HP 30 Day Challenge. Day 2

Day 2: Your fave movie.

I think Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Both are allowed to be my faves since its telling the end of one book :)

En Françe.... Sick = Sexy????

So. Of course the day after my birthday I get sick. I'm feeling super awful, super congested and with a sinus headache coming on. Which of course means I end up staying in bed as late as possible and just throwing on a long sweatshirt and leggings+boots to go to class. Normal class, a bit overwhelming especially since my brain is particularly sluggish.

But then after class, as I go to one of the main buildings at Cité U to get out some cash and look for the post office, a guy comes up and starts talking to me! This is the first time it has happened since I have been here. He just out of the blue comes up and starts talking to me. He was super nice and forced me to speak French, which was kinda cool. But he spoke English well enough that if I didnt know something in French he could understand when I said it in English. We talked for probably 15 minutes before I had to go. He also pointed out the post office plus another one near there that had better operating hours, so helpful! The bad thing was I was so paranoid the entire time we were talking that my nose was dripping and making my face all disgusting like. Of course I cant just go wipe my nose in the middle of a conversation and look even more disgusting.... So instead the entire time I just kept thinking "please, dont drip!! please please dont be dripping nose!!"

Since la poste was not yet open, I decided to head back to my dorm cause I was feeling pretty crappy. As I was walking back to the dorm a guy was running in the same area, then all the sudden he stopped and turned around and started talking to me! It was a much shorter conversation, and mostly spoken in English but I threw in French whenever I could. He asked me if I go running and I said yes, so he asked if we could go running together sometime. He said he had to stop and talk to me because he thought I had a very nice smile, though I didn't even realize I had smiled at him. Long story short he ended up giving me his e-mail address. I think I'll email him tomorrow since once I got back to my room, and got over the shock of the fact that sick Brittney, who hadn't showered and had no makeup except whatever didn't get wiped off with my Clean and Clear makeup wipes = sexy Brittney to these French men, I ended up sleeping for 3 hours then forced myself to wake up and do French homework since I have my first test tomorrow. Le sigh. But of course I spent more time talking to Sarabear and Nathan than I did studying... but c'est la vie!

Well, I certainly hope that this damn cold goes away by the weekend so I can see who else I can meet!

Joyeux anniversaire à moi... yesterday

Ah another birthday. I am not the biggest fan of birthdays, which my friends that have known me a while get why. Valentines day for a birthday is not the greatest day ever, at least not back in les États-Unis. But in Paris, the most romantic city in the world, Valentines day isn't really a big deal. Which I found both odd and kind of awesome. Since I never actually have someone on my Valenbirthday, it can be a pretty lonely day. I usually dread it, or else just try to pretend its just another day.

It was a little difficult to do that here. Everyone kept saying happy birthday and was so sweet and awesome about it, which of course then anyone else around us who didn't know it was my birthday would inevitably ask "Aw its your birthday?!" And of course I would have to tell them that yes indeed it is.
My favorite question though was probably: "So you're going to be 20? 21?" When I'd tell them how old I was really turning they'd be rather surprised, which was both awesome and annoying because then it would kinda make me feel old. But it is what it is, one more year and I get lower car insurance rates for a car I dont have! HURRAH! lol.

Anyways, last night after doing my homework a couple I ventured into the kitchen, which is where everyone tends to hang out, and Maddie, Christy, and Hannah had all bought a few bottles of champagne and a little pastry in honor of my birthday. It was so sweet!!

So we ended up just watching a movie and having a little champagne for the evening. It was pretty nice and relaxing, which was probably the best thing for me since I could feel some congestion starting to creep up in my sinuses. Thank you girls for celebrating my birthday with me :) It was lovely! <3

La premièmere classe de française

Thursday, I had my first French class with the Sorbonne. It was pretty intense. I was expecting it to be difficult and only in French, but I was still quite overwhelmed when I got there and nothing but French was spoken. It seemed like everyone in the class had more experience than I did too and was doing better in the class than I was, which didn't help either. Culture shock hit me hard at that point. I was very frustrated and left class feeling like I was going to fail. But I have found one way to overcome culture shock: retail therapy. So I decided to go shopping, since I neglected to bring any of my plain black shirts, which I am fairly certain I have a million of back home. Since people here do the all black without looking goth, and since I am also going as long as possible between washing clothes (ugh more money I need to spend when I could be shopping or traveling!!!) I decided to invest in some less expensive black tops. Dont worry, I was successful and now look even more Parisian than before! Its wonderful.

Speaking of looking Parisian.... The other day (and by other day I mean a week ago) when I was getting on the RER (a train line kinda like the metro only it is above ground and not one of the real bullet trains or anything), this ridiculously good looking man dressed impeccably well asked me something in regards to directions. I was so excited because:

1. The man was beautiful and he was talking to me
2. I look Parisian/French enough for people to ask me for directions!!

I was very sad that the only thing I could manage to say was, "je ne parle pas française, desoleil" (I dont speak french, sorry). Le sigh. Soon enough, hopefully, I'll be speaking and understand French well enough so that when the next beautiful and well dressed man who asks me for directions I'll be able to help him and maybe even hit on him. Tee hehehe.... Or just help him. Whatever.

But Friday I had my second Sorbonne class, which I was more prepared for this time around. It was still a little overwhelming at times, but overall it was better. Some of the things I learned before are starting to come back to me slowly, which is good. Its going to be an intense semester, but hopefully it will pay off!!

In Bruges... Wait... isn't that a movie with Collin Farrel?!

So with my study abroad program, part of the cost is paying for some excursions around France and close by countries. On Saturday the 4th, we went to Bruges (or Brugge as they spell it), Belgium. Its this little quaint town which I have been informed used to be the hub of all commerce or something in medieval days, which is cra'y since it was SO COLD there.

My adopted little sister of the trip, Christy <3. 

One exciting thing is how the snow made it seem like such a fairty tale of a place. I mean this is where the inspiration from Snow White was had! It was beautiful. So quaint. And my adopted little sister of the trip, Christy, who is from Florida (Go Gators! As she would say) has NEVER seen snow in her life. Besides on tv/pictures, which really doesnt even count. So she was all kinds of excited. She got to make her first snowball and first snow angel....

In which of course I had to help brush the snow off of her. She had no form for the snow angel, but it had to be the most adorable thing I've seen since I last saw my nephews. I regretfully did not get any chocolate, I KNOW, what was I thinking?! But I didn't. I did however, have a Belgium waffle and it was THE GREATEST WAFFLE I HAD EVER EATEN! Plus it was made for us by an amazing Englishman who informed us we could indeed have Bailey's in our hot cocoa! I fell in love until I took a bite of the waffle, then all of my love was transferred to the delectably sweet concoction in my mouth. ROWWWWWWMMM (which I am sure 99.95% of you will not understand, but perhaps those of you who watch Archer and remember the episode in which Pam is freaking out about bear claws and makes that crazy awesome hilarious sound will imagine that and be amused. That's what I was going for.)

So you know we're out wandering around, chillin - well more like freezing cause it was freaking cold. We're talking -12ºC, which is like maybe 5ºF. Which, ya know, is cold. So my toes and finger tips start freezing so I do this awkward thing where I ball my fists in the main part of the glove and the rest of it goes limp... which makes my friend Eli (pronounced El-leigh, she is a girl) laugh and actually almost fall over because its so ridiculous looking. It was amazing. Then we found the Lover's Lake / Minnewater or something. which is this place:

Quite pretty really, even frozen over. So here's another pic or two. I cant remember how many I uploaded.

So that was pretty much the trip. Except for all kinds of crazy issues getting to/from Bruges back to Paris, cause there apparently as a massive-ish snow storm in the Belgium area or something that cause some cables to snap or something so then we had to catch separate trains... it was insane and a little stressful but made for quite an adventure!

Well, thats all I got. No Collin Farrel in Bruges, which was depressing cause I totally would've been like, "hey... see that lighthouse?!!......" Which really I think only Eli and Maddy will understand that but that's ok too.

Bonne nuit!

La lune trop blême pose un diadème sur tes cheveux roux

A video blog about my day at Montmartre on Feb 1, 2012 :)

One week-ish down.

Well, I've almost been in Paris for a week. Technically, I've been in Paris for a work week since they consider their weeks Mon-Sun... which is odd... because if you buy a week long metro pass like i did on Tuesday, its only good through Sunday. Silly Frenchies.

Anyways. I'm really hating the time difference. 9 hours is so huge, its frustrating when I want to talk someone from home but I cant cause they would be asleep or at work/school. Its like if I want to talk to anyone I have to plan it at certain times here, but I don't want to spend my time here trying to plan out things based on when I'd be able to talk to my family or the important people from back home. I'm sure this feeling will pass once I get more use to being here, but for now its quite difficult. 

So far I am definitely loving a lot of the people on the trip. I've adopted one girl as my petite sœur (little sister) for the trip, she's so adorable. The girls across and to the right of me are awesome, I've spent most of my time with them so far. We are more on the same page of yes we want to go out and have fun and party, but we're not trying to end up being the real life version of Taken. Especially for the first weekend.

So this week. I feel like we did a lot and yet I also feel like we did almost nothing. We had orientation everyday during the week which kinda sucked but also got us very familiar with the area in which our school is located, at least the English school. The French school we only had one orientation for and didn't even get taken into the campus, so that "tour" seemed quite pointless, but I'll figure it out. The study abroad company also provided a bus tour for us, which was kinda cool for the people who haven't been here before. But since I came in the summer of 2007 and had taken a bus tour then, I mostly wanted to sleep on the bus.

Its really cool to be walking down the road. Everything seems normal and like a normal life, and then you turn a corner and there is the Louvre, or the Notre-Dame cathedral, or the Eiffel Tower. Don't get me wrong, the architecture of even the normal buildings are not like the ones I'm use to in Seattle, but its easy to get use to those nice apartment buildings until you come to an area with a huge monument or ridiculously impressive church. That's when it hits me again: I'm living in Paris. For example, ma petite sœur and one of the guys on our trip and I went shopping. We were walking along and all of the sudden we were at the Louvre. So at that point we decided to just keep going down and walking to the Champs-Élysées. Once we got down there, we were close enough to the Arc de Triomphe so we just decided to walk there. We left at 11 am to go shopping and ended up walking all the way to the Arc de Tromphe by 5pm. My feet were definitely killing me by the time we made it back to our dorm!

Speaking of the dorm, my dorm is at Cité University or Cité U. There are tons of dorms here, all sectioned off by country. So you have our dorm, les Etats-Unis, but then next door is the Belgian house. Down the road a little bit is the Canadian dorm, and the Argentinian dorm. They've got a bunch of them, I'm not sure how many different buildings in total, for different countries. The cool thing about our dorm that Idk if they do with the others, is we actually have some diversity. all of us CEA girls live on the third floor, but a few of us went upstairs and met the people from floor 4 earlier in the week. There were lots of americans (And another guy from Seattle!!!), but there was also a girl from Greece, a girl originally from Paris, a girl from Belgium, and a guy from Switzerland. They all lived in the US dorm! I may be missing some people and where they are from, but those are the ones I met and talked to for a little bit. It was really cool to meet people from other countries, and I found it quite amusing that they were in the US dorm. I guess it made it a little more like America, since we are supposed to be known for having people from everywhere come to American to start a new life and everything.

Well, considering I slept in until noon I should probably go actually do something with my day. Sundays here in Paris (and i think Europe in general) are dead days. I may have to google and at least try to find some place to get some food or something, but it could be a very lazy boring day. That could also be exactly what I need today.

Au revoir! <3