20th birthday in Paris!!!

I recently celebrated my 20th birthday (about a week ago) in Paris, France! I have to say that this was absolutely the best birthday I’ve ever had and a fantastic way to say goodbye to my teenage years.
About 20 of my friends from my study abroad program accompanied me and my friend Sabrina (who was turning 21 the day before my birthday) to a 4 star hotel in the business district of Paris. The whole weekend was magnificent – I ate nutella crepes nonstop, drank French wine and champagne, and saw all my favorite places in France!

I started my birthday off by going to Notre Dame, one of my favorite places in the world. The architecture conveys so much passion and devotion that must have gone into constructing this church. Standing there, looking at the breathtaking stained glass gives me a sense of tranquility and clarity. If I lived in Paris, I would be in Notre Dame every day just drinking in the beauty.




I also went to the Champs Elysees where there is a Christmas market and the Arc de Triumph where the Christmas spirit is nearly palpable.



I went to Montmartre – one of my favorite areas of Paris – and sat inside the Sacre-Coeur for a while.



On the way back to dinner, we encountered a band playing in a metro station. There was a huge crowd and a ton of strangers started dancing together. It was so much fun and there was so much positive energy. I felt as though it was my own personal dance party in the metro. I couldn’t stop smiling. :)



The best part of my birthday though was the evening. On 9:20 all my friends and I jumped on the metro and got to the Eiffel tower just at 9:54pm (the time I was born). I stood under the Eiffel tower and turned 20 there. I popped a bottle of champagne under the tower as a fantastic light show began and music played. My friends and I all watched the light show with awe – it was fantastic. We danced under the tower until we got too cold to stay any longer and went off in search of some other place to dance.

Upon returning to Italy, I had so many birthday wishes from my friends and family back in the US. My brother even wrote a special blog for my birthday :) check it out here:

The whole experience was so memorable – I feel so lucky to have celebrated my 20th birthday in the city of lights and have received so much love from the people in my life. Thank you to everyone for making it so special.

Who knew Tuesday nights could be so fun?

Yesterday I made sure to get my paper edited and printed out before 6 and all my assigned reading for the evening had already been completed. Now if you should know anything about me, it is this: I hate the majority of school work and am an expert at procrastination.

While I felt somewhat dirty finishing work with time to spare, it was for a good purpose. Death Cab for Cutie was playing here (RaRa Riot was opening), I had a wristband to get in, and I was going to sing and dance so much that I knew I would not be able to properly function afterwards.

Have you ever been to a concert and, in a soul-crushing moment of clarity, realize that the band doesn’t sound nearly as good as they do on their CD? Well, that wasn’t the case with DCFC. The concert was amazing. They played a good amount of my favorite songs (Summer Skin, Soul meets Body, Crooked Teeth, etc) and did justice to some of their bigger hits – especially “I will possess your heart”.

I have a problem when it comes to going to concerts –I’m short. At concerts such as this where there is a large crowd between me and the band, it is always a struggle for me to see the concert. Girls, this is where having three extremely tall guy friends comes in handy. The three guys I went to the concert with are all at least a good 8 inches taller than me (one of them is over a foot taller than me). This was such a blessing because they were able to lift me up to better see the stage from time to time.

One thing I don’t understand about people at concerts is how they can just stand still, arms crossed, and only listen to the music. I remember looking around the crowd and seeing very few people even tapping their toes or nodding their head along to the music. I screamed over the music to my friend “HOW CAN THESE PEOPLE STAND STILL?” as I danced, probably looking like a complete idiot, but loving every second of it. Albeit, some of DCFC’s tunes are a little slow and depressing, so I excuse people from not dancing to those. But come on people! How can you not want to dance with all the energy on stage when the band is playing “No Sunlight”? Do you know how ridiculous you look when you just stand there? What are you doing? Absorbing the music? Try FEELING it!

One really surprising thing about the concert was the crowd that it drew. Of course, more of the emo and indie kids were there, but I was pleasantly surprised at how very few people were smoking weed. At almost every huge concert I’ve been to, there has been an ample amount of ganja going around – so the fact that very few people attempted to smuggle in some pot was a point of interest for me. Its more than likely that many of them drank and/or smoked before coming to the concert, but I was glad to see that a good amount of people were there to actually enjoy the music and could do so while being sober.

I think my favorite thing about going to concerts is the connection you feel with a band’s music after hearing them perform it live. I felt this way after seeing Aerosmith a few years back – all their songs are much more appealing and meaningful to me. The same goes for Cake, Jon McLaughlin, Hellogoodbye, and all the other bands I’ve seen. Now I most definitely feel that way about Death Cab for Cutie. Before the concert I wasn’t very partial to their sadder sounding stuff (which is the majority of their music), often skipping over tracks such as “Transatlanticism”, in favor of songs like “All is Full of Love”. But now all of their stuff sounds amazing and all day I’ve been delving into all their music with enthusiasm.

Alright, this post has gone on for too long – I’m going to go chill out to some DCFC. :)