December: Exams, Paris, and Bruges!
Hello everyone,
I am typing from my family’s home in Camden, South Carolina now. I arrived December 22nd very late at night after a very long trip. But before talking about how everything’s been since the end of my stay at Lille, I would like to tell you how late November and December went!
As far as academics, classes were over after the first week of December. The schedule at the Université Catholique works a lot like ours at Charleston, which is very convenient. I studied for my finals and I think I did well in all of them — but I won’t find out my grades until February when my transcript arrives in Charleston. Most of my finals were written except for my Heritage of the Arab World class, where I had an oral exam, which was something new for me. It was a great way to assess how my French skills improved over the semester too, as I was able to talk answer questions about what we learned in class in French. The professor asked me about my stay in France and I told him it had been great. By December 16 I had taken my last final and I was very relieved that my studies in France went well.
In addition to studying for my finals, I used the long weekends during the two weeks of exams to travel. On December 6 I went to Paris again, this time for the whole weekend. This time the trip was much better and much more organized than the first time I went, and even the weather was pretty good. I booked a hotel using a website called Booking.com (by the way, when going to a destination as popular as Paris, it is best to book in advance. I found all hotels near downtown to be quite pricey!), planned my route to get to all the places I wanted to see, and booked my train tickets. Speaking of the train, I talked to some people and they told me about some cheaper alternatives to the train, such as the bus and car share apps. I wish I tried those to save some money, but at the same time, I really enjoyed riding the high speed train. It was clean, calm and very fast. I had planned to go to the Versailles Palace on Sunday but unfortunately the train line that went to Versailles wasn’t working that weekend. I did some additional sight-seeing on Sunday instead.
This time I got to visit the Louvre Museum and the Orsay Museum and I looked at art from many time periods and places. I liked the Northern European and Impressionist paintings the most! I saw many famous paintings in the flesh at both museums, like The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, Liberty Leading The People by Eugène Delacroix, The Mona Lisa by Da Vinci and Bal du moulin de la Galette by Auguste Renoir, among others. Both museums are incredibly beautiful inside and outside and are a must for anyone visiting! I took art history in high school so seeing the paintings that I studied was a wonderful experience.
I walked along the Seine River from Notre Dame and the Île de la Cité to the Eiffel Tower late at night,and even though I ended up very tired, it was worth it! The line at the Eiffel Tower was really short. I got to go to the highest floor and see Paris from 300 meters tall. At some point in history the tower was the tallest building on Earth! Earlier that day, I went to the iconic Montmartre quarter of Paris and visited the famous Sacré Coeur church. In my Modern France history class I took at CofC, we learned that this big white church designed in early Christian style was built here in Montmartre to indicate the defeat of the commune, a socialist government in Paris that lasted a month in 1871. From the Butte of Montmartre, where the Sacré Coeur basilica is, you can see a beautiful panoramic view of Greater Paris. In Paris I also went to the Christmas market in the La Défense quarter (where all the skyscrapers are) before leaving.
On December 12 I traveled to Bruges in Belgium. I was planning to travel by myself but I found a friend at the train station at Kortrijk so we traveled together. We noticed that we had taken the wrong train at the Saint Niklaas stop so we had to wait for another train, but we finally arrived at Bruges at around 1 pm. Bruges was a lovely little town — it’s possible to walk around its perimeter in a day. There are canals, swans, a grande place (typical of Flemish towns from Lille to the Netherlands), beer breweries, and government and historical buildings in baroque style. Bruges reminded me a lot of Charleston when I saw the horse carriages carry tourists through the town, though they are missing a college to be like us. My friends and I sat at a café downtown and I heard their stories about their trips in Europe. I wish I traveled more in the small nation of Belgium! Even though it has only half the surface area of South Carolina, the trilingual nation of Belgium has a lot to offer. Thanks to the train it is quite easy to get around too.
On December 22 I took the metro to the Lille Flandre train station. From there I took a train to Tournai in Belgium and then one to the Brussels National Airport (I nearly missed my second train!). I flew from Brussels to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Charlotte and from Charlotte to Columbia. In total I was awake for almost 30 hours with very little sleep, but I am glad I made it home safely and I saw my family again! I just realized this blog post is rather long so expect my final reflections in the next post! The blog is not over yet!
I leave you with some Paris and Bruges pictures!
