Last night, Claire, Jean, Eric, and I had our last dinner together with Pierre.  We got pizzas from my favorite pizza place in the entire world - Boîte à Pizza.  I basically died and went to heaven the first time I tried it and spent the rest of my semester with the goal to try as many as possible.  We ended up getting 4 (buy one get one free ( Read more... )

The sales finally began in France (so happy that I got to participate in them), and after being very good all semester, I finally got a little shopping spree and bought 4 tops and a purse at one of my newfound favorite stores, Kookai.  I tied up some strings here and there around Chambéry, like closing my bank account (another reason I ended up ( Read more... )

Considering that I’m leaving on Friday, I really have wanted to make the most of bringing my snowboard all the way to France.  I’ve tried various forms of finding transportation/snowboarding buddies without very much luck and decided a while ago to make a post on couchsurfing in the group “Ski in the Alps.”  Well after no luck, Mickael, a guy ( Read more... )

I’m sorry for the lack of updates the past week, it has been a fairly crazy whirlwind since we came back from Paris and while not much has happened, a lot has happened at the same time.  We came back on Sunday and the following day, had our thème exam (translation from French into English) which was my one piece of cake exam.  I have to say that ( Read more... )

Jean and I decided to sleep in a bit on Saturday (I suppose we didn't decide to sleep in as much as just wake up late), so around 11am, we set out on our final full day in Paris. Our first stop was le Cimtière du Père Lachaise which was about a 10 minute walk for Nicolas' apartment. Père Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris, one of the most ( Read more... )

Friday morning, we had to get up early because Nicolas worked, so Jean and I took the metro to go to the Musée Carnavalet, (one of Jean's favorites), devoted to the history of Paris. Since it wasn't open yet, we went to a café before returning. The neighborhood we were in was so charming full of amazing looking boutiques with such cute clothes. ( Read more... )

I must make this quick because I need to get to sleep, but I just wanted to wish you all a happy new year and tell you a bit about what I did for le Reveillon. I usually don't celebrate New Years or do anything exciting, so I wasn't stressing out about having an incredibly extravagant New Years this year. My French friend, Laura, was going to ( Read more... )

Coucou! (that is how the french say "hey there!" and I think it looks and sounds pretty funny ( Read more... )

As Christmas draws quickly near, it's hard not to notice how quiet campus is.  At Hamline, I always used to see the study abroad students and wonder what they did during the holidays and if they got lonely, and now I am the same person I used to wonder about!  Eric and Jean left yesterday to go back home for the holidays, so Claire, Angelica, and I ( Read more... )

The last week has been pretty devoid of exciting events, but I thought I would update a bit on what I've been doing and what most students across the world have been suffering through at this time of the year - exams. I spent pretty much all last week in sweatpants, locked up in my room, craving human contact all while studying for my 3 tests this ( Read more... )