In the depths of winter, I finally discovered in me

 I'm sorry I've stopped updating! 



This is a picture from last week, a Simple Plan concert. :) I'll stop using initials for people's names because it's getting way too confusing. Recently I've been hanging out a lot with Paul, a guy from L.A. who moved to Bordeaux immediately after high school. He's been living in the city now for almost 2 years, and has been taking classes at the same university as me. We're both enrolled in the same theater class, which is how we've become friends. Since Paul has been here for so long (and since he's very outgoing and social and friendly), I've been introduced to many of his friends. 

Anyway, one of his good friends is David, a native Asian-Frenchie. We've actually met a couple weeks ago, but have been hanging out more lately. He's super cute, ahahaha. ;) We mostly talk in English because he likes to laugh at my French. But anyway, he had 2 tickets to a Simple Plan concert that his friend invited him to, except the same friend (who's a big fan) who invited him ending up bailing on him the day of. So David invited me instead. 

It wasn't a bad concert, We the Kings opened the show. The only thing was that David and I aren't exactly big fans (or um..fans at all) of Simple Plan's music. >> We were both there awkwardly amidst a crowd of screaming fans. But it was still a lot of fun. We mostly chatted throughout the whole thing. I got excited every time I heard a song that I actually knew. (David really only knew one song, the one they sing in French, haha). Also Simple Plan's from Canada, so their French was hard for me to understand because Quebecois is really not French at all...

The weather in Bordeaux has also been really bad lately. It's been rainy and cloudy a lot (which everyone tells me is not natural at all for April in Bordeaux). :( Hopefully it will stop raining soon because David and I are supposed to play tennis on Thursday! 

I'm just a lazy butt who doesn't want to change all my photos from its 2000px sized glory to 500 px glory for this blog. But once  get over that, I will post some pictures on this sad, boring looking blog. Also, my internet is so crappy here that it literally days, I kid you not, DAYS, to upload 80 photos onto facebook. So...it might take a while. 

I just wanted to say that there are 2 Italian high schoolers staying for a week at my home stay. :) I think my home stay parents  are addicted to hosting people, because a month ago there was an Argentinian from Buenos Aires who stayed with us for a week. Anyhow, these two high schoolers are from Bologna (close to Florence!). 

They speak French at around the same level as me, and after dinner I chatted with them, except we switched to ENGLISH because their English is better than their French. I have to say, I felt guilty when Andreas looked at me because it's weird speaking English in my home stay house. :( But I can't help it, I have no personality in French! I make people laugh in English! 

But yeah, just talking to foreigners makes me feel so awkwardly proud to be american. It's weird because so many tourist-y sites (and people in the US in general) always say how you shouldn't broadcast being American. But honestly, everyone who finds out I'm from California or the US are always either excited or at their worst, ambivalent. These two Italians were gushing over what I watched and what I listened to. (They watch and listen to pretty much the same things). It's strange to think of America as the world's modern pop culture center. They wanted to know about my daily life and if it was similar to their tv shows (so wanted to lie and say yes!). And it's just weird, because pretty much most of the Americans I know are so jaded about our country. 

On a better note! I just bought new pens. >> And I have been drawing none stop with them. <3 

On another note! I have been talking more to A. and J. They are both very amusing, especially A., who I know likes the attention. 

So pictures of Porto and Paris will not be coming till a bit later. :X Yeah, I know. I suck at uploading stuff. 

This is just a post on how excited I am about everything! 

R. is as big of a Disneyland person as I am, so when we found out about Disneyland Paris we were both itching to go. We've actually already purchased Paris train tickets (68 euros roundtrip!) and have found and rented an apartment that's literally 5 minutes away (walking) from the Disneyland.  

All that's left is getting the tickets! We are most likely going to buy an annual pass (lol) because it's cheaper than getting a 3 day ticket. Also we'll be getting 10% off all stores and restaurants. :D I'm most definitely coming back in May or June, because the Disneyland will be celebrating a 20th Anniversary during those months! <3 Also for my upcoming vacation, I'll be going to Berlin for a couple of days. It turns out that a friend of mine from Berkeley is already there (K.) and so I'll be staying with her during my time in Berlin. :) R's boyfriend is actually in the same program as K. and they both live in the same apartment complex! As it turns out, R. will be in Berlin visiting her boyfriend on the same days that I'm there. :) We'll both be exploring the city together during the times that her boyfriend and my friend have class. I love it when things turn out great like this! 
 

I went to Toulouse in the end of January with a couple other EAP students. The first night we stayed in an apartment, and for the next two nights we stayed at Hotel des Ambassadors. A relatively cheap hotel for great accommodations.  I would definitely recommend the place to anyone who plans on going to Toulouse. The person who worked behind the desk was very nice and friendly. He actually gave us a map and circled every place that we should go to (and highlighted bus routes to get to said place), gave great food recommendations, and even blacked out areas to NOT go to at night. 


This is me in front of the Gare Saint Jean, the main train station of Bordeaux. Yeah, I have my glasses on (for once). 


R. and I in front of a giant rooster sculpture. 



Landscape shots of Toulouse. I'm not sure if you can tell, but Toulouse is actually more "French" than Bordeaux in terms of architecture. The buildings use a lot of red brick (so sometimes I think it's called the Red City?). Bordeaux was actually under English rule for a bit, so much of its architecture and the styling of the city has a British-French mixed feel to it. To be quite honest, although I liked how Toulouse did feel a bit more "French-y", the buildings at Bordeaux are much nicer looking (and cleaner feeling). <3 This is really a long way of saying that while I had fun at Toulouse, I most definitely prefer Bordeaux. 


A group shot of us in front of our hotel. :) 


We went to the Musée des Beaux Arts at Toulouse (much better than the one at Bordeaux, haha). There was a Greco-Roman section that was pretty interesting. There were also a lot of paintings hung Salon style, that ranged from Baroque to Neoclassicism. The Musée was actually formed from a convent, so there's a small church inside of the museum. 






A hallway of the museum. 


A fountain!


The architecture inside the museum was so beautiful. Here's just a shot of the staircase on one of the levels of the museum. 


A small exhibit on Roman columns. Me and R. being silly.


A tablet. I love the typography on this! I don't know what language this is, it doesn't look French. 


Self explanatory. 


Do we copy the pose correctly?? 


An example of the inside of the museum (with the Salon style paintings!) 


This is the Capitole du Toulouse, in the main square of the city. Right across from this building is a cafe shop that was recommended by the hotel desk manager. :) 

There, I got a café viennois, which looked like this:
Yeah, it tasted as good as it looked. 


Group picture at the café. 


On the ceiling of the awning in front of the café were these amazing modern art pieces. 



Nighttime shot of the Capitole. 




We actually went inside the Capitole (though you're only allowed into a part of it). 


A staircase inside. :) 


One of the hallways. 


Out in the plaza was a fire dancer. 



In Toulouse we also went to Les Abattoirs, the modern art museum that was recommended by one of my French art student friends and my art professor. They were doing a special exhibition on Vladimir Velickovic. His stuff is pretty disturbing, but I absolutely loved it. He paint strokes have so much movement in them. It's great how he can capture so much with so little lines. Everything just flows and looks fluid when he paints.

 
Here are a couple of my favorite pieces by him. 



These are all the "tame" pictures that he's done. 




One of my favorites, it's very Francis Bacon-y, which is weird because I hate Francis Bacon. 



My favorite piece, it gave me the chills. 



This is actually a huge Picasso, La dépouille de Minotaure en costume d'Arlequin. 

Landscape shots of Toulouse:






Too bad it's so dark, but another group shot. 


The photography gallery that we went into. 
The French really like their carousels. 


In action!! 

That's it for Toulouse! I actually also went to their Museum d'Histoire Naturelle (I don't know why they call it Museum instead of Musée), but I don't have any pictures of it. It's very interesting though, filled with many animal bones and dead animal specimens. There were also a couple peacocks in their garden! 

These are all my small edited photos, I actually have a lot more which you can find on my facebook here 

But! But!



I just watched The Artist! I've been meaning to watch it for the longest time (and wanted to do it in theaters), but it's been taken down in all the theaters in Bordeaux. It just so happened though, that R. and I had 3 hours to kill in Toulouse since we stayed longer than everybody else (and pretty much saw all we wanted to see in the city), and the one theater that was close to use had more showings of it. Lucky! 

The glory of this movie is that it's made in the style of a 1920's silent film, so people of all languages can enjoy it. :) The intertiles were in French, but surprisingly enough (:D), I could understand pretty much 90% of them.

Anyway, back to the movie. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a feel good film that manages to convey so much with so little. Ironically enough, it uses an old-fashioned charm to highlight its theme on the need to accept progress and innovation; and now I can't imagine a better or different way to present such a message. 

There are so many films that get swamped down by their special effects (Transformers anyone?), forgoing good story telling for flashiness. But The Artist really strips everything down to the core, and in its return to simplicity, powerfully does what movies do best: entertain. I'm still amazed at how the movie could make audiences laugh and cry with so little, how it can say so much with no words. It wasn't a deep story by any means, but it was one that made me feel the whole spectrum of emotions. Also Jean Dujardin is just dreamy, his facial expressions are unreal in this. <3

Here he is winning Golden Globe for Best Actor. <3 Rooting for him in the Oscars~ 

 So today R. and I were going to meet up with some Erasmus (aka, European study abroad students! or people who speak English but are not from America!), but unfortunately, we couldn't seem to find them and we did not have their phone numbers. So, as we were out anyways, we just went into our not-so-favorite English bar to get half-off cocktails, and then decided to head to a movie theater. 

Actually, wait, I suck at telling stories. This isn't relevant to the story, actually, but earlier today, we saw a French movie sans sous-titres, called Intouchables, which is the 2nd highest grossing French movie of all time in France. It's very very good. I highly recommend it. Although my French skills are no way up to par, I had no trouble following the story or seeing what was going on. It was tough understanding a couple of characters and catching the jokes, but all in all, I would say I know what happens and still enjoyed it despite the language barrier. :) I was worried at first, there being no subtitles, and me sucking at French, but yay! I guess my French is actually improving. 
Anyway, back to the story. We decided to head to a movie theater (same one we saw Intouchables at), to catch a movie at 10pm. The movie theater we went to, UGC, is cool in that it has these touch screen movie ticket ordering places, which is cool but sucks for non-French people because they don't accept non-French credit cards. I was just playing with one of them, trying to figure out which movie to watch since it had all the times up, but wasn't actually intending to buy anything because I can't. But slowly, a line started to form behind us. There was a group of 3 guys next to us, and I was worried that we were holding up the line.

Since my native language is English, my natural reaction to things is to respond in English, despite being in a foreign country, thus: 

Me (to the 3 random guys): Ack, sorry, I'm not actually buying anything, here. 
One of the guys: Oh, it's alright, we're just gonna use this machine instead. 
Me: ...wait, YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

Thus the start of a beautiful friendship. Haha no, not really. We all started chatting however, and discovered that the 3 guys are actually from England and are just abroad. It pretty amazing. R. and I just ended up watching Mission Impossible with them, and then parted ways after the movie. :) Maybe we'll end up seeing them someday. Haha. It was an awesome experience though. Just randomly talking to a bunch of strangers on accident and having a pleasant experience. :) I wish we ended up going to a bar or something after the movie and just chatted though, since I miss talking to people in English / actually sounding like a human because I can properly express myself in a language I know. 

It's been taking me a while to actually upload my pictures. But god, Bordeaux is just so beautiful. Last Friday, we got out relatively early (around 1ish I believe), and I just wandered around the center of the city with a couple other EAP students. We explored the Gironde (the river), who's bridge the Pont de Pierre is just freaking fantastic.

Here's a picture of just a normal sidewalk.

While walking around, we decided to go to the tallest building we could see, which ended up being the Basilique Saint-Michel.



This is really just going to be a picture spam. Here is the Fleche de Saint Michel, a bell tower, I believe.


Err, and no, the sky isn't actually that blue. Haha, I wish! Although, last week it was really nice weather (unlike today, which was foggy as hell and freezing for my standards).

Bordeaux also has a lot of small little plazas and open spaces within certain streets. I don't quite remember which one this Plaza was called, but it's really close to a clock tower.


I have a close up of the aluminum/steel boulders on a group. They are usually children crowding around it, just running and jumping. A little boy waved and yelled out "Au revoir!" when us EAP students left (which was super adorable~)


So that's it for pictures. :)

Today is the Lancement of Les Soldes, a 6 week long, government mandated sale throughout all of France. It only occurs twice a year, and we're lucky enough to be around while it's going on! It started today, and each day prices get lower and lower, though the inventory goes down as well. We got out of class early again today, so almost everyone just headed out to Rue Sainte Catherine, one of the longest pedestrian streets (2km), filled with stores and boutiques, just to shop. :) Almost every store is 50% off, with some going up to 80% off. It was very crazy and very fun, with very very long lines. I didn't buy that much...but I plan on going back a lot seeing as I live in downton. 8D It's pretty difficult finding things, however, due to the swarms of people. It's all very chaotic. I have a big exam tomorrow, but tomorrow is Thirsty Thursday, and on Friday we're going to Saint Émilion for wine tasting as a class.

EDIT:

I just bought plane tickets to Porto from Bordeaux because of some sale, although this was the only place Bordeaux went to that was super cheap. All in all, round trip ticket including all the administrative/web fees was 40 euros. WTF, without the 12 euro charge for "administration," the flight would've been 27. Fucking amazing. I love traveling. Haha, wasn't even thinking about going to Portugal, but who can say no to a round-trip flight that costs cheaper than a one-way ticket to socal. Cheaper than the peacoat I wear to school. Guhhh I love this. I just want to go traveling every weekend. >> 

 So, I've been in Bordeaux for around a week now, and with my host family for around 4 days. The first couple of days (2 days) with my host family was pretty lonely. I would hear all these stories from other people in my ILP classes who talk about how interested in their own lives their host family was, and how willing they are to show them around the city, etc. and how much they want to learn about American culture in return. I think that since my home stay family has hosted so many students before them, they don't care that much about American culture because they've asked questions to their previous host-ees. So, yeah, they don't really talk to me THAT much. Only if I say something first, they haven't tried to engage a conversation. 

I'm very lucky in that while I'm in a home stay, it's independent enough that it feels like an apartment. My host parents are gone till around 8 pm every day, and the 3 other french high schoolers that live here constantly have their room doors shut (thus making me feel like I shouldn't bother them just because I'm...quite...frankly...a...bit...bored sometimes). So basically, a lot of times it feels like I can't/don't interact with anyone in my home stay until dinner time, which is always (though not recently! the fewer people their are at the dinner table, the easer it is to communicate, thus less boredom!) an awkward affair. 

But things got a LOT better after the third day. Which was awesome because I was starting to think that it would be awkward and bleh for a while. I was chatting with the host mom while she was making dinner, and through some questions, she revealed that J. can actually speaks English because he studied abroad in America for a year. Queue me instantly going (WTF, THEN WHY DOESN'T HE TALK TO ME.) Haha, after that revelation, I went up to J's room and asked him if he spoke English (in French), to which he responded with (Yeah, in English). 

Me (in English): WHAT. WAIT WHAT? Then why don't you talk to me?  D: D: D: D:
J (in English): huh? like in English?
Me (English): Yeah! Or like...at all YEAH WHY DON'T YOU TALK TO ME HUH I'M SO LONELY HERE WHAT THE FREAK
J (English): BECAUSE YOU ARE HERE TO LEARN FRENCH! 
Me (English): oh...wait what, we don't even talk in French!
J: ....
Me (in French): will you practice French with me?

-- Queue to awesome first, legit, long conversation (ever really) I've had in French the entire time I've been here to the home stay (so 3 days in). And after that things started getting better. :) J. is a really cool 17 year old in his last year of high school, who wants to go to business school and travel around. Was in Kansas for a year doing a study abroad program, and went to 1934034123480134 states. Likes SF and NY like a boss. Also loves sports, but not basketball.

I still need to get A. to warm up to me, but it's very hard because he speaks no english. At all. And he speaks French at 212343 miles per hour. Or km, I guess now that I'm here and he's French. I can't understand a word he says because he slurs his words together a lot and uses slang. I'm pretty sure my face is in perpetual confusion when he says something to me. We can only interact when he talks to me as if I were an infant. Which, I'm sure, makes him less amicable to want to talk to me. (The other A. lives in another building across the backyard, so I never see her until dinner time, so basically we don't interact). 

--
Awkward conversations I've had at the dinner table where I embarrass myself in some way:

R (youngest son, ~24, in French): How old is your brother? 
Me: uhhh....vingt-deux, vingt-trois? (22/23?)
R: ?? you don't know the right age?? What year was he born?
Me: UHHH why are you asking me about dates? it's almost the hardest thing to say...mille....mille....huit-cent... quatre-vingt dix-neuf wait what, that is not right at all...
WHOLE TABLE: LOL 
Me: D: D: D: 
(Eventually we hit the right date, but um, yeah, my brother was most definitely not born in the 19th century). 

--

A: *Tells his WHOLE life story that is around a 45 minute spiel,where the host parents interject with their own thoughts; basically only J. is listening because this is new information to him, and he actually understands it*
Me: Zoning out because I was lost within the first phrase. 
Host Dad (French): Do you understand anything? 
Me: No. 
Everyone: ... 
Me: ....
A: *continues with his story* 

(Seriously, that day, I wanted to just take a nap at the dinner table. His life though is extremely interesting, I caught bits and pieces of bits of sentences, and can place together that there is some sort of sad/tragic/childhood past going on there.)

-- 

We're all playing around with the iPad 2
Host Dad (in French): I want the sketchbook app!
A/J: *helps him download it*
Me: oooooohhhh
Application: All the instructions are in English!
A: *reads aloud the English instructions*
Me (in French): OMG, A. YOU KNOW ENGLISH?!!! YOU CAN READ ENGLISH??!!
Host Dad (in French): He reads it but doesn't understand a word of it!
A: *wide grin* 

--

Host Dad (French): Where are you going out tonight?
Me: Umm...UM...je sortirai avec des amis! Je vais EXPLORER LA VILLE~
Everyone: LOLOLOLOL

(I thought saying that I will explore the city wasn't that strange of a sentence, but everyone burst into laughter for the longest time and I have no idea. IT'S NOT THAT WEIRD THAT I WANT TO EXPLORE THE CITY!!) 

So all those stereotypes about French people being tall and skinny are true.  And by people I don't just mean actual people, even the image on crosswalk signals are stick-thin (no really, I'm being completely serious; on an entirely different note, crosswalk signals change depending on what part of France/country you are in. Apparently in one area of France the signal to stop walking is posed with his hands on his hips, in a very ~sassy way). Even drinks are tall and skinny. Okay I'll stop now about that. 

Anyway, I have now been in France for ~24 hours now. Got scammed by the taxi driver (why am I not surprised by this...), but got to Y's place all in one place. She's staying with an old land lady, and the apartment is appropriately and stereotypically very old, european-lady-ish. Actually, now that I think about it, if Umbridge lived in an apartment in Bordeaux, it would be furnished and decorated just like this (with all the pink, floral accents and everything). 



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I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and switch over to Dreamwidth. I'll be cross-posting everything though, so I won't be completely dead on Livejournal, although to be honest, I wasn't quite alive here either. 

Just a small heads up, nonetheless. I don't want to get rid of this account simply because I've had it for so long!

But yeah, please follow me on yuji.dreamwidth.org

:)