French culture and cooking from some true locals by Christy Illius

I haven’t posted in a while, so trying to recap everything I have learned in the last week might be a little scattered, but I will do my best.

Since we last left off, I had met the mutual friends who live in the Paris area.  I was fortunate enough to spend every night from then on with these individuals, with a few meetings in the afternoon as well.

The first thing that comes to mind: Food and Wine. Food is an art form here , the dish being a  reflection of the chef himself. Everything is deliberately paired with another, as wine is paired with certain dishes back in the States. Myself and another friend were fortunate enough to have a cooking class with my new local friends, who happened to be 3 star chefs themselves. We made ratatouille and a bread crumb/herb coated cod dish, with a pear tart for dessert.  Delicious of course, and it was all in small portions. Once you come over here you will see that small is normal, and America’s HUGE size is an overindulgence that we have far too often. Even the placement of the food on the serving dish was deliberate and lovely to look at.  Our teachers were deliberate with everything they did, from cutting up the vegetables, to placing the pears in the dish just so. They had even chosen champagne to go  with our meal. Here’s a secret about Champagne: It should never be popped, and even though it looks impressive, you are actually spoiling the best part.

While I’m mentioning champagne, I might as well discuss wine and  meals. Wines and beers are paired with everything here as early as noon. It is typical for people under 21 to drink with a meal, and the super posh thing to do is to have a picnic in the spot of your choice, with a bottle of wine served in little plastic cups. Here’s the catch though- getting drunk is not the point. Wine and beer enhance the food and the experience, and so it is respected here. You would never see a box of Franzia being ripped open to play some game with at a party. Everything is very refined and classy here. Usually people will have maybe 2, or maximum 3 drinks here, and they aren’t heavy liquor drinks — although they do have the aperatifs and the digestifs, which I haven’t learned about yet. The point is, you generally wouldn’t go and order a rum and coke and continue to throw 4 or 5 of those back and then switch to beer. In fact, the idea that we drink to get drunk in the US is something that is very frowned upon. Yes, they do let go sometimes,but just because they drink in the afternoon doesn’t mean they are alcoholics, nor are they drinking to get drunk. Like I said, it is to enhance and enjoy the meal and the experience.

Now that I’ve mentioned that the French love food and wine, I should say this: The women and men here are all slim and small framed individuals. The are very little ( if any at all) heavy set individuals. They  walk , bike, and take the stairs everywhere. Parking is rare and expensive, and even then if you can afford a car, it is a little car. Mercedes even makes a smart car. Bet you’ve never seen one of those in the states. Hummers are non -existent and the SUV is rare.

With everything I’ve learned so far, I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like going back to the US. As our new friends told us, “everything that we have learned is special, and it’s very classy, so share it with those who will appreciate it, but for those who won’t , don’t waste the magic. It’s special.” And it’s true, everything has a little bit of magic, and I can’t bear to think of a life without all of this, so when I come home, I will recreate as much as I can, and relive everything with each new day. Coming home will be hard. Coming home and coming down from any trip is hard, but this is Paris, a city that anyone will fall in love with, regardless of what kind of person you are. You spend 2 weeks or more here, you will fall, and you will fall hard. Leaving this city is going to be painful, but as the cliches go, there will always be Paris.

That’s all for now,

c

Paris, Je t’aime! by Christy Illius

I haven’t written about my adventures in a few days, so I figured a recap is probably due.

Sunday was the Tour de France. I suggest you go early in the morning. I say this because it is an all day event for a moment of maybe 15 seconds. We couldn’t really distinguish Lance Armstrong because they go really fast. So If you’re a super fan , go all day because it’s kind of a party for everyone. If you don’t want to stand all day, go maybe an hour before they’re supposed to ride by.

Monday was our own little tour de France. There is an American bike company that gives a nighttime bike tour all around the city. Yes, you will look like a tourist in a giant group of bikes, but it is so much fun to just leisurely bike around and see everything.  You don’t rent the city bikes for leisure, because they are timed /rented by the half hour and are usually to ride to work, ride to errands, you get the idea. If you do want more info on our bike company, its fattirebiketours.com .

Tuesday was a visit to Musee D’Orsay, which holds Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Corbet ,Daumier, Degas, and so many other artisits. You could spend a while at D’Orsay. We spent 4 hours, which wasn’t enough time to see every piece, but if you don’t have much of an attention span after 2 or 3 hours, it is just enough to see all of the more recognizable works.

Wednesday we visited Versailles, which was amazing. We watched Marie Antoinette before going so we could have an idea of what we were about to see. The Chateau is probably the most crowded part of the estate, so if you aren’t good with crowds, try to get there super early. We got there around 11 am and it was swamped. You walk around the Chateau kind of like cattle being wrangled into each room, and there are so many people in there at once that pictures aren’t really worth it, unless you want 30 others in your photos. However, the rest of the estate like the gardens, the Trianons, and the Hamlet, are not as crowded and really enjoyable to walk around. You should choose a good day for this trip however, as everything is outside. The hamlet had little animals like goats. We ended up meeting the locals that I mentioned in my last post, and they were wonderful. Any crazy ideas we thought about how to dress, how to act, don’t be an “ugly American” , we are horrible, etc, were all dispelled, which was very nice. We had a fantastic picnic on the Seine ( which gets very cold at night, even though we swore to our host that we were quite warm) and then did a little exploring after that.

Today was the Louvre.  Of course, we saw the Mona Lisa , Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory, but we also saw a pretty interesting Egyptian exhibit and then spent some time just being in the Italian paintings area. Once again , however, it was very crowded. Get to the Louvre early, because after 11 am , it is pure madness, and that’s just for a Thursday.

Tomorrow we leave for Marseille. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. Our new friend from last night’s picnic was trying to tell us that it’s horrible and not to go, but I was also informed that Paris is to Marseille as OSU is to Michigan– so I’m sure we’ll still have a great time exploring : )

Off to pack,

c

Oh. Mon. Dieu. by Christy Illius

I’m here. And, unfortunately, against what everyone has said thus far, Paris has not been all berets and baguettes . Let’s start with our dreaded airport trip. I am currently the most hated American at Charles De Gaulle, but I swear it wasn’t my fault. Remember how I wrote about my somewhat shady Paris-shuttle.com plan? Well, gut instincts were correct, and it was a HUGE disaster. They were supposed to meet me at my gate, they weren’t there. I was given two phone numbers to call in case they weren’t there ( which is another disaster in itself because we were not given our French cell phones before we got to the airport. So I have a pretty scary AT&T bill waiting for me when I go home…)

So after several failed attempts at trying to get ahold of the worst shuttle company on the planet, I try my darndest to speak French to a few airport workers. The first gentleman was polite, but not helpful at all. The second woman was not happy, and the third was even less happy, but she still helped. Also, even though I tried as hard as I could to speak French, I eventually had to switch to English because I ran out of vocab words that could be substituted for phrases pertaining to my dilemma. The third lady was kind enough to call the phone numbers in the email I had received from this company. She couldn’t reach anyone, just like myself. Then she dialed another number, and that lady told us that she could not find my reservation and that my name was not in the system. Then the lady at the desk hopped on the phone and started getting ( from what I could tell by the tone of her voice) very VERY heated with the company on my behalf. So, thank you info lady, and I am very sorry to have bothered you. Because at the end, she just hung up the phone, looked at me and said, in perfect English of course, ” This shuttle company is stupid, go use a payphone”.

Finally, I decided to cut my losses and get a taxi. The word “taxi” does not mean taxi by the way, so that was also another challenge. And of course I over-packed, so I was lugging giant suitcases around CDG with me this whole time. Finally I got a taxi, which was actually quite reasonably priced/ rated at the end. My taxi driver was also a saint of an individual, after listening to my “horrible accent” according to him, I wrote down my address, and then he dropped me right off. Which was then me standing in front of St. John’s for 20 mins pressing buttons yet no one would let me in. Then as soon as I got in, I was led to my room and abandoned. Thank God I was with the other girls as soon as I got to St. John’s , because (faculty director) Judith Grant and (Teaching Assistant) Nicki Re were somewhere in the city, and after the day I had, I was NOT leaving the safety of my dorm. Needless to say, Paris thus far has been scary . Kind of a downer, but it will get better. Especially since the RA told us at orientation that there is a wine bar that serves people in baby bottles. Yes , you read that right. Baby bottles. Fascinating.

blog ideas and pre-packing misadventures by Christy Illius

I’ve been reading a few blogs lately, trying to decide how I should go about sharing all of my experiences with everyone, and I have to say that my favorite blog so far actually isn’t a blog, but a facebook page. My lovely roommate’s boyfriend is over in Asia right now, and he is doing this sort of “status update mini-blog” in multiple parts, like, part 1, so on so forth. They are short little updates, but I have had a ton of fun reading them! I am going to try to be tech-savvy here and put his link in so you all can read them. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=12316885&ref=mf  If that doesn’t work, friend him. His name is Mikey Smith. He loves new people, really. Tell him I sent you : )

Anyways, since my last entry, I’ve successfully semi-packed my bags, gotten together the majority of my laundry I need to finish, purchased my Euros, and scheduled my taxi for the airport in Paris. The euros look far niftier than US currency, which is good for me, because they are just too pretty to spend : )

The booking of the shuttle/taxi was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. First of all , the website is paris-shuttle.com and you can pre-pay ( that way you won’t be taken for a billion dollar ride around town as the newbie) and the driver meets you with a sign. However, I have a feeling the website was translated from French to English, because there were some holes in the forms, like where my state was supposed to be, how I’m supposed to choose the terminal I will be coming out of ( I don’t know, the American one? ), and when I tried to call the company, several things went not-so-well.

First, Paris is a (few) hours different from us. Ooops. I think I called them at maybe around 1 am? Secondly, when I did try to call at a more appropriate hour, the phone was busy. For 4 hours. Needless to say, I am a tad nervous about my arrival into Paris .

Also, packing for a month is hard!! How am I supposed to fit a month’s worth of daily items into only two bags?! I had to pack bags inside of bags just in case I bring home more than will fit into my already exploding suitcases. Did I already mention that I still have more to pack? I read somewhere that you are supposed to take “half of what you think you need, and twice as much cash”. Right. Oh and another fun side note — I’ve been told to hide my euros in different parts of my luggage. So what happens if I lose my luggage? At least I’ll have my list of where I hid all of my euros when I lose them.

The homesickness is definitely starting to show its lonely head as well. I already miss my family and fluffy companion, and my boyfriend ( who can sometimes be considered the fluffy companion : ) I went ahead and bought some mailing manila envelopes at Target today and pre-addressed them to everyone , this way, all I have to do is fill them up with trinkets and momentoes when I’m in Paris, and I don’t have to worry about paying an extra 10 e for an envelope each time I want to send some Parisian love to the states. Pretty nifty, eh? Speaking of nifty, I should probably blog about all of the nifty sites I found while shopping for travel things for Paris. I am a google goddess.

Later gang!

c

Editor’s Note: The OEA recommends that you carry all your money with you when traveling. Stash it in your wallet/purse, a money belt, and your carry-on luggage. Cash and important documents should never be packed in checked luggage. Lost and stolen baggage is unfortunately a reality.

I’m going to Paris?! by Christy Illius

Yes, I’m going to Paris. It still hasn’t sunk in, and I leave in exactly a week. For a month. How in the world am I supposed to pack for a month? My little dog (Isabella) keeps following me around the house as I try to get my laundry together, as if she knows something is about to happen. I have to leave her sweet little face for a month, I have to leave my cellphone “off” for a month, I won’t be able to see my parents for a month. These are all things I keep thinking about, but for some reason, it hasn’t truly sunk it.

It’s surreal for me. I have SO much to get ready! I still have yet to arrange my transportation from the airport to the university where we will all be staying. That in itself could be a huge disaster. Then there’s everything I have to remember to bring with me. Of course if I forget things, I will be going to a big city, so it’s not like I can’t go to a corner store, but there are some items that might be harder to find internationally.

Then there’s the whole language difference. Yes, most of the world speaks English, so there will be someone who could help me almost everywhere I go, but I don’t want to be that “typical American” ( make sure you pronounce that with a sheik accent), and then I don’t want to be the “stupid American”. I have been warned several times –even from a few local Frenchies– that pick pocketing is a big problem, and tourists are target #1, and my “American accent” might as well be a big “come rob me ” sign.  But I don’t want to think of the negatives. Only the positives. Positives such as delicious French food, amazing landmarks and history that I have seen on tv and in books and magazines,  the wonderful memories and experiences that I am about to have.

I suppose I’m mostly excited, but a little nervous. I am going to miss home .

Ciao for now!

Christy