26-28 septembre 2014

WEEKEND IN BORDEAUX -- NOT (to be explained later)! I was pretty excited for this weekend excursion, and not just because I got to miss a day of school. However, it wasn't as fun as I expected it to be. I showed up 15mn early to the train station, which required me to wake up at 7h (I am a college student; this is never okay). What they didn't tell us was that they had told us to meet an hour and 15mn before our train departed just in case. As you can imagine, I was not pleased. Whatever, I got over it. It was my first time riding a train so I was very excited! Unfortunately, I slept like 99% of the 3 hour trip because I had to wake up so early (okay, maybe I'm not over it).

Day 1 - 26 Septembre 2014

Once we got to Bordeaux, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel, grabbed a quick lunch (we all ended up eating at the same restaurant somehow haha), and got a tour of the city!

View from the hotel

We went on a walking tour and of course we saw fancy churches

We also went to a museum of local/regional history. Wine from Bordeaux has been renowned for centuries! The English actually invented barrels specifically to export it back to the UK... Hence the barrels and other nautical things.

They had a bunch of scale models of ships. It's like a ship in a bottle except the bottle. And it's a lot bigger...

Please note just how awful French architects were... The bottom arch is not centered. This actually happens quite often lol

I love these small European streets.

I mean, just look at them!

Um... no significance to this building, really. I just thought it looked nice haha

Justine and I went out for dinner and then met up with her friend, Vincent, and his girlfriend, Mao. They were really cool and I'm glad I went out with them!

We also saw a cool street performer... I didn't catch it on video but she's really good with the crowd haha

Day 2 - 27 Septembre 2014

Rendez-vous was bright and early. Instead of being able to explore Bordeaux more, we were shipped off to Arcachon for a 2.5 hour walking tour. As beautiful as it was, I was tired and the tour was really long...

This city is split into 4 neighborhoods named after the seasons. These are some houses in Summer.

Our tour guide and lots of greens.

We walked up this huge hill and this is the view! Wow!

There's also this huge metal tower that was designed by, you guessed it, Gustave Eiffel (this was before he was cool, wow Arcachon how hipster of you). It's known as the "Eiffel Tower [of Arcachon]." How misleading...

The view from the top!

The view from the top!

Me at the top!

...I'm really bad at taking panoramas haha...

Once our tour FINALLY ended, we had an AMAZING lunch by the beach. This was salmon and risotto.

As much as I love salmon, the dessert was what made this lunch great. So. Good.

After lunch, I just chilled on the beach and, unfortunately, reattained my farmer's tan that I worked so hard all summer to get rid of :( The sun here must be really strong or something because it's usually impossible for me to tan... Anyways, men in speedos, girls in bikinis, women with bare breasts. You know. European beaches. Yay...

We finally got back to Bordeaux and we went out for dinner.

Steak (which was just whatever) and unlimited fries.

UNLIMITED FRIES. (also derp)

Day 3 - 28 Septembre 2014

This really was The Trip of THE WORST PLANNING EVER. Met up bright and early -- again -- to go to Saint-Emilion. Very charming city but giving us two hours to explore this tiny city and then taking us on a walking tour of it was probably not the best idea...

You know what else wasn't the best idea? Wine tasting at 10AM on a Sunday morning. Yea. That happened.

Luckily (or maybe not so), we only got three glasses with this much wine.

AKA three sips of wine for me (just to be polite). Everyone was super disappointed because they were expecting some fancy Napa Valley stuff. I'm pretty sure this was free because most wineries give free dégustations (in less bougie terms: samples).

I got a stomach ache from drinking wine on an empty stomach -_- so I ate. I always eat.

And this cute kid sat next to us. Look how stylish he is!

Then we tried le canelé which this region is known for. It was... gross.

So here are some streets...

And wine cellars...

So cute!

Yea everything is about wine basically.

Oh and this church.

It was built into a monolith...

Strange art gallery where I got in trouble for taking pictures. This cat makes me think of Miyazaki's "The Cat Returns"!

Funny? Sassy? Creepy? Imagine if these were all weeping angels...

Here's a view of the city! (or village? I'm not sure what's the right word...)

And right outside the city limits are some vineyards!

Yaaay vineyards (read: Yaaay wine)

This was my first weekend excursion with ACCENT. I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped because there were too many tours and too many places (we barely spent any time in Bordeaux itself!) but I guess I can't complain because France. Yes, France. Just France.

22-25 septembre 2014

Nothing really interesting happened this week. Class, as usual. Lots of ham/cheese/butter sandwiches and paninis. I was invited to Andrew's birthday party on Saturday but I can't go because I'll be in Bordeaux :( I told him I'd make it up to him some how and he requested a song (because I told him I bought a guitar). Not down for that. So I drew him a picture instead! Happy birthday Andrew!

For those of you who know me, this is my favorite animal dressed up as his favorite animal in celebration of his birthday; I have not renounced my hatred for cats just yet.

21 septembre 2014

I've been having a really difficult time falling asleep (starting from Thursday night) so I woke up super late today (around 12PM?). I grabbed a late lunch with Natasha and Justine before going to the American Library in Paris for their Open House (at which point, Curran joined us)! It was a lot less interesting than I thought and we ended up leaving after Natasha got her library card. HOWEVER, we saw a gorgeous man who resembled Matt Bomer AND he was wearing an elephant vest. So obviously... obviously nothing. Haha but I was considering volunteering at the library and now I am more motivated to do it than ever! I'll get back to you on that once my Phonetics class ends at the beginning of October...

Afterwards, I headed off to the Hillsong Church in Paris for their 17h30 service. It was SO refreshing to have a service in English for the first time in months! It was also really cool because I learned some religion-related words and sang Hillsong songs in French (they projected both the English and French lyrics so I could compare). I was really moved by how welcoming everyone was and by the worship. HOWEVER, I am definitely going to stay alert because Hillsong is a pretty charismatic church and I don't want to get too desensitized to that and overemphasize the importance of emotions in my faith. Anyways, the message wasn't all that deep, but I think it is better for me to understand 100% of a just-okay English message than 50% of a Korean message (I can't even tell you if it was good or not because I didn't understand much LOL). And in case you're judging me for being bad at Korean, I usually understand like 85% of my dad's messages; but I swear the Korean in France is different or something because I found the sermons at BOTH French-Korean churches I went to to be difficult to understand. Meh. Still trying to decide which church to go to. Oh yea, and the church is located inside a theater. Hrm...

OH YEA in the lobby a random girl came up to me and asked me if I was Korean. She only saw me pass by so I don't know how she could tell, but it was cool to see that I am not the only Asian (let alone only Korean) at Hillsong! Instant friends woohoo! (Honestly, it was just nice to know that I don't look as Chinese as people in France make me think I do)

Some videos of the praise/prayer to come! EVERYTHING is translated from English->French or vice versa. Cool stuff yo...

20 septembre 2014

So remember how I said I made a Tinder? I ended up meeting up with someone today! Here is some back story: my friends were making fun of me because apparently, any and all meet-ups between 2+ people who met on Tinder is called a Tinder date. I invited my friends to come with me because this was strictly just a hang out between friends. However, my Tinder friend (who shall be called Andrew from this point forward because... that's his name) and I were going to visit some cool, random political buildings for les Journées du Patrimoine. That roughly translates to "Heritage Days" and it's basically a weekend where various governmental buildings are opened up to the public and some museums are free and there are special exhibitions celebrating the nation's history! Anyways, I love going to museums and visiting historical buildings, etc. (according to my friends, this characteristic can be summarized in one word: geeky) but my friends think it's boring. So they refused to come.

[I am starting a new paragraph because a giant block of writing looks boring and formidable] Anyways, I was pretty nervous about this all week because it's a day of just speaking in French and I'm so bad at meeting new people and I never know what to say and it's in French oh my God what am I doing. It was the worst, however, when I woke up on Saturday morning. My chest was really tight and I think I had a small panic attack LOL It was pretty bad. I'm sorry I'm really bad at describing things but I wasn't even hungry. That's saying a lot. I always wake up in the morning feeling starved so you can say it was really bad (haha my priorities though...). I considered, more than once and pretty seriously, whether I should just bail on Andrew or not. I decided not to and I'm pretty glad I didn't!

École Militaire

Used to be a military school - later became a school for the art of espionnage - now an administrative building used by the French army

I literally live across the street from this place. When I look straight out the balcony, this is what I see. I run around this building three or four times a week. This is pretty cool.

This guy is SO French.

He let me try a gun! I like him.

I think this car looks so happy ^_^ Also, this is my friend Andrew. Say "Hi Andrew!"

This is me with the French Resistance flag! Vive la France!

Here is a picture of the main wing of the building. If you look carefully, you will see that it is being guarded by a giant albino dragon.

Collection of miscellaneous vintage + américain items that one would have seen during the war (I suppose).

These fruits are fake but they looked SO real! I had to pick one up to determine that it was fake. Très bien fait!

These ladies offered me a "true American snack" AKA pieces of bread with vintage peanut butter LOL Andrew didn't take any because he doesn't like peanut and I was telling him that it was too dry because it was basically peanut butter by itself. He was confused and I explained to him that usually, one would eat it with jam and make a PB&J sandwich. He was pretty grossed out by that. He had NEVER EVER EVER heard of a PB&J sandwich and he looked at me with the most incredulous expression. I, of course, was appalled (what kind of depraved childhood do French children have??) and now I am determined to make him try a PB&J (I need to find a place that sells Crunchy JIF T_T)

Random tent.

Random desk with random things.

Another random tent. I like the jacket.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

L'Hôtel des Invalides

Military museum - Andrew told me some stuff about it and from what I understood, it was a hospital/hospice for military personnel

This place also happens to be right by where I live, just two blocks in the opposite direction of École Militaire

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before, but everything in France is always being renovated or restored... This is a first though. A for effort.

wutchu lookin at.

This was really weird. There were paintings and columns painted onto the walls to LOOK like the wall was decorated with real stuff. The capitals on the fake columns, however, ACTUALLY projected from the wall. Bizarre.

Anyways, they had a special exhibition for the weekend that highlighted stuff from WWI and WWII. This is a super old flag from... I don't even know. But just look at it. It's old! Haha the other parts of the hall were interactive so I didn't really take pictures... This is all you get!

The entrance to the chapel of Les Invalides. You can already tell it's going to be très fancy inside.

So the ceiling was reeeeeeeally high

And super intricately decorated

Not really sure what's going on in this photo but here is my interpretation: God catches Moses doodling on the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments written on it. The angel on the very right is laughing at him while the angel in the middle is like "Ooh let me see!" The angel on left is Moses' awkward sidekick who is stressing out because Moses is getting in trouble. (Yea, I don't even know if that's actually Moses or not but that's the vibe I'm getting lol)

Let's play a game: How many Napoleon corpses can you put in one building?

Napoleon Bonaparte (the famous one and probably the only one you know)

Joseph Napoleon I AKA Napoleon Bonaparte's lesser-known elder brother who was appointed King of Naples, Sicily and Spain (talk about nepotism!) AKA King José I

Yea I couldn't see which Napoleon he was but there was a roman numeral I after his name. I don't know any other Napoleon I so I guess I lose :( There were three or four more coffins of some obscure Napoleon. I just got tired of taking pictures of them haha

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Afterwards, we went to the Champs Élysées and we were going to go up on the Arc de Triomphe because it was free! We were not the only ones with this idea and the line was insane! Apparently, if you have a French school ID you can go up for free any time so we decided to come back another day. Instead, we decided to go the Tuileries Garden. As we were getting off the Metro, I got a text from Justine saying that the forecast for tonight was heavy rain. I showed him the text as we were walking up the stairs out of the Metro and he was like "oh I can already feel some raindrops. Let's take a quick look around before it starts to--" and then it started pouring. Hordes of people were stampeding out of the garden and by the time we turned around to go back into the Metro station, it was full. The entire station and platform were so full that the staircase and the entrance were flooded with people! We decided to walk to the next nearest Metro station and hopefully, by then, it would be less crowded.

We didn't really know which direction to walk in and we just kind of huddled under my umbrella. What a bad day to wear a white shirt. I'm glad I have my umbrella with me 24/7 or else we would have been in big trouble lol. Anyways, all of a sudden, he remembered that he was going to show me something! He wouldn't tell me what it was but he just started walking really fast! It ended up being a Korean grocery store! I only had 5€ on me though so this is all I bought: 

YUM KOREAN SNACKS

I think this was the best part of my day! We found a little... I don't even know what to call it. A pedestrians-only street of sorts with a glass ceiling. One of the restaurants was closed so we sat at a teeny tiny table outside of the restaurant and enjoyed our snacks!

The end. It wasn't as bad as I thought and I spoke in French 95% of the day (albeit, for the first half of the day I barely said a word HAHAHA). Andrew, if you see this, I'm sorry. Next time I promise to be less shy/terrified of speaking French in front of actual French people. Ugh I need to get over this stage fright deal.