This has been the longest time I have gone without posting on my blog! I am so sorry I just really wanted to make a long interesting post but I didn't have anything to exciting going on in one day. Let's start with Thursday. I've learned that I am going to dread Thursdays and Fridays. Thursday I start with class at 11:30am and then go till 5:00pm with a half hour break for lunch. But during that break a bunch of us have to run over from the IPP school to the Institute Catholic. In the morning my class was L'Espaces Parisian. It's basically a Paris geography and literature class. Then in the afternoon I have the equivalent of my French lit 2 class from 2-5. It is very brutal. After class on Thursday though I went to the grocery store and got some noodles, cheese, and a croissant. I went home and got ready and then went straight over to Lauren's to make some dinner. The wheat noodles were delicious! After dinner I went out with Lauren and her roommate Emily. We went to this place called Cite U ( I took the tram for the first time to get there, who even knew there was a tram in Paris!). It is in northern Paris and it is this giant campus that have different dorms of different students from all over the world. We went to the USA dorm and I was able to meet some of Laurens friends. We hung out there for a little while and then went to a bar called Cafe Oz. If the name didn't give it away it was an Australian themed bar. There was a lot of dancing. I had a lot of fun with Lauren and Emily but didn't really know anyone else who was there. At around two we ended the night and all shared a cab ride home. I had already been up so late so I decided to stay up another hour to watch American Idol live and see John Park make it into the top 20!!

On Friday I had another very long day of classes. At 12:00 I had my theater class till 1:30 and then had a phonetics class at the Institute Catholic at 2. So we all had to make a very mad dash to the cafeteria and then to find our class room. The phonetics teacher is pretty funny and it's the only class I don't have homework in hence it is my favorite class. After class I came home again and got ready because Emily Rein had just come in town!! I met Emily, Amanda, Julie, and Becca at a metro stop in little Tokyo. Then we went to a Chinese restaurant where I had some fried rice. Don't worry mom I did ask for some poulet (chicken) with it but they only had pork, so I opted no to the protein. After a very greasy dinner (but very delicious) I went back to Julie and Amandas and we got ready to go out. The goal of the night was to go to a bar so we went to rue de lappe (a street that has a lot of bars). All the bars looked very full and kind of creepy so we ended up just getting some nutella banana crepes. We sat down to eat and realized that we didn't care to go to a bar, we really just wanted to spend the time catching up. We walked from the Bastille to my apartment then stood in the lobby of my apartment for an hour and a half and just talked. It was really nice catching up and seeing Emily. It's crazy knowing that she has been in Barcelona for two months, and I am just approaching week two in Paris.

On Saturday a bunch of us went to Mortmarte. There are really only two things to do there, see the Sacre Cour, and see the Moulin Rouge. We hit up both those tourist spots.
The Sacre Cour was very beautiful and very high up so we were able to see an awesome view of Paris.
The Moulin Rouge was much smaller than what it seemed to be in the movie but it still made me feel like watching the movie and I still was glad to see it. It started out as a beautiful sunny day but the more we walked the colder it got. We couldn't figure out anything else to do so we cut the day short at around 4 and I went home and took a nap.




I wasn't planing on doing anything too exciting at night, but I ended up calling Caroline and she lives right by the Eiffel Tour so that's where I got to go! Me, Caroline, Erin, and Erin went to go see the Eiffel Tour. Even though it was pouring rain and freezing cold it was still absolutely amazing. Every hour it starts lighting up for five minutes which so cool to watch. I cannot wait to go back when it's nice out and actually climb it. After the Eiffel Tower we went to a little cafe and I had some crepes for dinner and we just all sat around and talked. It was a pretty fun Saturday night.








This morning I woke up numerous times to loud banging noises coming from outside. It turned out the wind was so strong it was knocking things over left and right. When I finally woke up for the day, I was leaving my house and my host mom gave me fair warning to be careful cause it's so windy. She was right. I left to go to the McDonalds by school. Why you ask? It has wifi and a bunch of people from my group came and we were trying to figure out spring break and other travel plans. As of now it seems that spring break will consist of Italy and Greece. I am so excited it is just so stressful figuring out actual plans, booking flights and hostels, and trying to find weekend that fit. After Micky Dee's I came home and just did some homework, showered, and skyped a little bit. It was a nice relaxing Sunday, which is good fuel to make it through this upcoming long week of classes.

I hope everyone had a great February! I can't believe it's March!!

The Arts- Theatre, Paintings, American Idol

Hi All! Sorry for the day late post but yesterday wasn't worth writing about. First off I wanted to say thank you to all of my followers especially all my friends that are telling me they love it! I miss you guys and knowing you're reading it makes me happy to know I'm not forgotten.

So let's start with yesterday, it was definitely not the best day of my trip. I woke up late because I did not have class. I wasn't feeling totally the positive Ashley most of you know me as because this experience really is hard. Being away from family and friends you find yourself missing everything from big things like my family, friends, macaroni and cheese, to the little things such as the SDT Sammies exchange. I am still getting adjusted to my major environment change and I know that hopefully soon enough I will feel like a true Parisian.

So to clear my mind I took a walk. My original destination was the Bastille to see Julie and Amanda's apartment which is in the 11 arrondissement and should take around 15 minutes to get there. It was really nice out and I just kept walking and walking and finally ended up looking at my map and seeing that i was in the 3rd...oops. It wasn't a completely unproductive walk. I was able to clear my mind and I also bought the sim card for my French phone so now I can finally stay in contact with my friends. This should make life a million times easier.

I gave up on my walk and hopped on the metro over to Julie and Amanda's stop and they picked me up and went back to their apartment. It is very simple but I like it a lot. They definitely have space for both of them and seem to have a great life out here. I can't wait till I get comfortable like that. After a lot of catching up and some skyping with home friends they offered me some food. WHEAT NOODLES! I was so happy!! I left their apartment a couple hours later and knew that I would be back soon so they can show me some of the Paris night life I have yet to see.

So yesterday was pretty boring but today was a lot more exciting. First I had my earliest class of the semester which was at a whopping 10:30 am. This class is honestly worth getting up early and worth being on Fridays. It is a theater class. It is with all IPP kids (my friends on the program) and it is taught by an actor so he gets very into the lectures. Also the readings look pretty interesting and we get to go to three shows throughout the semester. The best part is...i didn't get lost on my way to class!! This building is relatively easy to find, so that put me in a good mood all day. After class I picked up a banana nutella crepe from my favorite crepe stand (the only one I've been to in Paris) and then went with my other friends to a different place for lunch. Obviously I picked up a crepe just to be safe if I didn't like anything in the Institue Catholique Cafetaria. All in all I was happy with that purchase.




After lunch we ventured to the Musee D'Orsay, a beautiful old art museum, that features the most famous artists. We got to go in for free because we were students, which is always a nice bonus, but this would be worth paying for. The paintings of Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, etc are truly breathtaking in person. Here are some of the paintings that truly caught my eye.

























































Okay here are the pictures and their painters in order of appearance (Left to Right):
Le Bal- James Tissot
Nympheas Bleus- Claude Monet (My favorite)
Another Famous Monet one I forgot to take a picture of the name plate
Les Joueurs de Cartes- Paul Cezanne (reminded me of Brian haha; there was an even better one that reminded me of him but it was a little embarrassing, if you really want to know just ask!)
Les Chateau Des Papes- Paul Signac
Pommes et Oranges- Paul Cezanne
Champ de Bananiers- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Danseuses Bleues- Edgar Degas
Restaurant de la Machine a Bougival- Maurice de Vlaminck
Portrait de L'artiste- Vincent van Gogh
Paris, quai de Bercy, effet de neige- Armand Guillaumin
Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe- Claude Monet

and the last sculpture was just something I liked!

After the museum me and Erin and Beth walked around a little and discussed travel plans. I am starting to figure out some of my plans which is really exciting and should make for much more interesting blog posts! I got home at around 645 and had dinner with my host mom, then skyped with my real mom and did some homework. Then procrastinated my homework to write this blog post! I hope all is well in Northbrook, Chambana, Rome (hi Jori), and everywhere else my followers come from!!

!!!!!!!!!VOTE FOR JOHN PARK TONIGHT ON AMERICAN IDOL!!!!!!

Classes Day 1

So if the title didn't give it away today was my first day of classes. Sounds like it should be a boring post, but it definitely was not a boring day...probably actually the most stressful day since I've been here.
I woke up at around 11 which was very nice to actually sleep in. I thought I was meeting my friends at the St. Placide metro stop to get our pass navigo for the metro. Unfortunately I hadn't checked my facebook yet so I showed up at the station just to find out they weren't there. They were actually meeting some where else. I just started wandering around the streets of the six arrondissement to try and find my school. I walked around for a while and after a long period of time I went straight to panic mode. Instinctively I called my dad and had him google map me to school. Of course an hour later when I got to school I learned that my class was in a building that isn't attached to the school. Once I finally got to class late I was able to sit down for a minute and breath...
WRONG it's very hard to zone out during these classes considering they are all in French, French that I can barely understand. I know she mentioned something about Ancient Greek, and Ancient Rome (what's up jori!) but I really missed all the details. The class I had today was called L'Europe Hier et Aujourd'hui (Europe yesterday and today) and its goes from 14-17 (2-5). The three hours went by actually pretty quickly because I was trying to focus really hard on the French, I didn't succeed.
After class a bunch of us met up in the school courtyard and all had errands to run. My errands consisted of eating (if you know me you know how big of a struggle that is). We wend to my favorite crepe stand and I got a crepe with nutella and bananas tres delicieux!! After some refueling I went to the phone store to try and figure out a French phone (failure) and then walked around the street St. Michele with some friends to explore a little bit. We ended up at a Monoprix, my first Monoprix experience. It was great, it's a store kind of like Target that has everything you could've ever asked for (besides hair straighteners). I bought toothpaste.
It was already around 8 already so we found a metro and all went our respective ways home. I also got my Navigo pass which was exciting.
I hope everyone is having a much less stressful day than me!!

Versaille and Moving In

As you can see from my the name of this blog post I really have given up on creativity with this. So I believe I left the last post off with my adventures in the Louvre. So Saturday we had another really busy day planned. We were off to Versailles to see the kings palace and gardens.

The weather didn't seem to want to cooperate with us at first. When we woke up it was raining, then when we went down to breakfast it was snowing, then we left for Versailles it was sunny. Nevertheless it was freezing out most of the time. When we first got there we went to the nicest McDonalds I had ever seen before. It was so clean and so beautiful...not exaggerating at all. After our french fry fix we headed towards the castle. It is absolutely enormous and so beautiful. We got audio guides and were free to roam around on our own for while. Some of the highlights of the castle were the hall of mirrors and I thought the bedrooms were pretty cool.





Very interesting fact I learned- The queen had to give birth in public so everyone would know there was a true heir to the throne. Gross right?

After wandering the castle I met up with a few people and we went out to the gardens. I would've enjoyed them a lot more if I wasn't shivering. They are beautiful and HUGE. I definitely plan on coming back and exploring more when the weather gets nicer.




After the gardens we went for lunch...where at you ask? McDonalds! I was never more happy to eat chicken nuggets and french fries. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy the copious amounts of carbohydrates I eat every day, but I do miss some protein. After McDonalds we took the train back to Paris (only about a 25 minute ride). It is a system called the RER and you can get to it via the metro. During that 25 minute ride we decided to go to the Gallarie Lafayette. This is a giant seven story high department store. When we got there the music they were playing with a techno dance remix to Party in the USA- I really felt truly in Paris at that point..NOT. The store looked great but was super crowded because of the weekend. Caroline, Erin, and I were totally overwhelmed so we went across the street to the home goods department to get BLOW DRYERS!!!! That was very exciting. The mall was really overwhelming but I will definitely be back there during the week when it's not prime shopping time to see what they have to offer.

Across from the Gallery Lafayette there is an opera house where the Phantom of the Opera takes place in. It really does have underground tunnels and passageways just like the musical. Pretty cool I thought.




Once we got back to the FIOP we enjoyed our last meal together. Plain noodles...fantastic. Then me and Caroline went up to our room to pack all our stuff together then went over to Erin and Beth's room for a little wine night. Two euro bottles of wine are hard to pass up. It was nice being together with everyone for the last time because from now on it will be very lonely at night :(

Now the big day...Sunday Morning! I woke up more anxious than ever. Ate my typical croissant and then grabbed all my suitcases. We all met up in the lobby and Dr. Costello and Sean were there ready to help us with cabs. They ordered a ton of cabs for us and then sent us on our way to our host families. After a very quick cab ride I ended up right in front of the door I had stared at many many times through google maps. When I got in I was so thankful because I saw an elevator (the apartment is on the fourth floor (third actually but the first floor is always 0)). I pressed the open button and I saw the elevator was about the size of my closet and realized there was no way I was going to use it. I dragged two of my bags up the stairs and meetings Mme Riz at her apartment. She looked at me like I was nuts (maybe because I was speaking the worst broken French ever or maybe because I was holding two bags and still had one more to come) and told me to take the elevator next time. So that's how I got my third bag up there.



Once I arrived she showed me all around her apartment. It took a while to unpack all my stuff but once it was finished I was so relieved and so exhausted I took a nap. When I woke up we had a salad for lunch together (she's only speaking to me in English today so we had a good conversation). Then she left to go out Tango dancing for the night. I left as well and went to go see Lauren's apartment which is so nice! Then I met one of her roommates and we went and got ice cream, coffee, and hot chocolate. The most important part of my whole afternoon was that I made it from my house, to my metro stop, to the transfer metro stop, then to Laurens without getting lost!!!! Very exciting stuff.

When I returned home I skyped with my family and Brian for a little while and then wrote this blog post. I really want to include pictures in this but the internet isn't the best and isn't letting me do it. Maybe when I bring my computer somewhere else I will. Thanks for reading!!

Ma Chambre-->

Tourist 101

--> The Seine

The past few days have been filled with information sessions, guided tours, and lots of walking. On Thursday we started the day with a two hour discussion on being a student in France, safety, security, and other practical matters. The head of our program decided that this presentation should be done in French...leading me to completely zone out. My lack of intelligence with the French language makes me think that the past 10 years of studying really may have been useless, we'll see. After the first two hours we had a lunch break where I tried some French cheese, I have absolutely no idea what it was called but it wasn't half bad. Then we had more meetings about our host families. After all the meetings me and my roommate, Caroline, were so exhausted we both napped. Then lovely dinner time in the cafeteria. Let's just say my diet yesterday consisted of a croissant and two cookie dough flavored balance bars. We were free for the night at that point and a few of us went to a local pub and just sat around for a couple of hours. Then we went straight to sleep, jet lag is still kicking in.
Today was a much more exciting touristy day. In my last post I say "Welcome to Paris" I really didn't know what that meant until I actually got into the heart of the city today. It is absolutely beautiful. We started out this morning going to the ILFC (my school for the next four months). I took my first ride on the metro as well! Once we got to the school we were told we had to take our oral placement exams. Things got so screwed up and so confusing they eventually kicked us out without taking the tests. That was quite the relief for me. I did get my school ID card though, so the trip wasn't completely pointless. After the ILFC a few of us wanted to see where the IPP school was (another school I have classes in). The schools are almost directly diagonal from each other and we get to cut through the "Jardin du Luxembourg" to arrive at the IPP school. It is a beautiful giant garden that well be even more beautiful once the weather starts to get nice. After checking out the school we went to a crepe and sandwich shop and I got my first crepe in France! It had sugar and butter on it, very delicious, not very healthy. After lunch we decided just to walk around to see the stores and stands around school. After staring at the map for a while we realized we were very close to Notre Dame. We decided to go there. This was the first major monument I have seen so far and it definitely lived up to it's expectations.

It was very beautiful on the outside and the stained glass made it even prettier on the inside.



After that we started walking around to try and find a metro station to take us to the louvre. The longer we walked the more we couldnt find a station. The longer we walked also brought us close to the Louvre. We ended up just walking there. By this time you could imagine our feet were killing us. Once we got to the Louvre we met up with the rest of the group and Dr. Costello (the director of the program) gave a tour, again all in French, again I couldn't understand a thing :(

I got to see all the famous sites such as the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa.









After the Louvre I met up with Amanda and Lauren for dinner and finally saw the infamous Bastille that Julie talks about all the time on her blog. It is such an exciting area with so many people and so much to do. I am so excited to finally move in over there on Sunday. That's all I have for now but tomorrow should be more exciting...Versailles here I come!