean dumb.
• If you pretend to like something that you secretly loathe, chances are you’ll get served it again. (And I’m not just talking about food.)
• Sometimes knowing where you come from is just as important as knowing where you’re going. The lady I live with can trace her roots back hundreds and hundreds of years. It seems like everyone here has this really rich knowledge of their ancestry, and I really feel like that is something we’re missing in the United States. I never realized what a big part of whom a person is can be related to where they come from, and I’d very much like to discover more about my ancestry when I get back.
• There isn’t going to be a point where everything becomes clear. I have to admit, I came to Paris thinking I was going to be Sabrina. I was going to come back from France a new person – knowing exactly who I was, what I wanted to do with my life, what my next steps would be. But, I think I realized that no one (except maybe the very lucky or the mildly insane) has a moment where the right path becomes evident and they figure everything in their life out. I’m pretty sure being an adult is just taking things as they come at you and accepting the consequences (good or bad) of your decisions, taking solace in the fact that, like you, everyone else is flying by the seat of their pants.
• There is no better way to test how competent you are than public transportation in a foreign country.
• Sometimes the things you don’t look forward to are the ones you enjoy the most.
• The internet should NEVER be taken for granted. (If you have difficulty wrapping your head around this, think about having to make a 30 minute commute or pay $6 every time you want to check your e-mail.) Also, the same goes for Heinz ketchup, free bathrooms, ice, peanut butter, country music, and Mexican food.
• I’ve learned that a group of people who have very little in common can be thrown together for a semester and come out of it having made genuine friendships and truly having had a blast.
• You only live once, so shut up, buy an overpriced drink, and miss the last Metro home.
• Traveling is one of the best things you can do during your lifetime, but you can only go so long before you just want to curl up on your couch and watch TV with the people you love.

I guess what I should conclude with is something my good friend Susanna (who studied in Beijing last year and who I tend to get very philosophical with when we drink red wine together) told me and which has always stuck with me. She said that no matter where we (human beings) are from in the world, at our core we’re exactly the same. I think we have a tendency to think of the rest of the world as fundamentally different from us, and they are in some ways, but at the end of the day, we all go home and worry about the same things – our work, our family, our friends, and just being happy and coexisting with everyone else on this absurd spinning ball. That’s certainly something I’ve seen while I’ve been here and maybe the world would be a little bit better if we could all remember that.

I hope you have had as much fun reading this as I have had writing it. I’m sorry for the cheese, but I wish I could have taken each and every one of you in my pocket so that you could have been there for every moment of what has truly been the best experience of my life. (Except for maybe the boudin – I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.)

I love y’all and I’ll see you Stateside!

Kate

I am in such a Christmas-y mood! Saturday night my friends and I took a train to Strasbourg, a city in Alsace-Lorraine on the border of France and Germany. At Christmastime, Strasbourg is known for its huge Christmas market that lasts all through December. It was absolutely adorable! In different parts of the city they have rows and rows of wooden huts selling everything Christmas-related you could imagine – thousands upon thousands of Christmas ornaments, every color and style of Christmas light, jewelry, toys, Christmas trees, hundreds of different figurines for the all-important crèche – nativity scene. And the food, oh my Lord, the food! Hot spiced wine (delish), sugary and salty pretzels, roasted chestnuts, chocolate-covered marshmallows, beignets, hot chocolate, fudge, gingerbread everything, waffles drizzled in Nutella, tarte flambée (a kind of flat, thin crust pizza with bacon, cheese, and onions), choucroute (sauerkraut and sausage), the list goes on. It was absolutely incredible. The city was adorable, too – it’s truly a combination of French and German everything. It had these adorable half-timbered buildings and lovely canals. We walked around all day and took everything in, and it was such a blast.

Monday night I was invited by Madame de Billy to attend a wine-tasting at her and Jean Claude’s country club. (It was really cute how they explained country clubs to me – I had to tell them we have exactly the same thing in the States!) So, Madame told me to be home around 6:30 so we could leave, and I rushed in at about 6:25. I had been browsing at Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, the two major department stores in Paris that are absolutely gorgeous (not to mention packed) at Christmastime. So I get home, and she immediately asks me if I’m going to change. (I was in a grey jumper, black turtleneck, and tights and heels, which, although not super-fancy I deemed acceptable for a wine tasting.) So, of course, I changed into something un peu plus élégant. It made me laugh! Oh, the French.

So then, along with Florian, her nephew that she has shamelessly tried to set me up with, we hop in the old Renault and drive to the club which is by the Bois de Boulogne in a very swanky area of Paris. When we get there, it turns out we weren’t invited to actually taste wine, we were supposed to help Jean Claude by bringing in wine from out back for his customers! So we go out back and we’re crawling in this old truck looking for bottles of Beaujolais blanc with Antoine, Jean Claude’s assistant who always looks like he’s on the verge of tears and who didn’t say a word to me all night. I think I freaked him and Florian out a bit when I hiked up my dress and crawled in the back of the truck – I bet Parisian girls wouldn’t dream of it. It was also kind of a weird situation, because were it me and two American guys, I’m sure we would have just said “screw it” and opened a bottle of the good stuff, or at least joked about it, but these were French boys, and they were very serious and completely dedicated to the task at hand.

After about an hour of this, we were finally relieved of our duties and given permission to walk around. We walked around to all these little stands and tasted wine from all over France. I was so proud of myself! I met lots of people and carried out small talk in French, aucun problème! This cute old Frenchman was telling me about how his brother was a cowboy in Austin for six months twenty years ago and we talked about Stetson hats and cowboy boots. Love it!

One thing I did learn, though, is how seriously wine is taken here! I mean, I suppose people take it seriously in the States as well, but as I tasted more and more of it last night, it became harder and harder to keep a straight face as Florian and the vendors discussed bouquets and aftertastes and all that business. It was fun to compare the different regions, though, and I learned that you really can taste the difference in cheaper from more expensive wines. I also learned that France actually has laws against putting pieces of wood in their barrels of wine as they age, which some other countries do to infuse their wines with a more “woody” taste – something that the French consider cheating. All in all, an interesting and quite sophisticated night!

I have only a couple days left here and I am freaking out.

“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand different circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will.” –Lawrence Durrell

Okay, now, I have been secretly quite proud of myself for eating all sorts of different foodstuffs while I have been overseas. This includes smoked salmon, various spreads made from fish eggs, foie gras, raw miniature crawfish (complete with heads and antennae; oh yes, we just pop them in our mouths whole like popcorn), duck parts, oysters, beets (also known as slimy tasteless disgustingness), a vaguely fishy-tasting doughy thing in an unidentifiable white sauce, and an assortment of smelly cheeses from every animal imaginable including Roquefort, which I will eternally detest and yet choke down almost every night. Tonight’s meal, however, takes the cake. Oh yes, folks, 20 minutes ago I was eating boudin, which is, wait for it – a “sausage” made out of congealed pig’s blood, chestnuts (or sometimes onions, as I was informed, as if that would make it better), and oats. YUM. The taste was, well, bloody, and the texture was pasty and…bloody. Aaaahhh! I can’t think about it being in my body. It is quite the delicacy apparently, and oh, lucky me, it’s the season for it right now! If you are ever in France and hear the word boudin, run. Fast.
Okay, now I feel bad for complaining. Tasting regional specialties is all part of the experience, right? And it is cute how Madame wants me to explore les goûts de France. As far as I’m concerned, though, I’ve done my duty, tasted the tastes, and I’m ready for my good old-fashioned peanut butter and jelly, or pretty much any dish that doesn’t involve the eyeballs, organs, or the blood of an organism.
On a slightly less vomit-inducing note, Neuilly, my town, has a Christmas market coming up! It’s so cute – all around the church across the street there are these little wooden huts and starting December 2nd they will be selling all sorts of goodies for Christmas and yummy food like hot spiced wine and roasted chestnuts. I can’t wait. Hopefully they don’t sell boudin.

Lesley and Steph have left. We had such a fun week! Now the stressful part of my life begins – next week is finals time. I can’t believe it’s already here! I have so much studying to do, because in some of my classes, the entire grade is based on the final exam. (This is apparently how the French do things – no papers, no tests, just one make-it-or-break-it final exam. Yikes.) But, first things first. Here are some highlights of my week with the girls:
After some trouble with lost luggage, lost people, lost minds, etc., we finally rendezvous-ed at the hotel and then had dinner at Café Le Depart by Notre Dame, which everyone who has come to visit me has been to, because it is delicious.
I hadn’t seen Les in over a year, and Steph in over 4 years, but I knew we would still get along very well when I asked them what they wanted to do and they immediately said: “shop.” We did a lot of that, and I continued to feed my obsession with Longchamp bags.
We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night when it gets all sparkly and amazing. Night time is really the best time to go – there are absolutely NO lines, and the city is gorgeous all lit up. We took pictures proposing to each other, and I think we seriously disturbed our fellow tourists. There was one snafu – it was terrifyingly windy. I’m really surprised we weren’t blown up against the grate or even off the tower itself, like the Kelly bag in Le Divorce. So, dear reader, beware of the gusty conditions if you ever find yourself up there.
Steph left on Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning, but Lesley was still in town, so we made reservations at this restaurant called Joe Allen, which had a special menu for Thanksgiving. We had turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pecan pie, and it was glorious. I missed my family, though. Just a little bit. Okay, a lot.
Last night, Les’ last night in town, we went to Kong, which is the restaurant that Carrie goes to in Sex and the City when she has lunch in Paris with Alexsandr Petrovsky’s ex-wife. It’s really cool, but kind of almost too cool. I felt like the wait staff was walking around and saying to themselves, “Alors, I am zo cool because I work eer and it eez cool, so zat makes me cool. Plus, I am French, weech eez zee coolest.” No, in all honesty, it’s a beautiful restaurant, with a glass ceiling and these Philip Starck plastic chairs with models’ faces on the backs of them. And the food is amazing!

Today, I went with the Accent Center to the Loire Valley to see two chateaux. We saw Cheverny and Chenonceau, and they were both magnificent! My favorite thing about chateaux is that they are all so different from each other. I’ve seen five different ones here now, and I keep expecting it to be more of the same, but I’m always surprised!
Cheverny is a chateau that has been owned by the same family of nobles for hundreds and hundreds of years. The current owner (part of that same family) is only 41 years old and is a Marquis. Sixteen of the rooms in the chateau are open to the public and he and his wife and their three kids live in the other 34 rooms. Life is rough. The five-year-old son will inherit the chateau after his parents kick the bucket. Talk about winning the genetic lottery.
Cheverny is also famous for its stag hunts – they have one every Tuesday and every Saturday, and so they have kennels with over 100 hound dogs. Apparently each dog has a name, and the guy in charge of the dogs (pretty sure it’s not the Marquis) knows each of them by name. Although it was Saturday, we didn’t see them hunting. We smelled them, though, which just wasn’t as nice.
Chenonceau is the other chateau we visited. It was a royal chateau and at one time it belonged to Diane de Poitiers, Henri II’s mistress. Old Henri was quite enamored with her and so he gave her the chateau, but when he died, his wife, Catherine di Medicis (who was very jealous of Diane and also much uglier) made Diane leave and then she took over the castle. Ah, intrigue. During World War II, the owner converted it into a hospital, and one half of the chateau was located in occupied France, and the other half was in the free zone. I thought that was pretty cool. Now it’s decorated like it was back in the time of Catherine and is completely fabulous.
It was a good day. Now I have to get some sleep so I can study my face off for the next week.

"Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well-used." -William Shakespeare

Happy Beaujolais Nouveau! Yesterday was a big day here in Paris – the release of the first wine of the year. Beaujolais Nouveau, if I understand correctly, is a wine from the Beaujolais region near Lyon that is made from grapes that are harvested very early. (The sooner you drink it, the better.) Everyone freaks out on an annual basis when the first bottles are released to the public, and yesterday was the day. All the restaurants put up big signs in their windows that say “Il est arrivé!” (“It has arrived!”) and the supermarkets have huge displays of it for sale. The best, however, was when my French professor brought in three bottles of it and we all drank wine and ate cheese crackers during class. If I wasn’t already in love with France, I would be now.
My buzz was a little dampened, however, when I got home and wished Madame happy B.N., and she sniffed, “Oh, but that is market wine. Pas très bon, eh?” I guess when your boyfriend owns a chateau/vineyard, you can afford to be a little bit of a wine snob.
In a way, she’s right – it’s actually very inexpensive and not known for its quality, but I find it delicious. I guess that’s proof that drinking a lot of wine does not a wine connoisseur make…
My childhood best friends Lesley and Steph are coming to visit me tomorrow. Their trip was a little spontaneous, which makes it all the more exciting! I can’t wait to see them.

When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart. -James Joyce

I have returned from my journey to the homeland! Dublin was great. Blair, Gideon, and I flew out on RyanAir (crummy service, really cheap) on Friday (my birthday) morning. We were supposed to meet my friend Madi (flying from Rome) at the airport – her flight ended up being cancelled due to fog. (But more about that later.)
So, Madi-less, we took a bus to city center and found our hostel. It was, in a word, foul. Okay, maybe not complete squalor, but pretty gross. Welcome to la vie bohème. Blair and I were staying in a 12-bed female dorm with one(!) bathroom for all 12 girls. (Gideon stayed with his friend Kate, who goes to Trinity College in Dublin.) The girls in the dorm were pretty nice. Most of them were Canadian, and they had been living in the hostel for a MONTH while they were working and looking for a flat. That’s insanity, in my book, but they didn’t seem to mind.
After getting somewhat settled, we went and got the most delish fish and chips for lunch (with lots of salt and vinegar – yum), and then walked around the campus of Trinity College, which is just beautiful and for about an hour I was seriously contemplating transferring there. In the Trinity library there is the Book of Kells, which is this old beautiful manuscript, copied by monks hundreds and hundreds of years ago.(It’s one of the “1000 Things to See Before You Die,” so I figured we had to go.) We looked at that for a while, and then Blair and I walked around the city, and did some shopping, of course!
We found this store called Carroll’s which was totally dedicated to all things Irish – no joke, three floors that looked like a leprechaun threw up on them, chock-full of any kind of souvenir you could imagine. I think we spent an hour and a half in there. Pretty sad.
After a delicious dinner in a pub, we experienced Dublin nightlife. Allow me to share some things I learned:
Only losers go out before 11.
There are no such thing as bars for the younger set. Even at the trendier pubs, there is a mélange of people ranging from age 16 to 65. It’s actually a little disconcerting to watch, ahem, the more, shall we say, “mature” set try and get down and party. Not pretty.
When someone asks you, “What’s crack?” they are not inquiring about illegal substances. They are saying, “What’s craic?” which is Irish for “fun.” (You ask it when you want to know what fun things are happening.)
Irish men are awkward. Painfully awkward. Blair and I were hit on by the following men:
- A boy our age, who was so drunk he forgot his command of the English language. He came up to us, told us we were pretty, and then started swaying back and forth with a blank look in his eyes. When we looked confused, he resorted to sign language and starting pantomiming something that I think was, “I like to jog. Penguins are nice. Toilets.”
- A chubby balding man with a dimple in his chin of epic proportions, who asked us if we were on holiday, but couldn’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that we were Americans studying in Paris. We left him to ponder that one a while.
- My personal favorite, an Irish guy who, when he found out we were Americans, told us he was actually from Louisiana and started speaking in the poorest approximation of a Southern accent I have ever heard. He started spouting nonsense – I’m still not entirely sure what he was trying to convey, but he used the word “critters” a lot, told us that we need to listen to our “Commander in Chief,” and said he knew Donald Rumsfeld, the “fecker.”
- A guy whose opening line was to point to our drinks and ask us if we knew they had 7% alcohol in them. Yes, thank you, genius. (It said so on the bottle.) He then immediately proceeded to ask me if I had ever seen the movie “Unfaithful” with Diane Lane and Richard Gere. I said I had only seen parts of it, why? Einstein replied, “Oh. I don’t really know…It’s a good movie.”
Needless to say, by the end of the night, Blair and I were really good at making a tactful, yet hasty, exit. This was very disappointing, as I am a huge sucker for an accent. However, even the hottest accent can’t cover a complete dearth of social skills.
Don’t let Riverdance fool you – most Irish people can’t dance. In fact, I’m pretty convinced that this extends to all Europeans, but the Irish brand of dancing seemed particularly heinous. More field research may be necessary.

Despite all this, we had a blast. I love how everyone just piles into the pubs and it’s noisy and crowded and every one is sloppy and tipsy. It’s great, and made me proud to have the third most common last name in Ireland.
The next morning, Mads FINALLY arrived. (She actually had to take a plane to London and then connect to Dublin at 6 in the morning. Ouch. But, she was determined to get to Ireland!) The three of us actually found a tour to go out into the countryside, and we went and visited Malahide Castle, which is outside of Dublin. It is a medieval castle that was owned by the Talbot family for 800 years until they sold it to the state in the 1970s. It was so cool, and the grounds it was on were unbelievably gorgeous. It was also kind of misty outside, so the pictures turned out really neat-looking.
After the castle tour and a scone with clotted cream (so unhealthy, so good), the tour took us up the coastline, where we saw beautiful green cliffs – just like the postcards! Unfortunately, my camera didn’t quite capture how vividly green they were – the girls and I were getting quite faklempt.
Upon our return to Dublin, we enjoyed fish and chips again, and then went and toured the Guiness factory! It was pretty neat, although after the Heineken factory in Amsterdam, we were already pretty much beer experts, so it was a little same-old, same-old. At the end, though, we got to go up to the Gravity Bar for a free pint of the black stuff, and the bar had a gorgeous view of all of Dublin at sunset. Fabulous.
Speaking of Guinness, the “blonde in the black skirt” is really growing on me! I’ve been drinking a lot of the stuff lately. (I mean, not like, alone in my room in a sad pathetic way, but when I go out. You get what I mean.) It’s so dark and full of bitter goodness, and plus it kind of makes me feel like a badass. Okay? I admit it.
After Guinness, funds were kind of low, so we enjoyed a delicious dinner at…Burger King. Don’t knock it – after almost two and a half months without, a char-broiled meat patty really hits the spot.
At that point, Madi had been up for 48 hours straight, so she went to bed and Blair and I headed out to a bar called the Porter House for more awkward encounters. It was glorious.
I’m back now, and exhausted since we got up so early. The good news, though, is that I am 21! Woo hoo! And, I have been to Ireland! And, they actually stamped my passport this time!

"Amsterdam...is a dream of color and tender tones." -M.E. Sherwood, 1897

Oh, I am a little bit in love with Amsterdam. I spent the weekend there with 5 of my friends, and it was great! I wasn't really sure if I would like it or not, since I envisioned a kind of seedy city full of prostitutes and potheads, but it was actually really clean, beautiful, and very quaint. Some parts of it reminded me of Georgetown, oddly enough, with the row houses and such. Amsterdam has many canals in concentric circles in the city, so it's full of cute little bridges and pretty walkways. Also, everyone there rides bikes! It's so cute - they have special lanes for people on bikes, and they will not hesitate to run you over. But, everyone rides their bike, which I think is just fabulous. Also, the Dutch are so friendly, and they speak perfect English. It was a really nice change of pace.
We took the Thalys train on Friday morning and arrived in Amsterdam around 2 p.m. We went to our hostel, which was perfect - it was relatively clean, and we had a room with 3 sets of bunkbeds in it - great for the six of us, and we had our own bathroom. The first thing we did (typical college students that we are) was go to the Heineken factory. It was so neat! They walk you through and show you how it's brewed, and there's this little ride that jostles you around as if you were a beer bottle in the factory - kind of cheesy, but fun. You also get three free beers with the price of admission, which was nice. :) Ooh - outside of the factory, I ate the most delicious doughnut I had ever had, called an appelbollen. It was rolled in sugar and had warm apple compote in the middle - I highly recommend them if you ever make it to Holland.
After the Heineken factory, we walked around a bit and then went to an Argentinian steakhouse (weird, but there were a ton of them there) for dinner. It was pretty good. We asked for a carafe of water, and they only had bottled water, but the waitress went in the back and made one up for us. We couldn't believe it - in France, they would have just said, "screw you" and moved on!
Post dinner, we went to a coffee shop, which actually doesn't sell coffee. I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain. I then enjoyed a typical Dutch baked good, about which I won't elaborate. It was definitely a learning experience.
Saturday morning found us at the Anne Frank museum, which was very very tiny, but so well done! It was very moving to see where and how she lived. They still had the pictures of movie stars up on the walls of her bedroom where she pasted them. They also had her actual diaries, which were really neat to see. After Anne Frank, we went to the Van Gogh museum, which was also interesting. We were disappointed to find out that Starry Night, his masterpiece, is actually at MOMA in New York. Whatever.
For the rest of the afternoon, we walked around the city. I saw the flower market, with thousands of tulips, and the Red Light District, which was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Basically, each woman (I wouldn't call them ladies) stands in her own window in her underwear to conduct her business. (I'm trying to be polite, here.) All of them were hideously unattractive.
That night, we went out again in Amsterdam. We found a Guiness pub and played a lot of foosball, among other things. Everything there is so much cheaper than in Paris, which was super.
I guess that's about it for Amsterdam. I've (finally) put up the Rome photos, so check them out!