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."