Paris Meets the U.S...

Faithful readers,
This is my last boring post before a series of colorful {and hopefully interesting} updates on my various adventures throughout Europe begins to appear. I apologize for my blog being so de rigeur, but I happen to like chronological order. Hold your horses; the fun stuff's coming.


{Tuesday, October 28}
Sunday through Tuesday were homeworkful for preparation for {trumpet fanfare} Miles' visit! For those of you who don't know, Miles is the brother of my former {last year} and future roommate, Melanie, and he and I had met maybe once or twice before, and not for extended periods of time, but he's wandering around Europe and I thought I'd give him a decent introduction to the City of Light. So, Wednesday night he, Monica, Melissa, Cody and I {I can almost hear your gasps of surprise} went to St Michel {again, shocker} for dinner before strolling up to the Louvre for a visit that turned out to be relatively unproductive due to our propensity for joking and lengthy discussion, but was fun nonetheless.


Miles making the patented Caroline Awkward Face at the Louvre.


So, we may or may not have had a stereotypical night in Paris.

Thursday after class, I ate lunch with Miles, then we encountered a crazy woman from St. Paul, MN who told me not to live in France because she did, and it ruined her life. A very awkward conversation overall, considering it's a very real possibility for me. Bemused, we then walked to the Cimitière Montparnasse, one of the largest cemeteries in Paris, and wandered around it for an hour and a half. The only 'famous' grave we were both excited to see was that of Jean-Paul Sartre, which was pretty cool.



Afterward, I ran home for family dinner, hoping to leave the house early enough to meet Miles and go to Melissa's to watch the French version of "The Office" {I know; we're so cool}. Unfortunately, I left a bit later than I wanted to and presumed, due to his proximity, that Miles would be at Châtelet by the time I got there. This was not the case, because he broke one of the golden rules of Paris: if you can take the metro and you don't have spare time and you're unfamiliar with the area, do not try to walk somewhere. He was one stop away on Line 4, but instead got lost and wandered until I'd called him so many times that my phone ran out of credit because he has a US cellphone. I paced around a corridor at Châtelet and got accosted by a rapper with a stutter who was clearly more concerned with spraying it than saying it and who asked me to bring him to the US with me. I politely declined. As soon as he asked if I was waiting for my boyfriend, as if by magic, Miles called with his current location {glory hallelujah and hooray for free incoming calls}, and I told him to go across the street to the metro station and take the train to Châtelet, where I would wait for him on the platform.

As if it weren't already 10:30, the RER decided to take its sweet time such that the platform was more crowded than I've ever seen it, and hilarity ensued. The train was so full that I easily could have spent the entire ride with my feet off the floor and still have been in the same position. Apparently, it's not as difficult to get close to Parisians as we thought.

We paid half-attention to "Le Bureau" at Melissa's before having to head back shortly after our arrival...but not shortly enough, evidently, because my new 'shortcut' got us to Opéra at 1 AM...about 5 minutes after the last train. Try as we might to interrogate the high school-age boy about the Noctilien {night bus}, he had never taken it before {imagine that}. So we laughed {probably shouldn't have had that much Coke at Melissa's} and took a taxi back - it ended up being less than 5 € for each of us, which isn't too bad.

On Friday morning, Miles and I went to the Musée d'Orsay, where we saw a wicked trippy exhibit of Picasso's adaptations of Monet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" - a Cubist interpreting an Impressionist, so you can imagine how intense it was. We actually sat down for a while afterward to clear our heads. Then we met up with Monica & Melissa for lunch at a pizza place in the Latin Quarter, and the four of us journeyed to the Cluny Musée du Moyen Âge {Middle Ages}.


Miles: Do you want to know why Roman statues often have no noses? Because when they were conquered, the soldiers would run through the streets, defacing the statues by cutting off their noses.
Caroline: ...DEFACING them, huh?


Diabolique.




We all played our respective geek roles {history - Monica, art history - Melissa, language - Miles & I}, then went to a nearby BD store, where I got to geek out even more, and to buy one of the most recent work that I'd read for class. Monica's friend Julia had invited us over for dinner, so we all made pasta and chicken up at her host's apartment in Montmartre after grabbing a much-needed coffee.

Next, the five of us took the metro to Julia's friend Vanessa's apartment for her birthday party; at this point, it was a sort of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend situation, and Vanessa and her group were clearly not thrilled to have us there, so when everyone left to go to a houka bar, we shuffled off in the other direction and went home.

Saturday morning, Miles called to inform me that he was having a problem...namely, he couldn't get a train to Lyon, where he'd booked a hostel for that night, because it was almost Toussaint and apparently all of the Parisians were going there on vacation - 25 trains and not one seat. Surprised but determined, I invited him over to search for another escape route. We found no buses, ride shares, or planes, and the one available train ticket was incredibly expensive, which left us essentially without options. For some reason, this despair brought on the idea of hopping a train and hoping for the best. The TGV doesn't require a reservation slip, and his Eurail pass should count as a ticket. I forced him to eat some döner kebab before accompanying him to the Gare de Lyon - to which I hadn't been since my first day in Paris, which was a bizarre blast from the past. He nervously marched to platform 11, and apparently this radical plan worked out, because he didn't call me to say that he'd gotten dropped off in the middle of the countryside.

That night, Cody invited me to his family's apartment for their "chapeauter" party {a word, as it turns out, that the family invented and means 'to wear a hat'}, so I donned my beret {yes, I have one and I brought it} and headed across town. His family was really welcoming and kind and complimented both Cody and I on our French-speaking abilities. There was lots of good food, red wine in plastic cups, and French people wearing hats who were more than willing to chat with us. Not to mention the chocolate cake and the rhubarb pie, yum! We felt like we were at one of those big, joyful Christmas parties that you always see in movies but have never actually attended; people were constantly at the piano, singing arias and tunes from operettas, and to top it all off there was a lovely cello-piano duet, some of which I caught on camera {due to crappy video quality, this is available upon request}. Cody and I also laughed at the fact that us Americans think ourselves fancy when we drink wine, so we caress the curves of our crystal wine glasses, whereas in France they see it so much more casually than that. Anyway, it was really fun, and we finally got to hang out with 'real' French people. If Cody ever gets off his ass and puts them online, there will even be pictures someday.

--------

On another note, for those of you who are wondering, and even for those who aren't: last Tuesday night, Paris was overtaken by Obamania {oh-bah-mah-nya, as they pronounce it}. I had already slept very little in the preceding days, so I didn't go out to the crammed bars and stay out till 5 AM like a good American, but I stayed up until the TV froze at 3:30 AM, crawled into bed for a bit of shuteye, then dragged myself back out again to check CNN.com:


In case you can't tell, the clock in the bottom corner says 5:26 AM

The IES students who rejoiced the next morning {i.e. most of us} aren't the only ones. America is officially respectable in Europe, once again {for now, at least}. Some of my friends who were out the night before received hugs and congratulations and even thanks from random French people. I saw a thoroughly intoxicated man chanting, "Obama!" in the subway and, for once, none of the Parisians looked annoyed, but rather amused and even sympathetic. One of the men standing next to me during the commute home wore an Obama shirt, and one of the advertisements at Saint-Lazare bore a graffitied query: "À quand un Obama ici?" - "When will we have an Obama here?" And as Monica and I passed a store on a late-night stroll through Levallois on Wednesday night, we saw this in a store display window:





The effect of it all is surreal; I've been in Europe since before the candidates chose their running mates, so it's strange to see my country's history change from another continent. I won't subject you all to further schmaltz or a political rant; I just thought I'd share my piece of the action. If you want to see a published writer's perspective on it, check this out. French correspondent over and out.

Dinner and a Show

Hey all, this might be my last post for a while, as I have a month of adventure ahead of me. Every weekend for the next month, I'll be in some city in Europe, having fabulous times which I will hopefully write about regularly, but you know me...at any rate, it doesn't seem like anyone is anxious to hear about how I spend my time, as yours is pretty well occupied, too. So sit back, relax, check my page every once in a while to see if there's a post from Prague or a report from Rome, and maybe let me know what you think about it. For now, here's a new post {lucky you!} and a couple of tidbits to keep you interested in the upcoming weeks: I will be visiting a sinking city, retracing the bloody footsteps of Jack the Ripper, and getting beer for less than a dollar. Yeah, now you're hooked. Stay tuned, folks.

{Monday, October 20}

What a lovely weekend. I watched "La Bête Humaine" {a Jean Renoir film from the 30s} at IES, then ran some errands {the post office, cashing travelers' checks, etc.} before returning to L-P and waiting a little while for Monica to get back from Versailles. Her host was out of town and had invited her to bring guests over, so we had planned a lovely little repas for the two of us and Cody {Melissa was in Nîmes for the weekend}. We bought pasta, sauce, beef, zucchini, quail eggs, wine, brie, and ice cream at Franprix {or "The 'Prix", as we like to call it}, and a baguette at the local boulanger before heading to Monica's apartment to prepare. Cody arrived shortly thereafter, and the three of us munched on the baguette while boiling farfalle and sauteeing zucchini {my job, since I'm apparently the only one bold enough to sautee zucchini...Francophobic friends, aren't you impressed with how I butchered the French language right there?}. Why the quail eggs, you ask? Because I saw them at the store and got really excited and decided to make the other two try them...they weren't disgusted, but they were certainly not blown away either {I could make a horrible pun here, but I'll spare you}.

As I pulled the beef out of its package, we realized that it was not, in fact, ground beef, as the shelf had said, but rather a large hunk of meat. It looked really disgusting at first, but ended up working out fine. Due to a minor salt spill and our failure to realize that the stove was no longer on when we tried to heat the sauce, our assortment of dishes was of varying temperatures, but it was all delicious and even more satisfying because we made it. The wine {Saint Amour} was also pretty good for having cost 7 €, and the mint chocolate chip ice cream was, although perhaps not so French, a well-chosen dessert. We then left for a housewarming party at the apartment of one of Cody's host brothers, but there seemed to be no one there when we arrived, so we gave up on that adventure and headed home {edit: the doorbell was apparently broken. Dommage.}

Monica and I both vowed to get some work done on Saturday...which sort of happened, despite the usual procrastination.



Then it was time for the big event of the weekend, provided that we could get in. Since our arrival in Paris, the three of us have seen posters everywhere for a ballet version of "Edward aux Mains d'argent" {direct translation: Edward with the hands of silver}, i.e. Edward Scissorhands, and insisted that one day we'd go see it. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we figured it would never actually happen, but on Friday night I decided to be proactive. We planned to try for rush tickets 15 minutes before the show, but it was a Saturday night, so we didn't expect much.

The three of us met up outside the theatre, Monica and I all gussied up for an evening out because the ballet merits it and, in the likely event that we would not get in, we figured we'd go out for a nice dinner. Not really knowing where to go, we wandered around for a moment before walking up to one of the counters and inquiring about the "tarif spécial" {special price}. The woman behind the window, by way of reply, turned on a small screen on the countertop and told us to pick a place.

Minutes later, we were on our way to some pretty awesome seats {for which we'd paid 15 € in a section that would've cost 50 € ahead of time}, congratulating ourselves on following through.







The show was gorgeous - it was really interesting to see what they did to tell the story and characterize words; in Suburbia, there was a dance of the 'morning routine' which captured the monotony of their lifestyle extremely well. Movements were exaggerated, but it added to the aesthetic of the show and made it feel like one big dance, even though there were several scenes in which they were simply walking or running {with style, of course}. Edward absolutely nailed it; his gait and posture and gestures captured the character really well. And, of course, the live orchestra and choir brought it all together.

We grabbed some "Greek" kebab sandwiches down by St Michel for dinner and wandered around for a bit, taking random photos before heading back to our respective homes.


We also found a large congregation of Jews on the sidewalk across the street, playing some kick-ass music.


Us showing off our fancy clothes outside the Hôtel de Ville


Cody thought this was funny enough to take a picture - us "stripping" in front of the Hôtel de Ville


Um...putting the 'hô' in 'hôtel'?

Oh, and for your entertainment, a random picture of some chimney sweeps. We were thrilled to know that they actually exist.

La...er, Culture Française

{Thursday, October 16}

The rest of last week was obviously pretty busy; dinner with MMC {a more fun and concise way of saying the twins and Cody} on Wednesday, seeing Faubourg 36 {by the same director/screenwriter as "Les Choristes" and with a few of its cast members} on Thursday night, and homework and classes and all that good stuff. On a sidenote related to our cinematic experience, French previews are fabulous. Among ads for various interesting movies, there was a commercial for Le Parisien, one of the newspapers here, wherein an American couple was looking at Paris on Google Earth {and speaking English with really schmaltzy voices and French subtitles}. As the wife zoomed in on the Eiffel Tower, she noticed a man holding a sign.

Woman {enthusiastically}: Look! I think they're trying to say hi to us!
Husband: Uh...are you sure?
Sign: Merde à celui qui le regarde {If you're reading this, eat shit}.
Voiceover: Il vaut mieux les écouter ici {Try getting in touch with the Parisians this way instead}, picture of Le Parisien is shown.

Quite amusing.

On Friday, I went back to my speed-speaking friend at Aladin; he was quite nice and clearly glad to see me, which was almost like making a friend - the relationship between the people who work at a store and its "regulars" is sacred here. Afterward, I met my friend Lexi from French class at IES to watch some old Georges Méliès films, after which we attempted to find a photo exhibition somewhere in the area {unfortunately, my cinema prof was none too specific about the location}. We ended up finding, instead, a library off of the main road near our old school and, geeks that we are, decided to sit down and read for a while. Around 7, we went to her host mom's apartment for dinner - the place is really nice, and she has an adorable Jack Russell Terrier named Voyou {urchin}. The 'mom' herself {who is not a mom at all, but a single, retired, chic Frenchwoman} was sweet and welcoming, told me that I sound like a native speaker, and is utterly cool {she even listens to Eminem. Whoa}. She left to go to a friend's house, saying that I could sleep there, since we were planning to be out late and I live all the way on the other side of the city, and Lexi and I had a drink and waited for her friend Livia to arrive...which didn't happen until 11. That didn't matter much, though, because the place we were going to had a cheaper cover charge starting at midnight. Off we went to la Java, a dance club in Belleville to which none of us had actually been before.

We made our journey without incident {save having to hop back and forth between two metro trains going in the same direction from the end of Line 2}, and arrived at la Java, ready to dance. After checking the place out, the ladies decided to have a cigarette, and I didn't want to stand inside alone, so I followed them out to the smoking area, where we met Fodhel {pronounced 'fuh-deel'} and François, two regulars who pointed out the club 'celebrities' and invited us to join their table inside. So, rather than awkwardly hanging around an unfamiliar club, we made friends and got to have cool cultural discussions about school and the French language and America with Fodhel, François, and their friends Nicolas and Walid {'wally'}. Lexi and I got to dancing {the music was mostly reggae, but not bad}, then Fodhel joined us for a bit while Livia and Nicolas got to know each other.

After quite a bit of dancing, Lexi and I took a break at the table, where Walid told me I reminded him of Charlotte from "Sex & the City" and that he wanted to spend some time with me because he loved me. We decided it was time to leave. The taxi ride back wasn't too long, and we arrived around 4:15 and collapsed.

Since Cody and Monica were in Normandy for a couple of days, I spent most of Saturday doing homework, then grabbed dinner with Cody once they were back, after which he, Nick, Lexi, and I had a beer before calling it a night. Sunday was also uneventful.

On the class front, my BD professor seems to think I'm awesome, because he keeps leaving positive comments on my blog; the other day, he said that the workd I do is so "excellent" and so much better than that of my classmates that he can only invite me to pursue a "mémoire de master" on the subject {sadly, I have no idea what this is, and am so far too intimidated by him to ask in person}. Bénédicte suggests that he means a masters thesis. Whoa.

I also had my first lab session for Phonetics yesterday, where she asked me some preliminary questions {how long have you been studying French, were any of your teachers native speakers, do you play an instrument [yes, this one is actually connected to language because it trains the ear for rhythm and tone], etc.}, then made me talk for a couple of minutes into a microphone, after which we analyzed my faults {yikes}. It was cool, though, because she knows I understand the material from the class, so this is the place where I'll really get to work on my accent {thsi was apparently a relief to her, as was the fact that I've never learned the difference between the French 'o's, because she said, "At least I can teach you something"}.

Today, we bought tickets for our trip to London {the twins & I}, then went to Notre-Dame with Cody and two of Melissa's friends. It's amazing to see a real mass taking place there, but all of the tourists walking around is somewhat distracting {yes, I know; I'm a hypocrite}. Anyway, you get the picture. My favorite part is the smell.

Even MORE Artsy French Things {I bet you're excited...}

{Tuesday, October 7}

Nuit Blanche {White Night} is the night when Paris doesn't go to sleep; museums, churches, train stations, monuments, and various other buildings remain open late into the night {officially, the entire event ends at 7 AM the next day}, housing artwork, showing videos, playing music, and holding concerts and performances {traditional or otherwise}. Since the metro closes at 2, most people simply stay out and wait until it re-opens at 5:30 to go home, hence the lack of sleep. I, myself, did not stay out all night, as Monica and Melissa stayed in the dorm {accessible only by RER, which closes at 1}, and Cody, the only other person whom I knew for sure was going, was also planning to leave before the metro closed.

Despite my limited experience, I really enjoyed Nuit Blanche. I met Cody at the Centre Pompidou {a big modern art museum - yes, you're allowed to interpret that as "weird", but I didn't say it}, where he had just watched a bizarre performance art piece involving a cross-sectionally sliced trailer/hotel room and strings and harnesses. He said he thought it was about prostitution. Oh, performance art. We got in line to enter the museum itself, but since it was almost 1 and we were pretty far back in line, the guard turned us away, because they were apparently about to close the doors. We shrugged and headed over to the cathedral St. Merry, where there were various art exhibitions, a video of what appeared to be the subject of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" preparing to pose for the painting {and no, it was not Scarlett Johansson}. As we were wandering around admiring the various displays, I heard something unbelievable; the juxtaposition of this beautiful old cathedral with such a sound was just too much for my brain to handle.

They were playing hip-hop.





Now, this is Paris, so you know they had to get some interpretive dance in there for good measure, but it was really cool to see something that contrasted so forcefully with the setting. By the time we'd finished enjoying what the cathedral had to offer, such as...

An appropriate quote from the Bible, designating the snack table

This is art.

Zoom out: Swiss chair mountain?

And finally, for those of you who have read The Mysteries of Harris Burdick...

The Seven Chairs: The fifth one ended up in France.

For those of you who haven't: read it.

...it was pretty much time to head home. Cody satisfied a candy craving at the Haribo stand {think of those "get your own candy" areas at the movie theatres, but worse - this was 2,90€ per 100g}, then we boarded the metro and I crawled into bed around 3.

Sunday brought homework in great heaps, then Cody and I ate dinner at some café near his metro stop whose only dish without cheese was a large plate of meat...so that's what I ate. Prosciutto, some sausage that is sort of the French version of salami, and two kinds of pâté. Yes, I felt quite carnivorous.

Yesterday and today - more classes, etc. We worked on perspective in drawing, which made me happy because we got to use straightedges but, never again, alas. Tonight, though, was magnificent.

I arrived home, worked for a while, then Bénédicte arrived and we ate a quick dinner, which is basically unheard of for the French, but in this case it was important because then we set off for the wondrous Comédie Française. Since Bénédicte is a French teacher {not as in French and a teacher, but as in a teacher of French} at a high school, she likes to take her students out to performances, and she invited me along, this time to see Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro" {in French, "Le Mariage de Figaro", not to be confused with the Mozart opera "Les Noces de Figaro", based on this play and translated into the same title in English}. As enthusiastic as I am about French culture, I had actually never read or seen anything by Beaumarchais {one of the 'big three' French dramatists of the 18th century, the other two being Voltaire and Marivaux}. Bénédicte explained to me the plot of "The Barber of Seville" {to which "The Marriage of Figaro" is the sequel}, and a bit of the plot of this one, because you know those eighteenth-century French plays - plot twists, mistaken identities, and generally the nobles and their lesser counterparts messing with each others' heads.

So we took the metro into the city and met her students at the theatre, climbing up, and up, and up...into the nosebleed section. I couldn't even tell you how high up we were, but the chairs were straight-backed, velvet, and about a foot and a half from the little wall standing between us and a very painful descent. So, besides the fact that it was hard to see the actors' full physicality from so far away and the slight discomfort, the show was excellent. It was incredibly well-done, energetic, and accessible to a modern audience through their emphasis on the comedy without ignoring the human aspects of the characters, their relatively modern {but still believable} costumes, and a set that was comedic in and of itself {a door consisting of fabric stretched over a frame that "opened" by disappearing through a trapdoor, but couldn't actually be opened - though a few tried; merry-go-round horses; a trapdoor beneath which less-than-kosher activities took place}. I'll spare you the rest of what I fear would be a rather long theatre rant; suffice to say it was awesome.

Arty Farty...Party

{Monday, October 6}

So Tuesday was a day of more classes, then lots of homework, because I had to prepare my Tintin exposé. As I was slaving away in my room, reading about everything from Hergé's political views to the famous blond cowlick, Bénédicte came in and told me that Cyprien had passed his law exams {think the French and German equivalents of the LSAT}, so they had decided to have an apéritif. Ooh, my first one.

Given the choice among the table wine, whiskey, and Port, I chose the last one, which was incredibly sweet {I know, I know; what did I expect?}, and went...interestingly with the slices of sausage and peanuts, not to mention straight to my head {that's what I get for having an early lunch}. Still, it was nice to feel included, and to chat about differences in our educational systems. Afterward, it was time for dinner - roast duck, freshly caught by a friend of Romain, the eldest son. Absolutely delicious, except for every once in a while, when I found something small and too difficult to chew, and tried to discreetly remove it from my mouth, even though I figured it might be better to just try and swallow it, so as not to appear rude. After dinner, Benoît looked over at my plate and said with surprise, "Ah, Caroline! Tu as trouvé trois plombs!" {"Ah, Caroline! You found three pellets!"} This was quite a relief, as it was then clear that no one expected me to digest the ammunition.

Wednesday morning, I presented my exposé, which went brilliantly: the semi-strict, intimidating professor announced to the class afterward, "Voici notre premier exposé, qui a été parfait" {"That was our first exposé, which was perfect"}. Needless to say, that made my day. More classes, then Cody and I took advantage of a free theatre ticket from Bertrand in the IES office, heading up to the Manufacture des Abbesses in Montmartre. It was a one-woman show called "La Folle Allure" {basically, "The Crazy Speed"; not a great translation, but a rather difficult one, as well}; the character recounted various tales from her life, with occasional interludes of interpretive dance. Overall, I liked it {could've done without the dancing, but some of it was to Bach, the character's favorite composer}, and the actress was absolutely jacked. You couldn't tell at first, but as her costume evolved with her character {becoming much more simple as she became comfortable with herself}, you could see more of her arms {which reminded me, Jessica, of our buff waitressing arms}, which she also used to suspend herself from a makeshift swingset on the stage. Very impressive. We found some other IES students at the show {Amy, Andy, and Hayley}, and together we found a nice Italian restaurant down the street and had both a delicious dinner and a decadent dessert {dark chocolate and coffee ice cream with Chantilly - mmm}.

Nothing to shout about for Thursday. Friday, however...I mostly read and hung around in the morning, but around 4:30 Monica and I headed out to get dinner with Cody before the wicked exciting, ever-so-geeky main event of the evening - going to the Louvre! Melissa hadn't been yet, we have cards that get us in for free, it doesn't open till 6 PM on Fridays, and you cannot say you've seen the Louvre unless you've been at least 5 times. Bare minimum.

So, nerds that we are, we spent our Friday night at the Louvre...which was incredible. Beyond the obvious appeal, we also had Melissa, who happens to be an art history/anthropology major, adding her two cents to our knowledge of the artwork and, as we walked into one of the galleries on the top floor, we discovered a very talented pianist accompanying the sunset in creating an entirely new tone in the room.

After a few minutes, he began to play an avant-garde piece, wherein he muted some of the strings with clothespins - a similar effect to palm muting a guitar. Fortunately, the piece was also melodic, so none of us felt an overwhelming need to rip our ears off; I quite enjoyed it, actually.

In the next room, we noticed one of the well-dressed-in-basic-black group that we'd seen entering at the same time as us. She was studying a Fragonard painting from one of the benches, then walked toward it and began to read the caption, turning back as if she were shouting to someone at the back of the room. Suddenly, a rather attractive young gentleman began to correct her interpretation of the painting, emphasizing the, ahem, romantic aspects of the relationship between the subjects and addressing the young woman in a slightly sketchy but charismatic and seductive sort of way, like the scene on the ghost train in "Amélie". At the end of their entrancing dialogue, they simply ran away. Their chemistry was also ridiculous; we saw four or five more actors explicating paintings in the form of a scene, but none were as impressive as the first two.


This is one of my favorite administrative parts of the Louvre; notice that the 'no dogs' graphic is a French poodle. Yes.

We stayed till the building closed at 10, then braved the cold on a walk down to St-Michel, where we grabbed another bite to eat {dinner had been unimpressive and insufficient} at a small Middle Eastern place; a short, middle-aged Frenchman there jived to the sounds of James Brown and the various disco, soul, hip-hop, and other odd American selections on the radio. We enjoyed our time there and left as they were closing at midnight, eternally grateful that we had not spotted the mouse nosing around in the corner while we still had our food. Bravo. We then hung out at Who's bar until it was time to catch the metro, enthusiastically singing along with the band covering such American tunes as "How You Remind Me", "Proud Mary", "Chop Suey", and "Mustang Sally". A lovely evening overall.


The crew at Who's. You can't really tell, but that coaster for Hoegaarden beer says "Give me a call! <3/caroline";>


This blurry picture wasn't meant to be artsy; I just liked the floating candle.

On Saturday, the twins and I wandered around Levallois, eating lunch {complete with HBO-quality entertainment from a balcony where stood a girl in a bathrobe and her boyfriend who had climbed up via a pipe and a metal awning; the waitress noticed us watching and said, "Ah, ça se passe tous les jours" - "Oh, yeah, that happens every day"}, then checking out the various open markets, where I found some rather European gloves.



Back in Melissa's dorm room, we looked for tickets to London {to no avail} and had some hair-dying fun before I left to meet Cody for "Nuit Blanche" - more on this fabulously Parisian phenomenon later.

A Classy Week

{Thursday, October 2}

Ack! Where did the time go? I blame my classes for having thrown us right in {some of them, at least}. Fortunately, there's not much else to write about, as they take up most of my time; you that look pale or tremble at this, fear not: I am only working hard now and not going out much in order to be doing really well in my classes later in the semester when I explore Europe {or Italy and Prague, at least}.

Thursday - more classes, then celebrating Julia {friend of Monica}'s birthday at the real Café les Deux Moulins, made famous by the film Amélie. It looks a lot different than in the movie, but the bartenders were both drunk and raucously serenading each other with the songs on the radio, as I imagine people would do with a song like "Piano Man" in American bars. Our waitress also looked remarkably like Audrey Tautou as Amélie, and I ordered the crème brûlée - mostly because I hadn't yet eaten any in France, but we also couldn't resist taking a few pictures.

The interior. Take a look at the waitress and her sweet Amélie haircut.

Crème brûlée, Amélie style. Sorry for the devilish red eyes.

Oh yeah, and we were in the red light district. Near the metro stop 'Blanche' {the French word for white}, no less.

On Friday, Monica and I went to greet her twin sister Melissa who was arriving that very day, also to study in Paris, but with a different program. I got over the twin thing fairly quickly, as Melissa has blonde hair and, though their personalities are interlocking {trust me, this is a good word for it, not me losing my command of English}. they are quite clearly different people. We also experienced the RER {the Réseau Express Régional; it's basically just a metro that goes further outside the city} for the first time. The seats are more comfortable, but the smell is worse. Shrug.

Um...Monica and I being druids at the Cité Universitaire. She found the rock rather Stonehenge-like.

Me: I don't really know what druids do...
Monica: It's okay; no one does.

It was also Cody's birthday, so we later went up to Oberkampf {metro stop} and sat with him as he ate bad Indian food {as his host family apparently forgot to feed him - sad}, then ended up in a crowd of about 10 IES kids at the Berimbar {yes, named after the instrument - sweet}. Cody didn't pay for a single drink and thus got progressively more amusing as the night went on. I had a nice conversation outside the bathroom with a twentysomething woman who said my accent is very light and unplaceable. Monica and I left to catch the metro around 1 {ours stops earlier than everyone else's, unfortunately}. On the way home, we got asked for directions twice and called "beautiful lady" by some weird guy on the street who asked me my name. Creepy.

Saturday afternoon saw Monica, Melissa, her friend Emily, Cody and I at the Conciergerie {where Marie Antoinette and other prisoners were kept until their execution}

La salle des Gardes {the Hall of the Guards}

Some rather naughty monkeys in the Salle des Gens d'armes

La cour des femmes {the women's courtyard}

...apparently the femmes were pretty short.

A really creepy mannequin of Marie Antoinette in her cell

The soldier guarding Marie. Looks like he's playing solitaire.

and the Sainte-Chapelle. The windows of the Sainte-Chapelle are absolutely breathtaking and impossible to do justice with a photo, but this will give you an idea.

We ate dinner, once again, at the fabulous Marathon restaurant and then hung out in Melissa's dorm room and took the last RER home.

Sunday was, sadly, full of homework. It's a shame, because it would be a really useful day for buying books, running errands, etc., but everything is closed. I spent hours on my BD {bande dessinée - comic book} homework {more on that later}.

Monday was my first day with my real classes, as determined by modified schedule. I will now take this opportunity to talk a bit more about them, and then leave you in order to keep this entry {relatively} short.

BD: Prof. Loret rocks my socks. Seriously. He's pretty distant with everyone, but I think he doesn't dislike me {which might be the best I can get from him}. The first reading for the class actually cited him, and he clearly knows what he's talking about. Workload-wise, I spend more time on this class than all of the others put together. We read theory and comic books, find links to information about and pictures and videos of the references in our readings and post them on our blogs with our own commentary, and we also have to present exposés {10-minute Power Point presentations; I signed up for the first one so that I could get it over with while the rest of my courses are still starting up}. In conclusion, we can call this the most fascinating literature class I've ever taken {yes, BD is, by many, considered literature here. Ask me about it in a comment if you'd like to hear more, because after four days of this class and its readings, I could produce a full-fledged diatribe on this subject}.

Phonetics: Love it. Sometimes I feel a little patronized in this class because, between my French classes and my linguistics classes, I'm already familiar with a lot of this material. But Prof. Gourévitch is wicked laid-back {and usually late to class}, and the other day we practiced the tonic accent by pretending to throw things away {including physical gestures} while standing in the middle of the room. Some of my favorite pieces of "trash" were "homework", "the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro", and "Uhhh Nicolas Cage!" {?}

Word & Image: I still like it a lot, but the pacing is a little slow for me. We've just started doing analysis as opposed to theory, though {with Cyrano de Bergerac's famous nose monologue}, so I think it'll pick up soon.

Translation: is what it is; mornings with Dominique , who alternates between going a little too quickly and taking a concept and banging us over the head with it. But I got a 14,5 out of 20 on the pre-test {translatoins without a dictionary, given before any theory was presented}, where most people got less than 10, so I'm feeling pretty good there.

Drawing: can be tiring because we're spending the entire class on our feet for the time being, but I like our tiny, bespectacled stereotypical Frenchwoman art teacher, who wears bright red lipstick and generally tells me that my work is "pas mal" {"not bad"}, or even sometimes "très bien".

That's all, folks, for the moment. Also, it's October; what?

Chapter 24, in which not all goes according to plan.

{Wednesday, September 24}

Okay, time for the official judgement of the courses in which I'm stuck for the next 12 weeks!

Monday/Wednesday, 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM: Comic Books & Society

Exceptionally cool. The basic concept of this course is reading and analyzing comic books, but we also put them into a historical and political context, and we're reading everything from Astérix and Tintin to comics translated into French from English and Japanese to Les Schtroumpfs {the French word for Smurfs! Awesome!} to Barbarella to Persepolis. The professor is a legitimate art critic who is both brilliant and hilarious...not to mention that the other day he wore a yellow polo shirt, a black sports jacket, jeans, and black-and-yellow sneakers. Oh yes, and part of our homework is keeping a blog {if you hadn't noticed, it's connected to this account, but I promise you don't have to read it, as it's in French}.

Monday/Wednesday, 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM/occasionally till 3:45 PM: Phonetics

Phonetics? You say. What happened to the theatre class? Well, for one, the class was not what I expected it to be {it would be like re-taking Playscript Analysis, but in French}. Also, the professor is incredibly closed-minded - if your answer is not the same as hers, it's wrong. Finally, for practical reasons: I would have missed at least one performance {if not the following class as well} on the weekend I'm going to Prague {and more than two absences lowers your grade}, and I was not keen on getting up at 7 four days a week and waiting about four hours between classes at the IES Center.

So, phonetics. It was offered as a language course, so I thought I wasn't really allowed to take it, that it was for more basic students, and that the mandatory lab took place after every class; not so. The first session didn't meet, and I missed it today because I was changing my schedule, but I met with the professor, who seems very nice, and the booklet I received has some cool exercises in it. So, once again, friends, I have chosen linguistics over theatre in a sudden but brilliant turn of events.

Monday/Wednesday, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM: The Word and the Image

This is just as amazing as I thought it would be, mixing my favorite "art forms" - theatre, film, literature, and basically any image you can think of that can be connected to them. The professor is a real-life director who has worked on sixty-something films, mostly documentaries. He's the quintessential kindly old Frenchman, but he's still completely with it and, so far, has had some really insightful points to make. We'll be studying a little bit of everything: Cyrano de Bergerac, Jacques Prévert, "La Regle du Jeu", and much more - above all, adaptations of written works for film. Needless to say, I'm wicked excited for this course.

Tuesday/Thursday, 9 AM - 10:30 AM: Translation

I wasn't a huge fan of my professor at the beginning {i.e. during the Propédeutique}, but I think we've all found an equilibrium with her; she's a little bit crazy and scatterbrained. I guess you just have to know how to take her - and I'm glad we had two weeks to figure it out before actually being graded on anything. Anyway, it's gonna be cool to learn about when to translate directly, how to change from English metaphors/idiomatic expressions to French ones, and generally get some practice in, because this is theoretically what I'm going to do with my life {one of the potential choices, anyway}.

And finally...
Tuesday/Thursday, 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM: Drawing

This is literally a class for people with no drawing experience whatsoever, which is nice because we started from scratch, and the professor is very forgiving. However, it also meant sketching still lifes for an hour and a half, which did get slightly tedious. I think it'll be fun, and {hopefully} there won't be any homework {although I really wouldn't mind sketching alongside the Seine - how Parisian}.

Lawrentians, taking five classes is officially really weird. I almost feel like I'm in high school again. Not to mention that these classes only run for slightly longer than ours do {hour-wise and week-wise}, and we have no Friday classes, so the workload is kind of concentrated like at LU. Very strange.

Other than classes, this week hasn't been very eventful {unless you count epic searches for books at the FNAC}, with the exception of this evening. It started out normal enough: since Monica, Cody, and I didn't have family dinner, we decided to all go out together. We found another three-course restaurant off of the Boulevard St-Michel, and sat down around quarter to eight, Monica and I reminding ourselves that we needed to be back on the metro around 9, because half of our line was closing at 9:15 {ten stations in the middle of the line; how convenient}. Eventually, we realized that this was not a realistic goal, as we hit the dinner rush and dinner in France is never rushed. So at 9:15, when our desserts had not yet been served, we sighed and planned out a new route involving a bus that we could get to by taking the 4 from St-Michel to Strasbourg St-Denis, then taking the 8 to Opéra {technically on our line, but thereby inaccessible}, where there was a bus that goes to Levallois. A little complicated, but then again we got ourselves into this mess. Due to a street performance involving Prince and breakdancing {at which the white guys were much better then the others; Oh, inverted world}, we didn't get on the metro till quarter to 10, and thus began our epic journey. At Opéra, we walked up to the street to find the bus stop; it was actually very close by. We stood there a moment, scrutinizing the map of the bus' route to find our stop.

We noticed suddenly that the sign said "Dernier départ à 21h" {"Last bus leaves at 9 PM"}. I checked my watch, knowing full well that we'd missed the bus...by an hour and fifteen minutes, as it turned out. Disappointed but tenacious, we walked back to Opéra to plan our new route home.

On the line 3 {our regular metro line}, Opéra is 9 stops away. A direct trip like that takes between 15 and 20 minutes {at most}. But we didn't go that way. How did we get home?

We got on the 7 at Opéra and went 2 stops to Palais Royal Musée du Louvre. From there, we took the 1 to Charles de Gaulle Étoile [6 stops], where we hopped on the 2 to Villiers [4 stops], where we jumped on the 3 back home [5 stops]. There is probably a 'skip' missing in there, and honestly I don't doubt that we skipped, as we spent most of the trip laughing maniacally at our collective idiocy and bad luck...and at the fact that we had officially taken half of the available metro lines within 6 hours. We arrived home around 11:15. Thank you, Parisian metro system.