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CERGY/PARIS OVERVIEW BLOG
Hello, I’m making this because when I was preparing for the trip I was too lazy to read every blog the last guy wrote, so I only read the first and last. With this I’m going to make my last one a highlight reel with the information I collected over the 5 months so that the lazy people like me can have all the information consolidated.
First Blog
Read this one if you’re worried about traveling. I was too and I had to deal with a lot of covid-related headaches. Everything turned out well in the end, I was able to get through the Iceland border control very quickly, and they didn’t even check my visa. They actually only checked my visa when I left. Hopefully by the time the next person travels they won’t have to take a covid test.
Second Blog
This one is just a first-day blog. ENSEA takes you on a tour of Paris.
Next
Helpful blog with information about cultural events at ENSEA ( the Asian culture part), the price for laundry in the Aleggessec housing, and class structures.
Blog about cergy
If you want to know the history of Cergy this is a good place to start. There are plenty more resources online but this gives a good enough general overview of the town. I mentioned Cergy’s crime rate too. That’s important to mention too. Throughout my time in Cergy, I wasn’t mugged, I wasn’t harassed and none of the other students I was with did either. I heard horror stories about someone being mugged by 7 fourteen your olds. (Or was it 14 seven-year-olds?). But that never happened to us. I also found the homeless population in Cergy well treated and nice. One of my last interactions in the town was when a homeless man approached me and started saying something I couldn’t understand in French. I had a bunch of change in my hand (yeah, good move) because I was trying to think of ways to get rid of it before my flight back to the U.S. He kept on repeating the same thing in French and I kept trying to piece words out of it. Eventually, he gave up and laughed and gave me a fist bump and I took a random chunk out of the change in my hand and passed it to him.
I also saw homeless people being well taken care of by citizens. French people in blue shirts would stop by with homeless people alone on the bench and talk with them.
The most dangerous part of Cergy is the prefecture train station. It looks really sketchy. They’re renovating it though so it’ll probably improve soon too.
ADDITIONAL INFO
Need a bike?
Go to Velo services in Cergy
Good museums in Paris-
-Mundolingua
I visited this museum on my last day in Paris and didn’t regret it. Aw, man, that place was so cool. It has a 6 euro entry fee for youths. It had a bunch of stations that tell you the basis of languages. It’s confusing to explain because the subject matter that it covers is so broad. You get etymology, books about language, the different sounds that languages make, funny books, a quiz, etc. I went with Grace and it was really fun.
-Gustave Moreau museum
Cool museum with nice art.
-Marie Curie Museum
Gives a good and quick history of Marie Curie’s life. What’s really interesting is that the museum is on a scientific campus which you can walk around a bit. And it’s near the Pantheon.
-Musee des arts et metiers
Good scientific museum for engineers to see.
-Musee D'Orsay
Go to the Van Gogh exhibits those are amazing. They’re on the top floor and a bit easy to miss so it’s good to know that they’re there.
-Louvre
Gotta see the Mona Lisa.
MORE BLOGS
Read this blog if you want to know more about teacher culture in France.
Next blog - Logistics for future FAME students
^This one's important to get an overview of the program.
Day trip out of Paris blog
Some day trips are
-Auvers sur-oise (van goghs resting place)
-L’isle adam (voted France’s most peaceful town? Something along those lines)
-Monet’s gardens
Cities
-Chartes
-Dijon, if you wake up early enough (Cities surrounding Paris are better for overnight trips) Airbnbs and house rentals are relatively cheap.
Blog about Chartes
There’s also a water park nearby called Ile de Loisir. There’s wakeboarding, water rafting, ziplining, tree terrain traversing, wave wall, and swimming out there. Here’s a blog about it.
I got major whiplash from that so beware.
Some of my favorite photos from the trip:
Grace and I on Montparnasse tower
Where Van Gogh painted in La Maison Gachet
Haley and I in Lyon
MSM in tile by Ray Isidore at the Maison Picassiette in Chartres
Have a nice trip and thanks for reading my blogs.
Au revoir
Nick Peabody
Electrical engineering
ENSEA FAME 2022
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Bordeaux France
Last week was my last week at ENSEA. I finished my finals. Hopefully did well, said goodbye to my teachers for all their help throughout the semester, and began prep for my departure. This was last Wednesday. Thursday was a national holiday, I think it was a catholic one. Anyways, I was able to take advantage of my last weekend in France with a trip to Bordeaux.
I found this service that organizes trips throughout France called ErasmusPlace. It's run by this guy named Jeff, (super Jeff), and is open to anybody interested in a cheap and well-organized trip.
The trip to Bordeaux was 8 hours by bus on the way in. We took a few stops but it was more or less constant travel. Jeff kept people interested with quizzes and information about the activities to come.
We arrived later that day and did a city tour. There was a photo contest, so my photos for this blog are going to be kinda stacked. We were 85 people on the trip, and some of the travelers had super high-quality cameras.
Pics
So, we got to do a city tour and it I met a lot of people. 3 people from Greece: Signorita, Cleopatra, and Thanos. (Actually Thanos), 1 person from Germany: Simon, an aeronautical Engineer with top gun style ray bans and a scraggly beard. Rachel, a girl from the U.S who goes to Auburn University in Alabama and studies near where we do in Cergy (the 3rd person from the Alabama/Mississippi region I've met in France). Jesus, a student in Paris from Mexico, and Manu a student at Roma university who traveled to Paris from Rome just to make this Bordeaux trip.
For dinner, people were anxious about a decision because most places couldn't sit big groups and nobody wanted to pick a place. People were saying that they'd go anywhere, so we went into the first restaurant we saw. It happened to be a swiss restaurant, Savoyard style, with lots of cheese. Rachel wanted a burger because she thought that one of the tartiflette dishes (a potato lasagna) was a burger because it said, 'Berger'. The consensus after sitting down and reading the menu is that there's too much cheese. So we bail and our waiter recommends a place next door which sells savory crepes. We eat that up and afterward I head to the bar with Simon and Manu. Jeff picks the bar so the other travelers are there too. During this time, I'm speaking in Spanish with Manu a little bit because his English isn't so good and that's fun to do. At the bar, we get some beers and after talking with some people from Spain for a bit we go home.
The next day we go to the dunes of Pilat. A 3km long dune 110m tall.
Excuse my bad filming. We ran up the dunes the second we saw them and it's actually kind of difficult to sprint up 100 meters of sand, so I was out of breath taking it.
After a few hours at the dunes, we went to a beach 20 minutes north of the dunes in a town called Arcachoca. We swam in the Atlantic, and ate some seafood dinner, and headed back.
View of the Atlantic from the dunes
Not without incident, however, Our bus driver drove into a tree and broke a window on the bus. So we were stuck in Arcachoca a little longer than planned, trying to sort out how we'd continue to travel for the trip. Return to Paris, get back to Bordeaux, important things.
During this time we meet some Austrians, Natalie, and Lilith and we talk to them. Natalie just graduated high school in Austria and has left home to volunteer in Paris.
We get back and Jeff organizes a club for the travelers to go to. The music is a little much and Grace and I head home early.
The next day we prepare for the drive back, we try some Bordeaux delicacies the, caneles, which nobody seems to like but me, and we meet up with Victor, our friend from ENSEA who lives in Bordeaux. We see him for only 20 minutes or so on our walk back to the bus. It was cool to see him at home, he was really in his element. Bordeaux is exceptionally French.
The bus ride is long because of traffic. We stop briefly at a wine cellar to do a wine tasting.
The left photo is the oak used in the barrels for the aging of the red wine.
In the right photo, you see the roman architecture style arches which comprise the main cellar of the place. The tour guide told us that the building had papers from 500 years ago and could have dated back to the 12th century. The wine was good and I bought some for the family.
The rest of the journey was difficult. We didn't get back until 2am because of traffic. We were supposed to get back at 11PM. Overall, it was a really cool trip. I recommend the program to anybody going to France to study abroad.
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
Fame 2022 Ensea
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Blog up
What's going on on blog people? How's it going in your lives? I'd like to know, comment down below what's good.
I'm a week behind. I know. It's not my fault it's these two-week breaks. I won't get into it, but I'm gonna double post this weekend to get back on schedule.
We had a French class field trip to Van Gogh's house and we ate some sushi with the French teacher. It was a good time. I've been before, but I got to go to the house where he stayed and see his grave this time. We also went to a Teahouse with some quality tea.
FAME at sushi
Life's fallen into a routine here. A lot of my friends in the second year went home so that's a bit sad, but I end up having a lot of free time to chill before I start work this summer.
Mural at the bakery in town
Sunset if you're a bug
That's it for now. See ya!
Nick Peabody
Electrical engineering
IPE FAME 2022
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This guy's abroad
I'm having to take a look at my google calendar to remember the things that I've been up to this week. It's felt like a long one.
Let's unpack. It started on Saturday when we took a trip to the catacombs in Paris. There were short poems written on boards placed around the skulls and bones. We were with our French guide, Jerome, one of the students at ENSEA. Kevin, one of my fellow students abroad, met him in the gym and he offered to take us to the catacombs. While in the catacombs, I would ask Jerome for translations for some of the poems. One of them was roughly, "Death is never in the present, always in the future or past." I thought that one was pretty smart.
A poem in the catacombs of Paris
Moving forward, I had a lot of classes this week. On Tuesday I had an 8 hour day! All of my classes are 2 hours long and because we are only 2 students in the class, I end up having to stay engaged the entire time. I'm sure that's a dream come true for some teachers, but it makes these long stretches of classes almost impossible. Those 8 hours left me a new person. I felt like I'd been put in the spin cycle in a washing machine. Oh, that reminds me! I have to put my laundry in the dryer. It costs about 1.8 euros for a dry and 2.8 for a wash. The building has a washer dryer in it.
I'm enjoying my classes but I'm considering dropping one of them. I'm not getting credit for the probability and statistics course and so I don't really know why I would take it. These 8 hours days are a lot and so I've been trying to get in contact with an advisor who can tell me what to do.
The gang out for dinner at a Bistro in Paris with Jerome
Onto cultural immersion.
Well, today was an immersion into many cultures. I started the day buying shoes at the local mall and I met this 14-year-old student at the local university and somehow he was working at the Adidas store. I don't know what was going on there, so I asked about it and he told me he wasn't working there, but also he got me my shoes, so I think he must have been working there. I thought it would be illegal for a 14 year old to be working. I think it's 15 in the US. Ok, I just looked it up and you're only allowed to work at 16 with parental consent in France. I was a part of a crime.
Then I went to lunch and spoke with some of the other international students and the Americans. One student was from Brazil, there was Juan from Bogota in Colombia and Clara from Argentina. Once that was done, I went with the South American students to the optional French class taught by Ms. Delphine.
I entered the class and she started speaking to me quickly in french, "......... tarde ....... vous ........ arrette... assentent"
The words I show are the only ones I heard and understood. I just knew that she wanted me to sit down and I got that I was late. She only spoke in French, and I couldn't really understand her. We actually watched a French mini-skit thing about a couple going through a divorce and like the husband's company failing or I really don't know. It was all words I'm not familiar with. I was sitting next to one of the South American students I had just met, Diego, and he helped me get a few words because he has a bit more French language experience.
That was another 2 hour class of being on my toes, because she was picking on random people, and there was no way I wasn't going to fake my way into French knowledge.
After that, I found myself at an Asian culture fair. I had to identify spices, learn origami and take a Japanese culture quiz, learn how to and then play Mahjong (that was hard), learn basic Korean history ( very interesting ), and play rock paper scissors where when you lose you get bonked on the head. That passed and I thought I had had enough so I headed back home.
I felt more confident in the grocery store because I had been through so much cultural change just in those few hours, that a few french labels didn't really scare me anymore. And, I was fine to speak the basic french I do know at the cash register and everything. So honestly, I feel like the uber immersion that I did get has been beneficial. It's been a good way to just rip the bandaid off, and now I hope I'm not too scared to try my French with other people.
Another round off to the day is that I met a girl from Sweden in the elevator in my apartment and then I met a French guy named Romain at the gym in ENSEA who turned out to be pretty much my neighbor. It made the walk home easier for sure.
graffiti in Cergy
Optician near Châtelet in Paris
graffiti in Paris
Cheers
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA - 2022
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Logistics week for prospective FAME folks
I'm going to take this week to talk a little about how ENSEA sets up its classes and structures their international program. This is for people looking to study abroad themselves at any institution but specifically for those interested in ENSEA or France, as that's what I know the most about.
So, ENSEA has an allotment for international students from America which is designated a special name and space within the graduate college. It's called the FAME program (French American exchange program) and it's unique to ENSEA. It typically has gotten upwards of 15 students each year from universities all over the USA. From Pittsburg to Mississippi to Michigan to Hawaii, you're bound to meet folks from all parts of the USA if you join the program.
In my case, it's been a little different than that. Because of the omicron variant, fewer universities were able to send their students. Many universities pulled out of the program altogether and as a result, the US representation only came out to 7 students. I take all my classes with 1 or 2 other students in the class and the teacher.
One thing that I've been frustrated with is how separated the FAME program is with the rest of the university. I understand that because I can't speak French fluently, it doesn't make sense for me to be in French engineering classes. However, it's the fact that there's another international class in the school taught in English which we can't join the classes of that frustrates me. The other international program is made up of students from all around the world. Our year, the bulk was made up of South American students but, many come from China, North Africa, and Scandinavian countries as well. This year their classes were a lot more "normal" than ours. They had classes with French students, they had 12-20 students in a class at one time, and they had a set curriculum which was in line with what the French students at ENSEA are learning. This in contrast to the FAME students' 1-3 people per class and more private tutor like instruction.
There are two reasons that I can think of why we're separated from the other international students. One is that the FAME students are 1st years. To understand what that means I'll have to give a little background on the French education structure.
OK, what's weird is that they call "college" middle school. That's pretty crazy. Then they go through high school which they call lycée and then take the BAC. Which I was told by some French students is very easy. I'm not sure if they're saying that from a kind of warped engineering contextualized hindsight, but I'll take their word for it. I think the SAT would be easy for me now too, so ehh it's a tough one. Anyways, if they do well enough on the bac, they go to a prepa. The prepa is only for engineering students. It's a two year highly rigorous physics and math coursework driven curriculum. Students who emerge from prepa are very strong in the basics, but not all students do so. Many drop out because of the difficulty. After prepa, we get to where the FAME program is dropped in, the 1st year of a three-year graduate program.
So, we're first years, what's the big deal? Well, the thing is, we're not second years like the other international students so we can't join their classes.
And because it's a first year, we're taking generally core classes. Those familiar with UMICH courses for EE students know the core courses quite well. EECS 216, EECS 301, EECS 215, etc. Classes we want to get done in our sophomore year. So, my advice to prospective FAME students is to study abroad earlier so that those classes make sense for you.
Back to the second reason we're separated. This reason is more like "hmm, maybe that's a reason we're separated I don't really know though for sure", and it has to do with the tuition costs for the program. From what I've heard, the money that's involved in bringing the other international students from their countries to study at ENSEA comes from the French government. Their flights are paid for, and they're given a monthly salary to continue living there. In our case, the Americans pay for everything themselves; the flights and they even pay tuition around 4 times higher than the French students do. I found this interesting, and it certainly explains the special treatment we get at the school.
Designing a transistor circuit for optimal amplification
Because of the small class size, you can kind of choose how you want to spend your time in class, and you get a kind of tutoring experience. I've been able to ask some helpful clarifying questions. My circuits teacher has pointed me in the direction that I want to continue my studies in. And it's been really helpful to slow down and review the stuff I've learned in my previous years at Umich. I realized that there were some gaps where I didn't know things fully. Also, you get to be in France and there are plenty of other opportunities to meet French students at school organized events or otherwise. I eat lunch with the other international students a lot too, so I wouldn't say I'm missing much by not being in class with them.
My class schedule for May (not updated we actually finish May 25th)
There are many other benefits to having smaller class sizes which I think I'll just list here.
-easier student to management communication
-flexibility with class time and date (we were supposed to end classes June 3rd)
-more individualized instruction
and downsides as well. It all comes down to preference. I just thought it'd be good to inform any prospective students about it. If you're a student who's interested in studying abroad at ENSEA feel free to reach out to me by email at [email protected].
Nick Peabody
Electrical engineering
IPE FAME 2022
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Easter blog
This week a lot of stuff happened. I changed my sleep schedule, I went biking a lot It was a good one. Ok, that's my blog see you guys....
Until next week.
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA FAME PARIS 2022
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Just kidding, oh, I got you! Moving on.
Early in the week, Grace and I had a nice dinner and Pierre Hermes macarons for dessert.
One thing I really recommend people do is to go out of Cergy into the surrounding villes.
I went on a bike ride on Thursday to Auvers-Sur-Oise. (credit to my french culture teacher who told us about the trip!) It took me like an hour to get there but that was after having done an exam and biked all day, so I was kinda tired. I think you could get there in like 40 minutes by bike if you hurried. Also, you could get there in around 45 minutes by bus a train.
By bike, I saw these interesting houses along the way.
Houses and rooms built into the rock of the mountain
The green door would lead to like an open space that you might use for storage. Further down the street, there's the word Coutere. Which, I at first thought was a business, but upon further googling, I now think is someone's surname. So somebody lives/has lived in the mountain. That was dope to see.
Dr. Gachet's garden
Further along that same trail I got to Dr.Gachet's house. Dr. Gachet hosted Van Gogh in the most prolific and unstable period of his life. the artist produced 80 works of art in 70 days while under Dr. Gachet's roof. Including famous works like 'Madame Gachet in the Garden' which you can see above. That was where he painted it. It was certainly a special place to be.
There are more pieces of history scattered around that town because many other famous artists used it as inspiration for their art. Big names like Cezanne, Pisarro, etc, painted that landscape a little less than 200 years ago. It's really cool to see what has and hasn't changed.
I was struck by Van Goghs life in particular. He lived in over 20 cities across four countries in his 37 years. He had a very good work ethic and was certainly dedicated to his art. I read a quote about one of his practices techniques and I was struck to hear that he would repeat and repeat designs until he had a technique down. It's quite visible in his last paintings in Auvers-Sur-Oise that he had reached a new level of artistic ability. In the end, madness took him over. He was heavily reliant on the strong spirit absinthe and was accustomed to spells of madness. One of which landed him in a mental hospital. In Auver, he killed himself after making a work called roots which is a very good piece of art.
Ok, this time for real.
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA FAME PARIS 2022
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The blog
After having been in Europe for past 2 months, I feel like I'm picking up on some things and getting a feel for the culture. The differences I've found are small, but they add up. The classroom etiquette is different. It's more relaxed. Most of my teachers are late to class by a few minutes. And, in the age of covid, a lot of my teachers have been getting sick and missing classes. 4/5 of my teachers have gotten sick and had to take a day off of classes. I've found that interesting because in my fall semester at Michigan, some of my professors were also getting sick and taking off class. Whereas in High school and in my first-year pre covid, no teachers got sick and took off work, and if they did, it was a rare occurrence.
I think that's just one of the natural changes that covid's brought. People are going to be more careful about spreading diseases and I'm glad that teachers are setting that example. It's ok to stay home sometimes.
On to the week, this week we went to a dance club meeting? It was a Wednesday and my friend Junior told me about a kind of dance event the school was hosting. I was like, "For you, I'll go." He's a great dancer and he showed me how to dance the salsa one time. I told the other UM folks and we danced for a few hours. It was nice. I actually do have a photo from the night and you don't want to see it. My photography skills have dropped to pre-blog levels and it's brutal.
Moving on! We went to Lyon this weekend to visit our friend Eliot and see the city.
Lyon lemons -Ashley
We were in Lyon and we saw all the landmarks. Very beautiful city.
The food was really good. We went to this place called L'Atelier D'Yvonne. I would recommend it because the food was very high quality. I think it was the highest quality that we've gotten in France.
I met Eliot's parents too. He drove us out to their house like 20 minutes outside of the city center. The drive was a bit far but it was definitely worth it to meet them. My friend Haley and I had a very interesting conversation with Eliot's mom. It was interesting to hear her viewpoint because it shed a lot of light on how Europeans have viewed American presidents and on how they view the problems in the U.S.
Lyon
Overall it was a very good trip.
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA FAME PARIS 2022
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Normandy and Mont Sant Michel
Hello all this week was jam-packed with travel, cities, museums, and tourism, so I'm feeling pretty prepped for this blog. I've got all the info I need. I have nice pictures and everything, so this one's really gonna flow.
My mom and sister came to visit and I met up with them for dinner a few times in Paris for the weekend. I tried Escargot for the first time and it passed. It tasted like seafood but without the saltiness. I like seafood, so I get it ya know. We also got the famous Bertillon ice cream. Phew... that stuff was good. We got like a candied chestnut flavor and, wow, my socks were knocked off. So that was a great start to the week.
Good food
I was lucky this week because I only had classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That doesn't happen often. This is the first time I've had a Friday off which was really cool. So I left Cergy, I said goodbye to the beautiful Les Linandes building and I stayed the night in Paris before our trip to Normandy.
In the morning, we took the train to Caen and almost missed it because my mom forgot her bag in the room. We got to the train like 2 minutes before departure and my younger sister holly was just walking so slow behind us and my mom and I barely got through the gates and were like yelling at her to hurry up. I yelled "What are you doing???" and the guy working there laughed and she just kept walking. Surprisingly, we made the train. We left as soon as possible from Caen and headed to Bayeux by car.
Bayeux was dope because we got to see the Bayeux tapestry. The thing is 70-meters long because it tells a pretty epic tale. It was made to depict the conflict between William the conqueror, who famously conquered England in the 1000s, with Harold, the heir to the English throne. Harold visited Normandy and William captured him and forced him to take an oath on the two most holy Norman relics to make William the king after the reigning king of England, King Edward, died. But, when Edward died Harold seized the throne anyways and broke his oath. Drama, relic swearing, voyages. Pretty intense stuff. The tapestry was pro-William and it worked on me. I will be a William the conqueror fan to the bitter end. Anyways, enough about 1000-year-old wars.
William the conqueror in the middle boat. Basically, a Viking. Heading to take over England.
We stayed the night in a Bayeux and I got some breakfast with some homemade jams and I heard some Americans at breakfast talking about how bad the wind was like saying, "It was so bad you might get swept off your feet!" And, I thought they were exaggerating until we drove to a D-day beach which was so windy it was bonkers.
Omaha beach
Omaha beach is one of the D-day beaches which the Americans were tasked with retaking from the Germans. We stayed there as long as we could without being blown away by intense winds. There was really not much to do there but run to the water and check things out for a little bit. The American cemetery is there, but it closed at 5 and it was 6ish when we got there.
We did end up getting Cider from a small farm near a point that the Germans held as a stronghold in 1945. The guy working there was really nice. We walked in and he offered us some samples and showed us pictures from the War. He and his dad housed a lot of Americans once they got through the beach and he had a picture of some troops who stayed there. It was one of those old-timey photos with like 30 people all linked together shoulder to shoulder in black and white. He told us that his Dad got a Ph.D. at Michigan State and then came back to France to keep working on the Cider Farm.
After that, we headed to Mont Sant Michel. It was about an hour's drive from Bayeux towards the East. MSM is famously on the border between the regions of Bretagne and Normandy and they often fight with each other about which region the monastery belongs to. Here's a little gift thing that shows that.
The tough conflict there in the middle.
MSM was great. It's a beautiful stronghold resting high above the bay. It's served many purposes in its over 1000 years of history but mostly it's been a place of religion. There is still a practicing few who hold services up there and we ended up going to mass. To ring the church bell the priest brought down a thick rope that led up to a hole in the ceiling. To ring the bell he had to swing with his whole body weight and once the rope got going he got lifted up off the ground with each motion. I bet that most of the people watching were tourists. Some people next to us knew all the words though.
MSM abbey
The language barrier was pretty intense at that point. My mom and I got some things out of the sermon. I think he said something about aligning the thoughts in your mind with your actions. It was hard to understand really.
Chilling
The other thing about MSM is the famous omelet. Apparently, Hemingway was a patron of this hotel we stayed at which serves omelets the size of birthday cakes. Also, the U.S soldiers called Hemingway Papa and he had a lot of connections to like hotel owners who could house soldiers on the island. So, one U.S soldier was writing about how much he enjoyed the omelet and the hospitality of the hotel owner and this and that. And, the hotel put up what he wrote on the wall.
After MSM we left for Paris and that was the end of the journey.
Boom
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA FAME PARIS 2022
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Paris Picnics and Bikerides
This week I spent some time in Paris. On Wednesday I did a picnic under the Eiffel tower with Grace, Vivian, and Ashley.
Eiffel tower picnic alert
My bike is being put to good use too. I went for a 20-mile bike ride from Cergy to Paris on Thursday. My legs still hurt when I climb upstairs.
Here are some photos I took along the way.
On the same day, I went to the Gustave Moreau museum in the North part of Paris. It's a small museum in the artist's old residence that highlights some of his works.
The bottom right of the four photos above is one of his paintings I liked. It reminds me of Adventure Time you know with Marceline and the ax.
The picture in the bottom left is a statue I saw when I first got into Paris. It's tied in a bit with what I was doing that day. Biking a long distance doesn't really have a point in our day and age, where quicker means of transport are readily available and often cheaper and easier than slow ones. The health benefits of biking are one thing but the achievement and the confidence I get are really what I'm looking for.
The top right photo is a street I found on the way. I've noticed that a lot of monuments and locations in France are named after U.S Presidents.
Finally, the top left is some graffiti of Lisa from the Simpsons. Pretty radical if you ask me.
Cheers
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA FAME PARIS 2022
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Buonasera Amici
Let's get into it. It's time. I'm hearing the bat signal. I'm feeling the vibrations. It's blog time. The blog is now.
I started the week off with a museum run. Exciting. I know. On Saturday, March 12th, me, Vivian, Ashley, and Kevin met up with some of the international students. We saw
1. The Museum of Evolution
2. The Geology Museum
3. The Museum of Paleontology
From left to right: Vivian, Kevin, Ashley, skeletons.
Continuing on, Grace and I went to the top of the Arc de Triomphe after dinner in Paris.
Excuse my shaky hands. PARIS AT NIGHT ;3)
I got this time-lapse on top of the Arc. I had to stand there for like 8 minutes but it's always better to get a long time-lapse than a short time-lapse because you can always edit down a long one.
On Tuesday, our program director, Mrs. Muller organized a nice dinner for the American exchange students. There were orchids on the table and lots of good food. I tried this stuff called fromage blanc. or white cheese, which isn't actually a cheese it's more like yogurt, and it was pretty good on apples.
Here is the gang. There were tons of leftovers so we got to take food home in the boxes.
Before I leave I do want to write a bit about classes. Right now I'm doing the equivalent of 18 credits at umich. Like in terms of the number of classes I'm taking and equivalent credits. Still, though I have plenty of free time. Today I went on an hour and a half bike ride and I've still had time to make dinner and read. To be honest, I have about 3 hours of homework a week and for these past 2, I think I've had even less than that.
If you're thinking of studying here. I would recommend that you do all of your core classes first. Although, I've found that I can further my learning here, the classes aren't rigorous. I think that if I had come here without any knowledge of circuits, Laplace transforms pairs, knowledge of s-domain and j-domain work, I wouldn't be able to learn it as effectively as I did at Michigan, here. This is because of the language barrier too. Keep in mind that the teachers who are teaching us speak French first. This program is a testament to the great minds of our teachers who can teach in 2 languages.
Thanks for reading.
Over and out
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA FAME PARIS 2022
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Good News Everyone
I'm sitting here right now, waiting for my season ticket football page to load, so that I can buy season tickets for football next semester. I'm thinking about my day today and this week. It's been a nice week. A nice return to classes and a good time to be in France because the weather is getting a lot better. Flowers started blooming about 2 weeks ago, and when they did I would tell Haley on our walks to classes. "Wow, those weren't blooming yesterday." or "Wow, check out that tree with the cherry blossoms!" And then she might say like "Wow, Nick, you know that happens every year right?" And we'd laugh.
I actually did take a photo of the trees. Here's a photo I took outside of the McDonalds down the road.
très belle, eh?
Spring's one of the top seasons in my opinion, certainly better than Winter, so I'm feeling an upgrade in the weather department incoming. It's all very exciting because I also bought a bike. I looked on Facebook Marketplace and met up with this guy to buy an old Peugeot bike. It looked good, but when we met up, the things gears were all messed up. I negotiated him down in price to 50 euros from 100. Honestly, I still think it was worth less, but I took it anyway. Let me tell you, my fingers have rarely seen an hour without a little bit of chain grease on them since. I've been transporting the bike, messing up the chain, thinking about how to fix it, and eventually taking it to a shop to fix it all through the last two days. He quoted me 65 euros to fix it. I didn't like the sound of that, so I bought another bike for 65 and am going to sell the other one for a small loss. If you ever want to buy a bike in Cergy go to Velo Services near Les Linandes orange. The guy working there is super nice. Overall, all this bike work has been really fun and some good experience.
Moving on.
Grace and I have gone on some adventures in Paris this week. Starting with the Pompidou museum. We weren't that into it. I've actually been to it twice, and both times I didn't really enjoy it. I can't explain in words why though. It's more like a feeling I get. I did get some awesome photos though.
View from one of the escalators on the Pompidou modern art museum
The clouds make the houses look like they're going to start floating away like the house in Up.
We also saw the Sacre Coeur. That was pretty cool. I'm not big on the tourist spots in cities, so I didn't really enjoy the crowds. Some bright sides were that we ran into this sidestreet with this statue behind these nice trees.
Not my best picture, but we paid this statue a visit. Paid our respects and moved on.
And seeing that was really fun. I'm a proponent of the journey being more fun than the destination, so I'll try to find detours and sideshows whenever I can when I'm traveling with a flexible timeframe.
This week's also been good for my running. I've been getting back into the grind and I ran 5 miles Tuesday.
I ran this route around the lake nearby Cergy past the port, and I found some interesting things going on. Apparently, there's a pyramid in the lake, you can see it a bit in the photo below. Also, I was talking to my friend Maxime at lunch, and he was telling me that there's actually a laser that goes off too. A laser. A Cergy laser that points to Paris and goes off every night. A laser. I didn't want to believe him, but knowing Cergy, it's possible. I'm going to check that out soon, I'll keep you updated. Until next week.
Over and out.
Nick Peabody
ENSEA - 2022
Electrical Engineering
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Baby Come Back - YG
Early in the week, I felt like I needed some time to chill and decompress so I took a walk to the relatively close little town called Pontoise. Literally, bridge over the Oise River. I was calling with my family and walking and it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.
Statue in Pontoise looking spectacular
An anecdote for the week
At a birthday party for another of the international students, I ran into Paul, one of the French students I'd met at ENSEA on day one. We had some conversation and the highlight was that he’s from the north of France where they make a lot of beer. He was telling me all about the awesome beer they have up there. I told him that my dad brewed beer and I told him that I think he’d like it, and him being the aficionado that he is, he said that he’d have to try it first!
The Louvre
We went to the Louvre on Sunday this week too and saw the Mona Lisa. The Louvre is massive so we only saw one floor of the whole place. It’s an old royal palace. I was confused about how anybody could need that much space to live in.
Which is more influential?
We're at the Louvre under the pyramid
Raclette dinner:
Even later in the week, some students from ENSEA hosted a raclette dinner at our building. Let me explain, raclette is a kind of cheese that French people will melt and pour over potatoes for dinner as a kind of winter meal. It's often paired with thin slices of meat which they'll cook over on top of the raclette machine. The raclette machine is basically a hot plate with a melting cheese spatula heating zone underneath it. Check it out in this picture.
Folks hanging around the raclette machine
It was incredibly nice of them to organize this and eating raclette was really fun.
P.S I'm going to be on break from classes for the next two weeks. So expect some not-class-related content although I'm not really dropping that kinda stuff anyways, but expect even less...
Cheers
Nick Peabody
ENSEA - 2022
Electrical Engineering
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Salut les mecs
The title means "hey guys." On one of the walks to Crous, the government-subsidized eating facility near ENSEA, I was talking to this guy named Alvaro. He was born in Catalan, so he speaks Spanish, Catalan, French, English, German, and a little bit of Russian. Very impressive dossier there is what I thought. Anyways, he was telling me a little bit about casual French language. He told me that the way to say girlfriend in casual speak is "mon meff". If you look closely, you may notice that meff is actually the word for woman, "femme", backward. He told me that there are other words that are just backward too. Like one may say "chez moi" when talking about their own housing, or "chez toi" when speaking of other people's housing. He told me that casually, one may say chez oim or chez oit instead. I told him that whenever I didn't understand somebody I would just reverse the word in my head to see if that word made sense.
Wow, is that cool. Let me get into some of the week's events. We went to Dijon, a small French city about 3 hours by train east of Paris.
Moutarde Maille in Dijon
The city goes by many names. For one, Mustard capital of the world. Above you can see a shop entirely dedicated to the sale of mustard. I bought one of those mustards with the seeds in it and it was pretty great.
Owl of Dijon
Another is the "owl city". You would not believe your eyes, there's an owl in the city and if you touch it with your left hand, bam, you've got good luck. That's what I call a good deal.
Onto today, my Thursday. It's been nice, to be honest. I've been hanging around Paris. I went to brunch with Grace, and we got this shortbread that had walnuts in it, and we're both allergic to walnuts. Below is a reaction.
At "La Fontaine de Belleville" we got hardboiled eggs and walnuts
And then I went to a kind of engineering museum. "Le musee des arts et des metiers" (the museum of arts and trades). There was a really interesting tie between the mechanical and the artistic which I liked a lot. One of the boards gave a quote from a visitor who comes there to be inspired. There were all kinds of old energy-producing engines and vehicles like planes and cars. I really liked Foucault's pendulum. You can kinda see it in the photo below. The circular area at the bottom is where the ball of the pendulum moved back and forth and it's attached to the ceiling.
Musée des Arts et Métiers
Foucalt's pendulum is a cool experiment because it was the first experiment to give simple, direct evidence of the earth's rotation. And, also because the math behind the motion of a pendulum is differential calculus and EE's dig differential calculus.
After going to the museum, I walked around more and eventually ended up back home. So, that's all for this week.
Cheers
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA - 2022
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France is AWEsome - ENSEA
Well, I landed. I did it. After 3 flights on for the most part half-empty planes, I made it to France 3 hours later than my consortium of fellow USA study abroad students. After a pleasant drive to my residence in Les Linandes Orange, I felt happy to settle down briefly before going on a tour of the town I'd be staying in for the next 5 months, Cergy, France.
We went to the mall called the three fountains and we were overwhelmed by all the new sights and sounds. They sell crepes in little packages. *Wine* is cheap (I'm 21). And as to the sounds, the language barrier on the first day was certainly a small shock. I didn't expect to understand so little.
Above you can see the American students hanging out at the Auchan, the local supermarket in the mall.
Day in Paris
Following that busy day, we packed on an even busier day. When you're jet-lagged, that's the move because it's a good way to quickly adjust to the time difference. On this busier day, we visited Paris. We walked around the Louvre, saw the main attractions of the city, and enjoyed ourselves in the company of the other students at ENSEA who are studying abroad
Above you can see the three American students on the left, with Kevin(Mississippi State University) at the farthest left, me across from him, and Braden (Pitt) at my left. Also our trusty guide Eliot, across from Braden.
Eliot helping us order Kebabs.
No caption is required.
The American students from left to right, Haley, Vivan, Ashley, Grace, Kevin, and I (there are some French students in between)
Our friend Issa at ENSEA. He taught me how to say butterfly in French.
Classes
I'm taking 18 credit hours of Probability and Stats, Circuits, Power, French, and signals and systems. My classes are small. Most of them have only 2-3 students in them. My professor told me that these classes are meant to be taught to 20-25 students, but because of the pandemic, they've downsized. I think it's really cool to get semi-private lessons and I feel really comfortable asking questions if I'm confused.
OK, signing off for this week. See you all in the next edition of Nick's Blog.
Nick Peabody
Electrical Engineering
ENSEA - Ecole Nationale Supérieure
de l'Electronique et de ses
Applications 2022
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Pre journey jitters - Nick Peabody EE, IPE Paris
Today is Tuesday, January, 18th 2022. 6 days until the start of my classes in France (Woo!), and 72 hours away from my flight to Paris.
A few things I'm feeling: overwhelmed for one. There's so much information about what I need to fly with. And I can't help but check covid statistics on France and notice the civil unrest being publicized in the news.
Apprehensive as well. Especially right now about the flight. I have this feeling that I might miss something, like some form that I need to be able to fly, and that I won't be able to go on time. Or that I might get Covid in transit and they test me there and it's positive. It doesn't help that I got the flight with like infinity connections and layovers.
So, I've come to write here to document what it's like to fly during covid and to show you what studying abroad has been for me so far.
If you're going to study abroad, you're given a checklist of the things you need to do. Every other year, it's stayed about the same. Like, get your visa, complete this questionnaire/take these quizzes on safe traveling, look at the courses you're going to take on the course equivalency database for CoE, etc.
And that's been relatively straightforward. I ended up paying kind of a lot for my visa, I think it was like $300 total.
Here it is, the bad boy. On it, you can see the EU hologram thing in the middle. The photo they took of me at the DC visa office. The anti scan pattern, you name it.
After doing all the IPE required tasks, I focused my attention on the travel necessities. The one that has been ever-present on my mind, learning French, which I've been accomplishing by steady intervals throughout my month-long break, still haunts me to this hour. While other tasks kind of just sprang out of the blue. Like did you know you needed to get an EU covid pass to enter museums, libraries, public places? Well, you do and it looks like this, though I removed my QR code in the upper right-hand corner.
You also need to get tested preflight. I've heard horror stories of people getting the wrong test and being turned back and annoying semantics miscalculations are a big fear of mine.
So, I've scheduled two covid tests. One for the price of $80 because all the CVS spots filled up a week and a half in advance. Another of my fellow study abroad people paid $100.
There is approximately infinity to the power of 100 files that the French government requires upon entry. I've filled out the ones I think I need to do. There are different ones if you're unvaccinated and they just kinda pile them together. Also, there are different rules for people just transiting through an airport, which I'm doing through Iceland. I don't think you need to have a negative covid test if you're just transiting. Eventually, all of this information has kind of just combined and intermingled in my head, so that I don't know what's true for what. I'm hoping that the airport can figure it out.
Here's to a good flight!
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