Kai visits Paris!

I'm sorry that I'm not posting as often as I promised. Kai is in Paris for reading week and we've been busy touring around. Because of the teaching strike, I had the entire afternoon of Tuesday and Wednesday all to myself. By the time we get home from our outings, I would be tired out of my mind and motivation does not come easy at those times.

On Tuesday, we hopped on a train to Versailles to visit the famous Château de Versailles, place of residence of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette! This is the second time I go to the Château but what's different this time is that I decided to not be a cheapo and pay 10 euros to enter. The palace was very ornate and beautiful, but I feel like the lifestyles of French monarchs were only bourgeois compared to the Chinese imperial family. Their bedchambers are tiny compared to what I'm used to see on Chinese soap operas!



Tip for travelers: entry after 3pm is 10 euros instead of 13.50! Also, avoid the huge line-up and buy your tickets at a computer stand!

On Wednesday (today), I spent quite a bit of money (HUGE sighh). We ate at McDonald's for lunch (~5E), went to the Medieval Art Museum (5E), to Modern Art Museum - Centre Pompidou (8E), and ate supper at La Muraille du Phenix (~8E). We met up with Kai's friend from summer camp, who seems like he's doing a world tour but I'm not too sure since he was very very secretive about what's going on in his life. Everytime we happen to ask a detail about his life, he covers his mouth and starts giggling!! lol A very funny guy indeed.


Tip for travelers: feel like a good Chinese meal? Get off at Luxembourg on RER B and go to La muraille de Phenix. You can fill your stomach with only 3-4 euros!



A few words about French people... some are quite xenophobic. Others just don't realize how dumbass they sound. More than once have I had a group of young adults walk/drive by and greeting me with "Ching Chang Chong Chong!!!". Even today, as Kai, her friend and I were lining-up for starbucks, a lady stopped behind me and repetitively chanted at least 3 times: "T'es plus à l'aise ici que dans les mines de Chine hein! (you're more comfortable here than in Chinese mines!)'' I regret to not have turned around and said something. (I was actually exhausted from visiting Pompidou and turning around required too much energy. This is not a lie!) They've been happening often enough that these attitudes are really starting to bother me...


(The picture above was taken at Versailles. I loved the bright colors of the girl's potato bag (*high give for new expressions!*) and sneakers!)

The Butterfly Dream

Have you heard of Zhuangzi's dream of becoming a buttefly (see 02/22 quote of the day)? It is really an idea worth some time to ponder on. For the longest time now, I've hated waking up in the morning from my sleep on a restful night. Not something special. However, I hate waking up not because I'm all cozy and warm in my bed but because I dislike the feeling of awakening, a awfully bitter feeling of transition from dream to reality. The actually feeling at wake changes everyday, but almost always feels heavy with something that I can never recall. The reason I'm talking about the Butterfly dream is because my own dream last night was of a similar concept! Amy's passing through Paris for one night on her way back to Grenoble from Amsterdam, so she was also in it. I woke up in my dream next to Amy, sleeping on a queen-sized bed in my room in Ottawa. We had suddenly so much more room to move! I told Amy that my dream of the night was about sleeping on a very narrow bed in my dorm room in Paris and we laughed it off. Little did I know that I would wake up from that too, realizing that I am in fact sleeping on a very narrow bed in my dorm in Paris with Amy's knee jabbing into my thigh!
The following is going to be a short photo blog because writing takes too long!













I went to the Louvre on Friday with Angele, an exchange student from Singapore (free admission every Friday). We definitely happened to put more effort into talking than admiring art. She's a Paris know-it-all already so it was nice getting all the extra information about where to go and where to eat from her! At the same time, I felt like a totally lousy adventurer. It is a crime to stay in and rest on a Saturday afternoon?



A painting of the Emperor Qianlong. It was so moving to see this picture, knowing that it was done right in front of the Emperor. It felt like I was streading history!

On Saturday afternoon, I went to LaFayette with a friend who's on exchange from Poland.



Me in a very expensive cowboy costume!

Tonight, I went to the 21st birthday party of this English exchange student from my residence. He should have been the pampered one all evening long but he really took care of his guests well! He always came back to insist on pouring another cup of sangria for us, although he was pretty drunk so it often happened to be in cups that were not our own... lol Anyway, meeting generous people like that always makes you reevaluate the way you treat others and change for the better. I'm always hesitant about attending themed parties (this one is School-Disco) but it turned out to be a huge success! It was a lot of fun and I got to meet quite a few other people from my residence.

I think I made it obvious by now how unhappy I am with the administration at my university over here, but the people who are running the residence turn out to be very responsible and efficient! Since the party was in the common kitchen of the residence, they sent a chaperone dude who stood inside the tiny room with us for the entire time! It's a weird way of doing things but in the end, it was a win-win situation since he looked like he was enjoying himself.

Here's a picture of candies at a fancy Chocolatier next to the Pantheon, a 5 minutes walk from my residence. YUM!!!

BB

A scary thought is to be forced to continue taking my course in basketball! I went to my first class on Tuesday afternoon and it was just horrible. Can you picture me playing basketball with 15 macho guys who think they're all-that and make ridiculous passes between themselves? There's one other girl in the class, who doesn't look too athletic neither but at least she's taller and heavier than me, and would be safer during a collision. I also had the pleasure to experience wearing the notorious phys ed jersey passed on to me by a very sweaty and yes you guessed it, stinky player... Anyway, I feel like an old fart because it takes me two days to recover everytime I do 2 hours of exercise! Plus, I had a stomach cramp one minute into the warm up..

Time to go to sleep! I will update more tomorrow, promise!

New things

I feel so lucky to be receiving visitors weekly! Amy came up from Grenoble to spend the weekend with me and Chloe (her high school friend from Franco-Ouest who flew in fresh from Ottawa)! The day didn't go without hardships (this seems like a favorite phrase of mine these days) but they're kinda funny, although at the time I was just plain pissed and hungry.

I arrived at Gare du Nord at 4:20pm and started looking for Amy in the massive crowd. I walked and walked in circles but after calling her 3 times and each time setting a more visible meeting point, we still couldn't find each other. During our 4th call, 1:45mins later, I realize that she's at Gare de Lyon and that we were in different parts of the city! She told me that it might be too much trouble to look for her and before she could finish, the 25 EUROS phone card that I just paid for today ran out!!!!!!!!! So I just sprinted like a madwoman across the huge train station, hopped on the RER and luckily got to Gare de Lyon in about 15 minutes. I was so afraid that she and Chloe might leave before I got there! But there's a happy ending to the story. We found each other and had a great time eating supper in Chinatown :) But I am still awefully hurt by that 25 euros Mobile card that's now gone!

Do you realize how much crap is waiting ahead on the path of life that is just waiting for you to accidentally step on it? There is nothing that I have ever achieved without difficulties. I feel like that guy from Meet the Parents! If I set a goal for tomorrow, I just know that I will run into countless troubles before getting to the finish line. I keep asking myself why things can't go as planned. It's normal that they can't. The fact is there's only one way to make things right, but a millions way to screw up! It's just a question of mentality though. It will take time to not see the distinction between them. I will need to become a monk!

On top of that, there's a couple of other things I'd like to share today.

First, I'd like to proudly announce that I've finally settled on an okay course schedule for this semester. Here there are!

- Physiologie cellulaire et intégrée
- Physiologie humaine
- Biochimie II
- Chimie Organique: de la molécule au médicament
- Travail Expérimental Personalisé
- *Basketball (ya ok, ha ha)
- *Espagnol pour faux-débutants

I know I change my mind too often about this, but Paris has been treating me well. In the mere two weeks that I have been here, I've already absorbed so much from this experience and I'm grateful for everything that happened and everything that has passed me by and is waiting for a better timing. For one, I am more aware of what I don't want. I don't want to do a Masters in chem. It's so easy to be dragged into projects that just happen to fall in your lap if you don't leave your comfort zone. Knowing what I want is another story. But maybe I am where I'm supposed to be. Maybe we always will be we're supposed to be. Anyway (snapping out of it) Paris is a city that one would love to hate, just like how people love to hate Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan (*cough* Melanie *cough*)and I guess that's why my feelings towards it were so ambiguous.

WHEW thanks for getting all the way to here!

And a special thank you to Elaine for mentioning me in her blog =)

=>(find the link on the right! It's a must-read if you're thinking about Paris for exchange)

Now try to find L'arc de triomphe in the picture! LOL

I have always disliked protests. There must be another way to deal with problems other than creating noise and throwing garbage everywhere! Ugh. The students and professors of practically all universities in Paris are protesting against Sarkozy's government. I don't think it's about wages, I think it's about employment opportunities for researchers...something like that. Whatever they're angry about this time, I'm sure they're right (!), because the universities in Paris are so disorganized!!! I now realize that this is the worst time to do an exchange in Paris, because professors are on strike indefinitely and it's not certain whether they'll teach or not. None of my classes were cancelled just yet but you never know what might happen in the future.



As of now, I LOVE the city of Paris but, as you may have noticed, I HATE my university! World-leading university mon oeil. If in the future, I meet someone who wants to come to Paris for an exchange in science, I will physically try to stop them. Putting everything in perspective, I feel incredibly lucky to be studying at McGill, and having met so many great people during my time there. I miss its every little bit.


I am very happy with my weekend cause Melanie came from Brussels to visit me! We saw a big chunk of the most famous tourist attractions: Eiffel Tower, Invalides Museum (we saw the free side of it), l'Église du Sacré-coeur, le Moulin rouge, la cimetière de Montmartre, and the Louvre! Now I'll be sleeping in peace for the next few weeks knowing that I am not completely clueless about the attractions in Paris.


Melanie's video of us in the cemetary:

PS: I realized that this has become more my complaint blog than a traveling blog hahah. Sorry!

A few frustrating days

The first week of school has been a mess. I barely went to class and ran around all week to register for my courses. The French love to direct you to someone else, and I'm falling for it! It just seems that there's no other way, since they are very impatient with you and all you want to do is leave, without settling the issue completely! My schedule is such a mess and I have a bunch of conflicts everywhere. The worst is that you can't find all the course schedules online. For some classes, you need to go to their office but they're only open in the afternoon, or they say they're open but aren't there at all! And there's a different administration for different programs AND years. And they're not in the same building! And there's construction all around the university so some paths are forbidden so you can't take shortcuts to get to places. And I can't find the elevator anywhere so I have to climb up to the 6th floor everyday! I WANT THIS TO BE OVER!

On a lighter note, Melanie is coming to Paris tomorrow with a few of her friends from Brussels!!! I am very very very excited, but I would be thrilled if all our scheduling troubles were settled before she comes. I can see this going very badly tomorrow though, as she'll have less time to talk to her university about scheduling. Good luck!

I leave you with a reflection piece that I wrote last night, addressed to surely some people out there:

As a kid, you grasp the moment naturally and you let your personality run wild. At puberty, you try to repress some of that avidness and eagerness, you pretend to be mature and become more aware of what they think of you; you choose the forbidden fruit. “Grow up!” they tell you. And you do just that. You realize you can’t find that childhood serendipity that you once tucked away and kept to yourself to savour. To the young adult: it’s now gone and you miss it. You search for it in the arts, in various forms of expression. You may even produce a few works of your own but it will never be the same, as the symbolism is faked and the deliberation backwards. You try to shock others with what they already know. You absorb the individualistic movement; participate in protests, saving a society that works and stalls on coins and credit, saving the environment. You fail to notice you have become one of them, someone with a role to play and an opinion to confirm. You are who you thought you weren't.

Is this what they call the French Charm?

I went around Paris running errands for the whole day, from 10am until 5pm, after which I ate a bowl of instant noodles that I bought at FranPrix; it was VERY dissatisfying. I can't get used to having to cook again. I almost forgot how awful the food I made tasted. Even the instant noodles I cooked were soggy! But guess what? There is a huge cafeteria in the lobby of my residence and I can get a meal for 2.80 EURO! That's the best deal I've seen so far. Also, I noticed that the sports center is also in my building! I know, this one is not quite the athlete but it's always comforting to have a facility so closeby. Amy will be glad when she comes! =D

I was actually referring to something very specific in my title. I was walking in the metro station and casually observing the people around me, when I accidentally made eye contact with this asian dude in this late twenties who was walking towards me. He was well dressed, well groomed - the typical Parisian - but this time, he stopped and started talking to me! He asked me if I went to the Sorbonne and when I gave away that I was on an exchange with UPMC, he started bombarding me with questions to which I answered nicely enough. At one point, he leans in for "la bise francaise"! WOAH, was not expecting that move. Then, just as I was about to head off, he asks me so casually what I'm doing tomorrow and even more casually gives me his contact card. I'm very closed-minded when it comes to these situations that i kept on tell myself "ok, so he's going to sell me something right about now", the whole time. Only after explaining the situation to two friends did it slightly register in my mind that I might have gotten hit on. So this must be the French slickness they are so famous for! I was so confused!

Lastly, I got surprised by the Arc de Triomphe when I got off at the Champs Elysés station. My plan was to head to HSBC across the road but there it was, that huge and majestic monument right on my right. I think people who haven't visited Paris don't realize how massive that thing really is. Here's a picture:

Arriving in Paris

I'm finally all settled in my dorm room, at a residence called Jean-Sarrailh in the SMACK middle PARIS with a view that includes the tip of the Eiffel tower (find it on the picture below)! And I swear I just saw it glittering for a while but now it is just illuminated in solid light. Shame on me because the feeling of being utterly exhausted in amazement (that's exactly what I felt, I felt like my senses were wayyyyyyyyy too lacking to take everything in) is wearing off. Looking outside my window, it looks like any other city I've been in before but that feeling could wear off too... fingers crossed!

My first impression of Paris was that the sun shone brighter in this part of the world. lol but in a sense, it really did cause it was snowing pretty hard when I left Ottawa and pretty much cloudless when I started my day over here. Moving over here didn't not come with hardships!!! My two luggages were extremely hard to transport, especially up and down the escalators at the airports! At one point, I got stuck at the top and people were running into me and we all started screaming! And this lady said ''MADAME! C'est très dangeureux ça!'' Well no duh, I didn't plan to do that. Plus, I sat on a cookie during the flight so I was walking around with a brown stain on my butt until I got to the hostel. My taxi driver was hilarious and he tried to help me as much as possible but it made the situation worse. He left me on the wrong side of the river after searching the neighbourhood free of charge and the only way I could get to the other side was to cross a massive bridge that had a million stairs leading up to it. !/$%@@¤¢ On the other side, there were Chinese people playing ping pong and I thought it was very cute =)

My hostel was great. I'd recommend it anyone who comes to Paris for a visit, it was clean...and among other things but I was very glad it was clean. I was surprise to meet quite a few very brave ladies traveling all by themselves. *allll my single ladies oh oh oh* See pictures below! I was still a bit shy talking to some people though, especially Amercan girls who are bursting in their confidence and who seem to not have any flaws. It's a good and a bad thing.

A few words on Parisians: they are not all anal and blaming! They won't come and give you a kiss and a hug on the street but it's a different, more contained kind of nice. At the 19ème, where my hostel was, many people would stare and smile or say hi and this one person actually stopped and talked to me. Did I have a ''noobie'' sign across my forehead or what??? How did I get on their radar? My coat is pretty puffy and I have a winter tuque, so that might be the problem.

So after surviving the culture shock, embarassing situations, fish-out-of-water situations and a mariage proposal on the plane from a very religious Muslim person o.O, I am still alive and well! I still worry about my course registration, and money issues and starvation issues to the point I can't sleep but I know I need to chill. One of the reasons why I came to Paris is to learn to LET GO and so I'll be working on it!!!!!!

That's it for the first post of my trip! I'll try to update once a day but we all know how lazy I am, so I wouldn't count on it mwhahahahha Keep coming back!