Merry Christmas!!!

Hey everyone! Today is Christmas and we celebrated with my cousins here by eating a very French dinner last night, including every kind of course thinkable. Gifts from the French "Pere Noel" (Santa) were also opened :). Today we had the very Colombian tamales with my cousins for our Christmas repas. It was a nice mix of a Colombian and French Christmas. I will write more about it all later and about the trip to Cannes! Merry Christmas Everyone!

Some pictures of Paris, Alsace area and Belgium (Bruges)!

Bizarre Christmasy tree in Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Arc de Triomphe, Paris
Me at the top of the Eiffel Tower (on the freezing and windy side)
The most foggy night I have ever seen (while we were "In Bruges")
The main market In Bruges
Eric eating a giant "french fry" while in the Fry museum In Bruges
In Bruges
Me at a very Venetian looking bridge In Bruges
Vineyard in Alsace
One of the towns we stopped in in Alsace
Alsace

Countryside of France

A few more St. Nick Pics!

St. Nick Parade Photos as Promised!

Hey Everyone!

Well Im being terrible at writing these blogs but I vow to get better! Over this past month a lot has happened. Firstly I still do not have my residency permit and I haven't even seen a glimpse of getting it anywhere in the near future! We went through the first step of the process over a month ago and were told that we would recieve the next step of what to do by the end of november, but alas nothing has come. Even when we do get the next step, we have to schedule a doctors appointment and then go through another step! Oh well, it's really interesting going through the process of a sort of immigration into another country. It is no piece of cake, but I have to stop and think that getting into the US would probably be just as hard and even harder.

On a brighter note school has been going well, it is still hard though to get through those 3 hour non stop classes. At UC it's sometomes hard to concentrate for 50 minutes! The teachers are pretty tough but I definitely feel my level of french getting higher. I can watch french tv now without getting anxious trying to understand every word. I even bought some french novels that I am going to try and read. We have winter break in two weeks and we're going down to Cannes to enjoy the sea. It wont be extremely warm but it will be a lot warmer than here, and hopefully less rainy. But we will be back in time for christmas, to spend it with my cousins. It will be my first christmas away from home, so that is kind of wierd for me, but if I look at it in a different perspective, it is my first Christmas in France! There is definitely a big christmas feel in the city here, everything is decorated and lit up. However, that was more for December 6, which is St. Nicholas day, a very big deal here in this region of France. All of last weekend there were celebrations and people came from all parts of france to see it! We went to the parade Sunday night, which was exciting and very different yet also similar to parades in the US. I'll put up some pictures of it to give everyone an idea.

I also completely forgot to mention Thanksgiving! I am one of the lucky study abroad people who got to have a family member there on Thanksgiving! My dad was doing work in Spain so he took a few days off to come visit me here in France! It was so amazing getting to see my dad after all these months and being able to show him what I have been doing and where I have been living. He came just around Thanksgiving so he spent it with us. My mom sent over a ton of food items with him so we were able to recreate a little thanksgiving for ourselves! I even made a pumpkin pie, which my family here in France were not too keen on, but we loved it! On the actual day of thanksgiving though my dad bought us dinner at a couscous restaurant! It was really good, yet the strangest thanksgiving meal I've ever had! Sadly my dad had to leave only after a few days, but it was so great to see him and spend time with him, right when I was getting a little homesick.

Now im ready for winter break and ready to see Cannes! Ill let everyone know soon how things are going and also I'll upload those St. Nick parade photos!

à bientôt!

Nancy, Europe and school for the past month!

Hello everyone! I am so sorry that I have not written in so long but I hope to fix that by writing everyday for the next few days about all the different things that have been happening. The last time I wrote I was going to Venice and then on to Nice. To sum those trips up they were amazing! Venice was like no other city I have ever seen, canals and gondolas streaming by and the best ice cream ever invented. Nice was also wonderful, considering we were right next to the Mediterranean Sea :). However vacation had to end at some point and we headed back to Nancy to start school.

School started as a series of placement exams to test which level we were all in. I immediately started to freak out when I heard almost perfect French being spoken by some of the students and I thought I would be placed in a beginners class. The next two days were filled with orientation and paying for our school fees. They also gave us the impression that we would start the process and fill out the paperwork to receive our student card and health insurance, but we were in for a lesson on how the French bureaucratic system worked. In the end we were left in limbo for about a week and a half after classes started (them always promising to do the student card the next day), then finally having us fill out the paperwork. Some advise to new coming study abroad students is to make sure that you triple check to make sure you have ALL the documents needed to get any sort of necessary document in a foreign country. I would also contact the people in charge to make sure you have all the documents. After we filled out all the many forms and paid our money all of our documents needed to go through our school and then were sent to another main office to verify everything and then were finally approved! After 3 weeks Eric and I finally got our student cards. However for health insurance we needed to go to the main office of the insurance company to get that straightened out, which is a whole other story! All this was a lesson to Eric and me on how other countries operate and shift power around. I will save the fun adventure of trying to get our residency permit for my next blog because that is still an ongoing process.

The start of classes was a bit of a shock to me and Eric because we were so used to moving around Europe and visiting different places on our own schedule. School definitely brought us back to reality. Eric and I ended up both being placed in level 4 of our system at CAFOL which is a French learning program for foreign students. Level 4 is the highest level and is a great but extremely challenging level to be in. In my opinion most people in the class speak French a lot better than me and most have also been in France for quite a bit more time than me. However, I think it is a positive challenge because I am tested everyday on my French and I am in a continuous quest to learn the most French I can learn while on this study abroad experience. The teachers in all my classes are very nice and good at teaching French to a group of people from all corners of the world. There is absolutely no English spoken in any of our classes so we have to understand all the French or else. Fortunately our teachers do not speak as fast as the people on TV and are open to answering questions. A lot of the classes are 3 hours straight which can be pretty draining, especially early in the morning. Yet, for the most part the classes are interesting so we are not sitting idle for 3 hours. One of our classes is a french culture class, so we learn about the actualities going on in France and learn the humor behind French jokes. I am sadly running out of battery power so I will have to talk more about classes in my next entry and I will also tell everyone about the "french apartment" Eric and I now live in. Oh and stay tuned to learn about our trip to Bruges and our experience at the french circus!

PS I forgot to mention that the first days of our classes were graced by a strike (greve) on the transport system. What would France be without protests!

Now For Some Paris Pics!

Evangelia in Monet's Garden :)

More London!

Included in the photos are Evangelia, Eric, Tony and Wendy

Pictures From London!

Je Suis Ici

Hey everyone! Sorry it has been so long but I didn't have internet the whole time I was in London and now I finally have it for a day! When I actually arrive in Nancy I'll be able to upload all my pictures and write blogs more regularly!

Well England was amazing if I can sum it up in one word. It was kind of cold and rainy when Eric and I got there (and for pretty much the whole time we were there) but that only added to the charm of England (most of the time). The first day we arrived we were so exhausted from our trip that when we got to Tony and Wendy's ( our extremely kind hosts) we konked out for a few hours. After that we were ready to do some exploring. We went with Lincoln and Misty ( the dogs) to a cozy little town near where we were staying (Ruislip) to do some walking. Then we decided to eat dinner and what else an English pub! The next day we explored London with Tony and Wendy; walking through Hyde Park, gawking at Buckingham Palace, trying to sneak a peak at number 10 downing street, walking beside Parliament, and strolling by the Thames, you know just normal things done in a days work :). Oh and of course going to Convent Garden and watching a mini orchestra play for a few pounds. The next day we decided to go to the London Eye and see all of the city. It went up unbelievably high showing us London from a completely different perspective. We then went to what I was dying to see and others ,ay ask why, the Underground War Rooms of Churchill. It was so interesting and inspiring to see all the places where Churchill ran and decided the fate of things in WWII ( thats the history loving person inside of me).

The rest of England trip consisted of us feeding swarms of pigeons, visiting my cousin who lives in London and eating some amazing Indian food, going to the gardens and grounds/palace of where the infamous Henry the 8th lived and married wives, drinking tea with the queen at Westminster Palace (maybe it was just seeing the palace from the outside), and visiting the famous Eton school for the extremely wealthy and one day prime minister boys of England.
Tony and Wendy also took us to a quaint little village where we saw black swans swim through the little river in the town. We also went to the top of a hill where the wind almost blew us down and looked out across the country to see Wales in the distance.

Now for the interesting part, we were supposed to go to Paris on the Eurostar, but the day before we left the chunnel caught fire and haulted all travel. The nice part was that we got to spend another day with Tony and Wendy, but the part that was hard was that we had to figure out a different way to get to Paris. Tony and Wendy ended up graciously giving us a ride to Dover where we booked a ferry to Calais. From Calais we were going to take a train to Lille and then a train from Lille to Paris. However because of the fire everyone had the same idea as us and the ferry was overbooked. So we ended up leaving 2 1/2 hours late and then just missing our train to Lille. When we left on the next train we were sure we were going to miss our last train to paris, however we when we arrived in Lille we ran to the other train station that our train was leaving from and literaly just made it. We got on and the train left a second later. Keep in mind we were doing all this while carrying our luggage for 6 months!

Well I will have to tell you our Paris adventures later because I have to get ready to leave for Venice now! Pictures are on there way, don't worry I took a ton!

Salut!

T Minus 60 Seconds!!

So I am officially freaking out! I leave in less than 24 hours and I still have to pack all my clothes! I have all the clothes I want but i have to narrow it down, which is extremely hard. Time felt like it just completely flew by and what was a month until leaving is now only a few hours!!! Packing for winter when its 90 degrees is a whole lot harder than it may seem. But I have to keep telling myself that I'm not going to the middle of nowhere and they do have stores in France, so if I forget something I wont be left stranded.

I'm getting so nervous, but I know that this is going to be an amazing experience. I can't imagine being away for 6 months in a completely different country but I'm pretty sure that I will never regret going. Everything will be new and very European, which will be a nice change from the the America that I have been in my entire life. That reminds me I applied to get an absentee ballot sent to me in France, because there's no way I'm not voting in this election!! For those of you who aren't registered, go out there and do it!! No matter what your affiliation get your voice and vote out there! I'm going to be sporting my Obama shirt in Europe :).

Well the next time I put a post up I will be in Europe, which is still pretty hard to believe. I'll start posting all my adventures and stories and don't worry I bought a memory card for my camera with like a thousand pictures I can take so I will be posting them up as they come. Ok well everyone wish me luck!!!

Au revoir pour maintainent!!

Evangelia

VISA!!!

Ok so I realize that my last entry was almost a month ago! Sorry things have just been crazy, I mean trying to move to another country for 6 months is a lot harder than it may seem! Plus I had my birthday so that took up some time :). Well good news... all my Campus France stuff went through and ... I got my visa!!!

That was the most tiring day ever. We got up at around 6:30 am and left the house at around 7:30 for our day trip to Chicago. My dad was kind enough to drive me and Eric up and back all in one day! The drive to Chicago wasn't too bad, except for some very ominous clouds. Our trusty GPS (named Bouboulina by my dad) helped us out through some tough times. When we finally got to Chicago we were so excited and also like 3 1/2 hours early ! We scoped out the building where the French Consulate was and then decided to explore Chicago a bit. Well I don't know if you know Chicago parking but it was only the small sum of about 26 DOLLARS to park for like 2 hours!!! So we drove around for 2 hours trying to find something cheaper and then finally realized we had to give up and give in to the exorbitant prices. We ate a relatively quick lunch surrounded by pigeons and then made our way to the consulate.

It turned out to be a lot different than I had expected. The room we went in was pretty small and it looked like it was decorated in 1966 and then never touched again. I got there like 20 minutes early but I could have gotten there 20 minutes late because I wasn't called until 20 minutes after my appointment. I thought that they would take us into a little room and then interrogate us, but instead we just went up to this little window as if we were at a bank and did everything through a plate glass. At first it was just me, Eric and another young girl but the room started to fill up. The consulate woman took all my information, I was so nervous I would forget something that I took like a million extra documents. She then kept my passport and told me to come back at 4:00. So I sat there and waited for Eric to be called and as we did we started talking to the other people there and everyone started to get so enthused about where and when they were going to France. It felt like we were all in the same boat and it gave me and I'm sure everybody else a nice feeling, to know that we are not alone!

Well Eric finally was called and then he had to wait as well. I started to realize that they had told everyone to come back at 4 for their visas so the room started to swell! It turned out that there was even someone there from Nancy! He said it was the best town to study abroad (I'm sure he was only a little biased :)). Finally my named was called and they handed me my visa!! I felt so good and so accomplished, like it was my diploma or something, even though it was just a little piece of paper in my passport. I couldn't stop looking at it! Even though it is only valid until November because when I arrive in Nancy I have to go get my residency permit which will allow me to be there for the full 6 months. But it's still a big deal!

As soon as we got the visas we loaded up in the car and headed back home. The ride home felt soo long and I thought I never would be able to just fall asleep in my bed, but we finally made it home and collapsed! I was so tired but also so happy and content that my trip for the visa was a success. I know I still have many other things to get ready before I leave in less than a month but getting my visa felt great! Ill write again soon to keep everyone up to date on my pre France adventures!

PS. The picture at the top is one I took in Strasbourg the last time I was there. I hope I can go again this year it was so beautiful!

Bought Tickets!!!

So I am finally getting closer to having things ready! Everyone out there who is or will be studying abroad one day, don't get discouraged by all the hoops you have to go through before you can actually leave to study abroad. It seems like it's just one thing after another, but when its all done you have this amazing accomplished feeling.

I semi finished my campus France debacle and I finally turned in my grant application, so things are looking pretty good. Over the weekend we (Eric and I) bought the tickets for our trip to Venice in September! It sounds like we're millionaires jet setting across the world, but really our money is very limited. So we are staying with people that we know in all the cities we're going to except for Nice. We also bought our airline tickets on ryanair for only about $40! Anyone studying abroad in Europe in the future, look at ryanair or myair because they have amazing deals if you want to explore different countries. Also getting a rail pass might also be useful if you want to go to a lot of countries.

Well now I just have to make an appointment with the French Consulate to get my visa. I can't wait until the moment they hand me my visa, it will be like the gates of Europe Heaven are opening to me! Ok well I'll update on any new events as soon as they come my way!

Here's a picture (a pretty good one if I do so say myself) I took of the Eiffel Tower, the last and first time I was in France two years ago.

A little less than two months to go!

OK so I am officially going crazy! I have less than two months before I leave and I still have everything left to do! I still have to get my visa, which is proving to be 100 times harder than originally I thought, but oh well I'm trying to think of all the fun and excitement that's coming soon! For those of you who don't know, I am going to be studying in Nancy, France for six months, starting this fall and winter. My name is Evangelia and I go to the University of Cincinnati. I'm a junior and am a psych major, but in France I'm only working towards my minor which as you may have guessed is French. I am also going with my boyfriend Eric who actually already studied abroad in France when he was in high school (he's a little better at French than me, but I think I have a better accent :) ). Anyway we are both so excited, and we decided to do a little bit of travelling before we start classes, so we're off to explore Europe in September! Fortunately we have places to stay in most of the cities we're visiting, because we wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise, the euro is skyrocketing farther and farther above the dollar! Oh well even if we're poor it will be an adventure!

I have no idea how I am going to pack for six months, especially since most of those months will be as cold as Siberia! I think I am going to send a box of my things ahead to my cousins who live in France, so I won't be lugging around things like my winter coat. I probably won't even start packing until a few weeks before I leave! But I'm going to try to be good and start putting aside my designated France clothes. I went to Pittsburgh last week and my mom bought me a few outfits for France, I mean I don't want to completely stick out as an American :) . I'm so excited, but also a little bit nervous. Will I fit in at the University? What if I get completely stuck and only remember how to say something in Spanish! Will I have enough money for everything? I guess there's no way to know until I'm actually there. Ok well I'll be back to fill everyone in on my next installment!!