One of the things I really hate about travelling is furnishing a new apartment when I don't know where to find stuff. You just arrived in the country, you're tired and/or jet lagged, you don't know the language, and you have to get your place livable in two days because classes or work start on the third day. What do you do? Living in Paris can be a fun experience after you find an apartment and finally make it comfortable. As a newcomer to this history steeped city, I knew neither where to find what I needed nor what places were good quality. It's taken me two years to discover where to shop for household stuff. The places here are where I now go.
| | Ikea Thiais is an excellent place to go if you need a lot of stuff. It is located just outside of Paris in the beautiful Thiais Village shopping centre. While it doesn't take that long to get to Ikea, Ikea trips always seem to take all day. The food inside is good and also cheap; for more variety, check out the restaurants outside. | | | Muji is a chain of Japanese stores scattered around Paris. They have a lot of things for small apartment living. Their prices are higher than Ikea, their quality is better, but their selection is not as diverse. Their greatest mark over Ikea is they are inside Paris; you can take the metro, hop off, shop, and hop back on within an hour. | | | Darty is a good place to buy home appliances and electronics. Some students (myself included) buy toaster ovens here so we can bake dinners and make cakes and cookies we can't find in Paris (they don't have real chocolate chip cookies in Paris). It's also a great place for Mac cables and WiFi routers outside of the Apple Store. If you bring electronics (alarm clocks, hair dryers,etc.) from home and they die with a puff of magic blue smoke (technical term), Darty is a good place to get a replacement of reasonable qualiry. | Hypermarchés are another great place to find things. The best comparison for Americans would be hypermarchés are like a Super Target or small Walmart. The selection, prices, and quality varies greatly from store to store.
Géant Casino and Paris Store
Géant Casino is located in the blue building at 113 place de Vénétie and Paris Store is across the street. Both have a decent selection of household items and food. Great place if you're in the 13e.
Place d'Italie
Easily found at the Place d'Italie metro stop, there is a Carrefour underneath that had a reasonable selection of many household things.
Carrefour Hypermarché
There is a really large Carrefour Hypermarché located on 1 avenue Général Sarrail in the 16e of Paris. This place is huge, has a large selection of foreign foods, and many household and personal items I've only found on Amazon. Most mornings there is an open air market nearby with decent prices and selection.
The Masters of Arts in Global Communications and Civil Society (MGCS) {pronounced 'Magics' or "Magic with an S'} is the equivalent of a dual masters, blending the Masters of Arts in Global Communications (MAGC) {pronounced 'Magic'} and the Masters of Arts in International Affairs (MIN) {pronounced 'Min'} programs. Due to how masters degrees work in Europe, a one-year masters program in Europe is the equivalent of a two-year masters program in the United States. Since MGCS is a two-year program blending the one-year MAGC and one-year MIN programs, I have successfully completed four years of masters studies in two years at an excellent university (recommended by representatives to the U.N.) located in one of the primary hubs of Europe. | | My studies at AUP have taken me to seven new countries on three different continents. France is where most of my studies took place. In India and Auroville I studied Civil Society, forms of government and their processes, and sustainable development. Belgium is where I learned about the history of the European Union and their past and present roles in international relations. Sweden and Denmark are where I learned about civil society and local government working together on sustainable development. In Egypt I improved my Arabic skills and observed the (official) end of their Arab Spring first hand. | A university can only become excellent through the dedication, hard work, and integrity of their staff and professors, people who are there first and foremost for the students. Everyone at AUP has had an impact on my life, but these are the people who changed my world. Celeste Schenck, president of AUP, is a woman with a warm heart who specializes in connecting people together. She is a feminist who encourages everyone, regardless of gender, to be their best so that the best, brightest, and most open-minded men and women rise to the top. | Marc Monthéard, Dean of Student Services, is an open and friendly Frenchman who breaks the stereotypes. He keeps himself visible and accessible to students, helps them with surviving in France, and makes sure resources students need are easy to find and use. | Caroline Meyer was my Admissions Counselor to AUP. She helped me navigate the byzantine labyrinth of French bureaucracy to get to France and I have her to thank for telling me about the MGCS program in the first place. | Waddick Doyle is the found and director of the MAGC program at AUP. Students often describe him as a fatherly figure full of excellent insight and advice. He also always strikes me as a bit of an absent minded professor (in a good way); he's often slightly disheveled, appears lost in thought to the point where you don't want to interrupt him lest he loses the chain of thought, and more interested in a person's potential and capability than their appearance. He has frequently given me wonderful advice and helped me see thing in a new light. | Charles Talcott was my advisor during my first year at AUP. He was open and honest, acknowledging when he didn't know something and helping me find experts when I needed them. He used mediation, student learning, and treating graduate level students as rational adults when he led them on the India Practicum in Auroville. Throughout my time at AUP, I used him first as my official, and later my unofficial, advisor for the communications side of my degree. | Susan Perry is the director of the MIN program at AUP. She is very interested in human rights and strives to light a spark in her students to change the world for the better. She bends over backwards to help all students, not just her own. She is one of those rare people whom both her supporters and detractors say the same thing about her: she is highly creative in finding solutions to problems. She thinks outside the box and is honest with students. She has been my unofficial advisor for the international relations and conflict resolution side of my degree. | Kerstin Carlson is a newer professor in the political science department at AUP. While I'm not fond of her exams (they play up to my academic weaknesses), she has a wonderful teaching style that encourages her students to make connections and look at things anew; I have taken what I learned in her class and applied it in almost every class since. She is energetic, friendly, and makes herself available to students more than any professor I have ever met.She is my thesis advisor because her logical and creative thinking are more useful to me than an expert on my topic. | There have been many challenges during my time at AUP, but I am better for my experiences. I survived a hurricane in India. There was the extreme heat and sand of Egypt. I lost count of how many times I almost died because of the French medical system while simultaneously blessing how much of the healthcare costs were absorbed by the insurance. The Egyptian medical system tried to bring a degenerative auto-immune disease out of remission. Being the only one in my program and the homophobia from Americans while in India resulted in both isolation and stronger connections with people. Rebuilding myself physically and mentally after surgery to the point where riggers (the people who set up television sites) began calling me a gorilla.
I dealt with all of this while completing four years of masters studies in two years, studying six languages, and travelling the world as my grandfather wanted.
L'Ours du Marais storefront
There is a store in Paris that is all about Teddy bears. L'Ours du Marais is full of all things teddy. Teddy bears from all over the world, many are unique or hand made. There are plates, figurines, clothes, and more. If you like bears, and especially if you love bears, you have to stop here at least once.
I was shopping at Ikea the other day and I saw the first sign of a hideous invasion. In France, the country world famous for sexy lingerie; in Paris, the city world famous for sex, I saw a tentacle monster! In Public!
All your panties are belong to us!
This has to be the first stage of a covert invasion. I mean, if you've seen or heard about anime you know what anything with tentacles will do to young girls, especially when lingerie is involved. This thing is designed to hold women's lingerie until it can dry, at which point it will probably grab the young women when they go to innocently collect their dry panties.
I've been looking and looking and I finally found a nice little art store here in Paris! The name is Loisirs et Création. The one I found is at Centre Commercial (Mall) Passy Plaza. The nearest metros are Line 6: Passy, Line 9: La Muette, and RER C: Boulainvilliers. They are the first place I've found that has Fimo, that means I can now get back into making prototypes for pewter casting! I don't have the equipment to do the pewter casting itself, but I can at least improve my skills by making prototypes. They also have fabric glue at a good price, which means I can attach the backlog of patches I have to my instrument case. There is also a nice variety of brushes, drawing supplies, painting supplies, beading supplies, fabric paints, etc. Admittedly, they aren't the largest of stores, but they have a fair amount of what most people need, especially me :) It's the closest thing to a Michaels that I've found in Paris. They have some other sites at C.C. (Centre Commercial) Crétail Soleil, C.C. Evry II in Evry, and C.C. Les Passages in Boulogne. Loisirs et CréationsC.C. Passy Plaza Galerie Commerciale Passy Plaza 53 rue de Passy 75016 Paris M 6: Passy M 9: La Muette RER C: Boulainvilliers | |
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