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."

Swiss chocolate, swiss knives, swiss cheese..

Hi all!

I just returned from Geneva, Switzerland a couple of hours ago. We didn't spend much time there. Our train got us in at 12:30pm on Monday and we left Geneva on the 5:00pm train tonight. When I think of Switzerland I think of ski lodges on snow-covered mountains, rich people storing their billions in banks, and neutrality. Unfortunately we had a tight schedule and we barely left our hotel neighborhood so I didn't get to see the pretty mountain towns that I'd imagined..or even walk past a ginormous and intimidating modern-looking bank.

When we arrived in Geneva it was very cold and pouring rain. Luckily our hotel was a one-minute walk from the train station. The hotel hadn't assigned rooms to people, so Bruno (our teacher and the head of our public health program at Sciences-Po told us to match up on our own and tell him what we decide. People started pairing off left and right and I felt like I was back at middle school worrying that no one was going to ask me to room with them. I was even more worried that I would have to room with one of the people on this program that have no notion of how to not be an annoying person. I took initiative and asked one of the girls I get along with who wasn't paired up yet to be my roommate.

At 2:45pm we headed for MSF. We were going to walk there but because of the train we took the cable-car bus two stops and walked into a very unassuming building. There is no way I would've ever guessed that inside this building was the headquarters to Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders). I didn't even see a sign. We listened to a speaker talk about the history of MSF for an hour and a half, something we had all already learned while in Paris (not to mention that we're all global health minors and probably knew it before coming to France).

His lecture was very dry and I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open. I entertained myself by drawing the MSF logo on my notebook. After his lecture we were supposed to hear a doctor speak to us, but because of the Haiti cholera goings-on all of the staff were all over the place so we got a last minute lecture from a more lively woman (who had reporters waiting for her once she was done), she talked to us for a half an hour about a new nutrient supplement and the controversy surrounding it. Apparently there are intellectual property rights battles surrounding the liquid. It is made of peanuts, milk, water, and something else. I couldn't figure out what she was calling the stuff, it was either "plumpy nuts," "plant peanuts," or "plampinuts." There was nothing else scheduled for us at MSF so we were released at 5:00pm and told to meet in the hotel lobby a couple hours later to walk to dinner.

As we were leaving I noticed the front desk was displaying MSF apparel for sale. I asked the guy behind the desk if they were for sale and he said yes but they only accept Swiss Francs and they don't accept credit cards. Yomna and I decided we'd try to look for an ATM and then we'd return to buy something. We were told that the closest ATM was back at the train station near our hotel. We started walking that direction, searching earnestly in the pouring rain for any sign of an ATM. As we left a pharmacy that couldn't give us change in Swiss Francs we quickly realized that ATMs were not located every couple of blocks like they are in Paris. We tried to go into a bank but found the place completely empty.

Look closely at the picture below. The ceiling was made to look like the night sky!!

We left the bank feeling very confused about our preconceptions of Swiss banking. This was supposed to be Switzerland! Land of banks! Where was the top security? We walked in like we owned the place and only saw one person in an office behind a curtain.

As we left the bank we saw a bureau du change across the street! Yomna and I changed over 50 Euro and hurried back to MSF. The man didn't seem happy to see us, he informed us that the guy who was in charge of the apparel wasn't around, and that they didn't have all of the merchandise there. I was about to get nasty and tell him that we'd take the shirts they had behind the glass in the counter until he said he would make a quick phone call. As we waited Yomna pointed out a white board that listed all of the staff who were departing for service over the next several days, their debriefing meeting times, and their location of work. People were listed as going to Sudan, Swaziland, Niger, and one or two places in the Middle East that I can't remember. Eventually he got off the phone and was about to tell us that the merch guy wasn't there but then cut himself off and said "oh, he's right here." The man behind us asked us what we wanted and he went downstairs somewhere to bring up sizes. The sweatshirt was 80 Francs (about 70 Euro)! I didn't get a hoodie but I got a t-shirt, which was much more reasonably priced.

When we returned to the hotel I drank some tea and tried to ignore a sinus headache. I tried to get into my room but we were only given one key and my roommate had it and she wasn't there. I got one from the desk and took some sinus medicine and laid down for 20 minutes, channel surfing.

At dinner we were served traditional Swiss fondu.

There was a band singing, yodeling, and playing traditional Swiss instruments like the saw, the accordion, and this thing:

First they brought out orange le creuset pots with handles full of slightly boiling cheese and placed them on little...hot plate things with a little flame inside. We watched Bruno show us the proper procedure. First you take the long skewer/tiny fork onto which you secure a hunk of bread and you dip the bread into the hot cheese using the skewer/tiny fork. Bruno let his bread sit in the hot cheese for a long time before taking it out but the bread gets really soggy that way. I decided that what I liked the best was to dip half of the little hunk of bread into the cheese to improve the proportion of cheese to bread. We had two birthdays on Monday; Yomna and Amanda's 21st birthdays! The band brought them up a few times to play their Swiss instruments and it was really cute. When it was time to bring out the hot pot of chocolate fondue and the fruit trays the band played happy birthday as we all sang.

The experience was great but the food wasn't good enough to make up for it being so absurdly unhealthy. I don't know why, but food in France has a tendency to be made with alcohol. Almost all of the desserts (except for the ones at patisseries) taste like someone poured two shots of rum on them after cooking them. Well, Geneva is in the French speaking-side of Switzerland and, true to form, the cheese tasted faintly of alcohol. We had really good white wine with our meal, but I hate when my food tastes like alcohol. Also, the cheese they used didn't even taste that good. Several people said they didn't like the cheese that was used. The chocolate was delicious but they served it with apples, oranges, cantaloupe, and pineapple. I was really surprised that they didn't give us strawberries or bananas. Nothing went well with the chocolate, and the cantaloupe with chocolate tasted like vomit. All criticisms aside, it was a very fun dinner!

It was still raining by the time we left the restaurant around 10:00pm. I was dead on my feet when I got back to the hotel. Sunday night the new people in the room next to me had friends over and they were up past 2 am. They kept doing that random loud bursts of laughter thing. Remember the girl I spoke about before from New York who spoke like my Ben & Jerry's co-workers? I could hear her voice clearly. I could hear every word she said. I had waited since I went to bed at 11:30pm for them to quiet down, but I finally knocked on their door at 1:30am and asked them politely to keep it down because I had to get up at 7:00 to go to Geneva. My roommate came back from her weekend in Brussels and Amsterdam at 6:00 am and didn't see the point in sleeping for just one hour, so she stayed up. So I only slept from 2:00am to 6:00am the night before. At the hotel my roommate wasn't back yet so I changed into my PJs, vowed to ignore any knocks on my door, watched BBC news for half an hour in bed, and then went to sleep at 10:45pm.

I will post day 2 in Geneva soon!

Love,

H.

Going Postal

Greetings and Salutations!

Yesterday, something happened that I have been avoiding since day one of arriving in France. Let me give a little background info.

Because we are staying in France for over 3 months, we are all required to fill out a form called "OFII." We were all informed of this over the summer, and we were told it was very important. At some point we learned that it had to be submitted before the 3 month mark of living in France. The form asks for your address and how long you'll be in France. After the OFII office receives the form they contact you with a doctor's appointment that you must attend. Along with the form you are supposed to include a copy of your passport ID page and a copy of the student visa page of your passport. Given that this process involves making copies at a copy center, filling out a form in French, going to the post office, the looming mysterious doctor's appointment, and that we had a whole 3 months to do it, naturally all of us put it off.

We started asking each other what would happen if we just didn't do it. None of our program heads had said anything to us about the form since the first week we arrived. Somehow it circulated that if we just didn't do it, France could keep us from ever entering the country again. Another answer that circulated was that France wouldn't let us leave. "Not let us leave?" someone would ask,"wouldn't they want to kick us out?" It goes without saying that there was much confusion surrounding the whole process.

I already had copies of my passport, but the thing that kept me from touching the form was the dreaded trip to the post office. My 2 hour ordeal at the post office in Bolivia had me not wanting to ever enter a foreign post office ever again. EVER. AGAIN.

Mail piled up, and this weekend I found myself with my sublet contract for winter quarter, 6 post cards, and my OFII form all needing to be mailed.

Photo Courtesy of: L'Express.fr

So, after class, I walked into La Banque Postale. The man was very nice and helpful, but I didn't have cash and my card wouldn't accept the low 87 cents charge. I apologized and packed up all of my documents and left. Near my dorm I found my atm, withdrew cash, and crossed the street to a different Banque Postale. This one was much bigger. I walked up to a lady and asked her if she spoke english (we haven't learned post office vocab). In french she said "a little." I pulled out my documents and said I needed to send them but I needed 6 stamps. She brought me over to a machine, typed in something, pointed to the screen, and started to walk away. The screen said I owed 6 Euro. "Excuse me," I said, "this says I owe 6 Euro for 6 stamps..?" "Oui," she said. I sighed and thought, maybe the man from the first post office didn't know I was sending these to the U.S..so maybe the stamps (which look like normal stamps) he had pulled out were only domestic.

I pulled out a ten dollar bill from my wallet and realized there was no place to put in cash. I stood there staring at the machine trying to figure out what I was expected to do, and how I was expected to pay. Finally, a young woman behind me pointed to the cash to change machine next to me. I got ten dollars in change, and paid the machine with coins. This is my first observation of inefficiency in the French post office. After I got my stamps (which look like long rectangular labels and not like stamps at all) I realized that they were way too big and would cover my writing. I stood there feeling like the subject of one of those photos where one person is standing still and there is a blur of motion around them. I literally stood in one spot for 5 minutes.

The woman who I'd first spoken with was running around the post office hoping from desk to desk. There were several different counters but none of the signs had been translated to english, and the words weren't close enough to english for me to figure out. I had my postcards, my OFII form, my passport copies, and my sublet contract in one hand, and my weird looking large stamps in the other. Every time I tried to stop the woman and ask or pantomime a question, she'd respond to me in french, point in no particular direction, and then hurry away.

Finally I found an employee who spoke english. She actually walked with me through the process of getting done what I needed to get done. We solved the stamp problem by folding them over the edge of the postcards.

Since mom stubbornly refuses to take some things back for me like all the other parents, I know I'll need to ship a ton of stuff back home before the program is over. But the last place I want to go back to is to La Banque Postale.

Health & Safety, Midterms, and Macarons

Hey lovely people!

It's almost Halloween! I watched Hocus Pocus on youtube in celebration the other day. No, this post isn't about Rennes. This is a super quick post because I have a midterm tomorrow I need to prepare for and it's already 4:15!

We just had a Health and Safety Inspection of all the rooms in my dorm today. This is the second one we've had so far this year! It must be a catholic school thing, good lord. Northwestern never has Health and Safety Inspections. If you want to be a slob that's your business! The first time they did the check they came right as we were waking up, then all they did was peer behind the desk and declared us fine. Anyway I came back from my very stressful midterm (one hour to write a minimum of 5 pages on the differences between health care systems) with a small bag of sweets from Bon Marché.

I like to treat myself to something nice after stressful exams. After the GRE I bought myself a tee shirt from GAP, for example. Last week Le Bon Marché got its Halloween candy in! They have a special stand for the candy. On that stand they sell cool looking candy, but the coolest thing is what looks like a dried corn cob. What you are supposed to do is put the corn cob in the microwave in a bag they provide for you, and microwave it. The popcorn pops off the cob into the bag!! How sweet is that?! Anyway back to what I was saying. I originally wanted to buy the super cool looking specialty Halloween chocolates, but they were too pricey. Instead, I bought two small macarons (one praline, the other chocolate and coffee), and two chocolate balls that look like Ferrero Rocher chocolates. I was all ready to sit down and enjoy, until I walked up to my room to find the dorm manager guy and the RA standing outside my open door taking notes. I walked in and sat down at my desk, waiting them to either close my door, or say something.

They came in and handed me an inspection form. They wrote us up for having a dirty sink (due to dried toothpaste), having a full trash can (isn't that what the can is for? To fill it?!), and they said that we needed to sweep. Sweep! For goodness sakes. This is absurd. This place doesn't even have a broom! All they have is a small hand broom that is as old as dirt and one vacuum, both of which you can only rent out at certain times of the day, on certain days of the week. They said they'd come back Friday to check on us, and if our sink situation isn't fixed, they may fine us at the end of the year. We have a midterm tomorrow, my roommate leaves for Spain tomorrow evening, and I leave for Portugal Friday at the crack of dawn. The room isn't even as messy as my room at home used to get. They left, and I didn't even want my sweets anymore. I ate them anyway, and they were satisfying.

Who has seen the bedroom intruder remix video of Antoine Dodson? I really feel like telling them; "you are so dumb, you are really dumb, fo' real."

And you can run and tell that! Homeboy.

Hillary

If you don't understand that reference you need ask me or mom immediately so we can direct you to the appropriate links. You are missing out on some good laughs.

Bed Bugs- An Update

Hello friends!

When we last left off with my bed bug problem I had just woken up from a nap with bites. It ended up amounting to 6 bites, including on one my eyelid.

I changed mattresses and changed sheets but woke up the next morning with 4 more bites. After that I bought a sleeping bag (from Au Vieux Campeur) that I've been sleeping in on top of my covers, and haven't been bit again since that second time. Yesterday morning a specialist and the dorm manager-guy (I don't know his title) were in here to check it out, but I was in a library tour and haven't yet heard the verdict. My refund request (for sheets and sleeping bag) was rejected because they said I'd been offered to sleep in an empty room and had turned it down, wanting to switch mattresses instead. It's true that the dorm manager-guy offered for me to sleep in an empty room, but that sounded A) scary, B) unnecessary, and C) like a hassle. Plus, that wouldn't have solved the problem of my bed bugs quickly, which would have left it possible for my roommate to get them as well.

When I met with him that afternoon, I showed him the bites along my arms and his first response was to look at me skeptically and say: "Bed bug bites usually come in threes.." He then proceeded to pull up google and he googled "bed bug bites." What we found didn't say anything about them coming in threes, and the pictures looked exactly like my bites. He assured me that he would get it taken care of immediately. I asked him if that meant that night, and he said no, because everyone had gone home. This was Thursday at 4pm. It was then that I asked to be allowed to switch mattresses and he told me I could just sleep in an empty room if I wanted. I preferred to sleep in my own room. Monday evening I received an e-mail from the dorm manager-guy that told me he was sending in someone to look at the problem Wednesday morning, but that he doubted it was bed bugs. He also asked me to not say anything about the possibility of bed bugs to my other dorm-mates so that I wouldn't scare people.

Here was my response:

Jean-Christophe,

Sure, Wednesday morning is fine. I appreciate your taking this matter seriously. Although to be honest Jean-Christophe, I don't know how you have any authority to be able to say that it "does not seem likely that it's bed bugs." After two nights getting bitten (including the new mattess), I've purchased a sleeping bag to protect myself. It's working so far. Could you please put me in contact with your supervisor? I intend to request a refund for costs incurred due to the bugs.

You are absolutely right, bed bugs are a serious matter and I don't intend to keep this knowledge to myself if, perhaps, someone asks me why I have switched mattresses and am sleeping in a sleeping bag. This is something other students should be aware of.

P.S. There was a cockroach on our floor this morning- in the hallway. Just thought you may want to know.

Thank you,

Hillary

I have a meeting with him tomorrow afternoon, maybe then I'll be told the verdict. Until then, I continue to sleep in my sleeping bag.

Love,

Hillary

I Am Gordon Ramsey..In My Dreams

Last night I went to a jazz club on a street famous for it's jazz scene called Rue des Lombards. The bar was called "Le Baiser Salé." Here's a picture of the inside:

Just kidding, that's Gordon Ramsey's restaurant in Tokyo (the guy from Hell's Kitchen). I really want to go to one of his restaurants one day. Anyway, here's what it actually looked like:

I didn't take this picture I found it on google..but this is basically what it looked like outside except darker and way more crowded. Pretty cool, huh?

I tried google translating it in French and all I got was the word kiss, but translating it from Portuguese gives me "The Salty Kiss." I tried portuguese because I think the singer was Brazilian and I think he was singing partly in portuguese last night. The show was at 10 and we decided around 9 that we wanted to go there (we'd walked down the road to find the best bang for our buck). So, we sat down and ordered a drink and tried to ignore the cold. It was so crowded that we were as close to the street as possible and thus weren't under the heat lamps. Around 9:45 we waited in line to pay our 20 Euro cover and go sit upstairs where the show would be.

We got seated as close to the stage as you could get (which I don't think was a good thing). The show wasn't starting until 10:30 so the waitress said if we wanted food we could go to the corner for a crêpe and come back. A few of us left and when I got back, there was a chick in my seat. The friends of mine who'd stayed behind said they'd tried to tell her that I was sitting there but she ignored them. I stood there awkwardly in this teeny tiny super crowded room with nowhere to go because the other 2 friends who had left with me were behind me, and in front of me was the table my friends were sitting at and the bench next to it that I had been sitting on, that was now occupied. I was holding up my friends behind me, who had nowhere to go until I found somewhere to sit. I told her she was in my seat, and she argued with me, telling me that she had been there before. I know she was lying because when I sat down earlier her friend scooted over to make a spot for me, and didn't say a word about me sitting in an occupied seat. Then, when my friends sat down and I was the only person standing up with nowhere to move, literally, and the waitress was looking at this woman trying to figure out what had happened to my seat, the chick pointed to a little white bag sitting on an empty chair and said she could take that and I could sit there. So I KNOW she was lying- that was where she'd been sitting! Ugh. I took my spot, which was situated perfectly so that when I looked straight ahead all I saw was a music stand in front of me holding a big red music folder. But I told myself, all I really need is to be able to hear, not necessarily to see.

The music was good! The best way I can describe it was that it sounded similar to "The Girl From Ipanema" song.. with a little more drums. At one point this guy randomly walked onstage from the crowd (who obviously knew the band) and joined in for one song. He was singing in fast spanish and I was so relieved. Being here and not knowing french has made me realize that I am more fluent in spanish than I thought. (Not to say I'm fluent in spanish by any means, far from it). He left after his song and soon after they had an intermission. It's funny how you can understand so much faster than you can speak. For example, I speak a ridiculously small amount of french, but I understood the vocalist of the band when he said-in french- "We're going to take an intermission for 5 minutes and we'll start again in 20 minutes." (Insert crowd laughter).

Ok but back to the point of this post. So, the seat stealing liar bothered me more than I realized, because I'm pretty sure my dream last night was a manifestation of my rage towards this woman. See what you think:

In my dream I was eating dinner at a restaurant with some people. The waitress came by and someone asked her for her recommendations. At the same time I somehow had the internet open to a page of reviews about the restaurant. All of the reviews said that the restaurant was really good but to never order these two specific items mentioned, because they sucked. Literally every review said that. And lo and behold, those were the two items she recommended. I could tell (as you sometimes can in dreams) that she was doing this to be cruel. All of my friends were nodding and smiling, ignorant of the warning from the reviews. I was not going to let this happen.

"I'm not buying this bullsh*t! Who do you think you are?! Did you think we wouldn't know?! How is it that you are recommending the very two things that are supposed to be horrible at this place?"

She sneered and stayed silent, knowing the jig was up! Without a moment's pause, I turned to the head waitress standing nearby listening and said; "We'd like a new waitress, please." She smiled, nodded, and said; "right away."

This evening I realized that my rant at the waitress is exactly what I could have said to the lady sitting in my chair- minus the part about the menu. I never would have said that, but I think dream me was able to vent her frustrations the Gordon Ramsey way.

Until next time!

Hillary

Goodnight, sweet dreams, and don't let the bed bugs bite!!!

Oy ve,

Not again.

A couple days ago a girl on my floor was complaining that while she's been sleeping she's been getting tons of mosquito bites. They were all over her arms and her face. I doubted they were mosquito bites, but I didn't know what else they could be...other than the mythical bed bug (which I know exists but to me it only existed in super gross conditions..or back in the days of straw mattresses). Oh..what a fool I was.

I just woke up from an hour long nap with 4 to 5 semi-itchy bites along my arms. I know they aren't mosquito bites because the only thing close to a mosquito I've seen in France was a monster mosquito/fly/dragonfly thing floating around my room, and a little green mosquito looking thing. I think it's bed bugs. The maids are supposed to wash our sheets for us every 5 weeks. My plan was to wait for the 5 week mark to get my sheets washed. The problem could be one of 2 things.

It may be due to the fact that these sheets are super hard and aren't cotton. They don't breathe at all, so even though it may be really cold in here at night, I sweat like it's 100 degrees in here without a fan. Even in Bolivia the sheets were cotton. They only gave us one set even though we were told "linens will be provided." If I'd known they meant "we will give you one scratchy old towel and one set of puke pink sheets and we won't clean them for 5 weeks," I'd have brought one or two extra sets. And my cotton twin sheets at home are pretty! The pillow case they gave us doesn't fit on the pillow we were provided, so we can't use it. Thank goodness I brought my tie-dye pillowcase from home so that I could have a little piece of home!

Moving on to the pillow- this pillow is not new. My guess is that it is 3-5 years old. The material inside has formed into clumps. If you lay your head on it, it is flat as an envelope within 30 seconds.

I think the bed bugs are either because I sweat a ton at night due to these sheets made of who knows what, OR because this pillow is ancient.

Sigh. Laundry costs 4 euro (2 to wash 2 to dry). There is no guarantee that I can even get an empty dryer tonight. I don't want to sleep in this bed with these sheets tonight.

Love a very perplexed,

Hillary