How to Drain the Swamp, According to Donald Trump


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SPRING BREAK 2015 - Tours, France

Reading, Watching, Listening:
Has American Business Lost Its Mojo? - New York Times

 A new exodus? The reality of being Jewish in Europe today - The Guardian

 In strangely reshaped 2nd Ward, east meets west - Chicago SunTimes

 Move Over - Janis Joplin

 Come As You Are - Nirvana

 #88 - Lo-Fang

 I Love You Madly - Irene Diaz

Chateau d'Amboise
Written on Wednesday April 15th:On Monday in one class I spent 30 minutes presenting on the idea of reconciling Western and African cultures in the context of 20th century French colonialism. Yesterday in another class I visited the "Chocolate Museum" of Paris. There is a lot of inconsistency in the difficulty of my classes here.

Today I'm leaving for spring break. I'm more or less travelling by myself for 18 days - except in Madrid where I'll be staying with a friend and Granada, where I have several friends. My trip is going to take me into the south of France and eventually into Spain. Should be fantastic. In 48 hours I'll be in the French city of Tours, a medieval town in the famous Loire Valley.

Written on Friday April 17th:
It's Friday night, the last night of my time in Tours. With its ups and downs, I have successfully completed my first solo travel trip. It is incredibly weird to travel by yourself. Especially if you're not staying in a hostel, but an Airbnb like I was. For starters, today I did not have a single conversation out loud in English. I think this was the first time that such a thing has happened since I arrived in France. The second thing is that what you do, what you see, and how you travel in general are completely up to you. I woke up pretty late Thursday and today because frankly there was no reason not to. So in that sense, you don't have to conform to anyone else's schedules.

The downside of making your own schedule is the lack of motivation that can occur when travelling. If I'm feeling "out of it",  there are no parents or travel buddies to motivate me to get off my ass. The city of Tours was a nice place to practice my solo travel skills. I've learned that, while I don't need to make a specific schedule of what I want to do each day, it helps to have some sites in mind that I want to visit - and ways to find them. Otherwise the mornings drag on and motivation becomes scarce.

Tours itself is an awesome place. It's located a little over an hour southwest of Paris, in the Loire Valley region of France. There are tons of castles here. I'm pretty done for the day today and I don't really plan on adding pictures to this blog. But they're all on my Facebook page and I can post a couple on this post later in the week. On Wednesday I got into the city in the early evening, so I basically walked around for a while and grabbed some dinner.

My Airbnb host, Loris, is a super chill guy who does marketing for a French basketball team. His apartment is about two blocks from the Cathedral of Tours, which is an important site in the city.

Thursday I woke up quite late. Once I had moved my ass out of bed, I sauntered over to the Tourism Office and bought myself a tour of the Amboise, Clos de Luce, and Chenonceau castles, as well as a short wine tasting. Amboise was, for a time, the castle of the French King Francois I. It was my first French castle that I've seen, and it was awesome. After Amboise we drove just two minutes away to Clos de Luce, which is where Leonardo da Vinci lived in the last three years of his life. It was small, but it featured a lot of Leonardo's invention ideas made into full-scale models. So that was sweet.

The last castle, Chenonceau, was awesome. It is a real, full-sized castle with a huge garden and forest area. Chenonceau was actually built on a river, so when you're in the castle you can look out onto the river. After Chenonceau we checked out a wine cavern, where they make sparkling wine which is similar but not at all identical to Champagne. Every day for like months they have to turn each bottle a quarter turn so that the sediments inside of it collect and can be extracted later.

Friday, today, I didn't do a ton. It was raining a lot and quite overcast out. I did do two things which are big in Tours. The first was visiting the Musee des Beaux-Arts, an art museum right by the Tours Cathedral. The second was visiting the Castle of Torus. You can't climb that castle but they had a dope photography exposition that I spent some time checking out. It was of everyday life in oppressive regimes during World War II.

Now I'm chilling on the coach around 10pm at the Airbnb with my host and a couple of his buddies. We're watching Greece beat up Barcelona at basketball. I leave around 8:30am for Bordeaux tomorrow, where I'll hopefully get to check out some good wines. Should be fun! More updates to follow.

March 19 - March 29: La Vie Boheme

This is a 4-part summary of the past two or so weeks of my time abroad. Enjoy!

 Ruminations:

I'm looking forward to this question when I come home from study abroad: "How was it?". You try to sum up one week of your life, let alone four months.

 [From March]: I was sitting on a bench at the Bois de Boulogne when three dogs walked by me with their owner trailing behind. There were some ducks on the edge of the land, near the water. One of the dogs lunged at the ducks, who jumped away in fear - straight into the water. The owner looks at me and says “Ils ne sortent jamais” (they don't ever get out) and laughs.

 We actually have a surprising amount of homework here. It's like a normal semester in Champaign, except all of the classes are in French. The difficulty of our classes ranges wildly. In my Tourism and Gastronomy class, I have almost literally no homework each week. In my African Literature class, I have a 3-4 page paper, a group presentation, and a 1-page summary all due in French in the next two weeks. It's unfortunate, because all of the work prevents us from fully profiting from being in the beautiful city of Paris. But we've been kind of alternating between working incredibly hard and throwing caution to the wind - saying screw it, we're going to explore if we want to. C'est la vie.


 Part 1: Weekend in Rennes

 Thursday March 19th
I left Paris with five other friends from my program to visit the city of Rennes, located in the French region called "Bretagne" (Brittany in English).


I took an early afternoon train into Rennes along with John and Sarah, while the other three people arrived late Thursday night. The three of us spent Thursday afternoon drinking a beer and trying some sausage on Rue de la Soif, the "Street of Thirst". The Bretagne region is well-known for ciders and galettes, which are essentially savory dinner crepes stuffed with anything from a fried egg to ham to tomatoes to smoked salmon. After buying some great hamburgers from a knock-off American burger joint, we went back out to Rue de la Soif for a couple hours, drinking and waiting for our three other friends to arrive in Rennes. And so they did. And we of course went right back out to the bars!

Our beautiful Guinness baby

Friday March 20th
Rennes itself is an interesting city, but part of what makes it a great location for the weekend is that it is an hour away from two beautiful locations - the town of Saint-Malo and the former monastery/village Mont Saint Michel. On Friday we spent the day in Saint-Malo, which definitely has some history in which pirates were heavily involved. That's about all I can tell you. There are large stone walls that encircle the town. We actually were able to walk across the entire length of the town's ramparts as we alternated between slaying enemy pirates and complaining about how we were freezing our asses off.
"Privateers"
We picked this particular weekend to visit Rennes when we were talking about travel in mid-February. It was a completely random choice of weekend. Turns out it was actually one of the most intense tides in the century on the west coast of France. Bear in mind that I knew literally none of this. So we're walking on the ramparts, admiring the beach and trying to stay warm, when two reporters from Reuters come up to me and ask me in English if I would mind being interviewed. I blindly accepted like an idiot, before I realized what they wanted to ask me. The reporter asked me a couple questions about myself and what I was doing in Rennes, to which I answered, "I'm just here for the weekend with some friends from Paris to explore and visit some interesting sites". To which she responded, "In terms of the tides, what are you looking forward to seeing?" There's a video that exists somewhere that I'll have to find, but basically I looked at her and said, "I actually had no idea that there was a big tide event here this weekend, but I'm looking forward to seeing whatever it is!"


That night we made a delicious dinner that took a stupendous effort and amount of time. We then stayed in our Airbnb for the rest of the night and played a drinking game that involved singing and annoyed absolutely nobody.

Saturday March 21st
We woke up early again on Saturday and took a bus to an ancient monastery, prison, fortress, town, and now tourist interaction. Mont Saint Michel was built around the 8th or 9th century. There is a single long bridge that snakes from the land to the monastery, which is out on the water. When the high tide sweeps, the bridge is impassible and the monastery becomes an island. That seems to be the French thought that it would be the perfect place to fend off those pesky English during the Hundred Years' War. And later in history, it was also the perfect place to keep political prisoners.

We descended off the bus and walked the 30-minute walk along the bridge to the monastery. On the way, we met up with a charming student from Scotland named Emma, who was studying in France for the semester. Emma ended up hanging out with us for the most of the day as we explored (and ate) at Mont Saint Michel.


Emma on my right

The monastery is open to the public for the large part, and we spent a couple hours walking around it and exploring. It was our third castle/fortress experience in two weeks and we were loving it. There was a lot of sword-fighting, a lot of cool panoramic pictures from the top of towers, and a lot of wind. The monastery itself was relatively uncrowded, but the streets of the town were packed with tourists in town for the tide. 



We had to catch a bus back to Rennes at 6pm, so we missed the tide sweeping onto the bridge and the surrounding area - turning the Mont into an island. However we were able to see the area at peak low tide around 2pm, which was quite jarring. People could walk out incredibly far on the mud and "beach" while the tide waters were receding.

Part 2: The Week

 Not too much to say here, it was a pretty busy week in terms of homework. I checked out a cool Parisian covered street/shop area called Passage Joffroy on Tuesday. It's quaint and the site of many many Instagram pictures. The area is located on the border of the 9th and 18th arrondissements, in the Montmartre area. While there I stumbled upon a New York-style pizza joint and a kosher Israeli falafel shop. All in all Tuesday was a respectable day of exploring.

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to see my friend Alana and meet her family while they were in town in Paris. I went with Alana and her family to the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris, then we met up with Jocelyn and her boyfriend Matt (also visiting Paris) for a great meal at a deli in the Marais. Her parents took us all out to Micky's Deli, and I ordered a pastrami and beef burger. Wow. It was especially refreshing to eat something so caloric after having fresh and modest Parisian portions for the past month and a half. Wednesday night we checked out a bar just a couple blocks from our school called Le Pantalon. Beer was relatively cheap, it was dive-y, and it didn't smell too good. To sum up - everything I would want in a bar.

On Thursday we had our weekly Romantisme class - this time at a historically significant church in Paris called Sainte Clotide. This is usually not worth noticing except for a quick little anecdote. We were outside the church and our teacher was lecturing about the facade and history of the neo-gothique architecture of the church. Suddenly (and this is at 10am mind you) some homeless man drinking a 40 of Guinness walks up and starts accusing our teacher of misrepresenting the history of the church and not allowing the students to talk. He's clearly drunk and rambling, and our teacher brushes him off hardcore - first telling him repeatedly that this is a private group, and then sarcastically saying in French, "Merci pour votre collaboration, Monsieur". Some of us grabbed lunch after class. A few hours later I was on a train heading towards Amsterdam.

Part 3: Amsterdam

 Thursday March 26th
I arrived in Amsterdam around 9pm at their Centraal Station. For my weekend in Amsterdam, I was meeting up with my old pal, my buddy: Sarah. The rest of the Illinois Program in Paris spent this weekend in the Loire Valley, checking out castles and generally wreaking mischief. That made it an initially difficult decision to choose between Amsterdam and the Loire. In the end though I had an excellent time in Amsterdam, which was a city unlike any other that I had previously visited. Sarah is studying in London for the semester, and she took a plane into Amsterdam. We met up at the station and headed straight to our hostel, which was one of those hostels you'd have no problem staying in OR partying in. We had a drink at a bar nearby and then more or less called it a night, the better to prepare for the next couple days.

Friday March 27th
Friday was a day of walking and exploration. Judging by my "Google Fit" app on my phone, I walked more this weekend in Amsterdam than in any other weekend on the trip so far. But before I get to that, I need to explain our housing situation from Friday to Sunday. In the days leading up to the trip, Sarah and I were having difficulties securing a place to stay Friday and Saturday nights. Hostels were either completely booked or too expensive. Airbnb's were overpriced for our needs. Couchsurfing requests were denied, probably because two people is a difficult amount to accommodate for a weekend. A couple days before we left, we were able to book a cheap Airbnb just 15-20 minutes outside of the city center by bus. The owner of the Airbnb was particularly interesting and definitely gave three unique travel stories, at minimum.

We spent the vast majority of Friday walking along the bridges, canals, and various shops of Amsterdam. Some of the more particular stores that we found included the "Condomerie", a store dedicated entirely to custom rubber ducks, a coffeeshop/bar in the theme of "The Doors", and numerous sex shops.



By the evening/night we were totally knocked out. I was thinking of going out after a nap at the Airbnb, but as soon as I laid down I knew that I was going nowhere. Fair enough. So we went to sleep at 11pm-ish.

At midnight I hear a pounding on the bedroom door - it's our Airbnb host. I open the door dazed and sleepy, in my gym shorts and dress shirt that I passed out in. She starts immediately talking about how another person was supposed to stay in her apartment through Airbnb that evening. But, he hasn't arrived yet. He just contacted her and explained that he was running late, that he took the bus, and that he doesn't know how to find the apartment from the bus stop. It is worth noting that our host did not speak English particularly well, nor did the man who was supposed to stay in the Airbnb. He was a college student in the east of France, in Strasbourg.

Anyway, our host was in my debt as she put it, so she repaid me in the best, most equivalent way possible. She made coffee for me and Sarah.

Satuday March 28th
The primary goal of our Saturday was to see the Anne Frank House and the museum that accompanies it. In order to have that opportunity, we woke up bright and early and made it to the line outside the Anne Frank House at around 8:30am. According to the workers at the museum and some nice Californians that we met in the line, the wait to enter can go up to three hours.

We were inside the House just over an hour after arriving. I'd been there before when I was 9 years old, but I barely remembered anything from that trip - except the bookcase door that led to the Secret Annexe. The House was made into a museum by Otto Frank, Anne's father. He was the sole survivor out of the eight people hiding in the house. The visit was striking, particularly the idea that the Amsterdam I was walking in had been occupied by the Nazis within my grandparent's lifetime.

After leaving the museum we went to a delicious brunch. I had Dutch pancakes. Mmmm. We spent some time walking. After we reached the "Amsterdam" sign, I was able to connect with my friend Garrett, also visiting Amsterdam. Garrett was with his roommates from Prague, and we all joined forces to hit up the Heineken factory and tour. The tour was awesome. The history itself was not particularly interesting, but we received several free beers and were able to take some cool pictures and hang out in an interesting location. There was also a demo on how to correctly drink a Heineken to receive all its flavors. In the words of the employee, "Sorry ladies - but drink like a man".

We spent the rest of the day doing more wandering and grabbing a nice Italian dinner (in the Netherlands yeah shut up). At 8pm we went on a great Red Light District tour. The tour guide was an incredibly funny person who kept making sex shop and live sex show jokes. And she was actually quite knowledgeable about the history of the Red Light District and Amsterdam in general. It is a big no-no in Amsterdam to take pictures of the women working. So I did it anyway. Just kidding.

Sunday morning we ended the trip by walking around a little more and taking a canal tour. Full disclosure - I passed out for most of the tour. 11 euros wasted. Nap well spent. I loved Amsterdam - it was a unique city both in terms of its openness towards sex/drugs, and its physical layout. Sunday afternoon I took a train back to the City of Love, Paris itself.

 Part 4: The Futureeee

 It's Tuesday night as I finish writing this. My grandma is coming into the city very early tomorrow morning, and I'll be picking her up. My family is following her later in the week, when we'll celebrate the Jewish holiday Passover together. Should be a fun and fatiguing weekend! Updates to follow. Thanks for taking the time to read this, I know it was a long one.

PS: Add me on Skype to talk sometime! noah.feingold
Whatsapp and Viber: Noah Feingold
Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter for updates: noahfinny


La Culture:
King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar

 Your Fine Petting Duck - Devendra Benhart

 The Feast and the Famine - Foo Fighters

 Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who talks to Netanyahu ‘a lot,’ says his country is in danger of collapse - NY Times

 Carbon Capture - The New Yorker

 It's Easier to Win a World Series Than to Get Social Security Disability - FOX Atlanta

 Richard Simmons on Capitol Hill - Youtube
Inspiring video about the importance of physical education for children.

 Episode 142: Fake Sex (w/Ben Schwartz!) - If I Were You Show

Weekend with the Gang

Why is it that writing a 3-5 sentence response to a question in my French History class is an arduous process, but churning out hundreds of words for a blog post is as easy as having a connection to the Internet? Probably several reasons. I'm procrastinating my homework tonight, Tuesday, so that I can recap some of the shenanigans from this weekend. Hope you like it!

My good buddies, my pals, mes amis Catherine, Joey, and Alec were in Paris from Thursday to Sunday this weekend. While most of my group went to Dublin to celebrate Unofficial, we hung out in the City of Lights to celebrate Unofficiel (French version). I've mentioned it before, but it's incredibly difficult leaving behind all of your family and friends and your general social life for a completely new situation. I'm very fortunate to have such an amazing group of students from Illinois with me here in Paris - this experience would be a bit more gloomy without them. That being said, it is incredibly refreshing to see and hang out with old friends. The same thing happened when I saw my friends Jordyn and Lauren in the past few weeks.

So C, J, and A arrived Thursday afternoon. I met them at their hostel in Montmartre, in the north part of Paris. Montmartre is home to the Sacre Coeur church, the last gigantic church built in Paris in the 1800's. In my opinion, the view from the Sacre Coeur is the best view of Paris. Even better than the Eiffel Tower, because from the Sacre Coeur you can actually SEE the Eiffel Tower. The same thing could be said for the Arc de Triomphe.


We ended up grabbing some dinner later that night at an excellent crepe restaurant in the Marais, called Breizh (Br-eye-shh) Cafe. They make the kind of crepes that have meat, cheese, eggs, and veggies in them. So frickin' good. Especially with the cider and cheese samples that came with.

My smoked salmon, creme fraiche, chives, and lemon crepe.

After dinner we walked back towards the Notre-Dame area and checked out a jazz club that I've been to a few times called "Caveau de la Huchette". It's a swing type place. It took a while but finally some couples went out onto the dance floor and danced. Gotta love it.

Friday was a jam-packed day. Catherine Alec and Joey hit up the Louvre museum a bit early in the morning, and I caught up with them after noon outside the pyramid of the Louvre. The Arc de Triomphe is about an hour's walk away from the Louvre. It is possible to walk straight towards the Arc from the Louvre, without turning once. You walk through the Tuilleries Garden and enter onto Champs-Elysees, the beautiful wide boulevard of lore. We gradually made our way to the Arc de Triomphe, stopping of course for some pictures and delicious macarons, courtesy of Ladurée.

Delicious. Anyway, we did more touristy things that day, including buying some delicious falafel in the Jewish Quarter. The night was the highlight of our Friday though. On Friday night we explored some bars by the Bastille area, in the east of Paris. There's a really fun street called "Rue de Lappe" which is a bit touristy but definitely more affordable and full of students. We grabbed a pint in honor of Unofficial St. Patrick's day, we grabbed a late-night crepe at a stand, and then we went out towards the bars.



On Saturday morning my buddies took the train to Versailles to explore the palace and enormous gardens. We ended up meeting in the afternoon to walk around the Montparnasse and St. Germain des Pres neighborhoods. I don't have a video readily available, but we spontaneously stumbled upon a street band playing their original music. I'll try to post it when I upload it from my phone. The band played on the street corner as dozens of people stood around and tapped their feet. There were a bunch of children dancing around right in front of the musicians. Adorable. That night we met up with Sarah and her friend Mackenzie, who were in Paris for a couple days. We all went to the Eiffel Tower for the sparkly lights show that happens there most nights. After that, we made our way to a bar called "Le Bar Dix" (Bar Ten) - a sangria bar! The sangria was cheap and extra-fruity. It was a cool end to a jam-packed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I met up with Catherine, Joey, and Alec for a short while on Sunday for a shady brunch in a student cafeteria near Notre Dame. Then it was goodbye's - hopefully not for too long!

I started this post on Tuesday and just finished it today, Saturday night. Here's some more stuff that I've been up to since then.

Saisha and I decided to check out "L'Institut du Monde Arabe" (Institute of the Arab World) on Thursday after our last class. The place is, for the most part, a museum for the history of the Arab World. It was fascinating. They had a rooftop tea lounge with a beautiful view of the city.


The front of the building

Old Torah covering from an Arab country

Blurry pic from the top of L'Institut du Monde Arabe


Got drinks with Saisha at the top
That's all I want to say for now. Stay tuned for the next couple weeks' posts - I'm travelling to Rennes and hopefully Amsterdam!

-Noah

Eternal - Faun Fables

 On My Way Home - Gregory Porter
I found this song by Shazam'ing the music my cab driver was playing on the way home this weekend at like 3 in the morning.

 The Holocaust Survivor Band - Tablet Mag

 President Obama Selma Speech 2015 on 50th 'Bloody Sunday' at Edmond Pettus Bridge, Alabama - Youtube

 Cuba now has free, public Wi-Fi - Business Insider

Weekend in Normandy: A Review

Ruminations:

 The hardest part of studying abroad has been not seeing your usual group of people every day, not communicating with them as much - being out of the loop. The best part has been creating a new loop.

The late night study culture that we have in the United States does not exist in Paris. Parisians don't stay at libraries or coffee shops past 10pm doing homework. If they're out that late, they're at a show, eating dinner, or drinking. Work that late at night is reserved for the house, or maybe your university's specific library. It is a weird transition from routinely staying up until 1 or 2am at Grainger Library. Or from being at Illini Hillel from 3pm-10pm on several weekdays.

Today is Wednesday, March 4th. This past Friday, the 27th of February, 12 of the 15 total students on our Paris group traveled to Normandy for the weekend. Specifically, we stayed in a large house in a city called Caen. I can't accurately type out how to pronounce Caen, but suffice to say its a "Kuh" sound followed by a nasal sound.

So we arrived in Caen and took a couple buses to find the house. We spent some time looking for our street, Roy Joyeuse (Happy Street). After a couple blocks of walking, we finally found the house. So us 12 American students, with our bulging backpacks, walked up to a quaint house in the Norman city of Caen and knocked on the door. Except...it was the wrong house. Turns out we were NOT actually on Roy Joyeuse, we were one street away. Luckily, nobody was home to receive the 12-uninvited Yankees. But there was a cat, so there's that.

Here I am knocking on the door of the wrong house in Caen

Okay, so the weekend itself. Our goals were as follows:
1. See the D-Day beaches
2. Cook delicious (and hopefully cheap) meals for ourselves
3. Walk around the city of Caen for a while
4. Drink a lot
5. See the famous tapestry in the nearby city of Bayeux <---more of a personal goal

I'm proud to say that we successfully accomplished the first 4 goals. After a brief confusion on Friday, we managed to successfully find the real house and our host for the weekend, Claude. Claude was dope. No other way to say it. He was incredibly accommodating and even allowed us to rent out the basement, which usually isn't available. Here's a little anecdote about Claude: On Friday night we were partying when we smelled smoke and heard noises in the basement. Obviously those are two bad signs in any situation. So we cautiously went downstairs to investigate. The cause of the sound and smell? Claude chilling in his own basement, smoking cigarettes. What. A. Bro.

One of the important things about traveling with a group above the size of like, 5 people, is the necessity to split into groups during activities. We were 12 people, and it was inevitable that we would split off during the days. You can't have 12 people rolling up in a café. And you can't have 11 people waiting for one person just because they have to use the bathroom. So on Friday afternoon, after settling into the house, about half of us went to the Caen Memorial Museum, which is dedicated to World War II and the Holocaust. The other half, myself included, explored the city center. Caen has a huge castle, as well as several large cathedrals. There are two abbeys: L'Abbaye aux Hommes and L'Abbaye aux Dames (men's abbey and women's abbey). We spent 4 hours walking around seeing all of it. The castle was the highlight of the afternoon in Caen. There are tall "keeps" - watchtowers - that look over the city. There are castle walls that you can walk along. There is a huge courtyard area and a former drawbridge/moat. You can bet your ass we had sword fights and arrow fights.

An epic battle for the ages.

Not technically at the castle, but a little later in the day. Still epic. Still a battle.

The sun was going down on Friday and by God, we were going to find a high point from which we could view the sunset. We legged it from the castle to the Abbaye aux Hommes, above 15ish minutes away. The sun was going down in the sky and it seemed like the Abbaye was closed. Just our luck. At the last minute though, we stumbled upon........an art museum! That's right. We walked by a building and noticed two girls sitting on a roof. So John yelled up to them something like Comment est-ce que nous pouvons ascendre? - How can we get up there? They pointed to the entrance to the gallery, which evidently had stairs. So here we are, six VERY American students, walking into a gallery that frankly is seeming less and less like a museum and more and more like a place that we aren't supposed to be visiting. Anyway we find the stairs, and we make it up just in time for the sunset. All of this happens as I awkwardly try to hide the two baguettes that I had bought for dinner.

We made it.

Dinner. I think that was one of the most fun and liberating experiences of the trip. Not eating it, which certainly was great. Making it. Both Friday and Saturday, we'd finish the days activities and head to the supermarket around 7pm to buy groceries for dinner. The first night, we made vegetable stir fry with an optional chicken option. Plus pasta. And cookies. Cooking for 12 people, in a kitchen that you don't own, drinking in a glass of wine, on the weekend, is splendid. It's the perfect end to a stressful week of classes. It forces you to think on your feet. It helps you bond with your friends.

Saturday during the day we bought bread, turkey, cheese, pesto, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and two baguettes. And we made the best sandwiches any of us have had in the year 2015. Saturday night was taco bar, made by Marissa and crew. It was extra delicious.

Pas too many cooks. Shouts to Jocelyn for the pic

The sandwich of lore. Pic credit to Joc-jams.

The real reason we spent time in Normandy was because of the World War II history here. The American cemetery for fallen soldiers is in Normandy. The beaches that Allied troops landed on during the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944 are in Normandy. The American landing beaches are called Utah and Omaha Beach. And our goal was to visit them. Here's the problem - the only day that we had enough to make the trip to the beaches (about an hour from Caen) was on Saturday. We stopped by the Caen Tourist Bureau on Friday during our walks to ask about how we could visit the beaches. Their answer was basically, "You can't. Buses don't run on Saturday's." Well that sucks. So, we ended up getting taxis. They weren't prohibitively expensive and the taxi drivers took us to multiple stops along the beaches.



It's hard to describe the emotions we felt when visiting the American Cemetery, and the museum right before the Cemetery entrance. For me, it was a mix of emotions. I felt undeserving of the opportunities that I'd grown up with, and taken for granted. More than undeserving, I had a wave of responsibility crash over me. If my grandparents' generation was willing to fight, to leave their families, to stand up for very real threats to liberty, then I had an obligation to honor that. I'm quite liberal, progressive, and fairly anti-military when I can be. But I felt real pride in the role of American soldiers in World War II. There's the obvious sadness of the loss of life on both sides, and a stark reminder of the Holocaust that is ever present in World War II. The organization of the Cemetery in long, repetitive rows of crosses and Stars of David reinforced the sheer scale of the war. It was a really sobering experience for our group for the rest of the day. It was also a frisson-inducing point of pride.

We left Caen on Sunday for Paris, and now we're back in the grind on this cool Wednesday. I'm sitting in a place called "Anticafe". In most cafes, you walk in and buy coffee or food, right? In this cafe, you buy TIME. So you can buy two hours of time here. Once you do that, you have unlimited access to food, coffee, and WiFi (which here is pronounced Weefee). It's a pretty sweet deal. Tomorrow, my pals Joey, Catherine, and Alec are coming into Paris. I plan on showing them an excellent time. If they aren't doing body shots off a mime on the top of the Eiffel Tower by tomorrow night, the weekend will have been a failure.

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read my blog. I enjoy rapidly spewing my thoughts onto this forum - it helps me work through the many experiences I'm having here. Make sure to subscribe to the blog by putting your email address on the top of the page.

Bises (kisses),

Noah
La Culture:

Oh Wonder - Technicolour Beat

Stranger Things - Local Natives
In Defense of the Notoriously Arrogant French Waiter - The Wall Street Journal

 What Do You Do About Israel? - Tablet Mag
"Why American Jews should vote in the World Zionist Congress elections"
Shia LaBeouf on His Arrest - Youtube
What a man.

 Deli Man Movie Trailer - Youtube

Awkward Situation #174

Today I had an awkward and ultimately funny conversation with my host dad. In the morning I made some food, but then I had to run to school before I was able to wash the dishes from the food that I made. So I texted Boris, my host dad, like a nice exchange student should. To sum up my text, I basically told him that I didn't get a chance to do the dishes, but that I would do them as soon as I returned tonight. I also mentioned that I would be home for dinner Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Sounds good, right? Wrong. Apparently what I said to him loosely translated to the following:

I didn't have time to wash myself this morning, but I'll do it as soon as I return home. Also, I think that this afternoon, tomorrow, and Thursday I will be in the house for dinner if that works.

He responded to me, more or less, with "Can you say that in French?" Of course, at the time, I didn't understand. I had already said it in French! So I repeated myself but with different words and shorter sentences.

When I got home for dinner, he said to me in French, "Do you understand why I was confused earlier?" I said that no, to be honest, I was confused myself. He then explained what had happened. I basically told him that I didn't shower this morning, but that I will later today and that he shouldn't worry. Also, I'll be home for dinner this week.

Incredibly awkward. We laughed about it tonight at dinner though. So all is well in the cosmos.

I Wrote This In 6 Minutes and Then I Added a Few Pictures

Saturday night the group gathered together and made a delicious dinner. It was at the house of our friend's host family. Everything was put in place at the last hour before we headed to the house. Myself and a few others ran to buy chicken, pasta, garlic, etc. With the help of each other, we made Chicken Marsala with a white wine and mushroom sauce. We made pasta and sauteed veggies. We made a unique sauce from pasta sauce, heavy cream, flour, white wine, and oil. We drank a ton of wine. This was a really fun weekend. Here's a picture of some of the finished product that doesn't really do it justice.


If you're in the States, or if you've been at university for the past few weeks, you'll probably scoff at the following couple sentences. School has finally started here, and it's rough. It's quite comparable to a semester at the University of Illinois, except every single class is in French. French classes are structured a little differently than American ones. There are SIGNIFICANTLY less things to do for tangible grades. There are maybe 4 different grades that go into your final grade. However, there is a lot more reading. And it's not the bullshit general education reading that plenty of freshmen go through. Participating and understanding lectures is a major part of classes here. In that vein, you kind of have to do the readings. It's a trade-off. Less papers and no online postings, but more reading.

We've started to look at some cool weekend trips, as well as spring break trips. As of today (Sunday) we are hoping to go to Normandy this coming weekend. Planning trips with more than like 4-5 people gets very tricky, but I think we're going to pull this one together tomorrow after class. Monday is my worst day for classes - six straight hours. Then on Tuesday I have 4.5 hours. Then 3 on Wednesday, and finally  just a couple hours of museum visiting on Thursday's. If I can get through Monday, all will be well in the cosmos. Everything else is excellent here, my French is starting to sound a tiny bit better and the food is, as always, perfection. More updates to follow later in the week.

Noah


PS: Oh yeah on Thursday we went to a club. Every Thursday there is an "International Party" at this club. This week's theme was American, and they had beer pong. We finally got the French people to stop messing around at something they didn't understand, and proceeded to enjoy ourselves at their makeshift BP table. The club atmosphere was kind of weird, but overall it was a unique experience.




PPS: We were lucky enough to see our friends from Leuven, Belgium while they visited Paris. We went to our favorite Irish bar on Friday night and serendipity caused all of the Belgium students to successfully make it our way. Shouts out to Lauren Pliskin and Jaclyn Schwartz, it was very good to catch up with that crew. 

Recent music:

I Shall Be Free No. 10 - Bob Dylan

My Key - Atmosphere
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