Summer in St Louis

So I've been home for about a week, and it's been really nice so far. The comforts of home abound :) I haven't had too much to do (except for studying for the GRE and catching up on sleep), so I'm trying to figure out how to furnish my bedroom/bathroom when I do move. It's going to be design on a dime, so I'm starting to look for low-cost solutions (aka the Ikea catalog) to find what I need.

The rather unfortunate thing about the apartment is the carpeting...I much prefer wood floors, but we have carpets in the living room and the bedrooms. So I have to find looks that can work with very white carpets. Can you put area rugs on top of carpet?

Anyway, I've been meaning to upload some pictures that I've been taking with my new camera- I took more when my cousins were here last week. (Here's Madison, Asia, and the hippo at the zoo)

Happy Wednesday!

Apartment Hunting

This weekend, my mom, my future roommate, and I all headed up to Minneapolis to look for a place to live. I scheduled about 5 showings in one day, and at the end of the day we had an apartment (although the application is still pending).

We saw one building that we absolutely fell in love with. Open floorplan, granite countertops, lots of light. You get the picture. It was near where we lived last summer, but sadly they didn't have any two bedroom apartments available.

Then, we went to see Symphony place, which, happily for us, did have availability. The building is attached to the skyway, so in January I don't have to go outside to get to work in the morning. There's also a pool, tennis court, large gym, and basketball court onsite. Our 2 bedroom is on the 10th floor, and is about 1100 square feet.

Nice, right? I'm super excited to move in September.

First with Camera, Last in Chicago

This week is my last (for a while) in Chicago, so I decided to take some commemorative photographs with my new Nikon D3100 (a graduation present from my parents). The photos came out great, and I'm so excited to do more photography with a DSLR. :)

Here's a picture of the new library, affectionately named the "Eggenstein".

And some around campus.

Then I tried out the portrait setting on my camera, which is really great. Maybe I have a future as a self-portraiture artist.

Graduation and Real Person-Hood

I know I haven't written on this blog in a while, but I figure that now is as good a time as any to give an update on what's happening in my life.

I just graduated college yesterday, and I’m sort of at a crossroads in my life. I have a job (thankfully) but the job doesn’t start until September. So I’m taking the summer to study for the GRE...which is coming up in about 6 weeks. I want to do well on the test mostly because if I can knock it out of the park I won’t ever have to think about it again. I can just apply to whatever graduate school I decide on (more on that later), and be done with it.

Anyway, what time this summer I don’t spend studying for the GRE, I think I will try to take on projects that will promote self-improvement. (i.e. Learning skills like sewing, reading books I’ve been too busy to read recently, getting caught up on TV shows, etc.) Also, I will probably get roped into trying to help the family pack up things if the move actually happens while I’m at home.

My other goal for this summer is to try and get back in better shape. I think this year especially, I’ve kind of let myself go when it comes to eating well and getting a lot of exercise. I guess some of it was to be expected (3 months in Paris didn’t help that much), but I’d like to lose around 15-20 lbs. this summer, hopefully starting tomorrow. I’m going to try doing 2 a day workouts in the summer, morning and evening when it isn’t too hot, or at least 90 minutes inside at the gym.

It’s so weird that I’m done with college. I could literally never go back to school again, and no one would think that I was a failure. Not saying that I’ll never go back (I already miss student-hood) but I’m just having an insane internal dilemma about what kind of graduate school to choose. The most obvious choice would be business school. I have an economics degree from a premier institution, a good job in a business field, and if I get a decent GRE score, I’ll be a great candidate for top schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. Right now that’s sort of where I’m leaning. But, if I decide I don’t like business, I could either go to economics graduate school or medical school. I have recommendations ready for a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program- and then eventually medical school. The other option is a PhD in economics, which would probably be more difficult, because it would require me to take a lower paying job for a couple of years and take extra classes in order to even apply. But all of that would probably be moot if I end up liking my career.

Cote D'Azur

I'm rounding out my epic Eurotrip 2011 by spending 4 days in Nice (and the surrounding cote d'azur). First of all, Nice is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. The Mediterranean is gorgeous, the architecture of the old city is great too. Also, the mountains in the distance make the whole place look like paradise.

The food is also great. It's an awesome mix of Italian and Provencal, with like, a billion different flavors of gelato. (I may actually be the only person in Nice eating my personal favorite, avocado, but that's okay. All the more for me.)

On my first day, I took the train outside of Nice to a small town called Eze-sur-Mer (where Bono has a villa), and hiked about 8 KM from the small town to Monaco.

Monaco itself wasn't that exciting, but the hike itself was great.

Here's the Monaco yacht harbor...

The next day, I decided to take it easy and spend the day on one of Nice's beaches. I rented a chair for 10 euro and people-watched.

Afterwards, I walked around Vieux Nice some more. I'm totally fascinated by the buildings there, when the sun is out, they sort of glow.

Tomorrow, I'm heading back to Paris before flying out on Wednesday. Overall, it's been an amazing trip, and I've had a phenomenal time, but I can't wait to get back to see my friends and family.

Au Revoir from the French Riviera!

Loire Valley Castles and Le Mont-Saint-Michel

To round out my day-tripping from Paris, I took tours of 4 castles in the Loire Valley, and went to Mont-Saint-Michel, an abbey from the middle ages in Normandy.

For the Loire Valley tour, I started at Azay-le-Rideau, said to be "the most graceful" castle of them all.

Later that morning, we drove to Villandry, the castle that has the best gardens of them all. My personal favorite part was the garden that is associated with different types of love: tender, passionate, fickle, and tragic.

After lunch in Tours, we went to Chambord, the castle built as a hunting lodge by Francois the first.

We ended the day with Chenonceau, which is laid out over a tributary of the Loire River.

It was a really long day, but I'm glad that I got to see some of them before leaving Paris.

On Thursday, I took the train to Mont-Saint-Michel to see the abbey from the middle ages. It was really interesting, but the weather was terrible- and I was totally unprepared, due to nice days in the Loire and Reims the previous days.

The abbey was really beautiful, but the weather made it an exhausting day. I was glad to come back to Paris later that evening.

From Paris I took the train to Nice, where I'll spend the rest of my time here. It's absolutely beautiful, but I'll post more about Nice/Monaco later.

Day Tripping II: Reims

On Tuesday, I set out for my second round of day-tripping from Paris. This time I decided to go to Reims, a town in the Champagne region, for the day. (Reims is actually pronounced like "rance" but with a gutteral "r", FYI) In the morning, I hung around the Cathédrale de Reims, which for centuries served as the coronation location for French Kings. The weather was absolutely beautiful all day, which also made the experience all the more pleasant.

The cathedral itself is very beautiful, with intricate stone statues and good natural light. (At least this is the conclusion that I've come to because my pictures of the inside turned out relatively well.)

After looking around the Cathedral for a bit, I decided to go to the Palais du Tau to look at some of the remains of the cathedral. (It was heavily damaged in both WWI and WWII). Here are some of the old stone angels from the church.

Then, after lunch, I went to the House of Mumm (a champagne house located in central Reims), for a tour of the cellars and tasting. We also learned a bit about how champagne is made.

I tried the traditional Mumm champagne, as well as the 2002 vintage, and both were great! It was interesting how you can taste the difference between the two. Overall, another excellent day trip...I'm looking forward to more in the coming week (and of course, Nice/Monaco on Friday!)

Bonne soirée!