travels with song-my

Hello 2010

2009-12-31T21:49:00.000-08:00

For me, 2009 was one of those years that I couldn't wait for. I had singled out this year as a year that would determine so much -- the year I would live in another country, the year I would graduate college, the year we would see a new president in office. I knew it would be a year of transition. But the truth is, you underestimate what that actually means. When you are truly at the end of a journey, you rarely take the time to think about what you went through to get there or how you felt throughout the whole thing. Well, I'm not at the end yet... so it's a good time to take a minute and look at what this year meant to me.

I spent the first half of the year traveling. I won't lie -- studying abroad included studying, but much less studying than I was used to, even though I had specifically chosen to study at a renowned French institution. So I thought of the whole experience like a prolonged vacation. I stopped in New York City on the way to Paris, spent quality time with my boyfriend and friends living in the city, and then said hello to a new country that would be my home for the next 5 months. When you are taken out of your comfort zone -- no matter how willingly you go -- you are forced to learn to deal with a lot on your own. I had to learn to navigate the new school system, make new friends, and become accustomed to French culture and really cold weather... which all came to an abrupt end when I received news that my grandmother had passed away. I flew home for a weekend, which completely threw me off. I also learned my dad might be sick, and was being tested for cancer. I felt that I had taken 3 steps backwards. When I returned to Paris, I was sad, felt guilty for having only gone home for 3 days, and couldn't focus on being in a new city. I missed home.

But a month later, I felt much better and was happy to be in Europe. I looked back on my sadness and couldn't figure out the sudden change that came about that made me feel okay. I think it was a combination of things: the weather improved in Paris, I had a new group of international friends, and the passing of time eased everything. From there came spring break week in Turkey, weekend trips outside of Paris, visits from friends and family, and nights/picnics out on the town. Whenever I get nostalgic for Paris, I miss those warm spring nights when we drank wine, snacked on baguettes & cheese on the banks of the Seine the most.

Then came a slew of schoolwork. Suddenly, I lamented my broken French, and I questioned why I had decided to leave so much schoolwork until the end. I had a stressful few weeks where I hoped the teachers would pity me enough to grant me at least a 10 (out of 20) for my final grades (a 10 is the lowest grade you can get that would still be considered passing). Turns out they did pity my sucky French, and didn't care that I said a grammatical error every three words! Great! But when it was all over, I didn't feel ready to leave. How do you say good-bye to friends who live all around the world, ones you don't know if you'll ever see again?

Then came a month traveling on my own to a slew of random places: Rome, Tunisia (my first time to Africa!), Sweden (where I swing-danced the nights away at the Herrang Dance Camp), Norway, Berlin, and Prague. At the end, I congratulated myself on traveling for 4 weeks alone without any major hiccups. I returned to Paris to pick up my things and pack for home, and I finally felt ready to leave.

I was thrilled to return to California. The first month I was back, I relished the weather, the lax attitude of Northern Californians (people who didn't look twice when I wore flip-flops and gym shorts everywhere), and the comfort of being with my friends and family. I couldn't wait to find a job and move to San Francisco to be with all my friends. Then the reality from the recession set in. As an unemployed recent college grad with no real work experience, I quickly learned how hard it would be to find a job. I felt like I was grasping blindly in the dark, trying to find anything at all. When a few opportunities didn't pan out, I felt discouraged. It was the first time things weren't working out like I had planned. I switched directions, and made the decision to go to Vietnam with my mom, dad, aunts, and uncles to attend a huge family reunion and to spread my grandparents' ashes in the sea. I met more relatives than I will ever meet in my life, and was there to see my grandparents finally put to rest.

I came back from Vietnam with a renewed outlook on my current situation -- that in time, things will come together. In time, this period of uncertainty will pass, and I will look on it with reflection to grow from the experience. I don't see my involuntary unemployment as a blessing, but maybe by the end of 2010, I will see it differently. I'm not going to hide that I have big hopes for 2010, but these hopes come from my realization that even though 2009 wasn't the easiest year for me, I was able to learn a lot about myself and about others around me. After a year like that, how can you not expect a lot from yourself?

So with this, I bid a big farewell to 2009, and say a hopeful hello to 2010!

#2 Feliz Navidad

2009-12-15T23:30:00.000-08:00

My mom's favorite Christmas song is Feliz Navidad. She's all smiles and gets downright giddy when she hears the song, dancing in the car (even while driving) and singing along in really bad Spanish. All conversation, station-surfing, and otherwise disruptive activities stop for the 3 minutes that Feliz Navidad plays.

My mom likes the song so much that she has tried to find a recording of the exact version they play on the radio. Since she hasn't yet succeeded, we have many different versions of Feliz Navidad buried in a box somewhere in my house. One of the cassette tapes she bought quickly became one of our favorites, and to this day, I smile when I hear "Mamacita, donde esta Santa Claus?" because it was featured on that tape.

The other day, my mom complained to me that even though she set her car radio to the holiday station as soon as Thanksgiving was over, she hasn't yet heard Feliz Navidad. This is a big deal, because she only plays the station in her car in the hopes that she will hear it every time she gets into the car.

Well, that dry spell changed today when I decided to turn on the radio as we were getting dinner ready. Feliz Navidad was the first song we heard, and I had turned on the radio just in time to hear it in its entirety. At hearing the first beats of the song, my mom gasped, put her hand over her mouth like she was hearing from a long-lost relative for the first time in years, and pointed at the radio with wide eyes and a big smile. She tried to sing along to the parts that didn't include the title words, used exaggerated arm gestures, and moved her hips along to the music in her mismatched sweats.

That's where this picture is from. At one point, she went from moving only her upper body to doing full dancing with my dog. Needless to say, Kodi didn't understand what was going on but found a lot of pleasure from all the excitement. She also picked him up and serenaded him at one point.

What can I say? I have a very merry mom.

Vietnam in Photos, Part 2

2009-12-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

My dad rides on the back of his friend's scooter. I like this photo because my dad is so excited to be hanging out with his friends from Vietnam again. It's crazy that he is still good friends with his friends from high school (my mom is the same with her friends).

On the boat out into the ocean to scatter my grandparents' ashes.

The scene right outside my uncle's (my dad's first cousin) house in Cai Be (located in the rural Mekong delta region), which also happens to be the house where my dad was born. My uncle owns a factory (located right next to his house) that makes dried longan, and they get tons of longan shipped into the factory every day.

The artist Thanh Chuong's villa located near Hanoi. It features really cool contemporary and traditional Vietnamese architecture. It's a peaceful place, with a lot of trees and plants.

A busy street in Saigon. Notice the power cables and how they are crazily bunched up.

A pagoda in Northern Vietnam that is renowned for its arches.

The Bui Family Tree located in the Bui family pagoda in Ha Nam, Vietnam. My mom's name is on the last line, along with the names of all her first cousins on her dad's side. She has a LOT of first cousins.

Oily street food in Hanoi. So good!

A street view of Hanoi

Huge Buddha statues in a pagoda we visited in Northern Vietnam.

The landscape in Northern Vietnam, which has beautiful mountain ranges.

A look at Hanoi from the sky. Notice how gray it is... it's not because of rainy weather, but because of the smog and pollution in the city.

A Couple More

2009-12-13T09:27:00.000-08:00

I thought of a few more points about Vietnam that I didn't post earlier.

Vietnamese sofas aren't like the fluffy sofas and couches that you see in American living rooms. What I enjoy about my living room in California is that I can throw myself onto the sofa and sink into the plush pillows. If you did that with a Vietnamese sofa, you would either hurt yourself or cause the sofa frame to collapse. Vietnamese sofas have boxy wood/lacquer frames and feature rectangular cushions that sit loosely on the frame. The cushions aren't connected to the frame (although they may have a string that can help tie it down), so after you've sat on the frame for awhile, your shifting weight might cause on of the cushions to slowly come out from under you. Therefore, to sit on the sofa without drawing attention to yourself, you end up sitting pretty stiffly, trying to balance your weight out equally, and all the while trying to feign comfort.
Old Vietnamese ladies are TINY. Once they reach middle age, they tend to start getting even smaller. This stands out to me because I realized that these ladies have each carried 6+ children each. This also made me think of the physical labor that comes with carrying so many children, plus the stress and work that comes after the babies are born. One thing is true -- Vietnamese women are very resilient.
Vietnamese dog owners are protective of their dogs. If their dogs happen to wander away or are kidnapped, the worst is assumed -- that the dogs were taken away to be made into food. It's a harsh reality for dogs.

Observations about Vietnam and the Vietnamese

2009-12-02T05:18:00.000-08:00

It's funny going to a place that feels so familiar yet very foreign. In Vietnamese, when I say I am going to Vietnam, it literally translates to "going home to Vietnam" ("di ve Vietnam"). It is a strange way to think of it. Vietnam was never -- and never will be -- my home. However, it is nonetheless a place where I can understand the language, many of the customs, and the ways of thinking.

Therefore, as a Vietnamese-American, my observations of Vietnam are a little biased, because I think many of the things that others would perceive as strange are quite normal to me. But even for me, Vietnamese society can be quite weird. These are some things that struck me:

Once a Vietnamese person has finished eating, the first thing s/he does is search for a toothpick. Each restaurant and household has a toothpick box readily available, and everyone is very serious about making sure they do not have food stuck between their teeth. One uses the toothpick with his/her right hand and uses the left hand to cover the process. While the tooth-picking happens at the end of a meal, most conversation stops and you mostly hear people picking and cleaning their teeth. I think this practice is important because many Vietnamese people have crooked teeth, which makes it harder to make sure there is no food stuck between them without the aid of a toothpick.
Someone described traffic in Vietnam as equivalent to having the rules of the jungle -- no one follows written rules, but someone who is used to driving in Vietnam knows the unspoken rules, such as who has the right of way, how to make it around the crazy roundabouts, when you can pass someone, etc. Like I've said before, one of the most fun experiences for me was riding around on a scooter in the city. I was lucky to be the only one my age traveling, which meant my mom's cousin Co Chi could take me around on her scooter to go shopping, to check out cafes, and to meet the others. I have to say though, being from America, where the traffic rules are very black and white, it is pretty scary getting on the back of that scooter, especially when you see all sorts of cars, scooters and bicycles coming towards you.
In Vietnam, the symbol of your status in the society is your cell phone and how fancy it is. I suppose the equivalent status symbol in the States would be your car... but even that isn't as tell-tale a sign of your stature as the phone is in Vietnam. At my uncle's dried longan factory in Cai Be, located on the Mekong Delta, one of the workers told us that he spends about 2/3 of his salary on his fancy Nokia phone. The phone that my mom borrowed from a friend in Vietnam was sleeker, prettier, and had more functions than any of the phones that my family members own at home. Furthermore, Vietnamese people are willing to pay more money to have a "good" phone number -- one with a pattern or featuring a lot of lucky numbers.
Vietnamese fashion is funny. Older Vietnamese women wear what look like pajamas -- matching button-up shirts and pants made of the same pattern and material. The pajamas are really comfortable and and made out of cloth thin enough to withstand the warm, humid climate. On the other hand, you see very fashionable, young, and very thin ladies wearing tight clothing and looking very cute as they whizz through the streets on their mopeds. I'm not sure when the young, fashionable ladies switch to wearing the pajama-like pantsuits -- I think it coincides with when they become grandmas.
One thing I will never understand is the obsession with having pretty hand-writing. Growing up, I used to admire my aunts', uncles', and parents' handwriting -- perfectly formed cursive that all looked uniform. I didn't understand why Vietnamese people wrote such pretty letters, compared to my boxy, spiky handwriting. Then I understood why -- they practice like crazy. They even have competitions and awards for best handwriting! In Hanoi, we passed by a school that specializes on helping kids write prettier.
It's always a funny sight for me to see bicycles riding alongside mainstream traffic. Bikers find themselves in the midst of crazy moped and car traffic, and they brave it out even in the most difficult circumstances. They are both brave and stupid. There are no designated bike lanes, and the bikers must withstand mopeds and cars coming at them with more force than a bike could ever muster. It's scary for me to see these bikers braving the crazy roundabouts.
In Vietnam, there is a kind of a obsession with looking Western. For example, if you want to compliment someone on looking pretty, you can say they look Western and that will suffice. I noticed from looking at ads (billboards, posters, and inside magazines) that many of the models look hapa. In one particular ad, two Vietnamese parents had a kid that looked American except for its dark hair and dark eyes.
Saying pronouns in Vietnamese will always confuse me. The cool thing about pronouns for people in your family (i.e. "aunt," "uncle," "sister") is that it shows your relation to them with just one word (i.e. your dad's younger sister, your dad's older sister's husband). It can get confusing with family because the pronoun to which you refer to them depends on your relation to them. For example, I met a cousin who was 3 years older than me, so I called her "chi.", which means "older sister." But then I realized her grandma is my mom's first cousin, so she really should have been calling me "co" ("aunt"). In terms of family relations, age doesn't matter -- only your relation to the person. It becomes more confusing when you meet someone new or want to talk to a stranger. You have to think about if that person is the same generation as you, or if they are in the older generation, if they are older/younger than your parents, etc. Basically, there is a lot of guesswork involved unless you ask outright how old they really are.
Vietnamese people are thin and small. You often wonder how they do it, because they rarely exercise and their diet mainly consists of rice (carbs). When I go to Vietnam, I feel like a giant -- I am taller, wider, and pudgier than my Vietnamese counterparts. And I am 5'3'', 115 pounds, making me a pretty small girl by American standards. In Vietnam, I wear size L, while in America, I gravitate towards the smaller sizes. My size can be a dead giveaway of being a Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese), and any doubts that I might just be a big-boned Vietnamese is erased as soon as I speak, because my American accent is so obvious.

Bac Duong the Model

2009-11-29T03:31:00.000-08:00

I'm really grateful to have a person like Bac Duong in my family. He's my mom's older brother (and my dad's good friend from high school), and he's a big jokester and overall fun person to be around. You can always count on him to make a situation lighter, funnier, or more interesting.

Bac Duong jazzed up the Vietnamese landscape for me by offering to model in front of beautiful backgrounds. He would sweep his long bangs from his forehead, think of a creative pose, and stand there as long as needed to get the shot. He often needed reassurance of his beauty after each photo shoot, but then again, you must admit, he's quite pretty. America's Next Top Model material?

A tree in my grandma's hometown, Thanh Hoa

Lake Hoan Kiem

The view from the artist Thanh Chuong's house in Hanoi

With his new water puppet friend

On the boat to spread my grandparents' ashes out at sea (those are also my sunglasses that he borrowed)

At Cai Be, a city in the Mekong Delta region

At Vung Tau beach

What a yummy-looking starfruit, don't you think?

At quite possibly the best duck noodle place ever -- the last shot I got of Bac Duong before we parted ways!

Wow, Bac Duong dep qua!

P.S. You should make note of the shirts he's wearing. The yellow one says "Property of CIA -- Completely Insane Anteaters" (Anteaters are the UC Irvine mascots, and both his kids went to UCI). The red one says "Life's a BEACH!" and lists all the main beaches in California.

Back to California

2009-11-29T03:18:00.000-08:00

After a grueling plane ride, we arrived safe and sound in San Francisco at 2:45pm, only "2 hours" after our plane had left Saigon (when, in reality, it was really something like 16 hours later -- the perks of flying back home and buying time!). While boarding the plane, my mom and I ran into a family friend who was taking the same flight. During our layover in Taipei, she took us with her to EVA Air's business lounge. I had never traveled so well! There, we could use computers, shower, have unlimited food & drinks, and relax in comfy chairs.

I spent my first evening at home watching football on TV, eating popcorn, and eating a big salad -- ah, back to the American life. The best thing about coming home: playing with Kodi, my chihuahua! Oh how he was missed.

Food Update

2009-11-27T05:07:00.000-08:00

Eating in Vietnam took a turn for the worse last night. We ate at a restaurant that specializes in clam dishes -- clam meatballs, clam sauteed in different sauces, clam eggrolls, and the specialty, clam pho. Like any other meal, we feasted on too much food. Eating too much, coupled with a bad reaction to eating clams, meant that I was up all night with an upset stomach. Which means that my last day in Vietnam was spent trying to avoid food. That's almost impossible. I had a full day ahead of me -- breakfast with a friend from Cal, lunch with a group of singers my mom knows, and dinner with family. The day was spent looking at other people eat food while I mostly refused anything too hearty, lest my stomach act up again.

Oh well, there is always tomorrow morning. My great-uncle promises to bring Vietnamese chicken sandwiches to the airport for us!

Too Much Food

2009-11-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

Since landing in Vietnam, I've become scared of food.

This is a strange feeling, because I usually love food. Especially Vietnamese food. But when you arrive in Vietnam with a gazillion relatives wanting to take you out to eat, you become quickly sick of anything that has to do with restaurants.

First of all, my relatives took my family and I out to expensive restaurants, when all we really wanted to do was eat at the little noodle shop around the corner with the plastic stools and low, wobbly tables. Instead, in Hanoi, we were treated out to eat in all-you-can-eat restaurants for 3 days in a row. I am already weary of buffets in the States, and became quickly weary of buffets in Vietnam. It's the same thing each time: stock up on food, leave what you can't eat to waste, pay a lot of money.

Then, in Saigon, we were treated to home-cooking that closely resembled buffet-style meals. We went to visit my dad's uncle Ong Ba (my grandfather's older brother) in the rural Mekong delta, and we had no less than 8 dishes that included soup, roasted pork, Vietnamese-style crepes, hot-pot soup, and curry. It was like a wedding -- we kept joking that he should have written out a menu so we would know how many dishes were left in order to leave room in our stomachs. That night, at my dad's cousin's house, we were treated to porridge, fried fish, fried shrimp, roasted shrimp, tomato-fish soup, fish marinated in fish sauce, and unlimited fruits. We were still so full from lunch that we barely made a dent in the dinner food.

Vietnamese people show their love and appreciation by making food and treating you out to restaurants. They want you to like and finish the food they prepare, and they make sure that you continue eating by continuously putting food in your bowl. Sometimes it's like a never-ending bowl of food (the same thing happens with beer, so you can imagine how drunk the men get). Even if you insist that you are full or take a break for a few minutes, you will find your bowl full of food, and you won't even know who put it there.

No wonder Vietnamese-Americans gain weight when they go to Vietnam!

A City of Coffee Drinkers

2009-11-24T20:40:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has struck me about Saigon during this trip is the sheer number and quality of cafes in the city. I haven't seen such great coffee shops in any of the other cities I've been to, including Paris, San Francisco, or New York.

The other day, I stopped in 3 cafes during the same day to meet various people.

First, I was off to Windows Cafe in the center of the city to meet two of my cousins. It featured a waterfall outside, a big patio out on the first-floor deck, an air-conditioned room, and a lot of young servers waiting to take your order. The cafe was punctuated by loud techno and rock music, and the TV screens near our table showed an old Superman movie (starring Christopher Reeves). It was a place for a younger crowd -- my dad kept complaining about how the music was so loud he couldn't hear anyone talk.

Then, my dad and I went to Cafe Thu Bay to meet my mom and a group of Vietnamese singers who are friends of the family. This cafe was much more tranquil. Upon entering, you cross a bridge over a small stream and enter the air-conditioned cafe. There were old records hanging up in the room, and there was a CD player and old speakers on one side of the wall, where old classical music CDs were on display. The lighting was dimmed, and there was an older, rustic Asian feel to the place. Classical music wafted through the room.

After dinner that night, I went by scooter with my aunt, uncle, and their friend to a cafe farther from the city center. We went to this cafe to hear acoustic music, which turned out to be French, American, and Vietnamese acoustic music from the 50s and 60s. This cafe was outdoors, and there were trees shading the entire pagoda-influenced patio. We were sat next to a small pond that had a turtle swimming around.

Then, a few days later, I went with my aunt to Carmen, a cafe no doubt influenced by Bizet's opera. The cafe features live Latin music every night, and the place is tavern-like. You sit on wooden stools and eat on what look like wooden barrels. The waiters are dressed in toreador-like outfits and the waitresses wear short red dresses.

Here, I'm describing the high-end cafes, which are sprinkled throughout the city. Even more common are the small, mom-and-pop-shop cafes where you can sit on a plastic stool outside the shop and get a cafe for less than 50 cents. The mixture of these high-end and ordinary cafes makes Saigon a haven for the relaxed coffee drinkers in Vietnam, and give Saigon a distinct character of its own.

The Last Stage

2009-11-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

I lost my grandma in stages. As Alzheimer's claimed her mind, she slowly forgot who acquaintances were... and then who her grandchildren were... then her children... and then how to read, talk, and eat... until her body finally gave out at the age of 92. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I was 10 years old and didn't really understand what the disease meant. By the time she passed away 11 years later, I had experienced all too vividly what the disease was.

When I came home from Paris for her funeral, it still felt like she was there. After all, when I had visited her a month earlier, she was just as she had been for the past three years -- staring off into space, smiling when we smiled at her long enough, sitting in a wheelchair with her hands clasped together tightly. Then, after the funeral proceedings, we cremated her body and then it was like she was really gone. But not quite... we still had her ashes, and she had told me repeatedly since I was young that she wanted to be spread into the ocean with my grandpa, who had died in 1978.

We finally fulfilled her wishes today, in the last stage of her physical being. Two days ago, we picked up my grandpa's ashes at the pagoda where he had sat for 30 years, waiting for her. We brought them together to be reacquainted at another pagoda. We did a big ceremony yesterday at the temple, where close friends, family, and well wishers came by to pay their respects.

Today, we took their ashes from the temple and drove 2 hours to the beach city of Vung Tau. There, we lined baskets with paper towels and poured each of their ashes into a separate basket. We laid fresh yellow flowers on top. Then, about 15 of us -- relatives, friends, and a monk -- loaded into an old motorized boat. We drove for about 20 minutes until we were in the middle of the ocean. There, the boat driver turned off the engine, and the monk said a prayer that was inaudible in the wind and the sound of the ocean. Then, we each took a part in throwing the flowers, and then the ashes into the sea.

The ride back to the dock was quiet, unlike the trip into the ocean, where we had taken goofy photos and told jokes. There was a sense that we had fulfilled the last thing they wanted, the last thing that we owed them... out to sea, together, finally.

Vietnam can be so weird

2009-11-18T00:10:00.001-08:00

Even though I grew up feeling pretty Vietnamese, in Vietnam I can feel like an outsider looking in on a strange culture, where things are done way differently than I am used to. Even my parents, who both left Vietnam in their late teens/early 20s, feel this way when they come to Vietnam.

Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I really didn't know what was going on. Case in point:

1) Upon arriving in Saigon, my mom called my dad's sisters, who live in the neighborhood of Thi Nghe. This neighborhood is where my dad grew up, and is most easily accessible by the Thi Nghe bridge. Well, the bridge was closed for the entire day because a huge barge crashed into it. When you look at photos of the incident, you wonder why a barge that tall was able to go near the bridge in the first place. The barge literally got stuck trying to go under the bridge, like a really tall person trying to do the limbo and getting stuck under the bar. The bridge was closed all day and then reopened at night to small cars and scooters, but not buses in case the bridge would collapse under their weight.

2) When we finally got to my aunt's house in Thi Nghe, where we would be staying during our Saigon leg of the trip, we heard what sounded like karaoke music coming from a house nearby. It reverberated throughout my aunt's house.

"That's strange," we told her. "It's almost midnight, who is singing so loud?"

She answered: "One of our neighbors' family members passed away, and the funeral was today, so they're singing."

My mom was confused: "Why are they singing upbeat rock music?"

My aunt said: "So they don't feel sad all night. The gays come and sing at their house."

Uh... what?

They played music really loudly until 6am the next morning. My mom, dad, and I slept on-and-off the entire night, woken up at different times throughout the night by loud drumming or a loud falsetto note. We complained bitterly throughout the night about how ridiculous it was for them to be singing so loudly all night long, and at a funeral no less! We wanted to call the police, but my aunt said that the last time there was a funeral and she called the cops, they said, "each family only has a funeral once in awhile, just let them play themselves out."

The next day, I found out what they meant about gay people singing at these events. Apparently, gay performing troupes exist in Saigon that go around looking for houses where funerals are taking place. They go to these houses and bring a live band, where they sing to uplift people's spirits. They come uninvited and the families are basically forced to pay them after they come in and insist on performing.

My mom said, "Wow... if every family has a funeral now and then, then this will happen every week! Each family will try to do one up on the last one."

I hope that's not true... for everyone's sake and sanity.

Thoughts on Hanoi

2009-11-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we fly out to Saigon to spend 10 days there. I just wanted to reflect on a few thoughts about being in Northern Vietnam.

The accent here is really cool. I am used to hearing the southern accent, which is less enunciated. The northern accent has a lower register and does not flow up and down as much as the southern accent, but to me, it sounds more melodic and proper. I would equate it to the way Americans think of the English accent. My mom and I kept trying to mimic the northern accent the way they speak it here, but we really can't do it!
Hanoi is COLD. I thought it would just be cool here and there, but the other day I had to borrow a ski jacket to withstand a scooter ride home from a cafe. yes, a ski jacket, complete with tons of zippers and a fleece layer inside.
The best way to see a Vietnamese city is definitely by scooter. In a car, you feel like you are isolated from the city except for blaring horns, but on a scooter, you ride through the streets like you're seeing the buildings flash by in a movie.
I never realized what a southerner I was until I spent this much time in Hanoi. I had always thought of my mom being a northerner (because her parents grew up in the north and she has type of northern accent) but she really isn't -- she was born in the central part of the country and raised in the south before she left for the States. I find little things here funny, like the way they drink soybean milk (with tofu chunks in it), the words they use, and the minor differences in the way they cook their food (i.e. different nuoc mam, different marinades, different sauces, stronger coffee, etc.).
Hanoi is organized by parts. Unlike Saigon, where you will find certain foods and stores everywhere, in Hanoi, you have to go to a certain street or area to find a type of good. The streets here are named after what used to be sold on those streets (i.e. Hang Dao is where they used to sell peaches).
Hanoi has a different feel than Saigon because of the lakes that are all around the city. I've mentioned lake Hoan Kiem because it is the most famous, but there are others all over the city.
Hanoi is less busy than Saigon, and it shows... but that doesn't exclude it from suffering from stop-and-go traffic and crazy drivers.
People kept asking me if Hanoi reminded me of Paris, because people have often heard the two cities compared. I would answer no, but the more I think about it, the more there are random similarities, such as: how the drivers in the streets mostly do not follow street signs and do whatever they feel like, how it will randomly smell like trash and poop in the street when you least expect it, how people live in smaller houses/apartments that are built upward, and the abundance of cafes. By far, the most obvious similarity is the architecture -- some buildings that were built during the colonial era still stand and have a very French look.

The Trip in Photos

2009-11-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

Our first meal in Hanoi upon getting into the city from the airport. This banh cuon stand was down the street from our hotel, and they had to set up a long table on the sidewalk to accomodate our big group.Brothers on the street in Hanoi:

In Thanh Hoa, my Ba Ngoai's hometown. Here, we went to visit my mom's first cousin, who looks remarkably like my grandma. He's in the foreground talking to my dad. His wife is talking to me in the background. She was such a cute little lady -- she caught my eye and came to talk to me. She is suffering from dementia, and she told me about the hardships of her time during the famine during the war, and about the pain of losing her daughter. Her daughters later told me that those two memories are the clearest in her mind now.

The temple at Thanh Hoa, which has framed photos of my grandma's dad and her grandpa. There is also a detailed listing of the Le family past and present (my grandma is on the tree but not my mom or her siblings because they don't take the Le name).

At Thanh Hoa, we went to find my grandma's old house, which my aunt Bac Gai had grown up in. She was excited to see the place where the house was located, and pointed out where things used to be. However, she said most of it was entirely different, and the house had been completely rebuilt.

Bui Family Reunion obligatory photograph! (me = the unwilling photographer juggling 20 different cameras)

The gravesite in Ha Nam, my Ong Ngoai's hometown. Everyone buried here is a Bui.

At the temple in Ha Nam -- my mom and her siblings in front of the prayer table. This temple also has a detailed family tree of the Bui family that goes all the way down to my mom and her siblings. The tree goes back 5 generations!

On our first full day back from the family reunion, we took a trip to see 5 pagodas near Hanoi. Outside of one of the pagodas, we took a break, and my cousin (the man at the left) ordered thuoc lao, which is like Vietnamese hookah. It was really interesting -- when you smoke the pipe correctly, it makes a whistling sound. My dad had a hard time smoking it, and each time he tried, his eyes would bulge and he looked overwhelmed. After a few tries, though, he figured it out. He said it made him feel really drunk and tired.

On one of our nightly strolls around the Hoan Kiem lake, on the night that the cool winds from the north blew in. Since that night, Hanoi has been not humid, and actually quite cold -- refreshing from the hot days in Hoa Binh and Ha Nam.

The Bui Family Meets

2009-11-15T09:25:00.001-08:00

Random notes about the family reunion:

There were about 50 Bui family members in attendance. They were all children and grandchildren of my maternal grandpa and his brothers and sisters (there were 6 boys and 3 girls in his family). My grandpa was one of the youngest off his siblings and my mom is one of the youngest of HER siblings so she was one of the youngest in attendance. The age range was ridiculous. The oldest person there was 91 and I was by far the youngest at 22. My uncle Ut Dam is my mom's younger brother and he was the youngest of that generation, at 50 years old. Some of my mom's first cousin's kids were more than 20 years older than her.
Since there were so many old people at the reunion, and I was obviously very young, I became a human cane for many of them... meaning I walked with them up stairs and over rocks, with them holding onto my elbow or arm. The scariest part was when we decided to climb up 200 steps to get to this temple in a cave. I was scared one of my old relatives would fall at some point, especially because older Vietnamese ladies only wear fashionable sandals with high platforms.
We spent our time in a resort in the city of Hoa Binh (the resort is owned by a family member). When I imagined a resort, I imagined a beach and sand... this was a different type of resort in a more rural city (which meant no Internet connection). It was more like a nice building and outdoorsy things. We ate meals at the resort and spent our days traveling around the region, and our nights in a nearby hotel.
We visited Nam Binh, my grandpa's hometown (which my cousins and I had christened "Bui City" on our visit there in 1999), to visit the temple that has a family tree that goes all the day down to my mom's generation. We visited the gravesite there, where everyone who was laid to rest there was a Bui.
It was really funny to see the dynamics of such a big family reunion, especially with everyone being scattered throughout so many countries in the world. My mom's family left Northern Vietnam in the 1950s, so they didn't grow up with most of the cousins at the reunion who grew up in the north. When the nation was split in 1954, it was difficult/impossible for my family to see those relatives. Therefore, my mom and her siblings had only just met some of those cousins during the big family trip we took in 1999.

Pictures to be loaded later...

A couple of things

2009-11-09T16:03:00.000-08:00

Since landing in Hanoi, there have been non-stop activities: visiting family, eating good food, walking around the city, taking day trips to nearby cities, etc. (we have a hefty agenda up here in Northern Vietnam... this is all in the first 3 days!)

Yesterday, we went to Thanh Hoa, which is the province where my Ba Ngoai (maternal grandma) was born. Her dad and grandpa had been landlords in that region. More thoughts on Thanh Hoa later.

For now, a couple of things:

1) If you ever come to Hanoi, an early morning stroll around Lake Hoan Kiem (where giant turtles exist that hand swords to emperors fighting the Chinese) is a must. You will find Vietnamese people doing all sorts of aerobic activities, complete with Western tourists trying to join in. You will see people playing badminton, weight-lifting, and doing tai-chi. But by far, the best aerobics class is located at the lakeside at the statue of the great emperor Ly Thai To. There, you will see a group of around 50 ladies doing a choreographed aerobics routine to unidentifiable American rap music. The movements include pelvic thrusts, vigorous arm throwing, and lots of swiveling hips.

2) When the Bui family gets together for a reunion, they mean business. I should have known -- whenever my mom and her siblings get together, the room explodes with noise. And there are only 5 of them. One person already has a loud voice, so the others need to speak more loudly in order to be heard above the existing noise level, and from there, it spirals out of control. Soon, no one can hear anyone and everyone is talking very excitedly. I got a taste of this on Sunday, when we went to Hai Phong, where my mom has a ton of first cousins. These cousins are all the kids of Ong Quan, my maternal grandpa's older brother, who had 4 wives and 10-12 children. Many of them came on the trip and they are close to my mom and her brothers. Today, we are going to a 3-day family reunion where there will be 50-60 Bui's. It's going to be loud.

3) Hanoi is not as hot as I expected. In fact, I find myself pretty cold at most times. It's so much better coming in the autumn than the summer like the last times I experienced, just because of the weather. Hanoi is also less crowded than Saigon, so I like it better already. I feel much better walking around the streets.

That's all for now... more later. Hopefully more details on what should be a very interesting family reunion.

New Trip, New Posts

2009-11-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

T minus 5 hours to Hanoi, Vietnam!

I am currently at the Taipei International Airport, which -- I must say -- is pretty amazing as far as airports go. There is free Internet connection, free video game demos, and Chinese pop music blaring from random stores. (Although I must be Californian and ask: is Taiwan always this cloudy? It's already 8am or so and there is no sign of the sun.)

I am about to embark on a three-week family trip which serves a two-fold purpose. First, we are going to have a HUGE family reunion on my maternal grandpa's side. I never met my grandpa because he died before I was born, and I have never met many of the family members I will see in Hanoi. People are coming from all over the world for this occasion: the United States, Australia, Czech Republic, Canada, etc. (We were supposed to get Bui Family Reunion t-shirts made but the idea was vetoed last minute.) This will probably be the only time a big reunion like this gets put together. All my mom's brothers and sisters are coming on the trip.

Secondly, we are going to spread my grandma's and grandpa's ashes in the ocean. My grandpa predeceased my grandma by 30 years (my grandma just passed away this past February), and we will "reunite" them, and perform some kind of ceremony before bringing them out to sea together.

It's weird being on this trip for a couple reasons: I am the only cousin on my side going -- my other first cousins and sisters couldn't make it because they had school or are working full-time, so I am hanging out mostly with aunts and uncles. (Also, 3 out of 4 of my first cousins close to my age who are from Saigon are now in the States.) It is also weird to be traveling with my parents once again after traveling on my own for so long. It's pretty nice not having to worry about where my passport is or booking all the hotels -- that stuff has all been taken care of already. The downside of this is that I don't have much control over the itinerary. I am actually pretty clueless right now about what is happening during this trip, but I do know that we will spend 10 days in Hanoi and North Vietnam and then 10 days in Saigon and South Vietnam.

I was not initially excited about going back to Vietnam after having gone there last summer. Vietnam is hot and humid, and I always feel like such a foreigner walking around even though I can understand the language and am familiar with the food and customs. I am usually not allowed to go anywhere on my own because of fears that I'll be run over by motorcycles on the streets (which is a valid concern; motorcycles go anywhere and everywhere) or be robbed/kidnapped (not too sure how valid this concern is, but not willing to test it). But for the purposes of this trip (mentioned above), I decided it was worth it to withstand the weather and the little nuisances to make time for this special vacation.

I'm not sure about what kind of Internet connection I will have on this trip but I will try to post some updates and pictures when I can. Check back soon!

Free Sight-Seeing in Rome

2009-08-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

Rome (again): Friday, July 3, 2009

I was back in Rome on Friday. I woke up really early to get to the airport in Tunis, but when I got there, I saw that my flight had been delayed by an hour and a half, which Mrs. Driss said was the result of a shortage of airplanes for Tunisair. Therefore, I arrived in Rome much later than I expected due to the delay -- but I still accomplished 2 concrete goals on my mind that day: visiting St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, and visiting the Pantheon. These two monuments appealed to me because they were free (I was almost out of euros and didn't want to withdraw any more from the bank because I wouldn't need them until I got back to Paris 3 weeks later)

Even though it was sweltering hot in Rome, I put on a button-up short-sleeved shirt and my long jeans, because the Vatican guards are very strict about the dress code -- no shorts, mini-skirts, or sleeveless shirts. As a result, I was pretty red-faced and sweaty all day. I took the metro to the Vatican, and arrived at St. Peter's Basilica to find a long line -- not a result of admissions fees, but of security checks: x-ray machines and metal detectors, as well as guards checking for the correct dress code. When I finally got into the door of the basilica, my mouth literally dropped open. It was spectacular. Marble all around, huge statues, beautiful paintings -- the basilica had it all. It was huge. People took breaks by sitting down at the edge of walls or by resting in prayer areas. There were many memorial/remembrance areas for former popes.

Sadly, since it was already late afternoon, I knew I wouldn't have enough time to get through the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. Instead, I left Vatican City and took the metro to the Spanish steps, a really beautiful square that is surrounded by sandy-colored buildings with small streets converging out from it. I took the opportunity to rest on the steps.

From there, I made my way to the Pantheon, the best-preserved building of Ancient Rome (it was built in 27 BC!). It is in the shape of a dome, and is stunning and beautiful from the inside. Like many other buildings in Rome, it has many religious remnants leftover from the time it was used as a basilica.

From the Pantheon, I then walked back to the hostel, passing by the Trevi Fountain, exhausted. I had free pasta at the hostel (which was surprisingly pretty good), and had enough euros left to get gelato that night with a new Mexican friend I had made at the hostel. I got an early nights' sleep to prepare for what was sure to be a long trip to Herräng, Sweden.

Blue blue blue

2009-07-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

Tunis, Tunisia: June 30-July 3, 2009

Even though I had only been on my own for a day and a half staying in a hostel with strangers, I was really excited to board a plane to Tunisia to see a familiar face. I would be visiting Zara, a friend I had made from my foyer. Zara is Algerian-American – her dad is Algerian and her mom is Japanese-American (her mom grew up in Fresno, CA on a farm… so cool!).

Zara met me at the airport and we met her mom outside. I had no idea what to expect in Tunisia – what I would see, what to do, etc. (An up-side to visiting people is that they plan out everything for you!) As we drove away from the airport, two things caught my eye: the turquoise color of the water in the Mediterranean Sea, and a vibrant blue color on doors, window shutters, and gates, which was juxtaposed with the white color of the houses. Apparently, they are required to paint the doors this blue color in Tunisia.

The first thing on our to-do list was a covered market, which was closing up just as we got there. It was like the covered markets I had been to in Paris – but much simpler, with some fruits/vegetables/spices that I didn't recognize. Zara’s mom knew many of the sellers and they each tried to get her attention to buy their goods. In the end, she got some lamb and beef liver for a bbq that night (my ears perked up at the mention of a BBQ), plus some fruit – apricots that turned out to be pluots, nectarines, cherries, and the cutest mini-pears.

From there, we went home to Zara’s house, which was just beautiful. She lives in Sidi-Bou Said, which is a small suburb off the capital city of Tunis. Zara lives on the same hill as the Tunisian president, so there are security guards everywhere. In fact, you can’t go up the hill unless you live on it. They do a security check at the entrance, and unless they know you live there, you can’t go up. (By the way, the Tunisian president’s picture is featured everywhere in the country!) Also, Zara’s house is right on the beach. You can get down to the water from the back gate of her backyard, which makes for having somewhat of a private beach (albeit, without sand). There is a public beach right next to a dock at the bottom of Zara’s hill where people house huge yachts and private boats.

Zara’s mom made us a quick lunch of tuna salad sandwiches and macaroni salad, and then we left to check out this baron’s house, which has turned into a museum. The Baron is a German guy who lived in Tunisia with his wife. When he passed away, they used his house as a kind of museum. It was interesting to see Tunisian architecture – really beautiful, with ornate patterns on the ceilings and domed-shaped doors and doorframes.

By this time, it was mid-afternoon and HOT. We got some much-needed, refreshing ice cream and then headed to Sidi-Bou Saïd’s main hill to check out the stores there. We planned to sit on a café at the top of the hill, but it was waaay to hot, so we went to a café on the lower part of the city instead. Zara and I met her good friend Amor there, and then we ordered drinks – a boca menthe for me, which was like Sprite with mint syrup mixed in. When it started to get dark, Zara and I took a cab home and had dinner with her mom and brother. It was a great, home-cooked meal – bbq’d liver, merghez (a type of sausage) with vegetable kebabs and haresa (hot sauce) and fries. Yummy home-cooked food! Then Zara and I took a walk down her hill to see the boats and the people at the dock, before calling it a day and getting to bed.

The next day, we woke up early from a refreshing sleep. After breakfast, we went to get manicures and pedicures – talk about being pampered on a “backpacking” trip! Then, Zara’s mom took us to the American cemetery, which is quite peaceful and beautiful. Many American soldiers (2000+) who died while fighting in North Africa are buried there.

We then grabbed lunch and then Zara and I went to Carthage, the site of more ruins from the Roman Empire (talk about my trip already having a theme). We went around to the three main sites – the baths, an old village, and the amphitheater (concerts are still held here every summer!) – as well as the museum and a special exhibit on China, where we saw 2 clay soldiers who had been buried with the Qin emperor. Tunis is a bit like Rome, where you see ruins pop out all over the place (we would see some random columns while driving around). Carthage was a bit like seeing the Roman Forum and Colosseum, but one thing that really differentiated Carthage was the view of the turquoise sea from the ruins, as well as palm trees.

Then, although it was evening, Zara and I were still determined to hit up the beach. We took our things to the beach next to the dock and played in the water and sand until it got too cold and dark. Then we headed to the Phenix, which is a restaurant owned by a friend of Zara’s family. The restaurant hosts a buffet for tourist bus tours during the day, but at night, it is open for Tunisian-style tapas for dinner, complete with musical entertainment – Tunisian singers accompanied by a live band. We got really great seafood for dinner, which is fresh, considering Tunis is so close to the sea.

The next day, Mrs. Driss and I got haircuts in the morning and then headed to Bardo, a museum that has the most Roman-era frescoes in one place. It was a pretty huge place, and we spent many hours looking through the mosaics, recovered artifacts, and statues. We picked up shawarmas for lunch (wrapped like burritos in pita) and then headed to the souk (market) for shopping. The souk reminded me of the grand bazaar and spice bazaar in Turkey.

At the market, we got a lot of comments for being three Asian females – actually, Zara, her brother, and her mom deal with the stares and comments (“konichiwa!” “japonaise!”) all the time, but it was new to me. There aren’t too many Asians in Tunisia.

Us three Asian ladies at the souk.

The souk had a lot of touristy goods and it was fun to look around at what they had to offer. I bought some keychains, while Zara and Mrs. Driss bought things to bring with them on their trip to CA later in the summer. Then we were taken on the roof of the souk by one seller, and I got to see an aerial view of Tunis. The thing you notice the most is how many mosques there are – I hadn’t realized how many there were in such a small area. After awhile, the souk got really exhausting. We headed home and Zara and I hit the beach. We brought a kayak down from her backyard and rowed around/swam for a few hours.

Us on the kayak: the view from Zara's backyard.

When it got late, we came back up and headed to the city center to eat Tunisian street food for dinner! Basically, that meant a lot of fried food. We got fricassé’s for dinner, which are these small sandwiches made out of fried dough and stuffed with tuna, haresa, eggs, and olives. We had fresh potato chips on the side. Yum! We brought our dinner to a park that the Prince of Monaco had dedicated to Tunis and ate them on benches. Then, we walked up the hill with all the shops and bought babylouni from a street vendor for dessert. Babylouni are fried rings of dough (the same stuff as the dough for the fricassé’s) dipped in sugar, and sold fresh off the fryer. So good! We then went to Café des Délices, the café on top of the hill that we had left 2 days earlier because of the heat. We had mint tea while looking over the ocean and enjoying the warm night.

And so ended my time in Tunisia. I have to say it was one of the best trips I have been on. The water was great, the city was beautiful, I had great guides, and I was more than well-taken care of. Mrs. Driss and Zara were spectacular hosts. I was very sad to leave, but I am looking forward to seeing the two of them in CA later this summer – and maybe heading back to Tunisia in the long future.

P.S. A thanks to my mom, who encouraged me to make the trip to Tunisia despite the extra cost of airfare. It was well worth it!

Home Sweet Home

2009-07-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

I arrived back home in sunny California yesterday afternoon. It was such a relief to finally make it, especially after having to spend the night in the Dublin airport. Getting a cheap flight on Aer Lingus (an Irish airline) meant arriving in Dublin at 6pm and not leaving for San Francisco until 9am the next day. I went out to explore the Dublin city center, but it was very cold, rainy, and windy so I didn't stay out there long. Here are some pictures from my short stay there:

I think this is a popular fast food chain, because I saw more than 3 of these in the city center. The name made me laugh:
Apparently, U2 was in Dublin playing a few concerts over the week! The Irish were going crazy over it. (u2 is originally from Dublin)

When I got back to the airport, I camped out on some couches at the Starbucks, where I met 5 other Americans who were also going to be spending the night at the airport. I stayed with them throughout the night, where we played cards and watched Sex and the City on my laptop. We found a place to sleep in a stairwell until 3am, and then moved back to the couches at Starbucks (the area had been closed off for a few hours). Sleeping in an airport is not fun, but it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated.

Then commenced the 11-hour flight from Dublin to SFO, where I watched the new 90210 for the first time, started screening Frost/Nixon, and got squished in my seat by the man next to me, who kept putting his legs in my space. I had never been more glad to get out of the airplane.

I was finally home 2 hours later, successfully bringing pâté through customs and rejoicing that the wine and wine glasses I had brought back had not been broken on the flight.

Home sweet home. It feels as if I never left it.

When in Rome...

2009-07-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

Rome, Italy - July 28-29, 2009

I had wanted to travel to Italy during some point in my semester, but had figured that since it was so close, I could make just a short trip of it. I didn't make it a priority to get there. However, as time started closing in, I realized I wouldn't have the time to visit as many cities in Italy as I would have hoped. Instead, I would just have to make due with one city. The decision to stop in Rome was easy, because from Rome, I could get to Tunisia in the cheapest and easiest way. So I was off to Rome as the first stop of my month-long trip.

My experience in Rome had a couple themes: Getting lost, eating gelato, seeing remnants of ancient Rome, and eating more gelato. I knew going into my trip that 2.5 days in a great city like Rome would not be enough, but I was determined not to let the time constraint get me down. And even though I had no plans going into the trip (I only glanced at a Lonely Planet guidebook on Europe on the plane), I made due. In fact, I made due in the way I knew best: getting lost. Armed with a map the hostel had given me (the same map ALL tourists seemed to be carrying), I ventured out on Sunday evening to find the famous Trevi fountain, only to get lost for about an hour. I finally made it there as the sun was setting and sat people-watching for awhile. The fountain itself was beautiful -- so ornate and grand. I did the touristy thing of tossing a coin over my shoulder into the fountain. Doing so is supposed to ensure your return to Rome, or something equally as corny.
Then I looked for a place to eat, getting even more lost as I ventured farther and farther from the hostel. Finally, I stopped in a small restaurant on an off-street and ordered ravioli in cream sauce with mushrooms and prosciutto. I was embarrassed that i didn't know a word of Italian, but at least the waiter spoke English. We talked about Los Angeles vs. SF, haha. I topped off that meal with more gelato, which I enjoyed on the walk back to the hostel.

The next day was a day for checking out ancient Roman ruins. I walked to the Colosseum (getting lost again) and explored the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, which were at the heart of Ancient Rome. I piggy-backed onto a free tour, where I learned some Roman history and understood more about the bricks at which I was staring. The thing I thought was most interesting was the fact that the ruins had all been covered in marble, but the marble had since then been "recycled" and used for Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It was crazy to think that some of the areas had been all marble, especially because it is just dirt, rocks, and brick now. It was even crazier to try and imagine the Roman Forum in all its glory, as a metropolis and central trading location back in the day.
I then headed to the Colosseum, which I was really excited to see, especially after seeing a part of Gladiator (the movie starring Russell Crowe) screened at the hostel the night before. The Colosseum was huge. It's hard to even comprehend the spectacles that went on inside of the place, with the type of violence and complete disregard of human life in Rome.From the Colosseum, I trekked to the Tiber River and got pizza in this cute part of Rome called Trastevere, which has small windy streets of black cobblestone. I finished that off with (of course) some gelato, yogurt and pineapple flavor. Yum! I was completely exhausted by this time, and I had walked so much that my feet and ankles were pained with each step I took. Plus, it was HOT in Rome! I took a bus back to the hostel and took a well-needed nap, before getting ready for my trip to Tunisia the next day.

Greetings from Prague

2009-07-21T14:24:00.001-07:00

Since leaving Herrang, my trip has been a whirlwind.

I spent a day in Stockholm hanging out with a Swedish friend I had met at Herrang. Then I flew over to Kristiansand, Norway, which is at the southern tip of the country. I spent 3 days with my Dutch host family (the family that I stayed with in Holland when I spent 2 months there in 2005) in the beautiful city of Lillesand. I stopped back over in Paris for a day and had a really nice reunion with my Sciences Po friends who had not yet left Paris. From there, I took a plane to Berlin, where I stayed with friends of family friends. Currently, I am in Prague, where I am staying with some distant family members (my mom's cousin's daughter).

It's been crazy looking back on the trip. I can't believe it's almost over.

Till then, I have two more days in the beautiful city of Prague and then 4 days wrapping things up in Paris before I head home. More detailed updates to come! (including photos and more explanations of how I am related to the people I have been staying with)

Greetings from Herrang, Sweden

2009-07-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that a whole week has passed since I left Paris. Time goes by so quickly. I am now in my third destination -- Herrang Dance Camp in the little village of Herrang, Sweden. I spent the past week in Rome, Italy, and Tunis, Tunisia. I haven't been blogging because I have found very little time to use the Internet, but I have been writing down my "blogs" in my little Moleskine notebook, which I will type up at a later time complete with pictures. So you can expect a blogging overload in a few weeks.

I just have to say that Rome and Tunisia were both HOT, but a lot of fun. I especially have to give a shout-out to Zara and her mom, Mrs. Driss, for taking very good care of me in Tunisia. It made my trip really great and I still miss their house and the warm beach, especially now that I find myself in Herrang, which has a lot of people but minimalistic accommodation and public showers.

But all in all, my travels have been going well, with no major hiccups or problems. I will be here in Herrang until the end of the week, dancing the nights away! (well, nighttime doesn't really even exist in Herrang because the sun never completely goes away and the sky is lit by 4am!!) So far, the classes have been great and I am looking forward to learning a lot more by the end of the week.

Where in the world is smt?

2009-06-27T01:24:00.000-07:00

Well, for the next month, SMT will be traveling around Europe! Tomorrow, I embark on a month-long adventure, stopping through countries in Western Europe, North Africa, and Scandinavia. Why these areas, you ask? I either (a) know people in each place, (b) have really wanted to travel there, or (c) all of the above.

I'm doing a big circle down to Rome and then Tunis, Tunisia, before flying to Sweden to take part in a swing dance camp in a village called Herrang. I spend some time in Stockholm and then fly to southern Norway to spend time with my Dutch host family. I stop in Paris for a day and then go to Berlin and Prague. Then it's back to Paris for a few days to hang out with my cousin Yenba and then home sweet home (with a 12-hour nighttime stopover in Dublin... nothing like sleeping in an airport to make you really want to get to San Francisco!).

It'll be a long trip, but I'm very excited. I'll try to post updates as I go, but I can't make promises and many posts may be without photos. Stay tuned!

Jardin du Luxembourg

2009-06-26T13:29:00.001-07:00

As I relaxed in the Jardin du Luxembourg the other day, I saw two people doing the same on either side of me.
Sunny & relaxing days in Paris are the best.

A Short Trip to Belgique

2009-06-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

La Grande Place in Brussels

I realized that only in Europe could I do something like take a rather impromptu trip to Belgium in the midst of my final exams. It was especially tempting after finding 23-euro round-trip tickets on Eurolines, a bus company that travels through Europe. The trip would take longer than a train ride, but was more than half as cheap.

I was actually a little annoyed at myself for booking a trip out of Paris so close to my departure date. I thought to myself: I barely have any time left in Paris and I booked a trip to leave it? What was I thinking?? Well, as soon as I left Paris, I realized why it was worth it. The trip made me feel really relaxed and I was very happy traipsing around Belgium. Plus, I got to spend time with two of my favorite girls, Sara and Steph.

Sara and I arrived in Brussels at noon on Tuesday at their Gare du Nord, and asked people for directions into the center of the town. We were determined to walk even though everyone told us we should take the bus. "C'est loin," one guy said, "mais vous êtes jeunes, donc je pense que vous marchez bien." (It's far, but you're young so I think you can make it.) Well, the city center ended up being only a 15-minute walk away, so we were glad we didn't take the bus! We walked around central Brussels and found a little sandwich shop where I ordered a curry chicken sandwich. We finished off our meal with a fresh waffle topped with strawberries and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yum!

We then met Sara's friend (also named Sara) at the Grand Place, which is the central square in Brussels where their Hotel de Ville is located. It is a beautiful square, with old-fashioned buildings all around. Sara walked us to the Belgium Comic Strip Center, where we checked out comic series and graphic novels. It was really cool. We spent about three hours in the museum. (It took me twice as long to read things because everything was in French.) It was nice that Sara was with me because she had grown up with many of the comics and told me about some of them, like Gaston Lagaffe and Boule et Bill. I even recognized some others, like Lucky Luke, and of course, Tintin. One series that caught my eye (partly because it was also described in English) was Lanfeust of Troy, a French language fantasy comic about a young hero in a planet called Troy. It features these good-natured-looking trolls, and I think that's what I liked best about it.
We were exhausted after the museum, so we walked to a garden called Botanique and took a much-needed nap on the grass. I was very content. Then, we met Sara for at a bar, where I ordered a peach beer. Good stuff.

Then it was time to go to the train station to meet Stephanie and go to Bruges! I bade farewell to the two Saras and then boarded a train to Bruges with Steph. It was such a relaxing ride going through the Belgian countryside. In Bruges, we discovered that the buses weren't running, so we opted to walk instead. It was dark by this time and we weren't sure if it was the safest idea. Plus, we didn't really know the way. However, I had kind of remembered what the map of Bruges looked like, and led us towards this big tower that loomed in the distance. In terms of safety, we had no reason to worry. Bruges was well-lit and even though there weren't many people around, we felt very safe and the city was easily navigable. It was also very beautiful at night (see photo).

We finally made our way to the hostel and rested for the night. We were up early the next day (thanks to some Spanish girls speaking loudly in the bedroom next door) and bounded out of the hostel to check out a Wednesday morning market in the main square. The market had great-looking fruit and flowers, and a waffle stand! I ordered a simple waffle with chantilly (whipped cream) and it was amazing. So crunchy and fluffy at the same time.

Then it was off to the Frietmuseum, a museum dedicated to potatoes and fries! We were vastly amused by this museum. We learned about the history of the cultivation of potatoes (they came from South America), how the plant became important in Europe, what kind of potatoes exist, the history of ketchup/mustard/mayonnaise, why Belgian frites are the best/how to make them, etc. Very informative! We were guided through the museum with these signs featuring Fiona Fry and Peter Potato (very corny).

The most interesting part to us was why Belgian frites are so good. These are the reasons provided by the museum:

the appropriate variety of potato is cooked with the appropriate type of cooking fat
the potatoes are often freshly peeled and cooked
the fries are cooked in unrefined beef tallow, known as "blanc de boeuf", sometimes mixed with horse fat
fries are cooked in two separate phases

We were mostly amused by the horse fat thing.

Of course, after seeing so much about potatoes and fries, we had to go eat some frites of our own. Sadly, the museum's fryer was broken so we went down the street and bought fries from a street stand with samurai (hot) sauce. So good!
We walked around Bruges for the rest of our time there, stopping at the supermarket, some parks, all the while enjoying the sunshine in the beautiful city. Then it was time to take the train back to Brussels, and then the bus back to Paris.

Random notes about Belgium:

Belgium has two official languages -- Flemish and French -- which I found was weird because the country is so small! In Brussels, most people speak French and the signs are written in both French and Flemish. But in Bruges, everyone speaks Flemish and signs are only in Flemish. I found Flemish (which is kind of like Dutch) to sound and look really funny.
Les bandes desinées (comics) are a big deal in Belgium. They are really proud of their comics. All over Brussels, you can find random walls of buildings that have well-known Belgian comics drawn on the side.
People had told me that Brussels was boring and had nothing too interesting there, but I had a great time in the city and wouldn't have minded spending more time there.

La Fête de la Musique

2009-06-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

June 21 is the summer solstice, which, in Paris, means La Fête de la Musique, a day-long celebration throughout Paris. Sound restrictions are lifted, and one is allowed to take to the streets with his/her instrument -- either solo or with a band, whether are professional or amateur.

I had pretty high expectations even though I had heard mixed reviews of the event. My friend Adnane said, "It's annoying. Everyone plays on the street and it is hard to hear yourself if you want to play. It is way too crowded." I woke up and left my foyer expecting to hear music coming from every corner of Paris.

Well, that didn't exactly happen. I realized that the fête doesn't really happy until evening time. Like around 7pm. Oh well. My friends and I still decided to hang out and hold a picnic at the Seine. Along the way, we saw a lot of bands setting up and doing sound checks on the street. Talk about anticipation!

The picnic was relaxing, as it was sunny and calm at the river. We feasted on tiramisu, crème caramel, chips, bread, hummus, and wine (a varied assortment of food, yes).

Around 7pm, my friends and I packed up the picnic and headed out to explore musical Paris. We walked around the Saint-Michel and Odéon area, and along the Seine. I stopped to join them at Pont des Arts for a bit before heading off to Parc de Boulogne for a big, free concert.

All around Odéon and Saint-Michel, there were a ton of small bands playing. There were huge crowds of people around each band, cheering them on and enjoying themselves. The weather was perfect for this kind of activity -- not too cold, not too hot, with sunlight peeking through some fluffy clouds. Here is a glimpse of the acts I saw on my walk:

A band in between a set outside Gibert Jeune at Saint Michel.

High school (?) jazz band by the Seine.
Chorale group by the Seine.Tribal music on the bridge in front of Notre Dame.

French hipsters on Pont des Arts.

Gay rock band (?) on a boat on the Seine in front of Notre Dame.

Australian digeridoo (an instrument formed naturally like that) on the Seine.

Parc de Boulogne, the location of a big concert, is a huge park right on the western border of Paris. Katja and I didn't know much about this concert or the park but decided to check it out anyway. We took the 10 line to Boulogne, and figured we would just get out of the metro and follow the sound of the music. However, we got out and heard nothing. The streets were empty, a stark difference from the crowds at Odéon and Saint-Michel. Instead, we followed signs and found ourselves nearing the entrance of the park. Just then, a car pulled up beside us and a pair of French girls asked us for directions. We were just as clueless as them, and so they invited us along with them on the search. It turns out we were really lucky to have met them because we were on the complete opposite side of the park. We could have easily walked for 2 hours before finding the concert location! The girls were really cute and funny 19-year-old students who were really excited about being out on the town and seeing the concert. They told us the event was being broadcast on TV and would feature many famous artists.

After going around looking for parking for a good half hour, we were finally on our way! Inside, Katja and I were pleasantly surprised. It was a crowded, energetic concert featuring all types of artists including Jason Mraz, rapper Sean Paul, Flo Rida, Kelly Rowland, James Morrison, and a host of other French singers who I didn't know (I actually didn't know many of the American singers either!). It was great. Each artist only sang one song, but they sang them well and the energy was really contagious. It was interesting because the concert had such different music genres represented, including French chansons, rap, hip-hop, indie rock, pop, etc. The crowd loved the rap especially. (American singers are quite popular here.)

I wanted to continue experiencing the Fete de la Musique but it was 2am by the time I got back to my foyer and most of the music had died down. Plus, I was super tired. The night called for some juice over a conversation with Sara and a good night sleep.

Une Nuit Blanche

2009-06-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

I had quite the busy Saturday.

Highlights include:

1) Sailor Chic exhibit at the Musée de la MarineThe beginning of the exhibit had a ton of boats, huge mastheads, models of boats, and paintings depicting fighting navy boats, sailor life, and boats docked in ports. I learned more about boats than I ever wanted to know. It was interesting for me to think about how much the navy means to the French, and how important it was to French society throughout the ages. The fashion exhibit showed how fashion had been influenced by sailor uniforms over the years. It started by showing sailor uniforms right after they had been made standard in France in the 1800s. Then, it went on to show how certain characteristics of the uniforms became a part of fashion. Sailor fashion means the use of stripes, anchors, large brass buttons, three-pointed hats, the use of dark blue and black, and collared shirts. At the end of the exhibit, it had a catwalk of couture clothing from famous designers like Yves Saint-Laurent and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

2) Screening of Vietnamese documentaires at Musée du Quai Branly
My family friends told me about a screening of two Vietnamese documentaries at the Musée du Quai Branly. The films were really interesting, showing two issues in Vietnamese society. One featured the decision of a man to stay in Nha Trang with his family instead of going to Hanoi to find work. The second looked at the problem of displaced villages after investors put money in to build golf ranges in rural areas of Vietnam. There was a Q&A with the director of the second film at the end of the event. Afterward, I went with my family friends to their son's birthday party in Villejuif, a suburb to the south of Paris.

3) Hanging out with friends late into the night
I ended my night at Bastille, which is an area with a lot of bars. I got there quite late, which meant that many of the bars had closed by the time I arrived. I didn't stay at Bastille for long (which was good because it is not one of my favorite areas at night), and met with my friends as they were heading to an apartment to hang out for the night. When you're having fun, time flies. I didn't end up getting home until the sun started coming up, the first time having done so in Paris. The best part of getting home this early in the morning was seeing the bakeries start to bake their bread. They make their goodies really early in the morning so you know it's really fresh.

More Observations

2009-06-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

French people smoke a lot. Up until last year, you were allowed to smoke in restaurants and clubs. Now, thankfully, smoking is confined to the outdoors, including outdoor terraces. It surprises me how much I have adapted to this French habit. I no longer cough loudly when people smoke near me, and the smell of smoke does not bother me as much. (No worries though, I haven't taken up smoking.)
Musicians are everywhere, especially the metros. Street musicians will literally come into metro cars and play through a couple stops and then go around asking for money in a cup. There are also musicians in metro stations, including a cool string quartet orchestra that plays at Chatelet quite often.
Homeless people use their dogs for pity. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if people do this in the States. But here, it is quite common for a homeless person to have a really cute dog with them, with something that says "Nous avons faim!" (We are hungry). The dogs really tug at the heartstrings. They are so well-behaved. I would particularly like to mention the man who sits on the bridge at Notre Dame and has two dogs sleeping in his arms like babies.
Cobblestone streets are really cute things. They make you feel like you are in a quaint part of Paris, perhaps on a road that was built centuries ago. However, logistically, they can be quite hard to walk on. They are pretty uneven, which makes it almost impossible to move at a good pace if you are in heels. Sometimes I feel like I may trip on the cobblestone streets. But even after these ordeals, I still love them.
PDA: I'm not talking about hand-held devices. I'm talking about Public Displays of Affection. They are very common in Paris. You will see couples making out on metros, on bridges, on the street, on terraces, etc. This practice is not confined to lovesick teenagers or newlyweds, but extends to include old-age couples as well. Sometimes it's cute. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes it is just plain awkward.
Patisseries in Paris are AMAZING. When you walk by a patisserie, you don't know how you can possibly go without buying something. They draw you in with their smell, which you can sense from about a one-block radius surrounding the patisserie. The desserts, which you can see through glass windows, look impeccable. You often wonder how long they spent making sure each dessert looked so perfect -- so glossy, sugary, beautiful, fresh, scrumptious.
That brings me to... French people being skinny. I don't know how they are so thin, with such good patisseries around. Maybe it is the smoking? Maybe they indulge in patisseries and spend the rest of their time eating only vegetables?
In grocery stores, you weigh the fruits and vegetables yourself at these little weigh stations in the produce section. The first time I went to the grocery store, I didn't do this and they confiscated my produce in the front of the line. I was so confused and upset. It took me two more trips to the grocery store to figure it out.

My semester, en français

2009-06-21T18:47:00.001-07:00

Lately, I've been having short conversations with people en français about my time in Paris and how it has been. It is so hard to really put into words what the semester has meant to me. Plus, my pretty bad French skills mean I really don't have the ability to describe how I really feel about it. This is pretty much the basic conversation I have had when recounting my semester: (excuse the quality of the French)

- Other Person: Tu parts bientôt?
- Me: Oui! En fait, uh, je parts dans une semaine. La semestre est passée très très très vite.
- Other Person: Ouai, mais tu aimes Paris?
- Me: Bien sûr! Il y a beaucoup de chose à faire ici. Plus qu'aux États-Unis. Malheureusement, il y a les choses que je n'aurai pas les temps de faire.
- Other Person: Ah, oui. Mais tu manques Californie?
- Me: Oui, specialement ma famille et les temps.
- Other Person: Ouai, je comprends. Tu vas voyager en Europe après tes examens?
- Me: Oui, je vais voyager pour un mois.
- Other Person: Ah, tu as la chance. Profites-bien! Bisous!!
- Me: Bisous! Bonne journée!

After such a conversation, I usually stop and think to myself, "Wow, that was waaaay too simple. There is much more to say about my time in France and how I feel about going home." But then, I suppose I couldn't describe this semester in a single conversation in English either. There is too much to say, and at the same time, much that can't be said.

How do I best profiter from my last days in Paris?

2009-06-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite French words is the word profiter. I like it because there is no one-word English equivalent. It means what it sounds like -- to profit from doing something, to gain from doing something or to make the most of something. But it has a different connotation than "to make the most" of something. To me, when you want "to make the most of" a situation, it means milking it for all its worth or turning a bad situation into the best it can be. Profiter has a more subtle meaning. It is used to tell someone to have fun and enjoy whatever they are doing.

Since getting back to Paris from Bort-les-Orgues, my big question has been: how do I best profiter from my limited time left in Paris? It is a hard question, when you have so many favorite places you want to visit again, more places that you just heard are must-sees in Paris, and other places/things that are on your to-do list that you never got to. It is even harder when you have impending exams.

One can end up feeling quite overwhelmed.

I came to the conclusion that I should obviously do what I like best in Paris and can't do elsewhere. Here is a rather detailed list of how I have profiter-ed from being in Paris the last few days.

1) Took a day trip outside of ParisThis seems rather counter-intuitive -- to leave Paris when you want to profiter from the city. But day trips are really fun. You get out of the busy-ness of the city, and get to explore a small city that has so much history and has been influenced by Paris. My friend Katja and I went to Chartres, which is a very very small town southwest of Paris. Its claim to fame is a gothic cathedral that houses the robe the virgin Mary wore when she gave birth to Jesus. The cathedral also has amazing stained glass. We ended up taking an English-language tour with Malcolm Miller, a tour guide who has studied the cathedral for the past 50 years. He talked us through a brief history of the city, the architecture of the cathedral, and gave an explanation of how to read a couple stained glass windows. We took the day really easily, as we were both tired from studying (I had taken an exam at 8am that morning). We stopped frequently to enjoy the calmness of the city and to drink coffee and have ice cream.

2) Ate Crepes

Well, duh. After coming back from Chartres, my friends and I went to Rue du Montparnasse, where there are a ton of little creperies serving buckwheat crepes, the specialty of Brittany. Apparently, there are a lot of Brittany creperies in this area because trains going to and from Brittany and Paris come into Gare Montparnasse. Therefore, Bretons set up these crepe stands in the Montparnasse area. These crepes are amazing. We had them with glasses of cider. Yum.

3) Drank wine

I've stopped at several bars to sit and have a glass of wine with friends, which is even better if the weather cooperates and you can find a place to sit on the terrace.

4) Went to a cool art exhibitionMuseums and exhibitions are just one of those things you do when you have free time. I went to the Grand Palais and saw a cool exhibit called "Une image peut en cacher une autre" (An image can hide another). It features works of Dali, Escher, sculpture Marcus Retz, etc. Check out a cool video of the exhibit: click here. (It's in French, but you can at least see the works.) I liked how the exhibit was organized. At first, you saw early paintings where there were faces hidden in paintings of nature (faces in the rocks, formed from clouds in the sky, etc.), then Mongolian paintings of animals formed from smaller animals and human bodies, then optical illusion and perspective puzzles, and then finally finishing with modern sculptures that play with your perspective.

5) Went Shopping

Well, I went window-shopping, which means I didn't buy anything. It is always fun trying on clothes though.

6) Took a long walk

A cute street in the 13th.

This is one of my favorite things to do in Paris. I decided to forget about my metro pass and walked. My friend Daniel took me around the 13th arrondissement, which I had explored a bit but not all the way. That is one of the best things about walking around in Paris -- you may have explored a neighborhood but will find that there is always more to it.

7) Saw friends for food + dessert

It was my friend Alisa's birthday, which meant a perfect excuse for a rendez-vous at a French restaurant. The restaurant of choice was a fondue place in the 5th arrondissement. We feasted over a hot pot of cheese with unlimited supply of bread and roasted potatoes. We also ordered meat with long, hot stone with which to cook the raw meat and vegetables over. Afterwards, we made our way to Ile Saint-Louis for some great Berthillon sundaes. Food + great company makes for a perfect Parisian evening.

My Favorite Things #4: Odéon

2009-06-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

I have not yet given a proper shout-out to the area where I live, at the Odéon metro stop right off the main streets of Blvd Saint-Germain-des-Pres and Blvd Saint-Michel. I am at the 6th arrondissement, at Rive Gauche (the Left Bank), right at the northern part of the Jardin du Luxembourg. I live a five-minute walk from Pont des Arts, Notre Dame, the Fontaine de Saint-Michel, Église Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and Église Saint-Sulpice. The Théatre de l'Odéon is just down the street. It takes me 15 minutes to walk to Sciences Po.

As you can tell, Odéon is a really central location. I never feel unsafe walking around here at night because it is well-lit and there are always people around. The 10 and 4 metro lines come into the Odéon metro (the 4 goes north and south, and the 10 goes east and west), so it is easy for me to get around. In addition, a whole bunch of buses pass through this area. If I am somewhere wanting to head home, I will look at the bus stops near by and see if one of them goes by Odéon, Saint-Germain, or Saint-Michel. Usually, at least one bus does come my way, which saves me from taking the metro and having to transfer. There are three movie theaters right at the metro stop, a Starbucks, gourmet patisseries nearby, and many boutique clothing stores.

Right when you exit the metro stop, you find yourself at the carrefour de l'Odéon, which is a platform/sidewalk in the middle of all the streets intersecting into the section. On the carrefour, there is a guy who makes really good crepes and another guy who sells gummy candies and licorice. Every time I pass by these two places (which is quite often), I am so tempted to buy something to snack on. Usually, I am good about holding off on it.

Part of the reason it took me so long to give a proper mention to Odéon is because I often find myself annoyed at the place. Because I live and go to school in this area, I find myself here all the time, which can get tiring. Also, since I live in the center of Paris, it is really crowded. There are tourists everywhere. Sometimes when you exit the metro, you hear more English than French. There is such a stark difference between Odéon and other, less touristy areas. Sometimes when I find myself outside of Odéon, I feel like I am taking a breath of fresh air. The other problem is that there are so many boutiques around Saint-Germain-des-Pres, with cute clothes and beautiful accessories -- but also completely out of my price range.

However, these complaints are obviously not the end of the world. I've come to truly appreciate Odéon and my foyer -- it's a great area of Paris to call my home.

Travel Websites

2009-06-19T04:16:00.001-07:00

I just finished booking a month of travels on my own. Wow, it was complicated business. I now understand why people just make travel agents do it for them, especially if they don't know which cities they want to visit. The hardest thing for me was to figure out the best way to book everything, and the best way to make my itinerary to fit in things that needed to fall on specific days. I already had an idea of the places I wanted to go -- it was just a matter of finding the best order in which to go -- that would be most financially friendly and convenient.

In general, I have been using the following websites to find the best deals for flights:

Momondo: compares ticket prices from the airlines directly and from secondhand travel agencies. Oftentimes, the travel websites that it directs you to are cheaper than booking directly from the airlines themselves. It also has a handy tool that shows you when the cheapest flights are during that month.
Skyscanner: I like Skyscanner's interface. It's really easy to use and it does a similar comparison as Momondo. However, the prices are often out of date and that screws up your planning when you think a flight will be cheaper than it actually turns out to be. It doesn't feature any secondhand travel agents, and points you directly to the airline to book the tickets. I have found cheaper tickets on Momondo than Skyscanner, so I usually check both. The other annoying thing about Skyscanner is that it separates departure and returning flights instead of allowing you to book round-trip flights, which are often cheaper.
Kayak: The Frugal Traveler recently posted a blog about flight comparison websites he uses and he pointed to Kayak as his favorite one. For me, Kayak was okay but didn't have cheaper prices than Skyscanner or Momondo.
Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity: I usually do a quick check on these sites just to see what they have, because often they have some good tickets. However, they do not feature deals from the budget airlines such as EasyJet and RyanAir.
Budget airlines: There are many more budget airlines in Europe than I expected. I knew of EasyJet and RyanAir before coming here, but I didn't know that there was Vueling (Spanish), Wizzair (Hungarian), and AirBerlin (German) as well. EasyJet and RyanAir have many more options in terms of places they fly to, but Vueling, Wizzair, and AirBerlin are worth checking out. RyanAir and Wizzair only fly out of Beauvais airport, which is located in a small town outside of Paris. You must take a 13-euro bus ticket to get to. To me, this isn't terrible considering it costs 8,40 euros to get to Charles de Gaulle on the RER anyway. RyanAir is mighty tempting because they often offer crazy deals if you book in advance. Deals such as 10-euro round-trip flights to Italy from Paris, or 23 euros round-trip to Stockholm.

Non-flight options:

As I have written before, I love trains in Europe. Since the countries are so close together, it is quite accessible to take ground transportation to get to places. Each country has its own train system, so it is best to look at the country's website. I only used the following sites:

SNCF: The French train system
Bahn.de: The German train company (I am taking a train from Berlin to Prague)
Eurolines: These buses often have really cheap deals (I got 23-euro round-trip tickets to Brussels from Paris), but the trip can take a really long time, so watch out.
Eurostar: The best way to get to London and other locations. The Eurostar can have good deals if you book in advance, or if you go during the week (and avoid weekends), but that is hard to do, so it often becomes cheaper to take a flight to your destination.

Trains and buses are great, but the reality is that I usually found flights that were the same price or much cheaper. Obviously planes can be more convenient because they get you to your destination so much quicker, but I hate hanging around airports and would rather just get to the train station a couple minutes before the train leaves. You have to weigh the pros and cons when thinking about whether you want to take ground or air transportation.

So these are sites I have been using. Anyone have other suggestions?

P.S. More details about my month-long travel in Europe coming soon.

Visiting Co Hong

2009-06-17T05:47:00.001-07:00

Co Hong is a family friend/some type of relative (she may or may not be distantly related. family relations are always quite fuzzy to me). She used to work for my aunt and uncle in Vietnam, doing things around the house and taking care of my two young cousins. I have only met her twice before, on my trips to Vietnam in 1999 in 2008. When I saw Co Hong last summer, she told me she was marrying a French man and would be moving to France in the coming months. I promised to come visit her during my semester abroad.

I was finally able to make it out to her house this week. On Sunday morning, I took a train out of Paris to Brive-la-Gaillarde, a trip that took 4 hours. I slept like a baby on the ride, barely waking up in time to make it out at the right stop. Upon rushing out of the train, I was greeted by Co Hong and her husband, Christian, almost immediately. I was really happy to see them.

I had thought they lived in the city Brive-la-Gaillarde, the main metropolis. I had looked up a description of the city in my Lonely Planet book, which said the city was an ugly metropolis, so I wasn't exactly super excited to see the city. However, it turned out Co Hong lived quite a ways away from Brive. We got into the car and drove for an hour and a half (with Co Hong talking to me the whole time) before turning into a small village called Bort-les-Orgues, located in Limousin near the border of the Auvergne region.

I entered her house and was greeted by an entire clan that was there for Sunday brunch. Everyone gave bisous and introduced themselves. There was Christian's maman, his younger sister Christine and her husband, their two kids and kids' significant others, and Christian's daughter from his first marriage and her boyfriend. We had a great meal of salad, chicken, potato puffs, and a delicious chocolate cake. It was very filling, to say the least. Then the clouds ahead got thicker and it spilled over into rain. It rained on and off the rest of the day. I took a much-needed nap and then woke up to dinner: very salty cured ham + bread + salad + leftover chocolate cake. A very uneventful day, unless you count all the food! Co Hong and I talked the entire day.

Co Hong with her maman cutting the jambon (ham). It's seriously just a huge pig leg. It was really salty.

The rain continued into Monday. I woke up and went to a hyper-Champion (super huge Champion supermarket) with Co Hong, where we bought random groceries to cook lunch and dinner. I helped her prepare lunch of fried fish, a sauce made from ketchup, carrots, and onions (it was really good), and stir fry cabbage and carrots. We sat around and gossiped for most of the day because it was raining so hard. It was just like tropical weather -- pouring rain but warm and muggy (23 degrees Celsius!).

The next day, the weather was sunny and perfect. Co Hong and I took advantage of this by getting up early, going to Champion, finally finding coconut milk, and coming back to cook bánh xèo, one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. It is a big pancake filled with bean sprouts, mung bean, pork, shrimp, and onions. We had to make many modifications though. (1) Her husband's family doesn't like pork, so we bought beef instead. (2) No mung beans available. No worries. We would do without. (3) Her husband's family doesn't like shrimp. Same as #2. (4) No bean sprouts. No can do... bean sprouts are an important part of bánh xèo. Instead, we chopped up cabbage and carrots and sauteed them lightly. That would have to do.

I was very skeptical, to say the least. It was looking less and less like the bánh xèo I know and love.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. It was really good and tasted very much like the real thing. A lot of that has to come from the batter she used from the pancake -- it was really good. Also, we had fish sauce!

Her husband and mother-in-law loved "les crepes vietnamiennes." They asked her to make it for the entire family this coming Saturday! Haha.

Then, Co Hong and I decided to take a walk around Bort-les-Orgues. It really is a small city. It probably would have taken us 20 minutes to get through the whole city if we hadn't taken our time to go into some shops and the church. It was strange though. Even though it was a small town, it wasn't full of quaint little cottages like you imagine little French towns. It was very much like a little suburban town, with bigger houses, a rather deserted down center, and not too many people around. There were big warehouse-sized department stores, and only a handful of mom-and-pop shops. I wasn't sure what to make if it all.

What was really amazing was the direct surroundings of the city. While Co Hong finished making the bánh xèo, Christian took me to a summit point overlooking the valley. It was beautiful. I was really impressed by the view. There were trees, green plains, and plants everywhere. Some fog was still hanging around small pockets of valleys all around me. I could see the lake out of the corner of my eye.

That night, Christian took Co Hong and me to the lake near their city, where he has a boat. There is a medieval-style chateau perched on the edge of the lake, and we got to see it from all angles from the boat. He even let Co Hong drive the boat (although I realized driving it really isn't that difficult). We drove it through the lake as the sky turned orange, then red, and then blue. It was so tranquil and beautiful. I love boats and water.

I was sad to say good-bye because the family had been so nice to me, and because I don't know when I will see Co Hong again. I am beyond happy that she is doing well in France and that her family is good to her.

Co Hong with her sister-in-law, Christine. Christine has a dog salon, where she cuts and styles dogs' hair. Those are her two dogs. The storefront is located on one side of the house. Christine is also a singer who is in high demand on weekends (for weddings and other special events).

Co Hong on the patio with her maman and the sweetest dog.
Co Hong with Christian in front of Chateau de Val.

The Last Week in Pictures

2009-06-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

This week, I... (get ready for a lot of ellipses)

...ate Peruvian food with a huge group of friends in Montparnasse...

... relaxed in the Jardin du Luxembourg on a beautiful day (look at the big fluffy clouds!) where I ran into friends from Berkeley...... went to a 1920s-themed Great Gatsby birthday party on the river....

... ate Vietnamese food in Montmartre, saw the Sacre Coeur again, and visited the Moulin Rouge and Pigalle (sex district) for the first time.

My Favorite Things #3: The Sacre Coeur

2009-06-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

I've found myself at the Sacre Coeur every time I venture into Montmartre. Once I get up to that area of the city, it seems a pity if I don't take the time to soak in the view of the city and the view of the basilica itself.

The Sacre Coeur is situated on the highest hill in Paris, so as you can imagine, the view is spectacular standing right outside it. During the day, you can make out famous points of Paris, including Notre Dame, the Tour Montparnasse, the Louvre, and Invalides. At night, it is harder to make out these landmarks, but it is even better because the city sparkles at you from below. Right outside the basilica, people set up impromptu picnics, jam sessions, and dance parties. I've seen people juggling fire, dancing ethnic music, balancing basketballs, and one particularly amusing karaoke session.

Even though I am usually out of breath by the time I get to the top of the hill, the sight of the Sacre Coeur is always worth it. Especially at night. I am always impressed with how the city of Paris lights its monuments so that they seem to glow in the darkness (after all, it is the city of lights).

Le Train Harry Potter

2009-06-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

I love the Harry Potter series. So when I got a Facebook invitation for "Le Train Harry Potter," I decided it was worth checking out. The very short description said: "Venez découvrir les costumes, les animaux, le jeu vidéo et les décors inspirés du film." (Come discover the costumes, animals, video games, and decoratios inspired by the movie.) The train was scheduled to travel throughout France.

So my friend Alisa and I took the metro to Gare du Nord, where there was a train parked at the platform decked out in Harry Potter et le Prince Sang-Mêlé posters and decorations.

In the line waiting to get into the train, we saw this dog. It turned out to be the only animal we saw, and the description promised there would be animals, so we decided he must be important. First we thought he was the three-headed dog minus two heads, but then reasoned that he might be Fang (Hagrid's dog).

Inside the train, there were costumes the actors actually wore in the movie, as well as a lot of props. Each room had a theme: Ollivander's, Gryffindor common room, Potions class, Weaseley's Wizarding Wheezes, etc. There were also screens showing very short clips from the movie. You could also try out some video games for Wii. One thing that particularly amused me is the realization that the French call the wands "baguettes magiques" in French. Hah, magic baguettes.

The phoenix outside Dumbledore's office. The one you must say a password to get through (usually the name of a candy, like "lemon drop")
Lavender Brown's costume. I like how they try to make her look all mismatched to make her seem ridiculous. She was also wearing dark purple tights and purple boots. I thought that despite the mismatched patterns, it was a very cute outfit. Very French.

Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes! I think these are those fireworks that they used at the end of the 5th book.
Potions supplies in Potions class.
Outside the exit of the train after passing through everything.

Helpful Websites for the Parisian Traveler

2009-06-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

I use the Internet extensively in Paris to look up fun/interesting things to do and good places to eat. There is just so much to do here that sometimes you don't know where to start.

Here are some of the websites I've been using to figure everything out:

NYTimes Travel Section: A basic guide with restaurant and hotel reviews. It also includes "36 hours in ___" articles, which give you good ideas about how to spend little time in a city and make the most of it. I also enjoy Matt Gross' column, "The Frugal Traveler." He does some fun trips using little money. I particularly enjoyed the "Grand Tour of Europe" that he did about 2 years ago. [Ooh good news! He is in Paris right now!]
Spotted by Locals: A site made by "locals." Paris is one of the featured cities, and the premise is that the website recommends places that only locals would know about. I don't think the writers are actually locals, but they do make good suggestions for good places to eat and see.
Paris Étudiant: A site in French that targets students. I especially like setting the search options to "free" and seeing what kind of events come up. Oftentimes, it is a cool event (like the Carnaval festival I attended) or a live band playing at a bar. They also feature student discounts at theaters.
Stuff Parisians Like: A sarcastic, humorous blog about Parisians and Parisian life by a Parisian himself. His descriptions crack me up because they are often very true. His writing style is really amusing.
The Parisian Traveler: A blog of travel information in Paris. It's really interesting and offers historical information about different parts of Paris, as well as good finds for lesser-known places.
Tripadvisor: Great place to read reviews of hotels from other travelers. I booked many of my hotels from looking through only this site.
Lonely Planet: The website is not portable like its books (unless you have an iPhone and download the LP widget), but it has helpful user comments, maps, and recommendations.
Gridskipper: Fun recommendations. Of particular interest to me was a page about free food in Paris!

Last First Sunday in Paris

2009-06-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

In the garden at Musée Rodin, with Invalides in the background.

First Sunday of the Month = Free Museums

Although the French government made all national museums free to those under 26 at the beginning of April, the law applies only to EU citizens. My American/Australian friends and I have tried to surpass this technicality by flashing our school IDs (which also shows our birthdays), but I've only been able to succeed a total of one time so far. Some of my friends with better French accents have been able to get away with it... but more often than not, they ask for passport to confirm your citizenship so we are out of luck. [I have considered saying I'm from the UK though.]

Therefore, I was excited to have one last First Sunday in Paris. My friend Laurel and I were happy to see that the weather was sunny even though the weather forecast said it would be rainy all day. We planned to meet at the Musée Rodin and then have a picnic in Jardin des Plantes.

The Musée Rodin is full of Auguste Rodin's sculptures and artwork from his personal collection, which he donated to the museum. There is a beautiful garden outside with the famous Porte de l'Enfer (Gates of Hell), the Thinker, and about a dozen other statues. There is also a tranquil pond and roses. The roses were surprising to us because French gardens usually don't have flowers -- they usually have very pruned bushes, perfectly groomed grass, and occasionally some really organized trees. Laurel and I noticed that the bushes had some stray twigs sticking out and one even had a messy hole carved out. "Wow, Musée Rodin... not doing your job," we said. Tsk tsk tsk.

All joking aside, I really enjoyed this museum. I realized how difficult and technically challenging it must be to make sculptures, especially one out of metal. There was a little part of the museum that showed how bronze sculptures are made. There were more steps than I thought there would be: plaster molds, wax covering, building of intricate systems to get wax/air in and out of the mold, etc... very complicated. And of course, the statues made of chiseled marble were quite impressive.

Les Trois Ombres (The Three Shadows). This is an enlarged version of what is on top of Rodin's Gates of Hell.

By the time we left the museum, the clouds started rolling in and the perfect weather dissipated. Our picnic plans went out the door. Instead, we went to Trocadero to meet Zara at the Musée de l'Architecture where there was a house décor exhibition with Elle Magazine. Laurel and I took our time getting there, acting like tourists (aka taking many photos and speaking English loudly), strolling past Invalides in and walking around Trocadero in the light rain.

Outside the Grand Palais. "Oh look, a statue of someone important. OH it's Charles de Gaulle!" (M. de Gaulle is a general and former president of France. Very important guy, and the inspiration for many street names and the name of Paris' main airport.)

Being true tourists. Who can resist a photo op in front of the Eiffel Tower?

Then, there was much confusion trying to get to the exhibit. The woman at the front desk didn't know where it was and sent us in the wrong direction, where we ended up in a maze of empty corridors. Finally, we were pointed towards the right place. The exhibit was... interesting. It consisted of a total of 3 small rooms. One room had some furniture covered in white cloth, which led to a corridor with tables covered in white with wine glasses on top. This led to a small room insulated with white pillows and featured a pair of silver camel-toed shoes in a refrigerated cabinet with bright lighting. The last room was the biggest and most elaborate -- there was a dining table covered in white, with old-fashioned candles and chairs around for a dinner party. The walls were covered with black-and-white realistic-looking windows and doors that lookd like they could lead to other rooms. There were silverware and plates as well, and a tape on loop with party sounds. It wasn't what we were expecting, but we didn't get charged the 3-euro entrance fee so we had no complaints.On our way down, we stopped in the permanent collection, which was free. It featured mock-ups of cathedrals and medieval architecture from around Paris. There were religious statues, arches, doors, gargoyes, etc. Not as good as seeing the real thing (each piece looked out of place because it was isolated), but it was interesting seeing all the details of the pieces anyway.
We were still determined to "profiter" (very French word) from the Sunday, so we headed to the Musée d'Art Moderne in the Palais de Tokyo. I wasn't expecting much from this museum, and thought we could get through it in the one hour before it closed. However, I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't get through all the pieces before closing time because there were so many pieces. There was a lot of artwork, paintings, and sculptures. Some were hard to understand, but others were just beautiful.I came home so exhausted and sore from the day, and took a well-deserved nap.

More Swing-Dancing in Paris

2009-06-06T17:24:00.000-07:00

I went to another swing dance soirée, put on by the same group that had organized the last soirée I attended. This soirée was part of a swing-dancing weekend festival, which I had declined to participate in fully because of budgetary constraints. However, I decided to attend the soirée because of how much fun I had had last time, and because there would be a live band.

When I walked into the room, I was surprised at how crowded it was... probably 3 times more crowded than the last time. I recognized many people I had seen dancing before.

This party was not as fun as the last one though, for a couple reasons. First of all, there was a bigger imbalance between leads and follows. Secondly, there was definitely a disconnect between the band and the dancers. The band would continue their song for 10-15 minutes, which is way too long for dancers (it is proper dance etiquette to dance with the same person for an entire song). I found myself getting bored with the leads with whom I was dancing. Thirdly, I am really rusty with swing dancing, so I felt like I wasn't able to follow my leads very well... I felt a disconnect with most of the people I danced with.

But no matter, it was a good night anyway. For me, the highlight of the evening was a really cute choreographed routine by some professional swing dancers from Toulouse and Canada. The dedicated the routine to Frankie Manning, one of the "founding fathers" of lindy hop, who passed away recently. And although the band played really long songs, they were talented and enjoyable to listen to.

At one point, I reflected on the situation as a whole. There I was, standing in a ballroom in Paris listening to a French band play American jazz standards in English, and watching talented French couples do a dance style that originated in America in the 1920s -- and one that is not considered a widely-known dance style in the States. However, I realized that because swing is so fun, it can catch on easily and become a phenomenon anywhere in the world. Go to a swing party, and you will see smiles all around, from the people dancing, to the people observing, to the band playing. It never gets tiring being around that kind of atmosphere.

Snapshots of the Past Week

2009-06-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Not too much going on, but enough to write a couple bullet-points:

My Turkish-German friend Fatih took me to a Turkish restaurant that only serves soup, specifically Turkish lentil soup, which I had grown fond of after trying it in Turkey. The restaurant is located at the Strasbourg Saint-Denis metro stop, where there are many other Turkish patisseries, restaurants, and supermarkets.
I took Zara to Pho 14, where she had pho for the first time. Then I saw her school (Sorbonne 1 Panthéon), which is a really tall building with many stories. It reminded me of some high schools I've been to but with huge lecture halls and older students milling around.
I tried Parisian Tibetan food, which was pretty good (but not as good as Tibet Café in Berkeley)
My World of Wine course held its Dîner de Conference. Rather, it was a Pique-Nique de Conference. We met at Place de Vosges, which is a beautiful park located in the Marais and set up a picnic of wine (of course), cheese, fruit, chocolate, and baguettes. Unfortunately, we were forced to move after some police officers told us it was illegal to drink open bottles of wine outside (that is one of those rules that they rarely enforce but you must follow if they ask you). Then we moved to Ile Saint-Louis and continued our picnic right on the Seine. It was a really fun dîner de conference. We drank wine, ate snacks, and talked about everything from Sciences Po to our hometowns to French chansons. (We even played 10 fingers at one point...)
I finished my last oral presentation of the semester. It was in French, which made it really tough for me. I'm glad I won't have to do any more of those.
I had Berthillon ice cream for the first time! Berthillon is supposed to be the best ice cream in Paris, and it's located on Ile Saint-Louis. There are many restaurants and smaller shops that sell Berthillon on the same street. It was really good, but a bit expensive for the small scoops that you get (2,50 for one scoop, 4 euros for 2). I tasted salted caramel and grapefruit-rose. The caramel was definitely a highlight. There were swirls of real caramel weaving through my scoop. It is amazing how much the ice cream tastes like the actual flavor. After getting the ice cream, Laurel and I walked down to the Seine and enjoyed our cones on ther riverbank. Read a funny description of Berthillon from the blog "What Parisians Like" here.
Wine with Laurel in the Jardin du Luxembourg (I actually haven't been to the garden in quite awhile, considering it is only down the street from me).
Another late-night picnic at Pont Sully for Morgan's 21st birthday.
My wine course had a make-up class where the professor took us to Place de la Madeleine, located in the 2nd arrondissement. It's a square with a big church (Église Madeleine), but what was of interest to my class was the food and wine selection. We went to two huge gourmet stores, Fauchon and Hediard, and passed by a truffles and caviar shop. As you can expect, these places were pretty expensive but interesting (and mouth-watering!) to explore. What caught my eye the most were the gourmet mustard and jam selections -- they looked so good and there were so many different types of them (grapefruit-rose jam, passionfruit jam, curry mustard, chive mustard, etc.). They also had amazing spice and tea assortments too. And of course, there was plenty of good-looking wine as well.
Rue Cler Market (at the École Militaire metro) with my friend Lauren. We walked down the cute cobblestone street, where we stumbled upon not only a food market, but an antique market that was going on only this weekend. We had fun looking at old mirrors, birdcages, jewelry, and various knicknacks.

A Weekend in Bretagne: Saint Malo, Dinard, & Rennes

2009-06-06T04:27:00.001-07:00

Our first view of Saint Malo. Boats at the port and the walled city in the background.

We left Mont Saint-Michel and took a bus directly to Saint Malo. It was a comfortable bus with cushion-y chairs, but the weather was so hot that the bus felt stuffy. Therefore, when we got off the bus at Saint Malo, we were happy to be welcomed by a refreshing ocean breeze.

Right away, we could see that we would have a relaxing time in Saint Malo. People were walking around with t-shirts, sandals, and towels tied around their waists. Many people had obviously just come from the beach. We could see turquoise water around us, with cute little boats docked and the walled city (called Intramuros) looming up ahead.

I really wanted to explore the walled city right there and then, but we had to find our hotel first. I had lagged in booking a hotel because we weren't sure what the exact plan would be for our Brittany weekend (we weren't sure which cities we would visit), so I had only reserved the hotel the day before. Most hotels had been full, so we ended up in a hotel in St. Sevran, which is not in the walled city... you must take a 20-minute walk around a little gulf in order to get to the St. Sevran peninsula and our hotel. We initially had a hard time finding it and were annoyed that it was so far from Intramuros. However, it turned out to be a great little hotel -- clean, chic, and comfortable -- run by a helpful couple. [The hotel is called La Rance Hotel, and I would recommend it if you are going to Saint Malo.] Our room had a nautical theme and it looked out to the turquoise sea. We settled down and got ready to go to dinner in the walled city.

The hotel owners recommended that we take the long way around the peninsula to get back to Intramuros. We were apprehensive about this because we were so tired, but it ended up being well worth it. The trail around the peninsula followed the sea, and there were trees all around. The sun reflected off the water, making it sparkle. We saw more boats floating nonchalantly in the water, and passed by St. Sevran's fortress, Forte de la Cité. We also came across these huge metal structures that looked like they had been bombarded with guns/canons. Perhaps they had been used during WWII. We could see the walled city across the gulf and the city of Dinard across the sea. It was such a nice walk that we took our time and it took us twice as long to get to Intramuros.We made it to the walled city, and it was really cute. There are cobblestone streets everywhere, and restaurants, hotels, and specialty stores sprinkled all around. We were determined to get seafood (Brittany is known for having good seafood because it is so close to the water), and wandered into a restaurant where we ordered oysters, scallops, grilled fish, and shrimp. We washed all that down with cider, a specialty of the region. It was yummy. By this time, it was late and chilly, so we walked along the beach only for a little while before heading back to our hotel. We saw the sun set over Île du Grand Bé which is a fortress where the famous French author Chateaubriand is buried. The colors in the sky separated themselves out so that it was blue, orange, and purple at the same time.

The next morning, we woke up early, checked out of the hotel, and went back to the walled city. My to-do list for that morning was very specific: eat crepes (buckwheat crepes are a specialty of Brittany... crepes actually originated there) and buy salted caramel. We weren't hungry yet, so we walked around the ramparts again and explored different parts of the walled city. We then settled on a restaurant recommended in my guidebook, called Le Petit Crêpier. It was a cute little restaurant with a nautical theme. These were gourmet crepes, as you will see. Slin ordered the seafood specialty crepe of the day: oysters with cabbage covered in a white sauce. I ordered a crepe with filet mignon, a honey and beer tangy sauce, and a scoop of mashed cauliflower on top. Then, for desert, we had a crepe with salted caramel and poached apples. The crepes were amazing. Of course, we also had some cider to complement the meal.We headed to a couple caramel shops to stock up on caramel chews and spread, and then headed to the shore to catch a boat to Dinard. The boat, called "bus de mer" (literally, sea-bus), took us to Dinard in 10 minutes. Dinard is a beachy, touristy town known for resorts and nice coastal walks. We headed straight for Dinard's big beach called Plage de l'Écluse and rested there for awhile, dipping our feet in the water, laying and dozing in the sand, snacking on caramels, and people-watching. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather. Then, we took two relaxing walks that took us along the coastline and through the town. One took us around Pointe du Moulinet, where we saw beautiful seaside villas. From there, we explored the town, which is really small. It reminded me of other small coastal towns in California, like Monterey or Carmel-by-the-Sea -- not too many people, many mom-and-pop shops, and small streets. The second walk we did was along the famous Promenade du Claire de Lune (moonlight promenade), which was on the other side of the coast. We could see Saint Malo's walled city and enjoyed more views of the sand and water.

The beach!
Pointe du Moulinet ... look at that house on the cliff!

Promenade du Claire de Lune

Then we took the sea-bus back to Saint Malo and enjoyed dinner in the walled city. This dinner was amazing. I ordered a macholotte, which was a bowl with a collection of different seafoods: mussels, fish, shrimp, mixed with potatoes and a light wine sauce. Yum.

Then it was time to leave the beautiful city of Saint-Malo. We took the train to Rennes. There wasn't much going on when we got there. Rennes is a big university city and the capital of Brittany. [Well, "big" is pretty relative. We actually walked around it quite easily in half an hour.] We explored the area around our hotel, which was located in the center of the city. We saw the opera house, the city hall, and the big shopping center before calling it a night. Although our time in Rennes was limited, we wanted to make it count, so the next morning we woke up early (8am) to check out the town. Unfortunately, being early in the morning plus a holiday made Rennes look a bit like a ghost-town. No matter... we were able to see 2 cathedrals, buy a pain-au-chocolat that had come right out of the oven (yum!), and walk around the old town. Many buildings in the old town look like they are tilting and you can see their exposed beams from the street. I had never seen buildings like this before, and it made Rennes unique to me.
Then it was time to go back home. We took an extended train ride (because it was the cheapest option) and got back to Paris in the early evening.

The weekend in Brittany was amazing. The weather was absolutely perfect, the towns were relaxing, and there was good food everywhere! Lately, I've been recommending that everyone go there. Turquoise water, crepes, caramel, beaches, old architecture... how could it get better than that?

Mont Saint-Michel

2009-06-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

Mont Saint-Michel is a small, rocky island which is covered by a walled city. It is known for its beauty, especially when the tide comes up and the walled city looks like it is floating on top of the water.

Slin and I spent the beginning of our weekend in Bretagne (a region in Northern France known for salted caramel, great seafood, and coastal towns) at Mont Saint-Michel. We had woken up early on Saturday morning to take a train to Rennes, and from there, took a direct bus to Mont Saint-Michel. Once we were at the walled city, we only had a couple hours before we had to take a bus to the coastal town of Saint Malo. It wasn't too hard to get through the whole walled city in this amount of time, considering that it is small, circular, and easy to navigate.

Unfortunately, we had arrived at a time when the tide was down, so the city didn't look as spectacular as it does in some of the photos you will find. However, it was beautiful nonetheless.

When we entered the walled city, we were greeted with dozens of tourist shops, creperies, brasseries, and the occassional hotel. We went up the stairs to go into the abbey, which was pretty cool. A lot of it reminded me of cathedrals and older buildings that I have seen since coming to paris, but the view from the abbey was spectacular -- you can see around the walled city, and out into the expanses of shallow water (shallow because the tide wasn't in).

After enjoying the view, we walked around the upper expanses of the walls, which were built out of rocks and bricks. The sun was shining brightly the whole time, so it was enjoyable to wander around the walled city. Then, we headed down to the shore to get a better look at Mont Saint-Michel from below. We saw some people walking along the silt far out from the walled city, and we wanted to do this too. However, after stepping one foot onto the silt and almost slipping, we decided it would be better just to walk along dry land. Perhaps this was a good idea, because I read later about how there is quicksand all around!

Columns in the abbey:
The garden in the abbey. Really beautiful.

You can see all the silt here, where the water would be if the tide was in. You can also see two people walking -- later I wondered how they could have walked so much without slipping! They had a dog too.

The abbey is the tall tower in the background.

We caught a bus from Mont Saint-Michel to Saint Malo -- our next stop in Brittany and where we would rest for the night.

To be continued...

My Favorite Things #2: Trains

2009-06-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

I love taking the train in France. Even after spending hours and hours on the train this weekend (getting to/from/around Bretagne), I am still a fan.

First, let me get it straight. The train is different from the metro (which covers Paris and its immediate suburbs) or the RER (farther suburbs). Specifically, I am talking about the TGV (high-speed train) and TER (normal-speed train). These two train services take you everywhere in France. I splurged and bought a 12-25 youth card (49 euros), which allows me to save up to 50% off train tickets. This has been very helpful in getting me to Lyon and Brittany for a good fare.

Now, what I really like about the trains is the efficiency and comfort. There is no hassle in getting to the train station, and you only need to arrive just before the train leaves -- there is no need to show up 2-3 hours in advance like an airport. Plus, Paris has multiple train stations that are all easily accessible by metro. Once you settle into the train, the chairs are cushion-y and comfortable. It's also quite a smooth ride, with no disturbing sounds or jarring stops.

The next enjoyable factor is the view. Living in the big city makes you forget about green/farm-able/countryside France. On the train, you see stretches of trees, plains, vineyards, etc. without the hassle of having to drive and brave the confusing French roads.

Lastly, the trains get you places quickly and cheaply (especially if you book in advance).

Alas, I do have a slight love-hate relationship with SNCF, the national transportation agency. I constantly get emails touting deals for 22-euro trips to the South of France or Italy or another great location. But that's all they tell you! They don't give you any more details on which dates you should book or what dates the discounts will be valid. I've spent hours agonizing over these alleged cheap fares... it takes time and patience and know-how to navigate the discounts.

Slin Visits Paris!

2009-05-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

Slin arrived in Paris last Saturday morning, and he's been hanging out with me this week. Unfortunately, he happened to come during my busiest week of schoolwork thus far... so he spent a lot of time in Paris on his own while I sat in cafés and at the school library studying and trying to finish my work. This included most significantly a final exam in my French language class and a 5-page paper in French on avant-garde/classical music and its politics after 1945 (this paper posed 2 huge problems to me: it was all in French, which is already one of my weak points, and it is about an era of music that I only vaguely remember learning about as a music major because it is not my favorite period of classical music history).

Nonetheless, Slin and I did some really cool, touristy and not-so-touristy things this week. Check it out:

Musée du Quai Branly
This is a museum of world art and history located near the Eiffel Tower. Currently, they are doing an exhibition on jazz called Le Siècle du Jazz (The Century of Jazz), which I've been wanting to see for awhile. This exhibit featured art inspired by jazz music, as well as old records, articles and film clips about jazz. It was an enjoyable and interesting collection. It really did look at the entirety of the past century in jazz -- from the swing era to the avant-garde jazz that continues to this day. I've learned a bit about jazz history and theory in school, so it ended up being a nice refresher to see everything in the exhibit. One thing that stood out to both me and Slin was the inherent racism against African-Americans in early jazz that continued well on throughout much of the century. I didn't enjoy that part... but I suppose it is a part of jazz history that cannot be erased. This painting (at right) is actually from the MOMA in SF. It was one of our favorites of the collection.

Eiffel Tower
We joined my friends for a morning picnic at the Eiffel Tower, and then proceeded to climb up the Eiffel Tower to the first story to catch the view. We huffed and puffed up the stairs (it was a hot and muggy day, probably about 80 degrees F) but it was really worth it to see the city from a different viewpoint. I realized that I never tire of seeing panoramic view of Paris, especially when the weather is so nice (see view of the Champs de Mars at right). Also, the Eiffel Tower is pretty cool. I never thought about how weird it must have been to have a metallic, pointy structure pop up over the span of a couple years, one that is now a universal symbol of Paris...

More Eiffel Tower
We tried to go to the Centre Pompidou on Tuesday only to realize that it's the one day of the week the Centre Pompidou closes! Instead, we walked over to Hotel de Ville, where there was a free exhibit about the Eiffel Tower and other projects completed by Mr. Gustav Eiffel (the main architect) and his company. The collection included photos of Mr. Eiffel and his family, blueprints for the Tower itself, blueprints for other projects with Eiffel's company, and artwork featuring the tower. It was a really interesting exhibit, and made me appreciate the tower more. It was enjoyable to see the pictures from the construction of the tower -- back then, that area had been desolate, but now it is a booming area of Paris. It was also funny to see that the tower was highly criticized at its inception. There were drawings of proposals to change the tower (some were pretty ridiculous... like building grass and hills around the tower, or making it resemble a volcano), and also a petition to get rid of the tower. My favorite part was a collection of 36 drawings by Henri Rivière that included the Eiffel Tower in some form (in snow, in the background, in the forefront, etc.), called 36 Vues de la Tour Eiffel. It was modeled after a similar project by a Japanese artist called 36 Views of Mount Fuji.

The 13th Arrondissement
Slin stayed in two hotels during his stay, and one of them was located in the 13th arrondissement, or Chinatown. That meant we spent a lot of time there. In particular, we found a popular Pho restaurant called Pho 14, which serves a decent and fairly-priced bowl of pho with lines going out the door during lunchtime and dinnertime. We also ate at a Laotian restaurant called Lao Duong Chan, where we shared a yummy bowl of noodle soup and banana-flower salad. The soup was rich, and tasted like it had a mixture of coconut milk and curry mixed into the broth. The salad was very flavorful and refreshing. We also stopped at Tang Freres, an Asian grocery store where we saw mangosteens, Chinese pears, and dragonfruit. I felt very much "at home" in this district. It reminded me of Asian areas in the States. I realized part of this was because of the tall buildings, without any older architecture or older buildings in sight. It can make you forget you're in Paris.

Organic Market
We checked out the Sunday market at Raspail, which is there during the week but is specially for organic produce and goods on Sundays. We ate a delicious potato and onion pancake grilled right at the market, and bought a jar of pineapple jam (We ate this with these little yogurt Petit Suisse cups later, so good!). The produce looked amazing, with such vibrant colors, and the market was streaming with people.

Catacombs
The Catacombs are these underground tunnels that are stacked with exhumed bones. They began around since the 1800s, when the growing graveyards spread diseases among the population. As a solution, the city dug up the bones and put them in the already-built quarries and stacked them neatly. It's a pretty creepy place. You first go down a spiral staircase deep underground and make your way along clean tunnels. For awhile, I was wondering when the bones would start showing up! Then, you reach a door that welcomes you to the land of the dead and you see tombs, skulls, and human bones stacked up neatly. It's such a strange kind of place to visit, definitely very macabre. On your way out, you have to mount stairs (a workout for the thighs) and have your bags checked by the guards to make sure you didn't steal any bones (Why would you??).

Look at all those skulls!

Also worth mentioning:

Chai tea and a Bailey's milkshake at a hip, cool café near the Centre Pompidou, called L'Emprévu
Falafel and vintage clothes shopping in the Marais (Slin bought a really brightly-colored and brightly-patterned windbreaker that came straight from the 80s)
Moroccan food in Montmartre (yummy tagines and pastilles) and an enjoyable view from the Sacre Coeur

My Favorite Things #1

2009-05-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a thematic string of posts of things that I personally love about Paris, which I will title "My Favorite Things." Some of these things will be quite specific or may seem pretty random.

This post will be the first of (hopefully) many. I can already foresee that a lot of these will be about food (i.e. restaurants, cafés, random French cuisine), but I will definitely try to mix it up. However, I am going to start with a food post! Now without further ado...

My Favorite Things #1: Yogurt with Fresh Kiwi

First of all, yogurt in France is amazing. It's different from yogurt in the States, which is thick, rather rich, and usually has huge fruit chunks floating in it. Don't get me wrong, the French have thick, rich, and fruity yogurt as well, but most of the yogurt here is a tart, thinner yogurt, and this kind happens to be one of my favorites. I describe it to Californians as non-frozen froyo. It is a yogurt that is sweet (if you get it with sugar, which I do) but also tart. I cannot find this yogurt in the U.S., but my mom knows how to make it so at least I will have that when I get back.

[Side note: Other French yogurt is also quite tasty. Certain yogurt brands sell their goods in clay pots, which you can obviously keep and use later... I've thought about using the pots to plant small flowers or herbs. Or just to use as another cup in the kitchen.]

Now on to kiwi. I had never eaten fresh kiwi in the U.S. (which now seems like a big oversight to me), and I can't even remember if it is available fresh in supermarkets. In Paris, they are offered at my foyer with dinner, where they look so juicy and appetizing. I usually cut them in half (like shown) and eat them with a spoon.

The kiwi with the yogurt is really great. The kiwi is a little sour and a little tart, so it balances out the sugar in the yogurt really well. The kiwi seeds also give the snack a great texture. I can eat this snack at any time during the day, but I usually eat it as a healthy dessert at the end of a meal.

Week of Friends and Food

2009-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

I had a great week with good company and good food. Well, how could one enjoy Paris in any other way?

First of all, it is important to note that after 3+ months in Paris, a week of spring break, and two 3-day weekends in a row, my friends and I all are feeling pretty broke. So many of the activities of the past week have involved very little money. It's amazing what you can do with little money if you have some imagination and fun people to hang out with.

It started on Monday night, when I took an impromptu walk along the Seine with my friend Alisa. I haven't seen her in awhile, so it was nice to catch up and see the nightly sights that I have really been missing lately. We met at the Fontaine Saint-Michel, where a group of young French kids were blasting a radio and dancing -- which included random hip-hop, break-dancing, Michael-Jackson-like pelvic-thrusting, and the robot. Very entertaining. A whole crowd of tourists had crowded around to take a look. Afterward, we strolled along the Seine away from Notre Dame and ended up at Pont des Arts for about an hour. We then realized it was past midnight and Alisa might not be able to catch the metro home, so we hurried back, enjoying the view of Notre Dame looming closer.

On Wednesday night, my friend Ara organized a nighttime picnic on the grassy banks of the Seine, right off Pont Sully. The location of choice overlooked the river, and also had a small playground and ping pong tables! It was a perfect night -- warm and relaxing, with great people, most of whom were from Sciences Po. We drank wine, ate snacks, and chatted. Beyond that, we played on the monkey bars, went down the slides, and bounded up a "climbing wall." At one point, we were even given baguettes and chips from a group next to us, one that was leaving and had food leftover. (Well, we did ask them if they could spare their leftovers, but it was unexpectedly nice of them to actually give them to us.) I had so much fun at this picnic, mostly because I felt so comfortable and content with everyone there. I ran into a lot of people that I knew but hadn't expected to see at the picnic. I have realized through this past week that Sciences Po is a small world just like any other school -- one person knows another person who knows another person... the circle just goes on and on. It's a comforting feeling.

Then, on Thursday (a holiday in which I spent most of the day inside doing work and interviewing sommeliers at Lavinia for my wine paper), I had a picnic in front of Invalides with three girls from my Welcome Programme group, girls I haven't seen in weeks: Sara from Italy (she lives in a village with 300 people!), Corine from the Netherlands, Minsoo from South Korea, and then me from America. We tried to speak mostly in French (although everyone in the group speaks English fluently), and enjoyed a long meal that included taboulé, rice stir fry, strawberries, bread, dutch cookies with caramel, peach sparkling wine, olives, tomatoes, and chips. It was a much chillier night than the previous night's picnic, but we were having such a good time that we braved the cold just to hang out longer!

For Friday's dinner, a group of us went to Le Tribal Café, a little café/bar in the 10th arrondissement that serves free couscous on Friday nights. Yes, free. This café actually serves free food most nights -- they have mussels/frites nights and chicken couscous nights. All that they require is that you buy a drink, which are surprisingly cheap (I got a glass of wine for 3.50). We arrived one hour earlier than the food gets served, and relaxed over wine and cocktails. Then, at promptly 9pm, the workers began bringing out our couscous! It was pretty tasty, all things considered, and the chicken was seasoned very well. However, the portions weren't particularly big, so we went to a nearby Monoprix and snacked on some ice cream bars to fill the rest of our stomachs.

From there, we went to Cara's house for a small party. I always enjoy parties at Cara's place, and this was no exception. All the people there were fun, which made for interesting and amusing conversation. A few friends and I were determined to catch the last metro home, and we cut it very close, but succeeded. I got home around 2am and went straight to bed.

Since then, I've been keeping busy with Slin's arrival in Paris!

We spent Slin's first day walking around Paris in the light rain. We then ate dinner at a restaurant in the 13th arrondissement (near Slin's hotel) called Chez Paul. Actually, we had planned to eat at Chez Gladines (Basque restaurant), but it was so crowded that they said the wait would be over an hour. We decided to take a short walk around the area and ran into Chez Paul, which had been recommended by my guidebook and on the internet. It serves traditional Lyonnais food, which included a lot of animal insides (intestines, tongue, stomach, etc.). However, we decided to stay away from this, and instead ordered some hearty meats. I ordered a suckling pig cooked in a light sage sauce with mashed potatoes, while Slin ordered grilled lamb on top of lentils. It was cooked perfectly, and the restaurant's ambiance was relaxing and home-y.

Miscellaneous Observations from Paris

2009-05-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

The French like to capitalize all the letters of your last name. One is not Marie Smith, but Marie SMITH.
Sidewalks are tiny. You can easily get pushed off the sidewalk and be forced to walk in the streets. Most people are unrelenting about getting off the sidewalk, so you get a lot of bumped shoulders and overall aggressiveness on the sidewalk.
Which brings me to... dog poop. There is dog poop on the streets almost everywhere, so you really have to look out as you walk. Especially on Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which is the route I take to school every day. Luckily, there is an extensive street-cleaning system that rids the streets of the dog poop a couple times each week.
Parisians love small dogs. They love taking their small dogs everywhere with them, including supermarkets, cafés, bookstores, wine tastings, etc. The dogs will never cease to amuse me. There are calm, well-behaved, and often well-dressed. (They put Kodi to shame... he would go crazy on Parisian streets)
The word "attention" means so much more in French than English. It means "look out!" and sounds just as urgent when said in French. "Ah-tawn-see-own!"
I think the French use some of the cutest words in their daily vocabulary: "Coucou" and "Bisous." "Coucou" means "hey there!" and is usually said in a sing-song voice. "Bisous," often shortened to "biz," means "kiss!" and is said at the end of a conversation often in the place of or in addition to "au revoir." I still smile when I hear people say these words.
When you say bye to a French person, there are a whole line of greetings that take up the time between the initial "good-bye" and the time you actually part ways, so that there is never that awkward silence where you have already said bye but haven't yet left. Among these are: "À toute à l'heure," "à bientôt," and "bonne journée."
When you meet a person or see a person again, you give the person two kisses, one on each cheek. This is the generally accepted way to greet someone. There is no awkward "should I hug/kiss that person?" kind of moment. [Although this was hard for me to get used to at the beginning, I came to appreciate it. With the American greetings, it is too complicated to figure out if you give someone a hug, a handshake, or do nothing. On the flip side, my awkward Americanness comes out quite often. You can see me giving awkward waves as greetings or farewells. It is only after I wave that I realize how weird I must look.]
When Paris is sunny, the population of the city seems to quadruple. Parisians love sunlight and picnics, and they spill onto the streets when the weather is nice.
Cars here rarely honk. Apparently, it is not allowed? I remember being surprised that pedestrians would dart in front of cars and not get any reaction from the drivers. (In America, you would most definitely hear honks and cursing)
The French don't use QWERTY keyboards. Therefore, their keyboards confuse me immensely, even as I have gotten used to using them since spending more time at Sciences Po. Their keyboards would be called AZERTY keyboards. They are more or less QWERTY keyboards with certain letters switching places.
Parisians are very stylish. Before coming to Paris, I could expect young ladies and women in their 20s and 30s to be pretty fashionable, but here in Paris, EVERYONE is fashionable. This includes young girls (you will see 5-year-olds wearing designer coats, skinny jeans, and high boots) and old ladies (again in designer coats, heels, and stylish, albeit gray, hair). It's not even that Parisians wear expensive clothes (although many of them do), but they really go all the way with their styles... you won't see any half-assed fashions here.

more observations later...

À la Découverte de l'Opéra

2009-05-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

The view from the lobby of the Opéra Bastille.
There are old opera posters hung in front of the windows, which open out to a great view of the city.

One of my courses that I thoroughly enjoy is my opera class. Even though it is taught in French, I feel like I am learning a lot and improving my French at the same time. This past week, we had two field trips: a tour at the Opera Bastille, and the final dress rehearsal of Puccini's Tosca, also at the Opera Bastille.

I had already been to the Opéra Bastille for the dress rehearsal of Macbeth, but the tour showed us places that were not accessible to the public, such as the backstage area. It began with the entire group taking countless escalators to get to the top floor of the building. Our professor joked in his heavily-accented English: "It's bigger than Macy's huh?" At the top lobby, we enjoyed the view of the city and of one of the most famous parts of Paris.

From there, we went backstage, which was huge -- much bigger than the Opera Garnier's backstage area. There were sets everywhere, and technicians doing touch-ups on scenery and putting things in the correct places. There is a huge king kong character in L'Affaire Makropoulos, an opera that had just finished its run, and we got to see that setpiece. It looked real and it was HUGE.

The Opera Bastille is much newer than the Opera Garnier, and it looks much more modern as well. There is no plush, red carpeting or gold inlays. Instead, the design is more sleek, clean, and modern. The productions at the Opera Bastille are known for being more experimental than those at the Opera Garnier... hence the huge King Kong!

From Act 2, when Tosca is negotiating with Scarpia to save her lover from death and torture.

Then, this past Monday, we saw an early-morning final dress rehearsal of Tosca. It was a great production. I've never seen Tosca before, so it was a real treat for me. I hadn't looked up the synopsis beforehand, and without subtitles (since it was a dress rehearsal), it was hard to figure out everything that was going on. Between the first and second acts, however, I got my hands on a French synopsis, which I read to the best of my ability and figured out what was happening.

The lead singers were great. I especially enjoyed the singer who played Tosca -- her voice reminded me of Maria Callas'. I had heard parts of the opera before, in my music classes, most notably the famous aria in Act 2, Vissi d'arte. It's a beautiful aria, and one of my favorites. She sang it so well. Here is a clip from Youtube of Angela Georghiu singing it: click here. Like all other operas, the storyline really tugs at the heartstrings... opera is really a unique experience. I always walk out of the theater feeling more introspective and amazed at the singing I just witnessed.

[Side note: I realized partway through the opera that the other reason I recognized so many parts of the opera was because Michelle Kwan had skated a very successful program to clips from Tosca. You can watch the video here. It's from the 2004 nationals, and she won the gold medal after this program!]

Yes, I am here to go to school

2009-05-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

I am here studying abroad, but I have barely talked about my schoolwork, except when it involves something fun like a field trip. While it may seem like I am spending all my time frolicking around Paris and the European continent, I have been working hard at different projects between the fun. My Sciences Po experience has been different from my studies at Berkeley because of the emphasis on research papers and presentations, with rarely any tests. (There are students who have "galops", or midterms, which often fall on Saturday mornings. I, however, only have 2 final exams, and the rest of my grades are based on presentations and papers.)

Here is a taste of what I've been working on:

A presentation and paper on China's relationship with Central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional alliance it created with Russia, Tajikistan, Kazhakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
A presentation on California wine-making -- the past, present, and future. Also touching on French attitudes towards CA wines, plus France's influence on California wine-making in general.
A comparison of three different versions of "Una voce poco fà," an aria from Rossini's Barber of Seville
A research paper on vendanges tardives, a sweet wine that comes from the Alsace region of France
A paper analyzing a study of Western and Eastern German political and economic preferences before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall
A research paper on the Khmer Rouge trials of the Cambodian genocide
A presentation and paper on music and politics after 1945, focusing specifically on John Cage, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Berio

As you can see, it's not all fun and games here in Paris, but it sure is interesting.

La Nuit des Musées

2009-05-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

Paris does a cool event every year where they open museums at night on a Saturday, free of charge. Of course, my friends and I wanted to take part, so we met with a list of museums that we were interested in seeing: Le Grand Palais, Musée de l'Orangerie, Musée Rodin, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature), Musée d'Orsay, and the Musée de Quai Branly. However, I was pretty naïve in thinking we could just go "museum-hopping" -- I wasn't anticipating such huge crowds (although now in retrospect, I don't know how I could overlook that).

Our first stop was the Grand Palais, for the Andy Warhol exhibit. My friend Katja and I realized we would be in for huge crowds when we got to the Chatelet metro stop to transfer to the 1 line. It was so crammed that the conductor said he wouldn't leave the station until some people got off. We decided to talk to the Grand Palais instead. It was a short, 20-minute walk.

When we got there, we saw a line but we were pretty pleased that it didn't seem too long. 45 minutes later, we were at the front gates, but it wasn't looking like the Andy Warhol exhibit.... Rather, it looked like very very modern sculptures/paintings/pieces. That's when we noticed a big poster over the museum that said "La force de l'art." We realized that there were two lines for the Grand Palais, and that the other one had been for the Andy Warhol exhibit. No worries. We decided to check out this exhibit anyway.

Well, it was a pretty weird exhibition, to say the least. I'm not the best with modern art, so I had a hard time figuring out what some of the pieces were trying to portray. For example, there was a piece that featured different-colored plastic grocery bags on the floor. I bent down and almost touched one (not knowing that it was part of the exhibit) when the guard standing near me said sternly, "Ne touche pas!"

Katja and I were pretty amused by the exhibit. Here are some pictures, so maybe you can see why:

The aforementioned plastic bag piece:
Taste the poison!
These snowflakes were pretty cool
Chicago's coffee bean? Not quite...

We were still determined to see another museum when we left the exhibit at 11pm, especially the Andy Warhol exhibit. However, by the time we got to the the line, the guards said we probably wouldn't make it into the museum by closing time (1am). We were disappointed, but instead, we went to the Musée de l'Orangerie, where we met with my friend Laurel. The line wasn't too long, and we made it into the museum an hour after waiting in the rain.

Success!!

I loved the Musée de l'Orangerie. It's simple, peaceful, and relatively small. Despite the long line outside, there weren't too many people in the museum, which made it all the more enjoyable. There are two oval-shaped rooms that house Monet's water-lily paintings called the Nymphéas -- long, rectangular paintings of water, trees, lily pads, and nature. These rooms are beautiful. The subtle lighting provides a sense of grace, and with the small crowds, you feel calm and introspective. I could sit there for hours. Then, downstairs, there are small paintings by Cezanne and Renoir, which are also great. This museum is one of my favorites so far.

Musical and Theatrical Offerings

2009-05-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

A taste of my past week of music and theater:

"Pour un oui ou pour un non" by Nathalie Sarraute
Théâtre le Guichet Montparnasse
Starring: Paddy Sherlock and Jean-Marie Russo

This play was all in French. And featured two guys talking the entire time. I went because Paddy Sherlock (the singer/trombonist in the jazz band I often see) was in the play and he sold my friends and me 2-for-1 tickets. I also thought it would be fun to see a play all in French. I wasn't wrong necessarily -- it was very interesting and sitting front row center was also nice (granted, it was a small theater). However, the French was a little bit beyond me, and even though I understood bits and pieces of the plot, the play was mostly a prolonged conversation so it was hard to keep up. There was no intense action or much movement at all. Paddy was great. He's Irish, so I was really impressed that he could do the entire play in French.

Concert Night at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Adnane's and Hakim's band

I stopped by this university to see Adnane's and Hakim's band play their first gig ever. Adnane and Hakim are friends of Sara's who I have met before, and they recently began a band that includes a guitar and vocals (Adnane), a bass (Hakim), a keyboardist, a saxophonist, and a drummer. They sang some original songs, and it was really fun. They have only been together for a couple weeks, but they sound great.

Side note: It was held at a university, which was beautiful. There was a gorgeous garden with statues and sculptures all around (many of them were missing heads/arms/legs because I suppose they are pretty old). There was also a bbq! I really miss bbqs, and was pretty amused by this one. They were serving sausages and hamburger patties inside baguettes (they cut up the hamburger patties to fit them in) with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ketchup, and mustard. I must say, it was very tasty. And I was really excited about seeing a bbq.

A French hot-dog! Does it look tasty?

Choir concert
Église Notre Dame des Champs

I thought this was going to be some type of jazz event, but it turned out to be a choir singing in an église. I came with An, who works at my foyer and invited me to the event. Suong, who had invited An who in turn invited me, had gotten sick so it was only An and me. We both didn't know what to expect, but I enjoyed it anyway. The event took place to benefit an NGO called Couleurs de Chine, which sends money to help orphans and street children in China. The choir sang mostly songs in English, and when their French accents came through, it made me smile. I realized, as I sat there, that I had never heard a choir sing in such a beautiful place.

A Moveable Feast

2009-05-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

We returned to Paris from Barcelona early Saturday morning. It was My-Thuan's and Steve's last day in Paris, and we wanted to make it count. Not surprisingly, what I remember most about this day was the food.

I had been determined to have a picnic, and even though it was a little gray, I insisted that we do it. We rested up at my foyer for a bit, and then headed to Champion and Monoprix to pick up a few essential picnic items: cheese (Camembert and a salty hard cheese that I wish I knew the name of), baguettes from Eric Kayser, coppa, pancetta, cherry tomatoes, roquette, foie gras de canard in a can, Orangina, chips, and almond crisps. The makings of a true feast.

We picked the most Parisian spot I could think of -- the Champ de Mars, which is the field right next to the Eiffel Tower. The best view of the tower, really.

Feast!

For being a relatively simple picnic, it was really enjoyable and delicious. We pigged out to our hearts' content and even had some leftover. The picnic ended the way I think all picnics should: with full bellies and naps on the grass.

Then we ran some "errands." Which meant buying out Monoprix's supply of canned foie gras de canard for MT to bring home to my cousin's family, and getting more macaroons. For this errand, we tried the last place on the list -- Gerard Mulot. It is the patisserie closest to my foyer and every time I pass it, I am tempted to go in and buy out the whole store. We got nougat, rose, and pistachio flavored macaroons, and they were amazing. And thus ended the entire macaroon competition. We decided unanimously that Gerard Mulot has the best texture, assortment of flavors, and taste.

We went our separate ways for a bit -- MT and Steve to their hotel to rest up, and me to get some homework done. We reconvened at a terrace bar right near my foyer called Le Relais Odéon, which has some quality wine for a good price. We had some drinks and mini eggrolls (out of curiosity), and then headed to dinner.

Our restaurant of choice was Le Relais de l'Entrecôte, a place known for the sauce that goes with their steak. It has one menu that includes a small salad and fries with the famous steak. I had heard about the restaurant from so many people, and was happy to finally experience it.

When we got to the restaurant, there was a line out the door. Dismayed and hungry, we briefly considered other options before realizing that the line was moving pretty quickly. Sure enough, we were seated within 10 minutes. Then I could see why the line moved so fast -- the waitresses were moving around at lightning speed, really efficiently. Plus, with one menu, they only had to remember how one wanted their meat cooked (There were only three choices -- VERY rare, medium, and well-done). Our food came quickly, our steaks smothered in a green-ish sauce. To me, it tasted a little like pesto with lemongrass (?). It went great with a bottle of the house wine.

We were mildly interested in what looked like the waitresses keeping steak warm on top of lit tea candles. We briefly wondered why. Then, just as we were finishing up our steak, the waitress came by with another steak the same size, plus more fries. You could see the looks of astonishment and delight on our faces. Steve summed it up: "This is the best place ever!"

We declined dessert at the restaurant, and instead wandered a couple blocks down to Grom, a small, elegant gelato stand that I pass everytime I go grocery shopping at Champion. There, Steve and I each ordered two types of gelato on a cone. This gelato was different than any I've ever had. More "gooey," if I could describe it that way. To give us a sample, the worker first had to churn it up in the bucket in order to make it soft enough to scoop a bit of it on the small sample spoons. To put the gelato on a cone, the worker literally had to drape it on because it was so sticky. It was unlike any ice cream I had tasted, and I really enjoyed it. Sadly, however, I was too excited and mishandled my scoops. They fell on the floor and that was the end of my dessert.

Happier times: when my ice cream was still alive

And that marked the end of the day of feasts.

The next morning, My-Thuan and Steve left for the airport early. I met them at their hotel armed with the materials for a true French breakfast: a baguette, orange marmalade, butter, and tea.

Then it was off to the metro and the RER and they were gone.

It was really nice having visitors for a whole week, and I was sad to see them go. It was fun being able to show them parts of Paris that I love, exploring new areas (such as Champagne), and also doing things that had been on my to-do list. And, of course, I got a taste of home and quality time with friends and family.

More Gaudi + Tapas

2009-05-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

We had two main things planned for our second and final day in Barcelona: two apartments designed by Gaudi, La Pedrera and Casa Battló. We had gotten a sense of Gaudi's architecture from the Sagrada Familia and Park Güell the day before, but these apartments were a different story.

La Pedrera is an apartment built by Gaudi for an aristocratic family in the first decade of the 1900s. Right when you step into the lobby, you can see a huge sunroof with light streaming in from the ceiling. Gaudi's apartments are kind of doughnut-shaped -- they all center around a sunroof to allow sunlight to shine into each floor of the building.

We were able to see a "typical" Gaudi apartment -- one apartment is one floor of the building. He likes to make his architecture flow, which means there aren't any sharp corners. The colors he uses are also very distinct, bright, and work well together. I enjoyed looking at his furniture. Some of the chairs, beds, and tables were made out of this beautiful wood and shaped in surprising and artistic ways.

The best part of this apartment was the roof -- there was a beautiful terrace with interesting shapes and designs.

Our next stop was Casa Battló, another apartment designed by Gaudi. It was restored by him and and another architect named Josep Maria Jujol. I had seen pictures of the outside of the building and it looked amazing. The outside wall is lined with bright ceramic tiles -- very colorful, with beautiful balconies and shutters. In Barcelona, it is called the "house of bones" because many of the structures and columns resemble bones.

We were given audioguides, which told us about Gaudi's life, upbringing, and inspirations. More than La Pedrera, this house seemed devoid of any corners or straight lines. Everything from the staircase to the fireplace to the windows had some sort of flow to it. It reminded me of houses you would see in Disneyland because of the unexpected colors and shapes (i.e. the fireplace was in the shape of a mushroom). Yet it had a classiness and an elegance to it -- all the colors and lines made sense. And when you got used to it, you couldn't imagine it any other way. It made every other room I've seen look boring. We kept talking about how we would want to live in a house like this, especially with the view and the terrace up above.

This is the wall in the middle of the apartment, that goes up to the sunroof and the sky. He plays with your perspective as it gets higher -- the tiles are cut out into different shapes to make it seem like the column is the same size up to the top, even though it gets more narrow as you go up.

The view of the front windows from the inside of the apartment:

A ceiling lamp:

An unexpected and colorful creation on the terrace. It looks like the back of a dinorsour/dragon (on the right).

A garlic clove!

We spent the rest of the day walking around Passeig de Gracia, which is a busy street with lots of shops. We spent quite a bit of time in Zara, where the clothes is a lot cheaper than it is in Paris (Zara is a Spanish company). We also stopped by the ultimate comic book store for Steve the Nerd (he bought Watchmen in Spanish).

Lunch was awesome. We ate outside at a tapas restaurant that my friend had recommended, called Tapa Tapa. Some of the dishes we ate:

Skewer of shrimp and monkfish

Three hamburger patties: one with mustard, gruyere cheese, and caramelized onions

Skewer of duck with sauce and baked pears

All I have to say about the tapas: Yum!! We also had some great sangria too. It was really nice enjoying the peaceful lunch on the terrace on the street.

We stopped by the hotel and headed right back out to check out these gardens and a fountain with a water and light show. Unfortunately, because of a car race that was taking place, we wouldn't be able to get close to the fountain. However, we were able to go up a hill (again taking an escalator) that also had the Catalan museum of art, and see the fountain show from up high. There was someone playing acoustic guitar on the hill, which made it all the more peaceful and enjoyable.

See the fountain? The tents (including the huge Toyota tent) are part of the car race that was about to take place.

We also were able to see parts of the Olympic park, which is still there from the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games. This is the torch:

After losing Steve for a little bit, we all reconvened at the hotel and headed out to Plaça Reial, which is a little plaza located right off of La Rambla. We had a delicious dinner that included grilled fish, duck confit, and sangria! It was a nice way to end the evening. We didn't get home until 2am (granted, we hadn't started dinner until 10:30pm). Barcelona sleeps, but sleeps much later on weekends. We rested, cleaned up, and then got up again at 4am to make it to our 6am flight back to Paris.

I was sad to go back -- it meant the end to a week with visitors, and also back to the gray skies and intensity of Paris. Although I hadn't really considered going to Spain during my semester in Europe, I'm really glad I got a chance to see a part of it. For one, the food is awesome, the people are nice, and the weather is super. The architecture and the atmosphere is also great -- you feel relaxed with enough to keep busy.

Note: Many of these photos were borrowed from Steve. Thanks Steve!

Drinking Champagne in Champagne

2009-05-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

We spent Tuesday in Epernay and Reims (strangely, it is pronounced like "ronce"), two cities located in the region of Champagne, where they make (obviously) champagne. In fact, sparkling wine can only be called champagne if it is produced in one of the chateaus located within the borders of the Champagne region.

Although Reims is only a 45-minute to 1.5-hour train-ride away (depending on the speed of the train you take), we Californians opted to rent a car to drive out there. The car rental was intended to make it easier to go to the two vineyards that we planned to visit, plus it was a great way to see the French countryside along the way.

We got a somewhat later start to our day (leaving at 10:30am instead of 9am like we planned) due to some troubles with rental car issues, and my administrative troubles with turning in my paper early at Sciences Po. But then we were on our way!

I've been in a car in Paris before, but only with someone who is familiar with the system here. Therefore, I never really thought about the level of concentration that must go into driving in a crazy city like Paris. Steve, the only one of us who could drive a manual car, did a great job navigating the many roundabouts, twisty and turny roads, and general confusing road rules in France. For example: you stop right in front of the stoplights, not 100m or so in front of them like we do in the States. This means you need to look to your right/left/corner of your eye to see when the light turns green. The french also don't use turn signals when they change lanes, and it can be difficult to follow a GPS on city without its streets organized as a grid... sometimes it is hard to see what road they want you to turn on. We headed out of Paris, rolling past lush green and yellow fields (there were expanses of yellow flowers being grown... not sure what for), hills, and small houses. We were leaving the big city for some small-town fun.

At each champagne house, we were given a tour of the underground caves and given an introduction to the champagne-making process. This is the basic process:

Grapes are grown and harvested.
Grapes are picked and pressed by giant machines.
The juice is stored in stainless steel vats (these used to be oak barrels)
Then, the juice is bottled, sealed with a bottlecap (like the ones on beer bottles) and stored in the underground caves (pictured on right... this is one of the main hallways).
After some time, the bottles are stored at an angle (with the top pointing downwards) so that the sediment can reach the top, near the cap. A machine (formerly a person) rotates the bottles daily so that the sediment can reach the bottom.
Then a machine (or person) takes out the sediment so that you have clean wine. They do this by plunging the bottleneck into a mixture to freeze the sediment. Then they have a machine quickly take the bottlecap off, take out the sediment, and then close it again. They have to do it in a way that the bottle doesn't lose any of the wine.
To make the wine bubbly, they put in a mixture of yeast and sugar, which mix to create the bubbles. During this process, the people putting in the mixture wear protective gear to protect themselves from explosions. Afterwards, the champagne is stored in the caves, and no one is allowed to enter the area for about 6 weeks because as the liquid gets sparkly, it gains more pressure and could explode. The bottom of the wine bottles are indented towards the top of the bottle to protect against a chain reaction of explosions. Therefore, when a bottle explodes, it ejects the bottom only, instead of shattering and causing the bottles next to it to explode.
Then, the champagne can be corked, cleaned, labeled, and sold!

We visited two champagne houses: Moët and Chandon, and Veuve Clicquot. Each tour started in a chic-looking mansion where there was a store with champagne to buy and branded merchandise. Each tour lasted about an hour, took us through the main chateau, gave a history of the particular house, showed us through the caves (which stretched many and many miles underground), and brought us through to a tasting room. The caves were rather cold, dimly lit, and had thousands and thousands of bottles. It was funny that we only saw a small part of each chateau's caves because we saw so many bottles all around us. I could really see how the champagne-making process is so complex.

It was interesting to learn about vintage wines. When a certain year's harvest is seen as having exceptionally good potential, the chateau decides to make it into a vintage champagne. The other years, they work to make the champagne taste more or less the same, by using the same mix of grapes and mixing in some reserve wine from previous years to make it uniform. However, when the crop is exceptional, they want it to keep its unique taste, and therefore they will make a special batch of the vintage wine and sell it only a number of years after it is bottled.

After a nice dinner at a restaurant in Reims' main square, My-Thuan and I took the train back to Paris, while the others stayed in Reims for the night. (After this train ride and the one to/from Lyon, I've decided I really like trains in France. They are so relaxing.) The others would go to Versailles the next day, while MT and I would spend a day wandering around Paris before catching our plane to Barcelona.

More photos:

Look at the piles of bottles! We saw tons of these stacks during the tours.
(We also joked about stealing a bottle until we realized some of them hadn't become drinkable as champagne yet.)

Old crates they used to use to ship the champagne.

In the tasting room about to taste Moët and Chandon champagne.Tasting champagne! How cute.Raaj with his two bottles of champagne from Veuve Clicquot. He was excited about taking this photo.

My-Thuan Visits!

2009-05-10T01:11:00.001-07:00

Outside the Sacre Coeur with a beautiful view of the city below us.

My older sister came to Paris this past week. I had been anticipating her visit ever since she bought her plane tickets at the beginning of April, so much so that everyone around me knew she was coming. She arrived last Saturday morning with her boyfriend, Steve, and two other friends, Josie and Raaj. We had a pretty hefty agenda planned out for the week:

Saturday-Monday: Paris
Tuesday: Reims, Champagne (for tours of champagne wineries)
Wednesday: Paris for My-Thuan and me, Versailles for the others
Thursday-Friday: Barcelona with Steve, My-Thuan, and Josie
Saturday: Back in Paris with Steve & MT
Sunday morning: Steve and MT leave

First part: In Paris!

I woke up on Saturday morning and headed out to meet Steve and My-Thuan in Montparnasse. Their hotel, Le Meridian Montparnasse, was very nice, but was quite hard to find. I had never wandered into the Montparnasse area before, but ended up not being very excited to be there. It's a part of Paris with huge buildings reminiscent of American skyscrapers, although nowhere nearly as tall. It makes Paris feel like a big city like New York, while most of the time I feel like I am in a smaller quaint city due to the smaller buildings and ornate architecture.

My-Thuan and I sat at a café around the corner while Steve waited for Josie to arrive at the hotel. When she arrived, I took the group to Rue Mouffetard, where we walked around the little vegetable markets and explored the small cobblestone streets. We stopped at Au Petit Grec, a "gourmet" crepe stand where I ordered a crepe with feta cheese and grilled eggplant with My-Thuan. Steve and Josie shared a mozarella and coppa crepe. So good!

We hurried back to the hotel after that to meet Raaj, whose flight had arrived later. The others decided to rest at the hotel, but My-Thuan was a trooper (and also strangely not jetlagged), so we went to "my" area, or Saint-Germain/Saint-Michel. I took her to see my foyer, and then walked around the small streets and along the Seine. On the way, we stopped at three famous gourmet macaroon shops near my foyer -- Gerard Mulot, Pierre Hermé, and Ladurée (during her visit, we stopped by each one of these once and compared macaroons. more on that later). We ended up buying an assortment of 6 macaroons from Ladurée and ate them sitting on the Seine. We wandered to Pont des Arts to see the view of the Seine and the islands (She was excited when I told her it was the bridge where the scene from the Sex and the City movie was filmed). Then, we sat down on a terrace at Odéon to wait for the others. We each ordered a glass of white wine, both of which turned out to be sweet and really enjoyable. When the group arrived, I took them to a dinner in the Quartier Latin, where we ate escargot, duck confit, and French onion soup on the restaurant's outdoor terrace in the warm night air. We walked off our meal along the Seine, stopping by Pont des Arts again (which was way too crowded with people drinking and goofing off) and Notre Dame.

The group at Notre Dame at nighttime.

The second day of their visit was the first Sunday of the month, which first and foremost means free museums! The museum and Josie and My-Thuan really wanted to see was the Louvre. I was supportive of this, but I could already foreshadow the crowds that would be there. Sure enough, there was a long line to get into the museum, and overwhelming crowds in the main area directly under the pyramid. However, we had a purpose, which was evidently the same purpose as every other museum-goer: to see the Mona Lisa. We trooped through the museum and found the room with the painting. I opted to stand in the corner, while Josie and My-Thuan braved the mob crowded around the painting. It was much like a mosh pit at a rock concert. Luckily, both Josie and My-Thuan are petite ladies, so they pushed and shoved as much as they could to get to the Mona Lisa quickly. To say the least, the search for the Mona Lisa and the experience of seeing it had worn us out, so we opted to see a calmer part of the museum before leaving. I took them to Napoleon's apartments and the French sculptures, which were beautiful and a much less stressful to experience.

The crowd en route to the Mona Lisa.

After a quick walk through the Jarden des Tuileries, we made our way to the Marais to meet the boys for lunch at L'As Du Fallafel. They had been skeptical about the falafel ("We came to Paris to eat falafel??") but their teasing stopped once they had taken a bite. We decided to eat inside the restaurant, something I had never yet done (I usually get the falafel to-go). It was nice being able to eat the huge falafel at a table... I am known for dropping at least one falafel ball each time I get one to-go! We strolled around the Marais afterward, the highlight of which was discovering a salon for fashion and creative design. There was a warehouse-size space full of small stands of boutique and original clothing, jewelry, accessories, and purses. The items were all beautiful, but a bit too expensive for us. We left the salon with nothing except a desire to buy more cute clothes.

Our stroll of the Marais ended at the Musée Picasso, which is a small museum that is much less crowded than the Louvre. My-Thuan and I looked at Picasso's work from his most modern to his earliest pieces, with pieces from other modern artists sprinkled in between. I preferred his more modern paintings and was impressed with how his style changed throughout his life. You can seriously see his style go from classical, standard portraits into people with angled bodies, exaggerated facial features, vibrant colors and too many eyes/ears/noses. I also must say that this guy was really into guitars -- he had multiple drawings and paintings of guitars.

Outside of the museum, there was a long mirror, which we had a lot of fun taking photos with!The rest of the group headed back to the hotel afterwards, while MT and I decided to go to Montmartre to walk around and see the Sacre Coeur during the daytime. We took the forniculaire (a tram) up to the top, and enjoyed the view of Paris from the outside. We spotted familiar buildings such as the Tour Montparnasse and Invalides, with the help of a handy map available on top of the hill. We were able to go into the basilica and admire the stained glass and ornate decorations. We then headed to a Senegalese restaurant nearby to meet the rest of the group, drinking some delicious mint tea during our wait. I truly enjoyed eating Senegalese food again (for the second time in my life), and my friends liked eating a different type of cuisine. A new discovery of mine was the restaurant's coffee -- it was very aromatic and more flavorful than coffee I am used to. After dinner, we all headed back up to the Sacre Coeur to see the basilica and the view of the city at nighttime. I never tire of the view of Paris from the Sacre Coeur at night. The city lights up so beautifully that you really can't get enough of it.

After class the next day, I met with My-Thuan to have lunch with Bac Giao and Bac Thien at Leon de Bruxelles, a chain restaurant that specializes in "cocottes de moules," which are pots of mussels cooked in special sauces. The mussels come with unlimited fries. I had been wanting to try the restaurant for awhile, because it reminded me of the chain restaurants in the U.S., like Applebee's and Chili's. It was a good, solid meal, quality-wise. I was glad My-Thuan had a chance to meet Bac Giao and Bac Thien to discuss journalism (My-Thuan is a newspaper journalist and Bac Thien works for the French radio station RFI), the Vietnamese diaspora, politics, and travel as a whole.

Since we were right at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, we had another opportunity to check out a second macaroon shop. My-Thuan and I headed to Pierre Hermé, a very fancy patisserie that we had chosen not to buy from on Saturday because there was a line going out the door. We bought an assortment of macaroons that included pistachio (My-Thuan's favorite), rose, and olive oil/vanilla (this last flavor was kind of weird). These macaroons were softer than the ones we had bought at Ladurée, something we didn't like so much... however, I really enjoyed the rose-flavored macaroon. Probably one of my favorites so far.

We met with Raaj and Steve at Saint-Michel and decided to go to the Champs-Elysées. We started at Place de Concorde and made our way down the famous street, stopping to do some window-shopping and café-drinking. We ended at the Arc de Triomphe. I had been to the Champs-Elysées and seen the Arc in 2005 but hadn't thought to go back since. This time, we walked to the circle with the Arc and I saw how intricate it was. I hadn't realized that so many streets converged from it... it was pretty amazing. It must look great when it is lit up at nighttime.The others headed to a more expensive restaurant for dinner and I passed, choosing to instead have dinner in my foyer and finish my paper, which was due the next day. Then, I slept early to get up for the next day's trip to Reims, Champagne.

To be continued...

Free Friday

2009-05-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had my first three-day weekend. How did I spend most of the beautiful, sunny Friday? Sleeping in and writing a paper.

Well, the night before had been quite eventful. First, I had a dîner de conference with my opera class, which is one of my seminars taught in French. A group of 8 students and the 2 professors had dinner at Chez Gladines, a Basque restaurant in the 13th arrondissement I had been wanting to try. I was happy to see that they had a variety of salads and ordered one that surprisingly came with fried potato chunks, ham, a sunny-side up egg, and tomatoes. Talk about a huge salad! It was fun chatting with the other students (everyone who showed up was an international student -- there are surprisingly few French students in that seminar) and getting to know the professors. I learned that the two professors are actually lawyers... I had thought they were music academics like I am used to having at UC Berkeley. They had both earned their degrees from Sciences Po and then earned law degrees from the top law school in Paris. While working together at the same law firm (one was actually the other's boss), they realized their joint love for opera and decided to teach a course at Sciences Po on the subject. Besides this course, they also teach law at Sciences Po.

Afterwards, I met my friend Katja to relax somewhere, at a bar or café. We decided to check out an Irish pub called Corcoran near Saint-Michel, where I knew a guitar duo was playing. Marten, the bassist/vocalist, actually plays the upright bass in The Swinging Lovers band (the one with Paddy Sherlock), and I had spoken with him about his other gig in Corcoran every Thursday. It was nice chilling to some acoustical and relaxing music while drinking, but the atmosphere in Corcoran was a little sleezy/dodgy, so we left after about an hour.

I thought about taking an early night, but I wanted to take advantage of the holiday the next day. Next, I went to an international party in Montmartre at my friend Kate's apartment. Montmartre is way in the northern part of the city. Living and going to school in the central hub of Paris means that I don't get out to the extremes of the city often, so it was a nice change of scenery. I spoke a mixture of French and English to the students at the party and met some interesting people, so much so that I missed the last metro and had to take the Noctilien (night bus) home.

Therefore, I woke up pretty late on Friday morning to sunshine blasting through my window. Knowing that I needed to spend the entire day studying was hard because the sun kept trying to peek through the cracks of my room. I powered through the day ignoring the sunlight and then met my friends at Cafe Prosper, a friendly bistro located at the Nation metro stop. We arrived with 7 people without making a reservation, and instead of being turned away or served by haughty waiters, we were given an time estimate of when we would be served and were treated quite well. When we got to the table, we were so starved that I picked bread from the store of restaurant bread behind me and we feasted on it before we got our meals. For most of us, this consisted of more salads with fried potato chunks, but this time, mine came with curried chicken! Yumm. We finished off the meal with a shared tiramisu. Then, Katja and I shared a glass of wine at a terrace cafe at Odeon before calling it a night. I wanted to get to bed early because the next day my sister and her friends were flying into Paris!

Le Petit Nicolas

2009-04-30T13:20:00.001-07:00

The first stories I ever read in French were the Le Petit Nicolas series by René Goscinny and illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempé. It was part of the curriculum of my French 3 class in high school. I remembered really enjoying the series, so I was pretty excited when I saw there was going to be a free exhibition at Hotel de Ville.

Le Petit Nicolas centers around a small boy named Nicolas (yes, that's pretty obvious) and his friends at school. There is Alceste, his fat best friend, Agnan, the class "chouchou" (teacher's pet), Clotaire, who is at the bottom of the class, Geoffrey, the spoiled kid with the rich dad, and Marie-Edwige, his neighbor and crush. In Goscinny's words, "Le Petit Nicolas est un enfant normal, c'est-à-dire qu'il est gourmand, il est bagarreur, il aime jouer au football, il aime s'amuser... ceci dit ce n'est pas un enfant terrible." (Rough translation: Nicolas is a normal kid, that said, he is greedy, he is aggressive, he likes to play football, he likes to amuse himself... this said he is not a terrible child.) The books are really cute. They are written from a kid's point of view, with run-on sentences and frank observations. You can't help but smile and laugh from some of the stories (which I found myself doing while reading on the metro).

The exhibition featured original drawings from Sempé, original editions of the magazine in which Le Petit Nicolas had been published, and editions of Le Petit Nicolas that had been published in dozens of different languages, including Russian, Polish, Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese. I noticed that Sempé's illustrations are really simple but they really convey the emotions of the kids he draws. I really enjoyed looking at the different drawings. They made me smile.

At the end of the exhibit, there was a screen showing a scenes from a feature film based from the stories that will be out in theaters in September 2009. I'm not sure how it will be but I am excited to see it! A little teaser I found online: click here.

The drawing below was my favorite panel in the exhibition. The quotation that accompanied it said, "'Mes enfants, dessinez ce qui vous passer par la tête,' a dit le docteur. Moi j'ai dessiné un gâteau au chocolat; Alceste, un cassoulet toulousain. C'est lui qui me l'a dit parce qu'on ne reconnaîssait pas du premier coup." It was my favorite because it's about food, and features cassoulet.

There's Alceste (Nicolas' fat best friend who is always eating ) carrying his picture of the cassoulet.

Fashion Show

2009-04-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

This week, I went to a fashion show featuring the work of student designers from one of Paris' fashion schools. Sara, my friend from my foyer, was modeling one of the dresses in her friend's collection. The show took place at Cirque d'Hiver and featured a live band and DJ. It was really fun seeing all the different student fashions, with all the energy from the live music. Sara's friend's collection was based on a retro Marie-Antoinette style, complete with huge sunglasses and awesome hats.

Some pictures: (they're grainy, but work)

The band:

Sara's friend's collection! She is the one at the bottom in the hot pink.

Zara and I snuck backstage to meet Sara and get a better picture of her. She had taken off the accessories, but still looked great!

Weekend in Lyon

2009-04-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

Lyon's Hotel de Ville

Lyon is the second-largest urban area in France, located in the central Eastern region of the country. I spent this past weekend there, with my cousin Dung, who is in his last year as a master's student studying international business at the Université de Lyon 2. Dung is actually my second cousin -- his maternal grandmother is my maternal grandmother's younger sister. Dung grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam, but came to Lyon after high school to do his college degree here. I got in touch with him through email and decided to come to Lyon for the weekend both to get to know him and to see another part of France.

[Family history side note: When I talked to my mom after returning from Lyon, I realized that since my mom had grown up in southern Vietnam, she didn't know her relatives from Hanoi growing up. My mom's family had been split between the north and south because of the war. Therefore, she had actually only met Co Hong, Dung's mom, in 1999 on my family's first trip to Vietnam. Since then, she has kept in touch with Co Hong quite well. This means that even though Dung had only met my mom a few times, he remembers her fondly.]

As much as I love Paris, it is always nice to get out of it. It is strange to love both getting away from the city and the city itself. I think part of it has to do with the joy I get from returning to Paris and the sense of relaxation I get from being away. I realized that since I am doing my studies here, I now equate Paris to school, and since school equals a certain amount of stress, ... well... you can see where I am going with this. Paris itself has so much to offer that it is easy to get overwhelmed here even without the school aspect. Nonetheless, it was great seeing another urban city in France besides Paris and Toulouse.

I headed out from Sciences Po and got to the train station with a good ten minutes to spare. These ten minutes were essential for me to walk down the platform and find my seat on the train. These TGV trains are no joke -- they are LOOONG. I settled into my seat and had a really enjoyable ride to Lyon. Sometimes I forget how green and beautiful the French countryside is. On this ride, the sun shone through the window, and the train rolled by green pastures, hills, and the occasional vineyard and farm.

I was actually a little sad when the fun train ride ended, although this quickly dissipated into excitement at meeting my cousin. He came promptly and picked me up from the station. We took the bus to his flat located near the city center, on the edge of the old city called Vieux Lyon. It was quite spacious, with room for a full-sized bed in a nook on the first floor and another full-sized bed in the "attic" on the second floor.

The first thing he showed me was a mural on the side of a wall that depicts seven stories with famous lyonnais personalities. It was really cool. The one name I recognized right off was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the writer of The Little Prince, who was born in Lyon in 1900.

From there, the weekend got off to full swing. Lyon really is a great city. Sometimes, being in Paris, you forget that there are other great parts of France out there -- cities just as charming and fun as Paris.

The view from the river Saone, one of the two rivers that runs through Lyon (the two rivers meet at one point). Notice how green it is. You can also see a radio antennae that reminded me of the Eiffel Tower, plus the cathedral located on a hill.

Lyon has two bustling streets with restaurants: Rue de la Martinière and Rue Mercière. We had dinner on Friday night on Rue Mercière, where I insisted on ordering Quenelle, a dish from Lyon. A quenelle is a dumpling made from finely ground seafood, meat, or poultry mixed with a binding mixture and then poached in stock. A friend from my foyer, Nina, had insisted that I eat it while in Lyon. She explained that we had eaten it at the foyer for dinner several times. I had no idea what she was talking about until I realized she was referring to a dough-y clump shaped like a twinkie in a white sauce with mini shrimps floating in it. Indeed, we had eaten it several times at the foyer but I had thought it was a made-up dish and not one indicative of any region in France. (I had often referred to it as the "twinkie in sauce" dish in my head.)

Nevertheless, I was determined to try real quenelle, which turned out to be a real treat. It was cooked in a small casserole dish with a creamy sauce and had come straight from the oven. It was so hot that the sauce was bubbling. It came with a dish of rice.

Throughout the weekend I visited three museums: le Musée des Beaux Arts, le Musée des Miniatures, et le Musée de l'Imprimerie.

Musée des Beaux Arts was classy, uncluttered, and full of beautiful sculptures and paintings. My favorite room was a series of religious and philosophical paintings by a lyonnais painter named Louis Janmot. There was also a grand room with ornate sculptures on the first floor.
Le Musée des Miniatures & Décors de Cinema is a really unique museum devoted to miniature scenes and cinematic effects. The first couple rooms were creepy, showing real masks used in movies (masks of dead people and monsters) and mannequins with creepy music in the background. Upstairs, however, were little dioramas of miniature scenes and items. The exhibits were so detailed for being so tiny. I didn't know how to capture the size of the the dioramas with photos because they look so real up close. So I put my metro ticket next to the displays in hopes of communicating the miniature size of the exhibits. There was a video on loop that showed the making off certain movies that used miniatures to film scenes. Among those featured was Independence Day and Titanic.

Le Musée de l'Imprimerie is a museum devoted to printing presses and printing in general. I honestly just walked into the museum to get out of the rain, but it turned out to be really interesting. The permanent collection featured really old books and printing presses, which was nice at first but quickly got boring. Just as I was wondering if it was worth it to spend time in this museum, I walked into an exhibition room featuring the works of Roger Druet, who combines calligraphy with painting. His pieces were really beautiful and I spent a lot of time just staring at his work.

A taste of Druet's work. I like the vibrant colors he uses.

A page from the first bible printed from Gutenberg's printing press:

Outside of the museums, Dung took me up a big hill to see the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière. You can see the basilica from down below in the valley, and it was one of the first things I noticed about the skyline at night. From the hill, you can see a beautiful view of Lyon.

I really enjoyed exploring Vieux Lyon. On the day I walked around its small and windy cobblestone streets, there was a medieval celebration going on, complete with people in costumes and dances in the street. I bought a cone of fresh rose ice cream and walked down the main street, Rue Saint Paul, feeling like I was at a county fair because there were so many people in the road, skits going on, and things to see/do. The "fair" was complete with cotton candy, little kids running around, games, and music in the streets.

The city center, including Places des Terreaux and the main street called Rue de la République, was also fun to explore, as it was bustling but less busy than the big streets of Paris.

The last thing that struck me about Lyon was how green it was. Unlike Paris, which has a lot of buildings and has green areas confined to pruned gardens, you can see bushes, vines, and trees on the hills surrounding the river.

I was mostly on my own during the day, and spent my mealtimes and evenings with Dung (where we watched some Sex and the City dubbed in French, plus some episodes of this season's American Idol). It was nice having someone around to show me around and get me oriented with the city. Plus, it is always fun getting to know family.

A Week in Paris, Post-Turkey

2009-04-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Paris and headed straight to Maisons Alfort to Bac Thien and Bac Giao's house. I stayed in their guest room, which was really comfortable.

The Sunday after I got back, I went with Bac Giao and Bac Thien to a lunch party at a restaurant called Le Dan Bau ("the Monochord," the traditional Vietnamese instrument I play), located in Montmartre near the Sacre Coeur. It was a private party for Bac Thien's friends from work. The restaurant owner is a young Vietnamese man (he is at the left in white) who also works at the radio station with Bac Thien. There was a complete lunch laid out. I was so full afterwards. There was goi cuon (spring rolls with beef), eggrolls, and cha ca (marinated fish grilled with green onions) which we cooked on burners set at the table. For dessert, there was dried fruit, jelly, and jackfruit pieces with coconut milk. Yum.

I headed to see Paddy Sherlock and the Swinging Lovers for their last show of the season at Coolin'. There was such a huge crowd that there wasn't any room for the swing dancers. During the break, I was able to have a good chat with Martin, who is the band's bassist. He is originally from the Bay Area and still has family in Oakland, Berkeley, and SF. I was sad to hear that this show would be the last one at Coolin' while I am here, because I was looking forward to taking my sister and other friends to the show. Hopefully, I will see them again before I leave Paris.

On Monday, we had a guest speaker at my wine class -- Olivier Magny, a man from O-Chateau, which is a wine tasting company. He came to talk to us about the notion of terroir, which is the idea that the environment of a wine is very particular to that wine. Many things influence a wine's terroir -- fruits grown around the grapes, bodies of water near the vineyard, the type of soil the grapes are grown in, other grapes grown near it, the weather, the climate, etc. Terroir is a very complex idea. It shows how unique a wine can be, and how wines have different layers to them other than merely the type of grape used or the general region in which it is made. (There are issues with the idea of terroir, which we have been talking about in my wine class -- such as whether it is possible to produce the same grapes and wines in a different terroir outside of Europe, where wine was first made... but this is moving off-topic.) Olivier was French, but spoke perfect English and knew a lot of slang. My friends and I described him as pretty sassy. Example: Olivier said, "If you go to a wine cave, you will see 80% men and 15% American girls studying abroad." He made fun of Americans for having a drinking age of 21. He was an interesting speaker, and I was even more impressed when I realized he was the writer of a blog I have read a couple times, called Stuff Parisians Like. It's a humorous and interesting read.

Tuesday was a day for food and friends. It began with a BYOL (bring your own lunch) picnic with my friends Alisa and Mia at the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was fun hearing about their spring break trips in Belgium/the Netherlands, and Italy, respectively. Then, at night, my friends and I met after our evening class and headed to the Canal St. Martin, which is located in the 10th arrondissement. Our restaurant of choice was Le Cambodge, a Cambodian restaurant with a young, hipster feel (and played Bob Dylan, no less). The restaurant is always busy, so we put down our name and sat down at the edge of the canal to wait for them to call us. The canal is beautiful at night (not as beautiful during the day because you see the dirty water in the light), and a nice place to chill. After an hour though, the restaurant still hadn't called us and we were hungry! We made our way back to the restaurant and were seated about 20 minutes later. I had already known that Cambodian food was like Vietnamese food, and I ended up getting a bo bun, which was pretty good although it was sitting in a pool of fish sauce at the bottom (the fish sauce is normal but I like to add it in myself). There was also hu tieu nam vang, which wasn't bad but not as good as my mom's (as is most food here).

I spent much of the rest of the week at Sciences Po, doing work in the library and in the peniche area of the main building. Staying in Maisons-Alfort meant a 45-minute to one-hour commute to Sciences Po which meant I had more incentive to stay on campus and get work done!

Final Hurrah in Istanbul

2009-04-23T17:22:00.001-07:00

Day Five: Asian Istanbul and Hamam

We arrived in Istanbul early Friday morning again completely exhausted after the night in the bus. We were taken back to our hostel which was closed because it was so early. We ambled down the street and found an open café, where we ordered mediocre omelets and planned out our day.

After dropping off our things at the hostel and washing up, we took a ferry out to the Asian side of Istanbul. I love ferry rides! The Bosphorus Strait is beautiful -- a vibrant blue color against the backdrop of vibrant buildings on either side of it. What surprised me was that there were so many jellyfish in the water. I could see them everywhere in the water from the ferry... of all shapes and sizes. Note: don't swim in the Bosphorus.

What we found in Asian Istanbul wasn't much different from European Istanbul. We wandered around and found a really cheap lunch for 4 lira (2 euros) each... a meal that included 2 courses with rice. Asian Istanbul was definitely cheaper than the touristy European side. We spent some time resting in a park where we considered having a picnic (the Parisian side of ourselves coming out).

We took the ferry back to the European side of Istanbul and stopped in the Spice Market for last-minute souvenirs. (I bought another half-kilo of rose and lemon turkish delights and another scarf.)

Then it was time for our hamam!

A hamam is a Turkish bath. It was recommended by all the guidebooks and other people who had visited Turkey before us. According to Ali at our hostel, "it is like your mom cleaning you." Hmm. It didn't sound that appealing to me when he put it that way, but it seemed worth a try. Ali called a hamam and had a taxi take us there.

There were two different sides for men and women. We are supposed to be stark naked for the Turkish bath, but we decided to wear bikinis. After changing, we were taken to a steaming warm room made of all marble with a high ceiling. At the two ends of the room, there were three sinks (6 in all) with water running into a sink. In the middle was a big marble slab as high as my waist. We were told (or rather, they motioned at us) to use cups to pour water on ourselves with the warm sink water. After a few minutes, two burly Turkish women came in to begin the scrubbing and cleaning process. The big marble slab in the middle was used for us to lay down on, first on our backs and then our stomachs while they scrubbed and cleaned. We communicated with grunts, slapping, and pointing because the women didn't speak English. First, we were scrubbed down using a rough cloth to get all the dead skin off. Then we rinsed. Then we were scrubbed using a loofah and soap (and massaged although the massage was not that comfortable). Another rinse. Then we were shampooed, rinsed, and taken to a really hot sauna. I lasted in the sauna for about 3 minutes. After hanging out with the hot water in the steamy marble room, we were done with our hamam.

We were taken back to join the boys. Boy, were they a sight to see with their hair wrapped up with towels and relaxing with burly Turkish men. We were offered tea and then sent on our way.

Post-Hamam photos.

After a week in hostels, two nights spent in buses, and 2 days in rocky Cappadocia, it felt so nice to be really clean.

We stopped at dinner on the way home, where we negotiated a fixed price meal with an energetic salesman... a dinner complete with kebabs and lots of tea.

On our walk home, we made one last stop at the art gallery we had come by on our first day in Istanbul. The gallery features only Turkish artists, and Emre, the owner, works as an intermediary selling the paintings to buyers and museums for collections. He has 2-3 dozen artists that he works with directly. The artwork featured in his gallery was really interesting and I liked his artistic eye. In addition to paintings, he had jewelry, small sculptures, and photographs. Emre was happy to see us and invited us to stay for a "party." The party consisted of exploring Emre's music collection, spontaneous dancing (including David and me showing the Australians the electric slide... I guess that's something they teach in both CA and Missouri!), random karaoke (to Mariah Carey and Gwen Stefani no less), and chit-chatting with Emre.

With Ali, the owner of our hostel, who stopped by for part of the party.

Last Day in Turkey

After our last Turkish breakfast at Mavi Guesthouse, we said good-bye to David, who was taking an earlier flight out. Then we decided to take one last walk to find food and walk along the Bosphorus. Along the way, we passed a beautiful garden where there were a lot of tulips in bloom.

Gillian and me with a statue of Attaturk.

Then it was back to Paris. We said good-bye to the hostel, and a shuttle ride later, took off on our plane.

Turkey was a lot of fun, and I definitely want to go back in the future. I felt that the 5-day vacation was only a small taste of a diverse and beautiful country.

View of Istanbul from the plane. Bye Turkey!

Rocks, Rocks, and more Rocks

2009-04-23T17:21:00.000-07:00

Day 3: Tour of Cappadocia

We spent the night in an overnight bus to arrive in Göreme (pronounced Gore-a-may), a city in Cappadocia (Ka-pah-doe-kee-a), early Saturday morning. We were taken straight to our hotel by car even though it was only a short distance from the city center. Our hotel turned out to be in a cave! We got settled into our room (no 22-bed mixed dorm here! we had a 6-bed room all to ourselves) and ate a delicious breakfast at the hotel. Then, we departed on a organized tour of Cappadocia.

Now, I am not usually a fan of organized tours. On the contrary, I like doing things on my own because tours rush you and dictate how long you spend doing certain activities. However, with the limited time we had in the region plus our cluelessness about the area, we figured the tour would be for the best. For the most part, it was a good experience except for how exhausted we were from the overnight bus! Note to self: do not expect to sleep well on overnight transportation.

The tour started with an introduction to the rocky areas of Cappadocia from the view from Uçhisar castle, located on the highest hill in the region. What is special about Cappadocia, as you can see from the pictures, is that it has a very unique terrain - canyons and rocks formed by rainwater and erosion throughout the ages. In fact, the terrain looks so out-of-this-world that George Lucas wanted to film Star Wars in Cappadocia (although this didn't ultimately pan out).

We took a long hike of Rose Valley from there, where we were taken straight down into a canyon. It reminded me of the Grand Canyon but much colder, with less vibrant colors and more interesting rock shapes. Our tour guide pointed out these uniform rectangular holes that were carved into many of the rocks. Apparently, pigeons used to nest here and they were used to deliver the post. These pigeon houses were everywhere (and the idea of pigeon post kept reminding me of owl post from Harry Potter). The two-hour tour ended with a trip to a huge buffet of Turkish food, which we were happy to have.

Then, we were taken to see fairy chimneys. The fairy chimneys formed when the weather eroded much of the rock layers away except for certain columns of rocks that end up looking like triangular towers with boulders caps on them. These are fairy chimneys. They jutted out of the ground unnaturally.

We were on a roll, in terms of looking at oddly-shapped rocks. Our next stop was looking at rocks shaped like animals. See the camel in the background?

On the tour, we also stopped by a pottery and rug factory. Despite blatantly being designed to sell things to wealthy tourists, the tour included an explanation of how Turkish pottery and rugs are made, and what makes them so special.

These ceramic plates/dishes/cups/etc. are made on a foot wheel, fired in a kiln, then painted, glazed, and put back in a kiln. They all have intricate, vibrant-colored patterns painted on them.

The rugs take a lot of patience. These women sit there for hours knotting short pieces of thread through a skeletal frame made of cotton/silk/etc. The more expensive the rug, the more knots it has per square centimeter. The most expensive ones are the ones made of silk with a lot of knots.

With that, the tour was over. Extremely exhausted, we headed back to the hostel as it was starting to rain. After resting in the lobby and chatting with other travelers and the hostel staff in the lobby, we headed out to explore the town, which admittedly doesn't have much -- one coffee shop (a cute one that had a Sweet Valley Twins book in its book collection), one small pub, one rug shop, and two restaurants. We ate at a restaurant where we sat on the floor and had more meat cooked in clay pots -- I had eggplant and pork.

We hung out at the coffeshop for baklava, coffee, and ice cream afterwards and headed back to our comfy cave to sleep.

Day Four: Underground Cities & Stray Dogs

One of the main attractions of Cappadocia that we missed was exploring an underground city. Apparently there are dozens of underground cities all over Cappadocia that keep being found. There are two big ones that are open for visitors. The underground cities were supposedly carved out by Christians in the ancient days. They were used to house civilians during times of war. It is impressive to think that these people lived in the darkness for months at a time.

We took the bus to the city of Kaymakli accompanied by a staff member at our hostel, who showed us the right place to get off. The buses in Cappadocia were just like 12- to 15-people vans that weren't labeled as buses. It rained on and off the whole day so we were glad to go straight into and out of the underground city.

The underground city was a maze of tunnels carved out of rock. We had a good time ducking in and out of rooms labeled as wineries, living rooms, and kitchens (to us, they just looked like more caves), and scaring tour groups along the way (mostly David).

This is the kitchen! We are pretending to cook. Kind of.

The underground city was really twisty-turny and required quite bit of ducking. (photo credit to Cara)

After the underground city, we walked up a hill to see a "castle" which turned out to be a pile of rocky walls with grass covering it. A pile of ruins of what used to be a castle. Then, we hung around the underground city for a bit, befriending a cute black puppy that we were told was named Johnny. Here, it seems that dogs just go as they please but they were all pretty friendly, as far as we could tell. Back at the hostel, a neighbor's dog wandered into the lobby. We had fun goofing around with her and giving her tummy rubs.

We chit-chatted with other travelers there and met another group of exchange students from Sciences Po backpacking through Turkey too.

Then it was time to say goodbye to the Shoestring Cave Hotel and take the overnight bus back to Istanbul.

Mosques, Spices, and Tea

2009-04-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

Day Two: the Blue Mosque, Ayasophia, & Spice Market

We spent the day in Sultanehmet, which is a pretty touristy area where our hostel was located. But it also happens to be the location of two big mosques: the Blue Mosque & Ayasophia (Hagia Sophia).

The Hagia Sophia has a really interesting history. Istanbul has passed through Christian and Muslim hands throughout the ages, and the Hagia Sophia started out as a basilica. It was turned into a mosque when Constantinople was conquered by Sultan Mehmet in 1453. Therefore, there were mosaics depicting Jesus and Christian figures here and there... but most of it featured huge plaques with Arabic letters and pattered mosaics (because Islam does not depict Muhammad or other prophets). It is no longer used as a mosque and is now a museum. It had really high ceilings that were a dark yellow color with decorative patterns.

The Blue Mosque is literally right across the street from the Hagia Sophia. As you can imagine, it's color motif is blue but surprisingly had many hints of red. We came in as a service was happening, thus the main area was separated into a prayer area and a place in the back for visitors. It was well-lit with a very high ceiling. Unlike the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque had less vibrant colors and had simple mosaics around the ceiling. The sun shone through stained glass patterns on the walls. The mosque was majestic and quite beautiful.

In front of the Blue Mosque

We headed to the spice (Egyptian) market afterwards. We walked down towards the Bosphorus and grabbed some döner on the street, which was very tasty and quite cheap. Then we wandered for a couple hours through the market. To me, this bazaar was more fun than the Grand Bazaar because it involved more food. Mounds of Turkish delights, spices, and also pashminas. It was really fun to bargain, and the bargaining usually included a lot of tasting. By the time I left the bazaar, I was feeling pretty satisfied by the number of pistachios, dried fruits, and Turkish delights I had eaten. I ended up buying two kilos of assorted Turkish delights (Dave and I bargained to have 3 kilos for 30 lira, down from 12 lira a kilo), dried rose tea, and dried apple tea. The shopowners were admittedly tough on us but we tried as hard as possible. On our way out of the bazaar, Dave, Steph, and I were stopped by an English-speaking Turkish TV personality, who was looking for tourists to interview about their perceptions of Turkey. He asked us if we were surprised to see that Istanbul was so developed and if we had expected to see sand and camels everywhere. We gave him positive answers about how we had enjoyed our time in Istanbul thus far, and he gave us his business card so that we could contact him about when the show would air.

Dried Fruit!

These shopowners told me that Obama was in their back room. Yeah. Right.

We headed back to the hostel after the spice market, and ate a quick dinner of kebabs that came complete with grilled chili peppers (long green peppers), rice, and salad. Then we left for the bus station to get to to Cappadocia, a region located in the center of Turkey. We took the overnight bus there and arrived bright and early at 8am.

To be continued...

A Friendly Welcome to Istanbul

2009-04-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Day Zero: Late-Night Arrival in Turkey

Three of my travel buddies -- Cara, Gillian, and Steph -- were on the same flight to Turkey with me because we had booked our tickets together. On the RER to the CDG airport, we met an Australian woman that was on their way back to the United States, where her husband currently works as an airport manager. This family was interesting to talk to, because they had lived in many countries over the past few years (including Thailand and the U.S.) because the dad's position at the airline meant that he had to move every now and then. They also get to travel very cheaply -- their tickets from Paris to Washington DC were $ 30 each! We all joked we needed to find an airport manager for a husband. The couple had two kids (a girl and boy), one of which was a blond-haired, blue-eyed 12-year-old, who we swore would be heartbreaker in a few years (this stemmed from him bragging about a girl he had kissed on the family's vacation in France). Their kids were extremely well-adjusted, confident, and cute.

Upon arriving at CDG we realized that our flight wasn't listed on the Swiss Air departures page. There was a moment of worry before we talked to an agent and realized we were on AirFrance instead. Crisis averted, we boarded the plane to Geneva, where we had a 4-hour layover. Food at the Geneva airport is really expensive... like 17 euros for a slice of pizza. We pooled our money together to purchase a couple bowls of fries and even splurged on a couple packets of ketchup (50 cents for a small package). We met our other friend Chris at the departure gate and boarded the plane for Istanbul! Our plane was delayed a bit so we arrived later than expected... a t around 1am. Our hostel had arranged a cheap pick-up service, so when we got out of the gate, we saw our driver waiting to take us to the Mavi Guesthouse (We were very amused by the fact that he was holding a sign with Chris' name... and then made Steph hold another sign for him while he made a few phone calls). At the hostel, we were greeted by the hostel owner, Ali, who showed us to our big 22-bed dorm locate d on the roof of the hostel (with a makeshift roof over our heads). We reunited with Dave, the last member of our group who had arrived a couple hours earlier, before going to bed.

Day One: Topkapi Palace & the Grand Bazaar (+ Gillian's "birthday")

The next morning, we sat down and had a free breakfast at the hostel. I was expecting packages of sliced bread put out with communal jars of jam and butter... but instead we got individual plates of full Turkish breakfasts, which consists of unlimited Turkish bread, spreadable cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, boiled eggs, jam, butter, and a choice of apple tea or coffee. At the breakfast table, we discussed our plans for the week. Ali, being the helpful travel planner/hostel owner that he is, suggested that we go to Cappadocia instead of Fethiye, simply because the weather was not looking great for Fethiye (which is a beach town). After talking to some other travelers about their sight-seeing suggestions,we left the hostel and made our way around the corner to Topkapi Palace, which is a huge grand palace. On the way, we saw stands making pomegranate juice! The pomegranates looked so yummy... we stopped at a stand to buy some and the friendly worker let some of us try making our own juice. (He also invited us to hang out with him and his friends that night, which we never ended up meeting him for.)

Then it was off to the palace!

Being the chill travelers that we were, we hadn't looked much into the palace, except that it came highly recommended by Ali and one other traveler in the hostel. (Later, when I looked in my guidebook, there was a long chapter devoted solely to the palace.) It turned out to be HUGE. You enter the palace walls and there are gardens/grass/tulips all around. Then you enter an inner building that leads to more buildings.

Look at the colors of the tulips!

It was really crowded and the lines were enormous for each of the main buildings. At one point, Dave and I snuck in through the exit saying we were looking for friends, just in order to skip the long line. Most of the rooms had jewels and regal-looking weapons behind glass cases, and others had paintings. My favorite part of the castle was the back part, which featured smaller rooms with mosaic walls/ceilings with a balcony that overlooked Istanbul and the Bosphorus. It was a beautiful view.

Ceilings continued to interest me in Istanbul. I really liked the patterns and simple color choices that were present in all the architecture in Istanbul.

The entire group:

Look at the view! (and us)

Then it was off to the Grand Bazaar, which is a huge indoor market. At the entrance, we stopped and bought pide (which is like pizza without tomato sauce) and chatted with the owner of the stand, who enthusiastically taught us some phrases in Turkish, plus how to count. Cara and Dave caught on the quickest... I couldn't remember the number three. We wandered around the Grand Bazaar for a couple hours, making friends along the way. (On the way back towards the exit, we said bye and waved to many of the stands that we had stopped to speak with.) We all left the bazaar with some types of Turkish goods in our bags -- scarves, spices, coffee.

We made our leisurely way back to the hostel. It happened to be Gillian's birthday the next day, and Ali, the owner of the hostel, had noticed that when he had checked over our passports on the first day. He knew that we were off to Cappadocia the next day so he had a cake ready for her with candles. It was a surprise to Gillian and the cake was so good! (chocolate with pistachios).We went out to have dinner and celebrate Gillian's birthday. We found outselves in a little cavern-like restaurant in Taksim, which is an area in Istanbul known for its nightlife. For dinner, we all had some meaty, hearty meals. I had meat and vegetables cooked in a clay pot with rice. Yum. Steph ordered a yogurt drink that most of us couldn't stomach (it tasted like watered-down yogurt with salt added to it). After dinner, we walked around Taksim a bit but found that most of the places were closed because it was past midnight. Instead, we took a cab back to the hostel area to check out bars there. However, before we even made it to the main street with the restaurants and pubs, we saw an art gallery that still had an "open" sign. Curious, we walked in and saw beautiful modern paintings and sculptures. We found the gallery owner was there... drunk and on Facebook. He began spilling his relationship woes onto us. Being the nice and amused kids that we are, we listened to him attentively and offered tips whenever we could. (He was having issues with his young Austrian girlfriend who had told him she wanted to date other people. He told her this was okay with him but apparently she wanted him to fight for her to stay with only him.) He said he would throw a party for us on Friday when we were back from Cappadocia and we half-jokingly accepted but weren't sure if we would come back.

With that, we were done with our first full day in Istanbul. Exhausted, we went back into our 22-bed dorm and fell asleep.

Turkey in a Nutshell

2009-04-20T06:13:00.001-07:00

I feel a bit overwhelmed to blog about an entire week in Turkey. There were so many little moments and visits to grand places mixed with random chitchat and observations. I will write a more specific post about my time in Turkey in the next few days.

In the meantime, I just wanted to post some overall thoughts about Turkey.

Food: Not completely what I was expecting. I was thinking more along the lines of hummus and falafel. What we got was more meaty -- kebabs and döner and vegetables/meats cooked in clay pots. There were some similarities with Greek food, such as mezes (cold appetizer plates) of rice stuffed in leaves and bell peppers. Surprising highlight: the rice and bread. I'm not sure what kind of rice it was, but it was white, mildly sticky, and had a natural salty flavor on its own. The bread was not like French bread, which took a couple bites to get used to, but I really enjoyed it. The "baguettes" were wider and shorter loaves that were quite soft on the inside. Other highlights: apple tea and turkish coffee. Apple tea is apparently a big thing in Turkey, and we were offered it everywhere we went. The coffee was interesting and took me a couple cupfuls to get used to it. What distinguishes Turkish coffee is that the coffee sediment is left in the cup... so at the end, your cup will still have some sediment in it, which ends up looking like dark brown goop. Don't try the goop... it is not tasty. The desserts were probably my favorite of all. Turkish desserts are soaked (I mean SOAKED) in sugary syrup. It often hits you how sweet they are. Not only did I have several different types of baklava (pistachio, walnut, hazelnut, chocolate), and turkish delight (my favorite was the rose flavor), but also tulumba (a hollow fried dough ball soaked in sugary syrup), a white rice pudding dessert, and pistachio ice cream (pistachio, amusingly enough, sounds like "fish-stick" in Turkish).

The People: I had heard a little about Turkish friendliness and hospitality, but was completely taken by surprise by how nice and welcoming they were. The owner of our hostel, Ali, was beyond helpful, giving us advice on places to go and booking tickets for us. In our hostels in Istanbul and Cappadocia, we felt welcome and encouraged to sit in the common room and chat with the hostel workers or other travelers. We were given several invitations to hang out with random people we chit-chatted with on the streets. Maybe the friendliness surprised me and was augmented because I was coming from Paris, where people can be quite cold or rude to foreigners. The Turkish were not only happy to speak to us, but were willing to give us good advice and go out of their way to make us feel welcome.

The Mosques: Mosques are pretty much everywhere in Istanbul. If you ask for directions, you can be sure that they will include a reference to a mosque, i.e. "The spice market is in the back of a big mosque, you can't miss it." However, that being said, although Turkey is a Muslim nation, most of the people we met were not very religious. Yes, they identified as being Muslim but many did not pray 5 times a day or strictly follow Islam. In one day, you hear the call to prayer from the street, emanating from the mosques 5 times a day. If you are standing near several mosques, will hear many calls to prayer at once. It comes together and, to me, was quite striking and beautiful.

The Bazaars: The two main bazaars in Istanbul are the Grand Bazaar and the Spice (Egyptian) Bazaar, and they are HUGE. They are both covered markets held inside huge buildings and most of the stands that we saw had similar items: pashminas, spices, apple tea, turkish delight, pistachios, nuts, dried fruits, etc. These markets are crowded and really bustling, with tourists and locals. The vendors were actually quite impressive linguistically -- I saw many speaking to different tourists in Chinese, Japanese, English, German, French, etc. Their linguistic abilities went beyond the normal short phrases, as I heard many multi-lingual substantial conversations around me. You are expected to bargain in the bazaars, and it became quite a fun game to bargain with the vendors. I have to say I got better at it as I went along, mostly because I became more confident in protesting the prices they initially gave, and became less afraid/nervous in sticking to my guns.

The Turkish Language: We struggled with Turkish, to put it mildly. I'm pretty bad at picking up new languages, but I've always managed to scrape by with knowing at least "hello," "please," and "thank you." However, "thank you" posed to be a linguistic challenge in Turkish, so much that several Turks recommended that I mumble "tea sugar and dream" quickly, which was supposed to sound enough like "teşekkür ederim" to be comprehensible. One of my travel buddies, Chris, felt that it sounded more like "to shake it put it in," which worked as well but elicited giggles from the group whenever it was used. Turkish actually looks quite complicated because it uses the Roman alphabet but with special letters like ş ü ğ. Also, there is a difference between an "i" with a dot and without.

Overall Impressions: I was not expecting Turkey to be a "desert with camels" (word for word what a TV anchor asked us as he interviewed us for a show while we were in the Grand Bazaar), but I was not expecting it to remind me so much of home and Western Europe. I mean, part of the reason I chose to go to Turkey was because I wanted to get out of Western Europe and go somewhere less conventional. There was one point as we walked down a main road towards the pier of the Bosphorus that my friend Cara and I remarked that Istanbul was very much like home. The fact that both she (being from Melbourne) and I (being from the San Francisco Bay Area) live in busy cities near water made us feel this way. But I think it also had to do with the bustling energy and sense of community from the cities.

A longer, more specific Turkey update shall follow. Now to get some homework done! (Yes, I have homework and now that break is over, the real work begins.)

Swing Dance Soirée

2009-04-12T02:05:00.000-07:00

I'm relaxing at Cara's place before heading out to the airport.

Yesterday, I went to a swing dance party in Chatillon, a city that borders Paris to the south. I took the metro to the end of the line, and upon getting out, found myself lost without knowing where to go. After getting directions from three different people and a half-hour later, I found myself at the Centre Guyemer, which is like a little community center. The party was going on full swing in a dance room with checkered floors.

I was first greeted by Hadrien, the friend I meet at Coolin' who had told me about the party in the first place. Although I arrived almost two hours after the soirée started, I came right in time to see a routine by a couple named Patrick and Natasha (billed "les acros du swing"), who did a cute routine complete with ariels. Then, came the social dancing, on and off for around two hours. I met some nice people who welcomed me by asking me to dance and making conversation. Many of them seemed surprised that I was from California, but it made for continuous chit-chat. I also recognized many of the dancers from the times I had been to Coolin'.

To me, the soirée was like other swing clubs I have been to in California, but it was less crowded which was nice because there was ample room to dance. (This is probably because there are not many swing venues in Paris, hence, not many people can swing dance.) I also found that the leads were all really good and knew lindy hop pretty well. Maybe it was because I haven't swing danced in awhile, but I thought the people in general were more comfortable with each other, because they all knew each other -- I mean, the swing dancing community in Paris is quite small. There were certain times when everyone stopped to do the line dances like the shim sham and others that I am not sure of what the names are...

In the end, I was able to get a ride home from a friendly couple who were headed the same way as me. They were all so friendly and kind that I felt like I was back home with the swing community in Berkeley.

Anticipating Spring Break

2009-04-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

I spent this week getting ready for and highly anticipating my spring break trip to Turkey!

My friends who are going on the trip with me (4 Australians and 1 other American) met on Wednesday for another potluck to plan out our trip. The biggest thing on our minds was just where we wanted to go on a trip outside of Istanbul. In the end, we decided to take a night bus to the Turquoise/Mediterannean Coast and spend two days exploring the towns of Fethiye and Dalyan, which are near the bigger city of Dalaman. We will spend the other three days in Istanbul. I leave tomorrow, April 12, at 1pm and arrive in Istanbul a little after midnight after a layover in Geneva. We leave Istanbul at 5pm on Saturday, April 18 and arrive in Paris later that evening. Things I am most looking forward to in Turkey: mosques, the call to prayer, Turkish food, the spice market, hammams, mud baths, mint tea, and bazaars (to name a few).

After I get back from Turkey, I will be staying with Bac Giao and Bac Thien for a week. My foyer closes for two weeks for the Easter vacation, because most university students in France get two weeks for the break. Sciences Po, however, only gives us one week, so I will be staying with Bac Giao and Bac Thien for the remainder of the time. I'm excited about this because it will be nice to have a "family" for a week.

I didn't do anything too significant the past few days. It was a very school-intensive week that included a test in French and doing research for my papers later on. After I get back from Spring Break, there will be a lot of work to do, including several exposés and papers. I am not looking forward to doing the work, but then again, I will be out of school about 6 weeks afterward, so I cannot really complain. I also spent time this week researching hotels and places for my sister and her friends to stay when they come here at the beginning of May. I'm really looking forward to their visit and have been putting serious time into finding them some good and inexpensive accommodation (those two characteristics put together are definitely hard to find in Paris).

I was able to get a hold of Co Hong, who is a relative of mine on my dad's side. She lived in Vietnam, but moved to France two months ago to live here with her new French husband. I was really happy to talk to her, and I am looking forward to planning a visit before I leave. She lives in Brive-la-Galliard, which is a metropolitan city located in the more Southern part of France in between Bordeaux and Lyon.

Yesterday night, some friends from the foyer and I went out as a good-bye outing. We ended up at Coolin', the Irish pub near my foyer that I often frequent. On the way, we saw this cute scooter and decided to take pictures on it. (random, I know...) It will be strange not seeing the girls in my foyer for two weeks. Most of the girls are heading home for their vacations, as are many of the European students at Sciences Po, because home to them is so close.

I knew that today my family would be doing ceremonies to mark the 7th week after my grandma's passing -- this is a significant date for Buddhists because it marks when someone's soul transcends. I am not very religious, but I wanted to do something because Buddhism meant a lot to my grandma. I took the RER to a Parisian suburb and visited Linh Son temple and lit an incense candle for my grandma. It wasn't much, but it made me remember her. The temple was relatively small, but there were a lot of statues around. It was interesting because it was like a house converted into a temple, complete with pagoda-like columns.

I am off to drop off my things with Bac Giao and Bac Thien, which means my computer will go with them. Today I will sleep over at my friend Cara's apartment (the place that has a great view of Invalides) so that we can both leave for the airport together tomorrow. I am also going to a swing dancing party today! If I have the time, energy, and opportunity to post from Cara's computer, I will try to write something about the swing-dancing. If not, be back in a week!

A weekend with Castles and Red Bricks

2009-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

It was my first weekend outside of Paris! And where did I go? To the Languedoc region of France to see the cities of Toulouse and Carcassonne!

My friend Mia suggested covering the two cities in one weekend, and with the 22-euro tickets each way, I couldn't resist. So off we went. Sheepishly enough, I didn't know anything about the two cities until a couple days before we left. They are both located in Southwestern France right near France's border with Spain. Carcassonne's main attraction is a huge medieval castle, and Toulouse is a large city with a big student population.

We took the night train from Paris to arrive in Carcassonne at 6am. It was still pitch black outside but we had a little potluck picnic breakfast inside the train station. When the sky started getting a little lighter, we ventured out and walked down the main street to the town square, where a market was getting into full swing. We decided to buy ingredients for a picnic lunch to eat inside the castle walls. It was fun going around to decide what to buy. In the end, we bought two HUGE pieces of bread (one shaped like a flower and the other like a huge bagel... see photo with a small Cal bear stuffed inside the hole), dried sausages, frisee, tomatoes, soft cheese, and olives. The couple selling the sausages were really cute. They kept joking about which types of sausages were for girls and boys. In the end, we ended up buying a type for boys, but it was too good and covered in pepper on the outside. They also didn't want to slice it for us like we requested because they were afraid it wouldn't be fresh enough later on.

From there, we walked up a road up to the castle. The town was so small that it was impossible to get lost! We just naturally knew which way to go. On the way up to the castle, we began to see outlines of it... glimpses of gray castle walls, spires, and towers. On the way, we passed a peaceful river and small buildings.

When we got to the entrance of the castle's walls, I was surprised to see cars drive through. But the "castle" ended up being just a walled city itself, with little rocky roads. In this age, the little shops have turned into souvenir shops and expensive restaurants, but we were amused to see there was a youth hostel inside the walls. Inside the city's walls, we explored the different sections, which included the shops, watch towers, the chateau. We also watched a really corny informational video in French. In the middle of our tour, we stopped for a picnic lunch at a little spot next to the outer wall. It was a merry feast! In addition to the items listed above, I had purchased two savory macarons at a huge macaron store inside the castle. On Mia's recommendation, I tried 2 flavors: salmon-spinach and olive. I was trying to be open-minded, but I came to the conclusion that savory macarons aren't for me. The salmon was fishy-tasting and the olives were acidic. Blech. They really did taste like their respective flavors though.

When we had had enough of walking around, we took a rest right outside the chateau, where there was a beautiful view of the green grass below and the magnificence of the chateau's spires and walls above us. We ended up resting there for awhile before making our way back to the train station to catch a short train ride to Toulouse.

We arrived in Toulouse in time for dinner. After checking into our hotel, we walked to a restaurant recommended by our Lonely Planet guide books. This particular restaurant was supposed to be great for serving Cassoulet, a dish special to the area. It features duck confit (super fatty/moist duck), sausages, and haricot (beans). It also had a ton of oil hanging out at the top of the dish. Very gastronomic, but pretty amazing! Needless to say, we took a one-hour walk afterward (seeing some nice squares and streets along the way) to try to digest some of it before heading to the hotel to go to bed.

We woke up the next morning and headed to the flea market (where I bought an old purse for 3 euros). From there, we headed to an indoor market called Les Halles Victor Hugo, where there were stands of mostly meat and seafood, with the occasional fromage and baguette stand thrown in. We picked up more food for a picnic dinner later in the day -- more baguette, cheese, and meat! Then, we ate lunch in the floor upstairs from the market, where there is a food-court-like area. The special thing about these restaurants is that they cook using only ingredients from the market below. I ate two fish filets with a sweeter rice covered in a curry-like sauce. Yum!

I was excited to see so much fish and seafood!

We had a lazy day from there, doing some significant things with lengthy breaks to sit/nap in between. We walked through the Vieux Quartier (old quarter), which had windy little streets that really showcased the red brick and turqoise accents that is characteristic of Toulouse architecture. Also interesting to note is that all the street signs in Toulouse are written in two languages: French and Languedoc, which was the old language that was once banned, but now openly spoken (although still rare). We checked out the Église Notre Dame du Tour, a huge church with huge ceilings and beautiful stained glass (even more beautiful with the sun shining right through).We also went to Musée des Augustins, which is a small museum with sculptures, French paintings, and a peaceful garden. In the evening, we walked to the university and saw the campus! It was all red brick and had a little quad-like area, plus some cool graffiti murals. On the way there, we remarked on the relaxing atmosphere compared to Paris and Sciences Po. We saw people juggling, relaxing on the grass, and playing ball and it reminded us of Berkeley and Northern California. A weirdly nostalgic feeling. As nighttime fell, we made our way to the river, where we had our picnic dinner. We watched the sun set from the river, and then got dessert at an ice cream place called Octave. I got honey-lavender ice-cream, which was amazing! Then it was time to go back to the train station to take the night train back home.

The group in the garden of Musée des Augustins

The bridge over the River Gasconne. This part especially reminded me of the Bay Area because of the relaxed attitude and the amount of activity and people around the water.

Buildings characteristic of Toulouse -- notice the red and the bits of turquoise.
The other bridge over the river. Beautiful reflection at night.

Pont des Arts

2009-04-03T02:18:00.003-07:00

Pont des Arts is a bridge in Paris that is about a 10-minute walk from my foyer. It is right in the center of Paris, and from it you can see Ile de la Cite (one of the islands in the middle of the Seine). It is right near the Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay. The bridge is special because cars cannot run on it, and on warm evenings, people come out to sit there to hang out with friends, have a spontaneous picnic, or play random music. (Also, a scene in the Sex and the City movie was filmed on it, making it even more of a tourist attraction than it normally would be.)

Yesterday, I went with Zara to meet Sara and her friend Adnane at the Pont des Arts. Adnane is a great guitarist, and he knows a ton of songs. When we got there, he was going through his repertoire, singing Jack Johnson to Bob Dylan to Frank Sinatra.

Pont des Arts has a great ambiance and view. From the bridge, you can see the city light up. There are lights from boats in the distance, from the buildings all around the bridge, and from monuments like the Eiffel Tower. The bridge itself also lights up. The people who relax on the bridge are very convivial, offering each other food and beers. After playing for awhile, Adnane was joined by an American guitarist and a harmonica player, both of which were very good. And so this began an impromptu jam session.

I stayed on the bridge until it started to get too cold, and then we headed home. I'll definitely be going there more often, just to sit and relax or to meet up with old friends for a nice relaxing picnic.

Planete Durable

2009-04-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

I randomly saw an add about a salon of "consummable durable" (durable consumption) which turned out to be about the environment and organic products. I have been enjoying myself at salons so much these days that I decided to check this one out on Thursday. After having a picnic lunch with a friend at the Jardin du Luxembourg, I took the metro to Porte de Versailles.

Upon entering the salon, I was greeted with a wall of plants growing on the wall, which highlighted a path into the salon. The first thing I noticed were the color choices -- there was definitely a color palette that everyone had seemingly agreed upon: brown, green, blue, and a bit of orange. There were of course stands selling durable grocery bags, t-shirts, organic juice, and organic products. Each of them kept up with the color scheme and many used plants and vines as decoration.

Highlights of the salon:
- Tasting yogurt made from organic milk! Runny, but good nonetheless
- Tasting homemade soda from this soda machine
- Seeing the organic cosmetics and testing out lotions
- Chocolate samples

The salon was pretty fun in general, but not as entertaining as the Salon du Livre or the Salon des Vins -- probably because this one was a lot smaller, with less stands and less conversation, and more selling. I think it will pick up during the rest of the weekend though, because more families will be bringing their kids.

Ben Lee at La Fleche D'Or

2009-04-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

La Fleche D'Or is a little indie-rock and electro club in the 20th arrondissement that hosts concerts almost every night with music genres that range from indie-rock, funk, techno, electro, and jazz. The best thing about this club is that it is really cheap -- 5 euros on weekdays and 6 euros on weekends, including a free drink. My Australian friend Stephanie suggested going there this past Tuesday because a famous Australian indie-rock singer, Ben Lee, was performing. Also on the program were Alexander Kinn, Sandra Nkake, and Juan Rostoff (who actually had played at the funk event I attended a couple weeks ago).

We arrived partway through Ben Lee's act; he only played a couple songs after we arrived. His music is quite chill and relaxed, and the crowd was just standing there throughout the time we were there (not much movement). Ben really did try to work the crowd, but they weren't really feeling him too much. At one point, he asked everyone, "Do you have any questions for me?" No response. Except the guy right behind me who said "Yeah, who are you?" I didn't recognize any of his songs, but he did play a brand new song, and some others that my friends recognized. He is really big in Australia, so much that my friends said his tickets would have sold out in 10 minutes. I personally enjoyed his set and his music and the ambiance of the club -- not too crowded and small enough that you felt you were a part of the concert. After the set, we peeked behind the stage and got to meet him!

With my two Australian friends and Ben Lee (standing next to me)

The highlight of the night was Alexander Kinn, who has a funk/rock sound and plays the slide guitar too! I didn't know who he was, but now I want to check him out more. He is a french singer.

La Fleche D'Or is built on old train tracks, and the restaurant portion of the club is on the side and looks out onto the stage. Pretty cool atmosphere in there. We were so hungry during the third act (Sandra Nkake -- a jazzy/poppy singer) that we sat in the restaurant and begged the chef to cook us something even though the kitchen was closed. We stayed through most of the last act, but left to catch the metro home. So ended a nice night of music and company.

Salon des Vins

2009-03-31T07:30:00.001-07:00

I am taking a class called "The World of Wine." The class covers wine production, marketing, history, culture, taste, and issues concerning the French and international wine industry. It's a really interesting course, and we have so far done one wine tasting and have had several discussions on the wine industry in France.

This weekend, my class was given free passes to the Salon des Vins, which is a big wine exposition where hundreds (over 500) independent winemakers from all over France come to showcase their wines. I went with my two friends Beth and Andrea, who are working with me on a project comparing Chardonnay made in Napa Valley and the Loire Valley. Upon entering, you get a nice wine glass that you use to taste the wines at each stand.

When we walked through the entrance, we were so overwhelmed. Small stands were placed right next to each other, each with a sign that had the name of the winemaker, the region it was from, and the types of wine sold at the stand. Each region was denoted by a different color. I kept on the lookout for dark red (Loire Valley for our project) and yellow (Champagne... because we wanted to taste different types of champagne).

We weren't sure where to start, so we walked through the salon to the farthest room and went to the first stand we saw that said it was from the Loire Valley. We were pleasantly surprised to meet a helpful man and his wife, who were just as interested in us (being from California) as we were interested with them. They had a bottle of Chardonnay that we tasted, and then let us taste other types of wine that they made. They also gave us a packet explaining the wines they made and what kind of grapes and methods they used to make the wines.

We actually ended up coming back to this stand at the end of the salon. We hadn't had much luck from other winemakers, partly because Chardonnay is not commonly from the Loire Valley, and because the others we had spoken to weren't as friendly. We spoke to the couple again, and arranged to do a day trip to visit them so we could visit their vineyard and see how they make their wine. We bought a bottle of Chardonnay from them for our project, and Beth and I bought a bottle of their Vendage Tardives, which is a really sweet and aromatic wine.

Besides doing research for our project, we just plain had fun. We went around to stands from different regions and asked if we could taste the type of wine that was "plus typique" from their vineyard. Although our French is spotty, we made due with what we knew, and were generally very courageous in speaking to people. It was good practice for my French, and of course, we ended up learning a lot about wine too!

With Beth and Andrea in front of the entrance to the Salon:

The next day, I had a free afternoon and decided to go back to the Salon after seeing that it was only 3 euros for students. This time, I went on my own with a mission to find a topic for my research paper (which would be separate from my group project). I had an idea from the previous day -- looking at Vendages Tardives, mostly because I enjoyed tasting them so much. I found out that they are usually from the Alsace region in Eastern France, and the reason they are so sweet is because the grapes are very ripe off the vine when they are harvested. It was definitely a very different experience being at the Salon by myself because I didn't have the moral support of two other people when I spoke French (and to offer words when I wasn't sure what I was trying to say). It became a much scarier thing to approach the winemakers and ask about their wines, but I drew up the courage and had a good time exploring the parts of the Salon that we had missed the previous day.

Now, I'm looking forward to our day trip to the Loire Valley to see a real vineyard!

Mon Anniversaire

2009-03-31T04:08:00.000-07:00

I turned 22 this past Sunday. I never like to make a big deal out of my birthday, but I decided I wanted to do a chill celebration with my friends, partly because Paddy Sherlock (lead singer of the jazz band I often see play every other Sunday) said he was doing an extra performance as a fundraiser on the night of my b-day!

I spent the day at the Salon des Vins (see later post describing this event), and then the night at Coolin' hearing the band play. A group of my friends came out, and I think they all had a good time. At one point, someone (Beth) told Paddy it was my birthday. He alerted the bar, and a waitress brought me out a cake with a candle. Then, Paddy sang a song for me ("The Nearness of You," which is a song I really like actually), and then proceeded to get the entire bar to sing Happy Birthday to me. It was more attention than I am ever used to, but it was fun anyway.

The time change and my lack of sleep from the night before made it a very tiring day for me. I had an exposé (oral presentation) at 8am the next morning for my opera class -- in French! I didn't get too much sleep before the presentation, but I think it went pretty well. I had spent the entire week prepping, and I had written it enough in advance that my friend could check over the grammar for me.

All in all, it was a great way to spend my birthday, and an end to a great weekend!

A Busy Saturday

2009-03-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

This weekend was full of fun activities. It was my last full weekend in Paris for awhile (I have travel plans for every weekend in April), so I was glad I was able to do so many things in the city.

On Saturday, I went to a flea market (marche aux puces) at Montrueil, in the eastern part of Paris. I've wanted to go to the flea markets for awhile but didn't get the chance until Saturday. My friend Stephanie and I walked around for a couple hours, checking out the booths with old and used things. I ended up buying a cute coin purse and a sweater. It rained on and off all day, and at the booth where I bought the coin purse, the vendors gave Steph and me an umbrella each for free! They were little old-fashioned umbrellas. Mine had a golden handle and opened like a parasol. It came in handy the rest of the day.

Afterwards, I took the metro to Abbesses, in the 20th arrondissement near the Sacre Coeur. I headed to a violin concert at the Theatre de la Ville. My former stand partner who is visiting Paris, Daniel, had an extra ticket to this show because he was given an extra ticket from the accompanist, Oliver Schnyder, who is a friend of his. A young 21-year-old German violinist named Veronika Eberle played Beethoven, Schubert, and Strauss in the 1.5-hour program. I arrived a couple minutes after the show had already started, so I was brought to a seat in the front but way to the side of the theater. I actually really liked the seat because I could see the pianist's hands and had a great aerial view of what Veronika was doing on the violin. After the show, Daniel met his friend in the foyer where they were signing programs, and I was introduced to both performers. They were very gracious and appreciated our positive comments about their program. It was a really enjoyable recital for me, and my first classical music concert in Paris!

I headed home after the show and went to my friend Cassandre's birthday party at a nearby bar/club. It was fun meeting her friends and dancing, even though the music was pretty bad (a mix of techno and 80s disco music). I left the bar after a couple hours and headed to my friend Cara's apt for a party there. By this time, it was past midnight, which meant it was officially my birthday. My friends there sang "happy birthday" to me in an array of languages that included English, French, Chinese, Korean, and Finnish. The party was really fun because I met a lot of different types of people with different backgrounds. The time change (losing an hour for daylight saving) made it a very late night for me.