Spending time with Hannah O'Brien!

Olivia and Hannah look at Winston Churchill's grade book at the exhibit de Gaulle-Churchill 

on display at Les Invalides.  He went to St. George's School in Ascot!

Churchill's grades at St. George's School.  

Please note that he received "very fair" in French !

Cooling off during the heat wave with some Amorino Gelato in the Marais

Finishing the day with a stroll along the Seine, through Île Saint Louis, 

past Notre Dame and to Châtelet to get the métro

A Whirlwind Week -- Parisian Style !

This week has been a whirlwind! We are now halfway done with our internships and more than halfway through our visit in Paris. Sitting on a bench on the Champs Elysées, enjoying a traditional Parisian delicacy, otherwise known to the entire world as Häagen-Dazs, Olivia and I bewilderedly attempted to remember what has happened in the last week.

In the lab at the Curie, I have been working with a PhD student Maddalena Nado, who is doing research with fruit flies. She has taught me namely how to separate the brain of a larva from the rest of it body (see photo below), how to prepare and use stains to help identify different organelles, parts of the cell, and how to make and analyze mini movies from images captured by a laser microscope. It has been so fun and engaging working with Madda and all of her colleagues in the lab.

Not only has work taught me new scientific knowledge this past week, but it has also given me practical advice. For example, what does one do during an hour long lunch break by themselves? How about, walk down the street to a Boulangerie, grab a sandwich, and then head to the Luxembourg Gardens to enjoy lunch while reading a book. How does one find the metro after confidently yet obliviously making the wrong turn? Consult your best friend, Paris Practique, complete with a map of each arrondissement, or neighborhood, a street directory, and the metro layout. Why does the taxi strike affect the metro trains? Who knows? Everyone wants a break I guess. Just remember, as Ms. de Horsey says, personal space and oxygen must be sacrificed for the sake of time.

Now that we are “working girls” as our host father puts it, we can partially grasp why our parents seem so dead and grouchy after arriving home from work.  After work, the main and sometimes only event of each day, we stumble home on foot or via metro and immediately crash after a delicious dinner, courtesy of our host mother.

Though the days can be exhausting, due to work or to clocking our new high of 15 miles in one day, everything has been worth the while! How much more can we fit in during this last week? Stay tuned to find out!

-Sophie 

"The photograph is a brain lobe taken from a fruit fly larvae that has been dissected and immunostained for centrosomes (the yellow dots), then Tubulin to see the microtubule cytoskeleton in red and then the DNA in blue. We look at fruit flies to understand the basic mechanisms that regulate cell proliferation during development. Since most important genes are conserved from fruit flies to men, we hope that our findings will contribute to understanding the basic principles underlying cell and tissue organisation."
Renata Basto, Group Leader of Biology of Centrosomes and Cilia, Institut Curie, Paris

The City of Lights, the City of Love is forever in our hearts and the soles of our shoes !

Coucou je suis ici! I’m back and SO much has happened over the course of the semaine. To start off I started my internship on Monday at NLB Conseil, an executive search firm in Paris specializing in luxury goods and cosmetics. I was nervous on Monday morning as I walked to work, but I am so happy to be there because I am surrounded by positive faces and attitudes every day. Even though I have only been there for a week, I have learned and witnessed so much of the “head-hunting” process. Before my internship, I never thought about how a multi-millionaire dollar company interviews for their new Director of Public Relations or their new CEO, but from this experience I now know the procedure. I am so glad to be working at NLB Conseil because I know French business conversational skills and business in general. I am so lucky to be in Paris and even luckier to be working in Paris!

The days are long, tiring, and very hot because of the heat wave in Paris but the hours spent in the cool office are productive and fun. My dream was to work and live in Paris and I have successfully fulfilled my rêve. Although the internship has only been two weeks, I can say that I know Paris well enough to come back for two months, two years or more! It has been an amazing experience and I can’t believe that it is my last week here.  I am comfortable with my daily route to work and either looking at the Arc de Triomphe or la Défense that view is unlike any other on the planet.

Even though Sophie and I are working, we still have had time to discover Paris after work. Sophie and I climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe last Wednesday on a beautiful Parisian day! The view from the top was phenomenal and it was absolutely breathtaking!  On Thursday night, we all ate at an amazing steak-frites place right down the road, l’Entrecôte. I have nothing to compare it to because the steak-frites elsewhere are not even close to the restaurant dans le dix-septième arrondissement. After dinner, Sophie, Madame de Horsey, and I went to Hôtel de Banville and watched Madame de Horsey’s friend, Marianne, the owner sing and perform. This week has been so enjoyable at work, the night at the hotel, and our time with our host family. We have enjoyed our week in the office and the lab and are ready for another one!

Although our last days in Paris are approaching and the heat is rising, Sophie and I will not stop discovering Paris à pied. Tourists come to France from all over the world and are exhausted at noon, contrary to public belief Sophie and I are not les touristes anymore but Parisiennes. Our feet are numb from walking more than forty miles over the course of the deux semaines, however we are not finished yet! Paris defeats tourists with its beauty, a copious amount of museums and monuments, dozens and dozens of stores, and miles to cover in a short period of time, but Sophie and I successfully defeated Paris (it is still standing). Ne vous inquietez-vous pas, Paris on revient (Don’t worry Paris, we will be back)!

The City of Lights, the City of Love is forever in our hearts and the soles of our shoes.

À plus tard,

Olivia Vitton

SG’16

Views of Paris by Olivia

View from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

View of Sacré Coeur

View of le Sénat in the Luxembourg Gardens

View of macarons and Angélina's famous hot chocolat

Never Stop Exploring !

Filled with fantastic food and glamorous style, Paris is alive with so much to explore! After our first week our feet best understand the amount of traveling we have done. Working up our way up the ranks Olivia and I ended our first week by walking a half marathon, with a few stops along the way.

To ensure that we set foot in every single piece of Paris, we have visited a plethora of sites and plan to use any of our future free time to fully execute this goal. The the Archeological Crypt at Notre Dame taught us about the history of Paris, while the dome of the Sacré Coeur presented us with a bird’s eye view of the city. We were able to rack up our mile count climbing to the top of the dome and strolling along the Seine, Champs Elysées, and by the President’s Palace, where an officer gave us a tour of how to best avoid its gates. In the vast luxurious, well-provided Luxembourg Gardens and Monet’s picturesque home base in Giverny, we found peace and quiet amid the bustle of the city. This past Sunday the Fête de la Musique, a country wide celebration of music, captured Paris. When we weren’t scrambling through dense crowds finding our way, we enjoyed beautiful music, from classical to dance to African folk. The previous day, trekking long and hard, we traveled to the Marais to provision for our own delicious dinner, just like our hunter-gatherer ancestors. With the practice and advice we gained from the tastiest markets we had been to, our palates deemed our mission a success.  Just as our culinary talents have grown, we’ve mastered the Parisian métro and the art of map reading.  I’ll find out if this is really true on my first solo trip to work.
In conclusion, The North Face describes our adventures perfectly:  Never Stop Exploring.

In between adventures, Olivia and I started our internships on Monday. At the Curie Institut began by meeting lots of smiling, excited, research aficionados. Based on their insight and knowledge I will be learning a lot over the course of the next two weeks.

Until I am bestowed with awe inspiring wisdom,

Sophie Williams SG ’16

Week 1: Getting to know Paris !

Bonjour et bienvenue à Paris! Even though I have only been in Paris for a week I am more confident in my metro abilities and discovering the city by myself. I was nervous about managing the metro system but I am now a metro master and know which lines go to the Eiffel Tour or Notre Dame. The days have been busy and filled with exciting visits to museums or simply the opportunity to discover Saint Germain, the Marais, or the 17th arrondissement (where we live with our host family, the de Varax) by ourselves. Besides getting around the city, Sophie and I would consider ourselves experts in people watching and how to choose the perfect café or boulangerie.

I knew that I would be walking all over Paris, but I did not expect that I would walk a half marathon in one day and eleven miles the day before. Instead of trying to have the perfect outfit with the perfect shoes, my feet and I have decided that my Supergas are better than my Jack Rogers. Luckily I wore my sneakers when I climbed the Sacré Coeur yesterday and Montmartre’s “slight” incline is an understatement but the view was spectacular and so was the calf work out. The sun was out and there was not one cloud in the blue sky.  I saw everything from the beautiful white basilica-the Eiffel Tour, les Invalides, Notre Dame, Saint Sulpice, and musicians sharing their talent with Paris as they celebrated Fête de la Musique. Needless to say, my short time in Paris has been extensive and I have visited new areas of Paris that were unfamiliar to me before.

Of course there is so much more to experience in Paris than the countless monuments or museums, but to live the daily life as a Parisian. On Saturday, Sophie and I sat in the Luxembourg Gardens and people watched behind our sunglasses. The casualness is so Parisian and as we walked throughout the park, we admired some statues and flowers. Besides sitting in parks, we have enjoyed our “expérience gastronomique” , which has been amazing, how could it not be? We had delicious chocolat-chaud at Angélina and macarons at Ladurée but the smell of fresh baguettes and croissants from the boulangeries has been mind-blowing. We learned about French cheeses, chocolates and award winning prizes for the best éclair or baguette in 2010 or 2012. Our acclimation week has set in because we have all the tools to find a good lunch or how to get home.

Paris is more than the City of Lights, but of experiences, sore feet, shopping, delicious food, and work. The city is not as intimidating as it seems to be from a birds-eye view and is easier to navigate than one thinks. I am so glad to have two weeks left to explore this magnificent city!

À bientôt,

Olivia Vitton
SG’16

27,751 steps !

We had an epic day of exploring Paris on Sunday -- nearly all on foot !  From Sacré Coeur to Place St. Georges to Palais Royal to Place Vendôme, to St. Germain and St. Michel to the Marché aux Fleurs de Reine Elisabeth to Châtelet.  We crossed the Seine twice :  at the Pont Léopold Senghor and then at the Pont St. Michel.  By the end of our ten hour day, the girls had clocked 27,751 steps (13.37 miles!) to my 24, 589 steps (11.4 miles)!  They got an earlier start than I did yesterday and paid a visit to the Palais de l'Elysée, home of French President François Hollande (he was not receiving guests and they were asked politely to not get so close!).  It was a beautiful day and we ended up meandering our way from Sacré Coeur (via Place St. Georges!) to St. Germain and the Latin Quarter to have dinner and enjoy the Fête de la Musique.  The entire country celebrates music in its many forms on this day each year.  Throughout St. Germain and the Latin Quarter, we saw classical music, jazz trios, drums, techno and rock -- all as we walked through the streets.  Musicians set up in parks, on the street, in restaurants and cafés -- you can't go more than a few feet without the genre changing.  It was a festive day to celebrate Father's Day and the Summer Solstice!  We didn't get home too late because Olivia and Sophie begin their internships tomorrow - it's a big day and they are ready, having become acclimated to the city this past week.  As we visit the different areas of the city, Olivia and Sophie are taking note of their "perfect Parisian apartment".  At this point, the list is growing and the top apartment is on the corner of Rue de Vaugirard and rue Guynemar, overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg!