Episode 22 - The Champions!
PSG v Newcastle, finished with 3/5 classes, and a French dinner
And so somehow, the final week of classes in upon us. I feel like I just got here, but it is time to leave Paris soon. Final exams, final dinners, and final memories are below. Enjoy!
Tuesday 11/28/2023
I woke up at 11 and studied a bit of French before rewarding myself by writing a day of this blog.
Writing this is hard work, but I love it, so the hard work doesn’t feel like work.
“Love your job and you don’t work a day in your life”, and whatnot.
I hit up my favorite soup shop, Le Pain Quotidien, to get the soup of the day and study some more with the lightning-fast WiFi and great ambiance. Preston, my favorite waiter, was working there today, so that’s always a treat. The soup was ok, but the vibes were great like always.
About an hour into working, I got a call from a random French number, and I understood enough of what the speaker was saying to realize that my package had arrived at my apartment, a few blocks away. Given that I had only one package on the way, I knew my new, warm jacket from my mom had arrived!
I hurried over to my apartment, picked it up from the delivery man, and was so happy when I put on the jacket. So fluffy! So warm! So many pockets!
Thank you, Mama!
I chilled in my apartment and did a bit more studying, then biked over to the Pantheon area to meet up with Anna again to study some more with her.
As per usual, studying went out the window as we proceeded to have a lovely conversation about life. She wanted to hear my French as I had an exam approaching in a few hours, and then laughed with horror at my terrible pronunciation.
That didn’t fill me with confidence, but whatevs.
She’s off to Madrid this weekend to visit her g-pa, then we’re grabbing Russian dumplings on Monday. How exciting! How lovely!
I biked to French class for my final written exam, and honestly completing destroyed it. I felt like a hammer the way I nailed that exam. I am so happy with how I did!
In other fun news, I had made a study guide the week before the final and shared it with my classmates through our shared WhatsApp groupchat, and was tremendously pleased to see that many of my classmates had it open and were studying from it before the exam started. Hooray! It seems that my influence is reaching further and further lol.
After the exam, I headed over to another Sciences Po building where Emma was studying to chat with her. She was stressed about all the papers she had to write, but I know that she will write those words with no problems. Emma can write some great papers under pressure.
I then biked to Urban Grill, got a delicious kebab, chilled for a bit, then took the metro to western Paris.
Why, you may ask?
Because I WAS GOING TO A CHAMPIONS LEAGUE GAME!! PSG vs Newcastle! At Parc des Princes! How exciting!
The metro there was quite delayed, and I was slightly concerned that I would miss the opening ceremony. No need for concern, I made it there on time.
I bought a ticket for the game the week before after Joe told me he was going to with his dad and godfather, who were visiting from London to go to the game with Joe.
Those are perhaps two of the most British men I have ever met! Absolutely amazing lads, and a great time. We were sitting in the PSG section despite rooting for Newcastle, and I definitely got a few not-too-friendly looks from the other gents around us (especially when Newcastle scored in the first half). Nevertheless, we made it out unscathed.
The atmosphere at the game was insane, and I couldn’t believe that some of the best players in the entire world were right there, playing soccer on the pitch just a few dozen meters away. It was surreal. Mbappe was right there! Mbappe! And he scored a penalty!
After the game, Joe’s godfather told me that I could get 2 euros for every plastic beer cup that I collected and turned in (he told me this after telling me to keep the pint cup from the pint he bought for me, thank you!). After I realized the vast potential for earnings from the dozens of cups I saw in the stands, I proceeded to collect several dozen cups and headed to the bar counter to cash them in.
Imagine my disappointment when I learned that the limit was 10 cups per person.
Fortunately, there were a number of folks next to me looking for a quick buck, so we decided to trade some cups for money independently of the bar cash-in desk, and they would then cash the cups in for me.
What emerged after was a tremendously interesting barter economy, where a going rate for cups was determined based on several different suppliers and demanders of these recycling cups. I would give 10 cups to people, for example, for 18 euros, and the person cashing them would make a small profit of 2 euros.
After all was said and done, I made a total of 64 euros for the cup collections. That effectively gives me a 50% discount on my ticket!
That Champions League Game was a top 10 experience of my life.
On the way back, there was a massive crowd heading back into the city center on the only metro stop near the stadium. That’s what I call genius urban planning. Bar presence was crucial here to get onto the train.
The train was packed like sardines, as could be expected. I decided to get off at the Concorde station and Vélib home on my favorite road in all of Paris, the Rue de Rivoli.
As I was biking home, I remembered this article I recently read by Sahil Bloom that mentioned an American author who gave many speeches. He offered this advice about life:
Up to this point this speech has been new stuff, written for this place and this occasion. But every graduation address I've delivered has ended, and this one will, too, with old stuff about my Uncle Alex, my father's kid brother.
A Harvard graduate, Alex Vonnegut was locally useful in Indianapolis as an honest insurance agent. He was also well-read and wise. One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings was that they seldom took time out to notice when they were happy.
He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and he would interrupt the conversation to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
So, I hope that you Adams and Eves in front of me will do the same for the rest of your lives.
When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud: "If this isn't nice, what is?"
I have to say that when I was biking home on Rue de Rivoli, with not a single other person in sight, on a perfect green velib after coming home from a Champions League Game, I had to wonder, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
Life is not just nice. It is wonderful.
On the way back to the apartment, I stopped by Urban Grill to chat with Muhammad and Hasen about the game, and found out that they were secretly Newcastle fans. I will miss them both tremendously.
I made it back to the apartment, called Mama, read a bit of the Da Vinci Code, and went off the slumberland.
Wednesday 11/29
I woke up around 9, read a bit more of the book, then wrote my Friendsgiving blog with great music and even great vibes. About halfway through, I headed outside to grab breakfast at a boulangerie, and got 2 pain au chocolates and a baguette for 5 euros.
The fact that I can do that is amazing. A perfectly fresh, delicious, amazing French breakfast for 5 euros?
Wow.
I went on a short walk afterward, then finished up the blog and got the amazing picture from last night’s game from Joe. So amazing, in fact, that it is the opening picture of this post.
Afterward, I biked over to Le Floor to meet up with Hannah, the English girl who is replacing me as Eliana’s tutor soon. Basically, I wanted to tell how about how Eliana loves making paper airplanes and talks a lot of shit when playing Uno.
Turns out, Hannah has not been having the best exchange experience so far. She’s living with her roommate in northwestern Paris, and has not really made any local friends. I can tell that I have enjoyed being abroad much more than she, and I felt quite bad secondhand. I added her to the SP exchange group so that she could meet more people, and encouraged her to attend more of the picnics and events at the beginning of the semester to meet some awesome people. These picnics are where I first met Ben, Joe, Emma, and Harry, and through them, the rest of the group.
She’s also from Edinbruh, and so naturally, we talked about dragon soup and Arthur’s Seat. She also said she’s been meaning to learn how to bike, and I strongly recommended not doing so in Paris. Paris is absolutely crazy for cyclists, though there is at least an order within the chaos, unlike in LA, where it’s just a free-for-all between the different drivers.
In Paris, there is beauty in the chaos for those with the eyes to see it.
I then biked north to Eliana’s for my second-to-last tutoring session with her. What an amazing time! We played hopscotch on their back porch, got yelled at for jumping rope and stomping too loudly, and I was forced to play with a creepy doll.
Later, I showed her what a maze was, and proceeded to make a bunch of them for her to solve. I also taught her how to make paper snowflakes, and she absolutely loved them. She was tremendously confused about what I was doing when I folded the paper and began cutting it with scissors, but was super excited and happy to see the snowflake when I unfolded it.
We proceeded to make a couple dozen of them, string them together, and hang them around the apartment. Christmas is upon us!
The 5 hours flew by, and I biked over to near Joe’s afterward to check out an Iranian restaurant I had been meaning to try. The prices were not too bad, but the food wasn’t as great as my beloved Urban Grill.
I seem to have set impossibly high standards for myself regarding food.
I got a baguette for later, and biked over to the volleyball gym to cheer on the girls team that was having their game at the moment. They absolutely slaughtered the other team, and I am happy to report that I was leading the cheering and chanting from the sideline. You can be sure that as soon as they missed a point, they were hit by a barrage of cleverly worded phrases and some loud screaming.
I take my job as chief cheerleader seriously.
After the girls had their game, it was time for practice with the boys. Practice was phenomenal, as I finally mastered the timing of my jump and swing when hitting in the front row. I was destroying the opposing side with all my tips and hits, and the coach was super happy each time I would get a kill. Even Antoine, the reserved French setter, told me “I love it!” after a particularly great kill.
After practice, I served a ton and chatted it up with a couple of straggling teammates, and then we left the gym after the final practice before winter break. For me, that meant the last practice ever as a French collegiate athlete.
This was the first time in my entire life that I knew with exact certainty that I would never return to a place. For me, I knew that I would never step foot in that volleyball gym again, and it was quite a strange feeling knowing I would never come back there. I didn’t feel sad, nor happy about that fact.
It just felt quite profound.
I will not miss that gym, however. The peeling paint, splintering floorboards, dust bunnies everywhere — they are simply a physical place that holds no special meaning for me. It is the memories that I created there, the teammates and bonds I met — they are all symbols of a team of players from all over the world that came together each week to laugh, to play, to train, all together.
I will miss the wonderful people I met. The gym is simply the room where the magic happened.
Thursday 11/30
I woke up early for my last ever French A1 class. Since I ran out of yogurt the day before and did not have any food in the apartment, I left a bit earlier to get 3 pain au chocolats from the boulangerie near Sciences Po before heading over to class.
Of course, I got a coffee on the way!
For some strange reason, we were learning new material, despite this being the last class and us taking the exam later in the same session. I wasn’t really paying attention, but was rather chatting with Olivia and Guy the entire time. Turns out, Olivia also goes to UCLA and will living in a 12-person apartment off of Landfair when we come back in the winter quarter. That’s wild.
12 people? In one apartment? Good luck!
The last part of our final exam was a conversation in French with the professor, and before I knew it, it was my turn to converse with the prof. She asked about where I had traveled around Europe, my family, what I like and don’t like about Paris — so basically, things I can answer! She was pretty lenient with my few grammatical mistakes, but that’s because she likes me from all my participation and engagement all quarter.
Good times!
After everyone had their conversations, the time for the end of our final class had come. We took a lovely photo with the class, she emotionally wished us all good luck, and just like that, French class was over! Where in the world did the time go?
After class, I walked around a bit with Guy and we chatted about our weekends. Guy’s class was moved to another building, and Guy didn’t know how to get there, despite it being the main building of Sciences Po.
Some people are just navigationally challenged, it seems!
I asked why his class had changed rooms, and he told me that it was because there was some event that needed the original classroom. That then led to me and him wondering why in the world the event didn’t just take the other room where Guy’s class was switched into.
Bureaucracy!
At Sciences Po, I picked up my volleyball hoodie that I ordered a few weeks ago (I officially have French collegiate athlete merch!), then I chilled with Elise, my volleyball teammate on the girls team, in the athletes-only section with comfy couches and whatnot. Joe tried to pull up later, and I had to defend the athlete zone from him.
I finished up some mandatory readings for history and chatted with Elise for a bit. She was giving me shit for not speaking French with her, but as my French class was fully wrapped up, I just responded in Russian lol.
I left a bit later to chill and study with Joe, and was reading about network effects while vibing with Joe. The professor spent a lot of time discussing network effects the last few classes, so I predicted that that would be one of the possible topics we could write about on our exam later that day. As a result, I was doing some personal readings on the topic (which I found rather interesting nonetheless) so that I could go above and beyond in my writings later that day.
While reading, I saw Manon, my wonderful orientation leader, and she invited me to her handball game in northwestern, woop Paris that day at 7 pm.
Looks like I’m going to a handball game tonight!
Before I knew it, it was time to go to my International Finance class for the last time. I sat next to Sara, and neither of us were paying much attention as she was chilling on her phone, and me, reading the Da Vinci Code on my iPad. I did pay some attention, though, and was relieved when that class ended for the last time.
After International Finance, I headed over to history class, one that I tremendously enjoyed, and was rather sad was ending. The professor even brought us Christmas chocolates for our final class!
We learned about the final parts of decolonization between the French and British empires, and then before I knew it, class was over for the final time. I thanked the professor tremendously after class, and he told me he appreciated my participation all semester and really enjoyed having me as his student. When I mentioned I’m from Belarus and was waiting for him to make an anti-Soviet joke in class so that I could bring it up, he revealed that his grandpa is actually Russian, so he’s not privy to those kinds of jokes.
I miss Professor Todd already!
And with that, there was only one class left — Corporate Governance and Contract Theory. I can do it!
I randomly saw Arvid sitting at the tables in front of my classroom, so naturally, I talked to him for a bit and we planned for a pint next week. I wanted to polish up my knowledge of network effects, so I reviewed a bit more before heading into the classroom.
All this resulted in me pulling up 45 minutes late to the 2-hour class, just to realize that he was still teaching new material for some reason and had yet to pass out the exam. He passed it out about 15 minutes later, and I saw a beautiful prompt about network effects.
However.
I saw there was an option to do an exercise instead (there were 3 essay prompts and a math exercise on this exam, and we had to choose one to complete), and I noticed that this exercise would be much easier and faster to do than write an entire dissertation on network effects.
So, I found myself doing the math exercise.
It had been a while since I reviewed those kinds of problems, so I found myself deriving the equations myself during the exam. Nevertheless, I finished the entire thing in 20 minutes, packed up my things, thanked the professor for the semester with a firm handshake and a brief nod, and was the first to leave the exam room, certain I would never see that room, nor anyone in it, ever again.
I decided to reward myself with a walk, and headed over to the Saint-Sulpice Church to see the inside of it. I had just finished reading the Da Vinci Code, and there were a bunch of references to that church and the interior architecture that I wanted to see. Specifically, the book mentioned a red line that was the ancient Rose Line passing through the church, and a large keystone under which hid a secret tablet.
Imagine my disappointment when I found none of these things, and later read the Wikipedia article that mentioned that all the references in the Da Vinci Code were fake, completely made up, and annoyed the staff and clergy of the church tremendously from all the tourists that showed up to see the references that didn’t exist.
It was still a beautiful church, though.
After, I walked over to the Apple Store to finish up some articles I had been meaning to read, and downloaded Looking for Alaska on my iPad now that I finished The Da Vinci Code. Before I knew it, it was time to get on the bus and head to northwestern Paris to check out Manon’s handball game.
The bus was remarkably slow, but I didn’t mind much because I was reading my new book on my phone. Talk about a great book. I could not stop reading it!
I eventually made it to my bus stop, and got slightly lost because the streets were so strangely oriented. Me, getting lost! How crazy.
The handball game was amazing to watch. I had never seen a full game played out, and was shocked to see how violent the game was. The 2 teams were lowkey tackling each other, and I found myself flinching each time that would happen. Along the way, Simon called me and I showed him how crazy the game was on FaceTime.
Manon played extremely well, and even scored a few goals! She was extremely happy to see me and that I came to cheer her on. :)
I took the metro back home because I couldn’t be bothered to bike home in the freezing cold. I checked the weather forecast the other day and noticed that it’s so cold, in fact, that snow is forecast on Sunday.
Snow. In Paris. Wtf.
The metro back was smooth sailing, and I read some more of Looking for Alaska along the way. I made it back to the apartment successfully, cooked dinner, listened to opera, chilled, read a bit, and was vibing tremendously.
I then biked over to get a pint with the gang, but wasn’t really feeling it. It had been a very long week. I unfortunately spilled a pint, and they didn’t even give a discount on the next one. Ben and I did play darts, and he won after I couldn’t make a double-1 despite ~38057 attempts to win myself.
I biked to Joe’s apartment, opened it up with his spare keys, and fell asleep on his guest bed after reading some more of the book on my phone.
Good times.
Friday 12/1
Joe and I were planning on going on a bike ride this morning, but that plan fell through really quickly when we both woke up and were absolutely exhausted. I snoozed my alarm a bunch of times, then cuddled with a near-naked Joe in his much warmer bed. I read some more of my book and he watched some of the last Harry Potter movie.
Downloading pirated books is wonderful. Free knowledge!
We eventually got our shit together, and went to a lovely boulangerie to get pain au chocolats and coffee for breakfast. We ate them outside in the brisk cold, and Joe told me that he has a final round legal internship interview in London next Wednesday, and they paid for his Eurostar there and back.
Joe is getting Eurostared to London! So cool!
I thought it was crazy when Kraft Heinz flew me out from LA to Chicago for an interview, but taking the Eurostar from Paris to London, and then returning literally the same evening, is much, much cooler imo.
After our great breakfast, I biked home, cleaned up the apartment, ate the last pain au chocolat that I had saved, and then biked over to the Apple Store to meet up with Lisa to finish up our labor economics final that was due Friday at midnight.
Coincidentally, I met João (hi João!) from the Iceland trip, since he started working in the Apple Stores.
I am so proud.
João is going on this grand trip around Europe after the semester ends, because his uni in São Paulo will be on summer break, since Brazil is in the southern hemisphere. Crazy!
Lisa pulled up a solid hour late, and we began productively doing the labor economics final. Lisa was amazed by the Apple Store and its fast WiFi and free charging. I’m excited to come back here on Monday to write my history finals!
I left around 3 to bike back to the Bastille area to get lunch with Magdalena, my Czech friend. It had been too long since we had caught up, and it was great to see her again. We talked about how interesting it is to see different languages fluently spoken, and how strange it is to not be able to speak the local language fluently. I mentioned how I crave fluent conversations after not having them for a while, such as when I’m hanging out with my volleyball teammates or tutoring Eliana. Magdalena mentioned she missed reading and writing in Czech, and we agreed that English is not the most expressive language to write in.
Nevertheless, I try to push English to its limits in my writing.
We are carving pumpkins next week!
I walked home from the cafe and worked some more on the labor economics final. Along the way, I bought a lighter at the tobacco shop down the street so that I could finally light the candle I got from Aubervilliers, all those months ago.
Candle lit, exam worked on. Nice.
Around 6, I biked north to Eliana’s (wait, on a Friday?!) since her family had invited me for dinner that evening. How exciting!
Eliana’s dad poured me a drink that is common in Marseilles, but I quite frankly thought it was terrible. I settled for a blonde beer instead, and then we all sat down around the table and had a lovely French dinner together. They had this cheese melter called a raclette that Eliana’s dad (Max) got from his grandma, and basically, you melt cheese in it, then pour it over potatoes and charcuterie. It was amazing.
Along the way, we had a ton of cheese and wine. French people love cheese. It is no joke.
Around halfway through, the family cat walked over, and Max fed it cheese. I was shocked to see that and asked why the cat likes cheese.
“Because it’s a French cat,” said Max in the most matter-of-fact tone.
Wow.
Apparently, French dinners are typically 5 courses — appetizers, main 1, main 2, cheese, then dessert. Wild.
After, we drank this Normandy alcohol for “digestion”. Nice.
This tutoring experience has been so wonderful. Besides keeping me young, I have been exposed so much more to French culture and have seen firsthand how French families work. It has been a lovely experience.
On the way home from dinner, I considered stopping by Bouillon to say hi to Ben and Harry, but I still needed to finish my labor economics final due in 2 hours and was quite tired from dinner already. I made it home, finished the final (done with 3/5 classes now!), read some more of my book, and went to bed early.
What a week!
My Spotify Wrapped, just in case you were wondering:
