old lady status

This is my first blog post as a 21-year-old. Exciting, huh? Not really when you're in a country where you can drink practically since you are born. Anyway, it was a happy birthday thanks to all the love from home and all my new friends here! I like making new year's resolutions on my birthday instead of on the actual new year. This year's? Write something in this blog once a week...except maybe next week when I'm in Morocco and internetless. And hopefully make each post shorter and less rambly. We'll see how this goes.


In the last three weeks, I have experienced French strikes, travelled to Normandy and Mont St Michel, had arguably the best hot chocolate in the world, and gone to a French futbol game to cheer on les Bleus. The night of the soccer game, I was out with my friend Ryanne and some other girls from DU who were visiting from London. It was great to see them and to meet some of them, but by the time Ryanne and I found the metro and I got to the Stade de France, it was halftime. You wouldn't have known it from the roar of the crowd I could hear from the metro station, which was several blocks away. I didn't even have to wonder which way to go to find this place outside of Paris which I had never been to in my life. I just followed the sound of 80,000 cheering fans. Keep in mind, this was only halftime. The second half of the game was very exciting, with France scoring once in the last five minutes and again in the last minute of the game to beat Romania 2-0 and move on in the 2012 Euro Cup qualifiers. A text from my friend Lauren on my way to the stadium summed it up pretty well with something like, "If anyone gives you any trouble,  'allez les bleus!' seems to be a pretty solid line."


The next weekend, I went on an excursion with ISA to Normandy and Mont St Michel. We visited the Memorial de Caen, the American Cemetery, Omaha Beach, and Pointe de Hoc. I never thought I would be so interested in history in my life. I think I learned more about World War II in those few hours than I ever did in any of my history classes. It was so amazing to walk along Omaha Beach and see how serene and beautiful it is today knowing what happened there so many years ago. It looks like any other beach I've ever been to, and it's hard to believe it all connects to the same ocean. I said hi to you all in America on the other side. The next day, we went to Mont St Michel, the famous abbey surrounded by its own kind of ocean--quicksand! It was a lot of stairs but worth it since it's the most visited monument in France after the Eiffel Tower.


The best hot chocolate in the world is at a chocolaterie/boulangerie/salon de thé across the street from the Tuileries called Angelina. It comes from North Africa, and it is the chocolatiest, meltiest hot chocolate you will ever have in your life. Angelina is a beautiful tea room close to the Louvre that feels oh so Parisian. The walls are covered in murals, the ceiling is rimmed with gold, and the tables are the little round kind you see outside cafes all over Paris. I went to Angelina with two friends from one of my classes, British Matt and another Emily from Chicago. We discussed books, movies, and photography (en francais!), all while looking out for celebrities and models, the kinds of people rumored to frequent this place. It was all very classy.


I guess the memory of Angelina has to make up for missing the other very sophisticated and tasteful event I was looking forward to. As I started writing this last night, I was supposed to be all dressed up at the Opera Garnier watching the ballet Paquita. But, in France, ballerinas go on strike too!