Laundry takes less than 90 minutes to wash AND dry.
There's free wifi everywhere - grocery stores, restaurants, Target, Walmart, pharmacies, EVERYWHERE.
There are public restrooms everywhere, and you don't have to pay for them.
Everything is so big.
People go out in public at any given time of the day in pajamas or workout clothes.
No one yells "Goodbye!" when you leave a store if you're not buying anything.
People (at least from my hometown) get really uncomfortable/put off when they hear foreign languages in public.
Ice comes in every drink that isn't meant to be served hot.
Everything is so loud.
I am home.
Life Abroad
Saturday 7 January 2017
Saturday 17 December 2016
Last few hours in Aix
In a few hours, I'll be walking my suitcases to the bus station, hopping a bus to Marseille Airport, and checking in for my flight to Dublin (with a quick pit stop in Amsterdam).
This is goodbye, Aix, and goodbye to my French life. I think what I'll miss the most is living with multiple languages.
Sure, it's tough sometimes. I turned in a literature final the other day in which I described the main character's struggle with "length" (longueur) instead of "lethargy" (langueur). I ordered the wrong thing for dinner a few nights ago because I got sick of asking the waiter to repeat himself and instead just responded "Yes" to everything he asked. It was still delicious.
But I can understand practical French in most day to day settings now (also discovered recently that I can still understand basic Mandarin as well, but that's a different story). And I can get my point across coherently, even if not necessarily grammatically correct. Plus, I'm a fabulous eavesdropper.
I watch Netflix with French subtitles and laugh when I find French phrases like "It's not your onions!" instead of the English "None of your beeswax!" even though both make very little sense when read literally.
I'm still continuing Harry Potter in French, which is fun because I usually end up playing a game of "Is that a French word or is that a made up magical word?" and 50% of the time I'm wrong. I salute whoever translated the books, though - in order to keep up the ruse of Tom Riddle using an anagram to form "I am Voldemort" or in this case, "Je suis Voldemort," they had to make his middle name Elvis.
Jokes aside, I'll still be looking for more ways to keep up my French.
I'll definitely miss the weather here. It's not quite the heat of Sevilla, but a far cry from the frigid cold of Boston.
Still, it's been tough to get into the holiday spirit when it's 60 degrees out. In the morning when it's colder I listen to Christmas songs and by the time the temperature creeps up past 50 it just doesn't feel right anymore.
So, I guess I'm just Dreaming of a White Christmas....
(But after Christmas, I'd like to go right back to 60 degree days, please and thank you.)
Wednesday 14 December 2016
Rome, Lyon, and Avignon - oh my!
My last three weekends were spent in Rome, then Avignon, then Lyon.
First, the weekend after Thanksgiving the London Crew and I hopped on a plane to Rome at sunset.
We got in around seven, promptly went out for pizza and fried mozzarella. On our way, we spotted this sign:
I've heard of park and ride, but this was a new one.
In the morning we got up bright and early and made our first stop the coliseum. Pro tip (which we read online): go early. Like, go when it opens. When we arrived first thing the line was pretty short - by the time we were finished an hour to an hour and a half later, it was at least 10 times as long.
Now, I don't know about you, but my knowledge of most of Europe comes exclusively from things I've seen in movies. For the Coliseum, that means the film Jumper, where Hayden Christensen teleports his way into the lower level (which is unfortunately off limits to mere mortals) just to impress Rachel Bilson. Afterward, they promptly get arrested.
Our visit was a little less eventful than theirs, but still nice. I discreetly followed a french tour group around the second floor and got to hear a little bit about the history beyond gladiator fights to the death.
Afterward, we took an adventure on the metro into the city to see some of the sights (another pro-tip: buying metro tickets sucks in Rome. Bring plenty of coins to make exact change!).
We made it to the Trevi fountain, where we did our best Lizzie McGuire impression and threw coins into the fountain while making outrageous wishes. Between this and that magical French well I drank from a few weeks ago, 2017 should be my luckiest year yet!
We saw the sights, we saw the city, we ate more pizza (hey, when in Rome...).
It was a short but amazing weekend.
The first weekend in December we went on an organized day trip to Avignon, where we started out at the 3rd most visited site in France, the Pont du Gard.
Our plan of action after that was to visit the infamous Christmas market in Avignon. We got to the city, walked over the ramparts and past the famous Palace of the Popes - which was home to the heads of the Catholic church for 70-odd years in the 14th century - and promptly discovered that there was no Christmas market to be found.
Due to the state of emergency in France and the threats that terrorist organizations have made, especially surrounding events celebrating Christmas, Avignon made the call to forego their Christmas market for the first time this year
Fortunately for us, there was still plenty to see and do. There was a telethon happening in the main square which included musical performances (shout out to the older men's choir and their saucy choreography), service dogs doing tricks and receiving many pats, and an amazing food truck.
The big event this past weekend was our day trip to see the Fête des Lumières in Lyon.
I posted a video advertising the Fête at the bottom of my last post if you want to see some better examples, but here are my pictures from that day of the beautiful but smog-covered city:
The streets were packed. Hardly any of us had cell service so we had to use the buddy system and just hope that we would find each other in the end, which we did! We got to try hot wine and Aligot, a French specialty of cheese mixed with mashed potatos which somehow comes to an almost glue-like texture. Below you can see them lifting a big hunk of Aligot from the pot.
Even though the city streets were packed to the brim, the light shows were well organized and there was a lot of staff on hand to deal with the crowds. While shuffling through crowds of tourists, I did think a few times of the threat of terrorism looming over France and most of the continent (and the world), and how easy it would be to target an event like this where you have a huge group of people all stuffed into a small space together.
Luckily, Lyon made it through the weekend unscathed, but the same can't be said for Cairo or Istanbul, or Aleppo, whose struggle continues, and I'm sure for a lot of other cities in the world which haven't made major news. While I enjoy my last few days in Aix and head home for the holidays, they'll be on my mind.
First, the weekend after Thanksgiving the London Crew and I hopped on a plane to Rome at sunset.
We got in around seven, promptly went out for pizza and fried mozzarella. On our way, we spotted this sign:
I've heard of park and ride, but this was a new one.
In the morning we got up bright and early and made our first stop the coliseum. Pro tip (which we read online): go early. Like, go when it opens. When we arrived first thing the line was pretty short - by the time we were finished an hour to an hour and a half later, it was at least 10 times as long.
Now, I don't know about you, but my knowledge of most of Europe comes exclusively from things I've seen in movies. For the Coliseum, that means the film Jumper, where Hayden Christensen teleports his way into the lower level (which is unfortunately off limits to mere mortals) just to impress Rachel Bilson. Afterward, they promptly get arrested.
Our visit was a little less eventful than theirs, but still nice. I discreetly followed a french tour group around the second floor and got to hear a little bit about the history beyond gladiator fights to the death.
Afterward, we took an adventure on the metro into the city to see some of the sights (another pro-tip: buying metro tickets sucks in Rome. Bring plenty of coins to make exact change!).
We made it to the Trevi fountain, where we did our best Lizzie McGuire impression and threw coins into the fountain while making outrageous wishes. Between this and that magical French well I drank from a few weeks ago, 2017 should be my luckiest year yet!
We saw the sights, we saw the city, we ate more pizza (hey, when in Rome...).
The first weekend in December we went on an organized day trip to Avignon, where we started out at the 3rd most visited site in France, the Pont du Gard.
Our plan of action after that was to visit the infamous Christmas market in Avignon. We got to the city, walked over the ramparts and past the famous Palace of the Popes - which was home to the heads of the Catholic church for 70-odd years in the 14th century - and promptly discovered that there was no Christmas market to be found.
Due to the state of emergency in France and the threats that terrorist organizations have made, especially surrounding events celebrating Christmas, Avignon made the call to forego their Christmas market for the first time this year
Fortunately for us, there was still plenty to see and do. There was a telethon happening in the main square which included musical performances (shout out to the older men's choir and their saucy choreography), service dogs doing tricks and receiving many pats, and an amazing food truck.
The big event this past weekend was our day trip to see the Fête des Lumières in Lyon.
I posted a video advertising the Fête at the bottom of my last post if you want to see some better examples, but here are my pictures from that day of the beautiful but smog-covered city:
The streets were packed. Hardly any of us had cell service so we had to use the buddy system and just hope that we would find each other in the end, which we did! We got to try hot wine and Aligot, a French specialty of cheese mixed with mashed potatos which somehow comes to an almost glue-like texture. Below you can see them lifting a big hunk of Aligot from the pot.
Even though the city streets were packed to the brim, the light shows were well organized and there was a lot of staff on hand to deal with the crowds. While shuffling through crowds of tourists, I did think a few times of the threat of terrorism looming over France and most of the continent (and the world), and how easy it would be to target an event like this where you have a huge group of people all stuffed into a small space together.
Luckily, Lyon made it through the weekend unscathed, but the same can't be said for Cairo or Istanbul, or Aleppo, whose struggle continues, and I'm sure for a lot of other cities in the world which haven't made major news. While I enjoy my last few days in Aix and head home for the holidays, they'll be on my mind.
Friday 9 December 2016
In the Classroom
It's easy to forget, with all the traveling that I've been doing, that I actually came here to study. Monday through Thursday (no classes on Friday!) for the past few months you would have found me sitting in a classroom in the foreign student building at the Aix-Marseille University campus just south of Aix city-center.
Unfortunately, we have now gotten Finals. In fact, we're in the middle of two weeks of testing. Last week I had two finals, next week I have one more and my language test.
The language test is made up of two parts - on Monday I'll sit for a three hour exam which will include listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing comprehension. On Thursday I'll be given a topic at random, ten minutes to prepare a presentation, and then 10 minutes to present on the topic to a professor of the school in order to show that I can actually speak French (though the jury is still out on this).
French grading is very different than American grading. For starters, they grade on a scale of 1-20 rather than 1-100. Fortunately, any grade over a 14 is typically considered an 'A' in the US. This is good news, because it's incredibly rare to receive anything higher than a 12-14 out of 20.
The reasoning for this is simple; it's a language course meant to challenge you. If you're getting near perfect scores, that means you're not being challenged and you should have been placed in a higher level to begin with.
Really, we're all just striving to be 'average,' which would never be tolerated in the US.
When I took my language placement test back in the first week in September, I placed into a higher level based on my grammar and my writing skills. However, since I hadn't spoken French in 2 years and rarely ever with a native French speaker, my speaking skills were rusty, so I got bumped down to where I am now. As a result, in some areas I feel confident and in others (hello upcoming presentation on an unknown topic) I'm feeling a little apprehensive.
Either way, I'm confident I'll pass (knock on wood) and by this time next week I'll be packing up to leave, then making a pit stop in Dublin, and finally heading home to Pennsylvania.
Before any of that, though, I'm taking a break from studying to head to Lyon tomorrow to see the annual light show that started last night. If you aren't familiar with it, watch the video below and prepare be amazed.
Unfortunately, we have now gotten Finals. In fact, we're in the middle of two weeks of testing. Last week I had two finals, next week I have one more and my language test.
The language test is made up of two parts - on Monday I'll sit for a three hour exam which will include listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing comprehension. On Thursday I'll be given a topic at random, ten minutes to prepare a presentation, and then 10 minutes to present on the topic to a professor of the school in order to show that I can actually speak French (though the jury is still out on this).
French grading is very different than American grading. For starters, they grade on a scale of 1-20 rather than 1-100. Fortunately, any grade over a 14 is typically considered an 'A' in the US. This is good news, because it's incredibly rare to receive anything higher than a 12-14 out of 20.
The reasoning for this is simple; it's a language course meant to challenge you. If you're getting near perfect scores, that means you're not being challenged and you should have been placed in a higher level to begin with.
Really, we're all just striving to be 'average,' which would never be tolerated in the US.
When I took my language placement test back in the first week in September, I placed into a higher level based on my grammar and my writing skills. However, since I hadn't spoken French in 2 years and rarely ever with a native French speaker, my speaking skills were rusty, so I got bumped down to where I am now. As a result, in some areas I feel confident and in others (hello upcoming presentation on an unknown topic) I'm feeling a little apprehensive.
Either way, I'm confident I'll pass (knock on wood) and by this time next week I'll be packing up to leave, then making a pit stop in Dublin, and finally heading home to Pennsylvania.
Before any of that, though, I'm taking a break from studying to head to Lyon tomorrow to see the annual light show that started last night. If you aren't familiar with it, watch the video below and prepare be amazed.
Wednesday 30 November 2016
London Part 2
Since I'm bad at leaving TripAdvisor reviews for anything, I'll say a little more here about one of the tour guide companies we used in London.
A friend of a friend recommended Strawberry Tours to us. They're 'free' in the sense that you take the tour without paying up front, and then at the end you tip your tour guide according to how much you liked the tour (or in our case according to how broke you are on a scale of 1 to college student).
We started out with their Harry Potter tour, which was the last thing I mentioned in London Part 1.
Afterward, our guide suggested a discounted dinner at a restaurant near Leicester Square, so we took her up on the offer and had the best fish and chips of the week:
Over dinner we became BFFs with our guide, Katie, who moonlights as a theater/voice actress. In addition to being the one who created the Harry Potter tour for Strawberry Tours, she was also really knowledgeable about a whole host of other things in London, like where to eat, drink, visit, and buy the best souvenirs.
Because we loved her so much (just kidding, this was a complete coincidence) we ended up on her Jack the Ripper tour that night after dinner. We all know the story of Jack the Ripper, obviously, but Katie showed off her story-telling skills as she walked us through each murder - sometimes literally through the former crime scene.
Strawberry Tour Guides obviously do their research - again, can't say enough nice things about both tours we took with them, and the discounted meal we had with Katie was some of the best food we had while we were in London (it's tied for first with a meal we had later in the week - coming up soon).
The next day we saw an anticlimactic changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace - they were in blue coats, not red! But apparently a member of the royal family was home at the time, so who knows? Maybe I was just a few hundred feet away from the Queen.
The highlight of the changing of the guard was when this policeman came over and invited us all to pat his horse. Softest. Horse. Ever.
Then, we managed to get cheap tickets to see...
It was my first time seeing Wicked, even though I knew at least half of the songs already since it had been wickedly popular in high school (see what I did there?). It was really good, and definitely worth it considering we got a huge discount for buying last minute tickets. The website we used to get discount tickets was advertised all over the tube for a lot of different plays and musicals - sadly, nothing for Cursed Child, although we did stumble upon the theater while we were looking for antique/secondhand book shops.
The next day we took ourselves on our own walking tour....
And then I got to meet up with an old friend from Sevilla who lives in London, which was great. We went to our 3rd Wetherspoon's of the week with her and her boyfriend and spent a good 4-5 hours catching up.
This Wetherspoon's was much fancier than the previous two we'd been in - just look at the statue in the bathroom!
Friday, we made it to Soho, where we had a traditional English Breakfast (at 2pm) in The Breakfast Club, walked around the British History museum, and then went to a few pubs to finish off the week.
Saturday we had our best meal of the week (in my opinion). We headed back to Brick Lane, which we had already seen under cover of darkness during the Jack the Ripper tour. This time, the markets were open and the neighborhood was much livelier. Out of an old reconverted World War 2 ambulance, we had buttermilk fried chicken, french fries, and a combination of homemade sauces.
Oh. My. Gosh. Check out Mother Clucker if you're ever in the Brick Lane area for lunch, because this was so good. Normally, you can dump hot sauce on anything and I'll be happy, but this was just out of this world. They have a couple of locations around London, including a stand at Camden Market, so this is not something to miss.
That ended up being the last thing I took a picture of in London - and that's probably a good thing, because how could I top that?!
We could not have had a better week, but it was just as painful to leave at the end of our stay as it was to get up at 4:30AM on Sunday for our flight.
See you next time, London!
A friend of a friend recommended Strawberry Tours to us. They're 'free' in the sense that you take the tour without paying up front, and then at the end you tip your tour guide according to how much you liked the tour (or in our case according to how broke you are on a scale of 1 to college student).
We started out with their Harry Potter tour, which was the last thing I mentioned in London Part 1.
Afterward, our guide suggested a discounted dinner at a restaurant near Leicester Square, so we took her up on the offer and had the best fish and chips of the week:
Over dinner we became BFFs with our guide, Katie, who moonlights as a theater/voice actress. In addition to being the one who created the Harry Potter tour for Strawberry Tours, she was also really knowledgeable about a whole host of other things in London, like where to eat, drink, visit, and buy the best souvenirs.
Because we loved her so much (just kidding, this was a complete coincidence) we ended up on her Jack the Ripper tour that night after dinner. We all know the story of Jack the Ripper, obviously, but Katie showed off her story-telling skills as she walked us through each murder - sometimes literally through the former crime scene.
Strawberry Tour Guides obviously do their research - again, can't say enough nice things about both tours we took with them, and the discounted meal we had with Katie was some of the best food we had while we were in London (it's tied for first with a meal we had later in the week - coming up soon).
The next day we saw an anticlimactic changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace - they were in blue coats, not red! But apparently a member of the royal family was home at the time, so who knows? Maybe I was just a few hundred feet away from the Queen.
The highlight of the changing of the guard was when this policeman came over and invited us all to pat his horse. Softest. Horse. Ever.
Then, we managed to get cheap tickets to see...
It was my first time seeing Wicked, even though I knew at least half of the songs already since it had been wickedly popular in high school (see what I did there?). It was really good, and definitely worth it considering we got a huge discount for buying last minute tickets. The website we used to get discount tickets was advertised all over the tube for a lot of different plays and musicals - sadly, nothing for Cursed Child, although we did stumble upon the theater while we were looking for antique/secondhand book shops.
The next day we took ourselves on our own walking tour....
And then I got to meet up with an old friend from Sevilla who lives in London, which was great. We went to our 3rd Wetherspoon's of the week with her and her boyfriend and spent a good 4-5 hours catching up.
This Wetherspoon's was much fancier than the previous two we'd been in - just look at the statue in the bathroom!
Friday, we made it to Soho, where we had a traditional English Breakfast (at 2pm) in The Breakfast Club, walked around the British History museum, and then went to a few pubs to finish off the week.
Saturday we had our best meal of the week (in my opinion). We headed back to Brick Lane, which we had already seen under cover of darkness during the Jack the Ripper tour. This time, the markets were open and the neighborhood was much livelier. Out of an old reconverted World War 2 ambulance, we had buttermilk fried chicken, french fries, and a combination of homemade sauces.
Oh. My. Gosh. Check out Mother Clucker if you're ever in the Brick Lane area for lunch, because this was so good. Normally, you can dump hot sauce on anything and I'll be happy, but this was just out of this world. They have a couple of locations around London, including a stand at Camden Market, so this is not something to miss.
That ended up being the last thing I took a picture of in London - and that's probably a good thing, because how could I top that?!
We could not have had a better week, but it was just as painful to leave at the end of our stay as it was to get up at 4:30AM on Sunday for our flight.
See you next time, London!
Tuesday 22 November 2016
London!!! Part 1
3 weeks ago, I fell in love with a city called London. If it weren't for that pesky thing called citizenship, I would have absolutely no problem picking up and moving to London after graduation.
The neighborhoods are interesting and diverse, the people were kind (even to tourists?! What kind of alternate universe--), the public transportation was easy to navigate, and the whole city was surprisingly cheaper than I thought it would be.
(I mean, just look how happy we were to be getting on a Ryanair flight to London! No one is ever that happy boarding a Ryanair plane.) (Also, I am holding a to do list. I am that kind of traveller.)
So here is London, Part 1.
We arrived late Saturday night to Waterloo Station, where a friend of one of the girls I was traveling with met us and got us onto the tube and out to our Airbnb.
Sunday we were up early for our first walking tour of the week! Can you guess what the theme was? Really, I'll give you a second to think. Have an idea?
It's a no-brainer really; we took a walking tour of Harry Potter landmarks in London. We met at King's Cross station - fun fact, in the movies they filmed the facade of St. Pancras station, which is right next door, and which is also where we went first by accident because, hey, we recognize that place!
Our Sunday morning tour was with a company called Get Your Guide, and to be honest it wasn't my cup of tea. The guide was enthusiastic but obviously not a Harry Potter fan, which was a huge disappointment.
Hey, maybe that's what I'll move to London to do...give Harry Potter tours. ;)
The tour ended right outside of Shakespeare's Globe theater, so we hopped inside to the gift shop (sadly, there were no cheap tickets for sale at this point in the season) and then headed to Starbucks to strategize the rest of the day. I have never been so happy to be in a Starbucks where they speak a language which includes the phrase "Skinny Vanilla Latte." #basic
We spent the rest of Sunday at Camden Market, which was eclectic and cool and had some amazing Chinese food. It was also the only place in London I got carded for a beer - so what's up, Camden Market?
Monday morning we took a walk around the neighborhood we were staying in (or should I say, neighbourhood?) and went shopping. Please contain your excitement - I bought socks, a travel pillow, and a jacket. Really exciting stuff.
Monday afternoon I had to race back to the Airbnb for a co-op Skype interview with a company in New York City - didn't end up getting offered the position, so that'll teach me to schedule an interview at 9:30am EST on a Monday. (Only kidding! Real co-op news coming soon...I hope!)
After that, we had a very important visit to make just North of London at Leavesden Studios.
Can you guess what film lot we were visiting? Really, I'll give you a moment to think. It's not hard if you know me at all.
We, by some stroke of luck, managed to get last minute tickets to see The Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour. All the tickets for our visit had been sold out weeks in advance - yes I cried real tears when I found out - but we hung in there, kept checking the website, and managed to snag three returned tickets for that Monday. What better way to spend Halloween night?
The neighborhoods are interesting and diverse, the people were kind (even to tourists?! What kind of alternate universe--), the public transportation was easy to navigate, and the whole city was surprisingly cheaper than I thought it would be.
So here is London, Part 1.
We arrived late Saturday night to Waterloo Station, where a friend of one of the girls I was traveling with met us and got us onto the tube and out to our Airbnb.
Sunday we were up early for our first walking tour of the week! Can you guess what the theme was? Really, I'll give you a second to think. Have an idea?
It's a no-brainer really; we took a walking tour of Harry Potter landmarks in London. We met at King's Cross station - fun fact, in the movies they filmed the facade of St. Pancras station, which is right next door, and which is also where we went first by accident because, hey, we recognize that place!
Our Sunday morning tour was with a company called Get Your Guide, and to be honest it wasn't my cup of tea. The guide was enthusiastic but obviously not a Harry Potter fan, which was a huge disappointment.
Hey, maybe that's what I'll move to London to do...give Harry Potter tours. ;)
The tour ended right outside of Shakespeare's Globe theater, so we hopped inside to the gift shop (sadly, there were no cheap tickets for sale at this point in the season) and then headed to Starbucks to strategize the rest of the day. I have never been so happy to be in a Starbucks where they speak a language which includes the phrase "Skinny Vanilla Latte." #basic
We spent the rest of Sunday at Camden Market, which was eclectic and cool and had some amazing Chinese food. It was also the only place in London I got carded for a beer - so what's up, Camden Market?
Monday morning we took a walk around the neighborhood we were staying in (or should I say, neighbourhood?) and went shopping. Please contain your excitement - I bought socks, a travel pillow, and a jacket. Really exciting stuff.
Monday afternoon I had to race back to the Airbnb for a co-op Skype interview with a company in New York City - didn't end up getting offered the position, so that'll teach me to schedule an interview at 9:30am EST on a Monday. (Only kidding! Real co-op news coming soon...I hope!)
After that, we had a very important visit to make just North of London at Leavesden Studios.
Can you guess what film lot we were visiting? Really, I'll give you a moment to think. It's not hard if you know me at all.
We, by some stroke of luck, managed to get last minute tickets to see The Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour. All the tickets for our visit had been sold out weeks in advance - yes I cried real tears when I found out - but we hung in there, kept checking the website, and managed to snag three returned tickets for that Monday. What better way to spend Halloween night?
#byemuggles
I usually travel solo, so not a lot of people know my traveling quirks - but one of them is that I like to have an ice cream cone whenever I'm on vacation. I don't know why, and I don't know how I started that tradition, but it's something that I look for whenever I'm traveling. And luckily, we were able to have Butterbeer ice cream at the Studio Tour. It was amazing - I highly, highly recommend it.
Tuesday, we took our second of three walking tours. Can you guess what the theme of this tour was? (Are you sensing a pattern yet?)
I won't even make you guess this time - it was a Harry Potter walking tour. Why, you might ask, would you take two Harry Potter walking tours in the same city? Well, I will answer, because these tours were very different, and one was free. We all know what a sacred word that is for college students.
This tour, which was the free tour, I recommend 500%. I could not say enough good things about this tour. The guide was super nice, very knowledgeable about the subject matter, and very good at her job. So, shout out to Katie at Strawberry Tours - we had a great time!
You're all probably sick of reading about Harry Potter at this point, so here's where I'll finish (and we won't talk about it again, I solemnly swear).
Our tour guide stopped us in Trafalgar Square, where they held the premiere for the final Harry Potter film five and a half years ago. I remember watching the red carpet interviews and speeches given at the premiere, live, online on the film studio's website. I was 16, nearly 17, headed swiftly toward adulthood but still stuck in High school drafting essays for College applications.
JK Rowling ended her premiere speech with this quote, which is hung at the end of the Harry Potter Studio Tour:
And that is a very fitting sentiment, considering 5 and a half years later I've just been to the theater to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Okay, we're finished with Harry Potter! I promise. We crammed everything Potter-related into the first few days so we could get it out of our systems. And also so we could orient ourselves to the city by taking walking tours! It's amazing how easy it is to get around London.
When we got back from the studio tour we made our first trip to Wetherspoon's, a chain of pubs in London. There are something like 11 of them with various atmospheres all over the city, and (surprise) we ended up going to 3.
This one was called The Masque Haunt, and it was our first - but not our greatest- experience with fish and chips while we were there. .
For the rest, and some other food related adventures, you'll have to wait for Part 2.
Thanks for reading!
Wednesday 16 November 2016
Chez le Médecin
But for today, I thought I would talk about something that I was hoping NOT to have to do while I was here; go to the doctor.
I got sick back in October after my trip to Barcelona where we stayed in a 10 bed hostel room that cost 8euro a night (not my choice, guys!). But at least I came home with a cold and not bed bugs, am I right?
I'm right.
After that first week of being really sick, I started to get better. And, as usual, I had a lingering cough that wouldn't go away. For the past month I've had the same cold off and on - it gets better, then it gets worse, but the cough always remains. Always.
So finally after waking myself up 3 times last night because I was coughing in my sleep (sorry, roommate) I decided to see a French doctor.
I already had an advantage over most sick, struggling Americans in France because I didn't have to do any research on doctors in Aix or make my own appointment - CEA, my study abroad program, did that all for me. I was told to show up at 2pm and ask for Dr. Somny, and that's what I did.
Pro-tip: You don't need to show up early for a doctor's appointment here because there's no waiting room paperwork to fill out, even if you're a first time client. Also, the doctor is likely to be either running late with a previous client or (as in my case) returning late from a 2 and a half hour lunch break. I know, right?
I didn't have to wait too long though; by 2:15 she was ready to see me. She took my name, my birth date, and my email address. Then, we talked symptoms. I had already made sure (thanks google) that I knew how to describe all of my symptoms, but luckily she asked a lot of leading questions so I didn't have to rely on my own memory very much. There was also a lot of miming and charades-playing until she realized that I understood everything that she was saying.
We did the usual heart rate and blood pressure - interestingly enough, it's a bit opposite of how they do things in the US. At my GP in the US they take your blood pressure by machine, and your heart rate manually. Here the doctor used a little finger-clip machine to take my heart rate and did the blood pressure cuff manually. I'm not sure why that stood out to me, but it did.
Finally, she listened to my lungs since my main complaint was the ever present cough.
Afterward, she explained to me (still in French, mind you) what she thought was wrong, and what she didn't think was wrong - probably to ease my Web-MDing mind (do I have lung cancer? No).
Then, she started to write me some scripts and she suggested three things: 1, a simple nasal spray to be picked up at the pharmacy. 2, a blood test to rule out anything serious. 3, a chest X-ray to rule out anything even more serious.
Here, I paused. She asked if I needed her to repeat what she'd said, if I was confused.
No, I said...But I knew I had to pay for everything up front before I could submit claims to my insurance company for reimbursement, and I wasn't sure if I could afford a chest X-ray out of pocket. In the US, you could be paying anywhere upwards of $300 for something like that.
Quickly, she said, "Oh no! French medicine is cheap! Don't worry. It will probably be 15, 20 euro."
15 or 20 euro for a chest X-ray without insurance?! As if I needed another reason to move to Europe, sign me up!
In reality, it ended up being 35euro, and since I've lived this long and had this problem before without getting a chest X ray, I opted out of that. She agreed, it was just precautionary.
So she wrote out two scripts, one for the medicine and one for the blood test. (Side note, it took me three tries to spell medicine correctly in English - the curse of learning a second language.)
Then, another interesting thing I noted was that you pay the doctor directly in the exam room, rather than paying at the reception desk. In the US, I can't imagine doing this - American doctors would probably think that 1) they're above that task and 2) it would be a waste of their time. Although, maybe this is why French doctors are always running behind.
I left the doctor's office and went straight to the lab to get my blood work done, and was told that for a basic test it would be 20 euro. For a Whooping Cough test, which my doctor had suggested for some crazy reason, it would be an additional 35euro because they would have to send the blood all the way to Paris to be tested.
I'm pretty confident that I don't have Whooping Cough, so I opted out of that one, too, and paid the 20 euro for a basic test which I'm almost positive will also come back absolutely normal.
Finally, I hopped over to the pharmacy (to give you an idea - the doctor's office address is 19 Cours Mirabeau, the lab was 15 Cours Mirabeau, and the Pharmacy was in between the two) and picked up the medicine the doctor had ordered.
All in all it took less than an hour, probably around 45 minutes in total (mostly because of a language barrier at the Blood Lab - sorry I don't speak much medical French!) and all the combined costs (57euro) will be reimbursed next month by my insurance.
If I had been on my own to find a doctor and make an appointment, the process probably would have been a lot more difficult. And if I had done all the suggested tests/procedures, my bill would have been double what it was. I have a feeling that the French like to be thorough simply because everything is so cheap if you do have insurance. All in all, I found the doctor very thorough and hope to finally be on the mend once and for all.
Although, if it turns out that I'm dying based on the results of my blood work, I'll let you know.
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