Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Travel Log, First semester

Here's a list of all the trips I've taken since day one. (I wrote this a while ago and meant to edit and finish it but it looks like I won't have time to for at least another week or so. I'll just post the part I did do. Be sure to check it for added pictures and remarks later.)

August 23, 2010
London, England
Arrived at about 8am after a layover gone wrong in Dallas, walked around and explored the city, saw pretty much everything except for Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park, woke up the next day at 4am to fly to Bordeaux. I was obviously very tired when I arrived, but managed to take the tram to the city with a group of students before I conked out at about 5pm. I woke up in the middle of the night, suffering from serious jet lag. This was after my computer had crashed in Gatwick Airport so I didn't really know what time it was, plus last minute I had unpacked all my books to make my suitcase lighter. Don't really remember what I did but I managed to get back to sleep within a couple hours and wake up the next day for our noon orientation.

Late August/Early Sept
Don't remember the exact dates but the Centre de Californie took us on two excursions during our first couple trips. I'll add more later.

September 17-19, 2010
My first trip outside Bordeaux, three weeks into the year. Paris with the Octopus!!! (That would be the eight of us that really got along and hung out a lot, later made into OctoClaire when Claire started hanging out with us more. We're not clique-y at all....)

September 25, 2010
The next weekend I did a day trip with Kim, Claire, Nix, Kathy, and Tristan to St. Emilion, a small medieval town now famous for its wine. We went on a tour of the monolithic church, did a degustation at a cave where the owner was very excited to have Californians! We tried eight different wines and ended up taking a picture with him. Hung around and explored a little before taking the train back.

October 1-2, 2010
Trip to the coastal town of Biarritz, two hours from Bdx and half an hour from Spain. Such a beautiful place; I hope I will be back someday. We spent one day there, and the next in St Jean de Luz, another coastal town ten minutes away. Definitely could see the Spanish influence there. We (being my roommates Joanne and Kayla, along with Kim) spent the weekend basking in the sun and picnic-ing on the beach. Just in time for the end of the warm weather.

October 29-November 7, 2010
My first big one. We had a week off of school so everyone planned out trips all over Europe. I started out in Paris with two high school friends, Ali and Ainsley. Ali had won (on the Ellen Degeneres show) a super fancy hotel room at the Westin Paris, with a beautiful view overlooking the Jardin des Tuileries with Eiffel Tower to the right and the Louvre to the left. Still can't believe how lucky we were! I played tour guide and we went all over Paris, ate some good food, and really enjoyed ourselves.
From Paris I headed to Dublin, Ireland to spend a week on the green isle. Monday morning I flew and met up with Claire in the airport, since our flights arrived fairly close to one another. We checked into our hostel and found a pub, where I ate some soup (pretty much what I survived on that week). After, Claire went back to take a shower and I met up with Kim and Kayla, who were in Dublin at the same time. They went to eat before Claire met up with us again and we walked around the city, took a tour at Dublin Castle (which I had definitely already done before with the choir; it was like déjà vu!), and for dinner we went to a pub where we were supposed to meet for a literary pub crawl, but it turns out that it was off season so it wasn't happening. All the pub had was sandwiches, I guess because it was before dinner and they were a little fancier than a normal pub. That didn't fill us up so later we went to another pub, which had some really incredible mixed drinks. Kim and I shared a sampler plate. Getting hungry thinking about it! The next day, Tuesday/ my birthday, Claire and I went to the Guinness factory where I had my first pint (I think it was...hard to remember). We took a train after that to Killarney, but arrived a little too late for this small town and ended up eating Indian food for dinner, pretty good! The next day we walked around Killarney National Park, played with some dogs, and saw some incredible views. (like this)
 
From Killarney we took a bus to Galway. We arrived pretty late and we were tired so we skipped dinner in favor of sleep and got up the next morning for an Irish breakfast. That day (Thursday) we took a tour to the Cliffs of Moher and the surrounding area that was arranged through our hostel (which we paid a euro for!) with a friend from work who is studying in Galway this year, Shea.

Monday, May 9, 2011

EAP photo contest winner!

Yesh, that's right! I won a $25 gift card to the UC Davis bookstore for this photo that I took in Normandy on Omaha Beach:

http://ucdavisabroad.com/photo/come-away-o-human-child

And today, I took my Sociology of Immigration final. Pretty sure I did well on it. I knew the subject matter (integration) pretty thoroughly, and wrote as much as I could. Two more to go, plus my papers!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Procrastination's a bitch.

Finals!!

GAHHHHH!!!
Ruining my social life... but at least after next week it will be over/mostly over.

Right now I'm finishing up this ten page paper (or attempting to) and after that I have:
4 page max paper for my Anthro Islam class
1.5 page max essay for travail supplementaire
3-6 page paper for Soc of Discriminations

aaand next week I have one final on Mon, Tues, Wed each.
Can't wait till I can say DONE.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Things I'll Miss About France/Europe!

To follow up my angsty Things I Miss About California post...


Food: (it's probably possible to find/make most of these, but the fact that they won't be the norm is what I'll miss)
-Desperados beer (pretty sure it isn't available in the states, but if you know of a place that sells it, TELL ME)
-Lardon
-Baguette
-Goat cheese/Chèvre
-Kebabs (not the ones on a stick, that would be a brôchette)
-Balsamic Vinegar and Oil on everything and anything
-Formules and Menu Midis
-Wine at every meal (ok, bit of an exaggeration on my part, but it is the norm)
-Jambon serrano
-Variety of fromages 
 

Activities:
-Drinking and walking on the quai
-Going to the market to buy my fruits and veggies
-Pretending like I actually need to study
-Finding new ways to reject my many street admirers
-Speaking French, Hearing French, Reading French, Learning French
-Drinking alcohol (not just the drinking, but the whole go out to a bar and be social part of it. I'll rant on alcohol later.)
-Traveling, and easy access to cheap flights and hostels
-Couchsurfing
-Having friends over for lunch at dinner
-Experimenting with new foods and being creative with the things I make


Things:
-Architecture
-This apartment (yeah, even with the leak and all the quirks)
-Tramway
-French people (they're just so nice!)
 -Outdoor and open air markets
-Quinconces carnivals, fairs, circuses


There is so so much more that I have taken advantage of and I am now realizing how I will truly miss it all. This whole time I've been thinking about going back to California and that it will be so great to see my family and friends again, meet my new niece and nephew, eat mexican food, etc etc but I haven't thought very much about what I am leaving behind. I've really embraced French culture this year and although I don't feel like I've changed too much personality wise, I have grown up a lot and learned so much about the world, as well as experiencing all that I have. Talking with a new French friend today about his upcoming summer in Berkeley, I remembered how new and exciting everything was when I first came, and how Europe has lost a little bit of its novelty for me. Before it was this strange land that I had a whole year to discover, but now it has become my home and the place that has opened my eyes to so many new ideas. I have a little less than two months left so I won't go into it much now, but I'm kind of sure that a lot of my future blog posts will be me going deeper into these thoughts. 

I went to the open air market near my house today and bought a grapefruit (.50€), some apples(2.+€), some bean sprouts (1.50€), jambon serrano (7€), chunk (.5kg) of delicious bread (2.80€), and a fillet of fish (3.23€)(for Seafood Sunday 4, except this time I'm making it) and it was all so fresh and so well priced! I'm sure I spent less than twenty euro on it all.  For lunch I made two small sandwiches with butter, bean sprouts, jambon serrano, balsamic vinegar, and vegetable oil on fresh bread. Yum. I talk about food a lot, huh? I've become such a foodie...