Conversations While Packing for an Eight Month Trip

Conversation one takes place between my father and me. I'm sitting in my room, typing out e-mails in French to my future host couple, and my dad is downstairs.
Dad: Katherine?
Katherine: Oui? I mean--yeah.
Then I started laughing hysterically, a sure sign that the insanity from trying to fit all my shoes into my suitcases has taken hold. Life is going to be easier once I go to France and can just speak French all the time. This switching back and forth is killing me.

Conversation two took place this morning, as I came running out of my room to speak to my mother.
Me: Mom!
Mom: Yes?
Me: I'm having another moral dilemma.
Mom: Is it about which shoes to bring again?
Me: No...this time it's about sweaters.

Less than a week until I go! Housing has been procured (PHEW), all tickets have been purchased, all medical appointments have been attended to. Now if I could just figure out how to fit my cute pair of rainboots into a suitcase...

Return of the Queen

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack (and not just a little excited about it)!

In 4.5 months la jeune fille Katrine will be heading back to France (Brittany, this time) to teach English for about 7 months. I am WAY excited, so much so that I've found it necessary to update by blog long before I set foot on a plane.

This time I'm going to bring a huge vat of oatmeal with me, since I learned on my first trip that oatmeal does not exist in France. I'm pretty sure I can't make it 7 months without oatmeal. Unfortunately, skim milk does not keep nearly so well as oatmeal, so I'm not going to be able to pull that off. Perhaps I'll make monthly trips to England to drink their milk. My figure skates are also coming with me, and I've already located a skating club in the area as well as checked to see what level of skating I would be in in France. Maybe I'll find an ice dance partner over there and we can compete for Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan or some other country with no skaters.

I'm also determined to get to Salzburg this time around, where I shall not be kept from dancing around and singing the entire soundtrack to The Sound of Music. All people willing to indulge me in this are welcome to come along. I'd love to see Denmark for my Scandinavian fix this time around, but my bank account is still recovering from that trip to Norway two years ago. I am not going back to Rome, because the rain scarred me for life. I will definitely get back to Provence, home of sunshine, warmth, the mistral, l'Institut, Mireille, and good hair days.

Update 5/2: According to the Chicago Tribune today, the exchange rate is currently $1.319 to a euro. I would be a very happy girl if it stayed like that--it never got below $1.42 or so when I was last there, and it got up to $1.60ish. My money is going to go a LOT further if this exchange rate keeps up.

On your mark, get set, profitez! OR How I spent my last 24 hours in France

Pictures from my travels with my mom and grandma and my last day in France can be found at the following links:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011035&l=ccdd4&id=1158900089
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011038&l=a102c&id=1158900089

Some of you may have noticed a time lapse between my last entry, which covered the end of my time in Avignon, and the subject of this entry. Very astute of you all!

A brief summary of what has happened: Took a bus to Barcelona, met up with my mother and grandmother, saw Spain’s Arc de Triomphe (I like France’s better), had internet at home for the first time in four months (though that only lasted 3 days), walked up and down Las Ramblas, saw a Flamenco dance performance, saw some cool plazas or places or whatever they call them in Spanish, saw Columbus’ monument which had my gal Isabella on it (mother of my favorite of Henry’s eight wives: Catherine of Aragon), went to the big Cathedral which was under construction and covered by a tarp, went to the Gaudi Cathedral which was also under construction (as it has been for over 100 years) but was not covered by a tarp and was therefore more interesting, went to the beach, got locked in a park with my mother, went to a small mountain town B&B, had hamburgers that actually seemed to be made of ham (odd), had a yummy breakfast that actually contained protein (very un-French), set foot in Andorra, made it back to my home country of France, went running in a Caracassonne suburb, bought lots of baguettes, bought lots of pains au chocolat, went to the medieval town of Caracassonne (I like Avignon’s walls better), climbed up to a Cathar castle stronghold in ballet flats (it was worth every blister!), bought another pain au chocolat and some quiche (had to get in all the French cuisine), went to a beach town called…I don’t remember what it’s called…never mind, got tan, went to Arles and got four mosquito bites on one shoulder, went to Salon de Provence, went back to my home city of Avignon, visited IAU, visited my host mother and picked up my baggage, hung out with the only remaining IAU student in Avignon, ate a Kebab Frite, went to about three different book stores (the other student was an English major, too), hung out at Rocher de Doms and Palais de Papes, helped a lost American couple.

But you don’t want to hear about all that. (Or if you do, you’ll have to be patient, because even I in all of my English-majorness cannot handle typing that much up right now as I am waiting to board my plane back to the States). What you want to hear about is everything that I have managed to accomplish in the last 24 hours. I took a train into Paris yesterday morning and arrived a little afternoon. I put my suitcase in storage at Gare de Lyon, as I did not want to have to waste any of my 24 hours with taking them up to my hostel in the 19^th arrondissement and then coming back down into the more central part of the city. I met up with my friend from MU, Sarah, as well as a friend from Whitney, Michelle, and one of her friends. Michelle was a year ahead of me at Whitney, but we had a Creative Writing class together. As soon as she graduated, her family moved off to Seattle, so I haven’t actually seen her in three years. However, she’s been studying in France all year, so we decided to meet up. We all got sandwiches and then walked around a market in the Bastille area. After about an hour of that (and after I ordered a delicious tranche of brioche), Michelle and her friend went to go study for their finals, which start tomorrow, and Sarah and I went off to the Musée d’Orsay so that I could have my Degas bonding time.

A brief interlude that will perhaps but probably not explain why I am so obsessed with Degas. When I was about 6, I read a book called Degas, the Ballet, and Me. This was a picture book, but it was really interesting in that it talked about one girl’s explorations into the world of art, starting with Degas. It was at this time in my life that one of my best friends had a mom who was also our art teacher, and in addition to this making us play computer games about the Louvre, this also meant that we made regular expeditions to the Art Institute. While my artistic endeavors had started off with a very serious water color obsession (I painted more sunsets over lakes than anyone would ever want to see), the book on Degas lead me to experiment with pastels. A lot. And with all my trips to the Art Institute, I decided very quickly that I was going to be an artist one day, and thus I started bringing along a sketch book to every Art Institute trip and recreating lots of Degas paintings.

This obsession probably lasted until I was in fourth grade—I remember making sketches of figure skaters at the 1998 Nationals. And after that, I’m honestly not sure what happened to it. My best bet is that figure skating took over my life, and between figure skating and being determined to plough through Jane Eyre at the age of 10, art got pushed to the side. It had a brief renaissance with my required high school art class, in which I had a lot of fun getting back to water colors and pastels. However, one of our assignments was to do a charcoal reproduction of any other piece of artwork. I picked one of Degas’ lesser known pieces, almost went insane trying to draw one particularly difficult arm position, but successfully survived before returning to my safe landscapes (I can draw kick-butt trees). Regardless of the fact that I may or may not have sacrificed my artistic dreams for more realistic aspirations (such as being a noteworthy author of my generation), Degas will always hold a spot in my heart, and it is with that memory of Degas that I set off to Musée d’Orsay, home of many of his famous paintings.

In addition to the work that I recreated, they had several other Degas pieces, including his statue “La petite danseuse de quatorze ans”. I was really excited to see this, since I saw a sketch of it when I was at the National Gallery in Oslo. There were a number of other statues there that were really interesting, largely because they weren’t discovered until after Degas’ death. As his first sculpture had gotten very poor reviews, he never exhibited any of the other ones he worked on, but dozens were found in his apartment after his death. Besides more than enough Degas to keep me very happy, they also had some Gauguin woodwork. I have some ideological problems with Gauguin, largely due to the colonialist tendencies in his work, but I found the woodwork really interesting, especially since I’d only ever heard about his paintings. Lots of Van Gogh, lots of Manet, lots of Monet—yay for impressionism! Sarah and I went through the museum in chronological order, starting with pre-impressionism, then moving to impressionism and finish with post-impressionism. It was all very organized of us. We went

From the Musée d’Orsay, we walked over to Notre Dame, since we wanted to go to the Pentecost mass at 6:30. And we did! It was very cool to be attending a mass at Notre Dame of all places. It was packed, and it was a typical French mass (meaning limited song, and an uncomfortable hierarchical feeling plaguing me), but it was amazing just to be there. From there we went to grab dinner in the Latin Quarter, where we found a vegetarian place that had falafel and hummus and was affordable. Yay! We went over to eat on Pont Neuf so that I could see the Henri IV statue. When I had been in Paris before, I’d only walked over the first half of Pont Neuf before turning on to Île de la Cité, and thus I was within meters of the statue that I’d wanted to see the whole time I was there. Alas, I did not know at the time that it was at Pont Neuf, and so I missed it during that visit. However, after going back and checking my copy of Betsy and the Great World (the reason I was making the pilgrimage in the first place), I located the statue and was able to visit it during my second trip there.

After getting asked for money by an American (very odd, normally it’s a gypsy child), Sarah came with me over to my hostel in the 19^th arrondissement to make sure I got there okay. I did find it, and it was a pretty nice hostel. It was probably a good place for me to start my transition back to American life, since it was completely populated by Americans—the first language was definitely English, not French. I unfortunately did not sleep very well, due partially to the fact that it was really hot (a result of the gorgeous Paris weather) and due partially to the fact that despite being on the 6^th floor, I kept hearing people on the sidewalk outside. Around 4AM, I heard a group arguing whether they would get up at 9:15 or 9:45. I wanted to tell them to just go to sleep already or they wouldn’t be able to make either of those times, but I thought better of it. I was really glad when it was finally a reasonable hour for getting up, as I’d been awake for a while. I ate the breakfast provided (nothing too special, just baguettes and tea), and then took off for Montmartre to meet up with Sarah again.

We saw the Moulin Rouge, which was cool. Sarah said that ever since the movie of the same name came out, shows went from being five euros to being 90 euros. Oh, the power of Hollywood. From there we walked over to Sacré Coeur, which was incredible. It was a long climb up (sooooo many steps), but we made it and avoided the obnoxious bracelet guys who try to wrap a piece of string around your wrist and then demand money. This is one of the many reasons I’m so glad I studied in Avignon instead of Paris. I simply couldn’t handle that on a daily basis. The basilica was incredible, and I really enjoyed walking around it. We went to a small park nearby where everyone imaginable was doing yoga, tai chi, or some other form of meditation. It was a very quiet, peaceful place, and it was neat to see so many people in their own little worlds there.

From Sacré Coeur, we took the Metro over to the Jardin des plantes, an old herb garden that was the first public park in Paris. It’s also where the Natural History museum is located, but it was of course Monday, and Monday means that nothing is open in France, so that was not an option. We walked around the garden for a while, and found a zoo! Who knew they had zoos in the middle of Paris? We were too cheap to pay the €5 fee to get in, so instead we walked around the outside trying to sneak glimpses of animals. We were rather successful, seeing a red panda, a wallaby, and some black swans, and several goats. We were proud of ourselves! It was a fun little detour back to being a kid. From there we went over to Gare de Lyon so that I could start my trek over to Charles de Gaulle. We were first, however, in search of a bakery so that I could get enough pastries to last me until I get back to the US. Due to the aforementioned Monday closures, this was quite difficult, but I did finally succeed and had a delicious pain au chocolat amandes to reward me. Went and got my luggage out of storage, then figured out how to get to Charles de Gaulle on the RER, which was a bit confusing. I got myself a reduced ticket whether or not I was supposed to have one, but no one checked, so it ended up working perfectly. Sarah and I split up, which was sad. I’m jealous that she gets to spend more time in France, but in all fairness I did arrive a month and a half before her. I helped out a lost American who was running late for her plane. I thought it was funny that I was slightly anxious because I hadn’t made it to the airport two and a half hours before my flight, while she was slightly anxious because her plane was leaving in an hour. Hopefully she made it! Got through security without problems, and then bought a pain au chocolat to entertain me while I waited. And that was that!

I’m currently back in the States, land of skim milk and absurdly large everything. I’m still taken aback when I hear peopled speaking English on the street, and thus anyone who’s walked by me in the past week has probably gotten some weird looks. I’m quite happy to be back at my ice rink if nothing else. Sadly, this will probably be the end of this blog, though if I have any other travel adventures out of the country (I’m really hoping to go to Quebec some time soon) I will be sure to add those here!

Profiter-ing prior to death

Very sadly, this is probably going to be my last blog from Avignon. Hopefully I’ll be able to update at least once during my travels over the next few weeks, but if not (depends on internet access) I’ll add information about all of that once I get back home (May 12^th). Places on the agenda: Barcelona, Andorra, Carcassone, back to Provence, then Paris.

This week has been filled with lots of profiter-ing, as we’re all trying to take advantage of Avignon before we have to leave. Also, as I keep reminding everyone, we’re all going to die, so we need to profiter first. This last rather morbid thought is a result of a dinnertime conversation with Mireille. She had to go to Marseille a few times this week with her sister to tie up estate things for her brother, who died last November. She was talking to me about how her brother was a like a father to her, since her father died young, and how her other sister is probably going to die soon. It was a very depressing conversation that lasted the entire dinner, but the conclusion of it took me aback: “Il faut profiter!” Since we’re all going to die, the moral of the story is that we have to profiter while we’re alive. And it is in that spirit that we’re spending our last days in Avignon!

Last Sunday after my picnic I went over to a friend’s house to make crepes and play card games. It did not, as I had hoped, stop raining before I had to leave, and thus I spent about an hour walking in the rain because I didn’t want to take a taxi. And when I say raining, what I mean is pouring. I’ve been too cheap to buy a new umbrella after leaving my last one on a TGV train, so I was soaking wet until I met up with one of my friend’s in town who offered me his baseball cap. We all showed up at Daniel’s house looking more or less like drowned rats. The crepes were delicious (we made a serious dent in the nutella). Jungle speed, the card game, was not my forte. It wasn’t played with a standard deck of cards, which threw me off, and it was quite confusing. After that we played Golf (the card game, not the real game), which I was significantly better at. Won that twice, which was quite exciting. Given that we hadn’t left Daniel’s Sunday night until after midnight and almost all of us had a 9AM class the next day, there were quite a few “petits yeux” (little eyes) in Translation on Monday.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty standard days, though we were all excited that it was progressively getting warmer. Wednesday, however, one of our classes (and my only class that day) was canceled, so we all went on a picnic to Rocher des Doms, a garden above the Palais de Papes that has gorgeous view of the Rhône and Avignon. We enjoyed eating out in the sun and 75 degree weather (I’d broken out flip flops for the first time this semester, even though they’re very un-French), and we eventually got into games of twenty questions, which was fun. Some people had to return for class, but I ended up spending a few hours out there before heading back to IAU.

Thursday an IAU alum (Sylvia) visited the Institute—she’s working as an English assistant in Lorraine now, and she talked a little bit about her experience with that, which was interesting. She gets paid by the French government to teach English 12 hours a week with her housing paid for. We invited her to go out with us that night, when one of my France dreams was realized: salsa dancing! Aside from my ice dance and the Laendler from The Sound of Music, salsa dancing is my favorite type of dancing and one of the only types I can remember from one day to the next. I also got an excuse to finally wear a sundress I bought last winter. One of the IAU girls has been taking salsa lessons over the course of the semester, and not only has she found a French boyfriend through them, but she’s started to frequent the various places that have salsa throughout the week. She let us know about this one, which had an instructor for some of the time, so a bunch of us piled off to that. It was a really good time, and I was glad I got that in!

Friday was another gorgeous day (we got spoiled this week), but unfortunately most people had class Friday afternoon to make up the Wednesday class that had been canceled. If the professors in France has to cancel class, they have to reschedule it, which is not my favorite rule in the world—it completely ruins any delight to be found from a canceled class since you’ll have to face it again at an inevitably more inconvenient time. Even more annoying was that the professor kept us in twenty minutes over the class time—I cannot wait until I get back to American standards of time, that’s for sure. After we were finally liberated, I went over to Rocher des Doms again with some friends to hang out for another few hours in the sun. I went back home briefly for dinner, then went out to Le Chien qui Fume for another theater competition (they hold it the last Friday of every month). It was just as entertaining as it usually is, especially with a group called Anny et les Cow Boys, which sang country music in French. Quite funny. Another group, Les Mutins du Rafiot was really good, and a bunch of us bought their CD for €4. The dance groups weren’t so good, but the last few singing groups were nice to listen to. I was able to talk everyone into walking me home afterwards so that I didn’t have to take a taxi—it was still really nice, and no one besides me wanted to go home, but no one had other ideas of what to do. Thus, they got to see my part of Avignon!

Saturday I went for a run in the morning, then met up with a bunch of people at Les Halles to do a repeat of the cooking demonstration that we did the first weekend in Avignon. They made some sort of rhubarb jello-like thing topped with whipped cream flavored with white wine, as well as strawberries. De-licious. One of the guys at the Institute works at a bread place there, so we all also got free brioche. I love brioche. I have a very serious brioche problem, which is compounded by the fact that my host leaves out brioche for me every morning at breakfast. After consuming about as much free food as was available, we decided to have a picnic at the Ile for lunch, and then hang around outside there to ‘study’. I personally make a habit of never cramming, which I can get away with as long as I work all semester. Then during finals week when everyone else is cramming, I leisurely re-read my notes. This is why finals week is my favorite week of the semester (this is also why everyone else thinks I’m insane. I was told about ten minutes ago to jump off the Pont d'Avignon). We split up, as various people had to get various study materials/food/information before regrouping over at the Ile with Muscat, the delicious wine we’d tried the weekend before. We spent the entire afternoon there, and then around 5:30 I finally headed home. Most other people were making plans to go out that night—having been out the two nights prior, I proclaimed stubbornly that I would be spending the evening alone and enjoying it. I did so. Re-read Betsy and the Great World, ate some chocolate, and enjoyed my peace and quiet.

This morning I woke up at 5:30, which I was less than pleased about. This is the reason I have to make sure I have nights when I don’t go out: I have an inability to sleep in. And unlike at home, where I can always go to my ice rink when insomnia strikes, there is nothing to do in Avignon before 9AM. Once it was finally a normal hour when normal people are awake, I started to walk over to Daniel’s house (his hosts are some of the few hosts who are okay having guests over, so we tend to use his house as home base) where several of us would be meeting up to prepare an American style breakfast. Let me start by saying that everything one eats at an American style breakfast besides pancakes can be found in France. However, not one of them will be found at a breakfast table. Eggs, meat, and potatoes are strictly lunch or dinner food, and when I got back from London my host made fun of me for having eaten eggs for breakfast while there. French eat bread for breakfast. I always laugh when I see the signs on the street for breakfast deals because they usually involved at least three beverages, with the only food being a croissant. So this morning we prepared hash browns, pancakes, omelettes, and some croissants, since we were in France, after all. I was in charge of the hash browns, which I made from scratch for the first time—this means boiling the potatoes, letting them cool, chopping them VERY thinly, then finally cooking them. CJ did pancakes, Hannah did omelettes, Imanta brought strawberries and fruit juice, and everyone else was in charge of clean-up. It was a delicious and huge breakfast, but it was wonderful to actually get some protein in the morning. We hung out on the patio for a while, since it was (once again) gorgeous outside.

After I left, Hannah and I went to the ballet! Giselle was in Avignon for the weekend, and you could get decent seats for only €11. I can’t remember the last time I went to the ballet, and I’ve loved the music from Giselle ever since the Steiglers skated to it at 1999 Nationals. Since the theater is essentially the only thing in Avignon open on Sunday, we decided that we might as well go then. I really enjoyed it, though I think the second act was much stronger than the first. Hannah and I felt like none of the dancers were really strong enough in the character dancing that was necessary for the first act, while they were all much more at ease in the second act. However, there were definitely a few girls who we wanted to give sandwiches to. They clearly hadn’t been eating enough brioche lately.

Unfortunately the next few days will be filled with the dismal act of sitting in class rooms and taking finals. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which has me incredibly mad—I demand sun for my last few days here! Some people leave as early as Wednesday evening, a good chunk of us are leaving Thursday, and almost everyone will be gone by Friday.

Going to Norway and Eating Bread

First, I want to share (partager, if you will) some facts about Norway that I have researched upon my return that I think will put some aspects of my visit in perspective. The cost of life in Norway is 30% more expensive than in the US, and 25% more expensive than in the UK. The minimum wage per hour is the equivalent of $18, the unemployment rate is 1.7%, and 99% of the population can read and write (as President Bartlet would say, either that or they could also just be really bad at math).

Now, my personal experience there. I left the evening of Friday the fourth with my friend Alison from l’Institut. It took us several vehicles to finally arrive in Oslo (Bus for me into centre ville, train that we very nearly missed because it was at a hidden platform to Marseille, bus to the Marseille airport, plane to Norway, bus to central Oslo). I was very excited to see snow on the bus ride to central Oslo, since I hadn’t seen any since I left the US in January—very odd, considering I usually see several feet appear from January to April. In Oslo, we were staying at a place I found advertised on a B&B website, but it was essentially just a room in his apartment that a guy (Terje) was renting out. It has a fantastic location and fantastic view of Oslo, plus he lets you share the kitchen, which is an excellent way to save money. We were a little worried about whether or not he’d try to kill us, but he showed up at the bus terminal to direct us to his house and was in general quite nice. The best part was that since we were splitting the 300 krone cost between us, it came out to approximately $28 a night. Beautiful.

Saturday morning we got up pretty early, giving ourselves plenty of time to get lost as we attempted to find our plans for the day (we’d blocked out almost our entire week). Our first search was for breakfast, and we decided to stop at the first familiar place we saw: a 7-11! We thought it was hysterical that they existed in Norway. We bought the cheapest muffins they had, which were 18 krone, or about $4. They were disgusting. I couldn’t finish mine, it was so gross. Also, since when does anything at 7-11 cost $4? Norway is expensive. This is going to be a recurring theme in my analysis. We then set off for Karl Johannsgate, the main street in Oslo. We were hoping to find the Storting, the house of Parliament there, with plenty of time to make their 9:30am tour, and we actually arrived early after getting sworn at in English by a creepy guy on a creepy street. Since we had a half hour to kill, we went down to see the Palace, which is where their king lives. Their king is only the third king that Norway has had since becoming an independent country in 1905, and he was actually elected to power. However, his number is VII or something even though there have only been three kings (whose rule was split up by the Nazi invasion) because the kings took the names of Norwegian kings from the Middle Ages (This is your warning: the following paragraph is going to consist of essentially a Norwegian history lesson).

After watching the guards marching around to keep out any invading tribes, he headed back to the Storting, where there was a free tour of the building by an art historian. She was able to give a lot of really interesting information about the history of the portraits, murals, mosaics, and architecture of the building, as well as a brief history of Norway which I will now share with you just to show how much they educated me in the span of 40 minutes. After the Middle Ages, Norway spent almost 1000 years under the power of other countries. They were in a variety of unions against their will, the most important of which was a union with Denmark. This union greatly shaped the dominant Norwegian language so that it is in fact written exactly the same as Danish, with just a different pronunciation. During the Napoleonic wars, Denmark sided with Napoleon, and as he lost, Denmark was forced to give up Norway to Sweden (who was on the winning side) in 1815. Though Norway became its own country in 1905, it was this change in 1815 that really changed the way of life for Norwegians, who became almost autonomous. The union with Sweden was much friendlier, and it was finally dissolved formally in 1905, though Sweden hadn’t had any real power over Norway for some time. One important means of establishing their own independent rule was the declaring of Nynorsk as the second official language of the country (the first is Bykmal or something like that). Nynorsk is a combination of various regional dialects, but it is also a language that wasn’t shaped so much by Danish, so that was an important step for Norway. Anyway, the tour of the Storting was fascinating, and I really enjoyed seeing the inside of it. And yay for it being free!

After our trip to learn about the history of Norwegian politics, we started off for the Henrik Ibsen Museum. Ibsen was a Norwegian who wrote, among other things, a play called The Doll’s House which I read in AP Lit and absolutely adored. Unfortunately, it turns out that our tour guides had lied to us and the museum was not in fact open at 11, and it rather opened at 12. Thus, we headed off in search of lunch to occupy ourselves for an hour in the area. Finding lunch proved to be difficult, and we finally found a place that resembled a grocery store (we were in the downtown area, so they were sparse), where we bought ourselves some sort of potato tortillas (called lomper), a cheese spread to have with that, and some grapes. This came out to 67 krone total, which is about $13. Ouch. It was better tasting than breakfast, though, so that was something. After we finished eating, we went back to the Ibsen Museum, which was a really good time. In honor of his 100^th birthday, they refurbished the apartment where he used to live to the way it was when he was there. That was interesting to see, though also rather morbid—“This is the bed where he died! This is the chair where Susannah died!” I much preferred the rest of the exhibition, which was a fantastic analysis of his works. It really was almost at the level of literary criticism, analyzing the societal trends and reactions to his work. My English-majory self very much appreciated that.

Upon leaving the Ibsen Museum, we set off for Akershus fortress, a fortress and castle in Oslo that dates back to the 1300s, when it was strategically placed on a hill facing the Oslo harbor. They have lots of guards there that march around dramatically, which is pretty entertaining, and it’s really neat to walk around and see all the old walls and buildings. They offer tours of the castle on Thursdays, but alas, we were not going to be there on a Thursday, so that was out of the question (plus you had to pay for those). It was really nice out, probably about 55, and still sunny. Because the fortress was on top of a hill, you got a gorgeous view of the Oslofjord, which is not a real fjord (according to Alison and I). It’s just where water meets land. The real fjords are out west. After walking around there for a while, we started walking back to our apartment for the night. We were on the lookout for food that we could prepare, so we bought some spaghetti, tomatoes, zucchini, and apples to eat for dinner. We stopped at another grocery store on our way back since we hadn’t found anything we could eat at breakfast the next morning at the first store (which was more like a market). There we stumbled across a 1 kilogram bag of granola for only 12 krone (a bit over $2), which was an excellent find, and we also (after lots of staring blankly at the windows of the refrigerated section) found skim milk, or rather, ‘skummelk’. I was excited to see that it was both refrigerated and skim, and eagerly awaited breakfast the next morning. Dinner was nothing special as I’m sure you can tell from the products we bought, but it was at least food.

Breakfast the next morning revealed that Norwegian skim milk, while a significant improvement over the French UHT stuff, is not quite on the level of American/British skim milk. Our second day in Oslo was significantly less productive than the first: we simply went to the National Gallery, an art museum. However, this is a pretty darn impressive art museum. It has Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, which I was excited to see since I’d recreated it in art class as a child. It also had a lot of his other works, including two pictures painted eight years apart of his sister Inger. I had a lot of fun comparing those, given that I have an obsession with all things time-related, largely due to another obsession with post-colonialist literature. They had a fantastic display of Norwegian landscapes that were absolutely incredible. I adore landscapes (they were the only things I was ever able to draw well), and I adore anything with mountains in it, so I really liked those. They also had a random room of impressionist paintings, which took me by surprise. They had some early Paul Gauguin’s and Degas’, as well as a few very cool Picassos. The first floor of the museum was a little harder to get into since it was entirely in Norwegian (it was a lot more landscapes), but that was also interesting.

We had hoped to go to the Vigesland Sculpture Park afterwards, but it was pouring, so instead we stopped in the National Gallery of Design for about an hour until it closed, hoping that the rain would let up. It didn’t. We decided to brave the Sculpture Park anyway, but we only made it about a half a block before turning around. We decided to just return to the apartment for the rest of the day. It was after 4pm, we still hadn’t eaten lunch, and we were far too exhausted to deal with the pouring rain. We still managed to profiter by stopping at a café on our way out and buying three Norwegian pastries called boller for 10 krone (an excellent deal). Boller are hard to describe—they aren’t all that sweet, and they’re very dense. They’re spiced with either cinnamon or cardamom, and you can get them plain, with chocolate chips, and with raisins. Our favorites were the plain or with chocolate chips, and our goal for the trip quickly became trying to eat them as often as possible. We had trouble finding an open grocery store (we needed sauce) given that it was a Sunday, and in general in Europe, nothing is open on Sunday. When I get back to the US I’m going to go grocery shopping at 11pm on a Sunday night just because I can! However, we did eventually find it, and we spent our evening watching Norwegian television.

Since we’d skipped the Vigesland Sculpture Park on Sunday, we added it to our long agenda for Monday and made it our first stop. Our two days in Oslo had taught us that the rain tends to get heavier as the day goes on, so we set off pretty early. We also walked over there, despite the fact that it was quite a hike. I really, really liked the park. The sculptures were really, really neat, and the design was incredible. I would love to live near there and be able to go running in a place like that regularly, but alas, that is not the case. We spent a lot of time there walking around and looking at all the sculptures, and I think we easily could’ve spent a whole day there were it not for the fact that we had lots of other places to get to.

There exists in Oslo a separate peninsula called Bygdøy where they have a lot of the museums that attract tourists. Normal people take a ferry that costs 30 krone each way to get over there from Central Oslo. Alison and I are not normal people. We walked. It was a fairly long walk, but I liked getting to see more of residential Oslo, and as it wasn’t yet raining too hard, we didn’t mind the walk. Our first stop over in that area was the Viking Ship Museum, where they house three ships that were buried with Vikings from the 800s to the 1200s. Those were really cool to see, and I was impressed with how well the carvings on the side of them had held up. They also had sleds, statues, cloth, and other artifacts that were buried with the ships on display. Our next stop, keeping with the ship theme, was the Fram Museum, a large part of which is taken up by the Fram, a very large ship that has been the furthest south and the furthest north of any ship in the world. They had a lot of history of both Arctic and Antarctic explorations there, which was really interesting to read about. Outside the museum they also have a ship called Gjøa, which was the first ship to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage (when captained by Amundsen). After visiting ships that had been to cold places, we moved on to the Kon-Tiki museum, which contains one ship made out of papyrus (Ra II) and a raft called the Kon-Tiki. These ships had both made explorations to warm places under the control of some guy named Thor Ican’trememberhislastname. This guy spent about a year of his life on a Pacific island with his wife, and the indigenous people there told him their ancestors had come from the East, not the West, as most archeologists always suspected. Since the archeologists told Thor this was impossible given the technology the people had at the time, Thor decided to prove him wrong by building a raft using that technology and sailing across the Pacific! A very straight-forward way of proving other people wrong. That was the Kon-Tiki. The Ra II came about when he wanted to prove that boats made out of papyrus would not, in fact, sink after 14 days of sailing, and thus the Egyptians could’ve traveled significantly further than archeologists believed. However, it is worth noting that the Ra II is the second because Ra I was dashed to pieces against some rocks. Thus, while papyrus will not necessarily sink after 14 days, it still does not make the sturdiest of boat materials.

Having departed from all of our boat-learning experiences, we decided to take the boat back to central Oslo instead of walking as it was pouring by that point. We then had some errands to run: bought some food for dinner, as well as buying as much of the food as we could manage for our trip to Flåm. We unfortunately did not have access to a kitchen there, so we were trying to save as much money as possible by living off of grocery store food. We thus bought a lot of bread, some nutella, more granola, some bananas, and some apples. We also bought tuna, but that turned out to be a terrible bust. More on that later.

Tuesday we got up early to catch our train to Flåm, which we did successfully. It was a very touristy route, largely because so many tourists go to Bergen, but also because there’s a tour called “Norway in a Nutshell” where you take a train to Myrdal, then a train to Flåm, then a boat to Bergen, then a bus back to Oslo from there. We were only going part of that route (to Flåm, only not with the tour), but we were accompanied by many people going the whole way, some of whom were sitting just across from us on the train. Within about five minutes of sitting down, there was a guy who was eagerly talking about his life for the whole world to hear, and I learned that he was not only an American, but from a Chicago suburb. He started ranting about our governor, which had me cracking up since our governor is apparently doing such a bad job that I can be on a train in Norway and hear people complaining about him. Unfortunately for me, I’d made the mistake of wearing a Chicago Skates shirt that day, and sure enough, the guy noticed and started talking to me. Figures. If I’d been wearing my Michigan Figure Skating shirt, he would’ve been a UofM alum. The countryside was absolutely gorgeous, and I loved getting to see so much of it. A lot of the train ride took us up into the mountains, and the highest point (Finse) is 1,222 meters above sea level. We changed trains before taking the Flåmsbana railroad to Flåm, which was a beautiful journey in the Flåmsdalen Valley.

We found our pension without too many problems, but unfortunately we had a hard time finding out about hikes in the region, given that the tourist office was closed. As nice as it was to be in Norway during the off season, with fewer tourists and a lot more peace, there was the slight problem of everything under the sun being closed constantly. Typical hours for anything we wanted to see were between 11am and 4pm, sometimes shorter. Grocery stores are typically closed by 5 or 6, and some banks are only open 3 days a week. Ai ya! The woman at the pension gave us a good idea for a two hour hike that we decided to do for that afternoon. There’s a bike path that goes along the fjord that you follow for 4 kilometers, and then you climb up to this old farm called Ottesen, which has been a farm for over a thousand years. From what we saw, it’s quite the tourist attraction in the summer, but given that we were there in winter, there were only some newly-sheared sheep to greet us. It had a fantastic view of the valley, and we enjoyed staying there for a bit. We then went back for our gourmet dinner of tuna and pita. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the tuna. It was gelled. Who gels tuna? To what purpose? YUCK. We were not fans. I ended up eating an apple, a banana, and nutella after choking down some tuna. Alison and I found it a bit ironic that we got fantastic fruit the whole time we were in Norway, but the one time we bought fish, it was a disaster.

Wednesday was long. We got up early to walk to the next town over, Aurland, where supposedly there was another tourist office. We followed the bike path for the first 4 kilometers, and there was another path for the last 1 kilometer, we had to walk on the shoulder of the road, which was quite nerve-wracking. We were quite pleased that we didn’t get hit, as that would’ve been a downer for the trip. There is a ferry that goes between the two towns, but it only goes twice a day, and it’s 310 krone round trip ($60). Thus, as was the theme for the trip, we walked! It was a gorgeous walk, and it turned out to be quite successful, since the tourist office in Aurland was open, and the lady there gave us lots of information about hikes. We decided to set off on a 6-hour one, which was described as “fairly easy, some hills”. Just for the record, if you’re ever translating Norwegian into Midwestern English, “some hills” translates as “scaling the side of a mountain”. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad, but we were definitely going straight uphill for the first 4 hours, and that, for me, is not what “some hills” signifies. Nevertheless, we were both in pretty good shape, so we were able to enjoy it. The path went along a waterfall, so there was a lot of stream-hopping going on (Don’t worry, Anna, Nicole, and Gayle, I’m sure there’ll be streams left for us to hop when I return). We stopped for lunch around 1 o’clock, then kept ascending. We were very excited at the first site of snow we had, but as we kept getting further and further up, more and more of it appeared, and it was definitely not a novelty by the end of the hike. The path linked up with a road for a little while, which we followed. Eventually the lady had told us that it would split off again to another path that goes up to Mount Prest, but she warned us that there might still be snow there. Ha. We actually paused just at that point to take a picture of me with snow—snow that went over my head. Ergo, no summiting Mount Prest, but we kept following the road up through some cute towns. I told Alison I wanted to interview the people and write a book about them, so “if they could appear now speaking fluent English and dressed in traditional Norwegian regalia, that would be fantastic.” Unfortunately, it was not to be—I think that the towns might’ve been mostly for summer houses, which is disappointing. We finally turned around at 3 and headed straight down the road back to Aurland instead of retracing our steps, which allowed us to get a really good view of the fjord. We stopped and bought ourselves yogurt to have for dinner (yay! Food that had been refrigerated!), then walked another 8 kilometers back to Flåm. It’s worth noting that the 16 kilometers just from Flåm to Aurland comes out to just under ten miles, and that was only about 3 hours of our ten hour day. I have no idea what we walked the rest of the time, but I think it’s safe to say we got in over 20 miles that day. Exhausting. We slept ten hours that night.

Thursday we decided to hike back into the Flåmsdalen Valley instead of into the fjord, which turned out to be a really nice hike, as well. We walked through some really cute little towns, saw some adorable Norwegian preschoolers, and then found the path for the hike. This was once again all uphill, but it was along a dirt road, as opposed to a very overgrown path, so it was a little easier. However, we once more ran into the problem of snow. They kept the snow plowed up to a certain point, but after going for about three hours, we hit solid snow on the path. We kept walking on it for a while, but it was pretty steep and we only had gym shoes on, so we were not well equipped for climbing it. We paused for a bit to admire the view before beginning our descent—on our way down, we saw a woman doing the same path we’d come up on, only she had cross country skis. I told Alison that if we’d had skis instead of gym shoes, we definitely could’ve kept going. Once we got back down to sea level, we followed the river further back into the valley for about an hour and a half, just taking in some more beautiful sights. We returned that evening after only 8 hours of hiking (not much compared to the day before), and we ate ramen for dinner. It was actually really exciting to have warm food after eating so much bread. Slept another ten hours Thursday night.

We didn’t have to leave Flåm until 5pm on Friday, so we set out hiking again that morning. One of the suggested paths took us up to Ottesen Farm again, and then went from there to Aurland. We decided to do that hike and then pair it with a short two-hour hike that started and ended in Aurland. Unfortunately, our plans were foiled when the path from Ottesen Farm turned out to be not one path, but rather a good dozen that intersected and veered off regularly. Apparently at one of the many intersections, we took the wrong path, and our path eventually faded into nothingness. We were never lost, since we could always hear the road we were walking parallel to, but we definitely did not know where to descend. We ended up forging our own path down a very steep slope, essentially skiing/sledding, minus the ski, the sleds, and with moss replacing the snow. It was insanity. We finally made it down to the road to discover that we hadn’t even made it the 4 kilometers from Ottesen to Aurland—we still had another kilometer to go, and we’d been hiking for almost three hours (it was supposed to be a 1.5 hour hike). Thus, we decided we’d have to cancel the second hike, and instead we ate lunch in Aurland, bought more yogurt that we could eat for dinner, and then walked back to Flåm on the side of the road again since we were not feeling up to another wilderness adventure. In total, only 5 hours of hiking on Friday, so that was a very light day. We spent our time in Flåm browsing through the gift shops that are open two whole hours a day, which were ridiculously out of our price range—I thought it might be nice to bring a Norway deck of cards home. Ha. It was the equivalent of $12. Love Nerts though I do, no deck of cards is worth that much. We also browsed through the Flåm grocery store (we’d been frequenting the Aurland store) and found it entertaining, though inferior to Aurland’s stores. We caught our trains back to Oslo okay, did not meet anyone complaining about either of our governor’s on the ride home, and found our hostel quite quickly. We crashed as soon as we got there—we’d been going to sleep around 9:30 in Flåm, and given that it was 11:30 when we got into Oslo, it was way past our bedtime.

Our last day in Oslo it was alternating between snow and rain. Not super fantastic weather. We went to City Hall in the morning, which is where they give out the Nobel Prizes. They have some fantastic murals on all the walls that I really liked seeing. The murals were all very touched by the WWII experience in Norway, since the contest to paint the murals was initiated in 1936, then canceled when the Nazis took power and imprisoned many of the top artists in the country. It wasn’t until after the end of WWII that the decoration of the city hall was able to continue as planned. After going outside and discovering that no, the rain had not stopped, and yes, it was definitely snow by this point, we walked over to the Modern Art museum. I didn’t like the museum as much as the National Gallery, but they did have some really interesting things there. However, our general conclusion was that modern art was exhausting, and we were wiped out after our trip there. We left there to get our stuff together to leave, which was insanity in and of itself, but we made it out of there.

So that was Norway! Last week was a bit crazy with all the papers, but thankfully that has ended. This weekend we went on an excursion to Carpentras where we got to see an artisan candy producer make berlingots, which was pretty cool. We also went to a wine tasting, and I tried a specialty wine called Muscat that was de-licious. It was a bit pricey, so I didn’t buy any, but if you find yourself in Provence any time, you should definitely try this. Saturday evening one of the girls from school threw a party in her hosts’ theater, which was fun. There were essentially two groups: one group smoking and drinking, and one group drinking a little and mostly just dancing around to the Frank Sinatra music. I was in the second group—we had an excellent time.

Today (Sunday) I went on a picnic with some friends at Jardin de Doms, a garden that has a gorgeous view of the region. We walked around there for a bit after eating, then split up when rain started to threaten. I have to walk in and out of the city center on Sundays or if it’s after 7:30pm, which is a pain, and I definitely got caught in the rain during my 40-minute walk back home. It is still raining as I write this, but I’m really hoping the rain chills out, because a bunch of people are getting together to play cards and make crepes tonight, and it would be so much easier to walk there as opposed to taking a taxi there and back. I miss having public transportation 24/7. No Euchre players (sadly), but supposedly everyone is a really big fan of a game called Jungle Speed, which is apparently in the Spoons family of card games. I’m hoping that it’s something like Stresser, but we will see.

No big plans for the following week. Some friends and I are hoping to climb Mount Ventoux, the largest mountain in the region next weekend, but we have to find someone to drive us to the base of the mountain since there aren’t any buses that go there. It’s the last week of classes, which is good, because I’m sick of pretty much every class I’m in, but it’s also sad because I don’t feel like going home. Finals are the week after next—I’m not too worried about them. After that, my mom and grandma are flying into Barcelona, and I’m taking a bus over there to meet up with them. We’ll work our way back to Avignon, and then I have approximately a day and a half to myself the 11^th and 12^th of May before I leave to get back to the States. *sniff* I don't want to go back to the real world!

No Norway just yet

I lied. I'm not yet finished working on my Norway entry (I had 15 pages of French to write for this week!), but hopefully I'll get that up on Monday.

Until then, Norway photos can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010693&l=52103&id=1158900089

and here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010694&l=2e023&id=1158900089

Lots of details to come next week once I've finished the entry!

Paris!

I apologize for the delays on the Parisian news. I’ve received many complaints, but I do from time to time have to do homework and thus the blog takes second place.

Pictures from Paris can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010535&l=89cec&id=1158900089

And here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010536&l=3314b&id=1158900089

First of all, I would like to open this entry by saying that I’m refusing to come home. I’ve decided I like it here even if there isn’t skim milk, and I’m not sure I can give up having a new adventure every weekend, even for skim milk. Thus, I’d like to extend a blanket invitation to everyone to come visit me, since I won’t be back. Please bring plain M&Ms, the Italian M&Ms I bought taste weird. What would be ideal is just going home for a week—long enough to eat some M&Ms, drink some skim milk, speak some English, and pick up my skates—and then return here to benefit from the warm weather, amazing bread, and general French-ness.

This past weekend’s adventure was Paris! All I’d seen of the city before today was the airport, which was—well—an airport. Thus, I was quite excited to get a chance to actually see the city. Mireille gave me a ride to the train station early Friday morning, which was nice, since I didn’t have to take a taxi that way. No one was seated next to me on the train, which I liked, and it was a quick ride, just over two and a half hours. I’d purposely picked a TGV that didn’t have any stops between Avignon and Paris. Once I arrived, I was led around in circles by the signs in Gare de Lyon who were giving me very different instructions about how to get to Line 1 of the Metro. They led me in the completely wrong direction, and thus I had to wander around in circles for a good fifteen minutes before I finally found it. However, once I did find the stop I was looking for, I managed to purchase my ticket, select directions, and get off at the correct stop without any problems. I was most proud of myself for that. Once I got off at Tuilieres (I made it off at the correct, stop, too!) I took about three steps in what I thought was the right direction before realizing that I was walking towards the Louvre, not away from it, so I quickly turned around and due to the prominence of street signs (compared to street signs in Rome, anyway) I found my way to the hotel quite quickly. I was surprised that I didn’t get more lost, but I’m not going to question my luck—instead I’ll be grateful for it.

The hotel was lovely, despite my inability to understand the concierge (three times in a row) when he was welcoming me there in French. I’ll choose to blame it on the fact that he was talking too softly and with a Parisian accent rather than accepting the fact that I still, from time to time, have trouble understanding French. However, the hotel did have an endless supply of free marshmallows and gummy bears, which I certainly enjoyed. One of my friends (Paul) from Marquette was flying in to Paris for the weekend, and he got in just a little bit after I arrived. We set off pretty soon for lunch at Place de la Madeline, where we had yummy sandwiches and Madelines, which are delicious pastries. I had a caramel one—it was caramel flavored, with a little bit of caramel in the middle of it. Quite good. We walked around Place de la Madeline for a while, and peeked in the church in the middle of it, which was gorgeous. Then we started walking towards Place de la Concorde, another gorgeous plaza with a giant obelisk stolen from ancient Egypt. I believe my friend Paul has memorized the ancient history of the entire world, so please feel free to ask him for the details and he will give them willingly.

After Place de la Concorde, we started to walk towards the Champs Elysées. It was at this point that my luck started to go its usual way and the rain came along. We stopped briefly at Monoprix to purchase umbrellas and postcards (We had only one for three of us and that one broke rather rapidly), then continued on our way towards l’Arc de Triomphe. It thankfully stopped raining briefly at l’Arc de Triomphe, and I liked getting to see that. I risked my life taking a picture of it from the middle of the street, but I made it out alive. We walked back down the other side of the Champs Elysées and stopped at what was called a drug store but was really like a department store. I had fun browsing around the book section (no surprise) and a huge selection of newspapers, but alas, there was no Chicago Tribune. Upon exiting, we saw that the rain had started up again, and thus, our leisurely walk through Tuilieres Gardens was…less than leisurely. More like trying to avoid being drowned to death, really, since there were puddles everywhere. Nevertheless, it was fun to see

After arriving at the Louvre, Paul’s brother went with their parents and we met up with Sarah (a friend from MU) and one of her friends, Renée. Paul worked in Paris last summer and spent much time going to the Louvre then, so he had basically internalized a map of the place and we set out on a very specific route that would allow me to see the highlights while the others (who had all been there before) could see some new things. Paul’s knowledge of all things ancient came in handy once again as we received a monologue on why Venus de Milo should actually be called Aphrodite (Greek, not Roman), and another one on why the Middle Egyptian kingdom is inferior to the other kingdoms. Sadly a floor with a lot of the paintings was blocked off (boo), but we did get to see some that I really liked, including one of Pont du Gard that was super awesome because I’ve actually seen Pont du Guard. I did see the Mona Lisa, though I really just wanted to see it because I played a Louvre computer game when I was about 6 at a friend’s house that always opened with that picture, so I felt as though it was necessary.

After our tour of the Louvre was complete and a brief stop at the gift shop, we went to meet up with Paul’s family for dinner, which was quite delicious. Dessert was even more delicious—I cannot remember the name of what I ordered, but it was a bread-like pastry sandwich with ice cream in the middle and chocolate sauce all over it. Yummy. We walked back to the hotel from there, and I fell asleep quite quickly (though I was awakened at 6:30 am by a wake-up call sent to the wrong room. Boo). I meet Paul’s family for breakfast, and we started to make plans for the day.

Saturday morning someone made a surprise appearance: the sun! I was beginning to think that the sun simply didn’t exist outside of Provence, but apparently it does from time to time make appearances elsewhere. We walked over to Notre Dame, and thus got to see the Louvre in the sun (much nicer than in the pouring rain). Notre Dame was beautiful, and it was at this point that I started to make plans for what I would do with all of the buildings in Paris once I take over the world. I like the idea of using all of the gorgeous ones for my personal use. We looked around Notre Dame a bit, then went inside to look at everything in there. It was beautiful to see everything inside, though I think the outside was a bit more impressive. There was a mass going on while we were there, and I think that it must be rather distracting to attend a mass with swarms of tourists around. After looking at the inside, we got in line to climb up to the top of it, which I was really excited about. We waited in line about a half hour before we were able to get in. They very cleverly force you to wait in the gift show until you’re allowed to start climbing, which is certainly one method to boost sales. The climb up wasn’t too difficult, but it felt very circular and I start to get rather dizzy. The view from the top, however, was beautiful. I’m so glad that it was sunny then, because Paris looked gorgeous.

I successfully managed to not fall down the steps on our way out (it felt very steep) and after walking around the building to appreciate it further, we set out for lunch, which was then followed by delicious Berthillon ice cream. I had chocolate and caramel, and the caramel was amazing. Caramel served me well during my trip to Paris—caramel Madelines and caramel ice cream. From there, we took the Metro to the something Galleries, a HUGE mall. At one point in the store they have this beautiful dome. It’s entertaining to see essentially a shopping mall housed in such an architecturally gorgeous building. We browsed around there for a bit before walking back towards the hotel with another stop at Place de la Madeline so that I could purchase another Madeline pastry. I relaxed (I was rather exhausted) at the hotel for a few hours before dinner, which was also quite delicious. At one point when we had too many questions about the desserts, the server brought all the desserts out in front of us and set them all on the table. We weren’t sure if we were supposed to just start eating everything, but it was entertaining to see all the dessert in the restaurant spread out on our table.

After dinner, we took a taxi ride tour of all the monuments at night, which was absolutely beautiful. It was still clear (yay!) so we could see everything. The Eiffel Tower was lit up (apparently they only added lights to it in the year 2000), and everything was gorgeous. We also got to see the building where they imprisoned Marie Antoinette, and after seeing both that and the Tower of London I cannot help but think that American prisons need to start looking more impressive if they’re to stand up to the French and British prisons. We arrived back at the hotel, then I set out to meet up with Sarah again in hopes of going out dancing. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a place where people were actually dancing, and most of Sarah’s friends decided to just go out drinking, something that didn’t interest me at all. And thus I headed back to the hotel, but at least I can claim that I’ve had a taste of the Paris nightlife.

The next morning I ate breakfast with Paul’s family again, and then I checked out of the hotel. I took the Metro over to meet up with Sarah at a market she likes to frequent, and that was definitely fun to see. I’m a bit jealous of all the fresh fruit and vegetables they can get all in one place—it’s a little more complicated in Avignon. We spent about an hour walking around there, then we walked over to the Eiffel Tower, which I still hadn’t seen close up. By this point, of course, it was pouring rain again. This rain thing is getting a little bit old. I decided that I didn’t really need to go up to the top—if it had been sunny, I would’ve enjoyed it, but given the miserable weather, I decided it wasn’t worth it. We walked around the gardens behind it for a while, then took a train to the Latin Quarter so that I could walk around there for a little while. I enjoyed that, and then we went back to the Berthillon ice cream place. I am nothing if not a creature of habit, even if I only get 3 days in one city. We then took the Metro to the Gare de Lyon so that I could take my train back to Avignon. They’d had a first class ticket that was the same price as a second class ticket, so I rode first class for the first time in my life. It wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped, though I did get a seat by myself, which was nice. I unfortunately left my umbrella on the train, so if it rains again in the next month (and it will, I have no doubt) I’m in trouble. Nevertheless, I adored Paris and when I take over the world it shall be my capital (Chicago can be the second city).

However, one thing that really stuck out to me in Paris was how many people spoke English there. It definitely made me glad that I’d chosen to study in Avignon. In Paris, as soon as people realized I had an accent they started talking to me in English, while in Avignon there simply aren’t enough people who know English for that to happen. Southern France is definitely the place to go if you want to get a chance to use your French.

I leave this Friday for Oslo and Flam. Snow (!!) is in the forecast (for EVERY DAY that I’m in Oslo), which has my friend and I pretty excited—we’re both Midwestern girls who haven’t seen snow since we left. Those of you who have experienced the Midwest winter of late may not understand this desire. However, I was also delighted to see that the sun rises at 6:30am and sets at 8pm, which is fantastic—nice long days. I’ll be in Norway until the 12^th/13^thish (I arrive very very late on the 12^th and probably won’t get home until early on the 13^th), but when I return you can expect to hear about all of that. I make no guarantees about when you’ll hear about Norway, since I have five lovely papers due the first week back (yuck), but at some point by Friday the 18^th there should be an update.