Yesterday and Today

So many things happened between yesterday and today that its hard to remember everything.  This blog's not just for sharing things with you (people back home), but it also serves as a back up memory for my short attention span, so I've really got to get into the habit of writing things down before I forget them (-_-' )

All the exchange students went to the school on Monday morning and did a test.  Because me and some other people are only there for 1 month as opposed to 6 months, we had to wait for two hours after the first group.  Though boring, that time gave me a chance to meet two other Australians, Raelene and Dhru.  It turns out that all the Australians (about 6?) come from Newcastle Uni, but none of us never met before.

After that we all went to the computer rooms to do an online French test to check our levels at French.  It was SO hard, and I actually knew some French, so imagine what it was like for the people who knew nothing.  ( oAo)<!!

Then while the long term students filled in forms, which took about 2 hours, Dhru, Raelene and I ended up going window shopping and studying French at a coffee shop, since we had noting to do.

That night there was also a party at one of the other students dorms.  I don't usually like parties, but I though that it would be a good opportunity to meet new people.  So some people from my dorm and I (Dhru from Australia, Ditz and Madara from Latvia, Ryan from America, Yoshi from Japan and Marco and Omma from Mexico... I think that was everyone?) left around 8 and walked to one of the other accommodation places, which is about 15-20 minutes away by foot and found the party.  Just outside the building we meet a girl called Julia, who was also a student and had just arrived in France that night, however she wasn't able to get the key for her apartment until the morning.  So we invited her to stay with us for the night until we got things sorted.

The apartment, where the party was held, was about 3 times the size of my room, however it still wasn't big enough for everyone.  SO many people came to the party, it was crazy! I think there was about 40 or more people there that night, it was hard to tell.  In the end people were going outside, since it was so crowded inside.  I had no idea that there were so many exchange students here.

P.S There's more students...  People from Australia, America, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Europe.  Uhhh, yeah... basically they come from everywhere.


The next day we started Project Management (8am everyday), which is also insanely hard.  Why the hell am I actually studying this?  I don't even know what I'm studying.  The good news is... no one actually does.  Wait is that good?  That's actually pretty bad, since we're going to be doing group work.  Hopefully I'll learn something in the end.
It's a bit awkward being the only Fine Arts student here, since this is a school, which specializes in engineering.  A lot of people think i'm studying Finance when I say Fine Arts, so it's a good idea to learn to say it in different languages.

After Project Management we did a French Speaking test.  Perhaps our computer test were so bad that they couldn't tell, or maybe they wanted to check if anyone guessed their way through the test... which I did.  I actually got dropped down a level, but I'm happy.  It's better to be in the right level and actually understand things, than to be ridiculously stupid in a really high class.  There I meet some more students Somi, Hyeyun and Jyhwan from Korea and had lunch with them (including Yoshi from yesterday).

Then we had our first French class.  My teacher was really nice and taught us how to ask people to spell their names and how to say the alphabet properly.  It was a little bit easy, but that's ok.  It's better to re-enforce the basics early on, other wise you're screwed!

After that they told us to meet up in the sports hall.  Only a few students knew that we were doing sports and brought clothes to change in to, but the rest of us were pretty confused as to why we were called there.  I think it was to give everyone the gym activity schedule (which starts after I leave), so basically its only useful for the long term students, but they let us play some sports even though we didn't have the right clothes, so that was good.  I played badminton with Somi, Hyeyun and Juhwan first and then with Terry (from Hong Kong) and his friends.

I think everyone was probably confused since it was the first few days, so hopefully the organisation will improve though out the week as more people get accustom it school here. Anyway, I've got to go and look up some of the Project Management stuff for tomorrow, so see you!!!

cooking

Here is  a video of Tatiana and I cooking...

you remember my beautiful window/ fridge 

A Day in Paris

Today Tatiana and I went to Paris.  Why?  Why not?

Since it was Tatiana's last day here, we decided to go see the catacombs in Paris, which were... closed (stupid website).  If we knew that we would have visited Versailles castle instead :(

Here's picture of the metro sign, which looked kind of creepy.

weird metro

we even found Australia on the way...

... and Kyoto

Then after walking around for a while, we though: what would a tourist do?  The answer?  Simple, go to the Eiffel Tower.

The Challenge: 'That Guy' says - "Buy a French-like hat, grow a mustache and buy a baguette and then stand in front of the Eiffel Tower and say Le France~... and then you go home.  It won't be any better than that."

Some music to set the mood

yes I bought a stupid beret

close enough...

So after embarrassing myself in front of the whole Eiffel Tower, we finally went up and found out that the top floor was closed, great... Then we spent most of the time inside filming pigeons, who were also inside the building hiding from the cold.  Pigeons are smarter than the tourists, especially the dumb ones who walked up the tower in this minus degree weather.

Tokyo Tower... I mean the Eiffel Tower

After that we went to Notre-Dame and ran straight to the nearest restaurant.

Strawberry Crepe

That is not my beer, I swear!!

It's hers!!!

After we were fed we thought, oh yeah!  Maybe we should go and see the cathedral.  Oh wait, wasn't that what we came there to do?

Notre-Dame is AWESOME!!!

The inside is even more AWESOME!!

This is as close as I could get to the Pieta

 What it's supposed to look like

Paris doesn't need a sea to have an island

Then to make up for not going to the catacombs we went to the crypt underneath the cathedral, but unfortunately there were no dead people (sorry Tatiana).  It used to be a bath house and some other stuff... maybe we should have read the signs better, we only remember the naked guys on the 3D simulator... We're great tourists.

There's no naked guys now though

So what else is there to do in Paris?  How about the Champs-Elysees and Arc de Triomphe?

I am such a tourist...

Yeah, there's no way we could afford to shop here.
Only Pop can

Who wants to rent a Lambo for 89 euros for 20 minutes?

Mercedes Benz is super sexy <3 nbsp="">

So after doing more today than the whole week and mastering the art of falling asleep on any form of public transport, we finally decided to come back home to concur a new challenge... cooking, which is so scary that it has to have it's own blog post.

P.S There was a dog on the train KAWAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!

Ce chien est mignon!!!!

I bought my first baguette today.  I can see why the French love it.  Beside it being a meter long, it was super cheap and cost less than a euro.  It's also really good for hitting people if let it get hard.

This is the most French I've felt all week

Omake AKA a bonus picture

It's like Harry Potter, only French...

It turns out that Troyes; the place i'm living, doesn't have much things to do since it such a small town, so today Tatiana and I decided to randomly go into the city to search for... well anything lol.

Derpina is hiding from the camera

We started the day by have a very sophisticated breakfast, which we bought from the supermarket yesterday.  P.S the picture is super dark, because my room has very dim lights.

special K with fruit

After that we finally learned how to take the right bus and ended up in the city, where we walked around for a while.  Troyes has a lot of really old buildings that look like the ones from Harry Potter, but not as magical and not as English.

Then we went to a music/ book store called FNAC.  I wanted to buy some french CDs to practice, but it turns out that the stuff wasn't very good.  As Tatiana says, French music is so bad, that not even French people will listen to it, so I bought a Led Zeppelin CD and anime DVD instead. Wait a second...

We also found a few weird things there too such as the manga version of the bible, a board game on wine and the gay movie section.

Old and New Testerment

Tatiana says "It's so French, it hurts"

Yes, there is actually a gay movie section

After all of that decided to go find food, because we were hungry... Why else would we do that? Then we stayed in the restaurant for so long, that they actually locked us inside and we had to escape through the back door.

If Tatiana wasn't there I would not know the name for steak

Why do I look so creepy in this photo?

The other creepy girl and her beer

So we walked around for a while, getting lost in 'Knockturn Alley' and walked past 'Serious Black's house', like the Harry Potter nerds we are until we magically found ourselves at an art gallery.  Magically...

'Knockturn Alley'

Serious Black's house should be between these two houses

Outside the art gallery

outside the art gallery

Visiting an art gallery in France; my art
teachers would be so proud

The Holy Grail??

A church next to the gallery which looks like Notre-Dame 

After that we went home and decided to cook dinner for the first time, which really wasn't a good idea.  First of all, the window is colder than the fridge...

...So we kept the meat there

And secondly, the kitchen doesn't have any pots or pans.  Not even a kettle, so we couldn't even make instant ramen.  How bad is that?  You can't get much worst than that.

Luckily for us, the university cafeteria was cheap and open.  The people there probably think i'm a total derp, since i'm only good at speaking Japanese and English and I pretty much forgot all my French on the spot.  Either way it was good enough to buy food and that's fine with me.  (It feel like when I was back in Japan for the first time again).

Pretty good for 3 euros, and probably better than
window meat

I was moving in this photo, that's why I look like I
have a crippled hand (-_-')

That's pretty much all for today, smell you later!

the day after yesterday...

Today I meet Tatiana, who came over from Switzerland, and like the geniuses we are; we ended up talking Japanese the whole day (which probably not the best time, since we're in France) and took the wrong bus and ended up all the way at the other side of town.

Then after 2 hours we finally made it back.  We then went of a different adventure to the supermarket to by food and pretended to be real adults, who can take care of themselves (which is debatable).  Then we went to dinner at this weird serve yourself restaurant.

That French girl, who can't speak French

That non- French girl, who speaks even less French

Poisson means fish not poison (which I wrote on my French test lol)

Finally here in France

Hey everyone,

I finally got my internet hooked up, so I can upload my photos now.

I left Sydney airport on the 20th at 9pm and flew to Dubai, i'm not sure how long it was exactly, since the time zone changing thing is really confusing, but I think it was around 15 hours.  It wasn't too bad though, since I had plenty of things to do, such as sleeping lol.

First of all I did the usual strip down at Sydney customs.  They even had a new lazier scanny machine.

I also got a new nintendo 3DS (big screen) at duty free.  That stuff is mind blowing, however I only got Professor Layton, which is a 2D game, so I wasn't able to test whether I got motion sickness yet ;D

On the plane I watched the Space Bros (uchuu kyoudai), Thermae Romae and himitsu no akko-chan... all Japanese movies (-_-' ) (shouldn't I be practice my french instead? lol)

drawing of my character Lapis, which I did on the plane

Dubai airport, ps. that's a waterfall behind the elevators

Dubai

Plane at Dubai

After waiting at Dubai for about 1-2 hours, we took off on our way to Paris, which was about 7 hours.  On the plane I meet two nice guys called Florian and Nassim, who were going back home from Thailand (Pop, that's by you (>o<)). 

We arrived a bit late, because it was snowing.  Apparently it doesn't snow in Paris very often, so everything was delayed that day.

At the station I met a guy called Sylvian from UTT (University of Technology Troyes).  Then we took the RER train and metro to some other station (forgot the name), then he went back to the airport to meet some more people and I took another train by myself.

train station

train station

The train ride was pretty long and I was worried that I might miss my station and end up in Germany if I fell asleep, but I managed.  There was even an old school train conductor who clipped your train ticket.

In the end, the train terminated and everyone had to transfer to another train (probably because of the snow), I didn't understand this at first so I asked one of the passengers  who explained that we need to transfer to platform 3 (he showed me three with his fingers).  Some of the people there were laughing, because some of the trains in Paris were stuck and couldn't go.  I just thought that we were lucky that it wasn't us who were stuck.

train window

inside the train

After the train trips I meet up with Ben, who took me to my accommodation.

my room

the cupboard where Tatiana's going to sleep, just kidding

My own shower and sink, but I have to share the toilet. 

Fridge, but there isn't enough plugs to plug it in.