Tuesday

Today was Tuesday and I had a bunch of class. But fun things happened too. For example, I took the bus two times and the metro only once! +2 points. At lunch I went to the Franprix (tiny grocery store) across the street from my school to get something to drink with my lunch. Ok, and dessert. And the Franprix is really small and there's always this one woman working the checkout. I know because I go there at least three times a week for my drink and dessert combo. So today I get up to the checkout and the lady sees me and starts laughing! Admittedly I am a bit silz, but no where else can you get a drink and dessert for under 2 euro. So +2 points for making the lady laugh instead of making her cranky and +2 points for getting mini éclair balls dipped covered in chocolate pudding for 1 euro 40 centimes. Then I watched the news to prepare myself for my oral comprehension test next week and was treated to a long section on all the international politicking going on (ie, the G20 summit). +2 points. The French news and the NY Times also told me about French workers detaining their bosses in their offices for like 24 hours to pressure them into keeping workers on through the recession, or at least giving them better severance packages. I have to say that I wouldn't want to be the boss- the news showed like 20 Joes crammed into an office, putting their faces right up by the poor guy's face and not really saying the nicest things. He is not going anywhere- and what happens when lunch rolls around or you need the bathroom? It's happened in three companies so far. I'm not sure which way the points go on this one. However, today was a win.

Walking towards tall things usually produces good results

Today I didn't have any class or any plans (other than picking up the easter package from my mom-thank you!), so I decided to do two things- take the bus and walk towards tall things.

After picking up the package I went to the Viaduc des Arts near my school. This is tall. Its an old viaduc that now has art stores under it and a path with lots of plants and greenery planted above it (like that pretty white fleur). I want to take a longer walk along it someday because I think it goes quite a ways, but I needed lunch.

Then I got on the bus and headed towards Place d'Italie, an area on the left bank that I haven't explored yet. When I get there the tallest thing I see is a mall. For the sake of my bank account and my culture conscience I avoid it and strike off down one of the large avenues leading away from the place until I get to a cute little street called La Butte aux Cailles (a butte, those are tall). And its so cuuute! There were smaller buildings than elsewhere in Paris and it felt like a little town rather than a big city. And then I saw another tall thing and it was a church. So I went there and was the only person in there, which was kind of creepy as emtpy churches tend to be. However, I learned that it served as one of many charitable institutions for the 13th arrondissment during the 19th century, when the neighborhood was one of the poorest in the city. Chouette.

I took the bus half way home, getting off at Sevres-Babylone because I saw a papeterie and I needed to get a card. And I saw a tall thing that turned out to be the Église St-Sulpice! The church was so huge, it felt even bigger than Notre Dame. They're renovating one of the towers so I couldn't quite get the effect of the whole place, but it was great all the same. One of my top five cathedrals fo sho.

After coming home (lamely, on the metro) I read at a café for awhile and gorged on easter candy, then went out to eat more food with my two amigas. We ate grecs, which are basically the French version of gyros. They kind of make my stomach hurt, so I got a vegetarian one, and my stomach still hurts. They're kind of McDonald's quality food, but quite popular.

So that's all I know for now. I'm going to bonbon detox and you keep walking towards tall things.

Sainte-Sulpice and fountain.
Rar! Lion on the foutain.

La Défense

Today, at the request of my host-mom's little nieces, we ate lunch at McDo. Read- Mcdonald's. I've kind of been wanting to eat there because I've heard its different from chez moi. However, Mickey D's was still Mickey D's. The hamburgers tasted the same as the ones I ate when I was five years old (kind of disgustingly delicious). I once read in the Economist that the price of a BigMac was a better indicator of a currency's value than the exchange rate. For example- it would be way more expensive in England than in the US, but somewhere in between these two in the Eurozone. Sadly, I forgot to note the price, so I might have to go back for a McFlurry once it gets a little warmer out.

After lunch we had to drop the girls off at their grandparents house out by La Défense. This area isn't actually in Paris, but it basically still is Paris. There are tons of high rise apartments and even taller office buildings- think downtown Chicago. Even though I wouldn't necessarily want to work or live out there, the sun shining on the reflective sides of all the buildings made the neighborhood look pretty sharp. However, there were no cafes or stores around the huge office buildings, just impenetrable looking towers, which would be pretty depressing on a cloudy day.

Bagels and the Bois de Boulogne

La Sconita ate a lot of food today. And it was all delicious. Really, if I could eat like this every day...well I'd probably weigh a lot more than I do now. But wow, would I be happy.

I started out the morning by going to le marché Edgar Quinet (read farmer's market) and buying some raspberries to munch on as I walked around the Montparnasse cemetery trying to find Baudelaire's grave (I failed, the maps they give you are no good and its creepy walking around a cemetery for too long by yourself).

Next I go to meet a friend by the metro Notre Dame des Champs. We have to go to the Louvre and look at some paintings for our art history papers and decide to eat lunch at some point. This point came sooner than we expected when we walked past a little place selling...brownies and bagels!! Oh gods, they do have bagels in France. I'm never leaving now- the delicious tomato and herb bagel with cream cheese, tomatos and cucumbers has me convinced. Really, really missed the bagel. I ate them what, twice a day, at home? Needless to say, I will be indulging in this delicious lunch option quite often.

So we make it to the Louvre and then back to our respective homes to work on our papers. Thankfully, my host mom provided me a distraction in the form of a journey to the Bois de Boulogne to pick up her two nieces who were there horseback riding. The bois- totally legit. Its a HUGE park/woods on the edge of Paris where one can do pretty much everything you would think of to do in a park- including camping (if only I had my tent). However, she told me not to go there alone and not to go there at night since that is where the prostitutes hang out. Ok, no camping for me in the bois. When we picked up the nieces we had to wait for one to finish her lesson and had some coffee that actually wasn't super, super strong for once. Yay!

And finally, dinner, where we had my newest favorite dessert- raspberries and strawberries. It reminds me of Grandpa sconnie's ice cream smothered with strawberries from his garden :)

Also, a point of pride, I rode the bus for the first time! Buses are somehow much scarier than the metro, but so much more enjoyable to take, and I have vowed to become a busrider by the time I leave this country. Progess reports to follow.

Another thing I love about Paris is that they always put a little explanation on their street signs as to where the name comes from. Personally I think they're really interesting and pretty educational as well. At home once I looked up the history behind all the street names in downtown Madison- equally fascinating (ok or maybe only to me, but still).

Rue Stanislas- first name of Louis 18th given to the neighboring middle school

Rue de l'Armée d'Orient- Street of the Eastern Army- the army in the Balkans during the first World War

Thanks Montmartre.

So the last few days the weather has been crappy and I've kind been of sloth like. Attempting to do something worthwhile every day is tiring. Today, however, it was extremely delicious. A friend and I decided that we hadn't gone out for a really good French meal yet, so we found a restaurant and headed off to the Montmartre neighborhood. Typically, the place was closed, but we found an extremely good alternative called Le Sancerre. I got this dish of shredded duck covered by potatoes and a salad and hot chocolate. YUM.

The Church Saint Jean de Montmartre. Built around 1900, it was scandalous for being built out of reinforced concrete.

Moulin de la Galette

I wander, get tired and recuperate with hot chocolate

After braving the post office (the lines are just as bad as at home) to mail a job application to the States yesterday, I decided I needed an adventure. I started out by going to the Maison de l'Amérique Latine (House of Latin America) where they had an exposition on this writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues who went to Mexico and bummed about with the Mexican literary elite. Then I wandered over to Invalides (see photo), which was built as a hospital for the army and now, among other things, houses Napoleon's tomb. However, since I didn't want to pay 6 dollars and had already seen it in high school, I didn't go in. (All the art history cards I have that let me into museums for free are making me very spoiled- I never want to pay to get into places). However, his tomb is pretty legit. There are like seven layers to it, all made of different materials like wood and stone. Its also below ground level, and when you enter the building theres an opening so that you can see it (while having to bow your head to him, aha). That same neighborhood also houses a bunch of government buildings, like the ministry of defense and the ministry of education and all that fun stuff. Then I saw the Eiffel Tower and knew it wasn't extremely far away, so I walked towards it (tall things, like the tower and church spires, are very useful- you just walk towards them and evertually you get there and get to see something interesting). After about 20 minutes I got there, took some pictures and decided I was tired.

Today after class I was planning on wandering again, this time to a canal that is supposed to be really pretty, but I decided that I was still tired. So me and my Molière biography headed to my favorite cafe by the Place de la Bastille (where the coffee is only 1.20 and a small hot chocolate 2.00- the cheapest by FAR that I have seen in this city) and recuperated with some chocolate. Yum.

Here you go Mom...

Le Weekend

Jack came to visit me in Paris this weekend and it was super super bon. Friday we walked around the area by Montmartre, where he lived for a summer. Later that night I got to meet his friend Mathieu who lives basically across the street from the Georges Pompidou Center(the building in the picture there). Mathieu's gf Jeanne and his coworker Pablo were also there. Pablo was great- he's from Avignon in the south and has an accent that Mathieu mocks endlessly. We also ended up hanging out with this gang on Saturday night, sharing the most terrible music that has come from each of our countries (Americans- the boys bands of the 90's, Frenchies- some catastrophically bad singer named Claude François).

Jack and I also hit up three really good musuems this weekend- much more enjoyable than the tourist death trap known as the Louvre. We went to the Monet musuem by his old house, the Cognacq-Jay Museum (art from the 18th century in France-- my favorite) and the Museum of Jewish Art and History in the Marais neighborhood (where the Jewish community has been established since apparently the 13th century).

However, most importantly, we went to see a MOLIÈRE play!! Yay!! We saw Le Médicin Malgré Lui in a tiny little theatre that was really just a room with a bunch of chairs for the audience and a table and some glasses as props. And it was AWESOME. With Molière (in my humble opinion) its really the words that count. Anyways it was super bootleg and I loved it and I want to go again. The theater is doing like 25 Molière plays right now, about four a day, until the end of March. Also (to my extreme happiness) as me, Jack, Mathieu and Pablo were walking to go get dinner on Saturday night we walked past a huge statue of Molière and the house where he died. Yay Paris!

Me and a statue of Victor Hugo...Jack apparently didn't like Hugo's head so much, but you get the idea.

Molière is the bestest.

BALLET!

Tonight I went to the ballet at the extremely gorgeous Palais Garnier. The ballet was called Le Parc, and it takes place in one day in a French style garden in the 1700's. A man and women meet and fall in love- is basically the theme of the ballet. The choreography was really good with some great funny moments. For example, at one point the women wants the man to back off, but instead of pushing him with her hands, she bops him in the chest with her head! Anyways, pictures are better than words for this one.

Palais Garnier and its ceiling painted by my very favoritest CHAGALL.
A close up of the ceiling-- the eiffel tower!

However, on a very disturbing side note, I saw the most painful tattoo of my life. Some girl had, along the whole upper length of her arm, tattooed Marie-Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake". That is a french major gone bad. (ok and i just hate tattoos).

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Yesterday and today have been relatively quiet days. I went to the Louvre and poked around for awhile, took a nap in the sun and went to some classes. The weather has been absolutely beautiful (but somehow I still manage to be cold!).

Three day forecast-->
Wednesday: the ballet
Thursday: national strike
Friday: Jack comes!

The warm weather makes me miss Madison and evenings like this-->

Senlis/Sunny Sunday

A friend from the program and I went to Senlis, a small medieval town in Picardy, on Saturday. We had to take a train for about 25 minutes and then a bus for 20 to get there. (The bus part made us really confused after we bought our train tickets, got on the train and discovered that the train didn't go to Senlis...scary, until we actually looked at the ticket and figured it out). The population there is about 17,000 people, but the town was completely deserted all day. We visited a couple different things while there- the cathedral, remains of a Roman wall from the third century and two little museums- one on hunting (the kind of hunting one does with hounds) and one on North African soldiers that fought for the French. Senlis is also notable as the place where the first Capetian king, Hugh, was coronnated in 987 and where Joan of Arc beat down the Brits during one battle. I have to say that I've acquired this fear of being pooed on by the omnipresent pigeons, and there were about ten million chilling by the cathedral. There's me in front of the wall -->
And the hunting museum with its million pairs of antlers, which kind of creeped me out-->


So we bumbled around there for a few hours and then went back to Paris. We eventually met up with my favorite Whit and Beags (the soon to be First Couple of District 8) and went out for a few hours.

This morning I started with a plan, but only followed it until about the time when I got to the metro (so more or less five minutes) because it was such a beautiful day outside. I ended up walking through the Tuileries until I got to the Petit Palais (art museum). This is one of the museums run by the city of Paris and is free (except for exhibitions). I found the painting that I want to write my paper on for art history- a portait of Sarah Bernhardt by Clairin. The Petit Palais was also perfect to walk through on a sunny day because its very open and full of windows. After walking and getting lunch in the Marais area I got a drink by Bastille and read for a few hours, returning home to take a nap with the cat. Yum :)
Here is the very pretty Petit Palais-

Fondue/Salon du Livre/Banlieues

Last night I went with a group of students to eat fondue next to the Centre Pompidou. I was fully expecting it to be amazing, but was actually kind of disappointed. I think the reason was the lack of diversity- it was either cheese with potatoes and bread, or oil and meat. Too much cheese= stomachache. Too much meat= not that tasty (and sorry Dad, I'm starting to like my meat really red). ALSO, we did not get dessert like we had been promised. Not an altogether insprining dinner. HOWEVER, later that night the bf and I bought plane tickets for spring break! We're going to the Italian town of Trieste, which is on the Adriatic and conveniently placed for excursions in Slovenia and Croatia. SCORE.

Today I went to the Salon du Livre, which made me absolutely certain that Paris was the right place for me to come. The Salon du Livre is basically the biggest book fair ever, with publishing companies from all around France and Europe represented. They have tons of speakers and different things going on. I spent two and a half hours just wandering around the convention center looking at books. I came out with four books- but I only bought two. I got one for free for being one of the first 1000 people there (although its kind of a strange and random book so I doubt I'll read it). Then when I was talking to one of the sellers he gave me an extra promotional bookie for frizzle. Also when I was talking to the guy he asked me what I normally read and I mentioned some American writers and once he had confirmed that I was American he brought up McDonalds. EW. It turned into a bittersweet compliment when he said something about Americans being fat, but that I was quite thin. OK. But he conceded that he likes their fries. I don't really know what to make of that encounter in the larger cultural sense.

This afternoon I rescued my dear friend Whit from the train station and went out to the airport with her to rescue her boyfriend Bryon from languishing there with no knowledge of French. The airport is like a 30 minute ride outside of Paris, and the landscape is quite different from the areas of Paris I've been running around in. The neighborhoods you go through to get there are not exactly nice. Good opportunity for some reflection on how lucky La Sconita is.

Bonne nuit tout le monde.

Comme d'hab

Today mostly consisted of me shopping (for food and at my favorite store ever- Zara), marching around the Louvre for my art history class (I'll be so happy when we move to a smaller museum), and then recuperating with coffee.

On my way home I went past the Comedie-Francaise and finally found a book that I had been looking for back in Madison- this biography of Moliere by this Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov (who wrote The Master and Margarita, which you should all read). In case you don't know, I have a bit of a crush on Moliere (and I'll be bestowing his name on my future feline).

Anyhoos, I'm feeling a bit under the weather, so ciao for now.

Rennes

This weekend I went to Rennes on my longest voyage outside of Paris thus far. It's the capital of Brittany, the most mocked of all French regions I believe (although in close competition with the south). Besides seeing Jack, highlights include the Thabor Park and the Musée des Beaux-Arts. Brittany is also the crepes and cider headquarters of France, which are probably two of my most favorite foods in the world.

It was really nice to be in a city that is about the size I'm used to (Madison-sized). They have one tiny little metro line, compared to more than a dozen in Paris. Also, one could actually eat out without going bankrupt. Quelle surprise.

Anyways, it was a really nice and relaxing weekend. After a two hour train ride back to Paris (SO much easier than flying) I discovered that my converter (necessary for charging my computer, which was dead) had completely stopped working. Level three trauma which resulted in me dropping another 40 dollars today to buy another because I couldn't exchange it (having had the previous one for more than 15 days) and in me whining all day about technology.

Happy ending- after two pain au chocolats (croissants with chocolate in them) and some candy I have revived myself.

I become tired

The last two days have been extremely long, but not without their good points. Wednesday found me going to two museums- the Cluny Museum and the Louvre- both for classes. The Cluny was for my lit class and was all about the middle ages. I have to say that I was not too inspired, but I think that has to do with the fact that I've about reached my limit on museums for a week or so. The Louvre, for art history class, was an hour and a half jog around the huge building, while scribbling notes and feeling like my arms where going to fall off. At that point, Wednesday was not going down as a win for me. BUT then I went to an amazing bookstore (where I got an awesome book) and a fairly decent cafe where I had some legit conversation with a new amiga and all was right with the world again.

Thursday. Again, not the most promising beginning. For reasons unknown, my university decided to switch our classroom. Ok. Me and two other girls go to find the new classroom and run into about three more girls along the way (half of our class). We find the classroom. It's locked. We wait. For 30 minutes. Something is now obviously wrong and we go to the administration people and ask whats wrong. They insist that we had the room right and that there was in fact a teacher in there. ??? We go back to the classroom, no one there. We look at a map. It appears we are in the correct location. We go back to the administration people, they get crabby. This is when I got crabby. The six of us had been following the clearly marked signs for room C24. Ok. The administration lady takes us to a different set of stairs, where the sign is marked for rooms C12-23. And there is the classroom, with the teacher and the other half of the class. WHAT was going on, I have no idea. In any case, a late afternoon trip to the Musée D'Orsay cheered me up.

I'll be in Rennes this weekend, from Friday to Monday, visiting the dear bf, so I will talk to you all again next week!

Food

I think describing the food I've eaten in the last 24 hours might be a good way to describe what I did during that time as well.

Last night there was a family birthday party for my host sister's 18th birthday and there was an amazing buffet- salmon fresh from Helsinki (thanks to the mom's Finnish bff), lots of dishes of Eastern European descent (due to the mom's parents being from Eastern Europe) and CHEESECAKE. That's right, my mom's very own cheesecake recipe transmitted to the other side of the world. My host mom got really excited a few days ago when she found out that my mom makes cheesecake. So I got the recipe, translated it for her and hoped that everything would turn out ok. And it was a huge success! Everyone loved it and several people asked for the recipe. As always, MamanWinter's cooking makes lots of friends.

Breakfast this morning was the same thing I've been eating for breakfast for a week- bread with nutella and muesli cereal and some coffee. Lots of carbs to load me up with energy for all the walking I was going to do. I wandered around the two islands in the middle of the Seine today, the oldest parts of Paris.

For lunch I met up with some friends and had a very delicious meal at a restaurant by our school. The "formule" (fixed menu type deal) was 13 euro and included a hunk of beef with potatoes, fromage blanc (which is basically yogurt) with fruit puree and coffee. YUM. I was a little nervous while we were waiting for our food- the waiter had asked me how done I wanted my meat...and I didn't have the vocab for it. I really had no idea what to say. So I just said it didn't matter. And it was DELICIOUS. So thank you, lack of vocab (in this case anyways!).

That meal lasted me through a trip to Pere Lachaise cemetry- lots of famous dead people, including my favorite Moliere (and we saw a cat!--see above). On the way home I hit up Monoprix (kind of like a super Target) and got some groceries to make dinner. I found some of my most favorite candy- Kinder Bueno, which is impossible to find at home. YUM.

Chartres

Saturday we had a group visit to Chartres, this town about an hour train ride away from Paris. The cathedral there is famous for its stained glass windows and having the veil of Mary (which probs isn't real, but actually does date from about 2000 years ago so its still legit [how can a piece of fabric last that long?]). We had a tour of the cathedral given by this English guy who has been giving tours there for 51 YEARS. Geez. However, he was really great, which makes sense since he has dedicated his life to studying this cathedral. He explained to us some of the sequences in the windows and told us that you could tell who had purchased the window for the church by the little pictures on the bottom (like little guys making bread meant that the breadsmiths guild had paid for the window). It was also nice to walk around a smaller town, rather than be in the city like we have been. I finally got a pastry- a maple eclair :) Its hard to walk past patisseries and not want to eat everything in the window.

Alas, I do also go to classes (although only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays), so it is time to do some art history reading. Ciao.

Cathderal

Meeee