HOMEWARD BOUND

Hey friends, family, and lovers!

The time has finally come. I am leaving Europe tomorrow and ending my 6 month journey abroad.

From trekking through salt flats in Bolivia to navigating the Paris Metro, it has been a wonderful year. I've emerged with new friends, considerable language acquisition, and a plethora of traveling experiences under my belt.

When I get home tomorrow evening the first thing I'm doing is watching Love Actually with Rachel. That is as long as I'm not delirious from travel exhaustion.

In closing, I would like to send a shout out to all my blog followers to say: Thank you for reading! Your support has meant the world to me.

I'm considering finding an excuse to continue blogging after the new year. It's been a blast!

Until then, stay classy. Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Love,

Hillary

Last Minute Sightseeing

Hey everyone!

I am currently sitting in the foyer to my hotel because the internet in my room somehow got worse overnight. Yes, I am that dedicated to updating this blog.

Well, ok.. really I'm just bored. I went out for a bit yesterday but I'm not feeling great and I'm trying to rest up so that I can be 100% in Spain. So, I've been avoiding going out in the cold as much as possible. I keep waking up feeling like my tonsils are still there because it hurts to swallow. After having a couple cups of tea it feels better. But where was I...ah yes, the blog! I wanted to share with you all some pictures from this past Saturday! As I told you the other day I went to the Catacombs and two museums. The number of pictures I can put up will depend on how slow the internet is down here.

First of all, I should explain what the Catacombs are. I'm just going to say what I can remember from reading a few signs while we were there, and from what I saw for myself. The Catacombs is really one thing, so I'm going to use "is" instead of "are." The Catacombs is a series of underground tunnels that was built a few centuries ago by quarry diggers in France. Because of some incident, all of the bodies buried in the cemetery of innocents had to be dug up and placed somewhere else. There was either a flood..or overcrowding..or something. They started burying all the dead people in these underground tunnels, and families were allowed to visit them. As the burial site for each dead person began to look like it had not been visited for years, the skeletons were moved to the piles of skeletons already under there. So eventually what they had was 8,000 skeletons down there, their bones are piled along the walls in huge stacks, and the skulls rest on top of the piles.

We arrived at the entrance and were confronted with a sales lady who refused to accept my 20 Euro bill, saying she didn't have change. The ticket price was 4 euro for youth (16-25 yrs). Well, I didn't have change, and I sure wasn't going to just hand over 16 extra Euro. Besides, I knew there was no way that she didn't have ANY change. I mean where are we, Bolivia?! She stared at me until I said I'd pay for Hira too, and she handed me back 12 Euro. So off we went down the stairs to reach the underground cemetery. I was immediately nervous. The winding staircase we descended was so tightly wound that there wasn't that hole in the middle that you can look down to see how far you have to go. We just had to descend blindly for what seemed like hours, I kept looking for the moment when the wall would stop curving and we'd be there, but it took a very long time. I started getting nauseous. Once down there we walked through several dimly lit tunnels.

The ground was dirt and the walls were stone and mud brick. Initially I was like "this is so cool, this is JUST like Harry Potter!" Then I noticed that the ceiling was maybe 5 foot 7 inches high. And then I started thinking about how I would escape if I needed to, and I started to feel slightly claustrophobic. The only escape that we knew of was that hellish winding staircase and we were walking farther and farther away from it. There were supposed to be phones down there to call up to someone in case of trouble, but the only one I saw was out of order.

I made myself ignore that fact and that feeling went away. In one area of the tunnel there was a replica of what looked like a roman palace carved into the wall. Apparently the same guy dug them when he was prisoner down there and then he died from a cave in. After walking for 20 minutes through these tunnels, we reached the entrance to the cemetery.

This says "ARRÊTE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT," this translates to "STOP! HERE IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH."

It smelled funny in there. It wasn't as gross as I'd expected because they weren't whole skeletons, it was just piles of the same looking bone in neat stacks with skulls on top. Hira said she saw a hip bone, but all I saw was what looked like femurs and skulls.

There was a really cool skull and cross bones built into a couple of the piles, but because we weren't allowed to use flash, the picture didn't come out great. As we walked through the cemetery part of the tunnels, we noticed that the ceilings here were dripping every now and then, creating pools of dirty water on the ground. The last thing I wanted to do was get dripped on with what I decided was death juice in a cold underground cemetery from which there was no escape.

At the end of the cemetery there was another winding staircase to return to the land of the living. At this staircase there was a sign that told us exactly how many steps it would be until we reached the top (87). Thank goodness for that sign, or else I think Hira and I might've lost it.

After this we headed over to Musée d'Orsay to see some art. Hira said we should get in free by showing our long stay visas and our Sciences-Po student IDs. We walked over to what we thought was the appropriate entrance (out of like 5 entrances) and Hira, who is in Intermediate French but decided that since she was 2 days from being home she no longer needed to speak french, asked the doorman in english if he spoke english. He shook his head and said "Français, Español, et Italiano." Hira looked at me and said "spanish!" so I hastily switched to spanish mode and said:

"Hablas español?"

"Sí."

"Ok..uhm..somos estudiantes..y.." (we are students..and..)

Then he broke off in French and said something and pointed to the door, motioning for us to enter. After saying what he'd said in french, for some reason unbeknownst to me he switched to italian! The only word I caught was "Inglese." I very bewilderedly entered the revolving door, and behind me Hira, also obviously confused, tried to enter too but she walked straight into the glass. It was priceless.

I really liked this museum, it seemed overwhelmingly large when we first walked in, but after an hour and a half we'd walked through almost 2/3 of it. I don't have pictures from this because they weren't allowed. All of the Monet (which this museum is famous for) was gone for the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais, but we saw Manet, Van Gogh, and some other guys. It was 4:30 and the last museum we wanted to visit, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is in the middle of the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre, closed at 6pm. We walked across the Seine and through the gardens to wait in line for our free youth tickets.

I absolutely love Musée de l'Orangerie!! I hadn't been before. It is TINY and so it is extremely doable. It is known for the two oval-shaped rooms of Monet panoramic paintings that wrap around the entire room, creating the feeling that you are in his gardens. Those rooms were pretty sweet, but all the seating space was taken so we stood staring for a bit and continued downstairs.

All of the paintings downstairs (we saw Matisse, Renoir, Picasso, and some other people I can't remember), were very beautiful paintings. I really can't appreciate most modern art, but this kind of art I can truly enjoy. And pictures were allowed! (As long as you turned off your flash). So I have a few pictures of paintings that I especially enjoyed. I would put pictures up of these but the internet connection is like Crabbe and Goyle: almost too slow to function.

Of course at this point we needed nourishment.

We chose to descend the walkway in front of the museum to Place de la Concorde (where the end of the Christmas market on the Champs Élysées and the end of the Tuileries Gardens meet) to get it in the form of waffles covered in melted Nutella. For dinner we met Yomna and walked to our Indian restaurant, only to find it closed. It looked like it was undergoing construction. After walking up and down Montparnasse looking for other ethnic food and failing, we settled on Pasta Papa.

Thus ends my last night with the people on my program. That night I was up late, being awoken by tipsy people saying goodbye, someone wanting me to return a library book they forgot about, my roommate getting the handheld luggage weigher she'd borrowed from a girl she doesn't like stuck to her bag, and the 20 minutes that ensued with a parade of people stopping in our room trying to help get it unstuck. Of course, I was glad for these nightly interruptions. Anything to extend my time with new friends. Not to mention, at 3 am all of these events were experienced with a healthy dose of hilarity. I've really enjoyed my time here. I am so grateful that I was able to be a part of this program.

That's all for now. I'm off to pick up some lunch. I may decide to update again later today.

Love,

H.

My New Digs

Bon soir,

After a late night of goodbyes and conflicting emotions about the end of my study abroad experience, I moved into my hotel this afternoon.

The first thing I did of course, was take pictures of the room to share with all of you! Then, I checked my internet access and had to go back downstairs to sign in to the network. After the internet connection had been secured, thus securing my connection to the outside world, I tore into my lunch and watched most of You've Got Mail on my laptop. I fell asleep 10 minutes before the end but woke up and finished it before taking a shower. I decided that it would be a good idea to turn on the TV while I ate dinner, but found that the only channels in english were CNN, BBC world news, and some snoozetastic weather channel. While I love the BBC I didn't feel like watching news so I rented Inception from iTunes. But alas, the download began and it said it should be done downloading in 18 hours. I accepted that I'd just watch it tomorrow when it finished downloading, and I popped in Away We Go. Let me just say, I love all of John Krasinski's roles. This is him if you don't know who I'm talking about. (From It's Complicated, The Office, Away We Go, etc..):

Here are the pictures from my hotel room:

P.S. I started writing this around 7:30 and it is now 10:52. That's how long it took to upload these pictures.

I was thinking I'd post about the Catacombs, but I think I'll do that tomorrow downstairs in case the internet is better down there.

-H.

Moving Day

Hey folks!

It's Saturday night and most of the people in my program have left. The last stragglers leave tomorrow morning. I'm off to my motel/hotel at noon. My room looks so sad. My suitcase and my roommate's suitcases are really the only things in here, if you don't count what we still need to throw away or pack last minute tomorrow.

I plan to lay low over the next few days before Spain. The temperature is supposed to drop here in Paris. I'll hit up some last minute stores and a museum or two, oh and maybe hit up the Christmas market, but other than that I think I'm just going to relax. Today I went to the Catacombs, Musée d'Orsay, and Musée de l'Orangerie..I think that's what it was called.

The Catacombs were super creepy and the museums were actually really great. My camera is just about dead and my camera charger/SD card reader are packed, so I'll have to wait until I get to my motel/hotel to write about it on the blog.

Bon week-end!

Love,

H.

School's Out!

Hey everyone!

Yesterday was our presentation day and with the end of that day came the end of my studies here in France!

Hell week is over!!!

It has been an amazing quarter and I definitely learned a lot about public health in Europe. Next up: 9 days in Paris and then on to Spain! (Where I have a layover in Copenhagen...). I am so excited to see the family in Barcelona and equally excited to go home after that. I miss the puppies.

It's 11:16am and I was supposed to go out and wander around with some people 16 minutes ago but it's raining pretty hard here right now. Yesterday it snowed a lot, but the snow here is weird. Even though it looked like an all out blizzard, the snow was falling straight down like rain, and it barely stuck. That much snow at home would've been at least 3 inches. I don't think it was quite cold enough to act like real snow should.

I'll keep updating the blog, I'm not done with Paris yet!

Love,

Hillary

I'm a YouTube star. No big deal.

Hey everyone!!

Hell week is ALMOST over!!

This morning a few members of my group met to brainstorm ideas for our presentation on Tuesday. This presentation is supposed to summarize our 100 page group research papers in a fun way. Our teacher really emphasized fun. Of course we also need to discuss our findings, but the point is to keep it light. So we decided to use a flip camera to film a few skits!

The online presentation maker that I use allows you to paste a youtube link directly into the presentation, and then the video appears onto the presentation magically! So for the purpose of making everything easier, we posted our videos onto YouTube so that it will be easy to insert into our presentation.

This means that we are all now YouTube stars.

Well ok maybe that's pushing it, but it does mean that I can share the videos with you all!

Each clip is really short because we didn't want to use up a lot of time in our presentation showing these videos. We plan to show each skit before each of our segments, and then explain what the video was intended to show. Then we'll go into our research.

I'll give a little context so you know what is going on with each video:

I'm filming the following video. It is to show that it is much harder to see a doctor in South Africa than in the United States.

Access:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PBQ6gi_CFE

This one is to show that cultural identities can have a large impact on health. (I'm in this one!)

Culture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCuGn1zPHNI

This video shows that women have very different levels of power in sexual relationships depending on gender roles, specifically in regards to using protection. The woman is offered money in the last part of the clip because being a girlfriend in poorer populations in South Africa is sometimes a real job. A woman will take more boyfriends because she wants more money. (I'm in this one too!!)

Gender:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CobIEQxoiM0

This clip is about literacy. It doesn't require much background.

Literacy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4ga8ZOtlnI

I'm in this one! This one is for my section of the research. I did socioeconomic status as it relates to obesity and disability prevalences. The first person is poor in the U.S., and the second person (me) is rich and in China. This video is on the obesity part of my research.

SES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZv-ZM0jyRU

BLOOPERS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy_6epD2pw0

Enjoy!

If anyone wishes to see our research paper, let me know! I can e-mail it out.

Love,

Ragga Muphin

How do you like my new stage name? I'm sure I'll be using it a lot now that I'm famous.

Walking to Bon Marché con mi Camera in the Snow

Second post of the day-

After I wrote to you about the snow this morning I layered up and ventured outside to get some food. The closest thing I have to boots here are my Hunters and they have been my best friend since the colder temps have arrived. I pulled on my thickest socks, put on my boots, grabbed my camera, and headed out the door!

Here are some pictures of the snow:

Outside my building:

Outside Bon Marché:
I walked around Bon Marché mostly for fun and the energy in there was great! I love shopping during the holidays. All the decorations have been up since Thanksgiving and the place was packed with families shopping. People were everywhere!! Jingle bells was even playing outside. I'm not kidding.

I bought some gloves and the lady at the register asked me in english if I wanted to pay in Euro or Japanese money.

??

I was about to ignore her mistake but she caught herself and blushed but her english wasn't good enough for a quick recovery. I successfully told a saleslady "no, merci" when I understood that she was asking if I needed help! Then I went back to her and asked her the price of something. In french. Boo-yah!

I'm going to download a Christmas movie.

-Hillary out.

SNOW in Paris!

Hi everyone!!

I woke up today and pulled back my curtains. 20 minutes later I looked out the window to see that there is snow coming down, and it's coming down hard. There is a cascade of flakes, it looks like a blizzard outside and it hasn't let up in over an hour. One minute the flakes will be all in a tizzy and they'll be heading towards the ground like it's a race, and the next minute the flakes seem to be suspended in the air. I drew a picture for you! (Click on it to see it bigger).

Looks like I need to invest in some gloves.

-H.

December

Hello there!

Wow. I can't believe December is here already. I was drowning in so much work that I completely over-looked that when I wrote yesterday's post. This year has gone by quickly. I've officially spent over 3 months in Paris, and my time here is almost up!

I survived my first two finals and my research group is looking just about ready to put our paper together (due tomorrow at midnight..). I'm 2/5ths of the way done with Hell Week!

I've decided I think spanish is a sexier language than french. It's easier on the ear.

Today in french class we all stumbled into class half crazy and half dead from lack of sleep. Luckily, our teacher recognized that and she was really easy on us. After a large chunk of class in which our minds were working really hard to keep up with our surroundings, we all became ridiculously giddy. It was that "I am too tired to function" kind of giggling that doesn't go away easily. Here is an example:

We were talking about names, and our teacher said that for her the name Leslie is a girl's name (we were talking about Leslie Neilson Tuesday because he passed away this week) and that she was surprised he was a man. I was trying to say, "Pour nous aussi" (for us too), but what came out of my mouth was "pour nous tambi....pour nous aussi." I was about to say "pour nous tambien" which is half french half spanish. Someone noticed my slip up and the entire class was howling for a good minute at least, including the teacher. I was pretty sure it wasn't that funny but watching my class collapse into hysterics was funny enough so I started laughing too.

After an hour and a half of learning "-ire" verbs, during which the only way to get us to look alive was to have us write on the board, she pulled up youtube and showed us famous french songs from the 60's and 70's by Claude François. She had us all singing along and dancing by the end of class. It was our last class before the final, and it was a great way to end it. Plus I left feeling much happier than when I entered. How could I not have? I had 3 ridiculously catchy french songs stuck in my head!!

After today's test I vegged out for a little while and watched The Biggest Loser episode from Tuesday. I finished my section of the paper this evening and decided to celebrate by drinking hot cider and watching A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Don't judge me.

Love,

Hillary

Hell Week

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd take an early-morning study break to show what this week looks like for me. This will also explain the recent slow-down of posts.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: 2 hours of French in the morning

Tuesday: 3 hours of class after French

Wednesday: 2 hour essay final

Thursday: another 2 hour essay final

Friday: Our 100 page research papers are due. These are to be synthesized and turned in by midnight on Friday, but as of now, Wednesday morning, no one in my group has finished their sections.

Next week:

Monday: French Final

Tuesday: 1 hr presentation on our 100 page papers. Our teacher has told us it needs to be entertaining and creative.

I am so frustrated with this teacher. Everything that I just wrote out on my schedule, with the exception of French, is for ONE class. He didn't have to clump it all together like this. I went to bed at 2 last night and woke up at 8 to study, so got 6 hours of sleep last night.

Last night I had to call the RA on the room next door. Seriously it sounded like they were having a house party. I'm not sure if I've mentioned them before, but they're St. John's kids and they just moved into the dorm a few weeks ago. Since then they've kept us up at all hours of the night- there seem to always be hoards of people going in and out, and they all talk really loudly. I had to go over there at 3 am a couple of weeks ago and explain that I had a train in 4 hours for London, and I needed to go to sleep. When I knocked all the noise stopped and they wouldn't let me in until I said I was their neighbor.

Also, the girl I mentioned awhile back, who speaks like my New York U.S. Open Ben & Jerry's co-workers is always in there, and you can hear her talk from a mile away.

It was 11:30 and I knew quiet hours started sometime around 11, so I went down and told the RA about the NU kids' finals schedule and explained that "normally it's not a problem, because they do this all the time, but this week is important and we're all stressing out." (I made sure to say that it happens a lot). Five minutes later I went back upstairs and they were quiet.

I went to bed at 2:00 am and woke up at 8:00 am to study more.

Honestly I can't complain about that because it's enough to function normally, and I'm up now writing this at 9:45 am. My final is at 12:30 today.

We have another "health and safety inspection" today, so yesterday I swept and sponged off our sink.

I better get back to studying,

-H.

P.S. The illustrations in this post are from the book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day."