It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Wanderlust

AH....I really am bad at updating this thing. It's been a month since I last wrote mostly because the last month has been a little heavy in terms of school work, and quite light in terms of new and interesting things to blog about. This is the second to last week of classes before the Christmas break, and to be quite honest, the break can't come fast enough. It snowed for the first time today (or at least it was the first snow that I've witnessed in Paris), and for the first time in three months, I felt a little nostalgic for home...I'm still loving Paris, but the constant grey and drizzle really isn't nearly as pleasant as the fluffy snow back home. Since I'm not going home for the holidays, the hour of wet snow that we received this afternoon is probably the best I'm going to get.

Speaking of the holidays, I haven't left Paris since arriving in September, and I'm definitely beginning to feel the wanderlust creep up. In order to satisfy my need to travel, I'm heading to Strasbourg in the East of France (right on the border with Germany, and the seat of the European Parliament) for three days this weekend, and then in exactly a week from tomorrow I'm jetting off to Morocco for three weeks! This will be my first foray into Africa, so I'm super pumped about it. Mint tea, camel rides, and 5AM calls to prayer, here I come! The decision to go to Morocco was a bit of a last minute thing, because I had been planning on going to Egypt for the break, however Morocco turns out to be much more budget friendly at this time of the year (I'm probably going to hit Egypt in February). So for the moment, I haven't done any planning for Morocco, except that I know that I'm flying in and out of Marrakech, and I've booked my first night's accommodations....other than that, it's all a little up in the air, which is both refreshing and terrifying. Mostly, I'm just excited to hit the road, and to see a little bit more of the world...

On a final note, the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight: I have an appointment for my mandatory medical check next Tuesday, and hopefully in exactly one week from today, I will FINALLY have my residency permit!!!  Once that card is in my hands, I will be able to work (legally), apply for student housing assistance (more paperwork, but SO worth it), and leave the country and re-enter at will. If this is not a cause for celebration, I don't know what is.

French Multiculturalism

There was an interesting article in the New York Times today about what Obama's presidency has meant for Europe, with regards to Europe's own race issues. Before moving to Paris I never thought of France (or Europe more generally)  as being a particularly multiethnic society, and had never considered multiculturalism outside of a Canadian/North American context. I think that after having been born and raised in a country that prides itself for its official multicultural policies and celebrates diversity (the so-called 'Canadian mosaic' as opposed to the 'American melting pot'), the French version of multiculturalism is a bit of a shock to the system (I'm tempted to call it the "French Bleached Canvas"). France is officially secular and colour-blind, meaning that it that there are no official records or statistics available on the ethnic or religious composition of the population; however, if Paris' metro system is any indication, France is a surprisingly diverse country, thanks, no doubt, in large part to a colonial history that involved every region of the world except South America. (That being said, I suspect that Paris, being a metropolitan centre, might be more the exception than the norm, because when I lived in central France in high school in a smaller town, I was definitely the only person of colour within a fifty mile radius.) The issues of ethnic and religious differences have been hotly debated in the last few years, especially since the riots in the suburbs of Paris back in 2005 and the controversy over religious symbols in public schools (including the burka/hijab/niqab, kippa, 'large' crosses, etc.), and there is currently a national debate on whether or not France should adopt some sort of affirmative action program to help overcome the structural and systemic racism that is holding minorities back from integrating into mainstream French society. I'm by no means an expert on the topic, but as a casual observer of French race policies (or lack thereof), I do think that a policy that deliberately ignores ethnic and religious diversity is problematic, as it doesn't permit policy makers to address the community specific needs of different groups; furthermore, by not allowing people to openly practise their faith or cultural traditions (within reasonable limits, which is of course a contested idea), there's a serious risk of creating taboos and more cross-cultural misunderstandings that simply increase hostility and polarization. Anyhow, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, and I recognize the problems of and weaknesses of the Canadian brand of multiculturalism, but I really question if France's version of multiculturalism is a functional model for the 21st century. 

The first half of this week are reading days at Sciences Po, so there are no classes, and most foreign students have fled Paris, and are either at home (if they're European) or have gone to explore other parts of the country or continent. I, however, am still in Paris. I had plans to hit Barcelona for the five days that I had off, but after considering some of the stickiness that remains regarding my paperwork, and work obligations, I decided to stick around Paris. There are worse places in the world than Paris to be "stuck". 

Today being a rare sunny autumn afternoon in Paris, I took the opportunity to take a stroll around Montmartre and to visit some of its most famous sites. First stop was the Basilic Sacre Coeur, one of Paris’ most famous attractions. It’s a beautiful Byzantine, white onion-domed structure, and has what is arguable the best view of Paris, as it sits atop Paris’ highest hill. Seeing as I’ve already visited the basilica before on my first backpacking trip across Europe when I finished high school in 2003, I didn’t bother to hang around with the hordes of tourists for long. Instead, I decided to check out some of the lesser-known sites of Montmartre, and wound up stumbling on a couple of gems that probably never make it into Lonely Planet. The most interesting site of the afternoon was St. Pierre de Montmartre, a church that’s located just a few minutes walk from Sacre Coeur but has very few tourists. According to the very helpful “Paris historique” sign posted outside the church, St. Pierre de Montmartre has been around since well before the year 1000, having been built on an ancient Roman temple (if I’m remembering correctly, it was a temple for Mars) and is one of the oldest religious buildings in Paris (the oldest being l’eglise St. Germain), but it was abandoned during the French Revolution, and was pretty much in ruins before a “radical restoration” at the end of the 19^th century. Compared to the blinged out interior of Sacre Coeur, St. Pierre’s architecture seems a little Spartan, however its stained glassed windows are really special. I’ve never seen windows like them, they look like they belong to the cubist school (which makes sense because the windows were done in the first half of the 20th century), and look like they could have come straight out of a gothic Tim Burton movie. The windows tell the story of St. Pierre (a.k.a. St. Peter, the rock upon which the Catholic Church was built), including walking on water, betraying Jesus, and redemption.

Walking on water; notice the feet!

I’ve been told that people embarking on major tours of the churches of Europe should make it a point to brush up on their Biblical knowledge beforehand if they want to be able to truly appreciate the beauty and significance of the buildings, just as tourists of Greek and Roman ruins should familiarize themselves with classical mythology. I am not particularly well-versed in Biblical passages, but can remember enough from the days when I attended Mass on a regular basis to recognize the major events that normally make it into church décor (mostly the major events of the Gospels), but I often find myself wondering how non-Christian tourists view churches, especially those who are unfamiliar with the stories of the Bible.

            There are so many clichés about Paris that I’m trying to resist falling victim of, but I’ve become a big fan of the café scene. There really is something irresistible about sitting in a café for a couple of hours, just reading the paper/a book and watching life both inside the café and outside on the streets, preferably with either a café crème or a vin chaud in your hand. Given the over abundance of cafes in Paris, I’m puzzled by the fact that every Starbucks I pass by is always packed beyond belief. Before I started working at a Parisian Starbucks, I figured that most people inside Starbucks were tourists who were probably looking for a little taste of home, but to my great surprise (and a bit of dismay), 75% of the customers appear to be French! I’m not knocking Starbucks, but I always thought that French people probably felt a similar disdain for Starbucks that they express for MacDonald’s. I’m still exploring the café options, but I’ve already got a couple of favourites where I’ve become a regular. They are the rare Parisian cafés that manage to combine a good location (in terms of both convenience and the view that they afford), friendly service (sometimes a rarity in Paris), free wifi (although they lose points if the signal is too weak, or if the café doesn’t have enough electrical outlets for plugging in laptops), a good looking clientele (it’s nice to think to yourself that if you’re a client there, you're good looking by association) and reasonably priced food and drink (once again, somewhat of a rare find in this city). I’m not going to name them here (I’ve got to be selfish and protect these jewels!), but if you come and visit me here, I’ll definitely show you how to find them. 

Waiting on California

One of the frustrating things about being six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time is that exciting news that comes out of North American happens in the middle of the night in Paris. Case in point: election results, both Canadian and American. Now granted, the Canadian election wasn't much of a nail biter, so I had no problem waiting until the next morning to "find out" what we already knew would happen, but the 2008 American presidential election was one of those rare political events where you just have to hear the results live, and hear it with the rest of the world. In order to do this, it requires staying up until 5AM, when the polls in California close, and the results were made official. If you wanted to hear Obama's victory speech, you weren't going to bed until well after 6AM, which for some students at Sciences Po is less than 2 hours before their first morning lecture. Now the logical French person may have decided to simply go to bed early and wake up when the polls in California closed, however we, we being less than logical foreign exchange students, decided that it would be better to stay up all night, watching satellite television in one of the few places in Paris that had been authorized to stay open all night in order to broadcast the results live. Unfortunately, half of Paris had the same plan, which made for an extremely crowded and disorganized night. 

Elsewhere, it's definitely late autumn in Paris. Sunny days are far and few between, and night time temperatures hover around the freezing mark. It's on cold nights like tonight that I find myself dreaming about central heating. France may have better wine and cheese, prettier buildings, a more glorious history (well, that might be debatable, depending on who you ask), a greater appreciation for the arts, and a grander intellectual tradition, but it certainly has a thing or two to learn from the True North when it comes to heating its buildings. In Canada, most homes and buildings are toasty warm thanks to a little miracle called central heating; in France, most homes and buildings are damp, drafty and freezing because heating comes primarily from antiquated radiators which I suspect suck all of the warmth out of the room. 

Christmas in October

People in North America often complain about stores beginning to roll out the Christmas merchandise and music in early November; at Starbucks, we used to start playing Christmas music within a couple of days after Halloween, and we would always have customers make a stink about it. I've personally never had a problem with a long holiday season in stores, (although I do find it to be in somewhat bad taste to start aggressive holiday campaigns before Remembrance Day (Nov. 11)), however, since early October, my local Monoprix has looked like Santa Claus has thrown up all over it, which even I think is ridiculous. I guess since Thanksgiving and Halloween are strictly North American holidays (and merchandising bonanzas), there's really nothing in the French calendar that can be turned into a commercial holiday. 

I'm all settled into my Parisian home, although I've been having some serious problems working the washing machine. As a result, I've managed to dye all of my underwear and white clothes a not-so-attractive shade of blue. For a girl who came to Paris with not too many shirts, most of which were originally white or a variation of white, this has been a problem. Given the wild fluctuations in the Euro-CAD exchange rate lately, shopping to replace my wardrobe is not really an option, so I've had to resort to creative layering to try to hide the weird blue stains all over my shirts. Luckily, I should be starting work at Starbucks this week (I have an 'interview' this Thursday, but it's really just a session for the store manager to make sure that my paperwork to work in France is all in order), and will then soon be able to hit the Parisian shops and piece together a brand new winter wardrobe worthy of the streets of Paris. 

Speaking of paperwork, I've been here for just under two months now, and I'm just finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of filing away my paperwork. I've got a bank account, a student number, a student card, a social security number, personal liability insurance, and applications in the works for my long-stay visa and student housing allowance. Let it be known that there is a ridiculous amount of paperwork involved when one wants to spend any length of time living in France. It took me an extra-long time to get my carte de séjour stuff sorted out because there were problems with my birth certificate that required making an appointment at the Canadian embassy to get an attestation de naissance  before i could proceed with my application. FYI for any Ontario-born Canadians looking to get anything done in France, make sure you have a copy of the long-form of your birth certificate with both of your parents' names on it, otherwise you too will have to get friendly with the embassy staff.

I've not been very good about updating this blog. I've been finding it a little/lot harder to write this time around (compared to my last blogging experience during my Summer '07 trip), perhaps because my days are not filled with exciting, one of a kind experiences, but instead involve the mundanities of daily life, such as going to school, reading, grocery shopping, etc... things that I feel most people wouldn't be so interested in reading about. That being said, life in Paris is definitely blog-worthy, and I will start to make the effort to write about it more often.

For those of you who aren't aware, there's a Canadian federal election coming up in exactly one week. Technically, the voting procedure for Canadians overseas is a relatively simple one: you send in a form requesting a ballot, the government sends one, and you mail it back to Ottawa in time for election day. I faxed in my request form nearly three weeks ago and have not yet received my ballot, and I'm beginning to get a little antsy, given that my filled in ballot needs to be back in Ottawa in exactly one week, and I have zero faith in Canada Post (I swear, somewhere in the head office of Canada Post, there is a box full of mail that I've sent over the years that just never made it to its final destination). At first I thought that maybe the postman was witholding my mail (since I've actually been having a hard time getting my mail since moving into my new home), but I've spoken with a bunch of other Canadians who have also not yet received their ballots. There was a rumour floating around that we'd be able to just cast a vote at the embassy, but that did in fact turn out to be a rumour. I'm just a little ticked off, especially since I'm meant to be throwing a Canadian Election Party(!) next week, and it seems a little ridiculous that the organizer of such an event didn't even vote!

In other news, I've been in Paris for just over a month now, and to be honest, life here is a lot like life in Toronto: I wake up, brush my teeth, go to school, blah blah blah...the only thing that is remarkably different is that I've begun to shower in the morning instead of at night (this is a big change for a girl who has ALWAYS been a night time bather) and I tend to wear high heels a lot more here than I do at home.

Speaking of high heels, Paris fashion week (pret à porter for spring 2009) just ended. I didn't get to do as much fashion stalking as I had hoped to, but I did manage to convince a friend to come with me to the Tuileries for an afternoon to skulk around the tent where the Christian Lacroix show was taking place. While we didn't actually see anything inside of the tent, we did spot a number of très fashionable people wearing crazy high heels (photos to come), some very skinny girls (we assumed they were models or wannabe models), and some very well dressed security guards.

Picnic in the Park

Today I met up with a few of my classmates for an afternoon picnic in the parc des buttes Chaumont. The weather in Paris has been really nice over the last week (unlike the first week that I arrived and it rained every day), so it was a pretty ideal day for a day in the park. If someone were to listen in to the conversations that we were having, they would have probably thought that we were crazy, as the language kept jumping from English, French, and German.

While there, we were sitting not too far from a group of men who were having what appeared to be a stag party for one of their members. We had the pleasure of watching the poor guy get the worst makeup job I've ever seen, and forced into black stockings, a nun's habit, and handed a copy of the Bible, and a leather whip. It was quite a spectacle, although I'm pretty sure that if I were a parent, I would have covered my child's eyes. In any case, the man-nun actually seemed to be having a pretty good time (there was undoubtedly a good amount of alcohol involved), and he even asked to have his photo take with us, although he insisted that it be an all female shot.

Overall, things are going well in Paris... except for the petit problème that my computer repairman has just informed me that he can't repair my laptop...

Public Flogging or Intellectual Exercise?

I have been warned many times before that Sciences Po employs what one might be tempted to call a 'Socratic' method of teaching. Apparently this method involves professors tearing students down and then seeing them rise from the ashes and achieve intellectual brilliance. I'm not so sure I like this method, as I experienced it firsthand this morning. We had our first round of oral presentations in my methodology class today, and every presentation ended (my own included) with the professor inviting the class to tell the presenter what he or she did poorly, and then the professor systematically listing off all of the errors that the presenter had made. There's not a whole lot of stock placed in positive reinforcement, so I'm pretty sure that there were a number of wounded egos that walked out of the classroom. It's not clear if these presentations are meant to be an intellectual exercise or a public flogging session...oh well, I suppose that we can all look forward to the day that we rise from the ashes, and we'll be intellectual warriors at the end.

Elsewhere, la vie continues to be très belle, although it would be nice if the laptop repairman would actually repair my laptop rather than telling me ''il y a un tout petit problème...''.

How to Fix a Laptop in France

I've been in Paris for a week now, and so far things have been mostly great. I say mostly great because while almost everything has been going as smoothly as I could have wanted, my laptop decided to die the day after I arrived in Paris, and I had to take it into a shop to get repaired. I've never had to get any electronic device repaired before, but I always imagined that it would be a fairly straight forward procedure: you take the broken electronic to a shop, they fix it, you pay them for their services and you leave with a newly functioning device. Maybe this is how it works in Canada (although perhaps not), but certainly not here in Paris. The problem is fairly straightforward: my hard drive needed to be replaced, and Windows XP needed to be reinstalled; simple, no? I left my laptop at the repair shop on Monday, with the promise that it would be ready to be picked up on Tuesday, however, everyday since Tuesday I've been told that it would take another 24 hours for such and such a reason...finally, today the repairman PROMISED me that it will be ready tomorrow, but I'm definitely not holding my breath. Oh well,I'm not going to complain, because as I've said, otherwise everything has been great.

Orientation began on Monday, and I have two preparatory classes for the next two weeks in order to prepare international students for their studies at Sciences Po: methodology and French language classes. I won't bore you with the details of the classes, but suffice it to say that the Sciences Po methodology classes are pretty intense. I enrolled in my fall semester classes on Wednesday, which turned out to be a bit of a disaster, and I wound up having to take classes such as 'French Intellectuals in the Public Space', and 'Enjeux politiques'...while I'm sure that they'll be interesting enough, these are definitely not the classes I would have chosen.

There's really not too much to say right now (This post is going to have to be on the short side since I'm not working on my laptop , and the keys on this french keyboard are in all the wrong places!), however one last mildly exciting tidbit is that I saw the Pope's motorcade this afternoon! I was sitting with some classmates at a sidewalk cafe on St. Germain des Près (right up the street from Sciences Po) for an afternoon drink, when suddenly the streets were all blockaded, and dozens of police officers were prowling the streets, a helicopter was hovering up above, and then the motorcade zoomed right past us. We were blessed with the Pope's exhaust! No Popemobile today, just motorcyles and black cars with tinted windows. Apparently he's in town for the weekend, and is giving a huge speech at Les invalides tomorrow afternoon; a few of us are thinking of going to try to see him, if only for the experience, and to be able to say that we saw the Pope in Paris.

Greetings from Paris! I've been here since last Thursday morning, but it still doesn't seem real that I'm here for an entire year. Since arriving, the only thing that has been on my mind has been finding a permanent place to live. I was seriously stressing about not having a permanent address, and so the last few days have been spent doing nothing but apartment hunting and worrying about being homeless. Thankfully, yesterday afternoon I got an e-mail from a woman who had interviewed me on Friday, offering me a room in her flat, and I am now happy to announce that I have a home for the next nine or ten months. I'm going to be living in a four bedroom apartment with a lady named Beatrice, and her two kids who are only there two nights a week (they spend the rest of the time at their dad's), located in the 19e. Now, originally I had been hesitant about this particular place because I had wanted to live with people who are a little closer to me in age and spirit, but after having spent a couple of days looking at some real dumps/apartments, I was feeling pretty discouraged and the anxiety was beginning to set in. Besides, the room that I'm getting is the nicest room I saw (it has a fireplace!), in the cleanest apartment i saw, AND comes with a fully stocked kitchen AND an in house washing machine (rare for Paris). The only downer about the place is that it's definitely not walking distance to my school, and the location is a little out of the way. That being said, I am supremely relieved to have found housing, and am now ready to relax a little and enjoy Paris before classes begin in three weeks.

On one final note, although it's been five years since I was last in Europe, it's nice to see that some things never change: it seems that Parisian couples just can't seem to keep their hands off of each other, and everywhere you turn there are people practically falling over each other in the streets and walking into oncoming traffic, passionately engaged in the art of tasting each others throats.

Packing Up, Moving Out and On

Where has the summer gone?? I feel like the last six weeks since I first posted have gone by at an alarming rate. So much as happened since Bastille Day (July 14th for you non-francophiles, and the date of my inaugural post): I finished my my last class ever at UofT, I went on a three week trip to Asia, I've been wading through the mountain of paperwork and necessary appointments required to move to France (after scrambling to get my paperwork together, I got my student visa last week!), and I've finally begun packing up my apartment, cancelling services, giving most of my furniture and household items away, and making moving arrangements. Exactly one week from this time tomorrow, I'll be sitting at a gate at Pearson International Airport waiting to board my flight bound for Paris via Dusseldorf. I can definitely feel my stress levels beginning to spike, but I'm trying my best to stay cool under pressure. I'm not going to lie, a large part of my time has been preoccupied with trying to decide how many pairs of shoes and how many books I can get away with bringing, without being ridiculous...



Once I arrive in Paris, my number one priority is finding a place to live from October until June/July of next year. As of now, I have a room at a student housing complex for the month of September, but nothing set October 1st. I've been scoring the online ads, and so far I've emailed a lot of people, some of which seem kind of promising. I've set up a viewing appointment for the day that I arrive, but I'm definitely going to be conducting an intensive housing search once I get there. Housing in Paris is super expensive, but luckily the French government subsidizes student rent, which should take some of the financial pressure off.



Speaking of financial pressure, my second priority is to find a job as quickly as possible. Government subsidies aside, the euro-CAD exchange rate is pretty terrible now (currently, the exchange rate floats somewhere between 1EURO=1.55-163 CAD; just to give you an idea of how much the Euro has appreciated in value, when I backpacked around Europe five years ago, the exchange rate was something closer to 1EURO=1.30 CAD), so I need to start making local currency as soon as possible, otherwise I can see myself burning through my savings pretty quickly. As blech as I currently feel about it, I'm probably going to wind up working at a Starbucks in Paris for awhile, just until I get my Parisienne life going and can maybe start looking for something else a little more local/Parisian.



Even though I'm feeling an increase in my stress, I'm beginning to get excited. I'm looking forward to exploring Paris, starting new classes, and meeting lots of (politically-minded) young people from all over Europe and the world. Although I have steadfastly maintained that I am not a Torontonian (I'm ABSOLUTELY an Ottawan at heart), I do feel a twinge of sadness when I think about leaving Toronto. This was the first summer that I've spent almost entirely in Toronto, and I definitely developed a newfound appreciation for the city. Mostly though, I'm sad to be leaving behind some very good friends that I've made over the last few years.



On an entirely different note, my Asia trip was fantastic! This year my mom's brothers and sisters decided to throw a huge birthday party for their mom (my grandmother, obviously), which involved buying plane tickets for almost all of her grandchildren from around the world, and inviting 75 of her closest friends to a big dinner party in Hong Kong. After the party shindig, my mom and I headed to Malaysia for a weeklong vacation. We spent almost all of our time on the island Pulau Perhentian Besar, on the northeast coast of peninsular Malaysia. The food was mostly delicious (luckily no cases of traveller's 'stomachache'), the weather was almost entirely beach friendly (although the one night that it did rain, it was the most insane downpour ever), and it was nice to just spend some time with my mom, who I don't see very often because she lives in Vancouver. The highlight of my trip was that I became a PADI-certified open-water scuba diver! This has been a goal of mine for quite awhile, so after four days of spending eight hours in scuba class, I'm finally licensed to dive! In the four dives that i completed, I saw a bazillion clownfish, lots of beautiful corals, a pair of sharks (!), sea cucumbers, and just about every kind of tropical fish you can imagine. It was very "Finding Nemo". I'm addicted, and I'm already planning on trying to make a trip to Egypt in the next year in order to go diving in the Red Sea...and maybe also see the Pyramids.



Anyhow, there's nothing much else to write about at the moment. My next post will most likely be coming from the otherside of the Atlantic!

The Inaugural Post

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm going to be boarding a Paris-bound plane on September 4th for a year of studies at the Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris, otherwise known as Sciences Po Paris. SciPo is a grande ecole francaise, which means that it's separate from the normal French public university system, and it feeds directly into France's Ecole nationale d'administration, the place to get an education if you have any ambition to be a person of any of consequence in French politics or the civil service. While I don't have any ambition to become a player in French public life, SciPo is home to some really amazing and prominent scholars in political science and international relations, and the chance to live in Paris for a year made the opportunity to study at SciPo too good to pass up.

As of now I have a place to live only for the month of September. I'm going to be staying the Cite Internationale Universitaire de Paris (former student residence of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who also happens to be a SciPo alumnus) in September, but come October 1st, I'll be put to the streets. SciPo doesn't have any student housing, so the great housing search for a long term place will begin in earnest when I get there. Since classes don't begin until the last week of September (I'm getting there early for a two week orientation session and language classes), I'm feeling mildly optimistic that I'll be able to find something, although I've been warned by many people that finding housing in Paris can be a nightmare.

There are approximately fifty days between now and when I leave for Paris, and it feels like there's just not enough time to get everything done! I'm currently finishing up one last class at UofT (which is unfortunately on the most deadly boring topic ever: statistics and political science research methodology), working as much as possible to save up for the year to come (the damn euro kills the Canadian dollar), packing up my apartment and finding a place to store all of my things for the next year, going through mountains of paperwork to get my student visa stuff worked out (French bureaucracy is infamous for a reason), planning my upcoming August trip to Hong Kong/Malaysia/Japan (I'm going to Hong Kong for my grandmother's birthday, and figured I might as well make the bazillion hour flight over a little more worthwhile by sticking around for a couple of weeks), and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life. Needless to say, there's a lot that needs to be done, and I'm feeling a teensy bit stressed.

There's not a whole lot else to blog about right now, but I'll probably have more to write about starting in August when I'm in Asia and then when making final preparations to leave Toronto. On a final note, I thought about titles for this blog for awhile, trying a variety of different Paris/travel related titles ("Ma vie parisienne", "A Canadian in Paris", etc, etc, etc...), but in the end I decided that "Steph at 24" was the most appropriate since this blog will essentially be about my 24th year of life that I'll be spending as a student in Paris, France. Okay, okay, I know I'm not turning 24 for a few more weeks (24 days to be exact!), but....whatever.