After a long week in Italy and an overnight train back to France, I finally got to meet up with my mom and spend a few days with her. We met at the train station in Paris and spent a few hours walking around before we got on our train to Normandy. I introduced my mom to the acclaimed apricot croissant before we went to the Latin Quarter and then to see the beautiful Sacre Coeur. After my second attempt at liking Paris, I have decided that it is too stressful for ...

This past week has been exhausting. Between studying for midterms, planning trips, a day in Geneva, a day of wine touring, teaching myself economics, taking midterms and running a lot of overdue errands, I'm beat. However, as of 11 AM yesterday I have no conventional responsibilities until November- that's pretty nice. I even have some extra time to fit in a blog entry about my weekend. If it turns out to be boring, we'll blame it on my lack of sleep. Friday nig...

Today I went to Marseille in the South of France and it was absolutely beautiful. Since Southern France is a pretty mountainous place- more so than it looks, as you will find if you climb to the tops of the "hills"- we saw some exceptional views of the Mediterranean and the city from pretty high up. Because of the hilly terrain, the shore in Marseille was nothing like the ones at home; the only actual beach I saw was about 100 yards long and maybe 60 fe...

OK, so I haven't been too great about updating the blog over the last week, but things have been relatively slow around le France. I'll condense all of the week into one entry so that it sounds like I did a few things… but really, not so much. On Wednesday, Sharon and Paul organized a cheese-tasting night at their local Fromagerie. For €5 we got to taste 12 of the shop owner's favorite cheeses and a white or red wine that complimented each one. Until...

So, I've made it through my first week in the world of foreign academia. Here are my observations: International Economics is taught by a man so unsure of himself that he actually added PhD to his name on the board halfway through the class once he realized nobody thought he knew what he was doing. It's too bad CEFAM has a very strict attendance policy (supposedly modeled after the American university systems) because the opportunity cost of going to class is th...