Ryan Goes Places

About Me


Ryan Brown is a recent graduate of Duke University. Between May and December 2009, she kept this blog to record her travels across Europe and Africa. These days, you can find her here.




Where I've been
(since May '09)

Durham, North Carolina
Denver, Colorado
Durban, South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa
Victoria Falls, Zambia
New Orleans, Louisiana
Washington D.C.
Bucharest, Romania
Budapest, Hungary
Prague, Czech Republic
Paris, France



Contact
ryan.brown at duke.edu

Other Writing

To Be Certain
Short Story (Stony Brook Short Fiction Prize),
Dec. 2008

Learning How to Elect a President
Denver Post column, Sept. 2008

From War to Duke
Towerview (News Magazine), Oct. 2008




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So there I was in Paris, standing in the middle of a gigantic and amazing bookstore near Notre Dame, when I thought what if I never see cheap books in French again and spend the rest of my short and tortured life regretting not buying them here?
Perhaps this was a bit apocalyptic of me, but it is true books in French are aggravatingly expensive and annoying to find aux Etats-Unis. I can get them in Senegal of course, but the selection is a bit hit or miss. 
Anyway, this is my roundabout way of backing into the confession that I bought 10 books in Paris. Yes, 10. In my defense, nearly all of them were used and somewhere in the range of 2 euros or less, but even still, I’m probably kind of crazy. 
But the happy part of the story is that now I have enough Camus, Sartre, and translated Harry Potter to last me the rest of my French-speaking days, at least at the speed I currently read en francais. If you need to find me in the next two months, I’m probably sitting under my bedroom fan, gobbling peanut butter straight from the jar, and slowly inching my way through a Balzac novella I barely understand. Cheers to that. 

So there I was in Paris, standing in the middle of a gigantic and amazing bookstore near Notre Dame, when I thought what if I never see cheap books in French again and spend the rest of my short and tortured life regretting not buying them here?

Perhaps this was a bit apocalyptic of me, but it is true books in French are aggravatingly expensive and annoying to find aux Etats-Unis. I can get them in Senegal of course, but the selection is a bit hit or miss. 

Anyway, this is my roundabout way of backing into the confession that I bought 10 books in Paris. Yes, 10. In my defense, nearly all of them were used and somewhere in the range of 2 euros or less, but even still, I’m probably kind of crazy. 

But the happy part of the story is that now I have enough Camus, Sartre, and translated Harry Potter to last me the rest of my French-speaking days, at least at the speed I currently read en francais. If you need to find me in the next two months, I’m probably sitting under my bedroom fan, gobbling peanut butter straight from the jar, and slowly inching my way through a Balzac novella I barely understand. Cheers to that. 

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