Happy Chinese New Year! :)

My first week of class in Paris has been both terrifying, and at times, fun :P

Classes are intense - I’ve already been assigned 3 oral presentations and 5 dissertations, and I still have one class to go to for the first time tomorrow, so I might have even more work! :( I’m finding this semester to be a lot harder to understand already. The first semester, I was just typing everything that the professors said like the rest of the French students, but since the professors knew that that was the case, they spoke much more slowly. But here in Paris, the classes are not complete dictation, but rather lectures, and so, they speak much more quickly :S And I’m not looking forward to my oral presentations since they will all be in French, and that means I’m going to have to learn to speak about topics I don’t know about, all in French for 10-15 minutes at a time!! AH!

So needless to say, I’m feeling a bit stressed out! Especially since I wanted to travel more this semester, but I’m not sure how likely that will be anymore :(

But on a happier note, Happy Chinese New Year! :) This week, I celebrated the actual day with a few other students from Sciences Po, and we ended up going to the big parade that started in front of the City Hall on Saturday together - that was a ton of fun! We ended up spontaneously joining the parade, and even though at times, we probably stood out as not supposed to being there, it was a ton of fun :P

Now, it’s off to preparing for my classes this week! Wish me luck and enjoy the pictures :)

just a glimpse of my daily bus ride to class :)

blurry picture from my ipod - but part of an event earlier in the day by Karl Lagerfield (very famous fashion designer). you can see it in one of the pictures on this website! :) 

event/debate/lecture/thing at sciences po with many important people, including the director of 'le monde' and the director of bnp paribas 

lotsss of old people here for the debate 

there was a protest kind of thing by these women whose organisation is called 'the beard' - protesting the fact that there are mostly men in government and important positions 

inside a church by my university :) 

chinese new year parade going by the centre pompidou - museum of modern art 

so many people out to watch it! 

bubble tea!!! first time having it since leaving seattle!! 

not as good as seattle, but it'll do :) 

beginning of the parade, in front of the city hall 

why are there no asians in the crowd, you ask?! probably cause they're all in the parade... hence the need to join the parade :P 

success! now integrated into the parade :P 

our rogue group of paraders :)

we got a lot of those looks..  

i'm in a parade! 

truck of girls throwing confetti and hongbao/red envelopes to the crowd :) (too bad there was only 20 euro cents in each) 

firecrackers everywhere! :D my first time seeing them!