ch-ch-ch-ch-changinnnn

Everythings changing! And its about time. I've come to realize that 2009 was really just not my year. Yes, many good things did happen, but overall... I'm thinking that 2010 will be a better one. In just the last few weeks I feel like just about everything big in my life has changed... and I feel great about it! I'll be smoothly gliding on into 2010 tonight on such a positive note. Tonight we're gunna party like 2009 never happened!

hahaha i google imaged "fuck 2009" and this is what i got. My thoughts exactly.

Bring it on 2010!

OYSTER???

So after much confusion and discussion about the "farewell oyster" sign off from the now infamous French email... my loyal friend Suzi consulted a French man that she knows to get his opinion.

His thoughts...
1. He could have meant that I am flat chested and unfeminine... haha! Well thankfully I don't think that's the problem...
2. Oyster could also be referring to something about a lack of intelligence. Could be the case since he was so quick to belittle my education.
3. This is the best option i think, and kind of also what we were thinking as well... that I am sexually closed of/ frustrated. Which he also mentioned in the email. Thanks, dude.

Anyways, it was nice to get another opinion from a French man. This other guy (who knows my friend Suzi) went on to apologize for his fellow countryman and was quite ashamed that A French man would speak to a lovely lady like myself in such a way. Apology accepted. He also offered to "hook me up" if I needed it. Nice.

OMG

So this past week I went on 2 dates. Don't get too excited... they were both horrible!! The first one was a blind date that i was set up on by a girl from school. Guy from New York, totally not my type and I was definitely not interested, although he seemed to think otherwise (and not to mention the fact that he was WASTED when I met him). The second date was with a guy that I met briefly at a museum who seemed harmless enough. When i get to the date it instantly becomes the most awkward situation ever. He is so uncomfortable and socially awkward I just couldn't even handle it. I could tell you countless stories about all the weird things he did, but lets not waste time and get straight to the good stuff!! So both dates I had to weasel out of because they were so horrible. The second one with the French guy, I was only there for a few minutes and already called Kara to get me the hell out of this date! We formulated a plan about how Fozzie was sick and how Kara and Jenna were on the way to the vet and I had to meet them. He tried to convince me not to go and then tried to weasel a kiss on the metro! I dont think so. Anyways, today I get this LOVELY email from him pointing out all the things that are "wrong" with me. I'm sorry, but if I am so horrible then why did you want me to stay and then proceed to kiss me?! So heres the email, along with my commentary of course.

(Keep in mind that this guy is French)

Emily,

this is my last e-mail. Take it as a "farewell".
I hope you'll read this one, that it won't stay in your spam box.

I tried to listen and to comply with what you wanted.

MY ATTEMPT:

I knew it would be hard to make the things work out, since you already said nothing in our chats- I mean nothing but "ahah ok", the most frequent sentence. (*)
So, I knew that would be hard but not to a such extend.
(I said you're cute but I lied. You're not) (wooooow. why did you ask me out in the first place then?!)

MY ADVICES: `

The peak of surprise was reached when you showed me pics of your dog, claiming they were "more interesting" (I never said that. I was just trying to display convincing emotions about Fozzie being "sick" haha). (we were at Notre-Dame). I think that tells everything.

Let me order all that, as an advice list:

0. (clearly every list starts with zero) Note that you're in Paris here. People are evolved here, more than in the US. They are well-mannered, cultured, but not sexually frustrated. Besides, nobody goes longer to the church.
So you have to improve some things on your own:

1.The fact that you're not likely to speak French shows that your cultural interest is superficial. When I'm abroad, I try to speak the local language (English, German etc). You should change that (who said anything about not speaking French? I actually try really hard to speak French. I just did not want to talk to you. In ANY language.)

2.You spent all your time into texting. Here when you have a date, you're supposed to turn off you phone. Otherwise you're not polite. (sorry dude, but that was me trying to get of a date from hell with you.)
And you expected me lovely? (what?)
Do you know that not doing it is the most convincing evidence of a lack of education?
Emily, you're rude. You must change that. Otherwise, you'll get problems here. I'm serious (Uh oh!)

3.When you claim that your dog is more interesting that Notre-Dame, that obviously means that you're emotionally ruined. (HAHAHAHA)
That also means that you don't pay attention to culture- I knew you were a fake art student, since you go drink with friends in the middle of the week and go to bed at 1 am . (EXCUSE ME? do you know any art students? or college students in general??! thats what we DO! clearly this must mean I'm a liar and not actually an art student)
This way you offend people, meaning that the Paris cathedral- a symbol of Paris and its culture- is less than your dog (or rather your neurotic emotional involvement). This way you do show your lacks and offend your company, on a same move. (Yep, I have disrespected Notre Dame, Paris, and Catholicism for that matter, becasue of my dog)
Don't do that again. A ghost of curiosity should make you a better person. (ummmm, What?)
Actually, that shows you're not ready to get out an discover the world- especially have love affairs. (love affairs!!!!! hahahaha)
Besides, you don't need them : you have a dog already (HAHA!) About sex, (who said anything about sex?!??) living with two girls, without male contacts is somewhat saphic (look in the dictionary if you don't know what that means). (I did look in the dictionary, you actually spelled it wrong... its sapphic). Actually, your interest for boys is superficial. Maybe you should try with a girl first. (AHHAHAHAH so i guess im a lesbian cuz I have 2 girl roommates)

Farewell, oyster (??????)

*: you studied art in a little private college for spoiled girls since quantum physics at the UCLA were intellectually demanding- am I right? (wait wait this is my favorite. So every French person assumes that if you go to school in LA it must be UCLA. So he thinks that since I went to a small private school its becasue I'm a stupid spoiled girl. well my friend, I happened to have gone to Pepperdine for one of the best advertising degrees in the country, so you can suck it)



Well that is all! Wasn't that great! The email gets better every time i read it! SOOOO funny! But I might be a little freaked out tho... Jenna thinks hes stalking me/ followed me that night! Well lets just say that I will not be giving him the pleasure of receiving a response to that email. So I just posted all my responses here for you to read instead! What is my life??! When did my dating life become entertainment for the rest of the world? Kara and Jenna think maybe I should keep going on more dates and write a book about it... and then we can make a movie!!)

I gotta redeem my horrible dating record. Pushing away 2 attempt-at-kisses in one week is just not fun.

sometimes

Sometimes... (most of the time)

I just can't even believe that this is my life

and that we actually made it here.

Naughty Paris

A month or so ago, Jenna and I found ourselves on a little adventure with Kara who was in a desperate search to find a book. The book is about great places to shop, get your hair cut, nails done, find the best girly hotels, sexiest bars, most seductive lingerie... etc, in Paris. This book is essentially every girl's dream. We were led to a super secret lingerie and sex shop (but i mean that in the very classiest sense of the word) to find the book. This little shop was seriously the most beautiful little dirty shop I had ever been to. (Jenn, if you are reading this you would have loved it!) Alas, we found the book and little did I know what joy I would find in it. Et Voila... "Naughty Paris."

For the past few days, I've been starting most sentences with "well I read in Naughty Paris that..."

So like I said before, the book has all the best things for a sexy and adventurous girl to do in Paris. But my favorite part of the entire book is the intro. It is all about the secrets of Parisian women, and how they do what they do; how to understand French men and all their wonders, and what makes us lovely American girls so wonderful in the eyes of the little French men themselves.

"well I read in Naughty Paris that..." French men love to flirt. Clearly we all already know this, but I am just now realizing to what extent. Every woman who has ever been to France knows what its like to be "harassed" on the streets of Paris. I used to be completely appauled and offended, until I began to realize, this is just how French men roll! Yes, every now and then you will find that geinuine creeper, but most of the time, the French man is just doing what he does best. Naughty Paris made note of this same observation. It says that most French women just carry on their way, give no responce, but yet take it as a compliment and a little extra spring in their step.

I have also got to expirience this first hand by my French tutor. I just started taking French lessons with this oh-so-charming (and distractingly attractive) French guy. Not only is he constatly winking at me over verb conjugations when I get things right, but this man literally flirts with every girl who passes our way. But yet it is not sleazy or rude in the slightest! It truly is an art form. And I have to remind myself of this French past time with every wink of eye, knowing that this is just common practice.

It's truly facinating.

Needless to say I have learned so many interesting little facts from Naughty Paris and I am well on my way to becoming a perfectly polished little Parisian myself.

A Parisian woman always wears heels...


...and never wears color

THIS IS HALLOWEEN THIS IS HALLOWEEN!

We dressed up as tourists and went on a pub crawl for Halloween! Our costumes were spectacular because the French didn't realize we were in costume! The pub crawl was great because it was Halloween themed so it was nice to see some other people in the Halloween spirit!

I didn't take these pics since I was using a DISPOSABLE camera! Gotta get those developed...

posing by the Eiffel Tower like the good tourists we are. Its back there somewhere...

we decided it would be a good idea to take pictures in this booth. But don't be fooled... this is not one of those photo booths meant for tourists like us... this booth is for getting your passport pictures taken! We are such good touritsts.

The pub crawl leader was Lady Gaga

I broke my Eiffel Tower!!!! Luckily I am a seasoned pro and I brought the super glue along!


Eiffel popped a lot of balloons that night

my sweet digs


The French were LOVING us on the metro. We played the part so well and they for sure thought we were serious.

tourists in action

who needs it anyways

Recently, I seem to have lost all self control and will power. Somehow this seems to be working out quite well for me. It's a wonderful thing, really. Stay tuned to see if it kicks me in the ass later...

"this is our decision to live fast and die young,
we've got the vision, now let's have some fun."

ALLEZ LES BLEUS!

Here are a few videos from the France v. Austria game that we went to and WON 4-1! The first video was before the game when the team comes out. The announcer says each player's first name and then the audience yells the last name.






The national anthem? Nooo idea what anyone was saying

Get with it, France.

Those who know me know how much I love Halloween. Sadly, I feel as though my affections have been somewhat squandered due to the fact that France has just not caught on. When you think about, there is no logical reason for the French to NOT celebrate it. I mean, they celebrate All Saint's Day, which is where Halloween originated from. All Saint's Day is on November 1 (the day after Halloween) and it is a day to celebrate the dead. Schools even take a fall break, a week off of school centered around All Saint's Day! Can you imagine if we had an entire week off for Halloween in the States?! Haha!

Anyways, I have been doing a little research and there are definitely some Halloween events happening here in Paris, but yet, the same great Halloween spirit is just not present. But we will survive, and will make the most of this great great holiday.

Happy Halloween!

mmm pumpkin. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/10/halloween_in_pa.html

We are not homeless!

We finally found a place and we moved in last week! We love it here. We are in the 15th and are about a 3 minute walk from the Eiffel tower! We can see it from the front door of our building. I can also walk to school from here which is wonderful. It is soooo nice and we got a really great deal! I am so happy that we found this place.

Our place is pretty unique in the sense that it is technically one BIG studio. We have done a lot of rearranging and have kind of divided up the space so that we have a separate bedroom area. The place only came with one bed though, so we had to go to Ikea to get 2 more. What an adventure. If you have even been to Ikea, you know what an intense excursion it can turn out to be. Multiply that by 100 because of train traveling, language barriers, lack of customer service and SLOW french people. It was insane. We were there ALL day and were completely delerious by the time we made it to the delivery line to have our stuff delivered to Paris.

Luckily, we could have it deliviered the next day. When they called to say they were here I ran out to meet the guy. He was just standing there, staring at me as if he was waiting for me to do something... while I was doing the same thing, waiting for him to start moving our stuff in! The he explained to me that WE have to move it ourselves! They only deliver to the street! I called Kara and she came down and the 2 of us had to move 2 matreses and a bed frame through 4 doors and up 3 flights of strairs, all without getting caught by the apartment housekeeper/cosierge/recycling police/drill sergent becasue we had all the droors proped open which im sure it an illegal apartment act. Needless to say, we somehow got it all to our apartment and then spent most of the day trying to assemble Kara's bed. Shambles! We ended up having to use a power drill which was a really great adventure. Thankfully I learned how to use one in sculpture class last year or else i think we might have killed ourselves.

But now all our beds are set up! My bed is actually just a matress on the floor cuz i was too cheap to buy a frame haha. But it is working out just great so far. I'll take some pictures of the whole set up once we are fully settled in.

Tonight we are going to a French National Team soccer game! ALLEZ LES BLEUS!

NUIT BLANCHE! (a little overdue)

Some overdue pictures from Nuit Blanche. Now that I think about it... we honestly didn't really DO anything... we just wandered around and drank and had a great time! It was just so fun being out all night with everyone else in Paris, who were also doing nothing but wandering around and drinking. Ok wait, I take it back, we did see a tree made out of carpet and watched some dancers on acid.

Startin our day off early. Becca's good friend Lindsey came to visit from Germany for the weekend as well.

Too cool obviously.

At LE STYX! Our favorite restaurant from way back.

GIANT disco ball at Luxembourg gardens, held up by a crane, naturally.

Outside Notre Dame.


Go Kara! A Nuit Blanche highlight for sure.


The night would not be complete without a McFlurry avec daim.



The following pictures were taken by Jenna!

Weasels.


Corks flying through Paris. Typical.




Best picture! Puttin our hands up at Notre Dame/ sacrilege.


I had my eyes on one of those sweet Nuit Blanche books. Luckily Becca found one for me on the street!

chocolate

an email that I got from my mom this morning...



"Hi Emily and Trevor

I have a very important question for you both: Do you prefer milk or dark chocolate? heheheh

Thanks,
Mom"



hahaha!

long time no blog

WHOA I have not updated in so long. I am not even sure what to say. Well, the past 2 weeks have been super busy so I haven't had much time to update. Kara and Jenna got here about 2 weeks ago and we have been keeping ourselves quite busy by looking at apartments and eating every morsel of food that Paris has to offer. The apartment search has been insane. We have just been having really bad luck and have had our little hearts broken over and over again every time a wonderful apartment doesn't work out. This is not an exaggeration... we have literally called hundreds of apartments. We have looked at probably 12-15, and they either won't work for us, are out of our budget, won't accept roommates or someone gets it before us. Its really bizarre actually because because apparently roommates are not a popular thing in France. One real estate agent actually asked us, "so why do you want to live together". We didn't even know how to answer him! It has been so stressful! Just knowing that homelessness is lurking in the near future is enough to make a person crazy. But in the end... we finally found something! I am afraid to actually publish this piece of information for fear that I will jinx it. But this place is great! I'll share more once it is officially ours.

In other news, Becca got here this week! I still haven't acctually seen her, but we have been skyping her almost every night. She is an au pere just outside of Paris, therefore living with the family instead of with us. But we will be seeing her tomorrow for Nuit Blanche!!! Nuit Blanche is this night in Paris where everything stays open all night and everyone runs around the city and does not sleep. Sounds like my kind of night! There is free breakfast the next morning at 7am for those of us who last that long. We have been looking forward to this since we learned of it. Here's the website if you are curious. http://www.nuit-blanche.fr/

School has been good and busy. I got a "new" camera for my photo class. Its a canon SLR 35 mm. Its so sweet! We developed our first rolls today and made contact sheets. In sculpture we have been sculpting our FACES for like 4 weeks. Its so weird. Then we had to make a plaster mold and cast our heads after that. It was a serious stuggle. We were all in the sculpt studio from 8:30 am til 9 pm on thursday, covered in plaster, and still aren't done cuz we still have to make our bodies! Reminds me of the good old days in Ty's sculpt class at Pepp. Oh how I miss it. Painting has been my favorite class so far i think. We have already done 5 paintings and I can already see myself improving so much.

Ok I need to stop now for fear of making a really long and boring post. I promise to put up some pictures later, and give an update on NUIT BLANCHE!

Techno beats on the streets

TODAY was AWESOME. Kara, Jenna, Sean and I went to the techno parade. We showed up to the Bastille area (where the parade ends) around 3 just as the crowds were beginning the form. Young french hooligans were already picking flights with each other and I knew it was going to be a great day! We headed to a bar since we still had 2 hours til the parade arrived. By the time we returned to the Bastille everything had changed-- the roads were blocked off and there were thousands of people and we could hear the techno beats approaching! Suddenly the parade was upon us and people swarmed from all directions. There were people ON the Bastille! It was just like it was 3 years ago when Jenna, Bobby, Gio and I attended the parade. It is so bizarre (but interesting) to see all this modern day chaos happening on and around such an ancient and beutiful peice of Paris. On multiple occasions as I was risking my life in front of an oncoming float to get the perfect shot I was violently pushed out of the way by the "guys in orange shirts" who apparently were in charge? It was such chaos!!! But SO much fun. Before we knew it, it was over. That's when I realized my camera was missing... I'm just choosing not to think about it so I don't get really pissed. I'm the most upset about all the amazing pictures I took today which are now in the hands of some French creep. Ok thats enough about that.

Sean and I continued on in the spirit of the techno parade and adventured around Paris. We had such a funny night! We did free salsa lessons on the Seine, somehow ended up at some market/festival/concert and become some strange bands biggest fans, watch some crazy roller blading show and had many misadventures along the way. Such a good night.

Sadly I do not have any pictures to share since I am sans camera. But on the bright side, I have a 35mm camera that I am borrowing for my photo class so I will have some great film pictures developed soon enough!

Coucou c'est nous!!!

Jenna and Kara are finally here! We have already managed to come up with a few new favorite phrases in the past 2 days, including... Coucou c'est nous!, jour et nuit, and anything to do with GLOBI. I'm sure there will be much more to come. Tomorrow is the TECHNO PARADE!!! so excited! We happened to stumble upon it 3 years ago and it was amazing. Now we are are all ready for round 2.

Someone lost their bird... good luck with that.

Coucou c'est GLOBI!



Jour et nuit.... a a a nuit

schoolio

Classes are going great! We did our first canvas in painting class, went to Montparnasse station to draw today (for 5 hours!), learned how to use a 35mm camera in photo, sculpted a model of my FACE in sculpture class, and fell even more in love with my art history teacher. Here are a few pics from the week... I promise I'll try to take more!

settin' up camp at Montparnasse


Rosanna drawing


meeting outside the station and drinking free juice!

the very beginning of my still life... apples get a little old after 5 hours

Guess who's back, back again

2 weeks have flown by and now its time for the other girls to get here! In case you don't know the story, Kara, Jenna, Becca and myself have had this plan to move back to Paris for quite some time now. We were all in Paris together during the fall of 2006, and now we are finally back home. Kara gets here tomorrow!!!

Here are some pics of us in 2006. God we look awful.

Here's the whole group (and Theresa! hahaha) on Thanksgiving, 2006.

In 2009. Thankfully we've improved over time.

"One year masters"

The certificate program club (or candidates for a one year masters as we like to say). We're old.

La Tour Eiffel

I went the Eiffel tower today to take pictures for my first assignment in photo class. We are supposed to take interesting, unexpected and never-before-seen pictures of the Eiffel tower. Here are a few of the pictures that I won't be using... but thought they were still blog-worthy. I'll probably be making a few more trips during different times of the day til I'm really satisfied.