The Last Lofthouse

Well, I can officially say that December was a bad month for blogging for me. Not only did I only post a mere two pieces, but the first article was more or less just me thinking out loud. Probably not that interesting for all you brothers and sisters out there reading this thing. This post shall be much more interesting though, because I finally got to travel again, my last of the 4 months I have here. Off we go.

My older brother Andrew came to France for about two weeks, from December 16th to today, December 31st. This timing coincided just about perfectly with my Christmas break from school, so we had two full weeks of nothing to do but try to see Europe. And seeing as that can be quite, quite spendy, we cut the time traveling to nine days. Our destinations: Paris and Amsterdam. From the 19th to the 27th, we were rocketized animals, shooting around France, the Netherlands and eventually Germany on trains of high speeds and public transportation. The recap begins here.

We started off in Paris, taking trains up to the City of Light all day on the 19th to save some coin. We arrived in the evening and met up with our host, a friend from my hometown, who happens to be living there and working as an English teacher in a local lycée, or high school. We were able to spend three nights at her place and save a bit of cash money for the trip. She was our tour guide for a lot of it, showing us around Paris like it was the back of her hand. In the three days we were there, we hit the most touristy things of all time, but they were all great. We climbed the Eiffel Tower. We gawked at the wealth of the Palace of Versailles. We saw the Notre Dame and hiked up to Sacré Coeur. We saw the Moulin Rouge and walked down the Champs Elysées. We climbed up the Arc de Triomphe and saw the Nouvelle Arche on the other end of it. We went into the Louvre and checked out the Musée d'Orsay. We even managed to eat a real French cooked meal while dining at my Parisienne friends house one night. All in all, it was an extremely busy three days, packed full of activities, money spending and fun. We were definitely the most average tourists ever, but that is what you do in Paris. You walk around and you see those things. I can safely say both me and my brother loved it.

Next up was Amsterdam, which ended up being a letdown. I can't hate on Amsterdam, because it really is a cool city. The canals, architecture and unique culture make it an interesting place. Just NOT on Christmas day and NOT when you don't want to see naked woman or get high or freeze to death when you're walking around. Cool place, wrong time. We were victims of the wrong place, wrong time syndrome for sure here. Christmas time is simply not a time to be away from home is the final conclusion both me and my brother drew out of this experience. We spent a lot of time walking around, taking the trams and simply admiring the city. We went to a museum one day too, which housed a lot of Dutch military and world power mementos along with a lot of Rembrandt paintings. That was pretty cool.

But, as I alluded to, we soon grew tired of the city and decided to look into leaving a day early. So I sent a Facebook message to a German friend of mine who lives only a three hour train ride away from Amsterdam, way up north in a city called Münster. We checked the trains and decided to use the extra day on our Eurail passes to give them a visit. Sure enough, nothing went as planned though and we ended up arriving about three and half hours late and only being able to stay there for 18 hours or so. Although I have to say that they were some of the most enjoyable 18 hours of the trip. We checked out their city (which won the title of "World's Most Livable City in 2006 with none other than Seattle) and saw where they grew up. We had some tea and Christmas cakes with their family as well. Add on top of that an AMAZING Christmas dinner prepared by my friend's mom, and Christmas was completely and utterly redeemed for us. There is nothing quite like a family dinner with delicious food and desserts to put you in a holiday cheer. To top it all off we went out and had German beer in a German bar with a German name (Das Blaue Haus), a bucket list goal checked off for sure. We went to bed then took 18 hours of trains on home to Aix, finishing the day with a stressful connection between our last trains and a 2:45 AM bedtime. Thus ended my European travels for my stay here.

Needless to say it is nice to be home and I am ready to knock these two weeks of school out and fly on home. I put my brother on a bus to the airport this morning and now I am hanging out until classes start again, celebrating the New Year and trying to make sure I get credit for all my classes. I am quite ready to be home right now, especially since these two weeks of class are essentially meaningless for us. Only two classes have anything real to do so I guess all I can do is try to get better at French and pass those two tests. We shall see. So I am down to only one more post to the ol blogosphere world for my time here. To be honest, it will be an amazing feeling to be done with this all, bittersweet, but refreshing. So I hope you enjoyed this one, one or two more coming. And now, of course, some pictures.

why yes i AM amsterdam
hammurabi's code...balla.
been there...done that.
the two lovely French hosts.
Notre Dame de Paris

The exodus and ensuing thoughts

It is mid-December and here in France, the exodus of students has officially begun. In fact, one might argue that we're on the tail end of the migration. I have said goodbye to four of my American friends. Two of them have already left and the other two are leaving this weekend. On top of that, I received my last Coug Blog Squad prompt several days ago and it was entitled "Preparing for Re-entry". This is ironic since I still have a month here in France and, in fact, have many experiences ahead until my own re-entry happens. But all these events boiled around in my head until a nice little thought emerged that I believe is a good thing to write about on the blog. The topic is this: What would I have changed if I was to come back here a second time and do it all over again? Now, I realize I still have a month left and a lot can change, but I plan on writing on this again after my "re-entry" to the US and assimilation back to my own world. Geez I sound like I am an alien with the word choices I have made. Whatever, on y va!

At this point in time, there are two things that I would contemplate changing. These items are the school I go to and the amount of French friends I have. These two items are heavily connected. And I realize that you might look at this and say to yourself "Wow Connor, you do realize that these things are completely in your own power?" Yes I do realize that, but that does not change the fact that I may not have done all I wanted to or imagined I would. I will tackle the subjects separately.

The school is the main thing I question, mostly because I should have been able to see this coming, yet never did. Before leaving for this great adventure across the ocean, I tooted the horn of my school, L'Institute des Etudes Françaises pour les Etudiantes Etrangeres (IEFEE), heavily. Citing the diversity and international flavor of the students, I spouted off about how I would meet all sorts of students from across the world with cool lives and languages and stories. Never did it cross my mind that the adverse of that situation equates to "Connor not meeting any French people where it would be amazingly easy to meet French people. School." The more I think about it, the more I wish I had gone to a French university directly enrolled. Granted, the courses, language, students and general life would have been overwhelming at first, but when thrown into a situation like that, you learn fast. Between having French friends with whom I could talk, sitting through hours of class each day and my own explorations of the language, I am sure I would have been just fine after a month or so. On the other hand though, going to IEFEE was a choice made exclusively for learning French. It is a school created for foreign students wanting to learn French, as the name implies. Obviously I have learned more French now that in the last 3 years combined, but I still can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had gone into the French school system directly.

The other thing I would change, the number of French friends I have, should be a problem easily solved. Had I made the choice to seek out French people my age and hang out with them and develop friendships, this blog post would not be happening. I would be in the perfect situation. Learning French in a school designed for learning French, then learning French with real French, where they speak the fastest and with all the current language and slang after class. Nothing better than that dreamy life for four months. Win win for Connor. But alas, I have not made many French friends, mostly due to my own lax attitude about going out of my way to meet them. Being here is enough out of my comfort zone that I prefer to stay in my own language and speak English because it takes so much less effort. Also hurting me is the widespread knowledge of English by the French. 7 times out of 10 the French person I am talking to speaks English just as well as I can speak French, if not better. It's a blessing and a curse.

In the end this all comes down to my lack of effort of making French friends. I have a month left here, but of that month I am traveling for nine days, my brother is here for 15 days, and I am getting ready to leave for the last five days or so. Do I regret not making the effort? Sort of, but I absolutely cannot complain about the progress I have made and the progress I will leave here having made. All I can do is now try to make the best of my last 30 days here. May not seem like a long time, but a lot can happen in a month. Wish me luck.