Geneva, Amsterdam and Prague

For the past 8 days, I have been traveling to Geneva, Amsteardam and Prague with my best friends in the Montpellier program, Darren and Casey. It was the funnest thing I've done this semester, but I'm incredibly tired and happy to be home. Montpellier is currently sunny and 65 degrees! I'll just give a little rundown of every city we went to. :)

Geneva, Switzerland

We only spent about a day and a half in Geneva, but we managed to do everything we wanted to while there! The first day, we walked around downtown, saw the lake, and just took pictures. That night, we went to a grocery store and bought fajita ingredients and wine, and after we just relaxed in the hostel. The next day, we went to the United Nations and went on a tour of various rooms, and learned the various functions of the rooms. The building itself was really beautiful, with artwork and materials donated from several member nations. The biggest conference room was where Hillary Clinton gave an important speech declaring that gay rights are human rights. I posted the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABzMAuI1vj0&feature=related

Geneva was really beautiful, but also the most expensive place we traveled.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

This was by far my favorite city of the trip. The energy in Amsterdam is just amazing, and there are tons of young people, and every single Dutch person with whom we interacted were extremely friendly and helpful. It seemed as if English was a second national language in Amsterdam-- Everyone spoke it, so that was beneficial for us, since none of us speak a word of Dutch. Seemingly everybody bikes in the city-- The bridges along the canals and bike stands along the buildings were literally filled with bikes all the time.

The first day, we got right down to business and went to the red light district and to a sex museum. It was kind of a surreal experience, since I've never seen prostitutes behind glass windows with prices and such listed, nor have I seen "coffee shops" selling marijuana before (though coffee shops were not at all limited to the red light district). The sex museum was in no way classy or tasteful. There were lots of animatronic models, "movies", pictures, posters and advertisements. We managed to have fun there somehow :). That night, the three of us went to "The Bump", a gay-friendly bar close to our hotel. It was a lot of fun, I got a cosmopolitan and danced the night away. :)

The next day was, we went to the Anne Frank house, and it was a really great and sad experience. We got to see where the Frank family lived, read about who helped them, watched various video clips from friends of various family members, as well as one from Otto Frank (the father of the family). Throughtout the museum, there were quotes from Anne's diary, some of which were very insightful and difficult to read, other ones much lighter and funnier. I got the impression that she was very hopeful and intelligent. As much as I read about the conditions the family lived in, I cannot even try to imagine what it must have been like. The curtain always had to be down. The family could not use running water after about 4:30 p.m. (no sink, no flushing, etc). It was really awful and depressing but also very important to read about everything this family (as well as many others) went through during that time in history.

That night, we tried another bar called "the cooldown cafe", where the waitors were all in strange costumes that didn't seem to correspond with a particular theme. I saw a pirate, a superhero and elvis for example. The music was a lot of fun, because a lot of the songs were traditional Dutch drinking songs with dances and everything, while others were top 40 songs that everyone could sing to. Not to mention the waitors were giving out free shots left and right. :).

The next day, we went to the Rijkmuseum, which contains the most important collection of classical Dutch art. Everything there was really beautiful, and the two most well-known artists featured in the museum are Rembrandt and Vermeer. Aside from paintings, there was a lot of decorative art, such as 17th century dollhouses, model ships, and fine china. It was a really beautiful museum, and I'm glad I got a chance to go. After, we went to Vondelpark, which was really beautiful, and just walked around there for a while. The park is filled with foot and bike paths, bridges, ponds and cafes. That night, we went to the cooldown cafe again.

I was sad to see this part of the trip end, but maybe I'll go back one day. Amsterdam is easily one of my favorite cities I've visited in Europe.

Prague, Czech Republic

Hands down, Prague is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. It's extremely colorful and the architecture is unreal. We basically went to see a lot of tourist attractions and took pictures. It was definitely a transition from Amsterdam, since not everyone spoke English. And of course, none of us speak a word of Czech.

The first day, we went to Old Town Square, where we saw the astronomical clock and after went to New Town square. I don't exactly know what to say about either place, except that both were stunning and you should look at my pictures. :). That night, we went to a traditional restaurant and I had goulash (beef with dumplings and gravy), and of course a pint of Czech beer. After, we went to a 5-story club (advertised as the biggest music club in central europe, which was a lot of fun. We got to go into an ice bar which was really cool!

The last day there, we went to Charles Bridge, took a lot of pictures, crossed the river, and went to see the Prague Castle as well as St. Vitus cathedral, both of which were beautiful. After those two things, we headed to the airport to go to Lyon for the night and headed back to Montpellier on the train today.

The trip was a blast, and I couldn't have asked for better weather or better travel partners!

15.02.2012

So this first week of vacation has been pretty great. I got a couple papers done, and Casey, Darren and I planned some things to do on our trip, including buying tickets to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, and of course painting a picture for the staff in our Minnesota program office. On Tuesday, I went to a friend's apartment to celebrate Valentines Day, with spaghetti and wine. It was  a lot of fun! Tonight is Casey's birthday, so his host mom is cooking a few of us dinner! Tomorrow, I leave for my trip to Geneva, Amsterdam, Prague and Lyon with Darren and Casey, and it should be a blast! I'll take lots of pictures and update about it when I get back to Montpellier. :)

10.02.2012

The last couple of weeks have been pretty normal, and good overall! School is the same, going well, and not too much homework, but a little to keep me in line :). My favorite class is turning out to be my art history course, because I get to see interesting paintings and other pieces of art from various periods throughout history, and I would not otherwise be learning as much about any of these periods! It's a lot of fun. I also love my culture class, which discusses current events in France. We watched a movie called "The Prophet", a film about a young Arab man who gets thrown into jail, and all the various politics among different groups of prisoners (predominantly Arabs and Corsicans). It's very violent and hard to watch at times, but very well done and I would recommend it to anyone.
Last weekend, I didn't really do much. I went over to my friends Robert and Andre's apartment. It was a good night, filled with horror movies, dancing and making crepes. A couple nights ago (Tuesday), I went over to Darren's house with Casey and we had a "superbowl party", which consisted of watching the halftime show and eating lots of junkfood and perhaps drinking beer. Perfect. The next night, as usual, I went to the Vert Anglais and had a lot of good conversations in French with other foreign and French students. :). Last night was pretty relaxed, and Darren, Robert, Andre and I watched some quality 90s tv shows (mostly Buffy), and drinking lots of tea. Today (Friday), I'm going to stay in for the night and go to bed early, because tomorrow I might be going ice skating, and tomorrow night am for sure going over to a Hungarian friend's apartment in the evening.
Darren, Casey and I leave for Geneva, Amsterdam, Prague, and a half-day in Lyon on Thursday!!! I absolutely cannot wait! It's going to be such a blast, and I can't think of anyone here who I would rather traavel with. I'll try to update this one more time before my trip, and then after I won't update until I get home to Montpellier. I hope everyone has a happy Valentines Day, and thank you mom and dad and Grandma Barb for the package and cards!! It was all really nice. :)

1.29.2012

It has been a really fun last couple of weeks (and I promise to update this weekly-- I just forgot last week), and I've been feeling very on top of school as well as French so that's all fantastic.
I got my grades back from last semester: 4 A's, 1 A-, and 1 B. I was expecting the one class (France au Feminin) to be a B but was slightly concerned it would turn into a C. Luckily that didn't happen. I'm very satisfied with how last semester turned out academically and hope to get the same type of grades this semester. I've finally formed some opinions about my current classes, so I'll update about those a bit. My internship class is very interesting, and I really love learning about French work laws. For example, a full time job is working 35 hours/ week and their minimum wage is about 9.50 euros/ hour. On top of all that, every worker starts out with 5 weeks of paid vacation!!
My conversation class is a lot of fun. The first half is the student's presenting an article of their choice and then discussing the article after the presentation. The second half is learning about a specific topic (such as food or education) and learning important vocabulary, as well as useful phrases that one can use when talking about any of these topics. The class has virtually no writing, which is a nice break from all my other classes.
My integrated class, History of Wine in the Languedoc region, is kind of interesting, but so far we've been getting a lot of lists of wine and the region where they come from. I guess the geography aspect of the class does not particularly interest me. On the other hand, I do enjoy learning about the connotations of wine in various centuries, and the many types of consumers there have been throughout history.
My French Mosaique (culture) class has been very interesting. We've been focusing on immigrants in France, and what defines being "French". There is a lot of debate going on right now in France about what constitutes being a French citizen. It's one of the major issues being discussed in French politics, specifically presidential debates, right now. On a side note, I am lucky enough to be here during an election year, and will get to experience the elections as they happen at the end of April.
The art history class is a lot of fun, and probably my favorite class. Half the class is spent in a lecture hall learning about a certain point in art history, and the second half is walking around the museum to see examples of art from the era. It's taught by guest lecturers each week, so it's always a nice change of pace, and we get to go on 4 excursions for the class during normal class time, so that should be fun. We just went to the Paul Valery museum in Sete last Thursday, which I will admit was not the most interesting museum, but it was still enjoyable. So that's all I have to update about as far as classes are concerned! Oh, I also start my internship tomorrow. I will be working at an "Ecole maternelle" (kind of like a preschool and kindergarten), with children aged 3-7. I will be teaching simple English, such as colors, body parts, counting to 10, etc. Tomorrow I'm just introducing myself and teaching them a song (which will be the itsy bitsy spider) with actions.
France is having one of their two national sales right now, and it's a dangerous game. I'm tempted to pretty much buy out every store I see, but I've limited myself to a new purse, a few new shirts and a pair of shoes. That doesn't sound particularly limiting somehow... :). A few friends and I went to the zoo last weekend, and it was absolutely gorgeous. First of all, it's been an average of 55 degrees and sunny every day for the past couple weeks, which my host parents told me was very unusual for Montpellier. I guess it's just been an unusual year weather-wise all around the world. Anyway, the zoo here is absolutely beautiful. It's in a huge park with tons of trees, so it feels like you're just walking through a forest and suddenly stumble upon giraffes or lions. We were there for about 3 hours and couldn't make it through the whole thing because of all the walking, so we're going back sometime later in the semester. The conversation hour at the Vert Anglais has been fun as usual, and I've met a couple new French people this semester who are really great. I could really get used to this 3-day weekend thing. On Thursday night, Darren, Casey and I had a movie night at Darren's house which really just turned into us talking for 6 hours and falling asleep to a movie after that. It was a really good night-- we hadn't hung out just us three for a long time. Friday night was relaxing and I just spent the night at my host family's house. Saturday, I went to my friend Andre's apartment and hung out with a few people over there for the night which was really nice. There were a few people who I hadn't seen for a while over there. I realize that I have made friends from all over the world here and feel so lucky! In the groups of people I hang out with, there are often French, Hungarian, Polish, British and American people, and French is our common language, so it's really great practicing my French in an informal environment like that.
That is pretty much it for now! Today I'm going to do a little homework, watch a lot or some random tv show, and skype with Sam and my parents.

1.15.2012

I just had the first real week of the second semester, and it was a lot of fun! I'm finally back to my normal routine, which is staying at my host family's house, going to classes, hanging out with friends, and of course, not traveling around Europe.
I'm taking an internship class, where we learn about French work laws and the  education system. I have not yet started my internship, but I will be working in a preschool-type environment where I will be working with 3-6 year olds! I'm very excited. I am also taking an advanced conversation class that seems like a lot of fun. We talk about everything, and we will be presenting an article every other week to practice speaking more on the spot. I'm also taking a French culture class (called France Mosaique), where we will be talking a lot about current issues, such as immigration. My favorite class so far is my art history class, which is taught by guest lecturers each week and is at the art museum, so we get to see paintings of the era we are discussing. We will be going on a couple excursions for the class and it should be a lot of fun! The integrated class I chose is about the history of wine in the Languedoc region of France, so that will hopefully be interesting.
On Wednesday I went to the French-English conversation exchange again and as usual it was  a lot of fun. I got to see a bunch of people who I hadn't seen for a few weeks, as well as met some new people. 
On Friday, my friends and I went to my friends apartment where we got to meet a lot of the new Americans in the program this semester. That was a lot of fun, and everyone seems really nice.
Saturday, I went on excursion to Arles that was planned by the Program. It's a beautiful Roman city, where we went to a museum, a cathedral, saw Roman Ruins of a theater, and went to the small Colosseum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arles

Ireland 2011/2012

I met Sam in Ireland on December 28th, where we got to our hotel in the Temple Bar area, and went to a pub right away. Of course we got our fair share of Guinness and Bulmer's Irish cider, and just sat and soaked in the atmosphere.
The next day we got up and went to the Dublin Castle which was pretty cool, then to some library that was nearby with a Chinese photographer's works. Later that day, we went to the Guinness Storehouse, where we took a tour of the factory and learned about how Guinness is made, as well as various marketing strategies. The last part of the tour was in the Gravity Bar, where we got a free pint of Guinness and a beautiful 360 degree view of Dublin.
The next few days were spent in London, but when we got back to Dublin, we went on a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher, along with a lot of other sites and a couple pubs along the way. I got Guinness beef stew with brown bread, which was absolutely delicious. The cliffs were beautiful, and Irish Countryside looks just like it does in the movies. It was a stormy day, but still a ton of fun! We went to about 10 different sites, and the tour took all day. Our guide was perfect! He was an older Irish man with a thick accents who told us about all the legends and stories behind all the sites we got to see. He made a lot of drinking jokes, Catholic jokes and of course talked about love and how by the end of the trip he will have seduced all the women on the bus. It was just a wonderful day! Here's a link to a more detailed itinerary: http://www.dublintourcompany.com/dtc/tourinfo.jsp?id=1
Our last day in Dublin, we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Long Room, both of which were very cool! We weren't allowed to take pictures, unfortunately. We spent the rest of the day just walking around and exploring downtown Dublin.
It was a wonderful trip, and I can't wait to see Sam again when I get back home! 

London 2011- 2012

London with Sam is absolutely wonderful! We had a ton of fun, and our hotel was close to a tube station, so it was very easy to get everywhere we wanted to go.
The first day, we went to two musicals, both of which were fantastic. We bought student rush tickets for both, which are very discounted tickets that you can only buy the day of the show. Les Miserables was in the afternoon, and it was excellent. All the voices were beautiful, and every character was spot-on. I feel very lucky that I got to see my favorite musical of all time on Broadway in London! We saw Legally Blonde that night, which was so much fun! The show has a ton of energy, lots of strong voices and lots of dancing. The entire play was hilarious and I'm glad we were able to go!

The second day we were there it was raining, so we went downtown to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Buckingham Palace and caught the last half of the New Years Day parade by chance. After, we got out of the rain and went to the National Gallery, a beautiful art museum with paintings from a lot of different eras. We headed back in the late afternoon, and saw "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" at a theater by our hotel.

The next day we went to the British Museum, a history museum where we saw exhibits about Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the Americas, China, Japan, Korea, Africa, and a little bit of Natural History. We spent the entire morning there, and after lunch, we walked around parks in the neighborhood. It was lovely, and I definitely want to go back to the museum someday.

We had a really great time in London, and had some delicious English breakfasts and had fun just walking around and exploring the city. :)