Velib Shmelib.

So Jay and I went on a biking adventure this afternoon. We got Jay a Velib and biked over the Seine into the 16th and wandered around a bit before actually finding Bois de Bologne - course we ended up at the Arc de Triomphe which is at the top of the park when we planned on entering it at the bottom. Alas. We ended up finding a neat park which was suppose to have a chateau, but instead just had some nice buildings on the premises and a garden that I wish I had pillaged. Then to finish off our park adventure we went over to another gated off park (you have to lock up your bikes outside since you can only walk around them) that has this really cool Shakespeare Theatre that's basically built into nature. You sit on grass, the backstage is in a little hill, the stage is made of stone, super cool. On our way out - around sunset - Jay goes to unlock his Velib, and oh funny story, the key breaks. We can't get his bike unlocked, I have no more credit on my phone, and it's about to be dark. GREAT






So we minorly freak out for a second and then I scoot off on my bike to go find a velib station and get credit for my phone. I get to a velib station and call an operator who I can't understand between my poor French and the fact that I'm on a major street. A nice French guy tries to help me out, but I need Jay's pin number which he has on him. GREAT.

So for the next half hour I frantically look for a place to buy credit after trying a super market, a gas station, a newspaper stand, and a pharmacie, a minimart has it. It's dark by this point, I race back to the middle of the park and I find Jay literally about to leave the bike and walk home because I've been gone for almost an hour.



The moral of the story, JUST BORROW SOMEONE'S PHONE. Because that's what Jay did right after I left (and of course didn't have my number on him, silly us) and found out he can just mail the key and his pin number to the velib people and they are just going to come pick up the bike in the morning. REALLY? Yes, really.

So we take the metro to the Marais and eat a butt-ton of falafel. So all's well that ends well.



AND! Best part that I cannot believe I forgot we saw TWO prostitutes in the Bois on the walk out of the park last night. One was standing on the side of the road leaning against a sign post - completely dressed in black and unable to be seen without the light of a passing car. The other coming out of the woods with a man in tow who's breasts were basically falling out of her shirt - if you could call it that.

Apartments and Rants

So I'm at this awkward turning point in my living situation where my 'contract' is up at the end of January and as long as my fake host family doesn't really hate me that much I can probably renew my so-called 'contract' until the end of May. Just because I kind of want to switch it up a little and maybe see if I can get housing closer to campus I have started looking for stuff. But in reality I won't really be able to find anything until end of December/beginning of January because anyone who is posting now is looking for people to rent now.

But all of this apartment stuff swirling around in my head got me thinking about the fact that I know no one in my building. And the fact that they all make so much freaking noise all of the time. For the past three days someone has been blasting music from god knows where at strange hours of the day. Sometimes it's Cream. Sometimes it's pop-rock. Last night at 2am it was baroque music. Really? Really? And then it always sounds like there are mice running around in my hallway and the floor above me and below me, but I have to assume, for my sanity, that they are just weird neighbors, doing weird things.

And that gets me to the one really legitimate reason why I want to move. They have started construction on my building -they are installing handicap related things, so kudos for them, but not for me when they start work at 8am on Saturdays. It definitely reminds me of last year at Guthridge and Munson, and I would not like to repeat that situation for the next seven months.

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