Episode 4 - Locked Out 🗝️
Learning that Emma doesn't know how to catch dropped keys, making eclairs with a professional pastry chef, and starting to teach English 📚
And somehow another week in Paris has flown by! Though the days sometimes seem long, the weeks are all too short. It’s a reminder to cherish every moment and to appreciate the little things in life, not just the major ones.
“Inside every 80-year-old is an 18-year-old wondering what the f*ck just happened.“
If it’s your first time here, welcome! It’s great to have you on board and on this crazy journey together.
Let’s go 👇
Monday 9/25/2023
Monday marked my “back to reality” day after coming back from Iceland. The end of one of the most magical trips was upon me, and it was time to return home.
Returning to Paris is not bad at all!
But first, I made great use of my beanie of the flight home. Thanks Camila for snapping this gem.
At the Orly airport, Camila and I got quite lost looking around for the OrlyBus, which is a bus (shocking, I know) that takes you from the airport into the (somewhat) city center. We eventually found the bus after asking a couple of (very nice) security guards where in the world to go.
Thanks!
The bus ride was uneventful and chill, with lots of traffic on a Monday 7 a.m. driving into Paris. Seems like traffic is a universal in countries across the world.
Whoever invented traffic is an idiot.
It was very strange coming off the bus in Paris. After the magic and raw nature of Iceland, being back in a hyper-urban setting was quite stark, and frankly, wrong. Clearly, I’m much more of a nature person than a city person. :)
Being back in Paris, however, did mean it was back to my beloved Velib bikes. It was a short ride home, during which I saw several dads taking their kids to school on bikes. How cute!
I got back home right in time to see the sun rising and the light starting to shine on the buildings on my street. What a Parisian moment 😍
After a nice break looking out the window and pondering life, it was time to unpack, shower, and get back to work. I grabbed my laptop and headed off to the UC Paris just down the street. The bright side of not having WiFi in my apartment is that it forces me to leave my apartment, interact with others, and find nice places with fast WiFi to work. I have explored more of Paris as a result!
Some more internship applications and homework later, I called Babylangues to schedule my interview for Wednesday! Babylangues is a company my mom told me about where native English speakers teach French children English. Not only is it a great way to get some more money, it’s a fun way to learn French myself in the process!
My time at the UC Paris Center came to an end around 2, when the WiFi installation folks came over to my apartment. It seems that my era of not having WiFi was coming to an end! Joe was there to speak French with the gentleman (since there’s no way I’d be able to do that currently), and the nice, shiny, round WiFi box was installed just 30 minutes later.
Hooray!
Joe and I went to a dumpling place down the street to celebrate. They were delicious!
We stopped at a grocery store for some more food, where I learned that pomegranates are called “grenades” in French.
Sick.
We did some more work at the UC Paris Center, then it was time for him to get ready for class and me to go to volleyball practice. The gym we play at on Mondays is significantly nicer, larger, and more modern than the one we play in on Wednesdays, though it happens to be in the middle on nowhere as a result. The practice was a lot of conditioning and drills, then the guys scrimmaged the girls.
I was certain we’d win, so I made a generous bet with Emma:
If the guys win, she does 10 sit-ups. If the girls win, I do 50 push-ups.
Those 50 push-ups sucked. Story of my life.
Somehow I got voluntold to drop off the volleyballs back at Sciences Po, so I began the 5 km ride south to campus with 20 bright yellow and blue volleyballs strapped in a bag to my back. I got a lot of weird looks from drivers and pedestrians, but I couldn’t care less.
I was vibing to great music.
At Sciences Po, I saw Manon and Joe, chatted for a bit, then went home (via Velib, of course) to get ready for dinner.
Emma came over around 8 to make pasta with me, and rather than go down 2 flights of stairs to open the door for her, I had the genius idea to simply drop the keys to her out the window, saving us both time and energy.
The plan looked great on paper. The execution couldn’t have gone worse.
Emma didn’t catch the keys, the main key broke, and I was left wondering what to do.
I decided to temporarily ignore the problem while we cooked and ate (a delicious) dinner, then we decided to go for a walk. To be able to get back into the apartment, despite a broken key, I devised this ingenious plan to keep the door open with duck tape.
When we came back from the lovely walk, the door was locked and my duck tape mechanism had failed.
At this point, Joe had come over to get a pint with Emma and I, so I quickly called my landlord to notify her of the issue and figure out what to do. I decided to crash at Joe’s and we’d figure out the key issue first thing tomorrow morning.
Story of my life.
At this point, I had only 5 things with me:
Phone (partially charged)
(Broken) keys
Navigo card (for the subway)
High spirits
Joe + Emma
If I’m being completely honest, that’s really all you need.
We went to a nice bar with lots of cool, cheap drinks, I played some darts and pinball, got yelled at by the bartender, then we all went home. Emma fortunately brought her keys with her, so she was able to get into her apartment. Joe and I took the metro to his apartment (I had my Navigo card!), and we called it a day.
What a wild first day back from Iceland.
Tuesday 9/26
I woke up super early this morning at Joe’s to get to my class at 8 a.m.
My outfit:
Flip flops
Black cargo shorts
Poofy backpacking jacket
Iceland beanie
Yikes.
Since I didn’t have my Velib card, I had to take the metro to class rather than my beloved morning bike ride. That was unfortunate, but fortunately the metro station was right by Sciences Po, giving me only a short walk to class.
The first thing I did was apologize to my professor about my extraordinarily disheveled appearance, to which he laughed and responded that it was okay. He thought my situation with the key was particularly funny.
After class, I took the metro back to Joe’s and we went to a locksmith to see if he could duplicate the key.
He couldn’t. The key was so broken, he said, that no locksmith would be able to fix it.
Wonderful.
So we went to a boulangerie instead, with great success. Cheap, delicious baguettes always cheer me up! Put some jam and butter on that baguette, and it’s something straight from heaven indeed.
Along with the baguettes, I made some coffee for myself and Joe. The coffee machine didn’t work, we were out of instant coffee, and Joe didn’t know what to do.
I proceeded to put some ground coffee in the empty instant coffee glass, poured hot water into it, and then poured that delicious coffee through a filter into a coffee mug for myself. It tasted perfect, and Joe was extremely stressed the entire time watching my ingenious method of creating coffee.
Sometimes my genius is… it’s almost frightening.
At this point, my landlord called me and told me they had an extra key, so I stopped by their apartment to pick it up using Joe’s Velib card. Joe, you’re amazing.
I walked home with my new key and was absolutely super excited to be back in my apartment. Hooray!!!!
I cleaned the said apartment, read a super interesting article about Sam Altman, then wrote my blog post about Iceland. It was so nice to reminisce, I miss that trip so much already. 🇮🇸
After the Iceland post, I biked back to Sciences Po for my French class, which was exhausting because I was very sleep-deprived from Iceland and then slept only a little in Joe’s bed. The story of my life is having great quality sleep, just not enough of it. We had a French exam, which did not go too great. Good thing I’m taking that class pass, no pass!
Came back home after class, finished my baguette, watched a JP Morgan webinar for my interview on Thursday, and went to a sweet, sweet sleep.
About time.
Wednesday 9/27
Slept in today, finally recovering from the Iceland trip. How nice!
I spent the morning answering a lot of emails, applying to lots more internships, and doing other assorted tasks on my laptop. I love my Mac, so it was a great time overall.
I left around 10 a.m. to go make eclairs with some UC students! The UC exchange program has a number of programs this semester for exchange students, including a group dinner and a French pastry-making session. I signed up for the eclairs session, and today was the big day!
Our instructor was AMAZING! Not only was she a level 2 pastry chef (out of 3), she was super nice and answered a ton of questions I had about French cooking. For example, I learned that eggs in France aren’t refrigerated because they aren’t cleaned as aggressively as the ones in the US due to better chicken conditions, so they retain their protective coating from bacteria. Butter and eggs are of better quality in France because their production is extremely regulated, and there are strict guidelines for products to be able to officially call themselves Grade A eggs. She also told me about professionally graded chocolate, and showed us all how to make eclairs from scratch!
Overall, it was a wonderful time and we got delicious eclairs out of it!
Gabby (another UC student) and I headed over to Sciences Po from the pastry kitchen, she for class, and me for a French tutoring class. The tutoring went well, with me learning how to talk about events in the past that happened to my group. I did some more schoolwork afterward, then headed across the Seine for my interview for the Babylangues English tutoring job!
The interview was in an apartment building on the 6th floor and went extremely well. I got the job and picked out a family to meet later in the week to potentially tutor!
The interviewer, Varvara, is a student from London who is working here for the school year. She was super nice, very well-dressed, and spoke English, French, and Russian. I asked why we didn't do the interview in Russian. She said it was to make sure I could fluently speak English.
She was also ridiculously cute. Oh my.
I biked home from the office and bought a nice potted plant at a florist along the way. The gentleman in front of me only had a credit card, though there was a 10 euro minimum for card purchases. The plant he was buying was only 5 euros, so he was forced to get two of them despite only wanting to get one.
Now that is what I call genius marketing!
At this point, I met up with Anna and Emma at a super fancy library near the Pantheon to apply for some more internships. Anna was particularly focused on her maths work. The library was gorgeous and very Hogwarts-esque, and I officially got a library card for it! When applying for an Amazon internship, I learned that British is a language.
I knew it!
I left for Sciences Po to pick up a dress shirt from Joe for my interviews the following day, though the shirt ended up being quite small.
I did some more work at my beloved Apple Store, notably finishing my history paper with my group mates. Because the Google Docs was created by my British group member, color autocorrected to colour.
Atrocious.
I left SUPER early for volleyball practice so that I wouldn’t be late. We were threatened with having to run a lot if we were late, so I made sure that didn’t happen. Emma and I warmed up with each other by playing pepper, and we were both hitting the ball as hard as we could. It was a blast.
Our main setter wasn’t there today, so I had to substitute in for him today. Surprisingly, my once-favorite position was no longer that enjoyable, as I got used to passing and the excitement that a good pass brings. It was still super fun, though!
A quick bike home and a short dinner, then it was off to bed.
What a long day!
Thursday 9/28
My 8 a.m. French class was canceled this morning, so I fortunately was able to sleep in today and prepare for my 2 interviews in the afternoon. My first one at 4 p.m. was for a KPMG Data Analytics role, with the second one at 8 p.m. for a JP Morgan rotational program in New York.
I spent the entire morning applying for more internships and doing my homework for my international trade class.
Lovely.
On the bright side, I was jamming to an ABSOLUTELY BANGING playlist all day, Spotify is absolutely wonderful.
Went on a walk around the neighborhood around 1, then got a kebab sandwich from the local boss down the street.
Thanks, boss!
When it came time for my interviews, I crushed them as if I was I were a massive meteor and the interview was the Yucatan Peninsula about 66 million years ago. The two 30-minute interviews literally couldn’t have gone any better!
I sent my thank-you emails to the interviews, applied for another internship (lol), then went off to my corporate governance class.
That class was boring as always, but fortunately I was sitting next to this super cute French girl, so the class was manageable today. I’ll need to sit next to her in the future!
Class ended early today (miracles do happen!), so I biked home really quickly and prepped my beloved pasta-ground beef dinner.
The JP Morgan interview went EVEN BETTER than the KPMG interview! My interview was extremely impressed, and even told me at the end that she couldn’t wait to see me in the program this summer.
I’ll call that a success!
Completed the HireVues for 2 other companies afterward, then packed up my belongings to go meet my family along the Seine! My family is visiting me in Paris for the next few days, and they just landed tonight! I biked over to the train station, and we had a lovely walk along the Seine to a delicious restaurant.
I got the duck, and my dad got a double cheeseburger.
He is American through and through. 🇺🇸
Friday 9/29
Since I have no class on Fridays, I slept in once again. Fantastic!
I read the updated tour guide script that just came out, and was very pleased to see that there were a couple of new anecdotes about me in it. Two were about my geology trips that I’ve been on, and the others were about my business club projects. How cool!
I applied to some more internships this morning, chilled, and read Gogol’s The Overcoat. It’s a short story about a copier clerk in St. Petersburg who had a really bad overcoat and was low-key freezing in it. He saved up to buy a new one, it was stolen, he died from sadness, and proceeded to haunt everyone in the town as a ghost, looking for the overcoat that was stolen from him.
I read it so that you don’t have to.
Lunch was a baguette dipped in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, which is delicious as always!
I biked over to the Louvre to meet my family there and saw a few sculptures there in the process. I also wrote a bit of this blog!
After the Louvre, we walked north towards Sacre Coeur, a large church that’s the highest point of Paris with tremendous views! We stopped to look at some shops, and bought some food to eat in a park nearby for lunch.
I left around 4:45 to bike to the apartment of the family where I’ll be teaching the daughter English. They were absolutely lovely, though the girl was a little shy at first. She opened up when we started playing Uno! Eliana loves to play Uno, and is rather good at it too. :)
I’m excited to teach her this semester!
After the tutoring session, I biked back to Sacre Coeur and met up with my family again. Mama and Papa gave me a reality check about study abroad being to study, not a vacation (which it has been so far). That conversation really put study abroad in a great perspective for me, and resulted in me deciding to study here for only a semester. That means I need to make the most of it while I’m here!!
We took the metro from Montmartre to the Bastille district for dinner, which was a solid 7/10. I showed my family my apartment, they loved it (I hope), and I went grocery shopping with my parents. I have enough pasta to last me a few months!
My family went back to their hotel, and I chilled a bit before going to bed for the last time as a teenager :)
And somehow the week flew by! Iceland is in the rearview mirror, and exams are in the future. Life here in Paris is starting to settle into a rhythm already.
Thank you so much for joining me on this adventure and staying up to date on my life. I appreciate all of you reading! See y’all soon :)