Stanford in France

Last Updated: July 15, 2000

From the end of August, 1995 to the beginning of January, 1996, I lived and studied in Paris, France. This page will contain a collection of the photographs that I took while I lived in the City of Lights and travelled throughout Europe.

First Stop: Switzerland

I arrived in France at the end of August to spend some time with my friend, Jean-Philippe, and his family prior to beginning my studies and adventures in Paris. A few days after I arrived, we took a trip to Switzerland for a VW Bug conference. Remember, 1995 was well before the days of the new Beetle from Volkswagon. It was striking to see all the various sorts of VW Bugs (une coccinelle en français!), from limousine Bugs to Hot Rod Bugs to Jean-Phillipe's white Beetle.

Le Monde blimp sails over	Swiss landscape #1	Swiss landscape #2
Swiss town	VW Bug conference

Switzerland was a beautiful place in the Summer/Fall of 1995, and I'm anxious to return. If you're a gamer, I must say that parts of the country looked like they were straight out of Ultima, one of my favorite games!

Paris Arrival

The street I lived on, rue Bonaparte

I arrived in Paris in the end of September with the no expectations, no regrets philosophy, but I knew deep down that a change was gonna happen, and a good one at that. Studying abroad was one of the best decisions that I made at Stanford, and I highly recommend every student who has the opportunity to study in a foreign country to take it.

My cute little room

I lived in the 6e arrondissement of Paris, otherwise known by me as the "le chique sixième". I had an interesting living arrangement on rue Bonaparte. The family that I was living with lived on the second floor (la première étage) and I lived on the seventh (sixième étage) floor in a small chambre de bonne. You know how in movies of Paris, there's always the Eiffel Tower looming overhead? Well, it was no different in my apartment, as I was able to see just the tip of the La Tour Eiffel from my apartment window!

Next door to my pad, St. Sulpice

French Chinese restaurant owners

The first few days I was in Paris was spent getting familiar around the city and learning how to use the métro system. I wasn't too worried about my French, since I spent almost a month with Jean-Philippe and his family honing my French skills like one sharpens a knife. After 6 years of studying French in San Diego and an additional year at Stanford, I knew that I could speak the language. If you are planning on studying abroad, make a promise to yourself that you will speak the foreign tongue as much as possible while you're there. If you cave in and start speaking English (or whatever your native tongue is) with your American friends and colleagues, you're going to start down a dangerous path where the only destination is that you won't learn the foreign language all that well.

Another interesting thing about Paris, about foreign countries in general, is that you meet people who look like you, but don't speak your native tongue! Whenever I went into a Chinese restaurant, I marvelled at the fact that here were these guys who came from Hong Kong, but don't speak a word of English! And, the cool thing about them was that they spoke this mix of Chinese-French just like their counterparts in America speak a dialect of Chinese-English!

Detour to Strasbourg

Most of the Stanford students arrived in Paris a day or so before classe began. Boy, were some of them in culture shock! I was fortunate that I had arrived a month prior to get acclimated to the environment; this served me well in the coming months, and it's something else that I recommend to students who are planning on studying abroad -- arrive early to get accustomed to the country.

The Stanford coordinators arranged, using the generous donations of the Bing family, a trip to Strasbourg, a city on the French-German border for the entire group of students on October 6, 1995. We took the train from Paris to Strasbourg in a couple of hours and spent the weekend in this very beautiful city. Strasbourg, given it's situated next to the German border, is a definite mix of German and French influences.

La Cathédrale de Strasbourg

In front of Strasbourg houses

The cathedral in Strasbourg was one of the most breathtaking ones that I've seen in all of Europe. It look otherworldly, nothing like some of the more pretentious religious buildings I've seen around the world.

London Excursion

One of my goals while in Europe was to go to England. I had cousins living in London at the time and wanted to visit them. I also wanted to go to England using the train that went under the English Channel, the Eurostar. I went to London on the weekend of November 18, with Anne. We had a blast in London, though it was very, very cold (blue skies, though!). We all the usual tourist trap things, like viewing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, seeing Big Ben, and riding in a double-decker bus. We also visited this cool Star Trek exhibit and hooked up with my cousins, Edwin, Eugene, and Charmaine. We also got a kick out of reciting the now infamous saying, "Mind the gap" from the British Underground metro stations!

Big Ben	Buckingham Palace #1	Buckingham Palace #1
Wanna take a train ride?

Back in Paris

I spent the majority of my time back in Paris, with the exception of the trips to Strasbourg and London and some weekend trips to the family houses of my good friends, Anne and Jean-Phillipe. I studied at the Stanford Center in the ESCP (Ecole Supèrior de Commerce). The biggest political/societal things that happened during my time in Paris were the strikes and the terrorist attacks, or attentats.

Parisians strike on October 10, 1995

Chop, chop, snip, snip!

Paris Metro

Strikes and haircuts

Those parisians sure know how to put on a strike. In America, a strike is a place where disgruntled people hold picket signs and hurl obscenities at the other side. In France, they hold a frickin' party on the city streets! La Grè was also the day that I cut my long locks and had Ethan Hawke M:I-2 hair. I saw a few more strikes in Paris, one of which lasted for three weeks! If you can imagine practically the entire public transportation system in all of France on strike, you can imagine how paralyzed the city was. It's one of those stories that I'll tell kids, "I had to walk 45 minutes to school everyday, through the rain and snow!" Well, it didn't snow or rain that much while I was there, but I did have to walk 45 minutes everyday during the strike to get to class; I look back at the strikes as a blessing; I was able to walk through the city as a parisian, not as an American student in Paris. A number of my Stanford colleagues weren't as lucky, since they lived in the suburbs (les banlieus) of Paris. This meant a two hour walk, which they usually avoided by hitchhiking their way to class. I was amazed by the courtesy of the parisians during the strike; many of them banded together to hitchhike or pick up hitchhikers to help them get to work everyday. I don't think you'll see that happening in America anytime soon!

Terrorism strikes

Paris was also the unfortunate victim of terrorist attacks while I was in France. The situation in Algeria wasn't so hot (has it ever been?) and there were a number of attentats, or terrorist incidents, in the metros or in crowded, public spaces. The terrorists bombed specific metro lines and trashcans throughout Paris. Whenever I took the metro, I was frequently on the lookout for anything that looked suspicious. It's hard to enjoy your time studying and adventuring when the spectre of death through terrorism hovered in your mind, but we all did our best to push through the sadness and incredulity of people wanting to hurt, maim, or kill innocents through terrorism just to prove a point.

Friends made

I made a number of new friends while in Paris. In addition, to Anne, I met and befriended Khamkeo, Agnès, and Julia, all French students studying at the ESCP. I became good friends with my Stanford colleagues too, including Garry, Clara, and Supriya.

Living and studying in Paris was magical. I would rate it as one of the best experiences of my life, definitely one of the best decisions in my life. I remember my junior year in high school, right after I returned home to San Diego from my first trip to France, that I said to myself that I would return in three years. I kept that promise as a junior at Stanford, returning to visit old friends and meet new ones.

I vowed to return again, and little did I know that it would be just weeks after I returned back to Stanford for Winter Quarter. But, that's a topic for another musing and another photogallery!