homecoming

I went home this weekend..

...because as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros taught me, home is wherever I'm with people I love! Last weekend that happened to be Perpignan: a quaint town in France near the border of Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. I'll describe this journey in detail a bit later. As the indomitable Quincy Newkirk once said, the best place to start after all is the beginning. 

Last Wednesday night (not yesterday. I know, this post is terribly overdue), Shelby and I arrived in Paris. I could see the Eiffel Tower from my seat in the plane! Thus, for obvious reasons, I was quite literally about to bounce out of my seat from excitement. However, after a two hour long search for our hostel, we were admittedly a bit more subdued. We searched for dinner at one of the innumerable adorable cafes  near our hostel but our complete ineptness in the French language scared us off from a couple potential dinner locations. Shelby and I realized how fortunate (or spoiled?) we've been in Copenhagen to assume that everyone around us speaks English and will graciously offer to help us find our way if we're lost.  

fun fact: When I needed help from a French person, I eventually started to ask them in Spanish instead of English. They were so much more helpful when they thought I was a turista de España as opposed to a silly American knowing nothing more than "bonjour" and "je t'aime."

Bright and early the next morning, we hopped out of bed ready to explore our new Parisian surroundings. Our hostel in Montmartre happened to be just half a kilometer from the Moulin Rouge, so naturally I persuaded my friend to journey there first thing in the morning. 

I'll admit, I didn't think it was quite as spectacular spectacular as it was in the movie. 

(jumping 12 hours ahead) Here, however, is what the Moulin Rouge looked like at night:

As beautiful as this scene was, I was despondent that I wasn't able to burst into a certain Elephant Love Medley on the spot because the Nicole Kidman to my Ewan McGregor (or vice versa?) wasn't there to sing with me. 

back to the Parisian Thursday morning:

After we visited the Moulin Rouge (for the first time), we happened to find a small, narrow street that I thought I recognized from a scene in Amélie. This happened to me quite frequently; while traversing through the streets, I kept thinking I recognized places I had seen in various movies. It was all very exciting. As a curious explorer, I persuaded my friend to embark up this to see if it really was the same one that Audrey Tautou herself bicycled down. Thanks to a crazy random happenstance, we found ourselves staring at the Sacré-Cœur Basilica! 

kindly direct your attention to my feet in the above picture. That's right... FLIP FLOPS! This was the first time since January that I've allowed my feet to see the light of day.. I still haven't had the courage to stop wearing boots in Denmark. It was a glorious occasion. I was so excited about the prospect of wearing flip flops again after months of nothing but heavy boots that it didn't even occur to me that they might not be ideal footwear for a day filled with over 12 hours of walking. Needless to say.. I ended up with about 5 blisters. The funny thing is I don't regret this choice at all. The weather was just too beautiful to NOT wear flip flops (73 degrees?! I forgot weather like this existed!)

more pictures:

The Champs de Élysée! Where I found..

...a Parisian Disney store! Here's a shoutout to my sister Rachel, the biggest Disney fan in the whole world. 

aaannddd here's a picture of people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. It was TINY! and there were SO many people! I enjoyed people-watching here more than contemplating the timeless work itself. It was so funny to see people staring at the backs of their cameras more than the art surrounding them. I didn't even attempt to get closer. I figured I could ruminate about the enigmatic woman later. Google Images exists for a reason.

Shelby!

The Louvre from inside the Louvre!

the Parisian opera house.. the phantom of the opera lived here! The musical theater nerd in me was beyond excited to be here. 

While in Paris, I realized that I'm immensely grateful that I decided to study abroad in a city like Copenhagen. Not only was the transportation system unbearably baffling (whereas Copenhagen has TWO metro lines- one going back and one going forth. Danes like to keep it simple), but the sheer enormity of the city was overwhelming. Maybe this is just the small-town girl in me, but I like being able to feel like I've conquered a city. I love getting to know the personality of a city the same way as you would get to know a person. I love that Copenhagen isn't filled to the brim with tourist attraction after tourist attraction; it feels much more like a home this way!

Speaking of home..

On Friday morning, I was filled to the brim with pure lykkelig (loo-guh-lee: my favorite word in Danish.. it means happy/happiness!) because it was FINALLY time to reunite with some of my favorite people in the world! 

digression warning: You may not have known this about me, but I was a girl scout for two whole years! I never made it past being a good ole brownie scout, but some of the songs we learned were filled with timeless wisdom.. example: "make new friends, but keep the old. one is silver and the other is gold!"

Weirdly enough, this song (along with "Home," the song listed at the top of this post) kept flashing in my mind last weekend. Even though I was lucky enough to reunite with my wonderfully fantastic Davidson friends, I got to make some new friends on top of it all! 

NOTE: Almost all of these pictures came from Quincy and Keith's facebook albums, although I believe Blake and Paisley deserve some of this photo cred too.

(Ashley, Blake (new friend!), me, Quincy, and Keith! note: sadly, this picture isn't all-encompassing- it doesn't include two of my other two new friends, Sara and Paisley. I'll introduce y'all later!) 

We spent Friday afternoon in Perpignan! I felt so fortunate to see a part of France that many tourists don't get to see. If you're reading this and you happen to be planning a vacation over to this side of the world, remember that there's so much more to France than just Paris! 

On Saturday morning, we made the journey into the mountains to hike somewhere between 10-15 kilometers. It was so refreshing to be with a group who truly appreciated every morsel of beauty we came across. We soaked in the brilliance of our surroundings and never for a second took it for granted.

my soulmate- Quincy! She's the one who convinced me to come to France in the first place. She was also my roommate last semester and will [probably be] my fellow hall counselor next year! We sang, we laughed, we loved. It was just like old times.. except we were in France. boom.

The French crew had a game where they came up with superlatives for every member of the group. I decided that Keith is not only the best hugger in the group, but he's also the best hugger I know!

lovin' the teamwork!

The beautiful Ashley Parker! Believe it or not, this girl may end up journeying to Denmark later this semester.. stay tuned.

This is Sara, one of my new friends! I'm super sad that I didn't get a picture with her last weekend, but instead, here's a picture of her being beautiful with an equally gorgeous background! 

This is my last new friend, Paisley! It was always super easy to be happy around her because she's one of the most enthusiastic, naturally happy people I know. Basically, it was a great group and a ridiculously wonderful weekend filled with freedom, beauty, truth, and love.

This was a little town. It's a quiet village.

Every day like the one before.

It was a little town, full of little people.

Waking up to saaaayyyyyy...

....bonjour.

If any of y'all are nice enough to have read any of my other blogposts, you will know that pastries have a special place in my heart. Believe it or not, this pain au chocolat was the ONLY pastry I had in France.. and it was photo-bombed. I heard that France is supposed to have the best pastries in the world and I was ready to challenge that absurdity and test some for myself. Sadly, this dream did not come to pass. I guess I have a reason to go back!

“Little Gidding”

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

–T.S. Eliot (courtesy of Jessie Blount)

picnics and coffee and (more) travel plans

My host family had the fantastic idea to have a picnic with the other host families and students in and around Hedehusene! Not everyone could make it, but it was still a super hyggeligt afternoon. I loved getting to meet some of the other families and hearing about their experiences; one family said that their current student is the 20th student living in their home- they've been doing this for 14 years!

I decided to splurge on this 42 kroner coffee from Baresso, the Danish equivalent of Starbucks. The stirrer has a huge chunk of white chocolate on it and you stir it into the coffee until it melts in.. was it worth 42 kroner? definitely, but not more than once a semester.

I'm from a pretty small town back in the States.. the closest Starbucks to where I live is a 45 minute drive. Yeah, that's real. However, I think I finally empathize with the rest of the US when they complain about having a huge coffee chain on every street corner, less than 50 meters apart from each other (you like my use of the metric system there? that's right. I'm basically European).

You know something I love about Copenhagen? There are always new discoveries to be made while walking down familiar streets. For example, you can just be sauntering along down a road you've walked countless times before, you look up, and BAM there's an elephant above your head!

You know something else I love about Denmark? I'll be in the city all day, decide to go for a run in the burbs, and then all of a sudden I'm on a farm? I actually thought I was in Georgia for a second. I even spotted a cow, but didn't manage to sneak a picture of the elusive creature.

new favorite? I think so.























Lately, whenever someone has told me that they've read my blog, their next comment always has to do with pastries. Some have suggested we go bakery hunting, some have simply commented on my obvious love of wienerbrød, and one even suggested that I compile these pictures and turn it into a book. I don't think I'm quite there yet, though.

GUESS WHERE I'M GOING TOMORROW!

Maybe I won't be singing a love medley with Ewan McGregor on an elephant, but I am going to be staying in a Parisian hostel that's only about half a kilometer from the Moulin Rouge itself! I'm heading to Paris with my friend, Shelby, from my core class. On Friday, I'm meeting up with some familiar faces from Davidson(!) to head to the French/Spanish border town of Pergignan.

I'll keep y'all updated! vi ses!

I dropped my heart in Istanbul

Hej again! I'm back and ready to light up your newsfeed. I just returned from a week-long adventure to ISTANBUL with my core class, CDD- Childhood in a Multicultural Context. It was a wee filled with utter ridiculousness, photo-bombing, and baklava.

Here's a shoutout to Mary Sypek for compiling tons of pictures and video clips of our class saying thank you to our teacher, Maja, and the DIS intern who travelled with us, Jen.

somewhere in between Copenhagen and Istanbul!

#awkwardsoloshot

what Istanbul looks like from pretttty far up.

markets at the grand bazaar. They are INCREDIBLE!

note: I definitely did not take all these pictures. Basically, if it looks super artsy and beautiful, it was taken by Corinne, who should probably be deemed the official photographer for our class. 

Turkish coffee! I can honestly say that I have never before had coffee like this... basically, really finely powdered coffee beans are boiled in a pot, then you add sugar before throwing it into a cup and letting the grounds settle. Once you finish, you can flip your cup and then grounds will spell out your fortune! true story. If you're interested in more fun facts about coffee in Turkey (though not necessarily Turkish coffee), then you should click here!

Hagia Sophia- a 1500 year old mosque.

We took a ferry across the Bosphorus for a day trip to Asia! 

my first baklava experience... I don't know if you can tell, but I was pretty excited about it.

The Spice Market! 

It's a magic lamp! At the Grand Bazaar, flirtation is a common method of attracting customers. Shortly before this picture was taken, a nearby man who saw me holding up his lamp offered to be my genie in a bottle (hence why I'm laughing in this picture).
This flirtation is also the inspiration for the title of this post: while meandering through the different shops, men would yell: "Excuse me! You dropped something..." We all turned to look back as the man concluded, "My heart!" I fell for this on FOUR different occasions.. you can't afford not to look back, in case you actually did drop something! We were also called Spice Girls and Charlie's Angels. One person even offered up his brother to be my Turkish boyfriend. Needless to say, it was pretty hysterical.

We also had the crazy awesome opportunity to see a traditional Turkish dance! 

This is in front of the Sultanahmet, also known as the Blue Mosque.

As if all this weren't enough, we also had the opportunity to visit some universities, NGOs, and schools! 

This is Atuturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. He was a huge deal, to say the least; he was responsible for the westernization of Turkey. He secularized the new republic, separating Islamic law from the state. He changed the language of the country from an Arabic script to a Latin script basically overnight. He also was instrumental in increasing women's rights in Turkey. 

From an American perspective, it was fascinating to see how Ataturk is taught in a school setting. It is required by law in Turkey that every classroom, in both public and private settings, have a picture of Ataturk mounted on the wall. He is so integrated into Turkish culture that it's forbidden to criticize Ataturk because you would essentially be criticizing Turkishness itself.

This is what most of my meals consisted of.. even though I'm not totally sure what most of it actually was. This plate was a little unusual though, because generally we would eat all the things shown above, but over 4 courses instead of just piling it all onto one plate. 

I know this post is kind of all over the place, but I hope I've given y'all some sort of idea about just how amazing this last week was. I learned a ton, had an absolute blast, and ate more turkish delight and baklava than I'd care to relate. 

vi ses, y'all :)