Last days in Paris

I cannot believe how much can happen in only one week. I thought my last entry would be the ultimate entry, nothing to add to that conclusion. –Yet, in one week so many things can happen…

So after having praised Paris and the life in France so much, I will need to come to some downsides.

1. I am very sad that I got robbed 4 days before my departure. Someone came into my room and stole all my jewelry, not that they are worth a lot, but they had a lot of personal importance to me. Some were from by Dad… I cannot believe that someone on campus of a Grande Ecole needs to steel something. Where is your dignity, guys?!
I’ve always been nice to people and tried to see the best in every person, and now, do I need to start mistrusting the world, because I got stolen once? I’ve been asking this myself. Of course, I won’t start mistrusting everyone, but it still pisses me off that they are people in this world who do stupid like that.

2. I’ve had the worst hang over in my entire life. There was the last last laaaast POW ( I mean it, it was the last one!!!) and so we girls decided to get really drunk. Starting preprepowing in my room, moving on to the prepow and finally ending at the actual POW we cussoned the whole night.
Man, the next morning was sooo horrible, I wanted to die, for real… I vomited every hour and felt terrible! It took me 10 hours to sober up, and guys, believe me I’M NEVER DRINKING AGAIN (well, for the next couple of weeks!)

3. Still haven’t understood the French male world…

4. So after saying good-bye to Nicole, she returned to me in the end  Yea, thanks for missing your flight! (After she left the first time, I had to buy three dresses, spent so much money in order to compensate her loss and yet it could not fill up the emptiness of my heart, haha – the dresses are reeeeeaaally nice tho!!!!;) )


I’m leaving in some hours from Gare de l’Est. Although there were some downsides this week, I still had a great time in Paris. We had a picnic at the Champ de Mars, we chilled at the Seine and enjoyed the sun. Everyone, who hasn’t been here before –COME TO PARIS!

So this is definitely my last entry in France.

For all of you who haven’t left – have a save trip back home.


Love, Christine

In the end...

My exchange semester is almost over and it is time now to reflect over the past 4 months.

When I first came here, I did not like it here. I didn't like the campus, I didn't like JJ and I could not identify myself with most of the people here. I had a hard time adjusting to this new lifestyle and I missed home which was really paradox, since I was actually so eager to get away from it
- I guess, when humans are being thrown into a new environment and life, they are just still attached to their old life, since it is something they know and feel secure about - although the old life was really miserable. Anyways.

4 months changed everything.

I chose my courses wisely, so I had most of my time off. This put me into a new situation - I've never had NOTHING to do. In my last past 4 or 5 years, I only knew working, doing five things simulatenously, organizing my life with various calendars to be more efficient and sleeping only little in order to work even more.
Having nothing to do, virtually nothing - no exams, no homework or no reports to write was something I had not experienced in so long - and at first I didn't like it at all. For the first time in such a long period, I was confronted with a thing I forgot it even existed - boredom.

So I began wasting time.
and maaaan how it feels good to just spend time on things like watching all episodes of Gossip Girl, Heroes and How I Met Your Mother. How it just feels good to start the day at 12 p.m. and to do only sports afterwards. How it just feels great to lie in the sun for the whole afternoon being lazy and listening to music (and get a tan!!!!yeah:) ). How it just feels good to just sleep out of boredom - how it feels amazing to just relax and chill.
It took me a while to adjust to this new way of life, but I really start to like it a lot ( I hope I can change this laziness when I get back to Munich ;) ). It is the deserved long holiday I needed so badly after having worked non-stop the past time. It definately charged up my batteries and I feel so energetic and vital now that I could jump around like a little kid. (It also helped a lot to sleep 11 hours every day....;) )

I am very happy.

I am happy spending time with all the wonderful people here on campus. I got to know and love them. At first I thought I could not relate to them and they were boring. But I came to the realization, that each and every person on this campus is very very interesting (thanks to the hard application process to get into HEC!) and has his or her unique story of life to tell.
I met people who were very diverse and smart, who could impress me and with whom I could relate to. For example I met people, who could speak 7 languages fluently, people who spoke Chinese nearly perfectly (thats very hard for foreigners!), people who studied at Stanford and Harvard, people who are studying at HEC and other Grandes écoles at the same time, people who mastered in various sports, in various instruments and people thinking about deep stuff and the world and had the same views about things like me. How enriching it was spending time with them.

I love Paris.
The city is so marvellous and superb. I love every aspect of this city and I'm in love with its people and its language. It is a dream to come back and work here for a period of time.

So as a conclusion I can say that these 4 months were probably one of the best experiences I had in my life. It gave me back my energy and motivation. It showed me once again how many different and interesting people there are in this world.
I had a really wonderful time here.


I have a bit more than a week left.
I enjoy every moment that I have left, living only in the present, forgetting about the past or the future.

Only in the present you can feel entirely fulfilled and happy.



Some last impressions:

Christine in love!

I am so sad that everything is going to end so very soon and that everyone's leaving.
I had a fabulous time here in Paris and also on campus (i can't believe that i'm actually saying it but i guess i will miss JJ a lot!)

So my last few days I spent in Paris, discovering it by bike which gave me a bigger freedom to go wherever I wanted. I also went shopping at Louis Vuitton as you can see ;) of course i bought the whole store!




The weather was fabulous the past few days so picknicking in front of the Eiffel Tower was definately mandatory.
At night we would go clubbing at the Champs Elysées or play Laser Quest. Oh my gosh I haven't played Laser Quest in years and it was so much fun. I felt like a 10 year-old little boy :)




Paris was definately one of my best experiences in life. I'm in love with this city and I hope I will have the opportunity to come back and live here for a while in the future

xxx x-tina ;)

p.s. bilder copyright j.r.

WE ARE FROM JJ!

I'm having a blast time in Paris. Sadly we're leaving soon, maybe traveling a bit together?

These days were pretty sunny and we played a lot of tennis. Gosh i got really obsessed with it, its so much fun plus you get tanned, hahaha what a good combination, huh? :)

Sisi had a Black and White Party on Thursday, very cool party thanks for hosting girl!
(yea not exactly everyone came in black and white)



and i also had a great time in Paris today, we went to the Bastille area and walked around a bit:




italien mafia meets germasian...

and here is something very nice (thx sisi):

Spring Time in Paris

Photo documentation of my trip through Paris today


The roof of the Grand Palais

Les Champs Elysées

LV

L'Avenue Kleber


Le musée de la cité

la Tour d'Eiffel

La Seine

habt ihr das grüne Haus auch schon mal bei Galileo oder so gesehen?


Le musée d'art moderne

La Seine

Le dome des Invalides

Mein Tag beginnt nicht vor 12...

I guess it's time for a new entry... :)

We had an awesome week. It was campaign week, and three student parties tried to win over everybodies heart to vote for them. They raced against each other for the new "BDE" (Bureau des Élèves) which is the student council on campus (they're main job is to organize the Party of the Week - so u guys see, it's actually not a "serious" race...)

Anyways... we had a lot of fun at the 3 soirées, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday during campaign week (gosh so much partying already at the beginning of a week.. wow.) and during the day there were lots of free food, a lot of wii gaming and lots of drinks in the school building. It kinda felt like "Mottowoche" in Germany, (the student group would even disturb class to present their campaign dance!)
and during the nights besides all the partying, we had the "hotline" to order stuff for free... from pizza, crêpes, sushi (we've never seen that one!), croquet monsieur, chocolate over to massages, STRIPPERS, and lots of other cool stuff.

craaaazzzyyy french people. I had a good time, but after 3 days of only junk food I was really glad to have the old cantine food back! (I cant believe I would ever say tha but its true)

so the party is def. over for a bit, exams and midterms are starting eh- tomorrow....
yeah, not fun.

Christine

p.s. 'll be back in Germany by the 8th of April for GDB!

Cuisson en general!!! ALLEZ ALLEZ ALLEZ

So it's almost halftime and I cannot believe how fast time has passed...

What is my impression so far?

There are times where I am glad that I am only here for one semester.
But there are also times where I wished I would stay here for yet another semester.

Currently its the latter one. I'm having an awesome time here. I love spending time with the people here and I love going to Paris and exploring this fabulous city. Although we only live in JJ, I still like it here, I like the nature and the calmness that comes with a small town like JJ - a good place to reflect over life and do a lot of sports!

So yesterday we had the Cuisson Dinner at JJ's Pizzaria. Everyone who didn't go, YOU MISSED A LOT OF FUN...!!!

We were there with about ~100 ppl? (and if it wasn't as many ppl, it def. felt like that in the small restaurant).

So what is a "Cuisson Dinner"?
Basically it's all about drinking wine (as always...). Every single time someone would start the "Cuisson" Song which goes like this: "Cuisson en Allemands, Cuisson en Allemands, cuisson cuisson cuisson en Allemands, allez allez allez!" ( yea I know, not the deepest lyrics you guys have probably ever heard, but while being drunk, deep heavy lyrics would not work that well - especially in French ;) )

Anyways so the translation would be something like: "Go drink Germans, go drink Germans, come on come on"
Every German person in the room had to drink after singing the song and of course the word "Germans" in the Cuisson song is substitutable with every other word, (Internationals, Asians, Americans, Canadiens, Chinese ppl, ppl's names etc)
...And so you guys can probably imagine that sometimes it can be a very big disadvantage if you are very diverse and fall into most of the groups they were singing about... *sigh*

Eating Pizza, drinking wine and singing the "Cuisson" song, everyone was pretty drunk and happy after about 5 minutes! ;)

But the party wasn't over, after the Cuisson we went to the POW (Party of the Week) and had a brilliant time. The motto was "Explorateur, Tomb Raider" and so I dressed up as Lara Croft ;) and got into the Party for a reduced price of 3 euros :p

my first conclusion for the first 5 weeks is:
awesome traditions they have at HEC, great education (ha!), very nice people, i hope it stays that way...!

我想我爸爸.... :/

nothing much happened really in JJ...bad weather and everyone's getting sick around here.

I'm in a bad mood so here's something nice to look at:

(zu viel) Sport ist Mord...

dang my bones and muscles hurt... and yet I played tennis today... I hope everything is gonna be better tomorrow, cos Sisi and I wanted to go for a run in the gardens of the Chateau of Versailles! yeah...

anyways ppl where asking for a photo of my "brown" hair... here we go (and they only look that brownish in the light and that is totally fine with me. :) )

*bises*

und da waren die haare plötzlich (dunkel) braun...

yeaaa :) i dyed my hair this afternoon and now it shines very brown-ish, it looks good, and i also got a tan just by sitting on my balcony and studying GDB (*würg*) (and by running and playing soccer of course :)) So now people would probably consider me as from Malaysia or Singapore... -yeah..

WELL, it's said, that French people do like to do demonstrations or "manifestations" in French. I have the impression that they do it, not to really reach a goal but rather to -you know- get together, maybe talk about the newest gossip in their home town or they do it just out of the feeling of solidarity?
Anyways, so our wonderful cantine had a strike today... what does it mean for us? Well, we do not exactly live in the centre of Paris and neither have we any other food place in the next 1000meters, so our options for today were:

1. eat nothing (and lose weight)
2. begin an anti-protest against the strike (yea this one i totally made up...)
3. go to the Kfet "Cafeteria" of the Campus and try to get one of those very yucky Pizzas (after having waited for about an hour in line...)
4. be smart and have supplies at the appartment ( a.k.a. Chips, Chocolate, Cookies)

well i would have prefered option 1 but I did option 4 ;)

bisous

i'm only a girl...

i joined the womens soccer team... and i got hurt.... soccer is such a brutal game *waaah*

Pictures tell more than words....

Since I know that reading long blog entries can be really painful, I cut it short this time by showing some highlight pictures (I know from my own experience that laziness always wins over long blog entries ;) )

My campus is awesome, i always go there for a run... i LOVE the nature!




Some Impressions of 1. Versailles, 2. Montmartre and Paris at day time





Paris by night, 1. eating in a American diner, 2. eating Sushi, 3. at the Seine, 4. Arc du triomphe, 5. Tour Eiffel, 6. Pub Crawling






Bye guys :)



p.s. copyright of the respective owner...