Last Train to Paris

Paris started out bitter. Like REALLY BITTER! AirFrance is a bitch!...excuse my French lol. But no, they seriously are the worst. Here's the rundown. We all booked our flight to Paris on the same night at the same time, got our confirmation pages sent to our email you know everything's cool...so we were thinking. We get to the freakin airport and everybody gets their ticket except Sam. They claimed they had no records on her reservation or information on her in the system so they sent us to the information desk. Totally messing up the vibe at this point.

This is where they told Sam she could pay 317 euros to get on our flight. Ha! Big joke right? Supposedly the airline canceled her reservations. WHY????? Who knows! Like any person in their right mind Sam chose to not pay the 317 euros and opted to find a later flight at a cheaper price. This was just the beginning of a rough day.....


I guess I can laugh about the plane ride now but at the moment I thought it was for sure that I wasn't going to make it. As soon as I get on the plane to find my seat I'm instantly pissed off. First of all, the pilot was still reading his manual as we were boarding the plane o_0. Second of all, some Asian was sitting in my window seat! There was a family of about 12 Asians that crowded the whole back of the plane -__-. Luckily I was too upset that Sam couldn't be on our flight to even fight for my seat, and so, I sat next to the one of his family members on the other side with her ratchet offspring. About 30 minutes into the flight we ran into turbulence. The turbulence we hit in Fort Lauderdale on the way over to Spain was pretty bad, but I think this one was waaay worse. I can't remember who told me this but they said "If the flight attendants are calm you have nothing to worry about. When you see them freak out then you freak out." The flight attendants were in middle of serving drinks before we hit the turbulence and after 15 minutes of it they quickly packed the cart up and was trying to head to the back. This was it! The flight attendants were freaking out!!! Lol if y'all could have seen their faces and the way the carts were shaking y'all would have been scared too. At this point I'm feeling like it was a reason why Sam didn't make it on this flight. She escaped death lol. It felt like some real  Final Destination type ish. As I'm praying I'm trying to go over in my head what the videos on the plane ((that nobody ever pays attention to)) tell you to do in case of emergencies. I couldn't remember lol. Between trying to have a conversation with God and the loudmouth  Asian lady next to me I couldn't concentrate. Eventually it ended but the plane landing was wack as usual. We almost ran off the runway lol! I didn't want to believe that it was probably the pilot's first day of work, but after all what happened it probably was.

Friends Hostel....boy oh boy

I had no idea what I was getting myself into by staying in a hostel, and no I've never seen the movie Hostel. There was rumors that it was located in the ghetto. I don't know what ghetto these people have been to but I've seen some rough ghettos lol and this was not the ghetto. I've never been to a ghetto where they hustled Marlboro cigarettes on the street corner lol. Who does that ? Anyhow, the hostel was conveniently located by the metro station so as soon as we got off the train we simply crossed the street and there it was.

The inside tricked us. It had really nice mirrors with red,black, and white decor. Sounds posh right? 

....And then we stepped foot into our room. -_____________________-  The room Crockett booked for us was a mixed gendered room with a maximum of NINE people! If felt like jail and all of our cell-mates were guys lol. 

We slept with our purses wrapped in our jackets which we used as pillows. We created a lil barricade to protect our bags too lol. Shoooooooooot....

Idk if it was the best barricade but it made us feel better lol. 

Later that night Sam met us at the hostel! I didn't think she would actually make it, but there she was in the flesh! Because we waited for her to meet us we missed J.Cole's performance at the concert. But it was cool. We made it just in time to see Drake :) 

It was bananas! They new all the words!!! 

I didn't know that Drake was such an awesome performer. The concert literally gave me chills. Real crazy. I'm so glad that I can say I went to my very first concert in Paris! It was also Drake's first concert in Paris too..guess we have something in common. He's still ugly tho. 

Something weird that I noticed was they're still pretty big on urban wear lol. I saw BabyPhat, Mecca, Avirex, Reebok ((YES REEBOK'S lmao)) and some other lame crap that we've tossed out of our closets long time ago. A good number of the guys had on NY hats too...I'm sure Kadeem could appreciate that :) lol. The French guys were verrrry sexy! All of them! If only they spoke enough English...lol. We did meet one guy who spoke really good English and we asked him where did he learn to speak it. He said from movies and Michael Jackson lmao! 

Guess America gets 1 point for that! lol

Now on to the good stuff..the tourist-y stuff that everybody comes to Paris to see!

First up: Musee du Louvre

  And yes Monalisa was even nice enough to pose with me :) 

 If you squint really hard you can see her lol. 

Then we hit up Notre Dame

 I had no idea that it was a Cathedral. Learned something new. 

 After climbing 200 steps to the top of the towers this was our view. You can see the Eiffel Tower in a distance if you're not tired of squinting lol. 

1/20 bells that survived the French Revolutionary War. Can you believe it took 16 men to operate this 1 bell??

 I still think gargoyles come alive at night time. Blame cartoons.

 We even got to see a portion of mass. That thing that he's swinging around was producing this awful smell. I was happy when he passed me lol. I think it's kind of weird that they conduct ceremonies while tourist are still in the building taking pictures and video recording. It was an experience. 

After that we caught the train to Arc de Triomphe

 

And we ended the night with a ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower :) 

Good times. Good times. 

The next morning we caught the train to airport. We literally caught the train everrrywhere that weekend. But on this day we earned our stripes! We finally completed our rite of passage. We hopped ALL the gates to catch the train like all the other Parisians! The adrenaline rush had me feeling real bad ass! Ahh I loved it! A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Even though our trip started out horrible the ending was amazing. I really liked the fact that we didn't stay in a tourist hot spot. I got the opportunity to truly engage with the local people of France. I got to experience the really good side of Paris and I got to experience the "not so" good side of Paris. Lots of stereotypes broken down. I thought the French hated Americans. They loved us!!! Every time we spoke somebody was asking "Where are you from??" *French accent* followed by "Ahh..an American girl :)" I felt the love in Paris and I definitely plan to go back! 

Estados Unidos ≠ España

Alrighty. Before I began to get into this I would just like to point out that neither country is superior to the other. They each have different cultural practices and as I learn more about Spain, I am able to examine and realize things about my own country more & more. It's going to be hard for me to write this & not sound like I think America is screwed up but don't mind that. Just pay attention to the differences. 

One of the biggest things I've noticed is that Spaniards value their family, relaxation, & socialization time a little more than we do. Ok maybe it's not fair to say more than we do. Maybe we just show it in different ways. But then again......idk. For example, every Sunday here is family day. Our study center is located in front of what they call the Riverbed. It's an old dried up river with fountains, playgrounds, soccer fields, and I see they even have a traveling circus there now lol. This place basically has everything. People exercise, walk their dogs, and go on dates there. Very romantic. Now back to what I was saying. On Sundays this place is filled with families and strollers lol. Hmm..now that I think about it whenever I have seen a family it has always included a mom AND a dad. Muy bueno! The city just seems so happy on Sundays. I know in the Black community Sundays is usually the day when your mom or grandma make a big soul food meal and the whole family comes over for dinner. Besides holidays I can't really say that my family participates in this anymore. Therefore, it's always a nice treat for me to see families spending time with each other every Sunday :) 

SIESTA!

(btw, I know the guys in the pic are Mexican but I thought it was funny lol) 

Siesta means afternoon nap. I think all college kids can appreciate this. The whole country shuts down from 2pm to 5pm to take their afternoon nap and then resumes again from 6pm-9pm. Isn't that crazy?! One day Zachoria and I walked into this store and it had to be like 1:45pm. We probably spent a good 7mins looking around before the owner went upstairs, cut the music off, & grabbed her coat lol. She didn't say "Hey guys, the store is about to close for a couple of hours. If you'd like you can come back at 5pm." Nope. Nothing. She just proceeded to shut the store down as if we knew the routine lol. It could have been looked at as rude, like she was kicking us out, but in Spain I guess it's a general consensus that at 2pm you need to be in your bed lol. I think I will adopt this little practice. Next semester I'm planning all of my classes around siesta! Who's with me?!! 

Spanish people looooveee to socialize. I still haven't quite adapted to their way of socializing yet. For example, when they go out to eat they talk for 2 hours, then they order, and then they talk for 2 more hours. When I go out to eat the FIRST thing I'm doing is ordering. Y'all know it takes foreverrr for the food to come lol. I can't waste 2 hours talking when I could be eating. In America we do most of our talking waiting for the food to come and we'll maybe say a few words in between bites as we eat. I also noticed that as soon (maybe not as soon all the time) as we're done eating we talk for a few more minutes and then we ask for the bill if the waiter hasn't already brought it to us. Well here you have to ask for the bill since they expect you to stay for a lil minute. Spaniards love to talk and catch up with you doing lunch or dinner and that's fine & dandy, but it just feels weird sitting there for so long. 

While we're on the subject of food I told you guys that they're on this Mediterranean diet, right ? They eat 5 times a day, whereas we mainly focus on 3 meals a day. For breakfast  or El Desayuno which is between the hours of 7-9am they have a cup of coffee and 1 slice of toast or a croissant. This is the smallest meal of the day. 

 Now compare their breakfast to ours 

Lol BIG difference. Clearly our most important meal of the day is breakfast. Our McDonalds serve "Delux" breakfast combos. Their McDonalds have no such thing. You can only order a coffee & a doughnut. 

Next is Tapas - little Spanish meals eaten after breakfast but before lunch.

They look tasty right? Hmph! Just remember looks can be deceiving. I wasted $1.80 on 2 last week.

At around 2pm-4pm (during siesta) is La Comida also know as lunch. This consists of a 5 course meal. 

Salad...NO REGULAR dressing. Just vinegar & oil...

Paella de Valencia. All I needed to know was that it has rabbit in it. 

Sam liked the chicken..Zachoria said it wasn't seasoned. 

After your main course you order dessert. Not sure of the proper name for this but it looked the closest thing to normal so I went with it. It's basically chocolate over a waffle, and I love waffles :)

And finally your meal wouldn't be complete if you didn't end it with coffee lol. They love coffee! I'm starting to want it every 5 minutes myself. 

That's a lot of food for just lunch, but maybe that's why Americans are so obese. We eat big meals for dinner compared to eating a big meal midday giving ourselves enough time to work it off. Side note: There's an Obese Clinic downtown for fat people lmao! That's a little bizarre to me but I can't say that I've seen many people here. The ones that I do see are American..sad to say :( 

At around 5pm you have your afternoon snack, La Merienda. This mostly pertains to children who need energy to play soccer. Speaking of snacks..their cheetos taste different here. It's like healthy cheetos lol. Cheetos aren't meant to be healthy! If I'm trying to pig out then let me pig out! 

Dinner or La Cena is the hardest thing to get adjusted to. Dinner is eaten between the hours of 9pm- midnight. WTH?! At 7pm my body is ready for it's next meal but noooo I can't eat because all the restaurants are close until 9pm. I actually took a break while writing this to go and get dinner. Ha! Bust my bubble. Everything was freaking closed. I really wanted to eat at this Italian restaurant but I had to settle for Asian :( . The Los Chinos never close :( 

 Random facts: 

1. Wine is like juice in Spain. They have alcohol throughout most of the day. 

2. Spaniards walk ev.ery.where. They laugh at us because we're usually out of breath within 10mins, but I'm getting used to it. Last week we climbed 277 steps to the top of a Cathedral. I haaad to be smoking to go through with that lol. Jk jk! 

3. They all recycle! I'm glad America is getting into the swing of things. 

4. Our COKE (coca cola I mean, I don't do drugs) is waaaaay better! Ugh! I feel like it's secretly diet coke. It taste funny but Samara says Coke tastes different in different countries to go with the different spices & foods. It makes sense but I want real soda. 

5. The napkins feel like wax paper. Really weird. 

6. They take the garbage out every single day. I'm sorry, but I can't get with that. That's wasting bags.

7. Nobody here will ever end up on the "worst dressed" list lol. Everybody looks nice & they dress up for everything! The latest trend is the leggings under shorts. It's really cute. 

8. LOTTO IS BIG IN BOTH COUNTRIES 

9. THEY LOVE AMERICAN MUSIC haha #WeWin :) 

It would be a sin not to love her

 They shocked me w/ the Keri, but it's cool. I'm a huge fan

Chriiiiis! They still got love for him too lol 

I even heard "You gotta be" by Des'ree :) real crazy! 

Oh na na...

And I literally here "The Time" by Black Eyed Peas everyday lol. It's fine. I love it :)  

Culture Shock: Phase II

Culture shock is when people have difficulty adjusting to a new culture. There are four phases to this process, however, each person is affected differently. It begins with the Honeymoon phase, then the Irritation phase, next is the Adjustment stage, and then finally you reach the Mastery level. Right now I'm definitely in the irritation phase! You really begin to think "Why did I come here?" and "What was I thinking??" These last couple of days have been extremely annoying and frustrating...not to mention I'm still suffering from jet lag which causes confusion over the change of sleep when you cross the ocean by air. The language barrier (even the CHINESE people speak Spanish!), weird stares, traffic safety, nasty food, time difference, slow internet, and the fact that I can't text or tweet when I want are all taking a toll on me :( . I'm so use to having my crackberry by my side that sometimes I stop what I'm doing and look for it thinking I lost it. Then I realize that it's powered off and still packed in my suitcase lol. Lots of blonde moments lol. I did get a lil prepaid phone though and it came with 20 free text messages. Hecks yeah! But unfortunately, I can only make calls in Spain lol.

Yes. Don't roast me. I know it's pretty 20th century but I have to work with what I got lol. Yoigo is a good service I heard!

So about these weird stares. Everybody stares at us. According to Zachoria everybody looks at us like we're some type of Mob lmao! I agree to a certain extent, but I think a lot of the guys think we're really cute--which we are :). I notice sometimes as we walk past they stop in the middle of their sentence, look at us and say "muy bonita..blah blah I don't understand the rest" lol. There are a lot of Africans here too. They usually sell hats, gloves, and jewelry on the sidewalks. When they see us their faces light up! We're probably thinking the same thing "Finally I see a black person" lol. One guy yelled out "ellooo my siiistaa" one day lol. It was the funniest thing!

Traffic safety. I can't tell the road from the sidewalk. The roads in the neighborhood where we stay look like alleys so I didn't think those were streets that people drive on. Ha! Got me together real quick. I thought we drive crazy down south, nope. These people drive soooo freakin fast down this little streets it's ridiculous! I'm always paranoid because I never know when a car is just gonna bust out and hit me. There's no white lines, parallel lines, or yellow lines.

This is one of the few two way streets. Does it look like two cars can pass through here?

But then again all the cars here have hatchbacks lmao! So lame!

Poor Audi :(

Yup! Even the BMW's. 

Check this, I found this one to be hilarious!

I can't take any police serious who drives one of these! lol!

These are the only American cars I've seen so far. A Ford Focus and a Ford Mondeo. Weird. Can't say that I have ever seen a Ford Mondeo in America.

If I come back 10lbs lighter don't be surprised. The food here sucks! Everything that I have ordered up until today was disgusting and a waste of my money! If you know me then you know that I am a verrry picky eater and I don't have money to be wasting on nasty food. The first night we got here we ate at this Italian place. I thought I was in good standing. I love pasta! That was the nastiest pasta I've ever had in my life *Regina George voice* lol. It was so tasteless. We had like 5 different pastas and I didn't like not one. The program Director was like "Oh yea this place is really good! The food is so good students usually never finish it" ...I'm almost certain that I know the real reason why they never finish it. The next night Zachoria, Samara, Sam, and I call ourselves going to eat at this bar and "luckily" they had fried shrimp, or gambas romanas I should say. Everybody knows I love shrimp. That's like all I eat. When I say this was THE nastiest shrimp I've ever had.....seriously, who messes up shrimp?? 

This picture actually looks more appetizing than the one I ordered. Mine didn't have this nice golden color. No mine was white, the shrimp was still hard, and again tasteless. I just don't understand.

My latest disappointment was yesterday. I apologize for not taking a pic of it -__- I was just so mad! But here is the closest pic I found and I'll try to explain it. Let me just say I thought I was ordering a sandwich and this is what I got: 

Instead of whatever that is in the middle it was a teeny tiny piece of bread that was half the slice of the one in the picture below.

-_______- What was I suppose to do with a piece of bread half the size of my palm and 10 slices of cheese drenched in olive oil??!!! And to think I paid 7 Euros for that! I almost forgot to mention that there is no such thing as a complimentary glass of water or free refills on drinks o_O. I couldn't even sip on my drink in hopes of getting full! Just ridiculous.  

Today had to be the best day my taste buds have seen in a long time. I ate at this Asian place called Wok to Walk and it was ah-may-zing! Good food and a nice portion :) more of my style. 

The picture may look a little disgusting but I promise it was reeeeally good! 

I hope you are not bored reading this yet I'm almost done lol. I just have so much to say! But like I said before we walk everywhere we go and surprisingly my navigational skills are starting to kick in I just don't remember the names of the streets yet. A couple of days ago we got so lost isn't wasn't even funny. Being lost, not knowing the language, and not having a cell phn (this incident assured me I needed one) is theee worst. Many failed attempts at getting directions.

Me: "¿Habla Inglés?"

Them: "No." 

Me: "Great."

So I tried to get the directions anyway and was praying that would I "learned" in Spanish I in 7th grade would pay off lmao. Wrong. We never made it to where we was trying to go but we did manage to make it back to the study center in one piece. The streets/alleys in our neighborhood have weird smells. You walk 2 steps and it smells like good food...then you walk 2 more steps and it smells like shit lol. Literally. There are so many dogs that walk around and they just shit everywhere. No pooper scooper or anything. These dogs are huge too! Imagine big German Shepards, Golden Retrievers, and Dalmatians walking around. There are a few Yorkies and Chiwawas that roam the streets too and I originally thought these dogs were strays but they have owners..they just don't really use leashes or pooper scoopers. Can you believe there is like a public janitor crew that cleans all their crap up. Don't think I would want that job. 

I really hope I didn't make Valencia seem like a horrible place lol. Remember I'm just annoyed and irritated with a lot of things, however, these last 2 days have been fun. We went to a club call La Tres. I finally understand why Spanish people have house parties all night long in America. The party doesn't start until 1am! First you barhop and then you go to the club. Of course us Americanos threw in a lil pregame session before we went barhopping lol, and that's fine. 

 (not a good angle of my thigh here)

Think the alcohol had kicked in at this point lol

Wish I had pictures of us actually at the club but oh well. I ordered another drink once we got there, vodka y piña, & it was pretty good. I wore boots so my feet wouldn't hurt since we walk so much, but my freakin knees were killing me once we left! Fist pumping is tough work! lol! The dj was good and the techno music was putting me in the zone. My favorite songs of the night were:

1.Shut Up & Let Me Go- The Ting Tings! 

2.F*ck You- Cee-Lo

3.The Time- Black Eyed Peas (may be the theme song of this trip)

Download these and tell me what you think!