American Stories

It has almost been a month since I last wrote in my blog and this was not due to lack of will to do so, but mostly, lack of opportunity. I have now arrived in Bishop’s University, which I have been waiting to study at for a long time, but I still wish to catch up on the past month as a whole, and tell about the rest of my vacation. Last time I wrote, I had hardly just arrived in the US and it has been, imaginably, quite an adventure since.

American West

After my trip in Barcelona, I spent a week touring the western United States with my girlfriend and her family. It was a unique opportunity for me to revisit sites I had only seen when I was very young and could not entirely remember, such as the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. It was a parade of all the different landscapes you can imagine from cowboy movies.

I think I may have preferred San Francisco though, which was the final destination of our trip. It immediately felt like home in a blend of different impressions. Caught in between European culture and Californian West Coast, in between stoic rich and hippie chic and in between the cool of the harbor and the heat of Chinatown, SF was another vibrant city that seemed to have something going on. I was only there for some 24 hours before having to catch a flight out though, so I suppose I only really saw the tip of the iceberg. Though I probably will not be able to go back too soon, I have noted it down on my list of places to return to.

Mexico

After the US, down I went to sunny Mexico. Or rather, rainy Mexico! It is only upon arrival that I found out I had planned my trip to Mexico in the rainy season. So each day did not fail to bring us its rainstorm and downpour. But I actually managed my schedule around it and stayed mostly dry. There were three types of experiences in Mexico:

Firstly were the people I met. I had the very fortunate luck of meeting a friend, Ricky, through a website on which we both posted some writing. That was four years ago and all this time I have lived in France and him, in Mexico. This summer proved to be the first occasion we had to actually meet and with great generosity he and his family housed and fed me for two weeks. They were exceptional people, very warm and welcoming, who were always ready to help me plan my visits around the country. I am very thankful to them for the time they allowed me to spend with them, in Latino charm. Of course, Ricky has a bunch of friends in his home country, so I also got to meet many same-age Mexicans and have a good time with them. What they say about Latin hospitality is not just a myth and I met a variety of great people, even if it was sometimes just for one evening.

The second type of experience in Mexico was the FOOD! Mexicans are very proud of their cuisine, and understandably so. Of course, you need to like spicy food to get around the gastronomic experience in Mesoamerica, but fortunately that is my case and I had a heated blast, tasting all the tacos, quesadillas, sopes, chiles en nogada, tamales… not to mention tasty Margarita! If you go to Mexico, be sure to love the food!

The third type of experience I had in Mexico was the cultural visiting. I saw many pretty post-colonial towns around the south of Mexico city, such as Cuernavaca (where I stayed for my two weeks), Puebla, Taxco and spent a whole weekend in Mexico city itself, exploring this exciting and thrilling capital. My favorite visits ended up being those of temples though. I saw the temples of Xochicalco, near Cuernavaca, which are very impressive and have the great advantage of being relatively unknown to many tourists, making it a very peaceful visit. My host and I were alone, apart from a group of students. However, the most beautiful ancient site I saw was that of Teotihuacan, and this was the last place I visited during my stay in Mexico. It is the largest pre-Columbian site in Mexico and hold the Piramid del Sol, the third tallest Pyramid in the world. Sitting on the latter, while contemplating the smaller and more ornate Piramid de la Luna, while listening to Ennio Morricone’s music from the Mission (it seemed fitting, and there were too many people at the top of the Pyramid to enjoy the silence) I was very moved, as I knew my trip to Mexico was coming to an end and that I felt I had seen what I had come for. I knew that a few days later I would be starting a new life in Canada and moving into Bishop’s University.

That moment has now come and gone and I have effectively arrived at BU and I am having the time of my life. Frosh week (orientation) has been full of parties and events helping us to get to know the students in both our years and the years above. But it’s not all parties and I have also been starting my classes since yesterday, which are good so far. It’s a pleasure to be studying here after waiting for it so long. I’ll be here for a while, so don’t worry if I’m not saying too much about it yet – you’ll probably eventually get sick of hearing me claim that I’ll bleed purple ‘till I die (a BU reference). I’ll be sure to dedicate some future entries to my life at BU. The summer has come to an end and it’s time to head on into another school year, only this time, it promises to be different!

Vacation So Far

With limited Internet access and great travels going on, opportunities for blogging are rarified, despite having much to tell. I could dedicate a blog entry for each of the trips I’ve taken so far, and I would surely be able to fill them up nicely, but if I do that, I fear I’ll be writing with so much delay that eventually, the content of my entries will have become obsolete, and we’ll be rounding up on Christmas time. So instead, I’ve decided to catch up with my summer adventures so far in a single (somewhat lengthy) entry. Each trip I’ve taken is not a single story, but a collection of a large amount of them, diverse in nature and interest. I’ve decided to select one story to tell for each location I’ve travelled to.

French Riviera

I started my vacation in the town of Antibes, by the French Mediterranean coast, where my grandparents live. As far as my trips go, this was surely the most relaxing and comfortable one, in a very familiar environment. The week went by very tranquilly, perhaps sometimes a little too much so — of course, my grandparents live on a calmer rhythm than I usually like to, so I had to find ways to keep busy. One moment, which really did stand out though, was a talk I had with my grandfather. It was on the evening of the Tisha B’av fast, which my grandparents observe. Sitting out on the terrace of their apartment, my grandfather begins explaining to me what this fast day means, and how it commemorates the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism. As he does so, a seagull flies around in the background and catches his fascination. He interrupts his very serious explanation about religious symbolism to comment with amusement on the bird’s activities and watches it with an innocent spark in his eye. As he resumes the topic of his talk, I can see his eyes keeping track of the seagull over my shoulder, as he wears a mischievous smile on his face. I found this moment to be very endearing, and it also reminded me of my mother (his daughter), who has a similar reaction whenever she sees a swallow.  It was the kind of moment, in between a story about my roots and an attitude, which crosses a generation, when I indeed felt connected to my family.

Normandy

After Antibes, I spent a weekend in Deauville with a few friends, this time on the northern coast of France. It is a privileged beach resort, host to the summer homes of many well-placed people. A main attraction is the extensive beach, where we were to spend the majority of our time. On the first day that we arrived, we immediately set out on the sandy shore and dipped in the cold water of the British Channel. While most of us shyly made it waist-in, shrieking in pitches we didn’t know we could reach so high to, my friend Caroline, used to spending her summers on the cold Atlantic shore, lost no time in tackling the long swim separating the beach from the far-away float, signaling the end of the swimming zone. Admiring her endeavor, I decided to follow her out there, assuming it would be a nice stretch. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t exactly thinking: “if a girl can do it, then surely I can!” but I’ve never known Caroline to be much of an athlete. However, she completely impressed me, as she swam on and on to a buoy that never seemed to get any closer, without looking back once. In fact, it was only once she reached it and gave it a high-five, before heading back, that she realized I had followed her at all. Panting, and quite far behind after some 10 minutes of swim, I was definitely not pulling this off with as much grace and nonchalance as she was. But I did manage to give the buoy my own fist-pump before making the whole way back, with a certain exauhstion but especially pride. As we roamed the beach trying to find where we had originally set our towels, we ended up walking quite a long way only adding to the effort. As we finally rested, Caroline enthusiastically suggested: “All we have left to do now is bike back home and we can call it a triathlon!” Next time, Caroline, next time.

This memory really stands out from the trip, because it was completely improvised, and took me by surprise. I was not only satisfied to complete this challenge and manage to make it all the way to that buoy and back, but I was highly impressed with my friend, who showed me she was capable of doing something I would have never suspected of her and who showed me it was possible for me to do as well. I owe it to her and thank her for it.

England

Next stop on my paper route was England, which I crossed over to with my friend Tim (who was also with me in Normandy) to hike from London to Oxford in four days. This also proved to be an occasion to overcome my physical limits, especially on the third day, when we took on the crazy challenge of walking the last 25 miles (40 km) of the journey by nightfall, so that we could sleep in a hostel (instead of camping out) and be able to enjoy visiting the city of Oxford the next day. While we did manage this feat, this is not the story I want to tell. The memory I would like to bring up took place on the previous night, after the second day of walking. It had been a hard day on the road, where we kept getting lost and moreover, disagreeing about the road to take. I wasn’t having a good time, and as we entered the evening, I made a wish that we could have something happen to us that evening which would make up for the bad day, and which I would later be able to look back upon and think that the trip was worth having been done for if not for anything else. My wish came true as we entered a small village named Frieth, where we decided to stop for the night. Tim and I are both avid travelers and have been inspired by more experienced hikers, who gave up all of their possessions and means, to take on long walks across continents without any money, relying solely on the hospitality of strangers as a means for survival. While we may not have gone that far, we were both very anxious to try asking people for shelter and food, even though it seemed to be something very daring to do. But, considering we had nothing to lose, and that my wish would never come true if I did not at least try, I took it on myself to knock on someone’s door and ask for help. We were greeted by two over excited Labradors, followed by a woman with her hands covered in orange peel. Not expecting our strange request, it took a few moments for her to think the situation over, while visibly caught in the middle of making a nice dinner. A fortunate rainstorm began just at that moment, surely making her take us in enough pity to at least invite us in. After some ponderings and a few pone calls, our host, presenting herself as Clair, had found us a field to camp out in, and told us we would be eating dinner with her family that night.

So, Tim and I ended up being invited to dinner by a British family, and while the food was certainly wonderful, the best part, and the real reason we attempted this experience in the first place was the human contact we got out of the evening and the amazing feeling of meeting the local population, communicating with them for one night, and receiving their incredible generosity. Clair and her husband Rupert were exceptional people, fascinating in conversation, warm and generous in their attitudes and not without a good dose of humor.  Our luck kept up with us that night, as their niece Lucy had just arrived moments before we did, and allowed us to share the delicious meal that Clair had prepared for the event — yes, we did feel somewhat guilty for intruding on that, but our hosts reassured us that our arrival was only part of a chain of coming and goings through their home, as Lucy’s parents would be arriving the next day and that in the meanwhile they were also putting a friend up. Indeed, completing our new acquaintances for the evening was Rosemary, their Neo-Zealander friend, an equally charming person to meet. Overall, the whole evening lived up to what we hoped it would be, and gave me faith in this idea of travelling we wanted to do, but had not yet dared to try. An experience to surely try again.

Barcelona

After leaving Paris, where I wrote my previous entry, I headed down to Spain, where I spent the past week with some friends. Barcelona seemed to be a single moment to itself, in a succession of visiting cultural and authentic Spanish locations earlier on in the day, resting on the beach in the later afternoon, before enjoying the vibrant nightlife of Gaudi’s city, until daybreak. It was a crazy and exciting experience, which allowed me to relax and let go of many anxieties I had carried over from the stress of leaving home and moving. The last night of the trip did prove to be a bit more special though. It was my last night in Europe, and also the last time I would see my friends before I come home from school in the winter, so it was emotionally charged — though not as much as when I left Paris. After treating ourselves to nice Spanish-style dinner with tapas and paella, we settled on the docks with some ice-cream and hung out there for a while. My friend Thibault and I went on to have a very meaningful conversation, which was very useful for me, and will be one of those moments I will remember for long I think. We had spent most of the week going out to bars and clubs in the evenings, with a more electric and hyper mood, which is great and really fun, but also more superficial. This last night had more magic and philosophy, which was what I needed before leaving, and so I was very thankful to have it.

By now, I have made it to the US, and am currently making my way through the American West, which I’m touring with my girlfriend and her parents. I’ve only been here for a few days though (after some 22 hours of transit from Barcelona) and so I think it’s too soon to elaborate on my American adventure with enough perspective. Unfortunately, along the way of my travels, both my picture and video camera broke down, and this was not due to misuse or negligence. As a result I don’t have as many visual souvenirs of my trip as I would like to, despite borrowing other people’s cameras, but in fact, my favorite parts of the journey are the stories I get to take home and share, and these are not dependant on any other hard drive than my brain. I hope you have enjoyed this selection of those I’ve collected so far, and will bring you more soon.

Identity Baggage

I am on the eve of my permanent departure from Paris. By now, I may be sounding repetitive in my multiple departures from home, in this long anticipated move to Canada. However, it is only in this past weekend that the impression of leaving has actually settled in.

I’ve spent the past two weeks traveling, and I had some wonderful experiences, which I’ll be sure to talk about later, but this is not the subject I want to touch upon today. The last three days were fully dedicated to getting everything together for my emigration and tying up loose ends in my Parisian life. Before, I did know I would eventually leave, but this time, there is a more permanent value to my departure, as I won’t return to France before next winter, when I finish my first university semester. So, I’ve been trying to make sure I have everything ready, and much time has gone into packing my bags. I’m sending a trunk to Canada separately, which I’ll receive in Sherbrooke in September, and I also have a suitcase of things I will be traveling with over the coming month in America. In between considerations of what I need/want in one or the other, weight limitations and how much it is going to cost to send all of this, not to mention the emotion of leaving home, my stress level has been at its highest since I first decided to go to Canada. 

In packing, I’ve been thinking much about what makes my identity, or that of a person in general. I don’t generally tend to attach much importance to my possessions, in a somewhat Buddhist philosophy that what it material is irrelevant, but of course, I’m far from Nirvana, and in preparing to move, I’ve taken the things I own under much more serious considerations. What makes something valuable enough to me that I decide I should take it? There are the things that will be useful of course, but packing is hardly ever done with a practical mind. Mostly, I think I’m taking the things that I think I would otherwise miss. I have more clothes than I need, so selection was done on preferential basis: which ones contribute to expressing who I am. The objects and mementos I packed also have sentimental value and in a way contribute to my identity.

Of course, I don’t set out to pack under the question: "What should I take to fully express my personality?", but as I was finishing up on this whole process, I thought it interesting to see what I took and what these things say about me. Back when I was a bored teenager in need of brain-deadening entertainment, I would sometimes come across MTV’s Room Raiders. Garbage as it was, this show did explore the interesting idea that you can pick up a lot about a person based on what you find in their living space. So in going through all of my possessions, I effectively defined which are relevant to who I am. 

So now I’m taking the belongings I give importance to with me and I’m leaving home. Home seems to be becoming a vague notion for me. While home may still be here in Paris for me, within 24 hours, I’ll have left it and be off to settle my life elsewhere. Despite being French, I’m choosing to create my future around English-speaking media and storytelling, studying at a university in close geographic and cultural proximity to where I grew up in New York. Is this the place I have designated in my mind as home? Am I creating a new identity, or searching for an old one? I don’t really think I’m in search of the past. My experience in the US surely influenced the way I later decided to build my life, but I still think I’m trying to find my place. Going to Canada will continue to contribute to who I am.

In between two wanderings in the world, I find myself wandering in my own identity. I am at the eve of an experience which will surely make me grow and change much. It’s exciting but scary, and so I’m holding on to the most material things that make me. As I enter this next month and travel to great new places, I will surely let go of this anxiety I’m feeling and begin this adventure I’ve been looking forward to for so long.

From Paris to Sherbrooke... with a few stops in between!

I have finished work, my bags are packed, and I am on the eve of my departure from Paris! Well, in reality I am going to be coming through the city a few more times before I leave permanently, so I'm not totally finished, but I don't expect to do much more here. I may not have left home yet, but I'm done with Paris. I'm going without any regrets, because I have waited quite a while for this moment. This is the start of a summer which will bring me to a very promising place in my life. I want to enjoy it fully and make the most of it.

Since I've been working for the past two years, over different jobs, without taking much vacation, I was able to plan quite a great trip for myself, which will lead me from my hometown, Paris, all the way to my new home away from home, Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Canada. So where can you expect to see me blogging from?

Tomorrow I'm leaving for the south of France, in the seaside town of Antibes, where my grandparents live. This will be a great way to start the summer vacation, as it will be full of calm family moments. Well, that may be idyllic and hopeful on my part. As far as the mediterranean side of the family goes, family moments tend to be loud agitated rather than "calm". But overall it should prove to be a great week to unwind and get into the vacation mood.

Next, I will travel to Normandy with three other friends, for a weekend in Deauville, a popular seaside resort on the northern beaches of France. With one of these friends, we'll then head off to England, on the other side of the Channel, and attempt to hike from London to Oxford in three to four days.

I'll then return to Paris for a weekend, just in time to see my other grandmother, who will be visiting the family, and to tie up all loose ends. Indeed after that, I'll definitively leave Paris, and won't return until the winter. So, in early August, I'm heading down to Barcelona with four other friends, to spend a week in this exciting Spanish city. I'm currently going through travel guides to plan what I want to see, and I've also picked up a book to learn to speak some basic Spanish, seeing how I've never studied it before.

After Barcelona, I'm taking the great leap across the Atlantic Ocean, to end up in Las Vegas, where I'm meeting up with my girlfriend and her family. Indeed, my girlfriend's brother is getting married in California in July and afterwards, she and her parents are taking a two-week tour of the American West. I'm joining them halfway, as they enter the wonderful desert landscapes of the inner western states. Promised sights include the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and Lake Powell, among others.

My trip with my girlfriend ends in San Francisco, after a week. Her family and she are going home to France, but I'm staying in America, of course. I'll be spending the last two weeks before moving into University in Mexico. This was, by far, the most complicated part of my summer to organize, because the friend I'm staying with was very unsure of his situation. Having just graduated from high-school, he wasn't sure where he was going to end up for university, or when he would be starting classes. This lead to a lot of worrying and frustration, as well as a lot of waiting, but eventually it all worked out and I'm very pleased. I have something of a bet with myself to cross borders and to visit a new country every year. Originally, I wasn't supposed to end up in Mexico at all, but I'm very glad that I am, because it will be my new country of the year (believe it or not, despite all the traveling I've done and have planned this year, Mexico is the only new one).

On September 1st, I'm flying out to Montreal, entering my new country of residence and on the 3rd, I finally move into Bishop's, making a long time dream come true. I've put a lot of effort into planning this whole summer and these past few days I've been trying to make sure everything is in order. But, as of today, I have all the documents I need to immigrate, and all the plane tickets I should have to be in the right places at the right time. This summer promises much fun, and I'm glad to see it get started.

Paris Music Festival

A couple of weeks ago, Paris' annual music festival (or Fête de la Musique) took place. In an ideal Internet, I would have written about this sooner, but laziness is a factor that needs to be taken in an account when considering my capacity to blog with immediacy. But despite procrastination, I do think this is a great event worth mentioning.

The Music Festival takes place every June on the first day of summer, to celebrate the new season in song. The whole point is for everyone and anyone to enjoy music and, by consequence, it is for the masses. One of my colleagues, who is a professional pianist by night, spoke with much distaste of the event, saying: "It's not my thing to hang out with all those rednecks who think they know something about music". He does have a point in the sense that this is not the time to take music seriously. Since that's my case, I am effectively able to have a blast every year roaming the streets of the French capital, vibrating to the beat of songs played by all sorts of people.

This year's musical adventure took me to the picturesque hill of Montmartre in the north of the city, which is one of Paris' most famous artist neighborhoods. Montmartre corresponds, I think, to the idea foreigners have of Paris: paved streets, little buildings, cute cafés, artists painting in the middle of the street and some animation or street theater on every corner. In fact, it is a very popular tourist spot, and so the local businesses take full advantage of that to pull on all kinds of Parisian stereotypes and please the foreign mind. Montmartre is actually a very special neighborhood, with its own style and mood, which doesn't resemble the rest of the city much. I usually avoid this place for several reasons, the first being that it's on the other side of town from where I live, so just getting there isn't easy and also, in between the all the tourists and con artists trying to rip you off, it's not my favorite neighborhood. But every now and then, it makes a good location for a night out, and the evening of the music festival was such an occasion.

In fact, when my friends and I got there, things were just setting up, so we didn't see that many great shows. In front of the steps of the infamous Sacré-Coeur basilica, one singer would hand over the mike to a member of the audience every other song, which I thought was a good idea, because the music festival is really about sharing music, and the idea is that anyone can take a part in it. The atmosphere was laid-back and of course subject to the amount of talent the one-night-musicians could actually show. Eventually, it did start feeling like Karaoke, and so we left.

Later in the evening, we ended up in the area of St. Michel and Cité, adjacent neighborhoods in the center of Paris  and one of the major hubs of the music festival. I'm always quite torn about exploring this part of town on Music Festival night, because it is overwhelming with the great amount of people there, and depending on the year, you'll either find a really great mood there, or just nothing interesting at all. At first, my shortcomings seemed to be confirmed, and in between the heavy crowd, hunger and trying to find other people we were supposed to meet up with, everyone was having a hard time enjoying themselves. But, after all meeting up and being fed and watered, we settled on the docks of the river Seine and things starting looking up.
One of my friends, Jerome, is quite proficient in all percussion type instruments, and the docks of the Seine are usually a good place to find groups of hand-drummers at the Music Festival. So, he carried a Djembe drum around with him throughout the evening and eventually made some new friends beating the rhythm on the quays in front of the Notre-Dame cathedral, as we all gathered around. As the evening progressed and night fell, things got very animated in our location with song battles from one dock to the other, and people taking turns jumping from a bridge into the river, turning the evening into an odd underwear fashion show.

So that was the Paris music festival. It may not have much class or elegance, nor is it really about good and talented music performances, but it's more about having a great time with strangers for one night, to send off the summer in popular festivity and song. Not to be taken seriously. I'm leaving Paris in a little over a week and so I'm enjoying my last nights out in the city, which if always full of new places and opportunities to have a good time. It's becoming a habit of mine to not sleep much at night, because I have to get up early for work, and so, I'm looking forward to the beginning of my summer vacation, with much impatience.

Summer in the City

    I'm afraid I lost track of time in the past month, and was surprised to see how long it had been since my last entry. After sitting and passing my final exams for the year, I took some time off from living – a well deserved break, during which I did not get a whole lot done, but surely had some fun.
   
    Of course, my freedom has had its limits as I've continued working my supermarket job. While the latter is boring, and makes me get up very early, it is a necessity, so that I can have some spare money for this summer and then while I'm at college. The downside is that it continues to make me very tired, because I am definitely not a morning person. As a student, in Paris, with all my friends starting their summer break, opportunities to go out in the evening and have a good time are numerous, and it's quite a shame to miss out on a party. So, in the accumulation of late nights out and early mornings up, I've accumulated some fatigue and am often sleepy during the daytime. Lately, I have been trying to make efforts to keep my rhythm a bit more reasonable and I also am just learning to accept that this is the way things are for the next month.

    Indeed, it came to me with a certain amount of shock that I only have one month left to live in Paris, before I start traveling for the summer, and effectively leave this city, my home for the past eleven years. I finish my job on August 15th, which means I depart either that same day or on the sixteenth. In the meantime, I fully intend on making the most of my Parisian living one last time.

    Lately, I have been taking great pleasure in spending afternoons in the city's many parks with some friends. Unlike some great cities like New York or London, who have one famous large park (Central Park, Hyde Park, etc.) Paris is full of a variety of green areas, neither being remarkably better or more popular than the other. Within the city proper, you'll only find relatively small parks, while two major ones are at the city limits.

    In the 15th arrondissement (district) where I live, you'll find le parc André Citroën, which is a very curious public garden. It was designed by architects and is effectively very modern and angular in its construction. Nature is heavily contrasted by the use of a lot of geometric constructions in slates of stone, wood and metal. It contains a number of themed smaller areas to discover, each unique and interesting. It is one of my personal favorites and I especially recommend it in the summer time, because of its terrace with walk-in fountains.

    On the other side of town, in the 19th district, is another one of my preferences: Les Buttes Chaumont. This parc is caracterized by its many hills (buttes = hill), which were actually artificially constructed. Its terrain is very steep, but it has a number of wonderful areas with comfortably tall grass, where you can completely relax in, and you'll also be sure to enjoy the scenery, with the lake surrounding impressive cliffs, surmounted by a good viewpoint over the city.

    These are probably my two favorite parks in the city, but a number of other ones are also well worth checking out, including: le parc de Belleville, le jardin d'Éole, le jardin du Luxembourg, les Tuileries, etc.

    In addition to these traditional parks, you also get several long areas of the city with a lot of great lawns, which are popular places for picnics, especially in the evening. The most famous one is undoubtedly, Le Champs de Mars, which is where you'll find the Eiffel Tower, but l'Esplanade des Invalides, and l'Avenue de Breteuil (which both surround Les Invalides, a famous military monument and resting place of Napoleon I) are quite similar, and usually less crowded.

    Finally, le bois de Boulogne and le bois de Vincennes complete our selection of green locations. Both are much large than the previous ones I named and are respectively located on the western and eastern border of the city. So, while they're not necessarily easy to access, they are the best natural locations available near Paris. Of the two, I prefer Vincennes, which is wilder and have spent a number of afternoons tanning in the sun there, this past month.

    So, with the return of warm weather, I have been spending a lot of time enjoying what Paris has to offer as a version of nature. In between evening celebrating birthdays at the Champs de Mars, and afternoons of laziness and catching up on sleep in the sun, I've found my niche in the outdoors, relaxing and having a good time. However, in an upcoming entry, I'll be sure to tell you all about my equally interesting nightlife activities.

When In Paris... Bike on Vélib and Eat at MONOP'!

    The rest of my trip in Abu Dhabi continued in the same spirit as the first few days, as I explored the oriental metropolis further. Later adventures included shopping for the infamous purple clothes for Bishop's, and taking a day to cross the country and go swimming in the sea of Oman, on a beach infested with miniscule jellyfish. Good times.

    While I may have been enjoying the good life and relaxing in the UAE, upon returning the Paris, I was suddenly so busy, that I lost track of blogging for a couple of weeks. I have entered an exam month, and seeing how little work I got done during spring break, my precarious knowledge foundations caved in, so I had a lot of catching up to do. But I made it through, and I'm quite confident about my upcoming exam week, after which I will be study-free until I hit the BU campus in September.
    In the meantime of all this, I got a job, or rather, picked up a number of extra shifts at my old job. After dropping out of art school last year, I worked for about six months in a mini supermarket called MONOP'. For those unfamiliar with Paris, allow me to introduce the concept of this store. MONOP' stores are spin-offs from the bigger MONOPRIX supermarkets, a trusted name in France. They only sell those products which have the highest demand in the bigger store, and are open for longer hours, from 8:30 AM to midnight. Anyone who has spent time in France will know that stores generally do not stay open very late, so the idea of a store being open until midnight is very appealing to Parisians. Moreover, MONOP' stores have a selection of sandwiches, salads and ready-to-eat meals to go, and provide customers with tables to sit at, for a quick but healthy lunch / dinner. The concept is similar to that of the PRET food chain in London, combined with a mini-supermarket.

One of 45 MONOP' locations in Paris

    Anyway, I've been working for this company on and off for the past year and a half, as you can tell by my promotional speech there. Last year, I worked at a small store by my apartment, full time, before eventually leaving them, to pick up my study track again. However, earlier this January, MONOP' stores began opening on Sundays (which, once again, is not common in France), and I picked up a shift at the same store's new Sunday crew, since it was convenient with my schedule. So for the past four months, I have been working six hours a week on Sunday. Upon returning from the UAE, things started getting mixed up at my job. New regulations caused the stores to have to close at 1PM on Sundays, effectively making the Sunday crew way too numerous at my store and I was transfered to a new store, near the Parisian stock exchange (la Bourse). In the passing, I started negotiating with Human Resources to obtain an extra shift with more hours in the week time, as I would appreciate working a bit this summer before leaving for vacation. After a first ten day contract in the same store, I finally ended up getting an early shift in a brand new store: MONOP' Victor Hugo, which just opened today! It's not far from the legendary Champs-Elysées, if you need more of a reference. So it's been a couple of crazy weeks with my job, and if you managed to keep up with all the different shifts and contracts I had, well more power to you, because I surely did not.
    Anyway, apart from explaining what has been keeping me so busy, I though it would be a good idea to talk about MONOP' stores, because by now I know them quite well, and I think they're a very good option for tourists visiting Paris. The concept is relatively recent, so it is still expanding (in the past two weeks I have worked through the opening of two new stores), but you can already find a good number of locations throughout the city. Now, I'll be honest with you, MONOP' is considered to be on the higher scale of quality, as supermarkets go, so the price follows that trend. It's certainly not a place I would go do my daily shopping (my salary unfortunately not being higher than anywhere else), but it'll definitely be a cheaper alternative to eating in restaurants all of the time, if you're on visit in the city. For under ten euros, you can get a fairly decent meal, drink and desert, of good quality and taste. It's worth checking out if you're ever around.

    Another tip I would have for foreigners is the use of the Vélib system. With the return of warm weather, I've begun taking advantage of Paris' pick-up / drop-off biking system. Such systems exist in various places around the world now (though I've heard the proposition to introduce them on the Bishop's campus was turned down), and the concept is usually the same. Stations are positioned throughout the city, where you can pick up a bicycle to get around on. Once you're done using it, all you need to do is drop it off at any station. This system has two major advantages, the first being that it's cheap. The price for one day is 1 EUR, and 5 EUR for a seven day subscription. If you're going to be in town for a bit longer, the year-long card quickly becomes an advantage, at only 29 EUR. This is the base price you pay, which allows you to borrow a bike for half an hour between two stations for free. You'll pay extras for every additional half hour your bike is kept out of parking, though if you're smart about it, you'll never need to do that. Many people simply borrow a bike from one station to another for less than half an hour, and then pick the same bike up again to continue their journey, after a few minutes delay. 

 Vélib: Rent a bike in Paris

    The second advantage to Vélib is that it allows you to see the city as you go along. Paris has a good transport system, so the local subway does have its advantages, but it remains stuffy, crowded, dirty and smelly. Many roads in the city have special lanes for bicycles (usually shared with taxis and buses) and, apart from your occasional madman, Parisian drivers are generally quite safe, compared to those I've seen elsewhere. So, using Vélib bikes should prove to be a good experience, so long as the weather is agreeable and that you know where you're going. I should warn you that using Velib at night is not necessarily a smart option, depending on your destination. If you're heading for a mostly residential neighborhood in the low-altitude parts of the city (such as the neighborhood I live in for example) chances are that all of the local drop-off stations will be full, and you'll need to go back a long way to find parking spaces.

    So, these were my little insider tips of Parisian living for tourists. In other news of my recent activity, I actually have a new blogging platform. After posting my first entry in this blog, it was suggested to me that I join the blogging team for Bishop's University, which comprises of current and future students, who blog about their experience with the university. After sending a few emails back and forth, I finally put up my first post there earlier this month. If you're interested in checking it out, you'll find it on the Official BU blog. I'll be regularly updating that as well, with posts more focused on my Bishop's story.

    I'm about to enter a week of exams, though the results of these won't be relevant to any future studies, so I'm really just doing this for myself, to bring closure to my past year. The university system I'm in works in the following way: my final grade is accumulated through exams and what is called Contrôle continu (CC), which means that, regular tests throughout the year give me an average of points, which contribute to a specific percentage of my grade. The maximum grade you can achieve is of 200 points, and you need 100 to pass the class. With my CC and my first semester exams, I have actually already accumulated 100 points (100,9 to be precise). So, I technically already have my diploma, though the exams I'm sitting next week are worth 40% of my grade, so I should be scoring some good points there as well. Basically, all of this to say that I'm not worried, though I am still working hard, to try and make the most of it.