East of West

These are the cliff notes of my vacation thus far:

Almost missed train to Amsterdam. Stayed with friend’s Dutch grandparents outside of Amsterdam; ate Indonesian food. Wandered around Amsterdam. Saw prositutes, pot, and Van Gogh Museum. My wallet was lost/stolen/left behind in Paris–lots of drama.

Took flight from Amsterdam to London. Saw friend from college in US and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, and Buckingham Palace at night. Saw Big Ben and Westminster Abbey again during the day, and then saw the London Eye, Parliament, the British Museum, and Oxford Street.

I’m tired.

26 October 2007

After meeting Karoline I went with my French theatre class to Le Theatre de la Ville in Montmartre to see Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (No Exit). For those of you who don’t know, the play is about three people who have been condemned, and their punishment in hell is to spend eternity in this little room with these other people. It’s really quite fascinating, because I’ve read the play in English and in French now, and it just feels so different in French. It’s a lot more powerful in French, I think. I thought the play was pretty good, but not spectacular, because I didn’t really like two of the actors (and there are only three…). However, I did enjoy that it was more physical and harsh than I got the sense of from reading the play, because it really brought across how awful that situation really is.

Then Thursday (yesterday) the president of my college was in Paris for some reason or another, and he took all 30 of us in program, and our teachers, alums living in Paris, and parents of alums or current students, all out to dinner at this really swank hotel. We got to have a really nice meal, and then we got to ask the President whatever we wanted about what was going on with school. I was most pleased to learn that we have gotten the budget crisis taken care of, that we have been taken off the rankings of US News and World Report (there’s really just no way anyone could objectively rank schools, and US News and World Report has suspect methods), and that security cameras have been installed around campus, which has lowered the number of safety incidents. Also, we’ve found a new chaplain, so I am pleased about that as well. She can’t be as good as the last one though; it just isn’t possible. I also don’t know how I feel about a female chaplain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for women’s rights, but I just never picture religious leaders as women. Maybe it’s just that I’ve never really met one before. Oh well. I’ll just have to wait and see.

So I’m leaving irritatingly early tomorrow morning to start my vacances de toussaints, which translates to All Saints’ Day Vacation. I’m going to Amsterdam with a friend who has family there, staying with them, and then flying to London. I’ll be in London for a couple days, take a train through the Chunnel back to Paris. The next day my parents arrive (WHEE!!!) and then I think we’re going to go to Normandy–my dad wants to see all of the World War II stuff there. Then we’ll return to Paris and I get to play tour guide. I’m very excited to have a break and to get to explore some new places. So classes start up again on the 12 November.

I think I’ve been in France too long–I was going to type “November” as you see above, but instead I typed “novembre” which is French. I do that with a lot of words, like “appartement” vs “apartment” and “tour” vs “tower.” Oh well. I guess that’s inevitable if you spend a long enough time in one place.

22 October 2007

            I had a very educational weekend. Friday I got to experience la greve (transportation strike) in all its glory, and it added an extra hour and 15 minutes onto my commute. What joy. Tomorrow everything should be back to normal though.

Then, Friday night, I met three French men from Normandy, and learned quite a few new things. Here’s a list:

1. In French there are two ways to say what we would use the word “you” for in English. “Tu” is singular, and also more familiar. You would use this word when talking to a person younger than you or your same age, with a person you know, or a person who has referred to you as “tu.” “Vous” you use with a person older than you, with a stranger, or when you are talking to more than one person. I had already met one of the Normans before, P., and he introduced me to his friend R. I made the mistake of referring to R. as “vous,” which I didn’t think was a mistake but apparently it is. If we have been presented to each other (i.e. Sarah this is R., R. this is Sarah) and we are in the same generation, I should use “tu” with him. R. then went on to explain that he would use “vous” with a waiter or bartender, because he’s speaking to someone in their professional capacity, but then P. objected and said that he uses “tu” with servers if they are roughly his age. The moral of the story: apparently even French people have trouble with the whole “tu/vous” thing.

2. French men will not let you buy your own drinks. If you are out with them, and (I’m going to put this frankly) even if they don’t have a chance at all, they will buy your drinks, no matter how much you protest. I tried to ask why that was, and never got a straight answer. The moral: just say thank you.

3. French people like to make fun of the president’s wife, and now that everyone’s just found out that Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife are getting divorced, the gloves are off. The moral: Don’t be Mrs. Sarkozy.

4. It unnerves French people very much if you are at a bar and you don’t drink anything. I tried to explained to them that I had eaten way too much before I got there and that I didn’t want anything, not even water, but they continued to ask about every half hour if I wouldn’t like a beer or a Coke or some water. The moral: Get something to drink and sip it very very slowly.

5. R., P., and their other friend A. also introduced me to some Norman slang: “blow l’etat.” If you know that the word “l’etat” is “the state,” it would seem that they are saying they want to explode the state or that the state sucks. Apparently that’s not the case. An eavesdropping Parisian tried to explain the meaning to me in English as: “Look at that f****** bowl of s*** man,” which doesn’t make much more sense. By the end of the night however, I sort of figured out that it means something like “whoa” or “oh my god.” The moral: don’t translate slang literally.

            The next day, with all of this good learning in my head, I did my homework. Then I had to stop because H. (one of my host brothers) was having a birthday party, because he turned 16 a week and a half ago. So, the family commandeered my room for the party. This party turned out to be very bizarre, and I hope you’re dying to find out why, because I’m going to tell you.

            Mme. has a friend from out of town here, and she and her friend were getting ready to leave to go to the theater or dinner or something like that a little bit before the party was supposed to start. At this time, Mr. popped his head in my room and asked me if H. had invited me to the party and if I was going to go. I said yeah, because that was the truth. I didn’t intend to stay the whole night or anything, just maybe an hour. Then, Mr. left, and then Mme. and her friend were on the way out the door and she said, “Sarah, you’re in charge, and call me if you have a problem.” And then she left. I was like, “What just happened?” I asked H. if his parents were coming back and he said, “Yeah, about 2 in the morning.” “THEY AREN’T COMING BACK?!”

I suddenly got this sinking feeling that I had some sort of responsibility to the 15 or 20 teenagers who were going to come through the doors soon. I was furious, honestly, that I seemed to haven been put in charge of kids who aren’t that much younger than me, who aren’t mine, and who I can’t always understand, ALL without anyone asking me if I had plans or if I even wanted to take this on. Nothing like that. Furious is probably an understatement, actually. I tried asking H. if he was allowed to be left alone, but his friends starting coming and he never actually answered my questions; he was too preoccupied. Actually, he walks away from me a lot when I’m trying to talk to him. I wonder if it’s a French thing. Anyway, there were about 15 teenagers in the house, most of whom were smoking, a hookah came out, and H.’s twelve year old brother was still around and in the thick of the party. I couldn’t call Mr. because I knew he didn’t have his cell phone, and then I didn’t want to call Mme. because I though she was at the theater. I tried to think about what I would want to happen in this situation if I were H.’s mother: should I stay or should I go?

Frankly, I don’t know what I would do if I were a mother in this situation, but I do know that my mother would NEVER EVER EVER have left a sixteen year old with a  party to their own devices, and just waltzed out the door, especially with the twelve year old, impromptu college student chaperone or no. I think I would subscribe to my mother’s parenting style in this situation. About an hour later, Mme. called me, and asked if everything was going okay. I said, “Yes, but”—and then the phone cut out. I called back and just got her voice mail. Clearly the cell phone gods were against me. I waited about a half an hour, thinking that she would call me back and trying to find better cell phone reception. However, my normal room was full of smoking 16 year olds, and I interrupted I don’t know what in the bathroom. Finally, I tried calling her again, it cut out again, she called me back, and I finally got to ask her if I had to stay or if I could leave the kids to their own devices. She said, “Well of course you can go out!” THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU MAKE IT MORE OBVIOUS THE FIRST TIME ROUND!!!!!!!

Anyway, that was my unfortunate experience with that. I guess that French parents give their kids more liberty than most of their American counterparts.

Sunday I decided to do some sightseeing. I wanted to see the Picasso Museum, which is the largest Picasso collection in the world. France claimed Picasso’s paintings as “inheritance tax” after he died in France and his remaining family couldn’t pay the French tax. Good move by the French state.

Normally, Paris is slow and tranquil on Sundays. However, the Picasso Museum is in the Marais, which is just about the only lively quartier in Paris on a Sunday. This is because the Marais has a very vibrant Jewish community (it also has a large gay population, but that’s really another story). The Marais is dead on Saturday (read: Jewish Sabbath) but boutiques and restaurants are open on Sundays and so a lot of people are there because there isn’t much else to do in the rest of Paris. Falafels, central European food, hotels particulieres, and fashion are the Marais specialties, and plenty of people were out trying to enjoy it. I got to the Picasso Museum only to discover that it had a very long line that I didn’t feel like standing in. I went to my second choice, the Musee Carnavelet. This is the museum of the history of Paris, and is just a couple blocks down from the Picasso Museum.

I wandered around there for about an hour. It was a very interesting museum. There are lots of paintings of Paris during all of its different stages of life, so you can see what the Champs-Elysees looked like when it was just a dirt road, or what the Bastille looked like before it was torn down during the Revolution. That was really cool, because it showed that the way to see how something looked back then is paintings and not photographs (perhaps obvious, but difficult to really wrap your mind around). I especially liked seeing all the different kinds of “propaganda” that they had in there, where it was caricatures (sculptures or drawings), allegorical paintings, or even china. During the Revolution, they produced table china that said things like “the nation lives” or “the people before the state.” They also had commemorative medallions, revolutionary buttons, and on and on. I also got to see some models of what the Bastille looked like, paintings from the era of the Paris Commune (the radically-leftist government that took over France in the wake of the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871—really disastrous), and from la fin de la siecle—which is the end of the 1800’s, the Bohemian Revolution, Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Latrec, post-Impressionism, and all that jazz. Unfortunately, the museum closed before I got a good look at the rest of it.

Since I still had some time left before the Picasso Museum closed, I ventured back there. The line was much more reasonable. When I got to the ticket counter, I handed the cashier a 20 euro bill to pay for my 5.70 euro ticket. She asked me if I had a euro. I said no. She told me that she couldn’t give me a ticket because she couldn’t give me the right amount of change and that since the museum would be closing in an hour anyway it wasn’t really a big deal. Then she called the next person in line forward. I was taken aback. Was this a part of the French habit of telling it like it is, or the lack of emphasis placed upon customer service in France, or simply a “bad French apple”? It was easier to leave and come back to another cashier another time than try to solve this mystery.

I ended up getting a smoothie instead of seeing the Picasso Museum. French smoothies aren’t really what we would call smoothies in the US. It was more like taking fruits and putting them in a blender, which is what I would call fruit juice. It becomes a smoothie when it’s thick and has ice or frozen yogurt or ice cream in it.

Huh. I guess my weekend was busy.

Every morning, I get up, get ready for the day, and eventually make my way downstairs.

I go out the door.

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Sometimes I go to the left, towards my cafe. 

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 Sometimes I go to the right.

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This way takes me to Gare de Lyon…

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I go to school, and get off the metro right near St. Germain des Pres.

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I walk down this street to school.

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18 October 2007

            This has been sort of a hectic week. I’ve had a ton of homework, and then today there was a greve of transportation.

            If you were French, this knowledge would instantly strike fear into the deepest part of your soul. A greve is a strike. There are usually 19 metro lines or train lines running. Today, one was running at normal capacity, and three more had ¼ of their normal capacity. That’s it. It completely turned Paris into a ghost town. The streets were completely clogged with cars, the metro stations were abandoned, all sorts of shops were closed because the workers simply couldn’t get to work. Some of us, however, had to get somewhere, because we had a midterm in Art and Architecture, possibly. The strike turned out to be not so terrible for me, because I like right off of one of those coveted lines. I just had to walk about 20 minutes from that line to school, and have to wait a long time before there were any trains.

            After the exam, I managed to make my way back here without too much bloodshed. Because it was a beautiful day out, I decided to take a walk. To my great happiness, I discovered my new favorite place in Paris. It’s called le Viaduc des Arts (which translates to: the Viaduct of Arts. I’m such a good translator…). It’s an economic project imagined by some Minister of Culture or another, I believe. It’s this long viaduct which houses all sorts of ateliers—workshops for artisans. I’d wager it takes about a half hour or so to walk from one end to the other, and on the way you can see the artisans working on their crafts or simply selling them. I got to see a woman making a violin, and then next door to her were some people painting teapots. That’s nice to see, but it’s not my favorite part. My favorite part is on top of the Viaduct.

On top of the viaduct is a long walk, covered on either side by trees and flowers and plants. From up there, you can’t hear the traffic as well, and there are parts where you can’t see the city at all. You could forget that you were in Paris at all, if you wanted to. You’ve got to admire the French use of space. It was so beautiful, and exactly what I needed to brighten up my day. At the northern end of the viaduct is the Opera Bastille, and at the southern end is l’Espace Reuilly.

This, I also loved. Firstly, by walking the entire viaduct I discovered how close I am to the Bastille area. I had no idea that I could walk there in about 15 minutes! Then, also, l’Espace Reuilly is a park. And I’m not talking about the kind of park that Parisians kid themselves with in the middle of the city. This park actually had GRASS. I haven’t seen grass like that anywhere in Paris. Yes, there is grass in the Places des Vosges, but it didn’t look any good to play on, and this did. It’s also WI-FI equipped. Also, right at the edge of this park was a real, American style gym, the first one like that I’ve seen. It was pretty wonderful. I’m praying that the weather stays nice for a least a little bit longer, enough for me to enjoy my new find.

            This Monday in my French Culture I learned about the differences between French parents and American ones. Then, Tuesday night, my family provided me with a wonderful demonstration of what I had learned in class. Let me explain. Monday we discovered that French parents are somewhat more strict with their children before adolescence, and also that French parents have no problem disciplining their children in public, nor do French people have a problem with disputing in public. So Tuesday night I was sitting at the dinner table with the three kids, and Mme. was hovering above us as she always does. First the two boys got into a fight, and then Mme. got into a fight with the older boy, who’s 16. It was a big fight, and it was at dinner, and it was all right in front of me. I can’t imagine an American family ever getting into a fight with their kids, first, at the dinner, table, second, when a guest was at dinner. An American mother would have said, go to your room, we’ll talk about this later, or something like that. But they just kept going and going. They’ve sort of been fighting ever since, and because my room is across from the kitchen and next to the living room, I hear a lot of it. But my being there never seems to cramp their style. It’s a bit uncomfortable.

            Wednesday I got to take a nice long walking tour in the cold for my art and architecture class. We saw St. Sulpice (and it is important to pronounce the “l”, because if you don’t you’re saying Saint Torture), l’Odean Theatre de l’Europe, le Luxembourg Palais, and le Pantheon. The Luxembourg Palais is currently the seat of the Senate, and the Pantheon is where all the really important people from France are buried. I’ve really wanted to go visit and see all of the tombs, but by the time we got there I was cold and miserable and didn’t care anymore. Maybe another time.

            Anyway, we were supposed to go to Versailles tomorrow but we had to cancel because there is a chance with la greve that we would get stuck out at Versailles or wouldn’t be able to get there at all. Nobody knows how long the strike is going to last. We at least knew in advance that there was going to be a strike, because the unions are obliged to release that information, but no one knows when it might end. Hopefully it will not go on too long, but it appears that it will go into tomorrow. I think the worst transportation strike in history was about 10 years ago, and that one lasted for 3 weeks. Also, back then there was not the law of minimum service which Sarkozy has demanded, so while some lines have to run now, that wasn’t the case then, and Paris literally slowed to a halt. It’s funny to think how in my home in the US, if the public transportation went on strike, it would affect some people, but wouldn’t be that bad. Paris is just so dependent upon it here, and consequently, so am I. Give me my metro back!

PS Check out new pictures of Normandy!

15 October 2007

It’s pretty hard to believe that it’s the middle of October already. There are only 16 days until Halloween! Of course, they don’t celebrate Halloween here, but I believe I will actually be in Amsterdam or London then, so maybe they get all dressed up there.

            I just got back last night from a weekend in Normandy (today is Monday morning).

            We left early Friday morning, and managed to get all thirty of us onto a bus. Our bus driver’s name was Dominique, and he was absolutely hysterical. He has this microphone so that he can talk to the entire bus, and would give us commentary about the things that we were passing on the road. He also speaks about 8 languages, which is pretty impressive, and would always say “It’s so French” (in English with a pronounced French accent). The drive from Paris to Bayeux (one of the larger towns in Normandy, but pretty small if you ask me) took about 3 and a half hours, though it was more…interesting…than it should have been. That morning, there was an accident with a big truck carrying a load of animals to the slaughterhouse. The truck crashed and all the animals got out and ran away. Unfortunately, they were already on a highway, and pretty much all of them got run over. And not just run over. There were guts all over the highway for miles and miles. Icky.

            After that pleasant experience, we arrived in Bayeux. We all got lunch, and I tried a Norman specialty called a galette, which is like a crepe but made with a different kind of flour, and it’s more substantial. After that we went to see the Bayeux Tapestry. This tapestry dates from the 11^th century, and is over 70 meters long, and about half a meter tall. It tells the story of Guillaume le Conquerant (William the Conqueror) and his conquest of England in 1066. It’s incredibly detailed and must have taken years and years to complete, even with a team of people working on it. It was really interesting to see what contemporaries thought of William’s conquest.

            Next we went to see the cathedral, Notre-Dame-de-Bayeux (so many churches are called Notre Dame that you have to specify). It was nothing really special, except for the crypt, which was a lot older than the rest of the church and included frescos made during the time of William the Conqueror.

            After that we got some free time, and N. and I wandered around sightseeing. There is pretty much one street in Bayeux that you can explore (again, not a big place), but we actually ended up stumbling into French suburbia! I thought it was an urban legend, but apparently it actually exists. If you were parachuted there, you would have no way to tell whether or not you were in France rather than in the US somewhere (unless you knocked on someone’s door and discovered that they were speaking French).

            The next day we got up early and drove to the Peace Memorial at Caen (a larger city in Normandy). It’s not really so much a peace memorial as it is a museum about World War II. It was very moving, and very well done. Afterwards we saw a movie about D-Day. At this point the directors thought we needed a break from World War II (and they were so right, so we hopped onto the bus and went to Arromanches-les-Bains, where you can still see the artificial ports that the Allies constructed for the invasion into Normandy. We had lunch there and then moved on to the American Cemetery and Omaha Beach. We were sort of pressed for time but so we didn’t get to go down to the beach itself, but we wandered around in the cemetery. It was just heartbreaking.

            Next, to break the World War II theme, we went to a cider farm called Ferme la Lavoir. It’s basically just a family with their own little orchard, making apple juice, cidre, calvados, and pommeau. The owner/cider maker showed us around the orchard, the factory, the barrels of aging calvados, etc. It was quite fascinating. I learned that there are some differences between American apple-based drinks and Norman ones (they are a Norman specialty, not really made elsewhere in France). In America, we have apple juice, cider, and hard cider (cider with alcohol). In Normandy, they have jus de pomme (apple juice), cidre (which is like hard apple juice), pommeau (cidre and jus de pomme mixed), and calvados (which is basically half alcohol and doesn’t taste much like apple at all). They do not, however, have what we would call cider (a non-alcoholic drink made from apples, but different from apple juice). We got to taste all of these drinks, and it’s amazing how much better the apple juice there tastes from the apple juice in America. It just had an incredible depth of flavor.

We finally returned to Bayeux, and I wandered around a bit and got to buy some antique teacups (I collect teacups; don’t make fun). Then we went to dinner and then went to a bar (the teachers included) to watch the semi-final rugby game in the Rugby World Cup between France and England. France was winning for the majority of the game until the last 10 minutes when England got ahead and ended up winning the game.  Sadness.

            On Sunday we went to Caen again, and tried to visit L’Abbaye aux Hommes (the church where William the Conqueror is buried), but, lo and behold, there was a Mass going on. Who could imagine a Mass being held Sunday morning?! Instead of doing that, we went to the market at Caen, which was really huge and fun. My friend R. and I bought some food that we could eat when we got back to Paris (Camembert—a Norman cheese—some paella, some bread). Then we went to a creperie, and got some more galettes and this really incredible dessert crepe with pear and chocolate. Then we drove back to Paris—fortunately no dead animals this time.

            Upon returning to Paris R. and I went back to her apartment and heated the paella up and had a regular feast. There were whole crawdads or something like that in the paella, and we had quite a time trying to figure out how to eat them. Sometimes it’s better not to ask about what you’re eating. I finally returned home and crashed into bed.

            This week is going to be interesting because I have a ton of homework. Today I have to give two presentations (one in French and one in English) and then tomorrow I have a history test I need to study for, and then Thursday I have an Art and Architecture midterm. Wish me luck!

11 October 2007

            Yesterday I went to the Louvre with my Art and Architecture class, and then to La Comedie-Francaise with my French theater class to see Le Mariage de Figaro.

            There are about 30 of us in my Art and Architecture class, and when we go into the Louvre it’s always really funny to see the people just sweeping out of the way of our enormous tour group. Yesterday we walked in and our teacher saw that one section of the Louvre which is usually closed (the history of the Louvre) was open, so we took advantage of the opportunity and went in and walked around. I love that we can do that, just sort of change class plans on a whim. Anyway, after that we went to look at some paintings of de la Champagne, Vouet, Poussin, and la Lorrain. They are all history painters, which, I guess, means that they paint scenes from the Bible or from classical myths, and they paint in the Baroque style as well (but I’m not absolutely sure). This should indicate to you that I know next to nothing about art. In class, I try to overcompensate for this utter lack of knowledge, since quite a few of the other students have taken Art History 101 before, and I have not. Consequently, yesterday we were looking at some history paintings by Poussin, and our professor wanted us to try to say what the painting was depicting. I whipped out the exact scene from the Old Testament. When we moved onto another painting and I did it again, the professor was very impressed. She was just explaining how people in that age got a classical education and would know all of this, while we got a different kind of education and probably wouldn’t be able to figure it out. The only reason I could, of course, is Guided Studies. It’s so useful here! Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that I know already that we have to review. In my European Union class, we’re learning about imperialism and colonialism now. I KNOW ALL OF THIS ALREADY! Not only did I learn about it in Guided Studies, but also in AP European History back in high school. I thought in an EU class, we might learn about the EU. Enough about that.

La Comedie-Francaise is the oldest theater in Paris, and perhaps in France. It was founded in 1680, under the reign of Henri III, I believe. Anyway, it’s absolutely beautiful. There are marble busts everywhere of famous French playwrights, and inside the theater is all red velvet and gold inside. The play itself was written in the beginning of the 1700’s, by Beaumarchais. I had to read it about three times, all the way through, before I really understood it, because it’s almost like reading Shakespeare, but in French. Anyway, I loved the play. It was really really funny, and the director tried to set it sort of in the 20^th century with the costumes, but at the same time did some really bizarre stuff with the set (there were some upside down deer, that’s all I’m going to say). My favorite character/actor was Figaro/Laurent Stocker, and after we all got out of the play some of us waited by the actor’s exit, and we got to talk to him and to some of the other actors. It was really fantastic to be able to do that.

 This weekend I am off to Normandy with the rest of the kids from school to see the Normandy beaches, the cemetery, and some churches or something like that. Bon voyage!

7 October 2007

So I didn’t actually end up doing any of the things that I was planning on doing, except for my homework.

            Wow. The most incredible thing just happened. The floor next to my table at the café here just opened up, and a big trashcan just came out of the floor on a miniature elevator. WHAT?! How does that work?! I just don’t understand that at all. WHY IS THERE A TRASH ELEVATOR IN THE FLOOR AND WHY DID NO ONE WARN ME THAT THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING COMING OUT OF THE FLOOR RIGHT NEXT TO ME?!

            Sorry. Just sort of found that bizarre.

            Anyway, after my classes on Friday I went with my friend N. to Montmartre (the place where Sacre-Coeur is, as well as the breeding ground for the Bohemian Revolution, the Moulin Rouge, and Post-Impressionism). We found the art area, where anyone in Paris who has any artistic talent at all goes to try to sell their art in a never-ending tourist trap. Conviently enough for the tourists, all of the artists are rounded up in one square and categorized—the painters are in one area, those who will draw your portrait are in another, and those who will cut your silhouette out of black paper are in another, and so on and so forth. While I love and appreciate street artists, I really do, most of these seemed to lack originality simply because they cater to the tourists, and tourists only seem to want paintings of Paris or of themselves. So, that’s about all that these self-styled Picassos paint. At least it’s a living.

            Later that night, N. and I went to see the movie 2 Days in Paris. It’s written and directed by Julie Delpy (anybody seen Before Sunset or Before Sunrise?) and it’s about her and her American boyfriend visiting her French parents. It’s in Franglais (half French half English) and is absolutely hysterical and very poignant for any American who has even been to Paris.

            Saturday I went shopping on Avenue des Ternes in the seventeenth arrondissement. Then I did my homework, ate dinner, watched Desperate Housewives on my laptop, and went to bed. I was just too tired to do La Nuit Blanche.

            However, since I went to bed early I also got the opportunity to get up earlier and go to a Philocafe. This particular café is on the Place de la Bastille, called Café des Phares. It is the best philocafe in Paris. This means that every Sunday morning at 11 there is a two hour open mike discussion of a philosophic question that one or another café-goer proposes at the beginning. I thought it was a lot of fun, but it took a heck of a lot of concentration to try to understand two hours of philosophy in French. Sort of exhausting actually. What amazed me the most was its success. People were engaged, and it was clear that many of them came habitually and knew one another. People from all walks of life were there, mostly from the generation above mine. It amazed me that there weren’t any scarf-wearing cigarette-smoking intellectuals from the Sorbonne. It was really sort of philosophy for the people. Socrates would have been proud. All of the people there seemed very friendly, and I bet I could have talked to quite a few of them afterwards, feigning foreign-person ignorance to make some friends, but I had told my host mother I would be home for lunch, so I had to scurry off. Next weekend though, they don’t have a chance. Well, actually, next next weekend, because next weekend I will be in Normandy with school.

            That’s all for now folks! Tune in next time for further adventures, and my thoughts on why the French don’t do leftovers.

5 October 2007

So, a couple of things happened this week, none of which were very exciting, so I will try to make them seem more interesting than they actually are:

I’ve spent a long and arduous week battling the three-headed dragon of Sore-Throat, Headache, and Homesickness. The dragon seemed for a moment poised to bring me down until a very attractive man took pity on me and gave me drugs (i.e. the pharmacist).

 Two men battled over the right to serve me (this means that my usual waiter, Emmanuel, was too busy to get my tea this morning, so someone else did, but he promised to be mine tomorrow).

I visited centuries-old buildings and works of art, went underground to explore a medieval castle, and toured covered passages in Paris (actually, that didn’t need any exaggeration. That’s all true.).

I planned a secret rendezvous in a foreign country with an attractive man (I’m meeting a friend in London at the end of the month).

That’s about it. However, I am very excited about this weekend. This Saturday night is La Nuit Blanche, another invention by the Minister of Culture. In French, “une nuit blanche” (white night) is a night where you don’t go to sleep at all. So, the Louvre will be open until 2 in the morning, and there will be midnight concerts at Notre Dame, and the metro will run ALL NIGHT! You know, fun stuff like that.

Also, I’m planning on spending some of the weekend trolling the bouquinistes (the people who have stalls of books, posters, and art on the banks of the Seine) and going to the Marche aux Puces (a flea market where you can buy everything from hookahs to antiques. Maybe even antique hookahs).

1 October 2007

            I had quite the busy weekend. Friday night N. and I ventured into Chinatown (I don’t know how to say “Chinatown” in French). It’s down in the south of Paris, in the 13^th arrondissement, right on the border of the banlieue (the suburbs, though this has a different connotation in France). We got off to a false start or too, having gotten off the wrong metro stop the first time and found ourselves in the car dealership area of Paris—not exactly what we were aiming for. We tried again and managed to find ourselves in Chinatown. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to find it, but after we saw the MacDonald’s (which is called MacDo in France) where the menu was in Chinese I wasn’t so worried. We found a nice little Chinese restaurant, which was great fun because I didn’t see any other foreigners there! That’s such a rare occurrence. I’m actually getting almost as good as a Parisian at recognizing foreigners. Parisians are masters of the art, probably because France is one of the only countries anywhere that gets more tourists in one year than there are inhabitants in the country. You can tell the Americans a mile away, and people from the UK aren’t far behind. The Asian tourists are also easy to spot, because they always travel in enormous packs and take pictures of everything in sight. I feel a certain pride in being able to determine beforehand where someone is from, and maybe that’s why so many French people will speak to you in English, because it’s just a game that Parisians play—where is this tourist from? If they can figure it out and whip the rug out from under you before you even say a word, they win the game.

            Sorry about that tangent. Moving on…

            Had dinner at the Chinese restaurant; that was fun. From there we went up to Bastille, where the…OMG! We interrupt this post to bring you an important announcement: it just started raining here. And I’m not talking about just a light sprinkle, it’s raining cats and dogs, and literally just two minutes ago the sky was cloudy but completely dry. The only other place in the world I’ve ever seen the weather change as quickly as it does here is Colorado. But, in Colorado, it’s very rare to go days at a time without seeing the sun. Here, that’s commonplace. When people tell you about how wonderful Paris is, they forget to mention that the weather is not so wonderful.

            Again with the tangents! Why?!

            Well, it’s stopped raining now. The weather here is crazy.

            At Bastille N. and I went wandering around and met three drunk chain-smoking Irishmen, one woman from New Zealand, and one man from Paris. Very interesting.

            On Saturday N. and I went to get dinner down in Montparnasse (14^th arrondissement) at a little Italian place there. The food was pretty good and I stuffed myself silly. When we were leaving, one of the waiters accosted N. and asked if he could give her his phone number. Problem was, he asked in very fast French and we both just looked at him like he was crazy because we couldn’t understand him. He ended up having to repeat himself 3 more times before he could actually make himself understand. Stuff like that makes me feel like such a foreigner. My French IQ is definitely lower than my American one.

            After that, we met up with some other people from the Trinity program, and we were going to go out, but then people just started falling away and going back home, until it was just me, N., and a girl, R., standing all by ourselves in the Place de la Concorde. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but it was about 2 in the morning, and the metro was closed (which is so so annoying!). After the metro closes, you either have to take a cab where you’re going or take a bus. Trouble was, we waited quite a while to see if a taxi would show up, and not a single one did. Then a bus came by which was going N.’s direction. R. and I live the opposite direction from N., but in our desperation not to get left behind we climbed on the bus too, thinking that doing something was better than nothing. I knew it was heading away from my apartment, but I thought that once it reached its destination it would turn around again. It was only after N. got off the bus that R. and I discovered that the bus, was not, in fact, going to turn around. So we got off the next stop, on the Champs Elysees (so so far from where either of us live). We were both kind of panicking about how we were going to get home, so we decided to go to a café and get something to drink and calm ourselves down and think about the situation. We never made it that far.

            French men are absolutely predatory when it comes to seeing two foreign girls walking bemusedly down the Champs. They just stop you in the street and ask if they can take you out, to a club or a bar or something like that. Does that ever actually work?! I mean, some girls must say yes otherwise the men wouldn’t stop doing it, but it’s just totally different from the US. Here, it’s pretty commonplace for a man to waltz up to you on the street in the middle of the day, tell you you’re beautiful (I’ve even gotten ravishing), and then just walk away. To make a long story short, we got about 4 dinner invitations in about 3 hours. Impressive.

            R. and I finally decided that it would be easier to just stay on the Champs until 5:30 in the morning, because that’s when the metro opens, so we wouldn’t have to worry about finding a taxi stand or figuring out the night buses (which are completely different from the day buses). It actually proved to be a lot of fun, and an even better story. I got home at 6:30, because we had to get something to eat—we were starving!

            Sunday (September 30) was my friend D.’s 21^st birthday, and he wanted some of us to go to this concert of an American band he really likes called The New Pornographers. It was a lot of fun. The opening band was called Los Chicros, which was a German band, but all of their songs were in English and they spoke fluent French. The second act was a girl who played the guitar and sang, and I liked her a lot, but I could not for the life of me understand was her name was. The New Pornographers were a lot of fun to see, and it was pretty funny to see that most of the audience were American, Canadian, or English college students just like us, with a couple of French people thrown in.

            After all of this, I feel a little better about meeting people. You just can’t give up. My host brother has a friend from school who is also hosting an American student, so he’s going to try to get us in touch. The twins also have a French college student who is going to start coming to the house to help them with their homework, so maybe I can convince him to show me around.

            Yesterday (Monday) I just went to class. Nothing really interesting. I work up with a horrible sore throat and headache today, but that was to be expected. The directors say that happens a lot because your respiratory system

 can’t really handle the pollution here. C’est la vie!