365 days later.

One year ago today, I moved to Paris. A year later, my blog draws to its natural conclusion. I'm back in Blighty, on a permanent basis this time, surrounded by my family deep in the deepest depths of exotic Hampshire. This is the 48th post on this blog (I’ve managed to write a lot more than I had expected that I would when I started this blog!). It’s also going to be the last post, for the obvious reason: there’s no more year abroad to blog about! Sad, sad times :( 

To business, then! This post is going to be a bit of a soliloquy, really. It's a post that I've been thinking about and writing, on and off, for quite a few months now, and the more I enjoyed my year abroad, the more I added to it. It’s become a bit of a love letter to the last year, if you like. Call me a sap if you like, I don't care.

302 days after I moved to Paris, 401 days after I started this blog, my life in Paris came to an end on 28th June 2014. And now, with my return from China, it’s official. All told, by the time I arrived back on UK soil on August 6th, I had spent 341 days as an official year abroader. Not quite 365 days, but I think, quite close enough. My (not-quite) year abroad is over.

And after all that, what can I really say? Sojourn to Chengdu aside, which I have already blogged about in six separate posts this month, my year abroad was really all about la cité d’amour that is Paris.

It really is such a beautiful and charming city, with a lot of character, and it’s not difficult to see why it is somewhere that so many people dream of visiting, it really isn't. Building on something I wrote to this effect back in February: I still prefer London as a city and as a place to live. Snap me in half like a stick of rock and London would probably be written there, I just love it so much. It’s also a gorgeous city, home to my favourite place on the planet, and has its own fair share of excellent restaurants, fascinating museums and historic landmarks. It’s the place I gained my independence, the place I have made most of my friends, and the place which has had a large impact on who I am becoming as an adult. It’s exciting, and fast paced, and a perfect balance between old and new.

I was always super excited to go on a year abroad and come to live in Paris – who wouldn’t be? But perhaps because of this love that I have for the British capital, it took me longer than it perhaps should have to really appreciate Paris as it should be appreciated. The turning point was somewhere in the middle of February, but I can now say this with absolute certainty – Paris is always going to be equally as special to me, just for different reasons.

Going clockwise, from top left: the canal at Versailles; the Louvre; the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge, and the Sacre-Coeur

Paris was the place where I spoke in French every day; where French was just another language, not a foreign language. It's where nipping into the patisserie for a freshly baked croissant or a beautiful dessert was part of my normal routine. It has a unique charm that I've not seen anywhere else, with beautiful buildings, narrow streets, and a pace of life that is just slow enough so that you can sit back and enjoy life. (Lunch is so much tastier when you sit back and take your own sweet time to eat it, sat outside a café with a glass of wine!)

Paris is the place where it’s perfectly normal for men to hop on and off the metro with their accordions, playing their French melodies as each station whistles by.

True; the administration is slow; the bureaucracy incroyable, and not in a good way. Drinks, with the exception of wine, cost an absolute fortune, and as someone I know posted on their Facebook status quite early into the year;

"…bakeries are run by culinary angels, but beer is drafted by semi-trained monkeys."

Fact of the matter is, I've studied French since I was 4 years old and even with all that under my belt, I was remarkably ignorant, this time last year, about Paris, France, French life. Not so now, and I love all three of those things more than I ever had before or ever imagined I could.

We Brits might make jokes about the French, but Paris – and France in general – is a massive collection of weird and wonderful extremes, of every variety. It’s been an awesome year. One of the best of my life ever (so far, I hope).

I’m so lucky to have had the chance to do my year abroad there. Anyone can admire Paris, anyone can enjoy visiting it, but I don’t think you can ever understand it until you've lived here. And that’s probably true of most cities on this brilliant planet we call home. 

Going clockwise from top left: Champs Elysees, Palais du Luxembourg, the Catacombs and the Opera Garnier

Over the year, I've not just come to love Paris, but plenty of other places too. I've been to the beautiful franco-germanic gem that is Strasbourg. I've been to Dijon, in the Burgundy region. I've been to Berlin, and then there is the month that I have just spent, and posted about, in Chengdu, in the Sichuan province of China.

Fact of the matter is, my year abroad has given me the opportunity to see so many new things and have so many new experiences that so many people my age don’t have, and many people older than us never will. I imagine that living abroad would just get harder as you get older, and add jobs and mortgages and responsibility to your plate.

In Douglas Adam's story Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer, Deep Thought, ponders the so-called "Ultimate Question":

"What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?"

...and eventually decided that the answer is 42. 

If you were to ask that question in reality, I say that the answer to the Ultimate Question is a year abroad. Because the year abroad is an education, about life, the universe and everything. That’s why Erasmus as a scheme and other cooperation agreements between universities in varying countries are so important.

Getting serious for a second, I actually did a bit of research on this point, because I wanted to make my point as effectively as I could, and I found a debate on the New York Times website (links at the bottom of this post), where various people submitted their opinions. For instance, Stacie Berdan and Allan Goodman, co-authors of 'A Student Guide to Study Abroad' write that;

"...[studying abroad] teaches students to appreciate difference and diversity firsthand, and enables them to recognize — and then dismiss — stereotypes they may have held about people they had never met..."

Another contributor, Violeta Rosales, pointed out that;

"[We]… should study abroad in order to realize that we are more alike than we are different… Cross-cultural understanding – the exchange of ideas, information and art – is imperative in a world made smaller by globalization and the internet"

But that's all to easy to write when you think about a year abroad in the abstract. I can speak quite passionately myself on this subject, just more in the context of my own experiences.

Clockwise from top left: Wenshu Temple in Chengdu, the Mutianyu stretch of the Great Wall, Pandas at Chengdu's Giant Panda Research Base, People's Park and the Leshan Giant Buddha

Clockwise from top left: Berlin Cathedral, the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Brandenburg Gate

I look on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, and I see photos from people doing their year abroad elsewhere – America, Holland, Australia, Spain… All kinds of places. We’ve travelled, explored, and laughed ourselves silly. We've overcome homesickness and language barriers and cultural differences; we've tried new things, and seen new places, and together, we've got enough photos and tickets and souvenirs to fill thousands of scrapbooks. 

The point I'm trying to make here is that we've had a year in which we've really truly lived, away from the constraints of the education system which for many, me included, is the only thing we've ever really known.

And that’s exactly what it’s all about really isn't it? There’re still so many places in this beautiful world that I want to go and see – I’m very well aware that I have barely even scratched the surface, especially after spending time with some much more seasoned travellers than I in China - but I’m still so thankful that I've had to chance to cover even the small - tiny, really - corner of the globe that I have. I dove into the deep end, feet first, and I don’t regret one single second. Not even the things that went completely tits up. 

Turning onto a different tangent completely: when I think about it, my Law degree has taught me a lot of things over the past 3 years, being completely honest, only a tiny portion of it has been about the laws of the land. The university experience is an education in and of itself, and the year abroad in particular is brilliant in terms of personal development. A year ago, right now, I was completely, gut-wrenchingly nervous. In fact, exactly one year ago as this post is published, I was in the air somewhere above the English Channel heading towards Orly Airport and the unknown – a flat I had never seen, a university I didn’t know, a city I had only ever visited for approximately 6-8 hours as a stop off on a school trip to Futuroscope. So yes – I was nervous, maybe more nervous that I have ever been in my life.

Having said that, I am now a firm believer that the unknown is (or at least, can be), a good thing. I said in one of my earliest posts that I was viewing the year as a confidence building exercise. It’s worked. I am a shy person by nature, but I’m now able to push that to one side and plough on through it. I picked myself up, lock, stock and barrel, and landed in the middle of a foreign capital city where the language isn't my own and where I could count the number of people I knew on one hand. Difficult situations have never fazed me, particularly, but they certainly won’t now. 

Going to China – a country where I couldn’t even pretend to speak the language, or read the characters and where I was really going to be on my own, with no one familiar around, was easy in comparison.

Me, being exceptionally fortunate, without exception. 

That said, I am the first to freely admit that this year hasn't been easy - you only have to read back through this blog and you could probably identify when I was feeling low and when I wasn't, and there were plenty of lows. It is tough, it is difficult, and sometimes I wished that I had never bothered to go away in the first place (these were most definitely half-hearted wishes – I wouldn't throw my year abroad away for anything).

One reason that most people go away – it was certainly an important reason for me – is to improve your language skills. The language gap was also the biggest hurdle I had to overcome.

Obviously, my French has improved considerably. I lacked confidence in my own language skills when I first got here – I just read back through my very first post from Paris, on 2nd September last year, and it was full of doubts. That’s definitely not a problem anymore – I know I can handle most of the demands of everyday life. I’m not, however, fluent, which is what I had wanted to be - and if you go on a year abroad expecting that to be the result, I’m here to tell you now that it’s unlikely, albeit a very worthy aim. (This is partly, I will admit, my fault, for hanging out far too much with other English people). I don’t think in French – ‘Franglish’ is a better description. When I first got home, if I were to say, bump into someone in Asda, my first reaction was to apologise in French. In China, my first reaction was actually French more than it was English (probably because a foreign language felt like the right response, even if it was the wrong foreign language). So, there's definitely been a touch of reverse culture shock. Language wise, though, I’d need to go back for a good few months yet before I could realistically achieve fluency.

Who knows? Maybe one day I will. I'd like to think so.

Left: Strasbourg, Right: Dijon

So - in addition to everything that was said in the New York Times, with all of which I am in complete agreement, I would say that the personal growth is a compelling reason all by itself to go on a year abroad.

This has been the fastest year of my life, and it's been a real journey, one which has helped me prove to myself and others what I'm really capable of. Let's face it; I’m a different person than I was a year ago, in [hopefully] all good ways. I've grown up; I'm more independent than ever, and the boundaries of my comfort zone have widened exponentially beyond what they used to be. The year abroad has opened my mind and I am personally of the opinion that it will continue to do so even after my year abroad is long in the past.

And one day in the future, I will tell my kids about this past year, and what I did and saw, and hopefully they’ll be similarly inspired and will go off and get to do something even more wonderful themselves. The cycle will start all over again – as it should. I am firmly of the opinion that you need to see and experience the world to be able to deal with it.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who's been reading my blog, whether it was just the one post or each and every one. It's been nice to see the page views on my blog stats gradually creep up and know that people have followed my journey. 

That's it! At risk of sounding like a dodgy acceptance speech at the Oscars, I do need to say a massive thankyou my parents, my brother, my flatmate Parisa, and my two absolute best friends, Ashley and Akeelah, for carrying me through the last year. Couldn't have done it without you. Last but not least, thankyou Chengdu, thankyou Erasmus and most of all, thankyou, Paris, for a wonderful year abroad. 

It's been an absolute privilege. 

Signing off : Au revoir à tous.

Vicky xx

Quotes above may be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/17/should-more-americans-study-abroad/ (accessed 30/08/14)

Une liste: la partie finale!

Fin. Finished. End. Caput. No more. 

My time in Paris is at an end! Ten months down the line, my year abroad is drawing to a close (but is not ended just yet, for reasons I shall mention at the end of this post...). I packed up my bags and left my lovely apartment for the last time on Saturday just gone, and now I am temporarily (again, see end of this post) back in Blighty and getting all reminiscent. I tried to do a 'Paris in numbers' post, but it would have been boring, because I couldn't put an actual number on most of the things I came up with, and it would have gone something like this: "Many, many crêpes, Many more croissants, Even more carnets for the Metro..."

Which is boring. 

Instead, I've finally been through and updated my 'Paris things to do/bucket list', crossing off everything I managed to get done in my final few weeks in the French capital. 

Voilà.

1. Visit the Versailles Palace

2. Go to Notre Dame Cathedral

3. Visit Les Catacombs

4. Indulge in la cuisine, including croissants, macaroons, snails, frogs legs, seafood, and everything else French and/or Parisian. (On the seafood side of things, La Bar a Huitres is the place that I went for my birthday, and it really was delicious. There's several of them in Paris - I went to the one in Montparnasse. They've got a menu that ranges from massive seafood platters costing a few hundreds of euros, to a nice fixed menu for 44 euros, which was much better for my poor student budget)

5. Go to see the Pantheon

6. Spend time in La Jardin du Luxembourg

The next three I didn't do, and I always knew I wouldn't actually be able to do them this year - the first and second because I'm elsewhere at the time they happen; the third because I spent it at home. But I'm keeping them on my list because they're three things which really ought to be done in Paris, and though I won't be doing them this year, I'll be making sure to do them at some point!

7. View the Bastille Day Parade

8. Finale of the Tour de France

9. Spend NYE in Paris

10. Go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa! I have well and truly done the Louvre. I think I went there at least six times, covering pretty much every wing they've got in that place, and it's massive. To people going to the Louvre - see the Mona Lisa if you want, although she's pretty underwhelming, but make sure to do Napoleon's apartments too, in the Richelieu wing.

11. Go to Disneyland Paris. Disclaimer: I've actually been here before, so I count it as done. I wasn't going to include it on my list at all, but my "little" (he's 16) brother insisted that I include it, which was blatantly a not very subtle hint that I should take him.

12. Go to Sacré Coeur.

13. Stroll down the Champs-Élysées, and end up in the Place de la Concord

14. Rue Mouffetard - home of my favourite place to get a crêpe, Au P'tit Grec.

15. Go to the Palais Garnier

16. Visit Monet's garden at Giverny - I tried to do this, but on the metro heading to the train station realised that I would leave myself properly, PROPERLY skint if I went, which didn't seem wise.

17. Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower AND go see the Eiffel Tower at night

18. Visit at least 3 other European Countries. I did manage to visit Berlin in Germany, and I was intending to go to Brussels, but I just couldn't afford it, so sadly, this didn't going to happen.

19. Go to the Christmas Market in Strasbourg

20. Spend the day at Parc Asterix :) - another one for which I ran out of time and money!

21. Go to Bercy Shopping Village - because, really, what's Paris without some retail therapy?

22. Les Invalides

23. Moulin Rouge - It costs a fortune to actually see a show, but I've seen the outside and that will do for now!

24. Spend a few days on the South Coast and maybe in Monaco - this was another one that ended up being unrealistic.

25. La Marais and Place des Vosges

26. La Conciergerie

27. Visit St- Sulpice

28. Go to the roof at Galleries Lafayette - incidentally, I really loved the interior of this store. It's gorgeous!

29. Go the Musée de l'Orangerie

30. Go over to the Arc de Triomphe

31. Visit some other French Towns. I've been to Strasbourg (see no. 19 on the list) and also to Dijon.

32. Go for a walk along the Canal St Martin

33. Bois du Boulogne

34. See some jazz of some kind while I'm here!

35. Visit Le Château de Fontainebleau

36. Go to Musee d'Orsay

37. See an exhibition at the Grand Palais - Parisa and I went to see the Cartier exhibition back in January.

38. Go to Musee Marmottan.

39. Go to the French Open

40. Take a photo of Kilometre Zero, which is right outside Notre Dame (Km Zero is the point to which distances are measured to in Paris)

41. Find the most famous graves at Père Lachaise cemetery. (In case you're wondering, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde are just two of several famous names buried there)

42. Parc des Buttes Chaumont

43. Visit La Sainte-Chapelle

44. Browse the shelves at the bookshop, Shakespeare and Co

30 out of 44 things done. Not bad, even if I do say so myself. I'll be adding everything I didn't do to my mainstream bucket list, which I keep in the back of my journal. I'll cross everything off of it at some point, be it next year or in the next ten!

The next part of my year abroad is completely un-Erasmus related and it is all down to a company called Projects Abroad - http://www.projects-abroad.co.uk/ - who offer lots of volunteering projects in countries all over the world. I remembered them all the way back from the Gap Year fair at my Sixth Form College, and now I'm finally off on my Project, having got here rather in a rather convoluted fashion.

I'm going to be working for a month in a law firm in Chengdu, China, which is super exciting, and I'm jetting off again in about a week - so watch this space!

Vicky xx

À Dijon

Parisa and co. have trooped off to spend the next few days in Cannes, because they at Paris-Sorbonne have already finished their exams, the lucky people. Most of my time has been spent revising, because I've still got just under a fortnight to go before my exams start - but no way was I just going to sit around on my lonesome and do nothing but read while they're all down at the beach, *goes green with envy* - so I broke out of my revision schedule on Saturday to spend the day in Dijon!

It was actually a toss up for quite a while between there and Lyon, which is somewhere else I wouldn't have minded going if I'd had the time, but in the end, Dijon is just thaaaaat much closer, thaaaat much cheaper and much smaller - vis-à-vis, better suited for a day trip.

I'll start by saying a word or two about French train travel, however. When I went to Strasbourg back in December, I went by TGV and I printed my tickets at home. All's well and good.

This time, I went by TER, from Paris-Bercy, and I wasn't given the option to print my tickets at home, I had to collect them from the station.

And here is my advice. If ever you are travelling by train in France, and you need to pick up your e-tickets at the machine, leave plenty of time to get to the station. And if you've already left plenty of time: Leave more.

The SNCF ticket machines are confusing. Being a good Erasmus student, I tried to pick them up using the French language option at first, but eventually I had to switch to English and I still had no idea which option I was supposed to select. Every option I did select decided to pretend my reference number didn't exist.

So I joined the ticket queue to beg for help. Except that buying tickets in France is apparently nothing like at home where you tell them the destination, hand over the cash and get given your ticket in the space of a couple of minutes, because everyone in front of me was going through a ridiculously long drawn out process, and I mean long. It appeared to involve the filling out of forms and all kinds of other things. I'm not joking - I actually started to wonder if I was in the queue to take out a mortgage and buy a house, rather than collect a train ticket. A nice four bedroom place, in a cul de sac, with a decent sized garden for the children and the dog. That kind of thing.

You get my point. Minutes crawled by, to the point that I literally had my face in my hands, feeling increasingly nauseous and wondering with sinking heart just how I was going to explain to my parents, who very kindly gave me the money for the ticket, that I'd gone and missed the train.

Clearly, as I'm writing a blog post about Dijon, I got my ticket and made it on to the train (with literally minutes to spare, causing me to have a minor heart attack before we'd even got to 8am - not a great start, I grant you). But there is a lesson to be learned from this story: in France, they take things s.lo.w. Plenty of time still won't be enough time. Remember that, people *wise face*.

Got there in the end!

Having said that, the train journey itself was an absolute pleasure, because we took a winding route through the countryside, and out of the window there was an image of true France, and all drenched in the May sunshine. I would post pictures, but they're all a bit blurry :(

Dijon itself is beautiful, and reminds me in some ways of Strasbourg, in that there are still a lot of traditional wood/timber buildings, although obviously with more if a 'French' feel to it. Unlike Strasbourg, Dijon doesn't have UNESCO world heritage status, and I cannot fathom why. It's beautiful, and absolutely brimming over with character, full of buildings which date from the Middle Ages to the very beginning of the 20th century. It's another one of those cities which was lucky enough to escape the bombing during WW2. 

After I got off the train, I stopped in at the tourist information office and picked up le parcours de la chouette, or the owl trail, for €3.50. The owl is the mascot, if you like, of Dijon. You follow little arrows which have been set in the pavement all around the historic city centre (although they do have a habit of disappearing at a few inconvenient moments), like so...

Given that I was literally only there for the day, I reckon it was probably the best way to see everything and to know exactly what it was I was looking at! The trail starts out in the Jardin Darcy, which according to the little guide I picked up in the tourist office was the town's first public garden, created in 1880. It also, judging by what I saw yesterday, seems to be very popular with newly married couples. I must have counted three pairs coming into this garden alone, and I wasn't even in there very long!

The entrance to Old Dijon proper is through this gate, Porte Guillaume, which used to be part of the city's walls. It also marks the start of Rue de la Liberté, one of the main shopping streets in Dijon, which connects to Place de la Libération at the other end. 

I was lucky enough to end up in Dijon on market day. Les Halles, the covered market in Dijon was designed by Gustave Eiffel, who was born in Dijon and who also designed, (no guesses here), the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 

Les Halles and the surroundings streets were absolutely alive when I wondered through them, and some of the foods they had there looked like they were to die for, and it smelt absolutely amazing. 

This is Dijon's Notre Dame (I swear there seems to be one of these whichever way you look in this country!). It dates from the 13th century, and is known partly for the gargoyles which line the west side, which is in the picture, but mostly for the existence of this little fellow: 

"La Chouette" - the owl, is a tiny scultpure on the side o f Notre Dame. The people of Dijon consider it to be a good luck charm, and it's a tradition to rub it with your left hand as you pass it - when I was there, I saw several people doing this, so really it's no wonder that it has been worn down so much!

The church above I mention only because its one of a number of buildings I noted in Dijon which have their roof tiles arranged in unusual patterns. I googled it, but I didn't really get any reason as to why this is, just this quote from Dijon's wikipedia page,

"Dijon architecture is distinguished by, among other things, toits bourguignons (Burgundian polychrome roofs) made of tiles glazed in terracotta, green, yellow and black and arranged in geometric patterns."

...which doesn't help much, but there we go. It looks good.

After I completed the main route on the trail, I stopped into a restaurant near Porte Guillaume for something to eat. Dijon is actually the capital of the Côte-d'Or département of France, which was one of the original departments formed after the French Revolution, from the former province of Bourgogne (Burgundy). It's a region which is home to a lot of dishes which have become internationally known as typically french, like Coq au Vin and Beef Bourguignon. So I decided to cross another thing off of my France bucket list and have something typically French - I had l'escargots - snails - for starter.

And they weren't bad! I've had them before, a long time ago, but I didn't really remember much about them. They're quite meaty, and as for taste, I'd have to say that they remind me in a lot of ways of certain types of shellfish - perhaps mussels, perhaps something else, I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly it was, but there we go. If you are one of those (cough, strange, cough) people who claims to hate all seafood, I doubt you'd like snails. For everyone else, I recommend you give them a try!

For main, I had magret de canard (duck) with chips and a side salad with, obviously, a salad dressing based on dijon mustard.

And for pudding, I had Crême Brûlée, which was fine, but I prefer my Crême Brûlée warm, and this was served cold.

For all three courses and a drink, it was only €30, which I didn't think was bad at all! 

After I'd finished eating, I headed over to Maille, famous for its mustard. They have branches in Paris and London too but of course, Dijon is its true home. Call me a mustard heathen, but I was under the impression that mustard came in English, French and Wholegrain, but no, far from it. 

They had flavours the likes of which I'd never seen before (although to be fair, that you could have flavours of mustard never really crossed my mind), from nut to apricot and curry, from parmesan and basil to cassis, another Dijon favourite. I tried the red fruits mustard (a bright pink colour) but it, er, wasn't for me *cough*.

After that I headed into Galeries Lafayette - for no real reason at all. 

Galeries Lafayette is basically the same everywhere - Paris, Strasbourg, Dijon... And yet I still have to go in each one and have a look 🙈
— Victoria Goodsell (@9victoriag) May 17, 2014

Then, after sitting in the Place de la Libération for a while and enjoying the sun and my general surroundings (seriously, what i wouldn't give to be seven again. There was this one kid who kept trying to jump through the fountain without getting wet, and I swear, it kept him entertained for a good twenty minutes at least. He was laughing like a hyena, and I'm certain he would have carried on forever if his mum hadn't stopped him), I decided to do the two 'loops' i missed out when i was doing the owl trail.

These two loops covered the Sainte-Anne district, home to a former Bernadine monastry, Place Emile Zola, where Dijon's public executions took place until the turn of the 19th century, the Botantical Gardens and the Puits de Moïse, or the Well of Moses. I would put up pictures, but my phone had died by this point, and I've not transferred anything from my camera to my laptop yet (revising, don't you know). I might come back and add them to this post later, if I remember. 

So that's that! My train left Dijon at half seven, and all too soon I was back in Paris. I had a lovely day though, (I highly recommend visiting Dijon if ever you get the opportunity) and I'm glad I made the most of it. It would be a shame to waste the few weeks I have remaining here in Paris just because I have exams coming up. It's all about getting the right work/life balance, I suppose. 

Vicky xx

Une vie tranquille...

My blog has been more silent than I'd like it to be of late, and the absence of much to post can well and truly be blamed on the fact that my classes are well and truly underway and I'm pretty sure I already have more on my plate than I did at this point last semester - November wasn't the most exciting of blog months, either.

That being said, I think I have finally reached a turning point because despite the increased workload, I'm feeling remarkably positive and calm(ish) about everything. At the very least, as I said to my friend the other day, I now feel like I'm treading water rather than drowning in it. So that's definitely a positive!

It's also getting to the point in the year now - I've been in Paris for 6 and a half months, which quite frankly I find unbelievable - where I am starting to look ahead to my return to London and the final year (finally) of my degree, thinking about what modules to take, where I'll be living and so on. It's quite exciting actually :) 

Life's not been all work and no play though and the reason for that can be summed up like this:

The weather has been beautiful! Which makes for a very happy Victoria. Everything seems better when the sun is out - cliche but true. Just walking to and from Uni is a pleasurable part of my day. Paris is a beautiful place at the best of times, but never more so that when the weather is good. 

We took advantage of that last weekend and had a 'barbecue' of sorts - my flatmate Parisa got up really early and went trekking halfway across Paris looking for an actual barbecue but there was none to be found [which is really bizarre to a Brit like me who not only completely agrees with the below statement but is also perfectly willing to have a barbecue whether the weather is sunny or not]:

Buying 10 cases of Pimm's the second the temperature nudges 12°C
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) March 8, 2014

So we just trashed our kitchen cooking everything instead and then ate out on the balcony. (and when I say trashed, I mean it. Took ages to clean up!)

So I spent the day sunbathing, stuffing my face, and watching England beat Wales in the Rugby [hooray!!]

That's all for now but tonight I'm going to the cinema with Parisa to see The Monuments Men, and I mean to use the next week or so to get on top of my workload so that I can start taking advantage of the beautiful weather and so a little more exploring!

Til then - 

Vicky xx

Une recette...

So there's not much going on at the moment, and I don't like to leave many-month-long gaps between blog posts (which drives me barmy). So as a little filler, I thought I'd share an easy recipe which has become extremely popular in the Goodsell-Fard residence as of late, since I got it into my head that living in Paris, I needed to try my hand at some French Cuisine. I've tried out Coq au Vin, and this little gem - 

Baked Camembert - very yummy, very French :)

And it's so, so easy! Literally, all you need to do is buy a Camembert - take the lid off and unwrap the cheese and then put it back in its little wooden box.

Use a knife to pierce a few holes on the top of the cheese and then stuff a few garlic cloves in. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle over a few herbs (I use Bouquet Garni or Herbes de Provence) and then shove it in the oven at 200 degrees (Celsius) for ten minutes until the cheese is all molten and runny inside.

Take it out the oven, and enjoy :) we dip warm baguette into it and it's delish. It's also pretty much the only way I'll eat Camembert - most French cheeses aren't to my taste, so it's also the cheat's way out haha. 

As I said - not much of a post today but I'll be back up and running again soon I'm sure!

Vicky xx

Une visite: ma meilleure amie est ici!

The weekend just gone was one of the loveliest weekends of the year so far, because my best friend from Uni back in London, Akeelah, came out to spend the weekend with me. It was so good to see her - for the first time since she turned up at my house to surprise me for my 21st birthday back in October, and although we FaceTime quite a lot, there's nothing that can quite match the pleasure of catching up with your bestie over a cup of tea and a biscuit. 

She managed to catch a really early train on Friday morning, so we were able to spend most of Friday, all of Saturday, and most of Sunday together. Friday was a repeat of your average tourist activities, really. We headed to a Cafe near the Pantheon for a crepe, before doing the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Louvre, and the Champs-Elysees.

Then we spent the evening back at my apartment, literally just catching up, eating baguettes and Coq au Vin, which is a meal I've made twice now and I think it's going to become my french specialty - because really, I feel like I should be able to cook something native to my temporarily adopted home country.

Saturday, for me, was exciting because we headed to a part of Paris that I've not actually done yet, which is the Canal Saint Martin in North-eastern Paris, and which anybody who's seen the film Amélie really ought to recognise.

It's very scenic, and it just screams 'Classic Paris' with lots of pretty arched pedestrian footbridges, locks and cobbled walkways. Saturday was not exactly the sunniest of days - which was a shame, because we've had a lot of beautiful sunshine here lately - but I can just imagine that the Canal would be a brilliant place to go in the summer for pedestrians and roller skaters; tourists and Parisian's alike. I'll be making plans to go back there once Spring/Summer kicks in. 

After that, we headed to Galeries Lafayette, which I've now done numerous times, but which I particularly enjoyed this time because it had Akeelah's name written all over it, and as I predicted, she was enthusing that whole way around that 'this place sh*ts on Harrods'. 

And of course, we went up to the roof, which has resulted in yet another 'I'm-standing-on-the-roof-looking-at-a-view-of-Paris-but-this-time-it's-in-black-and-white' photo. 

Tadah. 

Sunday; we did Montmartre. I was only there a couple of weeks ago, with my Mum and brother, but this time we went in the daylight, and the sun had finally deigned to make an appearance, which really put a whole new spin on the place.

We took the obligatory photos of the view; had a proper walk around and look inside the Sacre-Coeur itself, and went behind to find the pretty cobbled streets full of Portrait-drawers and little shops crammed wall to wall with beautiful canvas paintings that I wish I could buy and take home with me

Then we went back to Au P'tit Grec [which I mentioned back in November as being a brilliant place for a gallette or, as I have since found out, crepes], and Akeelah headed back to London. Sad times! :(

I've not, in my earlier posts, made a secret of the fact that I prefer London to Paris as a city.

Spurred on, no doubt, by a touch of homesickness, the French Capital, probably rather unfairly, paled in comparison (in my eyes at least) to the city where I've spent my university life so far. 

Without a doubt, I still prefer London - there's just something about it that speaks to me. The reasons for that could probably make up a whole blog post on their own, so I won't go into them now. But this weekend, I really realised for the first time what a beautiful city I am lucky enough to be living in.

Why I'm realising this only now, I don't know. I've been living here for nearly six months now, and while I've always admired Paris - there's a reason it is one of the most visited cities in the world, after all - I think I've still been looking at it as if I were a tourist, going to sights because, well, that's what you do when you visit.

I'm going to put it down, I think, to a well phrased question from Akeelah, who asked me after a comment I made in passing, to describe the difference between living in London and living in Paris. Not the differences between the two cities, the differences between living in them. 

Forcing myself to become less detached and think more like a citizen, I tried to come up with a decent response to her question. After babbling for a few minutes and undeniably not making much sense, I finished, rather lamely, by saying 'it's difficult to explain unless you've lived it yourself'.

No, it's not the most eloquent of responses, but it's a true one - and one I would bring up in recommending a year abroad to anyone (which I absolutely do!) To understand the world around you; to experience the differences between regions; countries and continents, sometimes visiting isn't enough. 

Sometimes, you just have to live it.

And this weekend, looking out over Paris from the sun drenched hills of Montmartre; wandering the cobbled streets near the Sacre Coeur, and crossing the pretty iron bridges of Saint-Martin - taking in all those things with the mindset I have just attempted, rather poorly, to explain, as opposed to the attitude I've taken so far - Paris finally captured a little piece of my heart.

And with that little nugget of sentimentality, I'll sign off. Until next time...

Vicky xx

Cartier: Le Style et L'Histoire

So what's new?

This week my flatmate Parisa and I headed over to the Grand Palais, and after a nice chat in the queue with a travelling American, headed into this lovely building to meander around the Cartier Exhibition for a few hours. 

It's an exhibition which, fairly obviously, if you look at the picture above, told the story of the style and history of this great jewellery house, which was once described by King Edward VII as

"the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers."

And you can see why.

Every exhibit was fascinating in it's own right, and even as you had to admire each item for the look and the workmanship, it was fascinating to learn a little bit more about the background behind each piece, which when put together, could almost tell the story of world history for more than one hundred years. As Maria Doulton put it, much better than I even could, in her review of the exhibition [see here]... 

"While clothes may decay and photographs fade, the bright colours and box-fresh excitement of jewels always best capture the zeitgeist and aspirations of an age."

So, for instance, the Amethyst and Turquoise necklace below belonged to the renowned Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor...

And then of course, there is the jewellery of the late, great, and stunningly beautiful Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco. 

Essentially, it was a really well put-together exhibition, which I really enjoyed looking around and which let me kill and afternoon doing something interesting and productive, rather than sitting around at home glued to my laptop. If you're in Paris, it's definitely worth going to see. It's not expensive, and it will be on until the 16th February.

Not the most eloquent of reviews, I grant you, but praise is praise. And as they say, a picture speaks 1000 words - I've got 5 of 'em in here. You can also check out my instagram - my username is the same as for my twitter account, the rather imaginative @9victoriag

Til next time - 

Vicky xx

La Fin des Examens!

Hurray! My exams are over and I can get back to normal life once more. January is not even over yet and I can safely say that it has been the longest, most stressful and most tedious month of my entire year abroad so far. Revising for exams in another language is hard. And I am extremely thankful that the way my exam timetable panned out means that I have this week off because I am also exhausted. The Christmas holidays were not all that long ago, really, but any rest and rejuvenation I brought back with me from that fortnight at home has, without a doubt, long since been destroyed. 

Next week, my second semester modules will start, along with two from last semester that, rather to my dismay, I have to carry on with, and I am planning to learn a lesson or two from the misery that has been revising for these exams to make sure that in the summer I am markedly less miserable!

Luckily, just a few hours after the end of my last exam, my mum and my brother arrived in Paris to stay with me for the weekend. My younger brother, Sam, has never been to Paris before, so we did a lot of the old tourist favourites, which are definitely more exciting to re-visit when you're with someone for whom it's all new and exciting.

I would make exhibit A the Eiffel Tower, but for one thing, our trip there on Saturday was actually the first time I've made it to Paris' most famous landmark since I moved here almost 5 months ago, and for another thing, I've not actually been here in any case since a Year 9 school trip, 7 years or so ago. We didn't go up - Sam will be back in Paris in March on a college trip, and he will go up then. I'll go up again when my mum, aunt and grandma make a Paris stopover in May. 

 

Of course, the main reason we hopped over to the Eiffel Tower in the first place is because my Mum has always said that Paris is a place that ought to be explored by river, and so she'd booked us on a short river cruise which took us up past Place de la Concorde, the Louvre and Notre Dame, effectively covering all the major sites - and she was right, Paris does look a lot different by water, so it is definitely worth doing if at all possible.

 

 

And - bonus - we got given a lovely hot crêpe all smothered in Nutella to eat on the way around.

 

What followed this was an awful lot of walking. Sam wanted to see a lot of stuff while he was here, and so what we ended up doing was getting the metro to Charles de Gaulle - Étoile, which is immediately in front of the Arc de Triomphe.

 

So we went over to the Arc, did that, walked all the way down the Champs-Élysées, through Place de la Concorde and the Jardin des Tuileries and up to the Louvre - again, we didn't go in because Sam will when he comes over on his college trip, but we did however spend an inordinate amount of time trying to take photos like this one...

 

 

Anyway - once we'd done that, we walked from the Louvre, along the Seine, crossed over the Pont des Arts [the bridge which is covered all over in padlocks], and then walked down towards l'île de la cite, where we grabbed some lunch and went into Notre Dame Cathedral.

 

Mum wanted to see Galeries Lafayette, so we took the metro there next and went to the rooftop viewing terrace, before deciding that the last stop on our list should be Montmartre, because I wanted to see the Sacré-Cœur again, and because Mum wanted to see Moulin Rouge.

 

 

We actually got really lucky with the Sacré-Cœur, because we managed to time our entrance perfectly with the nuns coming out to sing. I'm completely unknowledgeable about these things, and I have no idea what they were singing, but it sounded beautiful and was very peaceful to listen to.. oh, and also, the view from the top of the hill was gorgeous :)

 

And here's the Moulin Rouge...

 

Not much else to say about that really.

 

We added it all up, anyway, and we reckon that we managed to walk about 16.6km which (I think?) is about 10 miles, so it's really not surprising that I woke up yesterday morning with muscles stiffer than a board!

We had to think about their train on Sunday, so we only did the Catacombs (third time lucky!!!) as opposed to a completely full day like Saturday was.

And I thought it was so worth it.

'Stop! Here is the empire of the dead'

 

It was really quite creepy seeing all the bones piled up - it is the largest necropolis in the world, apparently, and they reckon the remains of more than 6 million Parisians are down there, including several notable people such as Robespierre.

 

With the audio guide, you actually find out quite about about Paris' history. For instance, it was created because a local cemetery, which had been in use nearly 10 centuries was a major health risk - the milk in nearby houses would go off in less than a day (which really gives me such an unpleasant image of what the smell must have been like)!

 

So that was my weekend! I finally got to the Catacombs, I did a lot of walking and exploring, and thanks to Mum, my fridge is now well stocked up with Cheddar Cheese and other British essentials! ;)

 

I'm going to use this week off mainly to sleep and catch up on some well deserved (in my opinion) chillin', but it would be a waste for me not to use the time to go out and do a little more exploring, so at the very least I will be going to the Cartier exhibition at the Grand Palais!

 

Vicky xx