Sorry it took so long…

I posted the photos online, but didn’t put the link up on here.

PHOTOS

bummed out…

so there’s a little bit of a damper on our trip now. according to several blogs, dean lynch has accepted the position at berkeley, so i am sure the park students on this trip will be quite sad. the dean did great things for the school and will be greatly missed. still have to determine how this will affect incubator project, etc.

still cannot get on wifi, will post pictures when I get home I guess. i also will be “stealing” pictures from the other people i went to Paris with yesterday… since I stupidly forgot my camera.

i am here

so i am here in france now. my apologies, as there is no wifi in the hotel and i am on a computer at the burgundy school. the french keyboard is really messing me up, as half of the keyboard is in different places. i think i will try to get on wifi at a cafe, as i hear several near the train station have free wifi. i am thinking of all of you, and will come home with mustard and other goodies for all of you…. have you seen strawberry mustard before?

Almost time…

Sixteen days until we leave for France. We had a trip meeting on Thursday at noon, and everyone received the tickets to get from JFK to Paris. I’ve done a little bit more research, and it looks as if just about every hotel in the Villages Hotels chain has free WiFi except for like three… and ours is one of them. So it may be a little bit more difficult for me to blog the trip, post pictures, and video chat with my parents than I thought it would be, but I will still do my best to get online to keep everyone updated.

I just got an email from AJ, and it looks like the people who are staying in Ithaca are looking into renting out a mini-coach to drive all of the people who are staying at IC until graduation to JFK. That should be a lot of fun for them, and wouldn’t have been too bad of an option for me if I had known in advance, but I bought a plane ticket from Rochester to JFK, and that should be a lot easier.

April mentioned that bringing a laptop may be cumbersome, but I figure that I am not a girl and thus will not be bringing six pairs of shoes or a hairdryer, so I might as well bring something useful, like my good old MacBook Pro.

I should probably get studying for my exams… four exams and two presentations this week!

Another email from April today…

Hi guys,
Attached is the finalized France flight information.. This flight is direct from JFK to Paris (At one point we looked at a flight out of Newark to Paris but have decided to go with Airfrance).

Here’s the itinerary we are holding, payment information along with our travel agents contact information. Please note that you are responsible for making payment DIRECTLY to the agency and not through the college.

AF 7 21MAY JFKCDG 705P 850A, 5/22.

AF 10 5JUN CDGJFK 355P 610P

*$100 deposit per seat is due next Tuesday, March 20.* That cannot be applied to any tickets, the airline will refund it after travel commences. It’s not refunded if the trip is canceled.

Payment in full is due by *April 11*. Please contact the travel agent directly.

$420.00 Fare and agency fee (guaranteed)

$247.81 Taxes, security fees and fuel surcharges (subject to change until ticketed)

*$667.81 Total ticket price per person.*

Travel Agent contact information:
Stephanie Serino
Stone Travel/AAA
1284 Dryden Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850
Phone: 607-330-4428
Fax: 607-257-3641
Email: sserino@nyaaa.com

Because I now have this finalized information, I booked my flights to and from JFK.

May 21 ROC 2:40pm -> JFK 4:15pm Delta Flight # 5518
June 5 JFK 9:05pm -> ROC 10:58pm Delta Flight # 4954

Ahh, 66 days!

Airfare Update

New email from April Korpi, with updates on airfare:

Hi guys,
I am sure that many of you are waiting to hear about the cost of the
airfare for the France trip. I just got word from the travel agent that
she was able to find a group rate for about $600.00. She is waiting to
get the contract in hand before we have the official price.

Please start thinking about payment options with the $600.00 figure in
mind. I am sure that we will have the contract and actual price by time
you get back from break.

By the way. I also wanted to mention that this price is for roundtrip
airfare from Newark, NJ to Paris. We were unable to find a reasonable
price out of New York, NY.

Some options for our free weekend…

So I had a moment of not-so-much-work-to-do, and felt like looking up some possible things we could do on our ‘free weekend’ in France. Maggie suggested a trip to London, which sounds like an awesome idea – maybe seeing a show there, or visiting the royal type things. However, a train ride from Paris to London on the eurostar train through the chunnel is something along the lines of $112 per person round trip – and that isn’t including getting from Dijon to Paris, a hotel for two nights in London, or stuff to do while we are there… and it takes a few hours to get there.

So I, being the typical Disney freak that I am, I decided to look into Disneyland Paris. If we get 4 people to go, it’s a total cost of $1052, which is about $263 for each of the four people. Add another $90 each for the train from Dijon to Disneyland, and it’s $355 or so. Not bad for three days, two nights, transportation, and breakfast each morning. The cheapest hotel nearby which is endorsed by Disney is Hotel l’Elysée Val d’Europe.

I’ll add more options as I find them, but so far this seems the best.

98 days!

First Meeting

Yesterday at 4pm, we had our first meeting about the France trip. Most of the students going were there, along with April Korpi who is organizing stuff for the trip and Prof. Kim Gregson who is going with us on the trip. Within the next two weeks, we have to confirm that we are going – but I already know for sure that I’m going!

At the meeting, they showed us photos and videos from last year’s trip – it looks like everyone had so much fun. April went last year, and gave several bits of advice – pack light (there is a laundromat near where we are staying), don’t count on the food in the cafeteria at the Burgundy School to be very good (because it isn’t), and get a French phrasebook, in order to learn some of the basics.

I think we will be following a schedule pretty similar to last year. After flying into Paris, they immediately took a bus to Dijon, home of the Burgundy School. In Dijon, they stayed at the Villages Hotel. The first weekend (Sat-Mon), they had a free weekend during which the students were able to explore other parts of Europe. I’ve talked to my friend Maggie who is also going on the trip, and she thinks that we should go to London — sounds cool to me! Other things they did (or planned to do) last year included a trip to the UN in Geneva, a cooking class, wine tastings and visits to French media. For the last few days of the trip (Sat-Tues), they traveled to Paris and spent a couple days there. Apparently the hotel they stayed at in Paris was pretty far out of the center of city, so they are trying to find something a little bit more convenient for us. They then flew out of Paris.

It looks as if we will soon be getting more details about booking the flights – we are working with Stone Travel, the AAA-associated travel agency in Ithaca, to book our flights. I think since most people will be flying together from JFK airport in New York City to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I will book a roundtrip jetBlue flight from Rochester to NYC in order to save money.

I’ve done a little bit of sleuthing, and it appears as if the entire Villages Hotel chain has wireless internet access through Orange (France Telecom). A card providing 10 hours of connectivity can be purchased for 15 euros, which is about $20 US. I think I will do that, so that I can update this blog, call/video chat home using Skype, and post pictures online while I am there. Ten hours should be more than enough to last me through 7 days or so (since we will not be at the hotel for our free weekend, or the days in Paris at the end). I’m also sure that the 3 cents a minute is a lot cheaper than an international phone call.

Only 101 days left!

Intro to France

When I was a wee little soon-to-be-freshman, I went to an admissions event for accepted students at Ithaca College. At the event, Dean Dianne Lynch of the Park School of Communications talked about the amazing opportunities which Park students have. I gotta admit, the things she talked about were amazing – internships at the Olympics, a free trip to France, and master classes with directors and producers of big-name stuff (like the Saw movies). I doubted how real these things were; I kinda figured that she was working the typical marketing hype and telling us about the best possible things which only happened to a few students.

Now I know otherwise. I attended a lecture with the producer of the Saw movies, and I have a friend who is going to be taking a master class with him in the next couple months. I have another friend who is taking a class with an expert about how to create a television sitcom. And, most important of all, I found out firsthand that Dean Lynch’s claims were real – I won a trip to France.