Vols, trains, et automobiles

The past two weeks have flown by. With my birthday celebrations, Abby's death, increase in rigor of school, and me leaving for Ireland to see Vicky, I have barely even noticed that it's been two weeks! 

For my birthday, I spent the evening watching my little girl. We made cupcakes, and her parents bought me a "warm scarf" for my birthday! Now I have no excuse to be cold according to them.

My mom also sent me beautiful flowers which I received on the day of my birthday, and my best Brazilian friend bought me a book called "La Formule de Dieu."

I could not have been more blessed to spend my birthday with people I have grown to love over the past two months. We had a celebratory birthday cake and brigadeiro for both Bia and I this week. Priscila and Henrique made the special birthday food, and we invited Marcelo, Wendell, Rafael and José Lucas along to celebrate with us. 

We also attended La Nuit Blanche which took place throughout all of Amiens. It was extremely cold, so it was a bit hard for me to enjoy myself. The entire thing was a bit art exhibit (all kinds of arts) that were displayed all over Amiens in different buildings and areas. The most memorable parts - the floating light balloons, the electronic concert (it was warm inside), and the music cones. The music cones were these huge cones that were blown up and had lights shining inside of them. If you approached each one of them, they had their own genre of music playing inside! I don't know why it fascinated me so much, but they were just really interesting. I don't have pictures of that at the moment, but I will upload them in my next post.

Abby also passed away this week. She got into the trash a couple weeks ago and feel very sick. She ended up having kidney failure last week and we put her down on Saturday so that she could go peacefully.  It's hard to be away from home and think that I've spent a birthday outside of the States, and now when I get back home, Abby won't be there to greet me. That's the hardest part about all of this I think. I'm experiencing so much here in France, but at the same time, I'm missing so much at home that I will never get back. I'm just glad it's only for four months! 

I have also taken on the task of partipipating in a "Touch the country you're in" contest. It's a contest for study abroad students at Emory, and if I win, I could get an iPad mini! Of course I'm going to enter! If anyone has ideas about French things I should touch, let me know (i.e. Baguettes, French fries, Eiffel Tower etc). 

And now I'm off to Ireland to visit Vicky :) I've been beyond static to see her, ican hardly contain myself! All my friends know who Vicky is because I talk about her all the time! If I'm not talking about how hungry I am (estou con fome) or...about how hungry I am haha, then I'm talking about Vicky! I'm already here in Ireland, I arrived late last night. Today we are headed to Galway to visit Sarah Goldwasser for today and tomorrow, and then I am going to try to make a trip to Belfast in the middle of the week. But that stuff will be for the next post ;) Bonnes vacances de la Toussaint and have a fantastic week! 

Happiness, Patience and Stress

This week since I’ve been back from Glasgow has been interesting. Well, I guess now it’s been two weeks. The weeks are flying by, and I am started to dread having to leave my friends here. I started babysitting my precious girl, Marth, this week. Her family is originally from France, but they have been living in the USA for the past two years, and their oldest child (Marth) speaks English very well because of having lived in America. This had to have been the most ideal time for her to live in America, because now as a four-year-old, she speaks both French and English FLUENTLY. Better than me I would say. There are of course words that she does not know, and between French and English, we are always able to understand each other. Her parents wanted me to babysit her and speak English to her in order that she would not lose her language skills. The first day I spent with her, she spoke English with me, but by the end of an hour, it was no longer a game to her, and she didn’t want to speak English anymore haha. I was very afraid that she would hate me from then on. BUT, I bribed her to speak English this last time by telling her that it was like our secret language because none of her friends at school understand English. She was beyond thrilled to have this “secret language,” and I smiled smugly to myself as I had accomplished to keep her from being angry with me for the next two months! I am able to see the inside of a French “home” due to this job, and might I say that I thoroughly enjoy Americans’ big houses, cars, Big Macs, and anything else “oversized.” Sometimes I wonder how people could happily live in this kind of environment when they are fully capable of living in a huge house in the suburbs.

Marth being showing off her silly faces

Mom sent me a box last week as well It took long enough to arrive, but it was WELL worth every day that I checked for the mail. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! I only cried a little when I got it (or I might have sat on my bed and cried for thirty minutes hugging my ranch and peanut butter…maybe). I learned that the word for a box is  « coulis ».  Some days the people in the secretariat are nice, other days, not so much. The day I checked for the box, the guy knew my name and everything before I even said “bonjour” (probably because I had asked him the same question literally every day for a week). But then I had to use the laverie in the residence (I don’t normally use that one) to dry my clothes because they weren’t fully dried, and the woman I encountered was down right hateful.  I have learned how extremely difficult it is to express myself fully in another language, especially when it is extreme anger/impatience or extreme happiness. When I got the box, I could not contain myself, and I spoke English to EVERYONE. I couldn’t let the words flow as easily in French, so I just switched to English, because I knew they would understand me. And when the woman was hateful to me, it took everything I had to not switch over to English in order to ask for the key to the laverie. That’s all I wanted, but somehow she couldn’t enough words out of her mouth to explain to me what I needed to do. All she kept saying was, “Tu dois avoir la carte.” I think she said it five times to me. I understood fully the content of what she said, but I did not understand what card she was talking about! Through each experience, however, I feel myself improving in my language skills. It is difficult, but it has to be done. I have to be more patient than the person I am dealing with in order to get the answer I need.

Box with Ranch, peanut butter, bacon, and Easy Mac :)

Henrique, Pri and I before our French test

And finally, the stress. We (Henrique, Pri and I) took our FIRST exam this week.  We are now, what, five weeks into the semester? Six weeks? I don’t know (I lost count after that first three hour Law seminar completely in French – my brain turned to mush). But it is incredibly that this is the first written work I have had to do all semester. I have ZERO accountability, and it is beyond stressful. I don’t know how the final exams will be administered. I don’t know how much I have honestly learned here, and I feel as if my brain is slowly turning to porridge despite the fact that I feel PHYSICALLY worn out after each and every class session. Despite all this, things are getting easier to understand, and I am actually able to take several pages of notes without needing to look at someone’s computer anymore. I am finally able to understand these people!! Woo! (Only a month and a half too late). But I decided to document our first test, so here are those pictures. We have gone crazy from the intense pressure of this educational system. And of course, you have Priscila who likes to sit in the hallway and cry over YouTube videos while I am dying in my Sociologie Politique course ;)

On the bus on our way to Campus for the test

 **Side note: Nathalie went to Berlin with Henrique, Bea and Pri. She had a fantastic time making up for her lost trip to Glasgow. And apparently, she speaks better English AND German than the other three Brazilians ;) She touched the Berlin Wall, and she was able to have a drink or two in the hotel bar.

Henrique pledging to keep Nathalie safe and never lose her

Bea,  Pri, and Nathalie having drinks

 **Interesting thing: There are these Arabic weddings (I'm not sure if it's a Muslim thing, or Arabic, I'm not meaning to offend anyone with this term though) that like to drive through town in a huge train of cars honking their horns obnoxiously. I always forget to take pictures, but this time I got one! Apparently it is a common thing for them to do, and it most always happens every Saturday. I don’t know why I find this so interesting, but it reminds me of the Trojan Train at my old high school and the Rush Dinner trains that we have at Emory.

Arabs making circles around the round-about
honking their horns for the wedding

** Tomorrow is my BIRTHDAY. I hope to not have an egg cracked on my head by José Lucas, and I will probably forget to buy myself a cake (like Marcelo did for his birthday). I will get to listen to birthday song singing in Portuguese from Bea, Pri and Henrique, and Rafael and Wendell will of course be in attendance to my so-called “party” (according to Pri). I have a wonderful adopted family to celebrate with, and though I am so far away from my friends and family, I know they are all thinking of me. Sing to me across the ocean! Grands Bisous pour tous <3 

Gregarious Glasgow

In case the world didn't know, I went to GLASGOW this weekend. It was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to speak English (even though I couldn't understand half of what was being said), and experiencing a completely different culture a mere 600 miles away from France was impressive. I am so accustomed to everyone speaking the same language, wearing almost the same clothes, and using the same currency in America that it is almost as if I stepped into a different world from France to Scotland. You figure, I travel more than 600 miles throughout America to visit my grandparents in Florida!

But anyway, first thing's first...I DID NOT BRING NATHALIE TO GLASGOW. I was afraid of being made fun of, so I neglected to bring her. But I ended up being made fun of for NOT bringing her! There was much disappointment that Nathalie was left out of this adventure considering this entire blog is devoted to her! I will make sure to bring her next time!

We arrived extremely late on Friday night after walking from the residence to the bus station, taking a bus from Amiens to Beauvais, taking a plane from Beauvais to Prestwick, taking a bus from Prestwick to Glasgow, and then taking a taxi to the Youth Hostel. The plane was extremely late to pick us up from Beauvais, and by then I was already very tired, so you can imagine how tired I must have been by the time we actually got to Glasgow. When we got to the hostel, the boys were hungry, so we of course had to go out at 3 in the morning to find something to eat. We found this little café that was still open for the clubbers (as the receptionist told us). After eating, we of course crashed in bed for a couple hours before waking up the next morning at 8am to get going on the short weekend! It was very awkward for me to have to walk into a pitch-black room with three other random girls and have to crawl into the top bunk after trying to find my bed in the first place! It was an interesting experience to have to do all of this in the dark. The hostel was extremely nice. It was in a very old building that seemed as if it could have been a very old house. It reminded me a lot of the house in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When I woke up the next morning, I rolled over to find a Chinese girl getting ready for the day. She looked at me and said, “Good morning!” just as I say it. I think that it made my day a million times better to have someone say good morning to me, not only because it was in my native language, but also because it’s also nice to be told good morning. The Chinese girl had been studying in Costa Rica, and she came to Scotland just to visit.  The other girl that was in the room (the fourth one must have left very early) was from England I think. They were both very sweet, and it confirmed my belief that people who stay in hostels are quite nice.

On Saturday we decided to do all the things in the city that were free. The receptionist gave us a few good suggestions, and we set out to accomplish all of them in the day and a half that we had in Glasgow. The city was fairly small, so we walked everywhere. It was tiring, and by the end of the first day, I was extremely worn out. Needless to say, my shoes are now going to be thrown in the trash. The first thing we visited on Saturday was the Lighthouse. It gave us a nice panoramic view of the city. Inside the lighthouse was a sort of mini art gallery dedicated to Mackintosh (some sort of furniture designer). I also found some free postcards that I will keep for myself. I sent the purchased post cards back home and to Ireland :)

We went to the Gallery of Modern Art (also free), which was interesting, but nothing exciting. I found it more interesting that they had Burger King, T.K. Maxx (not TJ Maxx) and KFC in Scotland! We don’t have those kinds of stores in France, so it was nice to see something from home. It makes me wonder at why they have those restaurants in Glasgow, but not in Amiens. There was a very large event held in the city centre called the Great Scottish Run. I would say that maybe two thousand people were taking part in this run throughout the city. There were many activities in the main area of the city centre (George Square).  We also ran into these street performers called Clanadonia. They were playing traditional Scottish music, and we ended up staying to watch them for 30 minutes maybe!   

We also visited the Glasgow Cathedral and the adjacent Necropolis (a graveyard for famous people). By this time, I was extremely hungry (“estou con fome” in Portuguese), and I did not take many mental notes of what I saw. We went to a little store called Merchant Chippie. We ate good fish and chips! We also got another Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew but with rolled “r’s”). José Lucas is literally in love with this drink. I think throughout the course of the weekend, he bought five of them. It’s like a crème soda, but with a bit less of a taste. My favorite part of the drink was the name. I loved hearing the Scottish people say it…it was so…Scottish haha. The Necropolis was my favorite part of the city. As I sat on one of the tombstones, I wondered out loud why the grass was so green. José suggested that maybe because it was well fertilized haha. The view from the Necropolis was amazing. You could see the cathedral right below it, and the whole city had a very moviesque feel to it.

Some other funny things… Rafael was scared to death by a bus in the street. We were on the right side of the road, and he was walking with his head down. When he looked up, there was a bus coming straight towards him (the cars are on the opposite side of the road in Scotland)! We all got a good laugh out of it as he jumped out of the way…even though he was already on the sidewalk.  José also had issues with the cars being on the wrong side of the road. He would walk right out in the middle of the lane where cars were stopped at a stoplight thinking he was standing in front of parked cars. He had to be pulled out of the way a few times haha. So many people had colored hair in Scotland. I have no idea why they decided to color their hair blue, red, purple, orange, but it was incredibly odd to me.

That night we also explored the pubs a bit. We went to four pubs, but the last one was the best. The music was very good (almost all 90s music), and the people were extremely friendly! They all wanted to dance and sing with us all night! I chose just to sit in my bench and people watch because by then it was around 2 or 3 in the morning and I was exhausted! After the pubs, we crawled our way back to the youth hostel to crash in bed for a few hours before getting up again for the next morning!

Sunday was not so eventful because we had done almost all the free things on Saturday, so we just visited the University of Glasgow where I found a unicorn, José broke his watch, Rafael was bolado, and Marcelo took plenty of pictures. I was extremely happy to finally hear "quatrième étage" when arriving back to my room in Castillon. It was only 10pm when we got back, but it felt like it was 3 in the morning because I was so exhausted from walking everywhere! Needless to say, my shoes from that weekend have been thrown away (you're welcome, mom), and my feet still hurt two days later!

And of course, music for the week. This is by far my favorite song. I always sing and dance when it comes on. I know it's not in a foreign language, but I've been missing Home lately, and I thought it would be nice to post something in English (especially considering I just got back from Scotland - and English-speaking country).

Suggestions for visiting Glasgow: The Box pub, Merchants Chippies fish and chips, Irn Bru, traditional Scottish music, Sauchiehall Street shopping area, don't take subway, stay up as late as possible, rise as early as possible, take a taxi/ ride in a car on the opposite side of the road

Clanadonia (Scottish street performers)

Marcelo always taking pictures

Cathedral of Glasgow

The outside of the Cathedral

Fish & Chips and IRN BRU :)

Merchant Chippie's fish&chips shop

People with different colored hair...EVERYWHERE!

George Square at night

José found a bandana at the pub...themed "Pirates"

The boys enjoying their beers and free wifi!

Walking slowly on the last day to the University

For mom, since she likes pictures of me :) 

A UNICORN - University of Glasgow. I'm transferring schools.

University of Glasgow

Waiting in the airport for the late plane

DOUBLE DECKER BUS!!!!!!!!

Brasileiros Fodas!!

The group of us all together in George Square 

Gallery of Modern Art...where's the orange road cone?

Stairwell for the Lighthouse

Cathedral

View from the Necropolis

Necropolis view

The Necropolis

Parties, Papers, Professors

The girls makings the Nutella cake with coconut on top 

This week has been long and hectic, so I'm sorry for the delay in posting my blog. I will make this one super packed with pictures and exciting things! Last week was Marcelo's birthday (another one of my Brazilian friends), and we celebrated with a Nutella cake that Priscila and Bea made. We invited the other Brazilian boys and made a party of it! OH! And we made brigadeiro again. It's a Brazilian chocolate-type thing that takes a really long time to make. After you heat it up on the stove, you have to roll the chocolate into balls and then roll the balls in sprinkles. BEST FOOD EVER. I will teach everyone how to make it when I get back to the States. Our cake and brigadeiro was accompanied by Orangina, Coke, and random fruit juice that I needed to get rid of. For dinner we ate leftover sandwiches from an International Student Mtg that we had had earlier that day. Needless to say, I ate just cake for dinner since the sandwiches were salmon. I tried to layer them 

From left to right: Henrique Marcelo, Bea

with ketchup, but that didn't work out so well. The sandwiches French people eat are disgusting. Salmon, some sort of weird goopy sauce, and cheese. No ketchup, no normal mustard (just Dijon) and no mayo. I am definitely not cut out to live in France for an extended period of time. I love my Hidden Valley and Jiffy peanut butter. They do have barbecue sauce here though miraculously. Out of all the places to find barbecue sauce. It also takes literally two weeks to find the bacon. Come to find out, it is in a completely separate aisle from any other meats. I guess bacon isn't considered a meat here?

Our finished cake and brigadeiro

José, Pri, Bea, Wendell

So that's that for the birthday celebration. Not much happened this week other than the fact that I started classes for real. Last week was more of an insertion week. The professors taught class, but even if I missed a class or wanted to change to another course,  I could always find the notes and catch up. After a long week of changing courses, going to as many courses as possible, freaking out over a hard course, and finding one course too similar to my courses in America, I finally tacked down my academic schedule for the semester. At the beginning of the week, I went in thinking I wanted to take courses that seemed familiar to me. What I quickly found was that those courses had nothing to do with what I thought they would cover, so I decided to take a different approach. Instead of trying to find courses that would match up with my Emory courses, I took the opportunity to take courses that are not and probably will not be offered at Emory during my time there. I only get to study in France once, so why waste that time learning about subject fields concurrent with what I study in America? Why not branch out and explore different areas of Law? 

Dusk during my run

This week I also explored the city a bit. I wandered around some of the random bus lines that I have never been on before, and I went on a run through St Pierre (a park right down the road from my residence). The park is one of my favorite places in Amiens because it is very clean and organized. This is where the Medieval Fair was held, and it is much quieter without all the people lining the walkways and grassy areas. It is almost always rainy and cloudy in Amiens, so I only take pictures when the sun is out and it looks nice. I'm trying to create a nice picture of Amiens for all you tourists ;) That is really the only downside to the north of France. It is almost always overcast and dreary. I wouldn't mind it so much every once in a while, but I enjoy the sun too much to go without it for a whole week! The city itself really is quite nice. We've learned that Amiens Nord is the place to avoid at night. Actually, just don't ever go there. I live very close, if not actually in, Amiens Nord, so we all know to close our shutters at night and lock our doors. Never go out with less than groups of two either. But that's normal for any large city I think. It's common sense to not walk around as a young female in the middle of the night haha. 

One of the nice days in Amiens

Now back to my first week of classes : The most difficult part has been actually finding the classes. The professors change rooms and times, the schedule changes, the amphi is closed. So many things can happen, and the only way you will know about it is if you read every single piece of paper on the bulletin board. Thankfully I took a picture of the bulletin board, so I was able to follow the changes a little more easily, but I eventually got it all figured out. My LAST resort is having to ask the secretary, which I've done three times the past week. She is very nice, but it is difficult to follow directions sometimes. It is funny to talk to people in French when there is a big group of us because one person will hear one thing, another person will hear another part of the conversation, and we mash together everything we heard to figure out what we're supposed to do haha. The lecture halls are HUGE. They can pack maybe 250 students. Compared to Emory, that's...indescribable. It is hard to hear what the professor says at times, but they usually use a microphone. One professor this week did not use a microphone, and it was pointless for me to sit in the class because I heard nothing of what she said for the entire three hours. I heard "Suède" a lot, but that's about it. It should be an easier class for me because I have already learned many of the things, but it will be difficult to take notes if she does not use the microphone. I also think she has a Picardie accent, but I can't be certain.

Pri and I lost in the hallway

Men in Black

I also find their system of monitoring the buses interesting. Every so often there are these guys that board the buses who are cloaked in black suits (hence MIB), and they ask to see your bus card or ticket. Not only do they take your card, but they also scan it to make sure that it is valid. And they do this for every person on the bus. The first time it happened, I was so scared! I didn't know what was going on, and I was afraid I was going to get kicked off the bus! I finally looked over to see a lady pull out her card and have the man scan it, so I just followed suit. This has happened two times in the past week to me. They always seem to board the buses during the busiest times of the day (probably to catch the most people). I have never seen them kick anyone off, but I'm sure that's what would happen if someone didn't have their card or a ticket.

We still eat dinner together every night as a little family

One of my lecture halls

Two final things for my blog...AMERICAN SHUTDOWN. I saw this and thought it was funny. I needed to share it with the rest of the world. I hope everyone is doing okay and coping with their personal situations and how it affects you. I want everyone to know that the world is literally staring at America right now. I think the rest of France knew that my government had shut down before I even knew. It's become a big joke among the international students, one that I have to laugh at. It's interesting to see how involved these other countries are with American politics, and how much they look to the United States for entertainment.

And also, a good Brazilian song for you all to dance to. I can sing the chorus as of now :) My Portuguese lessons are going quite well, and my Brazilian friends are quick to correct me on my Portuguese from Portugal (since it is a bit different from that of Brasil). Hopefully this video works. If not, the song is called Vamo Apostar (Let's make a bet). I listen to it everyday on my way to school, so you can just imagine me as a true Frenchy with my headphones in, swaying back and forth on the bus...listening to Portuguese music hahahaha.