Bonjour, mes amis!

I am here again to share with you one of the best experiences of my life– a two weeks trip to Paris during this IAP. If I have to be fully correct, it was not just a trip, it was a cultural class, taught in French, about the political situation in France before the presidential elections in April.  Being a class, rather than just a vacation, changes things a bit, but I think for the good. We got to visit places where general tourists cannot go, for instance Assemblée National (National Assembly), Conseil d’Etat, Conseil Constitutionel. We got to talk to politicians and historians about France now and before, parties and problems in front of the country. It might sound not very exciting to you but French government is very interesting and everything connects very well with the traditions and specificities of the French. I personally learnt a lot and I probably know how French government works better than I know my own (Bulgarian) one.

The group of JSF students

French National Assembly

Coffee and Ice Cream Dessert

Small things can make you happy in France – drinking your morning coffee in a small “brasserie”, reading the newspaper, eating delicious pastry (like macarons, if you don’t know what they are, you are missing out), taking pictures, watching the people passing by. French people really do have style when it comes to clothing! No wonder Paris is thought as the capital of fashion. Other things about them that you can immediately notice – they smoke a lot, don’t eat “to go” food that much and don’t talk on the metro, which made our group very loud and sort of disturbing.

One of the many pastries places

On the other hand, the touristy places and things to do in France are amazing as you

Sparkling Eiffel Tower

might have heard! I thought maybe Eiffel Tower and Arc of Triumph are not as impressive as I imagined them, someone told me they were overrated. I kind of feared that my expectations would be very high and I would be left disappointed. It was not at all true. My expectations were not only met, but they were nothing compared to what I saw and experienced there. I joke with my friends that I almost cried when I saw the Eiffel Tower at night for the first time and it started sparkling at exactly 9pm. I really felt like in a fairytale. Then, there is Louvre, which is truly impressive with all the beautiful pieces of art there. And for the Impressionism lovers, there is Musee d’Orsay, which I personally adored (this is also a French word so it fits very well, I think).

In front of Louvre

I feel silly describing the monuments in Paris, first because there are people that can probably do it better than me and second since no one can describe it as well with words as pictures can show it! So look at some more photos below, get inspired and visit Paris if you haven’t been yet!

Versailles

Eiffel Tower viewed from Trocadero

Moulin Rouge

Love locks, there were some very cute ones, with proposals written on them

So, this is the post you’ve been waiting for for such a long time I’m Yoana and I am going to share with you my thoughts about finals week and what is like to be a sophomore at MIT during the week before finals, through my eyes. Yes, it’s weird, it’s already that time of the semester…

Generally, I tend to spend a lot of time in the student center, 5th floor, usually reading room but when I get bored there I go to the athena cluster, just for a change, but please don’t think of that as a description of me. I even joke with my friends (or they joke with me rather) that it is like my second home. I know, that’s not something I am supposed to brag with but hmm,  I honestly think it can be one of the more social places to study on campus, compared to my dorm room or the library.  But recently, it’s getting harder to find a seat in the study room and the cluster is kind of packed. People are finishing up their final projects that they have been procrastinating on for weeks, praying for their code to finally work or their paper to magically get from 2 pages long to 10 pages long. By the way, as I’m writing that a person next to me is sleeping deeply, maybe dreaming of perfect world with no errors and no need for debugging, two people are laughing hysterically in front of me and one other dreamer is just zooming in on an empty screen. Me, I’m not the perfect student right now either, blogging here instead of doing my work, but otherwise, how would the world get informed about the great thoughts born in my head?

On a serious note, in a week like this one, it is very easy for people to forget that there are other things than studying that a normal student is supposed to do. Besides the usual ones – eat, sleep, take shower (more than once a week), it generally helps to hang out with some friends just for fun, pset-ing or organizing presentations don’t really count. I just read today this wonderful blog post from an MIT alumni, on the MIT admissions page, I would like to share :

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/50_things.

I hope the person doesn’t mind if I use his great list of meaningful things to do to remind you that finals are going to be over soon, the new semester will come, then new finals week and so on…but what will be left after all that is the memories of you spending time with friends and learning cool stuff (minus the pressure), maybe even details like how you stalked someone on Facebook for hours or how you read 100 posts on “I saw you MIT”,  instead of studying for your bio final, for example:) I don’t recommend the last thing I said, finals are hard… So, do your best but don’t stress out too much! After all, the plans we make don’t always come true the way we imagine but panicking can only make things worse.

This is all I have for now. I mean, pre-finals week is important after all, I need to study. I wanted to post pictures of the people studying in the cluster in case you don’t believe me that they spend their nights in such a place, but my friends convinced me that’s illegal and people would take me for a creeper if I just randomly take pictures of them, so I guess no pictures this time. But you should stop by sometimes and see…I am sure it’s gonna get even more crowded very soon. Maybe you will see me here if you stop by.

Good luck with your finals

Sorry if you hated this post, it’s my first time blogging ever

Hello! This is Miho writing – I’m a project coordinator and (approved!) photographer for ISA. On December 1st, we had an annual holiday dinner – many international students came to eat our delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, apple pies, etc…. 

We also prepared holiday music from different countries – there were people dancing at the end of the dinner! Some people were making holiday cards with the materials we brought – if you have any other events, games or anything you suggest ISA to hold at the holiday dinner next year, please let us know! (･∀･)

So, actually, I was at the entrance for most of the times selling tickets … so many of the pictures were taken by Luly, our president. She has some artistic photography skills and I want to share the picture she took of happy people at the dinner …

International freshmen are having fun with a lot of food. It’s so great to be able to have such a nice dinner for 3 dollars, isn’t it?

Yoana, Vivek, Soroush from ISA serving mashed potatoes… we had A LOT of food. I was so full afterwards…

We thank to those of who came to our dinner even though it’s the toughest time of the term! I hope you satisfied your appetite and had fun catching up with other internationals.

I’m happy to realize that some internationals always show up at our ISA events … I guess we have a group of fans.:P We will keep working hard, so please keep supporting us!

Aww … apparently, our president is also a big fan of ISA.

Happy holiday for everyone! Please look forward to the next post by Yoana – she may be able to give you some Bulgarian insights about MIT.:)

This is a test post by Soroush to test the testing capabilities of this test friendly system of tests!