10 years ago in France, 17 girls squealed

In June 2001, 17 girls flew from St. Louis to Paris for a 17-day trip around France. Led by a well-traveled high school French teacher and two other women, our group landed in Paris, immediately jumped on a train to Grenoble, and then hopped a bus that took us into the Alps. I will never forget how long the flight seemed, how exhausted I felt, and how much the old men stared at my blond friends. We spent a few days relaxing in the Alps, adjusting to the time change and having a few more language lessons. I remember drinking hot chocolate for breakfast, tasting Nutella for the first time, drinking water straight from the mountain streams, and bringing little Babybel cheeses on hikes. We walked along trails that used to be part of the Roman road, with archways still carved into the rock. We met farmers and cows, sang Disney songs in the rain, and obsessed over the fact that we could see Italy from the top of our mountain. After the Alps, we spent a bit of time in Lyon and Grenoble, stayed with host students at a boarding school near Lyon, and then finished it all up in Paris.

Amy, Rebecca, Claire, Erica, Madame, Moi, et Maggie à l'Arc de Triomphe, Paris, Juin 2001

This trip changed my life, as I’m sure most people’s first trip overseas does. Before that, the French I studied in a classroom seemed too distant to be real. Did people really think and dream in French? Did 16-year old French kids really talk about the things in our textbook dialogues? For some reason my brain couldn’t get around these concepts until I was actually there, living with my roommate Cecile in her boarding school in Bourg-en-Bresse. I marveled over these French teenagers’ use of perfume, their cigarettes, their tendency to wear the same clothes two days in a row. I still remember them taking us to the Parc Des Oiseaux, a big zoo full of birds. I remember their school cafeteria, which smelled like cheese and served much more interesting food than my school. I still remember some of their names, especially the boys that all of us automatically fell in love with. (I wonder where they are now? Too bad there was no Facebook in 2001.)

Paris was everything we had dreamed of. We all spent way too much money on skirts and perfume, back when France was still on the Franc and things seemed cheap compared to the dollar. I’ll always remember the thrill of seeing the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, and Giverny for the first time. But one of the most specific stories I remember was a prank we pulled on some American college boys our last night. We were all staying on the third or fourth floor of this hotel, but the boys’ room was across a courtyard, so we only met them by saying “hi” through the window. It was our last night in Paris so we were packing our bags, but the boys had gone out for the night. Since our bags were stuffed from recent purchases and gifts, some things had to be left behind. One of those things was a bag of feminine pads. I’m not sure whose they were, but somehow we all decided that we needed to throw these pads into the open window across the courtyard. We voted, and somehow I ended up nominated to do the throwing. We ran out into the hall, where a window opened up even closer to the boys’ room. I leaned out the window, focused on the boys’ window about eight feet away from me, and gave it a gentle underhand toss. It went right in. We freaked out. We left early the next morning, so we’ll never know their reaction, or if any of them figured out where the mystery pads came from.

Why am I writing about this, ten years later? Because one week from today, I’ll be back on a plane bound for Paris. My good friend has been living there for the majority of the last four years, and I owe her a visit. Three friends and I also visited her when she was studying abroad in Paris in 2005. Pittsburgh currently has a direct flight to Paris that they will be canceling soon, so it’s cheap, easy, and I have no excuse as I wind down my graduate student career.

Danielle and Ameila, oh la la, we will eat chocolate together again!

Going to France ten years ago opened up to me a world of travel, language, and curiosity that has only grown stronger since. As I attempt to shape the past decade of experiences into a career in international education, it seems fitting to go back and visit the place where it all started.

Thanks to Madame and all my classmates who made that trip perfect. Je t’aime toujours!

Shanghai on a whirl

My last couple days in China were filled with intense activity followed by lulls of loneliness. Qing and I took the fast train from Hangzhou to Shanghai, arriving just after the subway closed at Shanghainanzhan. That meant waiting in a long taxi line and experiencing a big difference between Shanghai and Beijing: English speakers. It’s not that Shanghai taxi drivers speak good English; they just make much more frequent attempts. Drivers wearing flip flops and beach shorts tried to convince us to take a ride in their illegitimate cars for “very cheap.” I showed Qing how well I have learned to ignore people when they are bothering me. It’s a great benefit of being a foreigner: I can always play dumb.

view from hotel in Shanghai

Qing booked us an amazing hotel in the center of Shanghai, within walking distance to pretty much every fancy pants brand in the Western world. Another big difference between Shanghai and Beijing: there are parts of Shanghai where you could be convinced you were in an American city. In Beijing, there are aspects that look very Western, but then you see a man selling melons from the back of a horse-drawn carriage and you get snapped back into Chinese reality.

people waiting to go into the aussie pavilion

My only full day in Shanghai was spent partly at the World Expo. Seventeen months prior, Jon and I learned about the expo at the Shanghai urban planning museum. Oh, cool. An expo, we thought. What’s an expo? Turns out the expo is kind of like Shanghai’s bid to host an Olympic-sized event like Beijing did in 2008. Although there are a lot of differences: Shanghai’s World Expo lasts for months, all through the summer and fall, plus it is attended by almost exclusively Chinese. I was there for an hour before I saw any foreigners. The point of the expo was to bring all the countries of the world together to talk about green technology. Each country was represented by a building or a booth, and other global interests like NGOs and corporations had presentations as well. Inside each pavilion was supposed to be cool stuff, but Qing and I didn’t have time to stand in line for all that. We went into Slovakia and Cyprus because their lines took less than 4 minutes. But countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom had waits of up to 4 hours!

one of the most colorful pavilions, Serbia

Qing and I at the Chinese pavilion, the biggest one of course

We couldn’t spend much time at the expo because we had someone else to meet: Natalie, our good friend from school who had just the day before moved to Shanghai. Qing’s train left before we could find Natalie and her boyfriend Kenny in the train station, but I got to spend a nice evening with them. First mission: find Natalie shoes. Natalie and Kenny’s luggage had not made it with them on the journey from Pittsburgh to Shanghai, and her sandals were already giving her blisters. I took her to the only place I knew: Nanjing Lu, Shanghai’s famous shopping street. If only I were in Beijing, I could have taken her to great markets with cheap and comfy shoes. Instead we had to settle for a $7 pair of flip flops. How are those flippy floppies doing, Nat?

Shanghai's newest residents

The three of us ventured to the Huangpu River where I remembered last time seeing a psychedelic tunnel ride that was a bit out of my budget. This time, the temptation was just too much for budget concerns: crazy train, here we come! Just google Bund Tourist Tunnel and you can see youtube videos and reviews of this thing. The ride lasts only a few minutes, but it’s full of lights and colors and voices shouting out random words at you like “paradise” and “molten lava.” It’s totally trippy and absolutely worth the absurdly high price.

not really a vegetarian anymore

I was really happy I got to spend my last night in China with two awesome people. Natalie and Kenny had been in the city for less than 24 hours, but they were eager to learn a bunch of phrases in Mandarin and try my favorite Chinese dinner: hot pot! We found a seafood hot pot restaurant near my hotel where we got to sizzle some live shrimp in boiling water. After dinner, they went back to their apartment. After days of touring Hangzhou, taking a Chinese train, joining millions of people at the expo, dashing down Nanjing Lu in search of shoes, and teaching my friends as much survival Chinese as I could in one night…I was alone.

Back in my plush hotel room, watching (bad) English-language movies for the first time in months, eating a snack I can only find in China (xiang yu pi!), trying not to use the internet that cost a dollar a minute, all I wanted was to be back in my apartment in Beijing. I knew I was getting on a plane in a matter of hours to fly to San Francisco and see Jon and family and friends. But for that night, I was in China, and I wished so badly that it were my China. I was never and could never be ready to leave Beijing.

Cucumber cupcake avalanche

I never thought that school could be such an emotional roller coaster.  But I think it’s a good thing. In undergrad, my emotions jumped around because of friends and drama.  (My adolescent development class has taught me that this is very normal, but not if it lasts beyond college. Whew.)  In graduate school, my emotions are jumping around based on what I read, who I meet, what I discuss, and what I think.  I thought that I was going to learn lots of new facts here, but I had no idea that school was going to completely change the way my brain works.  My mind is blown on a daily basis by my professors, readings, and classmates.  I love it!

I’m really happy with the program I chose because it’s letting me explore all of the topics that are important to me.  Last semester, I studied the history of Americans studying abroad for my History of Education class, the experiences of Chinese exchange students in the United States for my Education and Society class, and English as an international language and its teaching by volunteer programs abroad for my class on Development Education.  This semester, I’m studying Third Culture Kids for my Adolescent Development class, attitudes about study abroad among university faculty in the United States for my Comparative Education class, and Chinese law schools for my Chinese Law and Literature class.  I’m still not totally set on my specific Master’s thesis topic, but I have to be by the end of the spring semester.  Then next year will be allllllll thesis…yikes!

I didn’t blog at all in December or January, and I think I have a pretty good excuse: I wrote a book.  Somehow I stumbled onto an opportunity at school as a graduate researcher to co-author a book with a visiting scholar from Indonesia.  We wrote about the status of English as a foreign language in Asia, particularly how it is taught in elementary schools in Indonesia.  I loved learning about Indonesia and working with one of the top EFL/EYL (English as a foreign language/English for young learners) scholars from that huge nation.  If all goes well (a.k.a. if I win grant money) I will be able to finish the book’s illustrations and publication this summer in Indonesia with her, and I’ll be able to actually visit the classrooms that I’ve been researching.  Of course I’m excited to see my name on the front of a book.  However, this experience also taught me how hard writing a book really is, so I think I am a bit more realistic about all the books I was planning to write over the course of my life!

The two scholars from Indonesia and another from Taiwan. My co-author is Kasihani, the woman in the middle.

We’re now almost into March, so I’m working on my plans for the summer.  My goal is to spend the first half of June in Indonesia, and the next 10 weeks after that living in Beijing and taking intensive Mandarin.  It’s been eleven months since I’ve been to China, but I can’t stop dreaming about it!  I’m also surrounded by many wonderful Chinese friends at Pitt, which makes me feel much more connected to the country than I did in DC.  I hear Mandarin on a regular basis in Pittsburgh (how crazy is that?)  But as much as I’m excited about returning to Asia, I’ll be really sad to leave Pittsburgh for the summer.  I really love it here, particularly because of the people I’ve met. I have a group of brilliant, fun, and inspiring women from my program who have made the transition to a new city and a new way of life seamless and happy. You know who you are!

Pittsburgh has also graced me with the snowiest winter of my life.  Granted, I would have had this same snowmageddon in DC, but then I’d be dependent on the always-dysfunctional Metro and surrounded by grumpy locals.  Sure, some people here are angry at the fact that we’ve had now 44 inches of snow in one month and the city didn’t do a stellar job at plowing the roads … but I just go on waddling down the snow-covered sidewalks like a penguin, immune to any of the driving woes.  I like the snow a lot more than I ever imagined I would.  I tell myself I live in Alaska.  I watch my neighbors’ dogs racing around the yard eating the snow.  Heck, I got a week off of school! This city wears the snow very well, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to capture it.

View of a bridge and houses on a hill from the trails of Schenley Park.

My street as a winter wonderland

Pretty house on my street

Also, Jon has a beard.

My word of the day!

FRABJOUS: wonderful, elegant, superb, or delicious

Origin:  1872, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (one of my favorites!!!) perhaps as a combination of FABULOUS and JOYOUS.  The word is featured in a poem of nonsense language within the book:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Reading this poem is like reading something in a language that you aren’t quite fluent enough to really understand.  Wonderful!

Meet me in Regensburg

One of my favorite things about this trip is that we didn’t have it planned out.  So when we met two German dudes in Halong Bay, Vietnam, and they invited us to visit them in Regensburg in April, we said sure.  We hopped a train from Munich to Regensburg and spent two great days exploring the beautiful city with our new friends, Murray and Franziskus.  It’s as picturesque as it can get, with narrow cobblestone streets and colorful towers spread over the city.  But it also has a lively student population, and they claim they have the most bars per capita in Germany.  (Or was it Europe?)  Whatever the statistic, it’s a really fun town and I absolutely recommend it to people who are interested in Germany.

Danube River and Regensburg

We arrived on Franziskus’s father’s birthday, so we got to attend his birthday dinner with the whole family.  His parents live outside the city in a village in a cute house with a brand new swimming pool.  Being the random Americans thrown into a situation like this is one of my favorite experiences in the world.  Everyone had such good humor about the attempts to speak each others language, the constant translating, and the comprehension of things that don’t need words.  Franziskus’s mother is learning English right now, and I was so excited to help her practice.  At one point I told her that her English was wonderful, and she turned to her son and said in German, “Americans are great liars.”

Franziskus, Murray and I after a mean game of foosball

Murray and Franziskus were awesome hosts, showing us all the oldest things in Regensburg and rattling off dates and names from its history.  The city was extremely important for trade and business centuries ago and was wealthy for that, so many buildings are the result of competition among rich residents for who could build the highest tower.  We went on a boat ride to the world’s oldest brewery in a monastery, where I’m sure you can guess what we had (beer and sausage.)  We went on a tour of the city hall, where the highlight was seeing all the instruments in the torture chamber (I’ve always been a fan of the stretching machine…I used to believe it would make me taller.)  We spent a long time in an old Protestant church listening to a German version of John Cleese tell us all about the differences between that church and a Catholic one.  He even let us ring the old bell in the tower, but only very quietly.  By the end of our time in Regensburg I was really sad that we’d only spent two days there…and I wasn’t going to hear German anymore!