Okay. I've posted a couple of little posts over the past couple weeks when I've had a few moments, but now I think I actually have the time to actually write a little about my trip to France.
To start off, I flew Air India. Not a huge fan. Most things about the flight sucked, especially the in-flight entertainment which was about 90% Bollywood. The food, on the other hand, was above average for airplane food. But if you don't like Indian food you'll probably be pretty irritated as the plane smells like curry. Anyway, they're pretty lame and I don't recommend them (though they were the cheapest option which certainly counts for something).
Got to Paris and went first thing to the school we were to be studying at, where we were then shuttled off to our respective families where we were to live for the next two weeks. This was a little nerve-racking, as it was the first real speaking-French-with-native-French-speakers experience for most of us, but at least in my case it went well. I ended up with this sixty-fiveish year-old lady who has a nice three-room apartment where she lets out all three rooms to students like me while she lives in the living room. As near as I could tell she has no job to bring in any income on top of what she gets from having foreign students stay at her place, but it may just be that she's retired now, but used to have a real job. At any rate, she's never been married, has no kids, and has been letting her rooms out to students for the last 25 years, so it's pretty much her life. It was incredible. I had a large bedroom with a private balcony and breakfast and dinner were part of the package. I have never in my life eaten so well or so much. I put on between five and ten pounds when I was in Paris. This lady could be running her own five-star restaurant. Every night it was course after course (always at least four courses) of culinary masterpieces. I felt like throwing up after dinner I was so stuffed. Some of my fellow students were not nearly so lucky. One girl was stuck with a couple who hated Americans and were very rude to her. They fed her just the cheapest crap you can think of and one night even had a dinner party for which they made a bunch of really great food and they made her separate ---smurfy--- food to eat. Lame. My set up, though, was awesome. And I was only paying like 35 euro per night for my room and all this food I was getting. Amazing. I got her contact information so that I can give it to anyone who's planning to visit Paris for any significant amount of time. You seriously could not do better. Often my friends would cancel dinner with their host families in order to go out somewhere and I always declined and just met up with them later. There was just no way I was going to pay money for food that would certainly be vastly inferior to what I already had waiting for me at home.
So that was where I was staying. Classes were pretty cool for the most part. They were useful at any rate, and I loved my professor. The only problem was that it was just a single four-hour class listening to the same person talk the entire time which was pretty damned tedious. The last hour always felt as long as the previous three combined. We saw loads of cool things of course, from Versailles to the catacombs to the Louvre to Notre Damn, etc., etc., etc.. And one night I went to a concert of one of my favorite bands (Built to Spill) who just happened to be playing in Paris while I was there and about an hour before the show my friend and I went into a nearby pub for a drink and about five minutes later the band came in and sat down at the table next to us. So we pulled up chairs and had drinks with them and then got our pictures taken with them. Pretty badass!
Oh yeah, and I went to the French Open! That was amazing. So. Much. Fun. And while there I just happened to get stopped by a TV crew to get interviewed by a French news station. Good times.
After two weeks of Paris I was sad to be leaving for Nice. Of the eleven students who went over to France from my school, though, I was the only one who was sad. Everyone else was excited for the beaches of the French Mediterranean. But I just love Paris so much and felt like I hadn't even put a dent in it. Like I hadn't even scratched the surface of it. Or smudged the surface. More like I had just breathed on it and fogged it up slightly, and even that disappeared almost instantly. And I knew I was in for some fun beaches, but hell, I was set to move to Miami just as soon as I got back to the states. I was about to have unlimited access to beaches any time I wanted. So, anyway, we got to Nice and it was actually pretty exciting once I got there, though I could tell that it was not going to be Paris. I lucked out again on the host family. It wasn't as good as my Paris setup, but it was a nice room in a great location and the lady cooked really well (though, once again, not as good as my Paris mom).
I liked Paris much more than Nice, and I would have preferred to stay there the entire month, but the school in Nice was a vast improvement. Instead of a single 4-hour class every day, the classes were broken down into a 2-hour grammar class and a 2-hour conversation class, each taught by a different professor. Once again, I loved my professors, and the classes just breezed by in Nice, unlike the tedium that defined the Paris school experience.
One cool thing about Nice, though, is that the South of France is just one smallish town after another and they're all just a few euro train ride away from eachother, so we visited Cannes, Monoco, Villefranche, San Paul, Ens, Antibes and more. And one cool thing, is no two beaches had the same type of surface. Nice was largish rocks, like silver dollar size, while Cannes was sand and Monoco was playground-style gravel, and Villefranche was this super-fine gravel like what you might put in an aquarium. This surface was my favorite. It wasn't as dirty and stick-to-everything as sand, but it was still fine enough that you could run around on it without pain or injury.
Anyway, that's it in a nutshell. I could, of course, go on forever and relate loads of amazing individual experiences, but I doubt anyone is especially interested in all that. Let's just say I drank probably 20 or more bottles of wine, averaged probably four hours of sleep per night and had one of the best times of my life. And my French-speaking skills probably doubled in just a month which is nothing short of amazing.
Thanks again to everyone who donated to my fund. I don't know how to put that in strong enough terms. And to all of you: GO TO PARIS!!! It is amazing. I'm convinced that it's the greatest city on the planet. New York and Rome might vie for second place, but they barely approach Paris. You've really got to spend some time there. And remember, I went there for a month eight years ago before I spoke a word of French and had absolutely no trouble at all. Don't let the language thing scare you off. Speaking French isn't remotely required to enjoy France. In fact, if you speak English you can go just about anywhere in the world and you won't have any serious difficulty.
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Topic: France (Read 3487 times)
