Angry Angry Hippos

I have now heard several French people say that they are "angry" when they meant to say "hungry." This is my favorite mistranslation.

I went to the Louvre this weekend. The building itself is almost cooler than the art. I can't believe people lived in it. The one bed chamber was massive -_-

It was soo cold that night, so we didn't hang around Paris much but came back home after getting Greek food near Saint Michel.

I had today off, so I did some more necessary AuChan shopping (it never ends!) and finally wrote my Udall Scholarship application essay and had some circuits hw to do.

Thibault and Jerome were selling asian food at ENSEA today for Chinese New Year so I went there for lunch. Jerome made sushi-style crepe + banana+ nutella + coconut rolls. Tres bien! And Erin and I got an extra fruit drink for free while none of the guys did...yay being a girl engineer?

I leave for my first Euro trip on Saturday. It's so soon! Amsterdam --> Berlin --> Prague --> Vienna --> Budapest. I'm excited. And hopefully I won't be broke when I get back.

Gah, I'm sick of people smoking in my hallway -__-; It gets all over my apartment.

I haven't eaten yet 'cause I've been working all night. I'm pretty angry, time for a tuna sandwich.

New Friends

Thibaut, Tim’s room mate, has the same Stargate taste as me. He only likes SG-1 and stopped watching it after Richard Dean Anderson left. He is also an excellent artist – pen, charcoal. De drew me an Angel and a clown that is actually attractive and not frightening.

Sylvain, I met at O’Sullivan’s Put on International Night. He is French and studying Computer Science. Erin and I hung out with him and his roommates Lala and Antoine Wednesday night. We played cards (a game that Zac taught me how to play!) and they made us crepes – even teaching us how to flip them in the air. I kept overflipping mine so that it landed on the same side it was on originally. Sylvain has been helpful by speaking to me in French on Facebook. I use Google Translate to have our conversations. He is looking for an internship in the U.S. for this spring/summer.

Lala, I also met at O’Sullivan’s along with Sylvain. He is studying management/project consulting and is from Toulouse. He wants to be a pilot, but the training is too expensive. He is also looking for an internship in the U.S.

Antoine is studying business intelligence and also from Toulouse. He once spent five months in Miami, so his English is very good and he knows a lot about the U.S. He has Sing Star (Karaoke) for the Wii and has challenged me to a competition. I will win ;)

Antoine, Lala, and Sylvain have a HUGE apartment. They have an entire house-sized living room, and a balcony. They have a nice TV too and invited our group over to watch the Olympics. Everyone is so nice and friendly and hospitable here! France is a very welcoming place.

Last night was an ENSEA student party. At a nightclub. They had a DJ and open bar. I liked the music a lot because it was mostly Techno, which American clubs don’t play. But there were also the usual American songs: Holiday Inn, Tic Tok, and even Heartbreaker by MSTRKRFT which I have never heard out anywhere before! I’m always so happy when I hear a more obscure song that I love. And it made me think of you Jackie!

It was a special party because it was when they announced which group of students would run the next year’s student government, basically like SA (Student Association) at UB, except SA doesn’t throw massive parties at night clubs. Even Sylvain, Lala, and Antoine were there, even though they don’t go to ENSEA. ENSEA is known for throwing some of the best parties in town. Go Electrical Engineers! Thibaut was in one of the two competing groups and they lost. He said it was okay though because he could drink more (the winning group serves the alcohol), and the other group doesn’t have enough people in it for all of the positions so he could still be chosen. Oh, and yeah, French students drink A LOT. It didn’t even phase them that the party was on a school night. I’m really surprised that alcoholism is more common in America than in Europe.

I’m heading out to Tour early tomorrow morning (the place) and will return Monday night (yay three day weekends!). For 40 Euros we get to tour a bunch of castles and have wine tastings from 9am-6pm on Sunday. I will have my camera fully charged this time!

I’m amused; I’m starting to think in a French accent and broken English -_- Sacre Bleu -_- And I’m still getting used to the French greeting customs. My French guy friends (basically all of my friends minus Erin - there aren’t any more female engineers in France than there are back home) lean in to my face and I’m thrown off before remembering: oh yeah, we’re supposed to do the air kiss on the side of the cheeks thing.

2 February 201

Today was my second day of class. The way it works is that we only have one class per day, but each class is 3 or 4 hours long. We also only have each class once per week.

Today I had Microelectronic Circuits II lecture. It was easy. So far everything we covered has pretty much been review, except for a BJT power dissipation equation I don’t recall seeing before. (A BJT is a bipolar junction transistor. Transistors are in pretty much everything electronic. I’ve been instructed in their use as amplifiers thus far– making a signal bigger, smaller, inverted, etc.) I like my professor, she seems very nice.
Today I enjoyed coffee for the first time. After fighting sleep for the first hour and a half of class, I decided to try coffee during our 20 minute break. A girl was already at the machine in front of me. She said something to me in French, to which I replied “Parles vous anglais?” and then in English she asked if I wanted a drink. I said yes and she proceeded to press a special button on the machine with a special key bob and so I got my Café Lait for free :) People here are so friendly, really. The “French people think Americans are assholes” stereotype simply isn’t true. (The staff member in charge of international students has a Barack Obama pen holder on her desk) Most people are happy to get a chance to try their English, just as I want to try French. And the coffee was actually good. Erin tasted it an informed me it was full of sugar, and it had a frothy milk layer, so that’s probably why <_<>

Last night we all went to Auchan (the super walmart type store) again. Erin and I bought groceries and tissues and such and it only cost us 55 Euros for the two of us (we decided to share food and cook together – what fun!); we were pleasantly surprised. For dinner we ate pasta with Bolognaise sauce. The sauce was pretty much like Chef Boyrdee (sp?) sauce. So eh, we’ll try another one next time. And we got a bag of croissants –mmm!!! I’ve eaten so many… - a couple long baguettes, jam (they have the bonne mamon that I like to get at Wegmans from France), cheddar cheese that tastes more like a mix of cheddar and American, a brick of margarine that was the cheapest we could find, green beans, clementines (a deeper orange than the ones we get in the states, these are form Moracco), lettuce, and milk (we were looking for skim but I don’t think it exists here. There were three different types and we chose the one with the least amount of fat and calories, and it still tastes creamier than 2%). I also bought a small bread pan that I can make banana bread with. Oh, and travesty! Bananas cost 1.70 Euros per Kilo! What happened to $0.40 per pound? :( I need to find a new cheap fruit… Hey Central/South America, thank you for being in the same hemisphere as the US and making bananas cheap!

Tonight Erin and I had grilled cheese, clementines, and green beans. We realized we need more food. Preferrably something that isn’t a carb… So we have to go back to Auchan again…

One thing I learned: In America, you know how all nutrition labels list things in Calories? Turns out, 1 American Calorie is actually 1,000 Calories. Europe has everything listed in kCal. So a 100Cal snack bar in America is 100kCal in Europe. There’s marketing for ya.

This evening I think I’m going to O’Sullivans, a British pub, for Foreigner Night with the other US students and Thibau, Tim’s French room mate.

Last night we all played cards in my room around my desk – which is big enough to be a dinner table.

More for my list of things different in France:

• They have plain Doritos!!! So they’re basically tortilla chips. Awesome.

Pigeons in Paris are Fat

1 February 2010

Today was my first day of class. I only had one! Granted, it was three hours long. French. It was good. We learned pronunciations and basic introductory phrases.

Yesterday we went to Paris!

When we exited the subway, we found ourselves in the burlesque part of town. There were lots of signs advertising “peep show” and stores, including the “SEXODROME” in neon red. The Moulin Rouge was on this street, but we didn’t go inside.

We saw Sacre Cour in Mont Martre (I’m so out of shape!!! You have to walk up a really big hill to get there. The view Paris from the top is stupendous. Sacre Cour is a famous basilica. It had a beautiful mosaic on the main domed ceiling above the altar.

We also went to the Paris Opera house. It was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. Oh my god. Oh my god. The grand staircase was made of so many different types of marble with bronze statues and chandeliers and carved stone ceilings. The hallway next to the stairwell had a mosaic on the ceiling. We took the self-guided tour, but I overheard a guide explaining that the mosaic was significant because it depicted naked men being held by clothed women, which was the opposite of most art of its day (Chris, it’s like in your English article!) And then, there was a very long room, painted in gold and it was incredible and I can’t describe it justly in words. Sadly, my camera died, but I can link you to pictures that my friends took when they post them on facebook.

After the opera house, we walked around the outside of the Louvre. It’s so freakin’ huge. Unbelievably huge. I can’t believe it used to be the Royal Palace, it probably took its residents at least 30 minutes to walk from one end to the other. We walked through the park to the Egyptian obelisk. Then we took the subway to see the Arch du Triomphe. We didn’t pay to go up to the top of it but we walked around it. Again, beautiful stone carving.

For dinner we at at Pomme de Pain, where I had a ham baguette, pomme de terre (apple of the earth aka potato aka potato wedges), and organgina, a good orange drink that is like something between juice and pop.

So far I’m getting by with the language barrier. A couple of times people have started talking to me in French after I say “Bon jour!” and then I have a blank look on my face and then they speak English to me <_<>

More things that are different in France:

· Women over 30, and yes, even over 40, where skirts that only go to the mid-thigh
· People eat outdoors when its under 30 degrees (Farenheit)
· Pop cans are slightly heavier, so it feels like you still have a little bit of drink left when you don’t
· Pop bottles are upside down in vending machines

Okay, so I’m going to go off again about sustainability. So, it’s less than 30 degrees outside, and most cafes had their doors, or even the entire outer wall, open. So much heat energy is wasted. And, like NYC, there are only public trash bins on the streets, no recycling bins like in Toronto.

I’m sad because my plug adapter can’t handle my laptop L I had it plugged in and the adc on my computer started to buzz and after a while I smelled the smell of a hot glue gun – hot metal and plastic – and found that it was coming from the adapter. I think it still works, just not with my laptop L

Oh and funny thing, there was so much static electricity in my fleece blanket and sheet that it actually sparked.