pas le garcon.

tonight was my first friday night in paris in 3 weeks. i forgot how lively this city can be. we didnt even really DO anything...just wandered. mal and maddy were hanging out with mal's mom and stuff, so chris and i got together and wandered the bastille/marais area. oh, but first we got a delicious, nutritious meal at mcdo (with a 1 euro student discount! WOOT education!)

we were at bastille and figured we could just walk down to the marais cuz we were there last night and saw a few fun bars. but we're dumb and we walked about a mile in the wrong direction. ah, no loss...we found a metro and made our way back. we mostly just wandered aimlessly, taking pictures and admiring christmas things (the ice skating rink is set up outside hotel de ville!).

our friend gretchen told us to meet her at this bar called 3 w. i hear chris on the phone go, "it's a lesbian bar?" haha. i'll admit, i was a little weirded out, but i'll try anything once, so we headed over there (after gretchen came to find us cuz we're like two lost puppies). we get to the door and the very lesbian woman at the woman looks at the three of us, and goes, "pas le garcon." uh oh. so we tell gretchen to just text us when she leaves and we split.

we ended up meeting up with our other friends from school and pop into this sports bar that's filled with smoke and too many people. amalia had heard of a cool hookah bar on the street, so we went down that way. i don't smoke, but i like hanging out, so i went along. it looked empty and sketchy outside, but we figured that since we had 5 of us, we could make it fun. well, it turns out there were bunches of people in the back, and it was a great place with a fun, dark, indian/natury type atmosphere. alas, chris and i wanted to catch the metro home, so we had to leave like 20 minutes after we got there.

we got on the metro and, lo and behold, who do we see but miss alice bald from the dorms freshman year! it was a crazy coincidence that we chose that train at that hour on that precise car, especially because we had JUST been talking about alice not but a few hours earlier. small freaking world.

now i'm home in a quiet house. crap, how did it get to be 1:40 am? tomorrow will be the first day to sleep in in a long while. wonderful.

joyeux...donne-merci?

happy thanksgiving! obviously, today was a regular day here. the french acted normally as if nothing special was going on....HELLO. it's a day of friggin thanks, french people.

just kidding. i'm not THAT self centered.

today was a grand day, though. i've never thought of myself as much of a thanksgiving fan before this year...actually, not even before today. when mme jeanson asked me what i was doing for thanksgiving, i was just kinda like, "eh...i'll go out to dinner with some friends." like it's no big deal.

but when i woke up this morning, it had a strong urge to go outside and play flag football, then watch the thanksgiving day parade (only the good parts...thank you, tivo). i dont even really LIKE the thanksgiving day parade...i really could just look at pictures of the floats online, because that's the only interesting part anyway.

i spose it's the whole family thing that i like (how predictable). i like pretending the millers are my family for the morning, and i actually do enjoy seeing my real family in the evening. sure, we aren't super close, but i've never wished for anything else. i know dad sometimes wishes we had a big family, but if we did, then we would have to hang out with them more often. with our small family, we can see them all in one fell swoop. then we have more time to hang out just hte four of us.

i think i also like hanging out with my extended family so we can talk about how crazy they are :-P family gossip is great.

maddy, mal, chris and i went out to dinner at "breakfast in america" tonight. i had a very traditional meal: soda, chips/salsa/guac, a cheeseburger and a salad, followed by gelato for dessert. lol okay, so it wasn't your typical turkey/cranberry/stuffing feast. i could have gotten that, but i would have had to pay 30 euro for the full meal, and really, i just don't wanna spend that much on a meal. that's $45. i'm not frickin bill gates here.

okay, i got off on a not thankful tangent. back on track. i really enjoyed the meal, and we all had a great time talking and laughing about how bizarre this is, to have one of the biggest meals of the year without our families. all day i've been missing my family a lot. everybody's facebook statuses say something like, "i'm home!" or "man, (city) is cold!" or "back in the bay!" i wanna be back home. yes, yes, this is still fun over here and i love it. it's not that i want to get home right now..it's just that i'm looking forward to it. a lot.

maddy asked me if i was gonna write a blog about what i'm thankful for. i hadn't really thought about it, but that's actually a grand idea.

--okay, i'll start with the cliché: my family. you guys are phenomenal. parents, i can't believe how understanding and supportive you've been of everything i've ever done. kate, you're cool, too. i'll never get tired of coming home because i always have such a great time.

--cliché number 2: my friends. it's weird to think that, just 2 and a half years ago, i didn't know the greatest friends in the world. now i'm struggling to live without them (well, okay, i have facebook and i talk to them weekly...but it's just not the same).

--ucsb: i never realized what i great school ucsb is until i came to aup. this school is small and has no resources and it blows. ucsb, on the other hand, is stocked with great professors, has amazing resources (that i really should use more...), and just fucking ROCKS. plus, it helped me come over here for four months, so i've gotta be thankful.

--the internet. is that really dorky? but it's because of the internet that i can talk to my parents weekly (for FREE!), that i can keep in touch with my friends easily, that i can find out all the information in the world...you know, amazing things like that.

--the jeanson family. though we don't get along like a family, they're so incredibly sweet to me. and paul is a great kid. though he doesn't know it, he's helped me feel much more comfortable in this country.

--america. FUCK YAH! i love the states. california is my favorite place in the world.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas!

ah, you knew i was gonna title a blog like that sooner or later. anyway, it's beautiful. because the railway workers are still striking, i was forced to 1) wait 45 minutes for a dangerously full metro, 2) try to figure out that crazy bus system or 3) walk home. when i choose option number one and it doesn't work, i get real pissed that i have to walk home. but when i choose option 3 deliberately, it usually turns out to be a wonderful day. since it was sunny and warm(ish...california me would have been freezing), i decided to walk home.

instead of doing taking usual i-need-to-get-home-really-fast route, i decided to take the long, winding way home. not like i had anything to get back to, anyway (when facebook is your roommate, home isn't exactly a hoppin' place to be). i walked up to the champs elysees and wandered down the street with too much money. much to my delight, many of the stores had their christmas stuff up! trees, garlands and lights everywhere. i heard music softly coming out of one store. i was a little disappointed when i found out it wasn't christmas music, but got re-excited when i realized it was ucsb's own jack johnson!

i found a bus (helllll no, i'm not walking all the way home from the arc de triomphe...that's like a million kagillion miles) and rode to trocadero when i realized there was a cemetery there. i pressed that little "stop the bus now, please" button (which makes me feel really powerful) and hopped off. this cemetery (cemeterie passy, if you're curious) was a little bizarre...it was over crowded and not laid out in nice, neat lines like i'm used to in the states. one grave had a dog statue, too. i imagine dad would like something like that on his tombstone.

i started thinking about what i would want for my grave when i die. i decided that i really want a bust made of myself, because i freaking love a good bust and to have one made of my own face would be a dream come true. but i don't want my bust to be one of those regular, regal looking ones where i'm just smiling normally. i want it to be one where i'm laughing or lip biting or making some other funny face...something that will make people kind of laugh (but then feel bad for laughing at a dead person...for shame!).

i walked home from the cemetery (why do i always wanna spell that word "cemetary"?) and wandered down rue de passy, which is another huge shopping street. i can't wait to see more of the city decked out in christmas gear. as far as i'm concerned, i'm getting the best of both worlds here: christmas season in a gorgeous european city and christmas eve/day with the fam...so long as i don't get stuck in o'hare.

à l'ecole

the LAST thing i wanna do right now is go to class.

parle en francais!

i just got finished with dinner with mme jeanson, her brother olivier, and his friend from argentina (talk about an international table!). though we all speak english perfectly well, olivier insisted we speak french.

well, crap. i can't have a conversation like that. it's like a constant test for me to speak in french. my shoulders get all tense (in fact, i just now untensed them) and i can't really say anything meaningful. i also have no confidence. i felt like the little kid at the table, especially because when the two jeansons spoke to me, they'd either speak really slowly, retarded french for me or give up and translate in english.

it's heartbreaking for me to not be able to crack a joke, or get my opinion across, or even ask a question. it makes me feel stupid and really bad about myself.

but, even when we slipped into english, i felt like a kid. i'm not grown up yet; i can't have grown up conversations yet, can i? i don't even know what the hell adults talk about, but here i am, hitting 21 in less than a month. is that when i learn how to talk about grown up things? will someone just give me a script?


the dinner wasn't as bad as i make it sound. i actually had a grand time...we talked about the drinking age, shared a couple drinking games, talked about how you NEED to speak english...tons of things. we ate for something like an hour, so you can imagine that we had lots of conversation.

oh, but the drinking thing. they pointed out that it was a very american thing to get SO drunk. i never realized that. i thought that everyone had their big drinking time, no matter where they were in the world. maybe our binge drinking is the result of that "forbidden fruit" thing.

london.

that blog title is inspired by the fabulous london eatery, "eat." that's seriously its name. it has mostly pre-made, packaged food (sandwiches, wraps, salads...you know the drill), which we were very hesitant about at first. turns out, the food there was delicious! i had a turkey/cranberry sandwich there and it was a piece of thanksgiving deliciousness in my mouth. "pret a manger" was pretty similar to eat (actually, i think it was the exact same stuff) but we avoided that one at first because the name of it is in french, and we were having a decidedly unfrench weekend.

the metros have been on strike since last tuesday or wednesday, so we had to wake up early to get to gare du nord to catch our 8 am train. after wandering around for half an hour in the dark and freezing cold, mal, chris and i found a cab and got to gare du nord WAY early. oh, well. we got through security quickly and got TWO stamps on our passport! that's an advantage to riding the eurostar: passport stamps. when we fly between EU countries, we don't have to get stamped :-(

anyway, the train left on time and we settled into the 2.5 hour-long ride. i switched back my clock (1 hour time difference between paris and london) and we all made funny jokes about getting train lag. ha, we're a riot.

i should probably mention that this was a communications study trip (both undergrad and grad students), so we were led by a few professors. once we got there, we got our first experience of professor doyle's excellent guiding skills. when i say excellent, i actually mean pretty awful. he's a really awkward guy and clearly not a leader, but he's nice and has good intentions, so i can't hate too much. he led us to the british library, right outside the train station, with all of us still dragging our bags. we were all irritated that we were doing this extra walking, especially since we were scheduled to go to the british library on saturday. but, no matter. we walked down to the celtic hotel, where we were to spend our next 4 days.

no, it wasn't a gorgeous hotel. i'd say it was a mix between a hostel and a hotel, actually. chris, mal, maddy and i shared a teeny room with four single beds and a sink in it (if you saw my house over the summer, it was like that...actually, yeah, pretty much that size minus the toilet/closet part). there was a shared bathroom and shower downstairs. the greatest part, though, was that we got a full english breakfast every morning: eggs, sausage, ham, hash browns, a mushroom and a tomato. when the housekeeper first told us what it entailed, we were kinda like, "omfg. nobody can eat that much food." but how wrong we were! i had the full english every morning and, of course, i finished it (except the mushroom...gross). and the housekeepers were these adorable fat and old women (and one old guy) who were incredibly sweet and helpful.

speaking of food...the english weren't skinny as a stick the same way the french are. in london, i was average sized, versus in paris, where i'm fat (no, i'm not just fishing for compliments...seriously, i'm larger than a big percent of the girls here). it was refreshing.

anyway, back to the london timeline. thursday morning, a few of us broke off from the group and wandered around london with no final destination. it was relaxing not having a go-go-go day, where we could just walk the streets slowly and get acquainted with the city. it was bizarre, but i felt comfortable in london almost instantly. maybe it was just cuz i spoke the language...but no, it was something more than that. the people there were just friendly and helpful, and to top it off it was a sunny, lovely day when we arrived.

at 330 we went to the bbc television centre for a tour. this turned out to be my favorite part of the trip. we watched them work in the newsroom (ooo how my newspapery heart wanted to be back in that) and saw some of the studios they film in. at the end, he called for volunteers to read the news/play on a game show. i volunteered for the game show (duh) and totally pwnd my competitors (would you expect anything less?).

mal, maddy and i went to a cute candy shop off oxford street thursday night (mrs klibber's candy shop or something equally quaint). when we asked the guy how long it had been opened, we were disappointed when he proudly said, "oh, about four weeks!" lol we went to a pub/restaurant he recommended for dinner just down the street. i ordered--what else--fish and chips. mmmmmmmm great choice. we were gonna go to a pub after that but were too tuckered out, so we just bought some bacardi breezers and wine and headed back to the hotel. stupid us, we didn't have a can opener, so we spent 10 minutes trying to weasel off the blasted caps. when maddy finally got one off, we screamed with joy. we were so laughy it was like we were already drunk...lol. good night.

friday was jam packed. we started out with a talk with an editor from the guardian, which i loved because hey, that's what i do, but everyone else found rather dull. then we walked to the london museum, but were bored because i swear it was a museum for CHILDREN. there was an exhibit on the london fires and there was a bucket. "pick up the bucket. how does it feel? how does it smell?" god, i dunno, it smells like a freaking bucket.

globe theater, up next. i enjoyed this much more than i thought i would, because i'm not much of a shakespeare connoisseur. it was fun daydreaming and imagining myself back in shakespeare's day, sitting in the gentlemen's room (of course i have enough money for that...remember? i'm dreaming) and watching "a midsummer night's dream" in my huge dress, corset pulled tight.

oh, right, after that i went to the tate modern! that ruled...on opposite day. modern art is retarded. no, no, no, don't tell me i "don't get it." one painting was a canvas that someone literally THREW paint on. another was a canvas pulled tight with a slash in it. THAT'S NOT ART. i did that like 13 years ago. there was also a video of a naked woman washing herself in the corner. that's porn.

following that great cultural experience was the bbc radio taping of "buy me up tv," a radio sitcom. i'd never seen/heard a radio sitcom before, so i was intrigued. i had a lot of fun--the people were funny and the story line was easy to follow. you know who was there? that one guy from who's line is it anyway...no, not drew carey, not the tall guy, not the bald guy, but the other guy...greg proops. man, he's a riot.

it was late by the time we finished, so we just grabbed a meal (quick, but not cheap..8 pounds>$16. i realized that maybe i CAN afford expensive dishes) and went home.

ah, here we are at saturday. this is getting long, eh? ah, no matter. we headed to the british library around 10 am and had another "great" tour. lol actually, only the organization was awful; the professors were very knowledgeable about all the old texts (mostly religious) that we saw and i quite enjoyed everything they taught us. it made me want to take a religious studies class again.

after that was through, we hopped on a red double decker bus (tourists!) and dashed around the city. buckingham palace was not as grand as i expected it to be, but i bet the inside is wonderful. saturday we mostly just rode the bus around the city and saturday night we wandered oxford street some more.

saturday night=dinner in soho. i got to mingle with some of my coworkers, so that was cool. (that was a joke...like i'm a hooker...get it?) we went into a licensed sex shop (where do you apply for that license?) and giggled at everything. so mature. because english food isn't exactly delectable, we treated ourselves to an italian meal, complete with a bottle of wine and a dessert :-) i'm not thinking about how expensive that was in dollars.

we went to a couple pubs in soho, but wanted to catch the tube home (and didn't wanna spend money to get into a club), so we got back early and stayed up late talking. those sorts of nights are my favorite, anyway.

sunday morning we were supposed to go to the british library, but decided to skip out on that and see hyde park/harrod's instead. hyde park was vast and i wish it wasn't so damn COLD there, because i didn't enjoy it fully. despite the chilly temperatures (it must have been 1 or 2 degrees celcius), bunches of people were still running. they must be effing mad.

before noon, we headed over to harrod's, which is the biggest department store i've ever seen. it was only open from 12-6 on sunday, so people were lined up out the door at 11:50. as soon as the doors opened, we made our way to a café (and then to another, better café) and ordered some tea. ooo and i got some shortbread...scrumptious. now that we had energy, we made it to the christmas floor, which was draped with ornaments of every kind and tons of other christmas decorations. it satisfied my day-after-thanksgiving, crazy-shopping urges (though i didn't buy much).

we had to be back at the hotel by 4 to walk to the train station and catch the chunnel home at 530. fatigued and hungry, we flopped down on the train, set our clocks to paris time, and made more train lag jokes. we got to gare du nord around 9 pm, took a couple packed metros (yes, they're still striking...) and a cab, and i finally made it home around 10 pm. i opened my door to a clean room and a freshly made bed. there is NOTHING better than that. mme jeanson treats me too well :-D

i bloody miss london

i'm too tired to give you guys the full london updates right now (plus, i dont have my pictures uploaded yet, and i use those as an outline for what i want to write about), but i'll just give you the highlights.

--i forgot how easy it is to be in a country where i speak the native tongue fluently. i haven't been in a place where i know what every sign says in 2.5 months. i felt like being extra chatty with the brits (who were quite friendly and seemed to enjoy my talkativeness). i wonder if i'll be more outgoing/jokey with strangers when i go home, just because i can.

--london was fully dressed in christmas attire! oxford street--the big shopping avenue--was decked out in lights draped over the store windows and across the street, with the phrase, "have an enchanted christmas" written in lights. in that kind of bright environment, it's hard not to. paris needs to catch up with this christmas thing. i've begun by putting christmas music on my ipod (okay, so thanksgiving hasn't come yet...shoot me).

--my fave part of london: a tour we took of the bbc television centre. i think. though i loved the city itself, and all the people who were in it. bah, i can't pick.


here's a side note that's not about london at all: it's cold in my room, i turned the heater on (which i might have done wrong, because i've never used it and there are no directions). now it smells like the heater does when you turn it on for the first time. christmas must be fast approaching.