One last trip

and it was a doozy...

Over the past two and a half weeks I have gone on three separate trips...hence why I haven't been writing. But before I get to all that there has been a lot of things going on at school too. Just after my last post I finally had my State Street Interview and as usual, it was disappointing. I finally nailed down a time with them but when it came time to the interview the only person that I spoke with is the current co-op! The kid tried to transfer me to the actual woman I was interviewing with and somewhere the connection got lost. I tried calling her back multiple times and emailing her. I didn't hear from her again until three days later when she told me she was "sorry" but they had filled the position in the mean time. We are supposed to be learning from these people and the only thing I've learned so far is that you can get away with being a jerk and relying on complete aversion. SO FRUSTRATING!

Anyways...on the CEFAM front...I've had two projects due and two finals. We had our French final in class two Wednesdays ago and I was fairly confident with how I did. Our teacher is excellent and the test was pretty easy. Then we had a weeklong hiatus before finals were scheduled to begin. Obviously I took advantage and planned a trip! I spent a day in Rome, 3 in Greece, 2 back here in Lyon, and then 2 more in Paris. All of this was spent with Adam and it was incredible! I love Rome and that was my third time there this trip, even though it was only for an evening. I've always dreamed of going to Greece and now I can only dream about going back! We spent two days walking around Athens and then a third day at the island of Aegina. The weather was incredible, and it was Easter weekend on the Greek Orthodox Calendar so the entire place was so festive. It was an awesome atmosphere to visit in. Here are some pictures:

White Houses!

View of the Acropolis

Main Street in Athens

Changing of the Guards
*Note: Don't touch them!

Ampitheatre on the Acropolis

Adam and I in front of the Parthenon

Greek Flag

View of Athens from the Acropolis

Now THAT is a Greek salad!

Acropolis at Night

Athens was definitely amazing and beautiful. In the future I would really like to explore some of the greek islands a little more...ahhh someday! So after returning to Lyon for a few days to do laundry/unpack/repack I was off to Paris for my third time this trip to show Adam around. He had never been so it was really cool to be there with him and be the 'experienced' tour guide...or at least I thought. Plus this time we stayed at a hostel in Montmartre which hadn't gotten to explore at all my first two times. It was a lot of fun and between the three trips I covered a lot of even small out of the way things that I had always wanted to see in Paris. Also, this was my third trip up the Eiffel Tower. The weather is starting to get so nice that the lines were absolutely absurd! We chose to get into the mysteriously short line which turned out to be the stairs! So yep...we climbed to the second level of the Eiffel Tower. It was quite the workout but a very cool experience. Sitting here looking at all my pictures I just realized something...we forgot to do the most stereotypical Parisian vacation thing! We didn't actually take a picture of us together in front of the Eiffel Tower! Oh well...thats what photoshop is for. Here are some other pictures though:

Basilique du Sacre Coeur

Montmarte

Centre Pompidou

Jim Morrisons grave in le Pere Lachaise

After a fantastic week and a half I got snapped back to reality a bit here in Lyon yesterday. I had my Art History final yesterday and I have my BLAW and International Management finals on Monday and Tuesday. Eek!

I can barely even believe it but less than a week til UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!!!

Emotionnnnsss

I've been taking the time to read the blogs of the other people here lately, and the common thread throughout them is how emotional and personal they are getting. I think I've done a pretty good job of recounting trips and activities, and certainly analyzing the Northeastern co-op process. However I have to say that "personal reflection" is not typically something that makes it into my blog posts. The main reason for this is...me. If you know me, then this fact shouldn't be much of a surprise. I'm often told that I don't "open up", or that I am not much of a "sharer". My best friend likes to make the joke that she literally forced me into being friends with her. Of course this isn't entirely true, I did like her. But I'll give her the credit, she basically beat information out of me until I had no choice but to become comfortable talking about almost everything. So in the spirit of being a good blogger, here is my best attempt at getting "personal":

1. Is this it?

'We only have 3 months left! OMG this experience is half gone already! The one month marker?!' I would say for the first half of this experience I was consistently waiting for it to really begin, waiting for something to click, something to happen. Finally a few weeks ago I had to come to the realization that this is it. This isn't to say that I have had a bad time here, however I can't say that life in Lyon has really been all that riveting. Bland would be a good word for it. We have our occasional spurts of creativity, but for the most part every day is the same. We get up, go to class, complain, go home, get bread, and then retreat to our separate rooms to chat online, download movies, or spend inordinate amounts of time on Sudoku. Everyone that I know who has studied abroad previously returns home with at least a few crazy stories from where they were, and most are dying to go back. I can honestly say when I leave here, I will very likely never return to Lyon. And as far as stories go? Sure I have some good ones, but the ones from times actually spent in Lyon are few and far between. It's a weird feeling. I can't say that I'm disappointed, more just neutral and indifferent...but is that really how I'm supposed to feel when I'm finally living a dream that I have had since middle school???

2. Am I the bitch?

I'm not sure if it's validated, but I have this nagging feeling that the French kids think I'm a bitch. It's not that I'm mean to them, however I'll be the first to admit that my days of putting in effort to get to know them are long since over. At the beginning I really did try, but somewhere between the culture shock, home stress, weekend trips, and eventual frustration with just about everything French, my motivation deteriorated. Coming into this experience the prospect of going to school with all French students really excited me. I had an idyllic vision of myself speaking fluent french (ha) and making a slew of international friends. However upon arrival it did not take long to figure out that the reality would be far from that. I have made a few French friendships that I truly do hope continue, but the vast majority of them I don't even speak to. I don't really have anyone to blame for this but myself. Can I honestly say that I've been putting in a lot of effort to improve my French? No. Have I really tried to reach out and understand these people? Not really. Have I been using my best friend as a crutch? Yes.
One factor in what has made this bonding difficult is the fact that I am rarely in Lyon on the weekends. Out of 17 total weekends, I will have spent 5 here in Lyon without any visitors (two of which were before we even met anyone). I've been thinking lately that maybe I regret going away so much. Maybe I regret not spending time here practicing French and building friendships. But when I'm completely honest with myself? I don't. When I signed up for this program I said that I wanted to travel and really see Europe. By the time I go home, I will have 9 countries and 17 new cities under my belt. This is what I really wanted, and I'm doing it. So does it bother me to be the quiet one/bitch/outcast? For once in my life...not really. That may be rude, but quite frankly, I just don't care anymore.

I don't know if that really suffices but hey, it wasn't just me recounting another trip. Take it or leave it.

Brussels & Amsterdam

This weekend Meredith and I went to Brussels and Amsterdam. We spent two days in Brussels and only about six hours in Amsterdam and I wish more than anything that that had been reversed. Brussels was pretty but I have to admit it was boring. Whereas I was expecting Amsterdam to be skeezy and kind of a joke, and it ended up being one of the most beautiful and interesting places I've ever been to. The best part of this trip was going to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. We had to wait in line for almost an hour but it was totally worth it. It was so intense walking through the attic and seeing where she had hid...definitely a memorable experience. Here are some pictures:

Meredith and I in Brussels

Town Center

Manneken Pis - they were obsessed with this little guy

Brussels Town Center by night

Bar with 2000 beers! Including some great Belgian ones!

Day 2 in Amsterdam!

Entrance to the Anne Frank House

Beautiful

Just trying on some Dutch clogs


And of course...Belgian Waffle! Yum!

Blahhh

After a bit of nagging, I finally heard back from my interviewer at State Street about the interview that I was supposed to have a week ago. We decided to reschedule for this coming Monday. Also today, I was scheduled to have an interview with Commonwealth Financial Network. About a half an hour after it was supposed to start, I received a phone call requesting to reschedule until tomorrow. That would be fine except for the fact that I am going to be in Brussels tomorrow! I told him I would be traveling and may not be able to find a perfectly quite space, and he said that was fine with him so that should be interesting. This whole phone-tag-interview-shuffle business is really frustrating...and stressful. Schedule a time, stick to it, is it really all that difficult?? I guess so. Anyways here is a nice little timeline of my next few fun filled days:

Friday - Monday: Trip to Brussels and Amsterdam
Friday: Commonwealth Financial Network Interview in Brussels
Monday: State Street Interview an hour after we get back
Tuesday: Management Project due (30% of grade)
Thursday: Art History project due and oral presentation (30% of grade)

As for now...I have to go find what scraps of food I might have left for dinner, and I should probably consider packing, oh and starting those projects would be a good thing too....

Berlin!

I can't say that Berlin (or anywhere in Germany for that matter) was on the top of my desired list of places to visit this semester. The only reason we ended up going was because a friend had to switch a flight, and Berlin was the cheapest place that he could switch it to. The flight was only 50 euro and I had nothing planned for the weekend so I figured, why not? Definitely one of the BEST decisions of my time here. Berlin was absolutely incredible, my only regret is that we only stayed for 2 days...I would have loved to stay longer. On Friday, we walked around Hackescher Market and took care of the first order of business, trying a real bratwurst. Delicious! We also walked all along Oranienburger Strasse, a very popular street, and took a tour of the Neue Synagogue, which was one of many synangogues destroyed during The Night of Broken Glass. That night we picked out a restaurant from one of our guidebooks to eat at. A drunk man on the metro gave us directions and after about ten minutes of walking were rethinking our decision to listen to him. However just as we were about to give up we saw some twinkly (aka Christmas) lights behind a gas station. Bingo! The drunk guy was right after all. Despite its initial location, the restaurant was fantastic. Great food, incredible beer (that's an understatement) and it was on a deck over the Spree river.

On Saturday, we woke up bright and early to see more of the city. We ended up taking a 5 hour walking tour, led by a kid from Ireland who knew just about everything about German history, all for FREE! It was to date the best and most informative tour of anything that I have ever been on, and it was the cheapest :) In my opinion they should have these in every city because it was a great experience, and really made me appreciate Berlin. We got to see all of the famous (and infamous) sights in Berlin, some of which I didn't even know existed. Unfortunately I forgot my camera for this trip...stupid...so here are some of Meredith's pictures:

The Reichstag

Hotel Adlon
(where Michael Jackson dangled his baby from a window)

Holocaust Memorial

The sight of Hitlers bunker

Berlin Wall

Us with the Berlin bear :)

Checkpoint Charlie

Bebelplatz - sight of Nazi book burnings
"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings"

Berliner Dom

Bratwursts!

Brandenburg Gate

We definitely covered a lot of Berlin, but theres always more. Had we been able to stay an extra day, we would have gone to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, revisited some of the spots of the tour, and gone back to Checkpoint Charlie to get a 'West Berlin' stamp in our passports. All in all though it was an unforgettable trip, and for me it was incredibly touching. Although Berlin wasn't an original attraction for me, it is one of the places that I think I would love to return to in the future.

Pleasant Surprise

This past weekend was the first in over a month that I've spent in Lyon. After traveling so much I was definitely looking forward to some down time, but I also expected it to be incredibly boring. So it was a pleasant surprise when it was actually a lot of fun. It helped that most of my friends were also staying here too, so we got to spend some time together. On Saturday, the weather was absolutely gorgeous here, so a group of us decided to take advantage and head to the park for a picnic. This was my first time really experiencing Tete d'Or and I loved it, I can't wait to go back. Especially because the ice cream there is delicious! On Sunday we took an impromptu trip to the Alps for some late season skiing. I went once with my family over spring break and it was fantastic. I thought that was the end of my skiing for the year so it was awesome to get to go again, and it was a lot of fun to go with friends.

This week has been pretty calm. We were supposed to have a BLAW make-up class with my favorite professor on Monday morning. We went, we sat, and surprise surprise...he didn't show up. This morning I was supposed to have an interview with State Street for their Trading Intern position. The job looks great and I was really excited about it. However, after about 10 minutes of waiting I received an e-mail requesting to reschedule. Ugh...frustrating, but at least she was courteous.

There has definitely been a buzz around CEFAM this week because tonight is their 'African Dinner'. We have heard about this since day one and I would equate its significance to prom in high school. It's a pretty big event and supposed to be a lot of fun. So tonight should be exciting and then its an early wake-up call tomorrow morning because we are off to Berlin!!!

Patience IS a virtue...just not one of mine.

By this point, every business major I know has a co-op job....except me. My best guy friend from home just got offered a job from Wellington, and my best friend who is here with me just accepted a job in Texas. Things are looking a little dim, however tonight was a bit of a break through. I finally managed to link up with my advisor for a phone call. Her enthusiasm and optimism was definitely contagious. She told me that I was getting too desperate, and actually refused to send my resume to a few of the places that I requested because they aren't "challenging" enough. Her position that we are just getting started eased my nerves a bit. While at the same time I'm wondering if I'm not shooting myself in the foot. I appreciate that she doesn't want me to settle for a job thats not good enough, but I do want A job...regardless of what level it is. There is a meeting of all of the finance advisors on Thursday to discuss the students that are left and the positions that are still left to fill. My advisor is confident that she will find me a number of good matches at this meeting. I can only hope...but obviously, I'm incredibly impatient.

A nice little break from thinking about all of this came in the form of Capri this weekend. For the long Easter weekend my boyfriend and I spent one night in Naples and two nights in Capri. Leading up to the trip weather.com was sticking strong to it's prediction of 90% rain and heavy winds. For Friday night in Naples, that was a pretty accurate forecast. But we toughed it and went out for pizza (Naples supposedly has the best pizza in the world). It was delicious, but I have to give it to Adam...his favorite pizzeria in Rome still holds the title for me. On Saturday, we woke up bright and early to catch the ferry to Capri. However, we quickly realized that a number of them wouldn't be running due to the weather. We had about an hour to kill and watch the clouds roll in. Guaranteed the ferry ride over was one of the most absurd situations I have ever been in. Because of the choppy waters, this huge catamaran that we were on was getting tossed around. You would have thought the vomit-bags were candy if you saw the fervor that they were being passed out (and taken) with. After trying desperately to plug my ears from the retching noise (and also not to start myself) for an hour, we gratefully reached Capri. And as if we weren't thankful enough, the sun was shining!!

Adam and I in Capri

The weekend as a whole was absolutely incredible. And weather.com couldn't have been more wrong. Instead of raining the whole weekend, it rained for about a half an hour while we were at dinner one night, and the sun even peaked out once in a while. We spent the majority of the weekend hiking around the island taking in the beautiful sights. We were actually staying in Anacapri, which is higher up on the mountain, and has even more incredible views. We got to check out both a Limencello store, where they made it on the premises, and a perfume factory/store that had been a favorite of Jacqueline Kennedy. And finally on Monday morning, we got to ride the chairlift up to Monte Salero, the highest point on the island. Obviously, the views were incredibly breathtaking. We didn't want to leave, and for a little, it looked like we weren't going to. Shortly there after, the weather got really bad again and they stopped running the ferries off of the island. We ended up staying almost 4 hours longer, and as a result I missed my flight back to Lyon. Thanks to Daddy coming to the rescue I got reassigned to a flight at 6:30 am (ugh!) the next morning, and spent an extra night in Rome.

This whole semester my boyfriend and I have been really lucky. We've been able to see each other every 2-3 weeks, and travel around Europe together. Unfortuantely, Capri was the last time we would see each other for 5 weeks this time. I am by no means anxious for this experience to end, but at the same time I am excited to get back to Boston and be able to see him everyday. These next 5 weeks are going to be a little tough, but then again the next time I do see him will be in Athens, Greece...so I guess I can't really complain :)