Episode 2 - Electric Paris
Somehow playing defense in collegiate volleyball, so many pelmeni dumplings, and a beautiful forest waiting to be explored 🌲
And we’re back! After a week that was quite eventful yet somehow flew by tremendously quickly, it’s already time for the next edition of the Chronicles of Dennis (or something like that).
Let’s dive in!
Sunday 9/17/2023
Sunday was my day of rest and relaxation. Chill vibes, sleeping in, and taking it easy were the themes of the day.
About time.
Woke up around 10 (nice!) and finished reading my book that I had bought the previous week for 3 euros. It’s called God’s Little Acre, and is about this family from Georgia (the state) that is quite dysfunctional.
Not the greatest book I’ve ever read, but quite an interesting read nonetheless.
Then it was off to my go-to WiFi spot (you already know it’s the Starbucks down the street) to apply for more internships and write a bit. The internship application grind has been paying off, fortunately.
I have an interview for JP Morgan Chase next week!
I’ll definitely need to study for that (especially regarding their company culture and the specific role), though that’s a problem for next week. I’m getting WiFi installed in the apartment on Monday, so my lovely trips down the block for Internet access will be ending soon.
Who knows, though. Maybe I’ll go there to work anyway for nostalgia purposes.
After a couple of hours working, it was time for some fresh air, a nice walk in the park, and a baguette.
“Une baguette, s’il vous plaît!”
Fantastic.
My Australian friend Annabel recommended I try a baguette with butter. I’ve been eating the baguette with only olive oil + balsamic vinegar, or just plain baguette, so it was quite a delightful experience to try it with butter.
Needless to say, it was delicious. Thanks, Annabel!
I was super excited because today I called my friend Sanketh back home. Sanketh and I are both tour guides at UCLA, and met when we both joined the program last year. Many weekly lunches, parties, and adventures later, Sanketh and I were voted “Best Bromance” out of the entire 90-person tour guide organization.
It was wonderful to chat with him again!
We talked about back-to-school, higher education, tour guiding (he’s one of the lead tour guides this year and will do amazing, I’m certain of it), life in general, and shared plenty of jokes. What a great convo :). I miss you, Sanketh!
After that, it was back onto a Velib bike to cycle across Paris to watch a rugby game with the gang. Besides being a great reason for a pint, it was wonderful to see them again (15 hours is way too long to not see Joe) and watch England beat Japan. There somehow was a major thunderstorm, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get home, then fortunately it cleared up for me in time to bike home.
Most of the group left before halftime, so it was just Ben, Joe, and I to watch the end of the game. We talked about the rise and dominance of British Olympic Sports (they’re patriotic, those two 🇬🇧) and how a focused effort on youth academies over decades led to them consistently beating all countries (except the US and China) in medals despite only have a population of 60 million people.
Fascinating.
Ben also told me an amazing quote: “If you can’t work, then teach. But if you can’t teach, then lecture.” Explains why so many of my professors are lecturers, I guess. 🙃
Oh and also, I switched my phone settings to Russian. Random thought, but I figured why not? It’s great practice, anyway.
Mне нравится!
A smooth, downhill bike ride home with great music, crisp air, and high spirits.
Monday 9/18
I woke up early today, because today…
Was a momentous day!
My mentee from my consulting club was coming to visit me in Paris!
Ok, she was visiting Paris and Lyon with her family for her dad’s work conference in Lyon, but give me a break. A guy can dream.
April and I met up early at 8 am, then I gave her a full tour of my apartment. After 2 minutes (I have a very small apartment), we left for a cafe. How exciting!
The almond croissants and cappuccinos were absolutely delicious. We chatted there for a bit, then left for a long walk to the Seine, along to Notre Dame, and back to the Bastille District to meet up with her parents. We talked about life, UCLA, internship applications (oh my), then I said bye to her and her family as they took the metro to the Louvre.
Au revoir!
On the walk back home, I began examining the stores along the street. It’s something I do occasionally when I’m bored. Who knows what I could find?
In this case, something exciting!
A Russian store! 🇷🇺
When looking at the name of the store, I found my mind reading it, yet not in French. In Russian! Eagerly I walked in, excited to chat with something in a language that I knew besides English.
I spoke with the cashier for around 10 minutes.
15 minutes later, I left happily with my bag of frozen Russian dumplings (pelmeni) and some of my favorite Russian crackers (baranki, or sushki). Hooray!
After reading a bit in the park and doing some schoolwork before class on Tuesday, I met up with Joe and Gibbs to check out a park on the outskirts of Paris I’d been meaning to visit (Vincennes Woods).
Boy, was it worth it!
Lots of geese, ducks, and swans. Beautiful forests and a pretty lake where you can rent a boat. Trickling rivers, wild blackberries, acorns everywhere, and hidden secrets just waiting to be found. We shared stories, told jokes, and had a wonderful time.
Truly, the stuff of a storybook.
Gibbs, Joe, and I walked around for about an hour, until Joe and I found some large acorns and started playing baseball and soccer (football) with them.
Gibbs called it “guy things”. Whatever.
After a quick lunch (Gibbs at MacDo, Joe and I are a random supermarket), Joe and I biked back home, parted ways, then met again at the Sciences Po gardens (my exchange university) to do some work together.
I brought my hammock. Lovely!
I was getting so many strange looks from people walking by. Clearly, students in Paris at not used to hammocking. Maybe it’s just a California thing? As we were packing up to go our separate ways (Joe to class, me to the library), a security guard walked up to us and asked what we were doing. After Joe explained the wonders of the hammock to the gentlemen, he told us that “we were lucky he hadn’t found us sooner.”
Looks like Parisians don’t like hammocks after all :(
After a long stint at the library (I seem to be doing a lot of work here in Paris…), I started walking home when I ran into Lisa (my exchange buddy also from UCLA, but we only met here), Joe, and Lisa’s friend. Lisa and her friend had just gotten back from Switzerland, and they were super excited sharing about their adventure. Joe left after a bit, after which Lisa’s friend asked me why my British accent isn’t so pronounced.
In response, I pulled out the cup of British tea that I always keep on my person and took a nice sip. “Quite lovely, innit,” I responded.
Just kidding.
Apparently, she thought I was from Britain, too! Clearly, I’m becoming more and more European by the day. Lisa and I had a good laugh about that, then I left to go home.
The Velib bike I got was brand new and the seat height adjusted to my actual preferred height (most Velib bikes don’t do that). Because of the fresh bike and maximized power from my legs, I flew home and promptly fell asleep.
Tuesday 9/19
Tuesday marked the beginning of a wonderful academic week for 2 reasons:
I woke up on time and had an absolutely delicious, healthy breakfast.
I actually got to my 8 am class on time. Marvelous.
The discussion for my international trade and finance class went very well. Despite the class being so early, the instructor makes an effort to really make sure we understand the material. He’s smart, very kind, and explains things well.
I’m very happy to be in his class.
My other economics class (labor economics) went ok. The professor is a decent teacher, though the material is not the most exciting. He always wears a light-colored dress shirt to class, which changes color as he excitedly teaches the class, jumping around in excitement as he lectures new material. By the time the class is over, his shirt is a completely new color (of a darker shade).
After class, I met with my 2 Israeli group mates to plan out our assignment for next week’s class. We discussed for quite a while, then finally decided on a course of action and split up the work. The Israelis were very impressed by how organized I was in my note-taking and planning.
Looks like I’m representing the US well!
Walked over to get lunch at the local Crous (a series of cheap restaurants across Paris for university students), and pizza was on the menu today, along with cookies.
Pizza is not yet in my limited French vocabulary.
Embarrassingly, I asked another student to translate for me, only to learn that pizza is pronounced “pizza” in French.
Maybe I’m not representing the US so well after all.
After lunch, I did some work at the nearby Apple Store, planned for my upcoming Iceland trip, then walked over to meet my friend Max at the Orsay Museum. We’ve started a tradition of visiting museums together on Tuesdays because we both have a 4 hour break between classes on this day. Nice!
I finished exploring the entire bottom floor of the Orsay Museum, now I just need to finish the Impressionism exhibit. The museum is gorgeous, located in the building of an old train station. The architecture and art are beautiful and a privilege to behold. Boy, am I glad I get free admission (as a student) to most Parisian museums!
I walked back to Sciences Po a few hours later for my French class, where I had a terrific time. I love learning French. It’s really fun struggling with my classmates, then celebrating when we correctly conjugate a sentence, or butcher a phrase just slightly less worse than the previous time. My classmate told me that all French children speak better French than us, but hey. You can’t win them all.
Plus, I bet you those French kids aren’t fluent in English and Russian. I am!
*laughs mischievously*
Later, I met up with Lisa to make some pelmeni (those Russian dumplings I mentioned earlier) from scratch! I have the recipe pretty much memorized at this point, and love making them with my friends because they’re fun to make, delicious, relatively cheap, and a great chance to share my culture with others.
Did I mention they’re fun to make?
There were some extra pelmeni left, so I put them in a baguette bag to freeze at home. The extra pelmeni, plus the kilogram of Greek yogurt that I had bought when we were buying our ingredients for the pelmeni, needed to be put into my fridge ASAP, so I quickly biked home to put them in my fridge before planning to head out to the bar with Lisa and Joe.
When I got home, there was no electricity. The light switches and appliances simply did not work.
Confused, I called Joe, who told me to look at the electric box to see if any switches had been automatically shut off. They hadn’t. The lights in the hallway worked, so I knew it wasn’t a general blackout.
At this point, something was tickling at the back of my mind. Then I remembered.
My landlord told me to switch the electric bill to my name after I moved in. I never did.
Fantastic. Looks like my power was shut off.
I had to toss the yogurt, and the pelmeni too :(
By this point, Joe and the gang had left the pub, so I ended up with no pub and no yogurt. Hooray for me. Only I would end up in this mess. Though it was quite annoying, it was kinda funny in the grand scheme of things. I viewed the ~15 euros of food I had to throw out (I had the frozen pelmeni from the Russian store in the freezer as well) as simply the training price for my “lesson in adulting”.
I remember reading about a CEO that was asked if he fired an employee that had lost the company $650k for a mistake they made. “Of course not,” replied the CEO. “I just spent $650k training them.” My yogurt was the training for me. Now I know to make sure the electric bill is in my name whenever I move to a new place.
I called my mom to tell her about my predicament. She found it funny as well.
I fell asleep with no electricity and a broad smile on my face.
Wednesday 9/20
I woke up early and the first thing I did was to call the local energy company. I was a man on a mission. Fortunately, the company had English-speaking agents, and I was able to get all the electric woes sorted out. I got the contracted created, processed, and signed all within 30 minutes. The power will be back on tomorrow!
Next up was to eat. Without my beloved yogurt, I settled for a butter croissant and a pain au chocolat from the local boulangerie (bakery) 1 minute down the street.
Not a bad fallback at all!
I studied in the little bit at the nearby UC Paris center (the University of California system has a satellite campus in Paris just down the street from my apartment, open to all UC students) and discovered some new, amazing songs on Spotify. I love that app.
Next, I rode my beloved Velib bike to Sciences Po for a private French lesson from one of their instructors. The university is very invested in language education, and offers free lessons to all students in 10 different languages! I learned how to say “I play [insert sport]” and how to say “I like [blank]”.
J’aime etudie Français!
Afterwards, I met with David (another friend from my orientation group) to play some volleyball at the nearby Luxembourg Gardens. We found a nice patch of grass to play, and had a lovely time passing the ball around for half an hour.
After we were kicked out by a security guard (no balls in the park, apparently; he was a very polite guard though), we walked back towards campus and parted ways. He went off to return some shoes he had bought but didn’t fit, and I went over to my beloved Apple Store to do some more readings for my classes. Steve Jobs was onto something genius with these stores. They’re amazing!
On the topic of returning shoes, I had a large epiphany while in Paris. I’m MUCH less materialistic that I used to be. I no longer have an interest in buying material things (besides books, but that’s to read them, not just to have them). I rotate the same clothing, and no longer collect as many physical things as I did as a kid.
Instead, I spend all my money on food, travel, and experiences. I wouldn’t have it any other way!
The only exception is flags. I like to buy flags from the countries I’ve been to and put them in a vase in my room. That way, when I look at the vase, I remember all the fun and memorable trips I’ve been on.
I love geography, anyway.
Later on, I called my mate Simon, one of my best friends from UCLA. We had a great time catching up, and I told him about how shocked I was to learn Hebrew is read and written from right to left (Simon is Jewish and knows Hebrew). How crazy!
The best quote of the conversation?
“It seems like you’re going on a great adventure, and I’m going back to UCLA to do the same bullshit.”
Ain’t that something! That makes me feel a lot more grateful and excited to be studying abroad.
Then, I called Tatiana and we caught up about life. It was wonderful to chat, I really missed her! She’s studying abroad in London and already bought tickets to visit me at the end of October. I can’t wait!!
After studying volleyball rotations for practice today, I went to practice and had a great time. I had studied well, and needed much less guidance on where to position myself on the court than I needed last week. I was passing really well, and my coach even put me as libero (the main defensive specialist).
Just as a reminder, I’m 6’ 2”. It’ll be really funny if I end up playing defense on a volleyball team while being that tall.
Called Mama after practice, then went to the bar with my teammates (I really like this tradition). A few of my teammates have actually studied abroad in the US themselves (one at UW Madison, the other at USC 🤮), and I practiced speaking French with one of the other teammates (she is Manon’s friend as well!).
I went home around 11 and went to sleep very quickly. Tomorrow is the big day! The lights will be back on, and I’m off to Iceland!
Thursday 9/21
Woke up at 7 and the first thing I did was turn on the lights. Wow, electricity is amazing. This experience has shown me that electricity is one of those things we take completely for granted, and don’t miss it until it’s gone (like clean water, sunshine, and good health). A good wake up call, for a variety of reasons.
On another note, what I’ve found really interesting is that when I have some problem that’s super pressing (electric outage, urgent deadline, etc.), all of my effort goes into fixing it, giving me clarity of thought and action. The problem needs to be solved, and I give it my all.
Once it is resolved, I find myself slightly confused and directionless, as there is no longer a clear goal or objective to reach. I guess have a super defined, high-priority goal is good for me!
Enough of that.
After packing up for Iceland (I’m not coming back home after class), I was off to the boulangerie again for breakfast (though I did have coffee in my apartment 😋). I continued practicing French with him. My goal is to have a full conversation with him by the end of the semester. (Pretty soon, I may be chatting with someone else that works at a boulangerie. Joe may start working at one soon!)
French class was amazing as always. Today we learned a bunch of different verbs (about 50 of them), now I need to go and memorize them all! Slow and steady wins the race. We also learned the polite way of asking for something: “Je voudrais [insert what you’d like]”.
At lunch, I used “Je voudrais” to order 2 sandwiches. How amazing!
I read a little bit and did some work in the main hallway of Sciences Po where most students walk by on the way to their classes. I met my Swedish friend Arvid there, and we chatted for a bit. I ate one sandwich, and left the other on the table for later.
Shortly thereafter, a hungry student walked by and asked to buy the sandwich off of me. I was very confused.
The price at the Crous for this particular sandwich was 3 euros, 60 cents. He offered 4 euros. I countered with 5. He was pretty desperate because he had class soon and the line for the cafeteria was long, but he still rejected my (rather generous) offer.
He came back one minute later and offered 2 euros for half the sandwich. I wasn’t too hungry, so I agreed. Somehow I think I got the short end of the stick. What a fun story!
My own class following this experience was alright. International Trade and Finance is an interesting topic, though the models tend to be quite theoretical and 2 hours sitting in a hot, stuffy room is quite challenging for me.
Afterwards was my history class, which I loved! We discussed the history of British and French military and intellectual conquests of Egypt and India, and it was super interesting. I really enjoy that class because we debate ideas there and don’t just listen to lecture.
We argue. We discuss. We debate. It’s the way history should be taught. I look forward to every class.
After that, it was off to the grocery store to buy some snacks for Iceland, then off to the train to the airport! I called my friend Audrey from Northwestern along the way; it was lovely to catch up :)
We’ll definitely need to talk more on Monday!
After chilling in the lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and writing most of this post on the flight to Copenhagen (my layover to Iceland is there), I find myself in the Copenhagen airport, excited for the weekend ahead in Iceland. 🇮
And with that, we’ve come to end end of yet another post. See y’all later!