Final post

Hey guys,

This is officially the last post and I just wanted to thank you all for going through the term with me. I hope you were all able to learn a little bit about the amazing country I was lucky enough to live in for half the year!  I really hope that you all will have the chance to travel at some point. It is so amazing to get to go out and see the world, and Europe is a fantastic place to do that. Hopefully if you guys end up in France, you’ll remember a few of the things you learned, and will get to go to a few of the same places!

I wanted to make a slideshow for you guys, but I’m having computer issues, so here are some photos – they should be all photos you haven’t seen yet – from the last term. If any of you have any questions about France or anything, feel free to leave them in the comments! Au revoir!

 

Hanging out in Rome

My school group in Saint Jean Pied (there were a LOT of us!)

Carcassonne

island off the coast of Marseille

Marseille

view from the Eiffel Tower

Paris at night

the Mona Lisa

Week 10 – Au revoir!

Bonjour classe,

I can’t believe we’re down to the last week already, and I am on my way home. My roommate in Paris and I decided to do one last trip before we left Paris, so we went to Mont Saint Michel. Have any of you guys heard of this place?

I saw it in a travel magazine when I was in high school and decided I had to go there some day! It’s located in Normandy, which is on the Northern coast of France, in the English Channel.

The first monastery was built there in the year 708! The main attraction there is the gothic cathedral in the center of the town, but it’s actually a whole medieval city, built far out from the mainland. When the tide is up, it used to only be possible to get there by boat. They’ve now built in a walkway for all the tourists to have an easier time getting up to the mont, but it’s still under construction at the moment. The tide was definitely out when we were there!

Without the walkways, it’s actually possible to get sucked into quicksand surrounding the whole place – isn’t that crazy? My friend and I walked out on it a little ways and realized really quickly that it was probably pretty dangerous. It looked like sand from far away, but it was more like wet clay. Our feet kept getting sucked into it as we walked around.

Do you guys remember my post about Carcassonne, the medieval French city I visited with my study abroad group? This place was definitely smaller, but had the same feeling of walking back in time when you went into the gates. The buildings and the monastery itself have been extremely well preserved from when they were originally built. And the views were amazing!

We also treated ourselves to a big meal while we were there, since we had a long drive home. Since you guys were so interested in French food, we made sure to take pictures for you! I got the ratatouille, which you can find in most French restaurants. It’s a delicious mix of veggies and spices. It’s super simple, but so delicious! And my friend got a typical French plate -moules frites (fried mussels) with french fries. If you don’t like seafood, you probably wouldn’t like this dish, but it’s definitely a favorite in French restaurants.

Ratatouille

Moules frites

After lunch, we walked through the cathedral and took in more of the beautiful views.

All in all, we drove almost nine hours to get there and back, but it was worth it. What do you guys think it would be like to drive in another country? Did you know France (and the rest of Europe) uses kilometers rather than miles? It’s weird to look down at the speedometer and see that you’re going 100 – it’s actually only about 62 miles per hour!

France has been such a great adventure, and I’m glad I got to share some of it with you guys! I hope you all learned a little bit about this amazing country, and will maybe get to come and visit it some day. Until next week, au revoir!

Picture of the Week

I’ve been seeing so many real castles in Europe, I finally got to go see a fake one – at Disneyland!! Have any of you been to Disneyland or Disney World in the U.S.? It was so weird to go to the one in Paris – everything is basically the same, except in French. And Space Mountain was actually way cooler in France! What’s your favorite ride to go on at the parks if you’ve been there?

Week 9 – An adventure

Bonjour classe,

I thought I would tell you all about my trip out to see Monet’s gardens since we were talking about art last week! Claude Monet is the impressionist painter who painted the waterlilies – and many other things, but the waterlilies are what he was most famous for. Take a look at these paintings, and keep them in mind as you go through the post – they’ll start to look familiar!

Monet lived in Paris for a time, but kept a home a little outside of the city. My friend Lindsay and I got up super early in the morning and caught a train to the town of Vernon, which is this tiny little town about an hour northwest of Paris.

We were so excited to see the gardens we forgot to take a picture together there! This is us from a trip to Barcelona, Spain last month.

We were waiting at the train station ticket office for so long, we almost missed our train! We had to run to the platform and managed to jump on at the last moment. When we arrived in Vernon, we still had to get to Monet’s town, Giverny. We had two options – we could take a bus, or we could rent bikes. It had been raining pretty much nonstop for the last week – it felt like being in Portland! – but this particular day was sunny and gorgeous out, so we decided to rent bikes.

The guy at the cafe told us it was 14 euros each for a bike – that’s the equivalent of almost $20! We talked him down to 20 euros for each of us. It’s a good thing we spoke French, or it would have been so much more expensive!

The bike ride was beautiful. The road wound through big open fields and crossed over the Seine River, the same one that runs through the center of Paris! We passed an alpaca farm and tons of cute little houses and coffee shops on the way in.

Do any of you guys ride bikes around Portland? At home, I have a car but rarely ever use it – I always bike or take the max. In Paris, most people drive or use the metro – both of which are very expensive! Tons of people walk around the city too, but it’s so huge that it’s sometimes difficult to walk everywhere. The bike lanes are also a little safer in Portland – it seems like people drive just a little more responsibly in smaller cities.

Giverny definitely isn’t a big city. We got to the gardens in about 25 minutes on our bikes. Monet’s old studio is used as the gift shop now, and it’s huge! His house overlooks a giant garden. And there are ridiculous looking chickens that live on the grounds, too!

Across the street is the pond where he painted the waterlilies and the famous Japanese bridges.

standing on the famous bridge!

 

Does it look familiar from the paintings? It was so cool to see in person! Are any of you guys artists? I feel like if I spent all my time in these gardens, I would be inspired to paint, too!

We sat near the ponds and had a picnic and enjoyed the view before getting back on our bikes. We were riding pretty fast along the road, and unlike Portland, there are no bike lanes – we were pretty close to the cars. Behind me, I heard Lindsay yell and turned around to see her crashing in the middle of the road! Apparently the pedal of her bike had flown off in the middle of riding.  She was super lucky – she crashed just after cars had passed us, and she escaped with just a sore ankle and a scraped knee! But it took us about 30 minutes to walk our bikes back to the cafe.

We’ve had really good experiences with friendly people in France, and the guys at the cafe were no exception. They bandaged her up and sent us on our way with free bottles of water. I guess we were still a little frazzled though, because we got on the wrong train! Unlike the max at home, the stops are really far apart here. We managed to get off after about 45 minutes and had to wait ages for the next train!

Where we got stuck waiting for our train!

Traveling by train in Europe is usually a little complicated, but people are usually really helpful – in any language. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten on the wrong train, and probably won’t be the last! Have any of you ever gotten lost on a bus or on the max?

That’s it for now, guys! My time here is winding down and I’ll be heading back to the states in just a few weeks, which is hard to believe. See you next week!

Picture of the Week

 

Since we were talking about art, I thought I’d throw some film in the mix, too! Hollywood films movies in Paris quite frequently, which is understandable – Paris is gorgeous! A couple of my favorite movies were filmed here, so I hunted down their filming locations. Have any of you seen the movies Midnight in Paris or Inception?

This is the Bir-Hakeim bridge, which they use in the movie Inception. It crosses the Seine river (the main river in Paris) and you get a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower from the middle of it!

 

And here’s a shot of the bridge from the movie:

The second spot I visited is from the scene in Midnight in Paris when Owen Wilson gets picked up by a car and taken to the 1920s. In Paris, it’s near the steps of the  St Etienne du Mont church, which is just a ten minute walk from where I live. If you guys haven’t seen this movie,  I highly recommend it. It shows so much of Paris!

And a shot from the movie:

 

Week 8 – L’art

Salut, classe! Ça va?

Since I’ve been in Paris I’ve been visiting tons of museums – art is such an important element of French culture. Just walking around the city, you run into so many beautiful things.  Many of the roundabouts here have a statue in the middle (like our elk statue in downtown Portland), and there are statues and drawings and paintings everywhere – even the graffiti is pretty cool!

Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, “Dying Slave”, used as decoration on a building! The real one is in the Louvre museum.

We even have something here like the Benson Bubblers downtown. They’re called Wallace Fountains here, and they’re nearly on every corner. Most of them have been around since the late 1800s.

I found a website that said there are 108 of them throughout the city. Paris also has about 173 museums, 37 bridges, 31 monuments, 3 opera houses, 171 churches and temples, 208 theatres and cabarets,  14 cemeteries,  and 463 parks and gardens. Those are huge numbers! Can you imagine 463 parks and gardens in Portland? The whole city would be one big park!

I included the cemeteries in the list because even those are full of sculptures. An opportunity to make something beautiful is never missed. The cemeteries are so gorgeous it’s actually nice to spend a sunny day walking around and just looking at all the tombstones.

at the Montparnasse Cemetery, which is just down the street from where I live

This is the grave of the famous French poet, Charles Baudelaire

And speaking of walking around, there is so much cool street art in Paris it’s worth a whole post on its own! It used to be incredibly illegal to graffiti or even put up posters here, but the laws have slowly changed over time. Now you can walk around and find entire walls devoted to street art, and even roadsigns are taking part.

The churches are also on the list as works of art. There are a lot of Gothic style cathedrals and churches here. Gothic style means the churches have arches and flying buttresses (which is a silly word for the support system outside used to support a giant archway inside the church). There are usually some really cool gargoyles on the outside of these churches, too. Some friends and I went to see the Basilica of St. Denis, which is thought to be the first Gothic church ever built. It was breathtaking inside! Walking into a place like this, with the stained glass windows and the giant archways, it’s easy to see how it can be considered a work of art!

The famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris is Gothic as well.

As for museums, there are so many here that it would be impossible to go to them all! The first Sunday of every month, all the museums are free. Isn’t that cool? Do you guys know of any Paris museums besides the Louvre? One that I just recently visited is the Musée d’Orsay, which is right next to the Seine river. They have lots of impressionist paintings – which includes artists like Monet, Manet, Renoir – have you guys heard of any of these artists? Claude Monet is really famous for painting waterlilies. In fact, there’s a museum just across the street from Orsay, called the Orangerie, that has two whole rooms devoted to Monet’s beautiful waterlily paintings! 

Monet

Looking out on another famous church in Paris, the Sacre Coeur, from the top of the Musée d’Orsay

View over the Seine from the top of Musée d’Orsay

The last thing I want to tell you guys about are the lock bridges here in Paris. It’s another example of how anything here can be turned into art! People come from all over and buy padlocks and decorate them or write their names on them. Then they snap them onto the bridge, and throw the keys into the Seine! It’s supposed to symbolize everlasting love. A lot of couples do it, but families do it, too!

The only sad thing is that parts of the bridge collapse from time to time – the locks are too heavy! So, people had to get creative, and they’ve started locking padlocks to other bridges in town, too – and lampposts, and anything they can get the lock to fit on. You can see them all over the place. What do you guys think of this idea? Have any of you seen the padlocks in Portland? They started showing up on the bridges a couple years ago. If you look carefully next time you’re along the Willamette you might see some!

Picture of the Week

Some friends and I went to have a picnic at the Eiffel Tower the other day, and we ran into a photo shoot! There were three girls and three guys all dressed up in 1920s gangster clothes, and they had the most amazing cars! They had professional cameras set up, but we ran in and asked if we could take a photo with them, and they were nice enough to do it. Have any of you seen the movie Midnight in Paris? All these people were dressed as if they’d walked out of that movie!

Week 7 – L’histoire

Salut tout le monde!

This week I’ve been exploring monuments and taking in some of the history of France. I took a class on the history of the region I was living in while I was in Pau, and it was really cool to learn about all the things that had happened in that area. Can you guys imagine growing up in a place where there used to be kings and queens?

 

This is Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was born in Bordeaux (super close to Pau) and had some really famous sons who were kings.

What do you guys know about France’s history? Did you know England used to be in charge of a lot of the country, and that it was much, much smaller than it is today? The fun thing about history is that there are some stories that people don’t like to tell. If a battle happened in France but was won by someone else, it isn’t really talked about here. But the country that won the battle will tell the story with enthusiasm, because they were the winners!

Do any of you know who Napoleon Bonaparte is? He is really celebrated here in France.

People usually know him for being really short – he was only 5’2″! The Arc de Triomphe was built to celebrate his victories in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in the 17- and 1800s.  The Arc is so huge you can actually see it sticking out above the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Can you think of anything in Portland that’s as big as the Arc? We have so many monuments and statues in Portland, too!

The British, even today, aren’t big fans of Napoleon. When he was alive, there was a lot of propaganda (which is information used to promote a point of view – and it’s not necessarily correct information) which painted Napoleon as a bad guy. My friend from England told me that some textbooks in school basically said he’d done nothing of importance. Their point of view was very different – they had to deal with him trying to take over other countries and constant wars, while the French only saw him making things better for France.

There’s a giant building here called the L’Hôtel national des Invalides, where Napoleon’s tomb can be found. France, and especially Paris, is full of gorgeous places like this!

It’s definitely possible to tell a story – even an historical event – from two different points of view. What do you guys think? Do you think one side is more correct than the other, or is it just a matter of opinion?

There’s a cool video I found that tells Napoleon’s story, if you guys have some time to watch it:

Napoleon Biography

I’m off to do some more exploring here! I’ll see you guys next week!

Picture of the Week

I finally got to see the Mona Lisa in person! I bet you guys have heard of this painting. In French, it’s called La Jaconde, and it lives at the Louvre museum. The Louvre is ridiculously huge! There are so many works of art that they actually have a basement full of stuff they can’t put on display, too. You could literally spend an entire day walking around this place and still not see everything. Have you guys been to the Portland Art Museum? Do any of you ever want to visit the Louvre in Paris?

Week 6 – Paris vs. Pau

Bonjour! I’ve just made it up to Paris and I’m glad I get to tell you guys all about this place! The differences between Paris and Pau are huge. It’s been really interesting learning the little variances between the two cities.

The Louvre museum, where the Mona Lisa is!

It’s really expensive to live in France in general, but even more so in Paris. I thought everything in Pau was pretty expensive compared to Portland, but the buses, the food, the metro – everything is expensive in Paris! The French use the euro, which is what all the countries in the European Union use. Do you guys know about the EU? It’s an organization of 28 different countries in Europe. 18 of the countries use the same form of money. The borders are also mostly open. They don’t even look at your passport to travel between the EU countries! It makes travel much easier in Europe.

Don’t you think it kind of looks like Monopoly money?? Sometimes it’s hard to remember it’s real money that I’m spending because it looks so different from US dollars. When I first got here, 1 euro was the same as $1.60. Now the US dollar is worth a little bit more. $1.39 is the same amount as 1 euro. It gets really confusing trying to figure out exactly how much you’re paying for something when you have to convert money all the time!

Another interesting thing about France (and actually a lot of European countries) – most stores are closed on Sundays. In Pau, we would have to remember to do all our shopping for food on Saturday, or else it was almost impossible to buy anything the next day! It was awful if you returned from a trip to an empty dorm room on a Sunday. I sometimes had to go to a friend’s place and have them cook me dinner because there was nowhere to buy food! What do you guys think it would be like in Portland if all the shops were closed? There’s actually a law that says that Sunday is a day of rest in France, except for major tourist cities.

The cool thing about all this is that businesses work together to make sure everyone is making money. For example, at 9:30, the supermarkets stop selling alcohol so that the bars will get business. At 2:00AM, the bars close so that the clubs can get business. Some of the clubs stay open until six in the morning!

Another big difference between Pau and Paris is the recycling. France is actually a pretty green country. Paris is actually a very green city, and they’re a lot like Portland that way. Pau was terrible, though! Do you guys recycle at home? In Portland, I recycled nearly everything I used. In Pau, it was nearly impossible to recycle and I felt terrible every time I had to throw something away.

There was one spot in Pau that was great for recycling, though. It was called Emmaus, and it was a giant thrift store which had a farm (you could buy chickens and cows there!) and people actually lived on the property, too.

Not only did they have a huge recycling center for aluminum, plastic, glass, and cardboard, but they also sold used clothes, books, movies, furniture – everything you can think of! The place was so gigantic it took hours to walk around the whole thing. We also spent a lot of time hanging out in the farm animals area. The store was pretty far outside of the city, so it’s great for people who farm and keep animals at their houses!

This cow got a little too close to my camera!

My friend from England and I lounging on some old furniture for sale

So far, Paris has been amazing, but it’s so big compared to Pau. Think Portland compared to New York city – there are so many more people, so much more to see, and it’s so big! I can’t wait to explore more and show you guys more of this place!

Me and my Australian friend Ruth in front of the Eiffel Tower!