Long overdue!

(disclaimer: This is really long. And there's more to come, since I wrote it last Friday!)

Hello hello! Sorry for the lack of update (mom); I’ve been keeping myself busy for sure!

Two weekends ago I headed to Normandy and Mont St. Michel with ISA. We took a double decker bus and went to a museum (so-so) in Caen and then spent some time at Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc. It was incredible to see. The American cemetery was really neat too. Every direction you look, there is a pattern, which is why you can’t really take a bad picture of it. I wandered around there for a while, just looking at the dates on the crosses and where the soldiers were from. I found a few from Kansas/Oklahoma, but the saddest part was the large number of crosses with no name on them. I can’t imagine what the families of those unidentified soldiers must have felt like—I’m sure not knowing would be the worst feeling in that kind of situation. It seems like I’ve seen/heard a lot about World War II recently, with the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam the next weekend and the book I brought with me. I just grabbed a book to take on the plane that my mom had bought for me, and I didn’t realize until I started reading it that it was not only set in Paris, it was about the Vel’ d’Hiv (Velodrome d’Hiver—a sort of indoor bicycle track that ended up holding French Jews for a few days during the war) roundup. It was the French police that took the Jews to the Vel’ d’Hiv, on Nazi orders. They were originally supposed to take adults, but they took whole families (I think children of certain ages didn’t have to go though) to the track and then separated the children from their parents there. They were then taken to concentration camps and very few survived. I’ve also heard about the Vel’ d’Hiv a couple of times since then, as there is a movie coming out about it. From the sounds of it though, the French general public don’t know a lot about what happened there. The French tend to close their eyes to things they don’t want to see (par exemple, women pretending they don’t notice their husbands’ affairs), and that was definitely a dark moment in Paris’s history since it was the French police that performed the roundup. Just some food for thought!

Anyway, after the WWII landmarks, we headed back to Caen for the night. We went straight to dinner and then headed to bed! I think we were all exhausted at that point. The next day we woke up early, ate breakfast at the hotel (I had the only milk I’ve had since I’ve been here!) and loaded ourselves back on the bus to go to Mont St. Michel. It was incredibly foggy when we first got there, so we couldn’t see the abbey until we were right in front of it. The wind and rain were strong, so we all ran as best as we could to get inside the village. We took a tour around the abbey, which took over 1000 years to build (WHOA!), and then tried to warm up a little while visiting the souvenir shops and food places in the village below. I would have enjoyed the trip much more if it weren’t so freezing, but it was a very cool place to go. As the bus pulled away, we could see the ‘island’ much better, since the sky had cleared a bit. We then headed to an apple juice/apple cider/calvados (ridiculously strong alcohol made from apples) to get a tour and try the drinks and spreads they had there. After that, our excursion was complete and we made our way back to Paris.

The next Thursday we had another ISA event—a night at the opera! As I’m sure you can imagine, I was extremely excited about this, especially since the ballet we went to see was at the Opera Garnier—the opera house that gave rise to the phantom of the opera. I had been excited to go there for a long time! It was my first ballet too, and I loved it! The music was by Chopin, and the story the same one from which the Moulin Rouge movie drew its inspiration: La Dame aux Camelias. It was a little hard to follow at times, but I got the gist and then looked up a little more information later so I could write about it in my journal for my French language class. Very cool!

The next day brought my first train experience, my first glimpse of Europe outside of France, and my first sight of a friend I hadn’t seen in nearly 4 years! I took the Thalys train to Amsterdam, arriving at the station WAY too early (they tell you to please be there at least 2 minutes before your train leaves), but at least I had plenty of time to figure out what I needed to do (which was basically stand there and wait for them to post the gate). The train made stops in Brussels, Antwerp and Rotterdam before finally carrying me to my destination. The trip was about 3 ½ hours total, so not bad at all! I got there and headed to Bob’s Hostel, 2 or 3 blocks away, where I got checked in and met Elisa, a friend who was with me in Poas, Costa Rica and whom I hadn’t seen since! I also met her roommate in Leeds, England, Liz. They’re both studying there for the semester. We went to the Anne Frank house that Friday afternoon and just wandered around a little. We went to bed early because it was not pleasant weather and we were hoping to get a semi-early start the next day. The room we shared contained 16 full beds, so we were woken up several times during the night, but I slept much better than I expected to. The next day we did some more wandering and then took a free walking tour around the city for 3 ½ hours that afternoon—we were exhausted after that! It was a really neat tour though. Our tour guide was great, really informative and funny. If anyone reading this heads to Amsterdam, I would definitely recommend doing the tour! Afterwards, we went back to the hostel for a little nap and warming up time, and then we went out to eat and checked out the red light district. We didn’t wander around it too much since it was night and we didn’t want to get lost. I had, by far, the best sense of direction in the group, so as you can imagine, I was more than a little worried about not being able to find our way back! I think Amsterdam gets kind of a bad rap for being the city with all the prostitutes and drugs, but it really is a beautiful place! The canals, the incredibly narrow houses, the Dutch people’s humor—I really enjoyed it all! It was really interesting to go somewhere that liberal from a cultural perspective too. The rule of thumb there is that you can pretty much do what you want as long as you’re discreet about it, it isn’t harming anyone else, and it’s good for business. I thought it was really interesting when our tour guide informed us that only about 10% (I think) of Amsterdammers smoke weed, that it’s mostly tourists who propagate that image. I would have loved to have talked to some locals to see how they felt about how the way their city is viewed is produced by the people who visit it (if that even makes sense—I think I’m losing my ability to speak English, if I ever really had it!).

This past week I intended to update my blog but I ended up the busiest I’ve been since I got here. My friend Amanda had some US friends in town, so we all ended up hanging out Monday and Tuesday nights, and then I ended up with a date on Wednesday (we drove around Paris and down to Versailles to see the palace lit up at night—lots of fun!) and then my parents got here on Thursday so I met them right after class got out at 5. Now I’m writing this on the train to Milan (it’s around 10 AM on Friday), where we are going to meet Ale tomorrow! I am ridiculously excited, since I haven’t seen her in almost 5 years! I’ve definitely missed her and still think about her all the time. If you don’t know, she’s the Italian AFS exchange student that my family hosted my sophomore year of high school, and she’s wonderful!

A lot of you have been asking about my host situation (probably because I’ve been complaining about it so much!), so here’s a VERY abbreviated version of the sitch. The lady that we’re staying with is crazy-town. She yells at us all the time and tells us we’re not doing things that we actually are, like cleaning. She makes us turn the shower off while we’re lathering up and only use it to rinse off (which makes sense for conserving water, but it comes back FREEZING so we end up using more water that way, waiting for it to be warm enough to use), she informed my roommate that she was manipulating me into hating her (um, I can think for myself, thank you), and makes us clean half of the apartment once a week. I really don’t mind doing things around the apartment, but it’s just the tone of voice that she uses with us and the fact that she never believes we are actually cleaning the tub after we take a shower (check the sponge lady—it’s wet, which usually means it’s been used!), won’t ever let us explain ANYTHING, etc. She was yelling at us about once a day for a week and a half, so Lauren (my roommate) and I went to talk to ISA about it. They called her to try to help fix the problem, which REALLY pissed her off, so we went back to ISA and decided to move. They had some potential families lined up, but once they started calling, they realized that the only option open to us is switching with two other girls who are having problems. We considered that, but after talking to some other people, it seems those two are having a lot of the same problems we are, but they’re in a worse location and we would have to pack up all of our stuff and haul it on the metro to get there. So for now, we’re staying at Madame Boquet’s, since she’s been weirdly nice the past few days (we really don’t know what to do when she’s like that!) and we’re in a great location right now. There’s the short version of that!

Other than the host lady situation, I absolutely adore everything here! My classes aren’t spectacular, but my schedule is, so I can deal! I love the city and (most of) the people and my trips I’ve taken and the food and all of that. So don’t worry about me getting homesick like in Chile—if I do, it won’t be for a while!

Bisous a tous!

Kristin