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.

15-19 septembre 2014

Monday
Okay at this point, I'm so worn out by this Phonetics class. Including the half hour break we get, 3.5 hours of class every night is so much. Time needs to pass by more quickly. Ugh.

Tuesday
SARAH'S BIRTHDAY WOOHOO. I had it all planned out:

✓ Edible Arrangements delivery (shout out to Best Friend for making that happen!)

✓ Birthday drawing (in lieu of a birthday card)

✓ Super cute happybirthdaybestie post on her Facebook wall.... oh wait...

For some reason, I calculated the time difference really bizzarely and posted on her wall at midnight AFTER her birthday... oops... Anyways, happy birthday again Sarah :)

Wednesday
I went to the Louvre for the first time with my Art History class! I got there kind of early so I took some pictures and you would not believe the line that formed outside...

So the line snakes around like 5 or 6 times...

...and ends up like this on the other side of the Pyramid!

And again, if you are really interested in seeing the pictures I took for my notes, you can ask me for it because no one else wants to see boring stuff like that haha

Thursday

My IR class has been super interesting! We're learning a lot about WHY and HOW the European Union came to be, which is a lot of WWII stuff. It's really interesting to learn about the War from a French perspective because it's such a different narrative than we learn in America! You know, the War was fought ON French soil and it's a very significant part of their history. Today, we went to a small museum called Musée Jean Moulin; the eponymous historical figure is one of the most famous figures who fought for the French Resistance.

*My insights on this museum visit (skip if you are not interested in history haha): It was really interesting to see how tiny the Resistance was. You know, history books and Frenchies try to make it seem like it was this great heroic thing that most French citizens took part in, but that's just not true. I think this museum did a great job showing how much bigger Vichy France was compared to the Resistance. For example, their propaganda is, quite literally, bigger in size. Of course, the Resistance was underground, but even the amount of propaganda that Vichy released is so much greater. I feel that this museum is much more an exposé of what really happened during the Occupation of France than anything else (I'm not sure how to explain this but it's like this museum is saying "Hey wait a minute, you guys are all for Charles de Gaulle now, but where were you during the actual Occupation? THIS is what you guys were like; THIS is what you guys did. Don't just jump the band wagon now because the war is over and Germany lost." And in doing so, it celebrates the bravery of people like CDG and Jean Moulin who actually fought in the Resistance. Okay there was really no point in this paragraph. /rantover*

Friday
After this awfully long week, my friends and I went to La Défense because Adam (a friend from my Sorbonne class) told us that there was going to be a fireworks show! All the restaurants were closed or packed, so we ended up grabbing some fast Lebanese food, but the lady who was serving me was so rude! She kept asking me to repeat my order because every time I started talking, she would start talking to her friend who was nearby or something. Then, she dropped my food, picked it up and acted like nothing had happened. When she heard me complaining to Justine, she looked at my face (which was very unhappy, to say the least) and asked me if I wanted a new one. NO DUH. So rude. At that point, I was just annoyed and the food wasn't even that great. Just expensive. Totally ruined my appetite too. All in all, I just did not enjoy the experience and will probably be avoiding Lebanese food for a long time (I really didn't like the taste of it!).
Luckily, the fireworks show really cheered me up. C'était super! Vraiment! It was the best fireworks show I have ever seen. It was a bunch of vignettes of people traveling around the world or something and although some parts were kind of weird and just politically incorrect, it was quite entertaining. I ran out of space so I have some snippets of the show recorded from my camera. There was one part (I MISSED IT UGHH) where they were making fun of Americans - a girl with an awful valley girl accent was talking about baguettes and the Eiffel Tower and just BUTCHERING her French. It was awful but also hilarious. Then it suddenly turned into NYC and it was hilarious.
Anyways, before I show you the videos and pictures, I just wanted to let you know that in one of them, my friend says a very bad word. I didn't want to watch all of them to figure out if you can actually hear it, but you'll probably hear me say "Adam! You can't say that! I'm recording!" LOL so please just disregard that. Also, at some points, they sync'ed the sound of the fireworks with the music and it was super cool! I'm in love with France. Okay here are the pictures/videos:

So many people behind us!

Even more in front of us! *Take a look at the Grande Arche de la Défense

*Look at it now! This is when I realized this fireworks show is more than just fireworks! They are projecting visuals onto the arch itself! So cool!

Okay so this is proof that I have friends. This is Justine. Say "Hi Justine."

This is, from left to right, Boba Guy (he owns a boba shop across the street from the Sorbonne and I actually don't know his name because it is complicated Chinese + his speech is very slurred = I couldn't really hear what his name was LOL), Adam's apartment mate(?) whose name I have forgotten now...), and Adam! Sorry for the flash, you guys!

Me and Natasha! Sorry I look way to happy in this but that's just how I smile ;A;

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

OK I know I promised videos but I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I should go about doing that because the Blogger video interface thing is weird and lame. I will update this post later....

14 septembre 2014

Not much happened today:

I woke up super late after the craziness that was last night (yes, for me that is considered crazy...) and missed church D:

I went to La Défense which is the most modern thing I've ever seen ever [in Paris] (please excuse my hyperbolic tendencies) with Justine and Natasha. Unlike the times I just go with Justine, I actually bought stuff! Albeit, it was at H&M but I bought a "basic jersey" (just a white t-shirt), a "jersey fancy" (I don't really know how to describe it... it's one of those loose shirts... and it's fancier than a t-shirt LOL), and a skirt. Yea, a skirt. And it has polka dots. Here is an excerpt of a conversation we had after I put on the shirt+skirt combo:

Justine: You look like a little church girl 

Jane: I am a little church girl

Natasha: Didn't you ditch church today?

Jane: ...

Other than that, the only other notable thing that happened today was a delicious Peach Lemonade I bought from Costa Coffee. YUM.

13 septembre 2014

Today we visited the cozy, picturesque village of Chartres! The main attraction is the famous Chartres Cathedral but we were in for quite a surprise. But first, the cathedral:

The view as soon as we got off the bus. Some things to note: ferris wheel, cathedral, lots of tour buses (there were even more behind us). I guess I can't complain about the hordes of tourists that were there because we were tourists too..................... I've gotten too used to hating on tourists #amiaparisianyet

Front of the Chartres Cathedral. I always prefer the sides of the buildings over the front... It just looks monolithic and there is too much of a stark contrast between the intricate details and plain, flat surfaces.

It's really tall.

Here's a partial view of the side. Isn't it so much nicer?

The rosace (rose window) above the main entrance of the cathedral.

C'est incroyable!! Look at how much detail goes into each window! We got a "tour" of the cathedral by THE leading expert on the Chartres Cathedral, Malcolm Miller. We got to sit down and just enjoy learning about the meanings in some of the windows. There was so much detail we got through four or five over the course of two hours - and that was rushed and incomplete! I could literally stay there for two weeks and not be able to look at EVERYTHING! A lot of my friends were really bored but I was actually quite interested because it was all Biblical stuff (it was also interesting to note extra things that the Catholics believe/study that Protestants don't). Also, you can't tell from the picture,  but each pane of the window is about 1m or so tall!

Yay more windows! Sorry I don't really know how to take pictures. I'm just pretending to be a photographer because I have a fancy DSLR camera~

This rose window (1225-1230AD) is 10.5m in diameter. I forgot to mention earlier, but all the windows I took pictures of (and most of the windows in the cathedral) are the original, dating back to the Middle Ages! During turbulent times like the Revolution and the World Wars, the windows were carefully stowed away. These are even the original colors, they've only been cleaned, never recolored or anything!

This is really quite an awful picture, but I just wanted to show the difference between the restored windows vs. the unrestored ones. Like everything in France, everything is always being constructed or restored, which is why there is always scaffolding and weird stuff in my pictures. Sorry but it's not my fault!

So this beauty (altar place or something like that) doesn't actually belong here. It's from the Baroque period but when the church was demolished or whatever, they wanted to save this part of it but they didn't really know where so they decided to stick it inside the Chartres Cathedral. Not like it's a sacred and important historical landmark or anything. Nbd. Lol anyways it's pretty but it looks more out of place than Montparnasse Tower.

This is supposedly the veil of the Virgin Mary. It's been accurately traced back to the 11th century or something ridiculous like that, but there is a millennium that is unaccounted for! It was re-gifted among royal families of Europe/Middle East, but again, all we really know is that it's SUPER OLD. It might just be an old blankie though idk

Yay cute houses

Okay so here's the surprise. I step out of the church and all of a sudden I see a bunch of soldiers and military vehicles and basically this picture. At this point, I am very confused.

But enthused. These are definitely not the real thing but I'm guessing it has something to do with WWII.

Apparently, today was the anniversary of the liberation of Chartres during WWII! What a coincidence!

Not to brag, but I totally knew it was WWII related. WOOHOO! I'm starting to notice that WWII is a really big deal here in France. WWI also but more WWII.

The funniest part was the French actors who made the exhibition come to life! Look at how snazzy that outfit is. I really wanted to pet her hat.

The actors were dressed up as American soldiers and, as such, spoke mostly in English (at least the ones I talked to)!

Hurray WWII! Hurray liberation!

:D Do you see the smiley face??

Last view of the church before heading off to our fancy lunch. This fancy lunch was pretty good but it lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. Ridiculous. We were told that the city is beautiful and the church is beautiful and we should explore and yaddayadda. But by the time we were done with lunch, we only had 30min to walk around -- including the 10min it would take for us to walk back to the bus. I'm pretty salty about that, if you couldn't tell.

Goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes on top of something flour-y. It looked and tasted a lot better than it seems from the picture...

Chicken and strangely corn-y mashed potatoes. The chicken was thebomb.com

This chocolate disaster was exactly that: a disaster. I mean, I am always for chocolate, but it was just very dense and too heavy after the goat cheese and mashed potatoes and ugh. I would have enjoyed it better after a lighter meal. I would also enjoy one right now.

After lunch, Curran and I decided to take a walk around the cathedral. Look at the back of it; isn't it amazing?! This is what I mean: the front is always the least visually interesting.

Hey that's me!

And at the back of the cathedral was a balustrade of sorts and it looked out onto a labyrinth and a neighboring village? Not quite sure about that but the view was incredible!

Hey that's me (again)! Please excuse my frumpiness.

The back. Or the back of the side from a backwards angle?

The back of the side with a slightly more sideways angle? Yea it's 2h du MATIN right now so that would explain why I am being kind of weird. lalalalalala

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

On the way back into Paris, our driver definitely struggled to navigate through the small streets. After passing by my house (literally) and driving in a circle 20 times (took 30min!) trying to turn into a small street, the driver gave up and just dropped us off at some really random location. I rentrer'ed (to go home), went running, and met up with my friends a while later for dinner and a "chill night." It was quite hectic at first: we (me, Justine and Amber) were meeting up with Natasha and Curran (who were not together) and a guy Justine met on Tinder + his friends. All the while, we were walking around trying to find a place that was selling alcohol! We finally found a place, my friends bought some wine and vodka and we met up with Natasha and Curran. At this point, however, Curran was with her friend Fiona (whom I met last week) and Fiona saw a friend on the street who was with her friend who was with his friend who was with her friend (Fiona + 4 friends only knew one person in the group each...). Curran kept saying on the phone that they found 4 Arabs who are super nice and I was just really confused because I thought they were complete strangers who started talking to them. ANYWAYS there was this whole mess of us losing each other and finally finding each other and then some people going to eat dinner while others had already eaten but EVENTUALLY it ended up being me, Justine, Natasha and Amber vs. Curran, Fiona & co. who went to go eat. We were going to meet up afterwards but, long story short, we didn't. My group went to the Seine and met up with Stephan (Korean-French), drunk Asian guy, Dutch guy, drunk Arab guy and (white) girlfriend who spoke a little bit of Chinese. At one point, I knew all of their names, but as I write this three weeks later, the names have eluded me. Anyways, I've long since realized that I hate the taste of alcohol, but I always give new ones a try just in case. Yea they all tasted horrible and I decided to just stick with water haha Okay it's time for pictures now:

THIS is when Frenchies do for a chill night. Bring a ton of wine and other alcohol (but mostly wine) and just hang out with friends. (Photo taken at approximately 11PM)

The group right next to us had a guitar which I thought was pretty cool except the guy was almost as bad as me and their singing was definitely worse. It was interesting entertainment though and it definitely contributed (positively) to the overall atmosphere! The group in the background was SUPER classy. They took a stone bench-ish thing and turned it into a little bar of sorts and they even brought wine glasses. Like, who does that? Oh, right, French people!

Amber and Natasha.

Justine and Amber and Natasha. Natasha, why you always gotta derp.

(Left to right) Dutch guy's arm, drunk Asian guy, girlfriend who speaks Chinese, drunk Arab guy. Drunk Asian guy kept asking me "Do you want to take a photo?" but it was kind of ambiguous because I didn't know if he meant take a photo with him, if he was going to take a picture of me, he mentioned selfie at one point idk I was confused and I think he just thought I was terrible at French haha

Here is a brief description of what was going through my head throughout the night:

Phase 0: (before the meeting) Wait, we have to meet people? I have to socialize? Ugh, Justine, why do you do this to me...

Phase 1: ohmygoshthisissocooli'mfreakingoutbecausei'minfrancewithrealparisiansandthisissocooli'mjustdrink[water]ontheseineandtherearesomanypeopleilovethisatmospherewhatismylifeeeee

Phase 2: We have a LOT of alcohol. Why is there so much alcohol. This is not okay. Oh wait, except for me, everyone is 21 or older. Wait but that doesn't even matter because the drinking age is 18 here. But so much alcohol. Who's gonna drink all that?

Phase 3: Alright, I can kind of get used to this...

Phase 4: (we started playing a game and I knew how to play after like one sentence of explanation in French and I ended up explaining it to everyone LOL I am truly the Game Master) GUYS C'MON IT'S NOT THAT HARD PLEASE KEEP THE BEAT DO YOU GUYS NOT KNOW HOW TO KEEP A RHYTHM? SLAP CLAP SNAP SNAP IS THAT SO HARD???

Phase 5: I really need to pee. (Justine actually went in some random alley way and later in the night, Natasha and Amber disappeared (separately) to go pee. It was crazy.

Phase 6: (Talked to drunk Asian guy... He was surprised that I could actually speak French!) Wow this guy is really drunk. This is hilarious. He should just speak French because his English is quite awful... He probably thinks he's being really insightful right now because he has no idea how drunk (and stupid) he sounds

Phase 7: Alright, the metro is closing in half an hour... We should leave guys...

It took soooo long for us to actually leave; from the first time I said we should head out to when we stood up to when we actually left. And out of nowhere, Justine decided to go home with Stephan, which was totally random because she wasn't even attracted to him (she texted us: NOT CUTE as soon as she saw him). Anyways, we were leaving, then Natasha decided to bring Justine with us because she was pretty drunk but Justine convinced Natasha she was alright. Then Natasha wanted to give Justine the left over bottle of wine so we had to go back. Then we walked the wrong direction from the closest metro and ended up going into different stations and we barely made it in time for the last ride at 1h30 (later we found out that the metro actually closes at 2h haha oops). We both made it home (I was afraid that Natasha wouldn't be able to make her transfer!) and I went to bed. Yay.

Well, not really. I don't know if it was having a real conversation with a real Frenchie (other than school administrators and my host family + dinner guests) or rushing to get on the metro, but I was really excited about today and I just wanted to tell someone about it. Unfortunately, no one was available to Skype or call or anything :( and if I were to text/FB message this to someone, I'm pretty sure they (*coughSarahcough*) would have just said tl;dr so here I am writing a blog post instead. Exciting adventures are exciting!

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Miscellaneous things of the day:

1. So I uncancelled my subscription to Netflix. Oops.

2. I made a Tinder. HAHA after hearing so much about Curran and Justine's (although her Tinder dates end up being a little more... wild) experiences, I decided I wanted to make French friends too! Strictly for friends, no shenanigans. Please don't judge me.