Péripéties du K

Samedi 18 novembre 2006

Operator License

It was some time ago now but I'm so proud of it I wanted to share with you. Yeah I got my michigan driving license. Basically I just had to answer the easiest test I ever pass about the driving laws in Michigan, then I had to pass the driving test, which was pretty easy as well, no tricks, I just had to drive for half an hour around Lansing. The only thing that might confused European that drives here is that you can turn right even if the traffic light is red, and you better do it or you'll be honked at!
Here what it looks like:

And it just cost me 100$... But I didn't have to pay the driving trainning
Next step green card!

Par Le K - Publié dans : American Culture
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Jeudi 16 novembre 2006

J-1

    J-1......month. This is how much time I have left until I get back to Paris for winter break. I'm not counting the days, but as my come back appraoches, I'm longing more and more to come back to the city where I was born, a city of love, a city of desir, a city of vices. It's a normal feeling, I'm sure you all experienced it at one point or another.
    I didn't talk a lot of my experience of living in a new country with another culture. Obviously there are several issues there. I wouldn't say that my experience is a bad experience, I absolutely don't regret coming here, it made me think a lot obout myself and about things that I always thought were normal or natural. But I won't say that it changed me completely, actually it hasn't changed me much I just know myself better.
    I would say that the main issue of my coming here is the fact that I always lived in Paris, which is a big city, whereas here I am living on a campus that is several miles from a rather small city. The problem is that I miss a point of comparison from the same living environment back in France, which prevent me of really appreciate the differencies between the two culture. Leaving in a big city like New York city, San Fransisco or Los Angeles would permit me to fully appreaciate these differencies. However what I did learn by living here is that I would much rather live in a big city than in a city like Lansing, or smaller. It is for those two reasons that I would like to find a internship in a big city for next summer, I'm so exited by the idea of living in New York during the summer! And of course you will all be invited to come and visit me!
    Back to my experience, another problem is that I don't have a car here. The fact that I'm not in a big city increases the fact that everything is so far apart in the US. So if I want to go to a movie, I can only access one movie theater by bus, where they play only 3-4 movies. I can't access the bigger movie theaters where more movies that I would like to see are playing. It's the same with bars and restaurant. However I must admit that the bus network is pretty efficient if you want to move around the campus (you can walk but it takes a lot longer) and to certain specific areas (like the mall and the supermarket).
    Another issue is that I may be on a campus of 45,000 students, but I live in the graduate and international students dorm. That means that most of my neighbors are Asian who would not even answer my cheerful but insure "hello!"(pronounce it "Ello!"). Moreover, in my classes, most of the students are in fact internationnal students, it seems like American don't really like graduate studies. I can understand that when I see the price of studies here. An American told me that he hunged his bachelor diploma (it corresponds to 4 years of study after high school) because it was worth 180,000$. You don't need to buy paintings, just buy diplomas!
    The fact that we are a group of 10 french coming from the same school doesn't help either to go and try to make new friends. The easy way is too stick together, and althought I tried not to do that in the beginning, it's not easy when you always have to make the first move to know people and call them times and times again to stay in contact. It happened to me with a couple of americans, I don't know if I just fell on the bad persons, or if it's the way americans are, but at a certain point you just give up, and take the easy way.
    Well after all that you must feel that I'm having a really bad time here... That's not the case. I'm rather negative here, but as I said, it made me discover more about myself, and I still think that it's a great experience and that everybody should try it at least once in his life. Well I'm still here for at least one year, and I'm glad that I'll have the chance to discover more about myself and americans. Plus I always find ways to entertain myself...
    In conclusion, I'm coming back to Paris for three weeks, be ready to partyyyyyyyyyyyy! Here wii go!

Par Le K - Publié dans : Voyage
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Dimanche 5 novembre 2006

Let's go to Miami...

Miami here we go! I am proud to be among the few who have gone to Miami and have successfully got out of it. Mark my word, it is not an easy task, for many dangers lay on the path, treacherous and vicious dangers in which one might fall into and never come back. There are called Miami vices.
Even before I arrived in Miami I had to fought for my life. In the flight from Detroit to Orlando, they tried to squeeze me like a lemon in a squeezer by placing to huge fat guys by my sides. Bravely I resisted and I didn't jump out of the plane to get fresh air... Then for the flight from Orlando to Miami, they tried to scare me to death by letting me fly in the smallest plane I ever flew in:

But they didn't know that I like to fly, therefore I wasn't scared a bit.
I arrived safe and sound in Miami on saturday evening, my cousin Dean came to pick me up at the airport in his Ford Mustang, he tried to impress me to death but I wasn't fouled, I knew it was only a Ford K in disguise:

We finally arrived at my aunt's place. Again they tried to dazzle me to death by letting me believe that it was a roman palace, but Kenneth is not easily fooled! I knew it was just a small American house:

    After I arrived, they tried to fed me to death in an italien restaurant - "Carpaccio" - and they nearly succeeded as I haven't had good food in a long time. I am living in a dorm in East Lansing after all...
    My aunt house is in Aventura, which is in the north of Miami. The hot places in Miami are in south beach, which is in......the south! You would have guessed of course, smart as you are. So we went to south beach after diner to dance our brains out, yet another danger in Miami. I forgot to mention that it was the week end just before Halloween, which was the following tudesday. We saw creatures wandering the streets of southbeach with outfits competing with those of the best drag queens, as well as those of Adam and Eve, especially Eve: apparently the competition was over the one with the less clothes on. I think I had a glimpse of the winners: two girls were wearing G-strings, and that's about it, with only their hair covering their breasts. Yuck.
    Unfortunately, or fortunately for me as you will see later on, we were refused entry to the nightclubs of southbeach. Indeed we were three desperate guys in need, whereas to enter a nightclub in a hot city like Miami you need to be with at least three girls and you need to appear unconcerned by whether they let you in or not. So guess who found the solution to this thorny problem? Well I'll just say that we ended up in a gay club, which woud never refuse entry to three guys in need...
    In there I met a really nice Cuban guy, Hemley, child of the world and quantum physics. Pretty quickly it became physical indeed. But this was a danger I didn't fight too hard, I even embraced it and let it penetrated me fully (the danger I mean you little vicious smart ass). Luckily it was my birthday, so Miami decided it was a good time to stop trying to trick me and let me out of this danger safely in the morning. I had the chance of visiting a lovely south beach house in the mean time:

With its lovely host:

He kindly drove me home on a Madonna tune, and I saw Miami under the hot sun for the first time because when I arrived the day before it was already dark.
After this good night of non-sleep, my cousin and I went to the swimming pool, where I met the brother of Brad Pitt. But this time i fought the danger and didn't fall into it (plus I didn't really meet him, only me eyes...)

They tried to drown me thanks to jet and bubbles in the Jacuzzi but I am a too good swimmer for that.
When we had enough of the swimming pool we went to eat by the beach in Sunny Isle, which is near Aventura. We didn't swim this time, currents might have taken me away... We stayed at the beach pretty much the entire afternoon, then we came back home. My aunt and cousins prepared a little happy birthaday for me, which was really nice, then we went to the restaurant, where they try to kill me again with cheese this time. Fortunately I felt it, my face even started to swell, so I took my meds on time. One hour later my face came back to normal and we could go out, not long though because my meds took all my strenght. Dean, John and me went to espagnola way, which is a street with italian and spanish restaurant in south beach, very nice.

There were dancing Flamenco to death inside. I didn't get close for obvious reasons.
On monday I woke up like a flower at noon. Yes you read me right, like a flower. You've never seen a flower waking up? Well you should see me waking up then. We had lunch with an Argentinean, Matis, a friend of my cousin. Then we went to south beach to actually go to the beach this time, the famous beach of Miami. We passed by Versace's house on the way:

And here was the beach:

After that we went to lincoln road, it's the pedestrian street of south beach. We had a drink there:

    Yeah we like to play with straws...
    I spend the evening and the night with my cuban guy, we went to a good american restaurant (it suprised me but good american restaurants do exist!). On tuesday morning I took the bus to come back to aventura, the driver tried to kill me by driving crazy, it was actually fun.
    I didn't do much on tuesday because it was rainning pretty much all day. Eventually it stopped rainning, we even had a pretty sunset:

We went to southbeath in the evening to see the crowd dressed up for Halloween, it was amazing. We tried to dress up but we had to do it with what we had:

I'm supposed to be a bad cop...
I took some videos, but we can't see well: that's too bad.

Later on we tried to enter in nightclubs but again we didn't have any girls with us so we couldn't enter anywhere. We ended up in the lounge of a high class hotel.
On wednesday I had to go back, and Miami Vices won because I didn't want to go back! However Lansing was calling and I couldn't shut up its calls, so I came back to Lansing. Sniff.

Par Le K - Publié dans : Voyage
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Lundi 23 octobre 2006

Corn Maze

Corn : maïs, maze : labyrinthe, comme son nom l'indique donc, le corn maze n'est pas un labyrinthe de maïs, mais un labyrinthe creusé dans un champ de maïs. C'est LE truc à faire dans le michigan, l'attraction du coin quoi. Le but est donc d'y rentrer puis d'y retrouver son chemin, en gros voila à quoi cela ressemble vu de haut :

Le Yo Ho Ho! est mis la pour qu'on ne puisse pas mémoriser le chemin du début, comme ça c'est plus dur. On a mis moins d'une heure pour le faire, un record ici...
Et voila à quoi cela ressemble vu de l'interieur:

J'y étais avec deux français, kristell et Pierre-etienne, et trois américains, pat, andrew et l'autre j'ai oublié :

Comme vous pouvez le constater, les américains ne savent pas s'habiller, bon c'est vrai on est dans un champ de maïs, mais la classe c'est d'être classe en toute circonstance!
Après on a eu le droit au "trail of terror", soit pour les nuls le chemin de la terreur. Evidemment je l'ai fait courageusement avec les autres, et d'abord que j'ai même pas eu peur!

C'était plutôt marrant, on a même eu le droit à des envolés lyriques d'un membre de notre groupe dont je tairais le nom par respect pour elle....Entendez donc par vous même :

Et en voila en autre extrait :

En bref c'était encore une expérience passionnante du nord americain. Après on a finit dans un bar du coin à jouer aux flechettes. Yahoo!
Je pars demain pour Miami, prendre le soleil (et pourquoi pas un mec ou deux... Ca manque cruellement par ici!) et voir mes cousins. Je vais bitcher sur les beachs de Miami, qui dit mieux?

Par Le K - Publié dans : American Culture
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Jeudi 12 octobre 2006

Noël en octobre...

Aujourd'hui jeudi 12 octobre nous avons enfin un aperçu du vrai michigan : eh oui il neige!

Après un week end splendide pendant lequel il faisait beau et chaud (au moins 25°C, c'était l'été indien, splendide!) on nous annonce qu'il va neiger jeudi. Nous en bon français on rigole doucement en se disant que ce n'est pas possible que la température chute de 25° en trois jours. Eh bien ce matin on a ravalé nos rires et on s'est vetu de nos gros manteaux pour sortir sous une tempête de neige à -2°C, viva el Michigan!
En gros profitez du temps à Paris, parce que finalement l'hiver parisien va très bientôt me manquer.

Par Le K - Publié dans : Voyage
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