mes pensées

je suis malade..

yep, i'm sick :( I always manage to get a really bad cough at some point during fall quarter. Apparently this time it's a few months early...i got some "sirop" at the pharmacie so hopefully it'll start working!! Anyways, I'm attempting to research "who pays" for the World Health Organization aka who finances it... but I mean, it's kind of boring. and by kind of, i mean INCREDIBLY.
So I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to update my blog...hopefully i'll get better at updating this more frequently...and feel free to comment on my posts too so that i feel like someone out there is reading this!!

So...not much new to say now that I have time to write. I love having a cell phone so I can talk to Matt and my family more often which is always good :) Definitely a money saver, because I'm sure I would have bought more than 49 euros worth of phone cards by december (that's how much the phone cost, it's a cute little sony ericsson phone). It has already been so effective in helping me plan stuff to do with everyone at FIAP, and once I'm not sick I'm sure it'll help more for going out!

For those of you who have facebook, don't miss the Giverny pics at Claude Monet's house. It was raining and I had no umbrella so I wrapped my scarf around my head like a babushka...and Peter called me Gypsy Vaughn. Then we had an hour to spare before our group went in for the house/garden tour, so we walked along the one-road town of Giverny...I really mean it. The city is one street long...it's actually quite charming. So "Gypsy Vaughn" took pictures at some of the fun sights of Giverny, mostly out of deliriousness and sheer boredom. They're not to be missed...hopefully you won't all defriend me after seeing them. You should know by now how crazy I am!! So that definitely made the trip more worthwhile.


There are a few things I miss about the U.S. and certain things I plan to bring back with me. Here's a list that I plan to update as needed...
Things I Miss:
-My Chester's hot fries, the quasi-cheeto's snack I'm addicted to
-All of you guys (aww...teardrop)
-Having the capacity to talk to my friends whenever I want
-Having things open late at night within walking distance (well there's not that much in evanston either i suppose...)
-24 hours a day internet. The nighttime could be much easier to contact you all (aka you'd be awake then) but I don't have internet in my flat...sad day.
-Dance space and classes and ladycats and dance majors... I don't have Blomquist 5 minutes away to go dance at either...

Things I Plan to bring back:
-Bringing a tray to the table with all of the food/extra plates for the meal. That way the table is never full of a bunch of food! It's fantastic!
-Small portions of food in general: Having small delicious loaves of bread, two small slices for breakfast with a cafe and not being hungry until dinner...aka the food is so good that I'm never hungry!!
-Goat cheese! (and every other delicious kind of "fromage" we have at dinner...yum)
- Exploring the city (aka Chicago when I get back...Paris while I'm here)
- Going to bed early and making use of the afternoon. After all, the library closes at 6 pm here. I see now that our library encourages us to have unhealthy sleep patterns and study habits. Bad Northwestern, bad bad bad.

That's all for now :)
miss you all
xoxo jess

posted by jessievon @ 9/25/2006 02:10:00 PM 2 comments

20 days later....

So 20 days later, I've finally decided to start this blog! Ifigured out the internet at my school Sciences Po about a week ago. (the official name is Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris for those who were wondering).
So where to begin? How about classes? Well firstly, I miraculously got placed into french 199 here. So apparently that means I get 2 credits and can pretend like I've take French for two years! So that's good news as far as improving my french at a rapid speed, but hopefully i'll do okay in the class! My France in the EU class provided me with a lovely midterm the second week of class, so that was pretty cool...haha. It wasn't too bad though so hopefully I wrote what the prof wanted to hear. The class is pretty interesting but sort of chaotic. Basically we all just share our opinions about France, including the French students' own interpretation of their State and Nation (the State is basically the government, but it's a lot more complicated than that...I won't bore you). So writing notes is hard bc I don't know if I should be writing down what everyone's saying or not...madness. My public health class is really interesting. Today we are having a guest lecturer who is a public civil servant (which is more respected here than having a public office job in the U.S.) and is a member of the Inspection general des affaires sociales. It should be a blast! hah...

And now for my social life which isn't incredibly more interesting but nevertheless worth mentioning. I'm currently a member of a soon-to-be "acapella group" known as TLP feat. Ludakrishna, created two weeks ago. We're kind of a big deal here...and by a big deal, i mean we sat in the back row of the bus on the Normandie weekend trip and did karaoke, inlcuding tangling up our two sets of ipod headphones. We probably drove anyone crazy but it made the drive interesting!! T is Tanto aka Dan, L is Lil Papi aka Victor, P is for Dulce and I, aka Princess Peach and Princess Daisy and Luda is Moulin. We, as well as Gauthami aka Toadstool and Jocelyn and Sarah, had a great time in Barcelona! It's nice to have a solid group of friends that I can do anything with. I also got a CELL PHONE!! It's free for me to receive calls so call me anytime! If you're having some sort of Jessica withdrawal, from the states you diall:
011-33-686-080-305 or from France 06-86-08-03-05.
I realized living in my homestay that I'm kind of excluded from the planning that goes on in FIAP, the hotel where just about all the NU kids are living. So in order not to miss out on the fun, i got the cell phone. I was hoping not to get one but it's just too hard when i'm living alone. At least I'll always have Emily, who is a fellow Californian (what are the odds?) living in the homestay with me and our "housemom" Annie aka Mme Battard. Emily is so much fun and we went out the first couple days I was here before I saw all the NU kids and she and her Smith friends showed me a good time. Hopefully we'll go out again soon!
I'll write more about Barcelona soon but I know if I write anymore you'll get bored and stop reading...and that wouldn't be any good!!! So for now I'll just say I miss you all back home and hope everything is going great!
<3, jess

posted by jessievon @ 9/20/2006 01:56:00 PM 0 comments

hi

this is a test...this is only a test

posted by jessievon @ 9/01/2006 11:25:00 AM 0 comments