in the land of beautiful people

didn't upload yesterday...

on tuesday i made the snap decision to come to copenhagen this weekend, staying with people from melbourne in the copenhagen business school dormitories. whilst its great and easy hanging out with everyone in the dorms, i am so happy to have my beautiful apartment in paris with a proper kitchen and enough space to hang out with friends!

spent my first afternoon in copenhagen at an awesome freah food market with bella and her friend nadia. the stalls served seriously yummy stuff - egg wraps, risotto, tapas and fish tacos, among so many other things! i was in foodie heaven! saturday night we went to the best pizza restaurant in the city, and it certainly lived up to reputation - best pizza i've had in europe so far! after dinner we attempted to go out, but midnight is far too early and all the clubs were still empty :(

sunday we decided exercise was in order... so we climbed the spiral tower to get a panorama view of the city, and man my calves are sore today! 

then we ventured to the christiana commune. technically it's own country, we left the european union for the afternoon to wander around the land of hippies and its permanent haze of marijuana smoke. the area was pretty filthy and abundant with wild dogs, and funnily they don't allow pictures - the residents force you to delete any photo they see you taking. anyhow, was a nice chill afternoon and then spent the evening watching movies. 

today i finally surrendered and went on my first hop on - hop off bus tour in europe. copenhagen is just too cold to go wandering for hours, especially as i haven't yet bought much in the way of winter clothing, but i still chose to sit on the open top deck by myself! went on both routes and to be perfectly honest it wasn't that thrilling... i saw the world famous tivoli gardens and amusement park (which closed yesterday for the winter) and saw the home of carlesburg beer. possibly the most exciting thing of the tour was finding out the correct pronunciation of georg jensen - sounds like yorg yenson -so there we go, no more incorrect pronunciation from ignorant aussies! 

very excited for dinner tonight, cooking a curry for the girls... definitely my mother's daughter, the highlights of this trip to the danish capital have all been food! back to paris tomorrow, can't wait! 

domestic goddesses strike again!

since coming to paris, sarah and i have hosted five dinner parties - ranging from  4 to 20 people! last night we put on a dinner for jonathan's 20th birthday. we spent all day slaving in the kitchen, but the result was worth it...

in the spirit of being in france, we made moules frites - so cheap and so yummy!!

and followed them with our first ever attempt at a croquembouche, which sarah decided we absolutely "babed"!

it was a very successful night!! which made going to bed early to get up for an 8am class all the more difficult - glad i did though, as following my presentation i was questioned by my classmates for almost 45 minutes!!! and exchange was supposed to be easy :/

on a side note, despite being proud of my independence on monday... my replacement cash cards have yet to be delivered, highlighting that i'm possibly not quite as capable as i'd like to believe! 

such a slacker

i can't believe how long it's been since i last blogged, or for that matter how much time is flying over in paris. i've already been here a month and it feels like no time at all!!! seriously scary and already saddening at how soon i'll be leaving!

life is going great over here. no boys to be spoken of - that will keep you happy dad - quite unfortunate really, given i'm in the city of love. thankfully i have enough wonderful new friends that go on picnics, stroll along the seine eating berthillion, watch movies and make yummy dinners to enjoy with me. got a nice little routine  doing pilates, walking to uni, going to the market and have a fun friendship group to do it all with - 3 aussies, 2 brits, a kiwi, a canadian and an american (all very anglo, i know) plus lots of frenchies and a few others who've been coming to our bigger dinner parties. we cooked mussels in white wine the other night after going shopping at the market - so delicious... it's all just so much fun!! have hardly spent an evening alone, pretty perfect considering i'm living by myself for the first time in my life! 

the bummer at the moment is how intense uni actually is. going on exchange is, despite what you're supposed to say, all about partying and travel... but this week i have two oral presentations! a 10-15 minute one on hobbes, the prisoner's dilemma and environmental protection, and the other a 20 minute one on the relationship between oil and power. really interesting but annoying all the same - my timetable may be pretty damn good, but if this workload keeps up i really don't know how much travel i'm going to get in on the weekends... oh well, just gives me an excuse to come back to europe in the future!!

this thursday is the birthday of one of the boys in our group, so been working hard to finish my preparation for my presentations early... so that sarah and i can spend all day on thursday attempting to make a croquembouche!! so exciting and likely to be an utter disaster given i'm involved, but sure to be an enjoyable experience trying! haven't managed to starve just yet though... probably because i've been eating a whole baguette every day! oops! trying my best to improve...

yesterday also taught me just how far i've come since beginning my trip 3 months ago... my secondary travel money card got swallowed by another atm! i must be super lucky!! anyway, unlike last time, i didn't cry, kept my cool and within an hour had arranged for two new cards to be couriered to me in paris... so proud of myself! 

still haven't done much of the touristy stuff in paris, waiting until the end of september for the queues to die down before heading to versailles or the notre dame. but super excited, alisa found the best activity for me to do while in paris... we're getting a group together to do a private scavenger hunt of the louvre, going to be awesome!!! 

first day of sciences po

that's right, today is a wednesday and it was my first day of uni for the week! after all the stress caused by my timetable, i am happy to report that i only have classes two days per week - giving me 4 day weekends!! however, classes here finish as late as 9.15pm, and i was lucky enough to get those classes every day :/ oh well! gives me ample time to travel!!

had two classes today, as my first tutorial is not until next week. going to be seriously out of my depth with political philosophy, but we'll see how we go. everything is made better by the fact that it's occurring in paris - still cannot get over how lucky i am to be living here!!!

i've been attempting to be responsible and take packed lunches every day... but it's been negated somewhat by all the evening cocktails we've been having... this trip has turned me into an alcoholic!!

going shopping at bastille market again tomorrow in preparation for our next dinner party... sarah is having 25 people! going to be so much fun!!! 

o-week in paris

this last 10 days has been incredible! i feel so lucky to be living in this amazing city for the next 4 months! to backtrack though my week...

monday we began o-week proper. in france it's nothing like australian o-week - we had 16 hours of classes for the week and had to give a 10 minute oral presentation in pairs! homework for no reason, gahh!! anyhow, we were divided into small groups for methodology classes for the 5 days. there were some awesome people in my group, so the classes were pretty enjoyable, despite having to learn the ridiculous french method of writing essays - you can't have an argument until the conclusion, what is that?!!! 

monday evening we had a walking tour of the area surrounding notre dame, wasn't too exciting but the gorgeous guide gave us pretty good tips about bars and cafes! following that we headed off to the first bar of the week. it was so much fun!! the bar was totally overwhelmed by the number of students that came and the surrounding residents weren't too happy about the noise on the street - we had a wonderful time dodging water being flung from windows by irate parisians! met more really fun people from all around the world, so exciting!!

tuesday was more of the same during the day. went for a lovely lunch with a boy from my class and then in the evening we all had a wine and cheese reception. holy cow!! the way the french eat cheese is insane, massive chunks on tiny bread rolls. yum! following the reception we all headed off to the nights bar - which was even smaller than the previous one! it was impossible to get a drink and we were all once again on the street, but happily met a big group of french sciences po students who we spent the night hanging out with!

wednesday again we had classes during the day, but in the evening we had a scavenger hunt!!! gahhh so much fun, we got super competitive. our team of 8 managed to get every single bonus challenge completed as well as being the first team back to the start having been to each location... so we won! yayyy!!! this of course led to a very messy night drinking out of our victory mugs in a cool underground bar! 

thursday was pretty tame comparatively, classes all morning, hanging out in the afternoon and then bar at night. 

friday was possibly my favourite day in paris so far. after our final classes, sarah and i wandered home along the seine. on our way i stopped to buy myself a gardenia pot plant and then we stopped on ile-saint-louis for a cheeky cocktail and crême brulée. just felt so carefree and amazing! grabbed a bertillon ice-cream on our way home and arrived back at my apartment to find shane and macrow had arrived.

dragged the boys to the supermarket with me and then had a wonderful time chatting to them while i became a domestic goddess... that's right, i cooked for and hosted a dinner party of 12 people on friday. it was so so so much fun! trying to squeeze everyone into my little apartment was interesting, but we managed! 

following dinner we headed to a nightclub on a boat on the seine. it was awesome fun, and once again we spent a lot of time hanging out with french students as well as some awesome british girls! 

saturday understandably no one did very much, but in the evening we all boarded a massive boat to go for a ride along the seine. spent the entire time chattering away and having an absolutely ball with some of the people we'd met during the week. it was really lovely to see all the gorgeous parisian buildings at night, and to see the eiffel tower sparkle for the first time! 

yesterday was the final day of o-week. sarah and i went shopping at bastille market for all our groceries for the week - absolute heaven - before rushing to get to the afternoon picnic. it was really great just spending a lazy afternoon with everyone in the park, and had so much fun when limbo and dancing started! headed once again for cheeky cocktails afterwards with maeve and sarah, a great way to end the week!

classes start today... and right now i don't know if i have any on mondays or not, oops!