Well, I haven’t written a proper post in ages. But it’s okay. I’ve been busy. And now I’m on “vacation”, which means I have 2 weeks or so to write 2 huge papers and study for 5 exams.
Now you might not think that sounds like a lot (really? you don’t think that sounds like a lot?) but I tend to procrastinate (in fact, guess what I’m doing now!) so school work takes me forever. FOREVER. And that leads to all-nighters and stress and unhappiness. But much less so than in Brooklyn because here almost everything is at the end of the semester.
I’m in Antwerp right now, by the way! I arrived today. It’s actually ridiculous how easy it is to get here from Paris. Like around 3 hours door to door, including 2 metros and a train and the walk.
As you can probably tell from the title, I intended to write this post ages ago. My mom visited me in Paris over a month ago now! But it was a really nice time. We toured, ate at some nice restaurants with my friends, and walked around a lot. We went to the Musée d’Orsay, which was gorgeous! Aside from the stunning art (oh the Van Goghs!) the museum itself, as a former train station, is really cool. We saw the clock that was featured in Hugo, which was unexpected! Ha, it was funny, my mom and I both loved that movie so when we saw the clock we just stopped in our tracks.
We drank coffee and ate ice cream at Café de Flore, one of the famous cafes where Sartre and other philosophers supposedly spent their days.
Oh and we also went to the movies twice! We saw Amour and Argo.
Me and my friend Kat on a bridge with Hotel de Ville in the background!
So what else have I been up to? Well for starters, have a picture of my block. The first day they put up these lights I was just so happy. My neighborhood is wonderful to begin with, but with all the Christmas lights it’s just magical.
I went to a klezmer concert with a bunch of friends! It was super cool, like a klezmer-electro mix. The clarinetist was American, and is apparently really famous. My mom knew who he was, anyway (isn’t that typical). I had no idea. But they were awesome.
I went to a Shabbat weekend thing at an engineering school right outside Paris called Ecole Centrale. I literally found out about it one day before I went, found out the morning of that I could still register, and found out the address like 30 minutes before I had to leave. Haha it was awesome. After on Saturday night we all went to one of my friend’s apartments in the 13th and had a party. One of her friends came over with a guitar around 4 am and played his original songs, which were actually great. Sure, I was half asleep by that point, but it was lovely.
I went ice skating at the Grand Palais near the Champs Elysees, visited the Christmas Markets… went back to the nerdy bar a couple of times. I met some friends of friends who are super into Doctor Who and Sherlock, which was super cool. The last time we went, the waiter took us to the basement and showed us their replica of the axe Buffy uses in Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was so awesome.
