Normandy- Day 2

Hello!

Thanks for tuning in folks, let's start the show!

2nd day in Normandy (last Saturday):

We had breakfast at the hotel in two shifts, half the group ate at 8:00 am and my group ate at 8:30. At breakfast I had a 25 minute argument with myself over whether or not I could wear my comfy white shirt with the french writing on it and not look like an idiot. I decided to wear it and hope the French people in the two towns we were visiting that day wouldn't judge me. I spent most of the day with my sweatshirt zipped up over my shirt out of fear. But I was comfy!

On the agenda for Saturday was to visit two towns, the first was Honfleur and the second Deauville. After visiting these two towns we'd hop on the bus and head back to Paris.

Honfleur:

This was the cutest seafaring town I've ever seen. Monaco's harbor is magnificent but this was a tiny town built forever ago and it was very quaint. We had 4 whole hours to spend here. I started the day walking around the outdoor market with a few friends. The market sold everything from cheese, striped clothing, cool looking liquids of some kind of all colors in cool looking bottles (they were different kind of exotic juices), to CDs from a decade ago.

We passed by the Marine Museum and I stopped in to see how much a ticket would be. For 3.5 euro we could get a double ticket that would allow us inside the Marine Museum and also inside the Anthropological Museum. I was so excited! I ran out to tell my friends and two of them decided it was too much money (...?) and they left to go walk around more. One of them stayed behind with me and as another group of people walked past I was able to convince two of them to buy a ticket as well. The Marine Museum was cute, it was really tiny but they had some cool models of ships and some old clothing. We were told the Anthropological Museum was around the corner so we started walking that direction.

We got distracted by this sweet alleyway that reminded us all of Harry Potter. It was in this alley that I remembered it was my birthday! I checked my phone and I had a text from my mom wishing me a happy birthday. I felt so happy to be in Diagon Alley (or so I imagined) that I decided that it must be my gift. I had mentioned the previous night at dinner to two people that Saturday was my birthday, but I told them I didn't want it to be a big deal and that I wasn't going to tell anyone. I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything because I'd already celebrated with friends and family back home. I'd already had cake from Portillos and that meant I'd already had my birthday.

It turned out that at the end of that alleyway was the Anthropological Museum! We went inside, grabbed our pamphlet in english that described everything for us, and started exploring. Outside there was some cool old stuff and lots of birds. I looked up and saw this bird in the rafters that looked like an owl. I was so excited!! Hedwig! I showed everyone I was with, then the owl moved and it was a bird, like a big bird, but not an owl. Oh well..being in the French Diagon Alley AND seeing an owl would've been unlikely. The museum was really big inside, it was a narrow old house with 4 floors. Everything was set up inside like it would have been 300 years ago. 3.50 euros well spent!

Remember how I mentioned the striped clothing for sale in the market? They were ALL OVER the place. This was like the town of stripes. I know stripes are french, and they're also nautical, so the combination of this french town with boats must've made all the tourists (and French people!) decide what they needed to do was to wear stripes to the town, and also buy some more stripes at the market.
We ate lunch there (mine was a 4 cheese penne which I didn't think you could mess up but alas, it was not good) and I also got a scoop of Ben & Jerry's. I've been craving Ben & Jerry's since Bolivia but I couldn't get any at home because A) the Vernon Hills one is closed, and B) I tried to buy a little container of it from Jewel but the label was misleading and I chose a gross flavor and couldn't enjoy it.

Our next stop was Deauville.

There was an American film festival and I think we were there for opening night. As a result, the town was very crowded. There were a lot of really well dressed people and very fancy cars, but I think that might be normal for this town because it is very posh and expensive..kind of like a Monaco of the north without the castle.
We snuck onto the red carpet and spent a few minutes waiting for something, but nothing happened so we assumed the official kick off wasn't starting until the evening. Coco Chanel opened her first shop in this town, so we went off looking for it.

We didn't find her shop because apparently it isn't there anymore, but we did find Hérmes, Ralph Lauren, Longchamp, and a great number of other designer stores. This hotel below was gigantic, and buzzing with people. I think it might be where the guests of the film festival were staying. Someone said that last year on this trip, people saw someone like Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep, so we had our eyes peeled and our cameras ready.
As we walked past the side of the huge hotel, we saw french people up against the gate periodically shouting a name like "John!" at this guy in the suit below. We assume he's famous because he waved once. That red flag is a picture of John Wayne on a confederate flag.

After walking around the town, we headed to the beach by the harbor and relaxed before getting back on the bus.

We were told we'd have a rest stop halfway to Paris, as we'd had one on the way up there Friday morning. After over 2 hours (it's about a 3 hour trip total) someone asked the leaders of the trip whether or not we were going to stop, as most of us were starving and had to use the bathroom badly (there weren't any accessible public bathrooms in Deauville). The driver pulled into the next rest stop and we all ran to the bathroom. After I'd used the bathroom I was waiting outside for my friends to be finished. I was standing amongst everyone else who was waiting for the bathroom (of which there was but one). Out of nowhere this girl I'd known before France comes up and says "HILLARY IS IT YOUR BIRTHDAY TODAY?? I JUST SAW IT ON FACEBOOK!" I was standing next to everyone on my program, and I was forced to admit it. So I said "haha..uh..yeah." They all took my not telling them as modesty, but really I just didn't want all the attention. It was cute though, everyone sang me happy birthday, then the French kids sang to me in French, and then the Polish French guy in our program gave me 2 kisses on the cheek. Then everyone kept saying "21? You gonna go out? We've got to stay out until the morning!" That was the last thing I felt like doing so I just smiled and laughed.

Anne-Cécil, the French teacher who was in charge of us for the weekend had told us we weren't allowed to eat on the bus, and we only had 15 min to stretch our legs and go to the bathroom but not to buy food. So what did we do? We all congregated in the mini-market and bought cookies and sandwiches while the male leader of our trip stood and watched. Once on the bus you could smell the overwhelming scent of tuna and potato chips, so Anne-Cécil said we could eat if we were very careful not to be messy.

That was my trip to Normandy! I hope everyone is having a wonderful September!

Love,

Hill

Normandy- Day 1

Hey guys!

Today is Friday and this week we don't have class on Friday! I took the opportunity to go for a walk this morning over by the Opera (pictured below) and to visit the Galleries Lafayette for a little shopping! I ended up walking around for 4 hours so when I got back I took a little nap, skyped with Grandmama, took another nap, and then got up and decided I had time to update the blog before I took a shower and had dinner!

This is the story of my trip to Normandy, part 1.

Our first excursion to Normandy included the entire study abroad group, so that meant there were about 50 of us, all from either the EU studies group, or the public health group. They really wanted to make sure we had a chance to bond as a group so they scheduled the trip for the first weekend, right before class started. We were told to meet at the Opera at 7:oo am sharp, which meant I got up at 5:30. We left around 7:20 on a coach bus.

We had one rest stop so the trip to Normandy in total took around 3 hours. I sat next to one of the French students in our program, Cami. All of the French kids are 18 and a couple of then turn 19 soon. They are all in their 2nd year of college. We talked about American actors and American TV shows for awhile.

Our first stop was the War Memorial Museum in Caen. (The entire first day was in Caen). We arrived around 11am and we had until 2pm. There was a scheduled movie at 12:30 and then we could eat at the museum café after the movie. As I walked through the museum exhibit, which was incredibly huge, I realized how hungry I was. I almost ran through the last few rooms of the exhibit on my way to the café so I could eat something before the movie. I did however see this painting by Picasso, this same painting hung in the restaurant in Bolivia that we were in for Bolivian Independence Day! I remember Sarah pointing it out and telling us that it was a Picasso from WWII meant to show the sorrow and anguish that people felt.

After lunch we had some extra time before our bus left, so I walked around the gardens in the back with a couple of friends. Look who I found! It's Firenze, the centaur from Harry Potter! Haha just kidding, but it is a centaur with one arm and one leg cut off.

After the memorial museum we visited the American cemetery. We had about 25 minutes at the cemetery so instead of walking around looking at the names of fallen soldiers, I sat on the wall facing the sea and watched the ocean for 20 minutes. It's been over a year since I've been to the sea and it was truly calming.

This was my view of the sea from the cemetery:

Our next stop was to Omaha beach. We only had 10 minutes here but that was enough time for about half of us to run down to the beach and put our feet in the water!

While we squished our toes in the sand, we saw this dude:

He got really close to us and he gave us a "Hello!" in a french accent as we yelled "Hi!!"

After the beach we visited what I can only call the Bomb Land. It was an area on the cliffs where lots of bombs went off during WWII and the craters the bombs created were still very much there. There were a few bunkers strew all around as well.

One of the craters:
At this point I was feeling a bit lonely because although I had made friends, all the friendships were still pretty much surface friendships (not surprising since it had been 4 days since I arrived in Paris), and everyone seemed to have split off into separate groups. But I didn't want to split off so soon, or stick to just one group, because I wanted to meet everyone without being categorized. We only had 20 minutes at this place but I decided to spend a few minutes walking around and exploring on my own. The majority of people from our program had climbed a few steps onto this lookout thing, and they were crowding it. I found a set of stairs on the back of the lookout structure, and descended into an adventure of my own.

As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw a doorway. The doorway led to a room on the left and a room on the right. There were no windows in either room, and the only light I could see by was the sunlight from the top of the stairs. This wasn't enough light with which to see into the room, so I used my camera to take a picture, hoping the flash would reveal what was inside. The flash was only on for about a second, and it wasn't enough time for my eyes to adjust and to see into the room. So I had to rely on the pictures from my camera. The picture below is what the room looks like, which I never saw from my own eyes.

The weird thing was, with my bare eyes I could see one patch of light on the ground, right about where that stain or divot in the ground is. The light had no source. In the square patch of light I could see dark figures with no real shape, just dark figures going across the light patch. It was as if there was a window at the top of the wall at ground level, and people were outside walking past the window. Except there was no window, and the light was incredibly faint. It was enough to freak me out so what did I do? I ran for it, and once I got to the ground I grabbed the first person I knew well enough and showed them what I'd found.

We spent 10 minutes at the German cemetery but at that point I was so sick of stopping for such brief periods of time that I didn't even grab my camera. I did stop to smell the roses at the center of the cemetery though! They smelled divine.

Our hotel was also in Caen, in the city part. I think we were suffering from withdrawal from Parisian architecture, because I heard Caen described as "the Eastern Block," "the Soviet Union," "ugly," and "institutional." It really wasn't that bad, but it wasn't Paris. There was a really old gothic church near the restaurant I ate in, but we ate for 3 hours so we didn't have time to walk over there to learn about it afterwards. For dinner I had salmon carpaccio (or something like that). It was super thinly sliced salmon, a potato the size of half of my thumb, a really yummy sauce, and a side salad. We had a nice dinner and I got home around midnight.

On this trip our room assignments had been randomized (another effort to get everyone to know one another). Let's call my roommate..Stacy. Stacy is really cool and very beautiful. A few days earlier at orientation I saw here with a dark purple Longchamp bag. I had been planning to go to the Longchamp store all week so that I could have a large bag for the Normandy trip. Plus I just really wanted one. I really liked her color, so on Thursday when I visited the Longchamp store, I got that one. When we walked into our hotel room Friday night before we all split up for dinner, she said "Hey! Our bags are the same!" and I said.."Hey yeah..they are!! I really liked the color of this one in the store." LOL.

Our room was a triple but we had it to ourselves. This hotel was like a poor man's La Quinta Inn. The decoration of the hotel (which was super cheap) reminded me of Saved by the Bell. It was very late 80's early 90's, and not in a good way. Unless you found the humor in it, as I did. The top bunk bed wasn't made, but there were two very starchy sheets and a pillow up there. the bottom bed was made, and had a scratchy thin blanket on top. We decided we'd probably share the bottom bunk because of the blanket. When I got back around midnight I took a shower and then chose to make the top bunk and try to sleep there in a hoodie and no blanket. Around 1:30 she still wasn't there and I was still awake and freezing so I climbed down and tried to take up as little room as possible. She came back soon after that and I woke up in the middle of the night with my head really close to her shoulder. Awkward! I don't know if she was aware of that..or if she slept through it. Either way I was glad we shared the bottom because it was way warmer than the top.

That's the end of the first half of my trip to Normandy!!

To be continued...

-Hillary

Huelga, part deux!

Hey guys!

Alright, think back to a time, long long ago, when I was in Bolivia. Do you remember me telling you that the way things get done there was to have a strike? While I was in Bolivia there were several strikes. I have recently learned that this is how people express their opinions in Paris as well! Tomorrow there will be a strike..I forgot why.. someone told us last week..but regardless the outcome is that public transit is going to take like 10 times as long. I don't have to worry about this because I'm a 15-20 min walk to class and I don't take the metro to get there. My french teacher warned us today that she might be late tomorrow because of it. After class today I was walking home and saw the roads blocked off and tons of people walking around with stickers that I couldn't read. Maybe it's already starting? It's only a one day strike though so who knows.

Ok let's get down to business. I have a lot of reading to do today and tomorrow so instead of telling you all about Normandy on Friday and Saturday, I'm going to talk about my Thursday and show you some pictures from that day!

Thursday:

Last Thursday we had french placement testing in the morning. After testing we walked over to Ladurée, a famous macaroon place, and picked out a few macaroons to eat! My favorite one was vanilla because it tasted like ice cream in a cookie sandwich. I'd never had macaroons before but they're delicious and they are in all these bright colors! They even have mimosa flavored.

Later, one of the French students in our program, Camille, told us she wanted to show us where the Jardin du Luxembourg was. It's a garden we all kept hearing about but no one had seen yet. What I thought was going to be a 15 min walk to the gardens ended up being a 2.5 hour tour around part of the city.

First we walked back towards school and Ladurée, and up to the Seine.

This is the beginning of Pont Neuf, the island in the middle of the Seine on which Notre Dame sits.

Our first stop was to be Notre Dame. (Again). This marks my fourth time inside Notre Dame. But this time was a bit different, outside one of my friends pointed out something really cool! There was this really old man feeding the birds (enter the Feed the Birds song from Mary Poppins) and the birds were actually on his hand! Then the birds were landing on the shoulders of this old lady chatting to another old lady, and she didn't mind at all!

After Notre Dame we walked past part of the Sorbonne (famous public university), and entered the Pantheon. the Pantheon is where lots of famous dead people are buried, and it is located in this odd but beautiful area next to a law school and what amounts to like a regional government building. Here are a few pictures from outside the Pantheon and inside it.

This is the bad guy from Ocean's 12! I've found the Night Fox! He's in an ad for cologne that's on bus stops all over the city.

Inside the Pantheon:
In the basement of the Pantheon where most of the graves are:
Voltaire's body is in the casket behind his statue:

Outside of the Pantheon were two groups of college-aged kids. One group was in all red, and the other in all blue. Most of them had odd random squiggly lines in face paint on their faces and they seemed to be standing around. Camille said it was their form of hazing for "associations" or college clubs. Their hazing is tame and all in good fun, it's not harmful according to Camille. After a stop for gelato we walked into the Jardin du Luxembourg.

THIS PLACE IS AMAZING. First of all, we had a beautiful day to be walking around outside. It was in the 70's and sunny. I don't know how I've been to France twice and missed this. I've always come in March when it probably isn't as magical, but in September at least it was heaven. I can't really describe it in words, but I'll start by saying this place is huge. I didn't see all of it because our feet were hurting and I didn't know exactly how far it went. We walked to the center by the fountain and rested for about half an hour. There were people all over the place going for walks, reading, chatting, or eating. Here are some of the pictures I took:

This is the senate building:

Alright folks! That's it for now!

I'll update again soon!

Love, Hillary

My Teacher is Famous!!

Hey everyone!

Lately I'm finding out more and more about my school, Sciences Po. I learned in class yesterday that they have an acceptance rate of 5%. To give you a comparison, Northwestern is currently trying to lower it's acceptance rate from 23% to 20% in order to rise in the rankings. It is the most highly regarded of political science schools in all of France! I guess this means that the teachers are top notch as well, because I just found out that the teacher I had today (who is also the director of the public health side of our France program from the French administrative side) wrote an article in Le Monde, a famous french newspaper.

It is in french but in case you want to take a look, here is the link!

http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2010/09/06/ne-sacrifiez-pas-la-jeunesse_1407360_3232.html

Au revoir!

Hillary

Paris; A Walking Tour

Hi everyone!

First of all, thank you for all the Happy Birthday wishes! Around 11:30 in the afternoon I remembered that it was my birthday. What a weird feeling to have forgotten it! I guess it's because I already celebrated at home. I got a lot of texts yesterday and it was really nice to hear from everyone.

Moving on..

This past week has been very busy. Class for the public health kids (that's me) starts tomorrow! I wanted to take a little time this afternoon and update you all about this past week!

Tuesday:

Tuesday I spent the day walking all around Paris with a couple of girls. We figured out that we walked close to 10 miles that day. We saw all of the sights that I've already seen, but it never hurts to see them again- especially when walking around with people who have never been to France.

In the morning I met the girls downstairs for breakfast. As I was walking to the water fountain in the back of the cafeteria by the kitchen, I noticed a little mouse crouched in the middle of the hallway. I was really close to it and was surprised that the mouse hadn't scampered away already. I ran to get my friends and I showed them where the mouse was. It still wasn't moving. None of us speak french so we couldn't get the staff's attention right away. After a few moments one of the cooks came out and apparently he said "oh have you seen the little mouse!?" He came over and kicked the mouse to the side of the wall so that it was out of the way. Grossed out, I finished putting my dishes away and immediately left.

We walked from our dorm to this store called Monoprix that everyone keeps calling the French Target. They sell food (pre-made and fresh), clothes, toiletries, housewares, and electronics. All the kids from NU have made Monoprix their second home because they have everything that we need (flat irons, shower caddies, etc..). After dropping off our purchases at the dorm, we headed out. We first walked to the Eiffel Tower and then made our way to the Arc de Triomphe. On the way we stopped at a restaurant for lunch and I ordered a croque monsieur. Near the Arc de Triomphe we entered a large store called "The Public Drug Store" looking for hair dryers. They didn't have hair dryers, but they did have Marc by Marc Jacobs purses, books, designer sunglasses, along with a small section for actual pharmaceuticals.

Can you spot me in the picture below?

After walking down the Champs Elysées and entering another Monoprix to search for a hair dryer, we crossed the Place de la Concorde and up to the Louvre. We spent a little time watching little boys and girls play with toy sail boats in the little pools in the park in front of the Louvre. It was so cute all the boys had boat shoes, khaki shorts, and polos on.

In front of the Louvre a woman and her husband walked up to us and asked in english (with an accent I didn't recognize) for directions to Musée d'Orsay (which I've never been to). She showed us where we were on her map (at the Louvre), and where Musée d'Orsay was on the map. It appeared that Musée d'Orsay was literally across the Seine on the other side of the street.. so I said that. I felt like I was stating the obvious since I was looking at her map, but she smiled and looked relieved and thanked us as she walked in the direction I pointed her in.

Louvre and guy taking a picture:

Place de la Concorde:

We then walked along the Seine and decided to follow it until we reached the Notre Dame cathedral.

(*Please excuse this section of the post. All of a sudden underlining appeared under this section of writing, the font changed and got larer, and somehow I can't get any of this to go away.Oh well, c'est la vie!)

This was my third time in the cathedral but it was no less beautiful than my first two times. At this point our feet were killing us so we walked back across the Seine towards our arrondisement.

Our meal plan includes breakfast (7am to 9am) and dinner (7pm to 7:30pm) Monday through Friday. The food is disgusting and everything we are offered is a pale yellow color. While I waited in line for dinner on Tuesday at the dorm, I noticed that the little mouse from that morning was still there! Most of the students hadn't even noticed it when I asked them if they'd seen that the mouse was still there. They also hadn't seen it in the morning and were shocked to find out that it had been there all day! After dinner we went to Le Deux Magots, a famous café where Hemingway and others frequented, for a glass of wine. It was a great end to a really nice day.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning at 10am we had dorm orientation. I should take a moment to explain our dorm situation. Sciences Po has no dorms or off-campus student apartments. It is not the norm for French universities to have housing. My dorm is called St. John's and it is owned by the St. Johns University in New York. It is a catholic affiliated school and we live directly next to a church and a place where the priests live. There is a St. John's school in Paris, Rome, and I believe the fourth is in Berlin but I'm not sure. The way this dorm works is that St. John's in New York places it's students here while they are attending their sister school in Paris for one month (then those kids move on to the school in Rome and then Berlin). They let students from other schools live there too. There are about 25 Northwestern students here, around 20 St. John's kids, a few kids from a school in Florida, and a few kids from Parson's. Speaking of the dorm, here is a picture of my room! I'm taking the picture from the top bunk (my bed) of our bunk beds.

That afternoon we met the NU International Program Development director Devorah (the woman who helped me get into the Paris program) at our dorm. She walked us over to the area where the Sciences Po buildings are and lead us into one of the buildings for a program orientation. At the NU study abroad orientation (which included both the public health kids and the EU studies kids) we met the 7 french Sciences Po students who will be in class with us and going with us on our field trips. We were also split up into our individual programs and at the public health orientation our director Bruno went over our class schedules for the rest of the quarter with us. He scared all of us and we all left feeling somewhat worried about our workload. Our average class time is around 4 hours but we also have some classes that are 6 hours long after our 2 hour french classes in the afternoon. Our schedule also changes every week because lectures are dependent on our teachers' schedules, and since they are very important people in France, this is always changing.

Ok folks, that's all for now! I'll update soon with the rest of this past week. I can't wait to show you pictures from our two day trip to Normandy! We got back late last night exhausted, but happy.

Until then! Love,

Hillary