Versailles Bike Trip Dry Run otherwise known as I should stop almost getting in trouble by French authorities

I can't write full sentences. And I just explained it in full to my sister via gchat. Hello Internet 2.0 and copy paste.

10:11 PM me: i went to versailles today on my bike
Jennifer: isn't that a hike?
me: it's 15km' so it took like an hour and a half
Jennifer: oh that's not bad
me: since i stopped a couple of times
Jennifer: i took the train when i went. it felt farther
me: and had to walk my bike up two hills
10:12 PM Jennifer: did you go just for the ride or to see versailles?
me: and then walk it back down the other side since literally i would probably have been going 40 miles per hour if i didn't get off
Jennifer: haha brakes girl
me: i went to versailles a month ago with my friends (i concur, the train ride seemed way too long for how close it is) i would have died even with breaks my bike isn't that good
Jennifer: ah
me: i swear i probably blew out the tires today going over all that fucking cobblestone
10:13 PM bane of my existance but i biked around the gardens because it's free and then you have to be an EU citizen and under 26 to get into stuff free and so i flashed my student id card from sciences po and said i was from angleterre (england) and done. that got me into the petit trianon it wouldn't have worked in the actual palace however
10:14 PM oh! and i almost got in troulbe twice! it was awesome once for climbing and sitting on a high rock (stupid) and the other for attempting to steal vegetables (long story short)
10:15 PM Jennifer: lol you were trying to steal vegetables? and i'm the hippie kid? :P
me: :DDDDDD i made beet salad with my new beets :DD
Jennifer: you stole beets? OY VEY
10:16 PM you're ridic "hay i stole beets from versailles. i am amanda leslie' :P
10:18 PM me: well no so here's the story
10:19 PM first it starts with that they obviously don't harvest the cutesy vegetables that are in marie antoinette's little village aka i see half of it rotting so i steal some leaves of lettuce for my sandwich and some grapes there are just loads of grapes i only take a few
10:20 PM then later on my way out i just wander into this other part which are like mini private gardens that are just haphasardly attended behind this big hedge so i'm like wahh? this is so weird so i go look at the vegetables that are on their last legs to see if i can salvage any of it all the tomatoes, which were probably good 3 weeks ago are gross there is a bunch of squash so i take two
10:21 PM you can tell no one is coming to get them and then i wander over to an apple tree
my favorite type of free food in france is apple trees because they are just randomly planted everywhere as in i got apples from an apple tree at a highway rest stop on sunday
Jennifer: HIPPIE
me: and so i'm trying to get these apples down from this tree and a police guy comes
10:22 PM and i start to run away and (this is in french btw)
Jennifer: you have a lot of run ins with the french :P
me: he's like why are you running away? so i walk up to him because obvi he has a car with him
Jennifer: haha
10:23 PM me: so i can't escape and he's like what are you doing? looks in my bag for apples and i'm confused because he's saying stuff fast in french and walking back and forth to his car
10:24 PM and so i take the squash out of my bag and i don't really know what's going on but he's like no no keep your squash you bought them right? and i'm like yeah? i guess? and then he asks for my id
Jennifer: haha
me: so i give him my student card
Jennifer: you are gettign in so much ridiculous trouble.
me: and he's like oh you don't have an address? and i say no, and he realizes i'm american and then he's like come with me
10:25 PM Jennifer: geez
me: so i follow him and 1. he's weird because there is dog poop on the ground and he asked me if i did it? GROSS.
Jennifer: LOL geeeeeeez
me: 2. i then realize that i'm not in trouble and he leads me into another garden that there is no way out of
Jennifer: ??
me: and so i'm like SHIT. HE'S GOING TO KILL/RAPE ME and then he walks over to some beets
10:26 PM and is like do you want some?
Jennifer: LOL
me: and i'm soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo confused
Jennifer: LOLOLOLOL
me: and he says oh, those apples are my friend's so you can't have those but if you want some of my beets please have them and i'm like oook if you want me to have them?
Jennifer: LOLLLLL
me: so he graps two big beets
Jennifer: too fucking funny jesus christ
me: and gives them to me and then i bike away into the sunset RIDICULOUS
10:27 PM Jennifer: You need to be careful! :P
me: i know it was stupid
Jennifer: This is yr second run in with the policeee me: but it's weird because i guess he was coming to tend his garden
Jennifer: but he was a cop?
me: i guess all the police guys who work at chateaux de versailles gets their own garden plot
Jennifer: ah
me: he was a security at the chateaux
10:28 PM but yes, it was weird that he was coming to his own garden because if he just hadn't come, no one would have found me it looked like those gardens were post war i was sure no one has touched them since the summer
Jennifer: lol post war?
me: yes like a bomb blew up and pooped out some vegetables
Jennifer: lol oy veyyyi <3<3<3

Carafe D'Eau Montage!!!

Paris seems to get their carafes from the same places....hmmmm...

Thanks G-dub for picking up the tab!

So we got to go to Normandy this weekend for free? When does that happen? Oh...you mean it's in our tuition bill. Greeeeat.

Highlights of the trip:

Free Museum

Free bus ride to Pont du Hoc

Omaha Beach

American Cemetary

Free 4 course dinner

Free Hotel on Mont Saint Michel

Free Breakfast

Free tour of Mont Saint Michel

Free Dinner at a cool town on the way home

As you can see I left out lunches - cheap bastards made us pay for that ourselves.

zone d'éducation prioritaire - the ZEP Schools

So rewind for a second. I was in Mauritius this summer teaching English. English and French are both taught in schools, but English is the official language of Mauritius which is funny because less than 1% apparently speaks it. So while we were there, and especially because our program director was writing a thesis on the Mauritian education system we found out quite a bit about how the government runs the schools and what sort of funding and programs take place to alleviate the problems that come with all school systems all over the world.

So basically I just really wanted to write a blog post about that fact that I thought it was interesting that there are certain schools that are ZEP schools in France and in Mauritius.

Obviously they got the idea for ZEP schools from France (which is funny because they were "strategically renamed ZEP in 2003" in Mauritius) and both work by giving extra funding to under performing public schools.

In France, from what I've read, since they installed ZEP in the 70s and 80s it hasn't helped very much even though the idea of increasing funding to reduce class size and better performance was believed to be what would work. Apparently 1 in 5 teenagers in France go to a subsided school, and many of them are ZEP. And obviously this goes deeper as these problems come from the segregation along ethnic and racial lines of school districts (which just comes from economic segregation of housing and what not) and how it is hard to keep experienced teachers working there. And then parents sometimes just let their kids drop out of school all together.

In Mauritius, with a population made up mainly of peoples of Indian and African decent, ethnic and economic divide plays some part (especially when you find out that basically the Department of Education and numerous other government departments are run by all Indian staffs), but the defined purpose of the ZEP schools is to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals 1 and 2 and alleviate poverty. Thus the ZEP schools are funded by the government, UNDevelopmentProgram (in Mauritius and Seyschelles) and UNESCO. Here is the January 2009 update, probably the most interesting bits since it's the most recent stuff to come out of the UN about it.


And damn it if I actually find something interesting that I learned at college. This book was discussed in my anthropology class - Ethnicity, Immigration, and Nationalism - and it just came up when I googled 'ZEP schools france.' I could make this post longer, but I'd probably bore you all to death and just list statistics and reasons why I think the French education system is fucked up. But maybe I'll just leave that for another post.

Fashion Week

So since I'm not in Berlin right now you have the pleasure of reading this blog post (all 3 of you!)

On Wednesday a bunch of GW girls got to dress models for the Elie Saab Ready to Wear (Pret a Porter) fashion show in the Tulleries Garden at the Louvre. It was very much what I expected - not chaotic to chaotic in about 2 minutes flat. And the shoes were really high. And hard to put on. This was the model I dressed with another girl. And our model was really nice, thank goodness.








Here is the entire show in photographs
Here is a video montage of them getting their make up done and some of the show
If you're on FB, Jana has some sweet pictures

Last Thursday or any other day ever.

Wrote this, but didn't have internet for a while, so this gets posted now. A little insight into my very normal, however much Parisian, lifestyle.

Welcome to my pathetic life. This was a great day.

Starts with the night before how I pull out one side of my neck for some reason and it’s super painful for all of today. The wifi is also not working at the apartment so I have to resort to using it at the school. We’ll see how that goes. I also attempted to make myself wake up an hour early to do some reading in the morning. Before I pass out I set my alarm for the regular time I wake up. Knowledge is power, that’s the spirit!

Breakfast is fine. Take the usual new route that I’ve figured out to school except this is the first time I’ve done it at rush hour. Kill me. Rue de Vaugirard is packed and it takes forever to get through. So I show up basically on time for class. The teacher is usually late so that’s good. But I’m finding that I don’t like showing up sweaty to class. That is no way to attract a French boyfriend.

I meet up with a girl I’m doing an oral presentation with after class which means no biking down the street to get new-found cheap lunch at the student cafeteria. We both head over to the library to email our teacher about our presentations to find that the regular internet isn’t working. After being on the struggle bus for a while we finally just use another random network. After an hour it just randomly shuts down. Thanks Sciences Po.

I bike over to the cafeteria, funny story, it’s 2pm and they’ve stopped serving lunch. Dave is going to class so mooching off of his free internet isn’t an option, but I keenly remember that Place des Vosges has free internet. I head to the Marais, pick up a falafel, and then head over. Takes me ages to find the proper internet connection and I guess I’ve just never connected to the internet outside before, but even though it was overcast in Paris today the sun just makes looking at a laptop screen impossible. It would be more properly used as a hand mirror.

Time is up and I have to head back to Sciences Po for my 5pm class. I do the reading right before-hand in the classroom next door, but it doesn’t say much. Class is interesting -Global Public Goods-, but I play hearts throughout. I think I’m just on this high of never having a laptop before in class and this is how I express myself.

Two more boys in my class add on to my oral presentation group. One of them I have hung out with before, and god damn it, he has played charades in my dorm room. And he has no idea who I am.

Get a text from Nathan. Pasta Party at Alesia. Bike over to the 14^th. The pesto is delicious and who cannot love the company. I think I need to stop carbo-loading. Biking 4+ km a day is not doing anything to the baguettes I’ve collected over the past month.

They head off to booze it up, but I make my way over to Montparnasse to see 500 Days of Summer (500 Jours Ensemble) with some other friends. It’s good, but I chronically ruin movies for myself via imdb and Wikipedia. If you like depressing (yet hopeful!) ‘romcoms’ spend a couple of euros and treat yourself.

I start home only to find that I have a flat tire. That has probably been getting worse and worse all day and I just haven’t realized it. It gets to a point where it makes the back part of my bike bounce a little and it makes a weird noise and my bell rings unintentionally at a cyclical rhythm. The noises become curiouser and curiouser so I get off. Yep. That’s a flat tire. I walk the last ten minutes home. Course the sketchy druggies are hanging outside as usual. It’s a nice neighborhood I swear, for some reason across the street from my apartment is their location of choice. I hurry inside to properly inspect the damage.

Grocery shopping and the bike store tomorrow. I need some granola bars.

White Girl Can't Bake

So it came to my attention when I went to one of the biggest grocery chains in France yesterday to buy ingredients to make my illustrious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that apparently people in France don't bake. Like at all. Sometimes possibly bread (especially because you only need yeast, flour, and water for that) but that's about it.

So here is my, if you're ever in France and you want to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies recipe (here is the original for reference or if you're just in the US):

1 stick+ 6tbsp butter = a little less than 250 grams of butter, estimation probably was the best thing I learned in math class

3/4 cup brown sugar = is that a joke? they don't have brown sugar in France. Maybe if I was less lazy I could have figured out the conversion with molasses, but f that. sugar is sugar.

1/2 sugar = the one thing they do have, almost everywhere, as they put it in, almost everything. - so put the two sugars together - 1 1/4 cup - and just use a handy tea cup that looks like it's volume is close to a measuring cup you'd use at home.

2 eggs = chickens are so interval oriented. gotta love 'em for that.

1 tsp vanilla = they don't have real vanilla in France. You're going to have to settle. and just splash it in. god knows if they even use measuring spoons in France. Maybe you should just bring them with you.

1 1/2 cup flour = flour is simple and cheap. thank god. so take your fake measuring cup and measure out a cup and a half.

1 tsp baking soda = I actually went to Grand Epecerie which is a famous food store here (very equivalent to a Balducci's). They have a Etats-Unis/Canada section which had Arm and Hammer baking soda and a whole slew of other funny American things including: marshmallows, fluff, maple syrup, peanut butter, beef jerky, salad dressing, rando candies, buttered popcorn in bags, pumpkin puree (which I snagged for pumpkin cookies), and other things I can't recall at this time. So just grab a small spoon and throw some of this in too.

1 tsp ground cinnamon = I couldn't locate it in the two stores I looked for it, it probably was around, but I was banking on my fake host mom to have some and thank god she did. But it expired in 2007. Whatever. Fake cinnamon is fake cinnamon. Throw some of that in too.

salt = salt

3 cups of oats = oats aren't allowed in France, just like immigrants and poorly made cheese. I couldn't find it in either of the two stores so I settled and bought this muesli granola stuff that was very obviously not cooked yet and was marked at 4 Euros and was dried bits of figs, apples, and uncooked oats. Cool France, for making everything unnecessarily expensive.

1 cup chocolate chips = those don't really exist in France either. Occasionally they pop up. I bought a bar of chocolate and cut it up instead. IT WAS FAIR TRADE CHOCOLATE. That is one thing France is good for, Fair Trade products. The sugar was FT as well.

Mix it up. Figure out how to work a French oven, set it for 175 degrees Celsius and cook for 8-10 minutes.

Granted I could have gone to the specialty baking store that I found today looking online for baking soda, but should I have to do that? No I say! But I guess the French can't miss what they don't have. So I probably should just keep my cookies to myself. ;P