Happy Birthday Ju-Ju!!

Friday January 23, 2009

It was my birthday today!!! I turned 20. I was able to wake up late, probably around 10:30, i had no classes, i could relax... It was a good day :D After i woke up, i showered, got ready for the day. etc. I opened mom's gift she stuck in my suitcase secretly before i left! It was a cute card, and i got two more charms for my Pandora bracelet (one she called Journey and another of a 4 leaf clover) Thanks mom! They look really good on my bracelet! After that i video-chatted her because she was up. (P.S. Everyone needs to download Skype. I need more than one friend. hah Its like a phone--This was I can actually talk to you guys, and if you have a web cam, i can see you!)

After that we went down the street again and got a sandwich for lunch in a baguette. hah After lunch it was kind of a lazy day... but very relaxing :D I read, talked online, etc. After a little bit i started to get ready to go out.

We decided we were going to go out for dinner then go to the Eiffel Tower. I was so excited! Who can say they went to the top of the Eiffel Tower for their birthday?? So we got dressed and ready and headed out.

We just started walking somewhere for dinner. We ended up walking for about 10-maybe 15 minutes until we decided on this Italian restaurant. It seemed nice-- and for a reasonable price- we wanted to get a little fancy for my birthday.

The place was nice inside- kind of modern. We all got pasta or pizza. So i ordered what was called "spaghetti marinara", along with one of the other girls.. i figured it was normal pasta. So we were waiting for our food.. must have been early because we were the only ones in there until we left around 8. Well anyway they began to bring out our food. Everything looked pretty good, until Kim and mine came out. What we thought we had ordered something we actually wanted, but our spaghetti had muscles on it!!! EWWWWW. Thankfully one of the girls was able to switch with Kim because shes allergic to shellfish. And for me, well i wasn't allergic so i was going to just suck it up and take off the muscles. Jen really likes them so she took mine and i just had the pasta. Unfortunately, it tasted like seafood, which I definitely do not like the taste of! So i like put a bunch of grated Parmesan cheese on it to try to make it taste better.

What i thought was going to be a normal plate of Spaghetti tasted like seafood. After I put the cheese on it, it tasted a little better-- at least tolerable. Well i didn't take home the leftovers.. i just sort of wanted to get on with the night and go to Eiffel Tower!

After dinner he took the Metro towards the Eiffel Tower. I was so excited! When we got off the metro we could see it so big already.. In pictures, or even through my view outside, you wouldn't think it is actually as big as it is! Of course, being us, we took like a million pictures!

Once we got the the Eiffel tower, these men (selling things) came up to us asking if we wanted "bling bling". That's all they would say like a million times haha. Bling bling? bling bling? haha They would be selling statues of the Eiffel tower, key chains of the Eiffel tower, glowing Eiffel towers.. basically every kind of Eiffel tower souvenir you can think of. lol

After we got through like 10 men selling the same exact things, we walked up to the ticket counter to buy our tickets to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It only cost us i think 12 euro to go up top. I think it was definitely worth the experience! After we got our tickets, we went through and headed for the elevator to the top. It was a huge elevator with all glass windows so we could see out! The first elevator went to the second floor, where you could either go up to the third floor or stay on the 2nd. we went up to the 3rd first. The first elevator started at a leg, so it went up sideways. It was weird lol.. felt like a roller coaster! hah My roommate Stephanie was petrified of heights so she was like freaking out on the way up-- let's just say she didn't look out the windows and she was in the center holding onto the poles the whole time hah.
Once we got to the center level (level 2), we had to go through these winding amusement park paths. To get to the elevator to the top. The 2nd elevator was smaller and this time went straight up the middle lol. I was again in the front where the walls were all glass so i could see everything going up. It was the most amazing thing I've seen. I do have to say it was better than when i went to Top of the Rock with Eryn last semester in NY, just because it was much much taller and it's Paris! hah

When we got to the top we exited the elevator into a closed room where they had observation windows all around with descriptions below of what you were looking at. Above the observation desk, they had different countries & cities in certain points telling how many kilometers it was away from that point. We found New York! lol After we were done there we went on top-- in open air. It was so cold and windy up there but amazing. We took so many pictures!!

After we were done up there, we headed down to the 2nd level, because it was getting close to the hour. On our way down, there was someone who started speaking french to us (very poorly i must say) He was reading from a paper, "Parle vous angleis?" My friend Kim replied, "Angleis?", and as the elevator doors were closing he screamed, "ENGLISH!!" It was really funny because her was trying to ask us something , but figured out were were American as the doors were closing. ...I guess you had to be there.. it was really funny lol. While we were waiting for the elevator, Jen decided to start basically singing opera saying " We are on top of the Eiffel tower..." and kept on going on about that. It was funny that she made up a whole song about being on top of the Eiffel tower on the spot... there are videos. lol

So we headed down the elevator. It was so cool down there too-- things were closer and it wasn't as windy, but equally as beautiful. We wanted to go down there, because every hour, on the hour (well at night anyways) the Eiffel Tower sparkles for 10 minutes. We wanted to videotape it from the ground. It was so pretty. We took a whole bunch of pictures while on the Eiffel Tower- it probably takes up half my pictures!! I am so glad i was able to go on top of the Eiffel Tower on my birthday!

Once we were off the tower, we skipped the bling bling men and headed back home. On the way home, we stopped by a souvenir shop and all got postcards. Steph and I split 20 postcards for only 2 euro! So expect some postcards, i haven't sent them yet though... tomorrow lol. After we got those we walked around, then headed back on the metro to go to a different area. While on the metro., we had our own section, and we played musical chairs. Juvenile?.. maybe... Steph said later we were getting so many looks of disgust. She didn't participate in it.. party pooper. lol But at least it was fun! We then walked around some more. we were going to got get a casual drink at a bar, but none of us were up to it.. It had been a long day and were wicked tired..

So instead we found a crepe place, and got crepes as we walked home. got banana and nutella... I'm telling you it is the best thing ever created lol. mmmmm. After walking back we all hung out in Brittany and Kelly's room for a bit, then we called it a night. We went back to our rooms, talked online and slept.

It was an amazing birthday!!!

xoxo Julia

My pictures

So i made an account on Snapfish. The folowing link can be used to view them!
<3 Julia

europeanadventures-pictures.snapfish.com/snapfish
Click Here ^

(i hope it works! lol)

I uploaded pictures onto snapfish... i just don't know if there is a way i can make it public so you all can just go to a website and see them... i sent them to a few of you...

<3 Julia

Pre-Birthday bash

Thursday January 22, 2009

So today i had to get up early... and actually stay up! I got up, showered, had breakfast and headed to class. I had class right at 8:45 today, for the second day of Theology. Honestly i don't really understand the schedule like why it is some days in the morning and some in the afternoon. I'm not complaining because I like to go back to sleep after I get breakfast..even though I should stay up after I get breakfast lol... but it seems weird to me.

Today in theology we continued to learn about Indigenous Religions. Pretty interesting things- we began to learn about voodoo hah. just a tiny bit of that though!

After class we stayed up and went down the street to a little Italian place. There We got little things. I got a small sliver of this calzone-like thing-- layers of cheese, ham and bread. Also i got a rice ball. The calzone-like thing was really good, but i don't know how i felt about the rice ball. it was good, but was really heavy. I had to eat it really slow- and i couldn't even finish it.

After we got those, we came back to the room and ate it. We hung around for the rest f the day until dinner, which we ate at school. After dinner we planned on going out for a pre-birthday bash. lol So we got ready and headed out around 9. We went to a bar called The Long Hop. Its an American bar- and it was student night- so there was a DJ so we could dance. Us group of girls that i always hang out with always need a dance floor when we go out! lol this place is casual. It reminds me of the place by school in NY- Traditions. I said its like the Traditions of Paris. Don't worry-- only a sip. They told the DJ it was my birthday so he put on a happy birthday song and we danced all night! We videotaped all the French people dancing-- they are so bad its really funny! We like to imitate them sometimes.

After the night was over, we had to walk back to campus. The metro closes here at 12 on weekdays, and 1:30 on saturdays and sundays. Unfortunately, by the time we left.. it was raining!! So we had to walk home in the rain!! On the way home, we saw these 2 REALLLYYYY drunk French men, falling all over eachother TRYING too keep eachother up as they walked. It made the night! It was a great beginning to my birthday though-- casual and fun!
<< the security guard took a picture of us back at the dorm drenched form the rain!
<<< Walking home.

Wacky Wednesday

Wednesday January 21, 2009

So really nothing happened this Wednesday. I got up at 7, showered and had breakfast, but then went back to sleep. I slept probably until 10:30/11, and hung around went on my computer, hung out in the other girls rooms, etc. until it was time for our weekly meeting. Our meeting was at 1:00. we just talked about things that were going on during the week coming up and they asked how we were liking Paris so far.. etc. The meeting was short- only about 25-30 minutes because we had class at 1:30.

It was our 1st day of Theology- Religions of the World. Looking of he picture of our professor that they have on the bulletin board downstairs, it looked like he would be a stuck-up french man that is a wicked hard theology professor. In his picture he is very serious and had his very big nose suck up...scary guy!

The professor though, could not be any more different from what I thought! He seems like a really cool guy. He jokes around a lot, which is good. It makes theology seem better. But after explaining the class, it seems like it won't be really bad at all. We talk about the different kinds of religions in the world. We will talk about indigenous religions, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and basic religion today. he's not really expecting us to anything beforehand, which is how I felt about my other Theology class, and its all new material. It seems like it'll be a very interesting class overall.... Even better than the philosophy class! Knowing that the class won't be too hard (i hope) makes me feel a lot better about the semester.

After class, we waited around until dinner and basically did nothing that night. Boring day. But as we were going to bed probably around 12:30, the madness started. The walls here must be like paper thin, and we can hear a lot of what is going on in the rooms next to us. Our room is in between the bathroom and another person's room.So we can hear people's conversations either way. Well these two girls next to us, they are form the Staten Island campus. They seem nice, kind of quiet and weird, but overall nice. Well once 12:45 hit, they were both on skype talking to people from home.. well not talking ... basically SCREAMING. At 12:45, you know its only quarter to 7 at home so everyone at home is still awake. They must not seem to care about the people around them may be trying to sleep. It is so aggravating. Not only can i hear them talking, but they have the volume so loud, i can hear the people form America talking--- i can follow their whole conversations!!! ( and now this basically happens every night) What really bugs me is if its 2 am and they are still going at this! I can hear them screaming through the computer talking to their dog! (I'm not sure which girl it actually is.. could be both, but either way its just as obnoxious!)

well I'm done venting about them for one day! haha

until next time...
Julia

The Frog and the Princess...

Tuesday January 20th, 2009

Today was our second day of classes. We got up at 7 again, and went downstairs for breakfast. For breakfast i had.. well ... the same exact thing! But i brought my croissant back upstairs for later. After we ate, Stephanie and I both took naps until about 10:30 because we didnt have class until 1:30. I didn't want to be lazy all day so I got up and took a shower. I went to class at 1:30. Another day of philosophy... After class we rushed upstairs to watch the Inauguration of President Obama. it was cool to watch it live online from France!

After that, we went out to the grocery store like 2 buildings down... Shopi.. No one speaks English. It's fun trying to cash out at places if they don't speak English. After we got a few things, we came back to the room.

We went to dinner at 7:15, like clockwork, and went back upstarirs to get ready. We decided to go out with some other people because we didn't have class until 1:30 the next day. We weren't planning to stay out late anyway.. we just didn't want to stay in our rooms another night.

So we headed out. We walked about 15-20 minutes trying to find this place Kim's friend had told her about. It was called The Frog and the Princess. It was a bar that also served food. After walking for a little bit, we still couldnt find it. So we asked a group of girls who were heading in our direction. They knew what we were talking about and tried so hard to figure out where it was and explain it to us. They looked at a map by the metro we were standing near, and decided it was too complicated for them to try and explain it to us. They were really nice and seemed like they knew where they were going- so they actaully showed us the way and walked there with us- well at least to the small street it was on.

It was an okay place... I wasn't too impressed. We actually met some other people- a group from NYU studying in their Paris campus as well. It was kind of cool...We went back early- prob about 10:30. Once we got back we relaxed and I started reading my book--procrastinating again on making this blog! I dont think we will ever go back there again--- we didn't really like the place. but it was an experience!

First day of classes!

Monday January 19, 2009

Today was the first day of classes. My schedule is as follows:
M-- philosophy 8:45-12:30
T-- philosophy 1:45-5:15
W-- theology 1:45-5:15
TH-- theology 8:45-12:30

I had Philosophy today-- Metaphysics to be exact. That title scared me a little, especially since i didn't do so well last semester in Philosophy. I woke up today at 7 and took a shower. After my shower i got ready and went downstairs for breakfast. Breakfast is the same everyday... nothing big at all. You can either have tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and grab a piece of bread when you get your food. I had hot chocolate today. its weird-they had bowls out for the coffee and stuff so we drank it out of bowls... it must be the french thing to do! Anyways when we all sat down at the tables, they have croissants out with different jams you can put on it. I think that bread just goes with every meal no matter what. So we ate breakfast and went up to the first floor for class. So many people signed up for metaphysics class that they had to split it up into two. Both classes are at the same time. Unfortunately our group is split in half into each class. But thankfully i wasn't the only one in one of the classes!

In metaphysics we have a professor from Germany. She seems really nice, but kind of unsure of her teaching. She takes a long time to get out what she wants to say! In this class we are learning about the philosophers In the class we picked project topics. I'm in a group with Kim and Kelly-- two of the girls in our little group lol. Our project isn't until the end of the 5 weeks so we don't have to worry too much about it. But we are going to try to get it done earlier. we get two breaks during the class.. honestly it's not enough! ha It feels like its going to be a long semester with this class because it takes her so long to talk and she has a heavy accent. But hopefully we get through it and i get a good grade.

After we got ready we went and walked around for a little bit and got a baguette sandwich for lunch while walking around. I had ham and cheese.. it was good! We went into this store down the street- called Zara. It was a cute store with really cute stuff! We went to the front where all the dresses were and looked through them. Then we saw a huge rack in the back where shirts were starting from 3.95 euro. We like bolted back to those racks! I found a lot of cute stuff, but nothing that I wanted to buy.
So we left the store, after Brittany bought a couple shirts, and on our way back Steph and I went into a different store. Almost every store in Paris says "soldes" which we are guessing means "SALE", but this store said, "-50 to -70" meaning that percentage off.. so we thought it was a good store. And it def was! Immediately upon entering i fell in love with this pinkish-rose colored jacket that buttons up. It was too good to resist so I decided to buy it! It was only 20 euro! Its a wicked good price! Everyone loved it. Steph said the jacket screams "Julia" hah.

After we got back, we went back to our rooms, finished my sandwich, read for Philosophy, and hung around for a bit until dinner. For dinner we had some kind of beef.. I'm not sure what it was, and veggies and rice. It was pretty good.

At night we printed out readings, did some homework and hung around in our rooms until it was time for bed.

And the week continues...

Sunday January 18th, 2009

Today we slept in for a little bit. ... Unfortunately that meant missing Sunday mass at Notre Dame. Supposedly it was supposed to be an international mass, but it still wasn't in English. I was really meaning to go because that would have been awesome! But def i will sometime before we leave Paris!

At 2, I signed up for a guided tour of the city. On the tour we started walking from school to Notre Dame. Our tour guide was actually the art and architecture professor for St. Johns. Thankfully she could speak great English-- just like an American! lol I found out a lot of interesting things about the architecture of the Notre Dame! It is actually pretty interesting! I found out that the exact center point of Paris is in front of Notre Dame. Paris' districts are formed around in circular formation around this center point, which is marked off on the ground. Also when someone looks up information on the distance from one point to Paris, it is approximated by this center point in Paris. ((From Westfield MA to Paris France, it is 3526 miles)) i thought that was an interesting fact.

Anyways the tour was pretty interesting, a little dull tour the end because it was pretty long. However, the weather couldn't have been better. I was supposed to rain, but it ended up being sunny like all day, which was great!

We saw many different places on our trip. We walked through the smallest, and only original streets left in Paris. After a certain point a long time ago, the government decided to redo Paris. They repaved roads, and made them more than twice as wide. The streets we walked through, the original streets, were so narrow. It seemed as though only 1 car could have fit through them at a time. She said that part of the reason they repaved was for military. As for defense, it was easier to barricade streets and trap troops in. Also the (beautiful) cobblestone roads were able to be used as weapons a long time ago. People used to dig up the stones and use them as weapons, throwing them at the enemy.

Also by the original roads and buildings areas, you could tell how old the buildings were. some had garages from medieval times ( like low wooden doors, with brass handles) She said that they probably weren't used as garages anymore, because they were so short lol.. but who knows with the tiny cars Europe has! On the same road we noticed a weird sign on the building. It was at a certain height, with a line in the center of the sign, something written in french and a date. Someone asked what this was and she said that you can find those in various places around the city. It is a water line form a major major flood Paris had a while back. The line was sooo high up! Like probably well over 8 feet above the street... and looking at the nearby river, that was at least 50-100 feet below the street.... To get that high, must have been such a huge flood.!

After we saw all that, she took us to an original ancient Roman part of Paris...weird... and she brought us to a street where the oldest cafe in Paris was. She said Ben Franklin used to eat and have tea here! Nuts!! she said shes actually never been in there, but it was a cool original part of Paris to visit!

After the tour me and my friends decided to go to eat American cuisine... McDonald's!! and let me tell you, it was delicious!! It was funny ordering, starting with our favorite line to say in french, Parle-vous angleis? (aka do you speak English). We thankfully got someone who spoke a little english. I ended up getting a royal cheese... it was basically a cheeseburger...just with a fancy name. ahh the pleasures of fast food. lol For some reason it tasted so much better in France!

After McDonald's, we walked back to campus, taking in some sights along the way, and decided to have a girls movie night. We watched the movie, the Sweetest thing- my friend Jen brought a bunch of movies from home. I had never seen it before so it was good to relax for the night with the girls. It's such a girly movie lol. After the movie, everyone was pretty tired so we all decided to head to bed. I read a little of my book at night before i fell asleep. Class the next day!

Until next time...
-Julia

Parle-vous angleis?

Hey.
so it has been a couple day i am going to try to get in the habit of writing everyday.
I have a lot to catch up on so here we go:

Saturday January 17th

Today we got up and started our day off with a traditional french pastry for breakfast. It was really good. The tradition is there is a little trinket inside the cake somewhere (ours had a tiny ceramic lamb). Whoever gets the little trinket in their piece of cake is the king/queen for the day. They got to either wear or choose someone to wear the crown. It was a cute little thing to start off our trip in paris. In my group, no one had it in their piece-- it was atcually in the last piece on the plate, that no one originally took... so Brittany lbasically looked through the cake until she found it. lol . With our breakfast we had some pomme juice (aka apple juice) lol. it tasted normal lol

After we had breakfast we had our orientation. we learned the ins and outs of the St. johns Paris campus. We were introduced to the staff and our advisers. Everyone seems really nice. We figured out where our classes were and where everything in the building is. next to the building is a church-- priests and stuff live there. Also St. Vincent De' Paul's bones are in the building next to us... that's kinda weird and interesting haha. A nun talked about doing service in Paris.. not a lot of spots, open so we had to expand something. i signed up to do a night at a soup kitchen with my roommate.. it'll be a long night compared to the other services, but I'm fine with it lol. I really wish i could have signed up for the preschool-- they start teaching English at that age so i would just need to go there an talk to them. That would have been perfect if all the times i could do weren't all filled up by the time i got to the sheet. But its okay.. maybe in another country lol

After our orientation we had lunch -- the food was okay. lol after lunch we got ready and headed out to our boat tour. The boat tour was on the Seine River. It was a lil chilly, and they thought it was going to rain, but it didn't! We walked there.. wasn't too far. You could definitely tell we were all not French though! Everyone was taking pictures of everything we passed by. we stood out so bad. hah it was good though. we got to hang around a bit before the tour because we were early so we walked around the area.. where we went for the boat tour there was a little park and it was by the river, so we took some pictures. on our boat trip we saw a bunch of things including museums, famous bridges, federal buildings, as well as the Eiffel Tower. it was a nice boat ride and it was cool to see all the things from the river.

After we finished with the boat tour, we were free to go do and see whatever we wanted to. a bunch of us just walked around the area. we went to the Notre dame, and the surrounding areas. Notre dame is so big, and looks so nice. all the details of the building were amazing. It reminded me of the hunchback of Notre dame (the Disney movie). After we saw that, we walked some more going to various places, while we walked back to the school. i love just walking around the city, looking at all the buildings, and taking in my surroundings. It is nothing like new york-- the buildings anyway.. they are so nice.

That night we went out on the town, found a bar and danced the night away!! it was fun!

pics

Pictures from the tour on the Seine River. These are just a few. I probably took about 20 of the Eiffel tower alone haha.

Plane and New home

Hey. so i arrived in Paris yesterday. My flight was on Thursday Jan 15. it left about 6. Next to me was this french man that spoke no English. such fun! Anyway, it was a pretty good flight. I'm so glad it was direct to Paris. no layovers :D. suppsoibly Miss Jay from ANTM was on our flight, because others saw him../her.lol but unfortunately i didn't.

It was about an hr bus ride from the airport to school. ( a lot of it traffic tho) i was so glad to finally get here. it is in such a cute neighborhood. its weird.. i swear every 5th store is a pharmacy.

when we got here, we got our keys and stuff and headed to our rooms. the rooms are kind of tiny but cute. we have 2 desks, closets, bunk beds, and a sink and mirror. Out our window we can see the top half of the Eiffel Tower, where like evry 10 minutes or somethign it sparkles. so pretty. Also we can see the top half of The Panthéon.. i think thats what it is... maybe a differnet one. lol
I'll upoad some pictures later.

After we unpacked we went and got crepes nearby. soo soo good lol. On our way back we stopped and went to a grocery store and got some things... nothing was really the same. all in french lol. but it was just another adventure! we all had reservations at a restaurant nearby for 7. i'm not really sure what we ate.. either chicken... or duck. but i didn't want to ask. lol
--update... it was def duck. they told us the next day...---

after we got back we were all exhausted. thats probably the only time i will go to bed real early hah
Today we are heading to do some tours of the city and have our orientation, where we will take a boat cruise. Later we will probably go to the Eiffel Tower. I will definately have pictures by tomorrow.