On a croisière on the Seine. Caught this beautiful moment when the sun rays pushed through the clouds. It was really magical. This photo doesn’t even accurately capture half of the wonder. I have a lot more photos of the moment, but since this post is only one photo per day, I will show you the rest in my future post about the croisière.
Explored the area around Bercy with my friend, Hélène.
Road trip to Picardie. Château de Pierrefonds.
On August 24th, I visited numerous tourist sites, including Notre Dame, the Catacombs, and the Arc de Triomphe. Guess where place this photo was taken.
Cali and I threw our first apartment party here in Paris back on September 27th. Why? For a few reasons:
Thus, a 1920s themed birthday party was born. But a very informal party at the most. It was set at our apartment because we have the biggest and coolest place, obviously. And our apartment is the most accessible by public transportation.
The event was planned last minute (as in, less than a week) and just all fell together perfectly. It was simple and classy – mainly people sipping wine/champagne/beer/whiskey, etc. (moi not included) and eating chips, some lovely deviled eggs made by the lovely Cali, a scrumptious bean dip made by the scrumptious Jacqui, and tarte aux pommes for the birthday cake. Oh, and having good conversations, of course! Voilà. Just invite the right people and you’re all set. More people showed up than I expected (twice as many people), but the floor didn’t break and no one threw up (or even drank til they were drunk) so I was very happy!
I don’t have any photos from the event, so if you’d like to see some, you should definitely head over to Cali’s post. I think it’s awesome!
Cali, Jacqui, and I had a lot of time to kill before our appointment to see an apartment near Pernety, the metro station. We ended up strolling around the neighborhood countless times. This is an image of the street on which the apartment was. I loved the street (very picturesque) and almost signed the contract to rent here, but more about that in my future “apartment hunting” post.
This photo was taken while I was doing more apartment research. An uneventful day.
Finally starting my “Photo of the Day” posts. Each day, I take a photo that I think either summarizes my day or stands out the most from my day. I’m very behind so you’ll see me posting loads of photos one after another to catch up (just as I am doing with my other blog posts). Sorry! I hope you don’t mind. Without further ado, my first photo of the day from my first day on my own in Paris:
Jacqui, Cali, and I – classmates back at Brooklyn College – reunite in Paris! Our first day was spent arduously apartment-hunting.
This is a post about something I did a long while ago. On September 25. Almost a month ago. Wow. Time flies by…
I convinced my roommate, Cali, to go with me to Musée Rodin on the last day this year that it would be open at night. (This summer, Musée Rodin opened its doors until 11PM every Wednesday. But when I discovered this opportunity, there was only one Wednesday left before the museum would stop having late night hours.) On the actual day, I was a bit lazy to go and had to convince myself, but it was well worth it. We only went into the garden because we arrived past the gallery’s open hours, even at night. (I took a very, very long and late nap before going to Musée Rodin.) Also, the garden was free! So, no money spent that night. It was a very nice night.
I love going to museums at night because there is a completely different vibe than going in the daytime. It’s a lot slower, more peaceful, and a bit romantic, I must say. Going to the Rodin jardin at night was that and it was mysterious. The sculptures were illuminated by individual lights, casting shadows everywhere. I don’t know if the museum does this in the daytime as well, but that night, there were speakers hidden inside bushes playing some eerie yet mystical sounds. Weird. At one point in my walk through the garden, I was in a small field with magnificently tall trees. It was completely dark here and it felt like I was in the woods in America, in awe of mother nature and the dark.
Now get ready for an unnecessarily long photo dump:
The first few photos aren’t even of the museum. When I got to the garden at around 9PM, I fell in love with the beautiful night sky and the magnificent dome of the Hôtel des Invalides. (That is one of my favorite buildings, here in Paris.) So, I spent a good 10 minutes trying to capture the view. (Plus, I don’t love the Eiffel Tower, but there was a pretty awesome view of it from the garden. So I took a picture of that too.)
I also took photos of some of the other famous sculptures, such as the Burghers of Calais (which I personally love) and Balzac, but the photos did not come out as nicely and this stream of photos is already too long.
The magnificent dome.
The dome sneaking behind the museum.
The Eiffel Tower doin’ its thang right on the hour.
Sneaky Eiffel Tower~
The Gates of Hell, in its full glory.
One of the very cool, sculpted bushes (?) that had a speaker placed inside, with weird sounds coming out from it.
A pathway to the back of the garden. Yes, it really did look like that. Spooky and cool.
There was a runway being built behind the museum in the garden for Fashion Week. Like an extremely flowery jungle gym.
Well, that’s it for my visit. I really only went for the experience. I’ll have to go back to actually look at the art. Musée Rodin en Nocturne was cool, but I didn’t see much (other than the very well-lit sculptures in the front of the museum). At one point, in the woods-y area, there were no lights at all, but there were statues here and there. I couldn’t even make out the sculptures sometimes! It was an odd experience. There were times when I wasn’t processing what the garden looked like because the night was impairing my brain functions, or something. I could only see what was in front of me, but I couldn’t stitch together what the whole garden looked like. It was as if I were in a terrifying dream and couldn’t figure out where I was or how I got there. I wonder what I’ll feel when I see the garden again during the daytime in its full entirety.
The last few weeks before I boarded on a plane to Paris are a blur. Everything came and went so quickly and I can’t remember much of what I did, except that I watched a lot of Korean dramas and rarely left my house. One vivid memory, though, is my last-minute rush to finish packing.
PACKING:
I’m not going to give you any advice on packing because I failed miserably at that. But I can give you some warnings: PACK AHEAD OF TIME. I knew that I needed to pack early, but I still procrastinated with the excuses that:
In the end, I think it all boils down to my inner-reluctance to acknowledge that packing meant I would be leaving soon. And not just on a nice family vacation, but on a year by myself, for the first time. Those last days were dark days. Or, more accurately put, bright days. On my last two days before the flight, I packed the whole day until maybe 6-7AM, then I took a short nap and resumed packing at around 10AM. I don’t do all-nighters, so that was my sleep for the day.
Why was packing so difficult for me? Well, I have a love-hate relationship with my clothes. Some days, I love an article, but most other days, I hate. Sometimes, I love it for a long time, then grow to hate it, until one random day, I like it again. But most of the time, I dislike all of my clothes. So, I first had to distinguish between which clothes I disliked, but still thought were nice enough to bring with me to Paris. That was a difficult. And even after deciding all of that, my suitcases were still too heavy. So I had to complete the arduous task of getting rid of things that I already set my mind on bringing. After all, everything that I had chose to bring, I chose for a specific reason. Now, I had to narrow it down even more. Quite stressful, I must say. In the end, I narrowed down my clothing items and after being in Paris for two months now, I have not once felt, “I wish I brought so-and-so clothing article with me!” My wardrobe felt so huge while I was packing, but here it feels so small. Small yet sufficient.
I began packing on July 19, almost a whole month before my flight. But still, my less-admirable qualities got ahold of me and packing became a complete mess in the week before leaving.
About 2-3 weeks later, I resumed packing and got serious business done, including putting things into space-saving bags. I ended up having to take some clothes out of the space bags because I had too much.
Here’s a shot of my smaller, carry-on suitcase that I ended up not using.
I just think this is a cool photo.
My last day packing.
Everything all nicely enclosed.
After ditching the carry-on suitcase that weighed too much, I tried to decide which carry-on bag was better suited to carry all my junk.
A laundry hamper full of my final, reject clothes – clothes that I would not bring with me to France.
All my miscellaneous items waiting to be packed into my suitcase.
The joy and relief of finishing packing, just a mere 4 or 5 hours before my flight.
In the last photo, there are two quite large suitcase. The bigger one is mine and the smaller one…is also mine. I can’t help you with packing a year’s worth of stuff into one suitcase because I was fortunate enough to be going on vacation with my family before settling down in Paris. Therefore, my parents let me have one of their suitcases to carry extra things while they shared one. And it all works out because my return flight through Icelandair allows two suitcases and a carry-on. Yes!
AT THE AIRPORT:
Even after I had finished packing, I did not feel any sadness about leaving home and NYC. Maybe it was because my family was going on vacation with me for two weeks before they left me on my own that I didn’t feel sad or scared. But as my dad was driving us to the airport that last night, my sister said something about crying and then, suddenly, my eyes began to tear a bit. Yup, I was sad inside all along.
Nowadays, I am fine. I don’t feel all that homesick, but occasionally, I will remember something about home and miss it or feel nostalgic. Ah well, ’tis life. Fond memories of the past, exciting prospects for the future, happiness in the present.
