Yesterday, I had my midterm for my Religion and Society course. We were tested on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. There was a lot of stuff to learn (which I now know, so I am happy to answer any questions you may have, and put this new knowledge to use!). It was a crazy 3 days of cramming before the test and I was happy to have friends to study and go over concepts with. We had a lot of fun pronouncing names like: Muhammad ibn abd-al-Wahhab and Jnana Yoga and making up good acronyms (ex. Bananas and Mangos make Inuendos: an acronym for the names of the different Hindu Casts, in their English equivalent). The test was at the ungodly hour of 830am (noone should be asked to think before 10). After the test, which went OK, we went and got "Real America Pastries" from a bakery. yummmmm Carrot cake.
Today, I am working hard on getting a paper done for Tuesday. I planned to start it yesterday, but after a 4 hour exam, I was too exhausted. I was working at a friends house again, since I really find it easier to work with motivation around. So, when one person is slacking, the other can call them out on it. Also, it is better to stop and talk for 5 min to have a break, than to go online and chat on msn for an hour...
I have 6 more assignments to get done before the semester is over. Wish me luck!
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tourist week
Hello everyone,
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of updating! I need to restart, so I shall. What is new in France? A BIT, not so much.
From what is new with me personally: I have a friend from Vancouver staying with me this week, Gloria (find her Travel blog on my blog list). It has been fun doing a lot touristy things here with her. On sunday when she arrived we did a walking tour with NewEurope. The tour is free (donations collected at the end), and good! It is the same tour company that I did my Berlin walking tour with. Then on Monday we went walking through the Marais. The Marais is the Jewish part of Paris (and the Gay part), so we had a bit of a Jewish day. I attempted to have a Jewish day a couple weeks ago, which was a complete failure since it was a Saturday... Shabbat... so everything Jewish was closed. Anyhow, this Monday we had no problems and went around shopping, eating Falafel, ect. My friend's knowledge of Hebrew got us a free Falafel sample too! Language skills come in handy at very random times.
Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day) we went to the ballet in the evening. It was the "Troisieme Symphonie de Mahler". It was at the Opera Bastille, one of the big opera houses in Paris. We arrive at the Opera at 710, and the show was at 730, and we did not have tickets. So, we went to the last minute line up, which only sells tickets 15 min before the show, so we were actually on time! We got great seats (5th row, fairly central), for 15 euros, a great deal. The show was amazing! There were about 70 dancers accompanied by an orchestra and an opera soloist.
Yesterday we went to Versaille, which is fabulous! It is huge, we spent 7 hours walking around and just got the basic stuff visited. With my bus pass here I get free entry, so that was nice. Also, being mid-week and low season we did not experience huge lineups like many do. We took lots of pictures and shall post some here soon. At one point we asked an asian man to take our photo, and after he asked us to take one... but he pulled back the camera and handed it to his friend, he meant to take the photo WITH us, not of him. It was a great day which ended at LaRotisserie, a restaurant in Belleville which is run by a different NGO each night to raise money, the idea is neat, the food was OK, but the company was awesome as I met back up with the people I traveled with to Morocco.
Today has been chill; I went to school and am now catching up on unreplied emails and some homework. The city is on Strike today and there are big manifestations all over town. The past few weeks have been funny in that sense... pretty much all the Universities here are on strike here (not including mine, since it is an Institution and not a public University). However, we now have to present our student cards when entering the building due to apparent thefts (but I am not sure that is the real reason). I bet they lose more money hiring the security guards than they would in stolen goods. Ironically the school got occupied Tuesday afternoon by protestors who came in through a back entrance. I am not exactly sure what that all was about, but they are gone now. Some of my friends at other Universities here have been very affected by the Strikes and I have heard stories of students returning home, since their semester is already as good as a loss with their courses being suspended now for over a month. France is definatly living up to its repupation for having a lot of strikes and protests.
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of updating! I need to restart, so I shall. What is new in France? A BIT, not so much.
From what is new with me personally: I have a friend from Vancouver staying with me this week, Gloria (find her Travel blog on my blog list). It has been fun doing a lot touristy things here with her. On sunday when she arrived we did a walking tour with NewEurope. The tour is free (donations collected at the end), and good! It is the same tour company that I did my Berlin walking tour with. Then on Monday we went walking through the Marais. The Marais is the Jewish part of Paris (and the Gay part), so we had a bit of a Jewish day. I attempted to have a Jewish day a couple weeks ago, which was a complete failure since it was a Saturday... Shabbat... so everything Jewish was closed. Anyhow, this Monday we had no problems and went around shopping, eating Falafel, ect. My friend's knowledge of Hebrew got us a free Falafel sample too! Language skills come in handy at very random times.
Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day) we went to the ballet in the evening. It was the "Troisieme Symphonie de Mahler". It was at the Opera Bastille, one of the big opera houses in Paris. We arrive at the Opera at 710, and the show was at 730, and we did not have tickets. So, we went to the last minute line up, which only sells tickets 15 min before the show, so we were actually on time! We got great seats (5th row, fairly central), for 15 euros, a great deal. The show was amazing! There were about 70 dancers accompanied by an orchestra and an opera soloist.
Yesterday we went to Versaille, which is fabulous! It is huge, we spent 7 hours walking around and just got the basic stuff visited. With my bus pass here I get free entry, so that was nice. Also, being mid-week and low season we did not experience huge lineups like many do. We took lots of pictures and shall post some here soon. At one point we asked an asian man to take our photo, and after he asked us to take one... but he pulled back the camera and handed it to his friend, he meant to take the photo WITH us, not of him. It was a great day which ended at LaRotisserie, a restaurant in Belleville which is run by a different NGO each night to raise money, the idea is neat, the food was OK, but the company was awesome as I met back up with the people I traveled with to Morocco.
Today has been chill; I went to school and am now catching up on unreplied emails and some homework. The city is on Strike today and there are big manifestations all over town. The past few weeks have been funny in that sense... pretty much all the Universities here are on strike here (not including mine, since it is an Institution and not a public University). However, we now have to present our student cards when entering the building due to apparent thefts (but I am not sure that is the real reason). I bet they lose more money hiring the security guards than they would in stolen goods. Ironically the school got occupied Tuesday afternoon by protestors who came in through a back entrance. I am not exactly sure what that all was about, but they are gone now. Some of my friends at other Universities here have been very affected by the Strikes and I have heard stories of students returning home, since their semester is already as good as a loss with their courses being suspended now for over a month. France is definatly living up to its repupation for having a lot of strikes and protests.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Last Day of Class!
Today is my last day of class for Semester 1 at Sciences-Po! For those of you who worried about my academic commitment here (Mom, Dad..), I assure you that I have spent plenty of time studying here. Of course, it is not my top blog priority to describe the exciting days in which I sequester myself in my room and work on my essays for 12 hours straight at a time. I have now handed in ALL my homework and it feels great. I do not know many marks yet, but for the ones I have received back, I am doing well enough. Also, if you are worried about me traveling so much, keep in mind that the school system is set up very different here. I was in school from October - Mid Feb for Semester 1, a total of 4.5 months, where as at home semester one would only be 3.5 months. And now between semesters I have an additional 2 weeks off after my exams. Semester 2 will go from Feb 23 - the end of June, just over 4 months, again longer than at home. Since we are in school for longer we get more time off and more breaks. The entire month of September I was in the Welcome Program which ran 3 weeks and allowed me the last week to travel to Switzerland. So, if you do not hear about the homework, it does not mean it doesn't exist.
Anyways, I am off to my last day of class. I have my French course today in which we are having a "tasting", each person was assigned something to bring from wine to cheese, to grapes ( I am bringing white grapes). What a tough course it will be. I then have a volleyball game, will come home to pack for leaving tommorow, and then I have a dinner with my team. I will be in switzerland as of this saturday until feb 2nd, when I will return to Paris to study and write exams. Adios for now.
Anyways, I am off to my last day of class. I have my French course today in which we are having a "tasting", each person was assigned something to bring from wine to cheese, to grapes ( I am bringing white grapes). What a tough course it will be. I then have a volleyball game, will come home to pack for leaving tommorow, and then I have a dinner with my team. I will be in switzerland as of this saturday until feb 2nd, when I will return to Paris to study and write exams. Adios for now.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Busy Busy Busy
What happened to me having no life in Paris? I do not know.
So much has gone on the last few days, and so much is yet to come.
School has picked up and I had my first expose (ex-pose-ay), aka an oral presentation, on the Korean film Memories of Murder (it is a really good film based on the first serial killings in South Korea). The teachers here are crazy about them. Every class requires you to do one. I have my second one next week (in French!) on renewable energy. Luckily I'm paired with a real French girl, so I should have some help with my grammatical issues.
This past week I missed Canadian Thanksgiving, but sported a super cool maple leaf fake tattoo on my hand in support. For the election day many Canadian students united at the great canadian pub to try and be at least a bit patriotic. Very few were able to vote. This I largely attribute to the short notice we had on the election. 5 weeks is not a lot of time for dealing with all the paper work. A few students received their ballot the day of the election which was useless.
My friend Neil, from Hornby Island is in town this week with a friend he is backpacking with. It is nice to see people from home. We played ultimate frisbee with the group from Sciences-Po and it felt great to run! This weekend a former co-worker of mine will be coming and I will spend some time with her perhaps visiting a museum, shopping, or seeing a show. Having tourists around gives me a good opportunity to get see things I haven't had a chance to thus far.
I am also trying to book tickets for my November break. It is proving difficult for me to decide where I want to go. I have until this weekend to decide, so come back by Monday to see the decision!
So much has gone on the last few days, and so much is yet to come.
School has picked up and I had my first expose (ex-pose-ay), aka an oral presentation, on the Korean film Memories of Murder (it is a really good film based on the first serial killings in South Korea). The teachers here are crazy about them. Every class requires you to do one. I have my second one next week (in French!) on renewable energy. Luckily I'm paired with a real French girl, so I should have some help with my grammatical issues.
This past week I missed Canadian Thanksgiving, but sported a super cool maple leaf fake tattoo on my hand in support. For the election day many Canadian students united at the great canadian pub to try and be at least a bit patriotic. Very few were able to vote. This I largely attribute to the short notice we had on the election. 5 weeks is not a lot of time for dealing with all the paper work. A few students received their ballot the day of the election which was useless.
My friend Neil, from Hornby Island is in town this week with a friend he is backpacking with. It is nice to see people from home. We played ultimate frisbee with the group from Sciences-Po and it felt great to run! This weekend a former co-worker of mine will be coming and I will spend some time with her perhaps visiting a museum, shopping, or seeing a show. Having tourists around gives me a good opportunity to get see things I haven't had a chance to thus far.
I am also trying to book tickets for my November break. It is proving difficult for me to decide where I want to go. I have until this weekend to decide, so come back by Monday to see the decision!
Monday, September 8, 2008
Little random things
What to say...
I saw Babylon AD the other night at a Cinema on the Champs Elysee. It was 10 Euro, which is their premium weekend night price. A bit price, but oh well.
I went to Sciences-Po today for the first time! It is a hidden little building the 6th. It is nice. We had a 4 hour meeting with the hundreds of exchange students where we were just pumped with information. Most people had little breakfast before it started and we didn't get a break until 1:30! At 1:30 I went with some friends to find a restaurant CROUS which has discounted meals for students. For 2.85 Euro you can have a full meal. The meals are edible but people often sit down and try to deduce what type of meat they received.
I finally got an internet cable! This makes me sooo happy. Now I can use t he internet for a decent amount of time instead of always having to borrow cables from others. It also allows me to look up courses which is awesome since my course registration is on Wednesday.
Speaking of registration, I am slightly scared of it since it is supposedly a mad free for all. We were told to pick 2 back up courses for EACH course we want to take. So, since we take 6-7 courses here per semested, we need to pic about 18-21 courses we are interested in! I'm very interested to see what courses I get in the end.
More random tid bits... I locked myself out of my room today. I'll post a picture when I get a chance, but this means I had to cross the 10 lane highway which is right outside my room 6 times this afternoon to sort it out since the administration for my residence is on the other side. The over pass has about 30 stairs so it sucks having to go up and down constantly.
There is a lot of talk about shit here. Literally. Our bathrooms and showers are always nasty but I won't go into details. To add to the nastyness there are cockroaches in the kitchen. So, although the stairs to the 5th floor suck, they are at least a bit helpful at controling that problem on my floor.
Final thought: It is neat meeting people here and learning they know people you know even though they are from the other side of the world.
PS. Although this week has been stressful and shall be for a bit longer, I am very excited to spend the year here. So far, so good!
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