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Tag: France

Juliana Struve | Paris, France | Post 4

Juliana Struve | Paris, France | Post 4

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Favorite French Words French is a funny language and despite the fact that so much of modern English has been influenced by it, there still remains some parts, some phrases, words, and even sounds that simply do not make sense to English-speakers. Here are some of my favorite Frenchisms. Some I have adopted enthusiastically into my own daily speech. But others I know will be almost impossible for a non-native speaker to master. You’ll see… 1. “Coucou!” This is perhaps…

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Juliava Struve | Paris, France | Post 3

Juliava Struve | Paris, France | Post 3

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Tips for going out in Paris and the best secret gelataria in Rome    I’ve been going out every weekend in Paris since I’ve gotten here and I have discovered an undeniable fact: every weekend that my friends and I go out, we get a little bit better at it. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned so far: -Pregaming on the subway at night is slightly socially acceptable, the same can be said for drinking in parks in…

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Juliana Struve | Paris, France | Post 2

Juliana Struve | Paris, France | Post 2

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The All-Carb Diet For the few weeks leading up to my departure, I was exercising like crazy. Images of impossibly thin and chain smoking French girls kept running through my head. I made it my goal to keep off the holiday weight as much as possible. All I really wanted was to fit in! Anyway, in the three weeks or so that I’ve been here, something quite unexpected has been happening. I have been actually slimming down. Never mind that…

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Juliana Struve | Paris, France | Post 1

Juliana Struve | Paris, France | Post 1

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Notes on Paris I cannot believe that I’ve been actually living in Paris for a week now. I feel like I’ve been here for so much longer. But of course, I know that the days will start to go by really fast—too fast, in fact—once my schedule is set and I fall into a routine. There are so many things that I want to say about Paris, but for simplicity’s sake, I will only write about the two that surprised me…

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Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 3

Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 3

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My blog post this month unfortunately won’t focus on life in Paris. While French universities don’t have fall break like Vassar does in October, we had about two weeks off at the end of the month to celebrate La Touissant, or All Saint’s Day, which falls on November 1st. I had booked tickets in early September to go on a whirlwind trip to three different cities in ten days with two of my close friends from the program–a trip from…

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Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 2

Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 2

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It’s hard to avoid the French language when in France. Yes, I am fully aware of how idiotically obvious this sounds. What I mean to say is, it’s hard to commit to learning and speaking French all the time while in France—and you must commit, because everything is all French, all the time. But in order to commit, you have to want to commit. And thus far, in my study-abroad experience, the wanting (which conversely means giving up the English)…

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Colin Crilly | Paris, France & Munich, Germany | Post 1

Colin Crilly | Paris, France & Munich, Germany | Post 1

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Hi, everyone! My name is Colin Crilly and I’m a junior Biology major (with a possible Political Science correlate). This semester, I’ll be studying at University College London. It’s kind of like Vassar College…except that it’s the complete opposite of Vassar College—large, public, in the middle of a bustling metropolis, and without a fire-spinning circus group on campus (not officially, anyway). Interestingly enough, UCL works on a trimester system, which means that classes don’t start for another week. But instead of spending September at home…

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Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 1

Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 1

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Salut, tout le monde! I write this blog post from the apartment of my home-stay host Bernadette—a nurse who lives with two cats in the 2ème arrondissement of Paris. I’ve been in Paris since Saturday, September 7 after spending the previous two weeks in Bordeaux, France. My study-abroad program left on August 24 for Paris, and after a three-hour layover in Charles De Gaulle airport, we continued on to Bordeaux. Twenty-one jet-lagged students from Vassar, Wesleyan, Swarthmore, and Tufts arrived in Bordeaux on…

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Emily Dowling | Paris, France | Post 4

Emily Dowling | Paris, France | Post 4

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My study abroad program seeks to immerse its students in French language and culture to the greatest possible degree. Indeed, we live with French host families, take courses in French at Parisian universities, and even have the opportunity to work at a stage—a French internship. The first week, we were presented with numerous internship options, ranging from working in a wine store to taking photos of French cheeses for a fromagerie to hanging paintings at a Parisian gallery. Since I have been a tutor in Poughkeepsie schools during…

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Emily Dowling | Paris, France | Post 3

Emily Dowling | Paris, France | Post 3

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One of the benefits of living in Europe is that everything feels so close—at any moment, ancient monuments and breathtaking cities are only a brief train ride away. As if the destinations themselves weren’t attractive enough, my study abroad program provides a financial incentive to motivate students to explore France, offering reimbursements for up to 350 euros for travel within France and other Francophone countries. When my friends proposed a weekend getaway to Mont-St-Michel, a mountain-city in Normandy that is…

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