“To the left, to the left…”

I’m trying to write this blog while listening to Irreplaceable by Beyoncé, but it’s not working very well, because I just have this constant urge to dance, but can’t because my host dad’s in the next room, and then by the time I settle down and look at my Microsoft Word screen the song is done and I am forced to start it again.

I am currently in the process of preemptively packing all of my things because of my host brother’s arrival from Brazil on Thursday. I don’t really like packing. I have way too many books.

These blogs should really get written more often, because after a certain point I don’t feel like doing them because so much has happened and I tell myself it will be too hard to explain it all. This is one of those times. But here I am. Typing away.

Two Saturdays ago (the 12th), my school had this ‘oversized gathering’ (aka party) with another school at a club here in Paris. A couple exchange student friends came with me, which saved me as I would have been forced to dance to techno all night with my French friends. But as any good American is trained to dance to rap because of high school dances, we had fun dancing how we wanted. We are exchange students, so we do what we want anyways. It was extremely hot and I perspired copiously. But, you’ll be pleased to know I cut my hair yesterday for the first time since December, so if it so happens that you are dancing near me in the near future, I will be sweating much less. Our night was filled with much more than sweat. It also included fun, confrontation with French people who didn’t like my enthusiastic dancing during 50 Cent, falling asleep in the grass next to an old church while waiting for the Metro to open, and many laughs.

As I got home around 6 in the morning, I slept as much as possible on Sunday (which means until 1 o clock, when my host dad called me for lunch). My friend Elizabeth (exchange student from Cali who was on my EuroTour) was in town with some other exchange students, as she was leaving a few days after for the states. We hung out in a park and then got kicked out because of a severe weather warning, although the sky was perfectly blue and it was sunny out. Go figure.

That night I had an amazing Table Group at Justin’s house. Justin, Taro, Jean (his name is really spelt NDJsomethinsomethin, but I’m not going to even attempt it, although I just did) and I had a great time picking apart 1 John and throwing ideas off each other. Taro brought some German sausages and German beer, which we consumed with pleasure. All a night really needs is some 1 John, German gastronomy, and community.

Thursday was a holiday (although I’m not sure which one, all I know is that I got out of school, which is all I really need to know). Signe (exchange student from Iowa in northern France) was here with some other exchange students (including my friend Lorca from N.Carolina). We sat talking near the Eiffel tower for a while, then did the European thing and got Kebab for lunch, all the while meeting another exchange student Sarah (in my district, from S. Carolina) in the process. We then walked around Montmartre. Sarah left, Signe and I got cheap pints, and then I went home and ate. Successful day.

My good friend Andrew from church was on vacation in China until Thursday, and I hadn’t seen him since Easter, so it was high time Friday night for a reunion. We went to a bar with some of his fellow Fulbright scholar friends, then made an intensely late (but delicious) dinner for one of his friends and her boyfriend who had just arrived that night from Ecuador.

I thought I was saved from waking up early on Saturdays as I finished with my sport class last week, but Saturday morning started at a solid 7:30 in order to meet Andrew and Paul at 8:30 to pick up our bikes for our excursion into the forest. We had been talking about doing something with just us guys for a while, so it felt relieving Saturday as Andrew, Paul, Taro and I got on the train to Fontainebleu (château outside of Paris) to spend a day riding bikes through the forest and enjoying each others’ company. The whole biking aspect turned out to be a bit more difficult as expected, as fold-up city bikes with tiny tires and wheels aren’t exactly designed to perform on forest trails made for mountain bikes. Our optimistic expectations for finishing the 5 hour loop in 4 quickly turned into constant comments on my part concerning how imperative it was we stop for food, and constant ‘let’s just find this spot’ by our German-Japanese tracker, Taro. We stopped for the long awaited picnic in a boulder field, and just spent time talking, watching lizards, and trying to take group photos. Riding through the forest made me realize how much I miss the outdoors. Sometimes in Paris I just feel so cooped up and claustrophobic because of all the gray buildings that seem to constantly encircle me. It’s really good to get out and smell the roses every once in a while, even though we didn’t see any roses.

(Almost done). Sunday we had a church wide lunch. I discovered that Leffe Brune is infinitely better than Leffe Blonde. I also realized that I’m going to miss the beautiful people at my church more than I know. (beautiful as in, their hearts, not as in ‘I’m only going to miss the good looking people at my church). We also make good food as a church (well, not me…they), which I will equally (not really equally) miss.

I’ve lost all motivation in school. It feels good.

Brent

27 days

…And On Saturday Morning I Write Blogs

If I put my week in a box it would resemble this.

Cinco de Mayo. Mmm is the only word I can think of when reflect on last Saturday’s greatness. I had a burrito for the first time in over 8 months. For those of you who know me and my love for burritos, you can guess that I was pretty ecstatic to break that involuntary burrito fast. I went to this quasi-American/Mexican restaurant called Indiana with Tina (goes to American University in Paris/my church) and one of her friends. We had awful service…but I had a burrito (washed down with a typically Mexican corona) which trumps all (burritos wipe away tears). We stole matchboxes and spent our walk to the Gelato place flicking matches. After meeting some more of her friends and watching the girls attempt to climb this sculpture of a head, we had as Tina would say “the best gelato in Paris.” I guess it was pretty good, but I’m not gelato expert, I just judged by the simple fact that it tasted similar to the gelato I had in Italy.

Moving on, Sunday I met up with Brittney (exchange student in Beauvais) for Free Museum Sunday in Paris, where we managed to choose two of the few museums that weren’t free to attempt to visit. Not all was lost, as our third pick was a charm (the Centre Pompidou). As it is the modern art museum in Paris, we had some fun playing the “what is the meaning of this painting?” game. After she headed off I met up with Taro from church to munch on Falafel. For those of you who didn’t know, there was an election Sunday night in Paris, so Taro and I were interested to see if we could find large groupings of people so we could watch some mischief happen. Taro, being an architect, suggested we check out the Socialist Party headquarters, which was designed by Fredrich Niemeyer (who I guess is a famous architect). Confused at our arrival by the absence of people, it took a few minutes to realize that it was in fact the Communist headquarters we were looking at. Socialist, Communist, sometimes even the best of us confuse them. After seeing some interesting architecture (but no riots), we had a beer at a hoppin’ café/bar. Taro is amazing. If you ever get the chance, hang out with him.

My cousin Melanie came Monday through Tuesday, and my history teacher’s absence made it possible to spend the whole day with her Monday. We haven’t seen each other in almost two years, so it was awesome to catch up on what we’ve been doing in our lives. We had some Kebab then walked around Montmartre. As I arrived at her hotel a few minutes after she did, she was a bit jet lagged, so we headed back to her hotel where we took naps/watched a documentary on the foreign unit of the French Legionnaires (yes, contrary to popular belief, France does have some semblance of an army). We then picnic dinnered by the Eiffel Tower and proceeded to watch an interesting French movie. I spent a good part of the movie translating for Melanie, as although she took French immersion, had a little trouble understanding (but I had trouble as well, as it felt like half the actors were speaking with croissants in their mouths). I’m not sure if the people behind us appreciated it, but oh well.

Tuesday was a pubic holiday, therefore I didn’t have school. Melanie’s plan was to visit the Louvre (which I forgot was closed) in the morning and then meet up with me later. The Louvre was not open, so she had to just chill for a couple hours then try to figure out my awfully confusing drawing of the Louvre to figure out where to meet me. After a short walk, we met up with Paul from my church to go on one of his amazing bike tours. Melanie’s maladroit-ness on the bike aside, we had a wonderful time seeing/discovering Paris with Bike About Tours (http://www.bikeabouttours.com/). If you are ever in Paris, go on one of their tours. You get to see the city in such a different light than you do walking as well as learn as much as you need in a few hours to appreciate the city. Tuesday night was another fantastic, multicultural dinner at Paul’s. Of those who ate, there were one American, one American/Canadian (me), a Canadian, a Kiwi, a Japanese/German, an Irishwoman, and two of Paul’s French roommates. Conversations flowed somewhat randomly from English to French as all of us “foreigners” spoke French. The sense of community was amazing, as it is every time Paul has others over for dinner. There is power in a meal-shared.

The rest of my week was comfortably slow. I discovered some things. Like that I can save money by buying frozen food for lunch and cooking it at friends’ houses. Or that spending a few hours reading with a glass of wine in a café is a perfectly appropriate way to spend a Thursday (and Friday) afternoon. But most importantly I learned that, senioritis is most definitely worse the second time around, and that these three weeks of school that remain may be the hardest/longest of the year. Oh high school, I’ve had enough of you for one lifetime, please leave me alone.

37 days.

Brent

3 weeks of vacation and 6 weeks to go

As you see from the pictures in my last blog entry…I had a pretty amazing time to say the least on my Euro Tour. You can all thank me for learning my lesson about overly wordy blogs when I wrote about my Spain trip, so thus I will not be paining you with 6+ pages of intense details of my trip. Instead, I will succinctly summarize its greatness.

11 days
44 exchange students
Cities visited: Strasbourg, Munich, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Venice, Loano, Monaco, Cannes, Cassis, Marseilles, Lyon, Annecy, Geneva, Dijon
Theme song: What Goes Around by Justin Timberlake
Pictures taken: 1174
Average hours of sleep: 3-4

That actually doesn’t give really any insight into my trip, sorry. The pictures do a much better job of explaining, just look at those. In any case, know this romp around Europe goes down in the books as my most memorable experience from this year.

I got home at 4:30 last Friday from Euro Tour and left at precisely 5:35 in order to catch my train for St Nom la Breteche, a small town outside of Paris where I was staying the night with my YEO and Leo (the Brazilian in Paris) before our district’s weekend in Normandy. We ate really good crêpes with my YEO’s German friends and I wowed them with my vast knowledge of several useless German phrases which include “I bought this pen” and “I dropped my fork.”

The next morning we were off to the D-Day beaches in Normandy, which was quite an experience. We started off by watching a 360 degree film about the landings, then went down to a museum by the beach in Arromanches. The intense fog that surrounded the beach was fitting of its history, and made seeing a beach where so many young men died that much more powerful. But we did not stay somber the whole day, as we took full advantage of these free (free as in liberated not as in without cost) beaches to dig our feet in, get a little wet, and laugh. I think the soldiers who died there would find it appropriate that a group of 12 exchange students from around the world, whose countries were on both sides of the war (my YEO is German along with a girl in my district), could come together and enjoy the gift of freedom that they gave.

After the beaches, we headed over to the American cemetery a few miles away. This was even more powerful than the beaches, with line after line of white crosses testifying to the horrible toll the war had. It was also amazing to be there with the German exchange student, as we talked about how awful that part of history was but both shared brighter views for the future. After the American cemetery was the German cemetery. I found it more touching because of a simple detail on the gravestones of the German soldiers, their birthdates. Whereas on the American crosses only the day of death is mentioned, you notice with the German gravestones how truly young the soldiers were. It seemed like almost half were 18 or 19. It is just astounding to think about how different life is now. Using the example of Rike the German exchange student, at her age 60+ years ago she would be fighting in France against the French, whereas now she is acting as a goodwill ambassador there and living with a French family.

Anyways, the next day we visited a Castle built in the late 1100s by Richard the Lionheart and picnicked near there.

Tuesday was a Holiday in France, and therefore I was not obligated to attend school (although if I could just make that non-obligation continue until June 1st my joy would be made complete), so a few exchange students and I tanned in a Park, and then went and saw Das Leben Der Anderen/La Vie des Autres/The Lives of Others. It was a extremely well made and thought provoking film. See it.

Thursday I went and saw Gorgias by Plato (which is a book but was made into a play) with my Philosophy class. It was really hot in the theatre. I sweated a lot. I fell asleep a couple times. But overall it was pretty good.

Last night was really fun. My friend Guillaume and I did a little shopping after school, then we met his girlfriend and saw SpiderMan III. We went to McDonald’s after, and for my first time this year, got a beer with my BigMac meal. Although honestly I think coke goes a little better with a BigMac. Guillaume and I walked home because it was a slightly crisp and beautiful night. He is definitely one of the people at my school that I will be missing the most when I leave. Bref, I had a great time hanging out with him yesterday and speaking French. Did I mention I’m going to miss speaking French too?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Brent