A note on the French school system

This will probably be a rant. I really should have written this back two months ago when I left most classes 15 minutes late swearing in f&**ing English as I angrily ran to be swallowed by the 5 p.m. métro rush hour to my next class. I should have written it when I woke up, took the hour-long métro ride and sat in a class room for half an hour to discover that there was a "weird man" walking around the building and "security" wouldn't let our "professor" in. But we were allowed to sit there, sans any kind of information. Or maybe I could have written it when one of my teachers thought it was a good use of time to speak with one student about just their project in front of the whole class for an hour and a half. I should have written it then, it could have been more ranty.

But, since I am writing this now, when I only have to go back to the hellish halls of Paris VII one more time for my final, I have wise and balanced retrospect. Kind of. Seeing another country's higher education system has been educative, but not in the sense that I have actually learned much about any of my class subjects. I have learned that I love the American school system, both college and otherwise, and that I have been incredibly lucky to have had such passionate teachers, interesting and entertaining lesson plans and a culture that actually believes in time as a way to organize life. Maybe it's just because I've been socialized to like these things, but I really do appreciate them.

So...list of things I like about French school:
the lunch (but does this even count, because I basically just like lunch and it's just a coincidence that I have to eat it there)

List of things I don't like:
teaching style a.k.a. lecture and power points of their lecture notes (where's the Prezis?), lack of homework (my host-mom said it's because they're too lazy to assign it and have something else to grade), how everyone madly types notes (what are they writing????), lack of syllabi, don't respect my time! (classes routinely ending and starting at least 20 minutes late), how I discovered I still wasn't registered when I went to turn in my final project, the criticisms given to students' faces in front of everyone else after an oral presentation (didn't understand mine woot!)

But I'm done so whatever. Fall, I look forward to your syllabi, schedules and readings. I'll probably eat these words when I have to do actual work again, but hopefully they'll taste like crêpes or something.

Really belated blog post

Well blog, it's been a while. (when I last wrote this it was March...so now it's been even more of a while)

A lot has happened since we last spoke (even moooooore). So much that I might need to write in you twice. In a row. Lots of things. But I think you can take it. (yeah...March Grace was ambitious, we'll see about that one)

Last (last last last x10+) weekend I went to Amsterdam. I kind of just don't want to talk about it so I will make my Amsterdam review brief, perhaps a haiku. Here it goes:


Stroop waffle french fries

canals and charming architecture 

Anne Frank tears and Van Gogh ears
Pannenkoeken Boot


Like most of my travels (and my life in its entirety) this trip was centered around, and will be remembered by, food. Fresh, gooey, caramelly stroop waffels, huge paper cones full of freshly fried taters smothered in spicy mayonnaisey samurai saus, 75 minutes of all-you-can-eat pannenkoeken (dutch pancakes, somewhere in between crêpes and a flap jack)...these are the things I will remember. They have literally become a part of me since I used them to regenerate cells and such.

So Amsterdam was awesome, the Dutch were exceedingly friendly, everyone's English was a pannenkoeken boot better than my French, but the Van Gogh museum is overrated. Really though, it was 15 euros and I like the Van Goghs they have at Musée d'Orsay better, and that place is free. And now on to Istanbul.

Through this experience I have had many moments of standing in front of something, mouth gaping, thinking "OMG THIS IS SO AMMAAAAZINGGGG HOW IS EVERYONE ELSE NOT COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOWWWW GAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" This sentiment basically characterizes my entire trip to Istanbul. It was passed in a five day sleep-deprived haze of awe, my mouth only closing when I stuffed it with Turkish delight. Or licked my ever-present cone of Turkish ice cream. After eating ice cream for three straight days in a row, I decided to make it a personal challenge to eat it every day I was in Istanbul. It's little goals like these that give life meaning when you conquer them. And I did, finishing up with a ridiculously over-priced cone consumed at 4 in the morning in the Ataturk Airport. Also, Turkish ice cream is super thick and toothsome and the ice cream mongers use this long metal paddle to beat it into submission and slap a chunk on a cone. This one guy stuck in his ice cream prong and pulled out the entire bucket-molded hunk of chocolate flavor, to which my friend and travel-buddy Cara said, "That looks like a big turd." And it did. But I wanted to eat it anyway.

Blue Mosque, starring Cara 

I loved Istanbul because it felt so completely and utterly different from Paris, or Amsterdam, or anywhere. Definitely not Erie, Colorado. Everything was so old, like stone-medusa head old. And it just feels like there was a lot of struggle there. I loved staring at mosaics and thinking about the tiny ancient man (probably wasn't a woman let's get real) who spent his days eating ancient Turkish ice cream and putting tiny iridescent tiles on a wall. It was by the ocean, but not beachy, but not-not beachy like Seattle, just this alien beach/not-beach feel I have never felt. One day we took a ferry to this chain of islands and walked around the biggest, called Büyükada. Once again, WEIRD! This island was full of random stray horses, dogs and cats, a pine forest, huge abandoned building, sprawling summer villas, and lots of ice cream (surprise!). It was beautiful, though, with the sunniest day we had the whole trip and the smell of green and pine and Turkish ice cream and horse doodie wafting up from the sea. Ahhhhhh, nothing beats the smell of horse doodie and stray cat urine on a Turkish island, am I right?

The blue mosque, beautiful inside and out