avoiding midterms studying

So, this week is midterms, I have two tomorrow (my 2 poli sci ones) and two Thursday (French and art history). I don't expect tomorrow to be too hard, hopefully that doesn't jinx me, but it's poli sci and most of the students in my class aren't poli sci majors and don't know much about the subject. Thursday will be harder.
Yesterday Megan and I created our own Halloween mood by going to Pere Lachaise, the most visited cemetery in the world. I had been there about a month ago, but unfortunately was wearing heeled boots and did not make it very far. So we went back for try #2 in more comfortable footwear! We saw the graves of Heloise & Abelard, Chopin, Jim Morrison, Balzac, Moliere, Lafontaine, Gertrude Stein, and I revisited Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde to show Megan. In addition, we found a cat right near Jim Morrison's grave! The most gorgeous cat I've ever seen, white stomach with a black and orange back...the perfect Halloween kitty! But yeah, very Halloweeny cemetery. Then we came home and cooked ourselves some amazing chicken pesto paninis. We're so good at this.
Today I went Christmas shopping and got everything done before the family gets here Friday! My backpack was really heavy though, lol. I also went to see Madeleine, or the church of Mary Magdalene. There was a British choir rehearsing for a concert while I was walking around, I seem to have a knack for walking into places while people are rehearsing. It was really pretty, and the choir definitely added a great atmosphere! The outside is modeled after a Greek temple, and is only a few blocks from the Place de la Concorde (and thus has a great view)
Anyway, just a short rant. I hate smokers when I'm at home, but at home, they aren't that prevalent, except for some dumb people at Richmond and my piano teacher. (through which I realized that I have a slight allergy to cigarette smoke...it irritates my eyes, and in cases of longterm exposure, seems to make me congested, which I discovered in Paris). So yeah, I have seasonal allergies and it is normal for me to be sniffly all the time. But the flowers are dead, the leaves are falling, my room is clean (no more dust) and there is nothing left for me to be allergic to. So what is it? The stupid idiots who smoke all the time. Not just Parisians, that's to be expected, but about half the students I go to school with! And for some reason, the people who have just come in from smoking always choose to sit next to me in class, and as they sit down give off a cloud of their disgusting odor of cigarette. I can cut the elderly some slack, when they were young we didn't know how bad it was and it's hard to quit, but people my age have no excuse to be such idiots. And plus, I suffer too for their bad decisions. And I am tired of feeling like crap during class because my program includes a bunch of druggies and smokers (the drugs thing is not an exaggeration) who have fried their brains with alcohol and cocaine.
OK, I'm done ranting now, other than that everything is good, time to go study for midterms!!

Christmas already?

So this weekend has been pretty cool. We had our first out-of-town visitors! Megan's friends Katie and Steph came from Dublin and Oxford to visit Paris for the weekend, so we showed them around a bit. Friday we met them at the Eiffel Tower and then went out for lunch in the Latin Quarter, then showed them Notre Dame (where there was a mariachi band playing...oh, Paris). Then they had a walking tour scheduled, so Megan and I wandered around the Latin Quarter by ourselves. We saw the famous English bookstore Shakespeare and Company, and wandered around inside--it was pretty cool!! Stacks and stacks of English books. We did a little souvenir shopping, and checked out the Eglise Ste-Severin, and walked around the Latin Quarter a lot. Then we met up with Cristy and her mom to eat dinner, which was really cool!
Saturday we met Katie and Steph for lunch again, and then went to the Musee Rodin. It was really amazing--there are gardens and an indoor museum. Rodin was really talented at expressing emotion through really simple sculptures, or really complicated ones. We saw the Thinker and all of his other famous works. Then Megan and I went to les Arenes de Lutece, which is a 2000-year-old Roman arena that was used for gladiator fights back in the Gallo-Roman days. It was discovered 200 years ago and is now used for kids to play sports in, pretty much. Last on the agenda was the Jardin des Plantes, which is really pretty to walk around in--it also has the Paris Museum of Natural History, but neither of us were dying to see that so we skipped it this time around.
Today we went to lunch near Place de la Bastille, so we got to see that, and then went to the Marais to see the Musee Cognacq-Jay. It's basically a museum in one of the private mansions in the Marais that houses furniture, paintings, jewelery, etc, to show off upper-class French tastes from the 18th and 19th centuries. It was nothing too intriguing but still really pretty. Now we're back at home and settling down to do some homework before dinner with our host parents.
The family is arriving on Saturday so that should be cool!! Megan and I also just booked a hostel for our trip to Rome Thanksgiving weekend, which is walking distance from the Colosseum! We're also starting to plan our trip to London the weekend before that. November should be a pretty cool month!!
Oh, and if you thought Americans got Christmas decorations out early...Parisian grocery stores already have Advent calendars and Christmas chocolates ready for sale! When Megan and I were eating lunch today, the restaurant had a TV tuned to kids' morning cartoons, and it was a cartoon all about Santa...scary, hmmm? I guess when you don't have Halloween or Thanksgiving it's easy to slide straight to Christmas!
I just finished uploading all the pictures from this weekend, so check them out!

Institut du Monde Arabe and some churches

Another week of class is over...next week is midterms! Fun. I have 4 midterms next Wednesday and Thursday, but none in my Cato class...no, there I just have to write two 10-page single-spaced papers before December 9...at least one I get to choose the topic for, so I can start it soon. But yeah, ouuuch.
Today I finally got to do something enjoyable...I had to go to L'Institut du Monde Arabe to see the Bonaparte in Egypt exhibit for Art History (at first I had no idea why I was there, but since we just finished studying art during the Revolution, so next up is Napoleon, I suppose). I ended up buying a ticket to the whole museum, since I'd wanted to go anyway. The exhibit was really cool and interesting, it included a lot of effects with light and projection. The actual museum was slightly less interesting but still decent--it went through Arab artifacts and history starting from the days of Carthage and going up to the Ottoman Empire, including everything from Persian rugs to astrolabes. I was so sad that pictures were not allowed because I really wanted to show Robi everything I saw!
So after I finished that I decided to head out to the Latin Quarter to see the insides of some churches I'd wanted to see for awhile, Ste-Sulpice and Ste-Germain-des-Pres. Ste-Sulpice has a lot of Delacroix paintings, and we just finished learning about him in Art History. Apparently it used to be a little-known church that only people who loved Delacroix went to, but ever since The Da Vinci Code was written it's become full of tourists who flock there to see the Meridian line. So yeah, I was in two hemispheres today! It totally had not occurred to me before that I lived in a different hemisphere now...but yeah, the church was pretty. It was built in the 1600s and is the second-largest church in Paris, after Notre-Dame.
Next up was Ste-Germain-des-Pres. There was actually a small concert going on while I was there, a small string orchestra and three opera singers. It was really amazing to listen to, and the church was pretty. It actually dates back to Merovingian times in France, about the year 550, and it's right in the heart of the Latin Quarter.
Then I went to the mall at home to go shopping! always fun. This weekend two of Megan's friends from Richmond are coming to visit! It should be fun to practice showing people around.

Musée Cluny and L'Institut de France

So today was Monday, boo for that. I had class, and then Megan and I decided to go to the Musée National du Moyen-Age, aka the Musée Cluny. It's called that because the private mansion it is housed in is named Cluny. It had a lot of really cool artifacts, including a famous tapestry called the Lady and the Unicorn, or La Dame et la Licorne in French. The paintings and artifacts they had were mostly religious, since that was generally the focus of the Middle Ages. The hôtel particulier itself was just a beautiful building, right in the center of the Latin Quarter. We had a nice afternoon break there before we had to get down to logistics like grocery shopping and planning meals for the week.
After that, I had to go to a visit for Art History at L'Institut de France. L'Institut de France is both a building and an organization. Typical of French bureaucracy, there is a government agency which houses things like artistic institutions and L'Academie Francaise, which controls and regulates the French language. It is generally not open to the public, but the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (school of fine arts) which is associated with the institute (basically where all the really great young artists go) was giving an exhibition on the human body. This apparently has something to do with what we are discussing in class, so we got tickets to the exhibition. First our teacher walked us around the building, which is across the Seine from the Louvre, and showed us where artists used to compete for the Prix du Rome (a prestigious prize for art students which allowed free art study in Rome), which we just learned about in class. Being in a city like Paris is so amazing because you get to see all the practical applications of something like art history. The exhibition itself wasn't thrilling, just a lot of sculptures of naked people. I found the view outside of the Seine at sunset much more interesting.
Anyway, check out the pics! http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarz

Giverny and Brussels

So this weekend has been quite eventful. Friday started out with an IES field trip to Giverny! It was cold when we got there, so my group started out at the American Art museum with a guided tour that discussed American impressionism. It bored me a little because it was early but there was a cool painting of Coney Island! Then we had lunch, and then we got to go see Monet's house and gardens! The house was cool, very prettily decorated, and the gardens were amazing. There were two sections...the one near his house was full of flowers, even in mid-October. (however, it was also full of bees, which was not cool) Then there was an underground tunnel leading under the road to go to the water lily side...the huge water lily pond (there was only one flower left), and weeping willows and huge trees. It was really pretty but not really worth spending a ton of time. It was really great to see where Monet got the inspiration for all his paintings, though! Then when Becky and I got home, we met up with Megan to eat dinner and walk around in the Latin Quarter...we found the two warring philosophers' cafes, Cafe de Deux Magots and Cafe des Flores, and walked past a bunch of churches, and ran into a beggar who meowed at us to ask for change...
Saturday I left for Brussels to meet up with Cristy! Unfortunately I forgot my camera battery and hers was out of battery, which made us both really sad because we saw so many beautiful things. Even though I'd been to Brussels before we hadn't seen a lot of stuff! At first we just walked around a lot and saw the Ste Michel and Ste Gudula Cathedral. Some of the saints' statues were carrying weapons, I have to Wikipedia it and find out why. Then we found the Musee des Beaux-Arts, because I really wanted to see the painting "Death of Marat" by Jacques-Louis David (since we studied it both in high school and in art history). We finally found it and it was so exciting! (after we walked by the Royal Palace and some other really pretty buildings) Then we had some frites, and walked around a lot and saw some more churches, and the Grand-Place and the Manneken-pis (he was dressed up this time!). The sights we saw were so beautiful, I was so sad that I didn't have my camera! We also did a little shopping--we found a lot of really pretty shopping centers, and a store where everything was 10 euros, so we got dresses! We also unsuccessfully searched for cheap haircuts before dinner, but any cheap place was closed. We had dinner at this great Indian/Moroccan/Thai/Lebanese restaurant called Hemispheres, which was delicious, and then went back to the Manneken-Pis and bought massive amounts of chocolate for our friends. Our hotel was so nice--we stayed in a budget hotel that was only slightly more expensive than a hostel, and it was so worth it. It was in a nice area, 15 min walk from the city center, a nice room with a private bathroom and a TV! I'd never watched French TV before so it was so much fun! We had a really great day in Brussels, even though I am still so sad that we were camera-less. Maybe if I come back to Europe someday...
I really realized this weekend how much my French has improved...like everything has finally clicked. Cristy had a lot of trouble with her train ticket in Brussels and then her metro pass in Paris and I was able to talk to a ton of different people in French, even on the phone, and get things sorted out. I watched the French TV and understood everything too. It's really awesome to get the feeling of finally being truly bilingual.

A Very Victor Hugo Day

So this week has been pretty routine as far as school. Monday after class Megan and I went to the Memorial de la Shoah, the Holocaust museum in the Marais. It was small, very recently built (in 2005 when Chirac admitted the Vichy government's responsibility for deporting thousands of Jews in a collaboration with the Germans). The museum was interesting, but what I found more interesting was the amount of security around it. You couldn't leave the museum without stepping into a separate compartment and closing the door leading in before you opened the door going out. There's still a bit of anti-Semitism in France and the museum is afraid of attacks. I learned that there were 76,000 Jews deported from France through the collaborationist government.

As far as school, my history class is getting a little easier and we are also finally finished with introduction and getting into the actual topic of the course, Napoleon III, so that's cool. The other IES students and I are a little confused about the assignments, since we're leaving before the end of the French semester, but we'll figure it out. I had an oral presentation in one of my poli sci classes this week, and I think it went OK. I also had another visit to the Louvre for art history, we talked about the artists David, Ingres, and Delacroix.

Today Megan's last class got cancelled, so after my class ended I went to the Musee Carnavalet, the history of Paris museum, to see the special exhibit on Les Miserables! It was really awesome, they had a timeline of the characters, paintings of Paris at the time the book was written, explanations of the locations used in the book...it was basically really awesome. Then I went to all the parts of the museum that Megan and I apparently totally missed the first time, like the French Revolution and the Gallo-Roman period, it was interesting. Then once Megan got out of class, we went to Victor Hugo's house. Obviously they talked about Les Mis there too, so now I have the desire to reread the book. His house is located in the Place des Vosges (originally named the Place Royale), the oldest square in Paris and the model for all residential squares in Europe. It was built in 1612.

My host parents have the first student they ever hosted staying with them this week, she's 26 and a doctoral student. It's really interesting to have dinner now. I love my host parents in general, we had a really great dinner tonight. They keep lending Megan and me movies that I hope we'll have time to watch! Mostly French movies but some American ones as well.

This weekend should be interesting, Giverny and then Brussels to see Cristy for the first time since CTY!!! More on that the next time I update. By the way, the top photo is L'Institut Catholique and the bottom is Place des Vosges.

Normandy

So this weekend I got to go on a really great IES field trip, a weekend in Normandy.
We got up at 5 am on Friday morning to meet at a bus stop near school to catch our chartered bus. We were in Caen, Normandy by a little after 10 am to see the Memorial de la Paix. It's basically a big museum that focuses on World War II but has exhibits on WWI and the Cold War as well. They had a lot of really interesting stuff, since a lot of it focused on France during WWII, but there was plenty of stuff about the conflicts in Russia and the Pacific as well. Something really special that we got to see was a temporary exhibit on September 11th. It choked me up a few times, because it was so strange to see that kind of thing in a museum...they had fragments of the towers, a crumpled police van, posters of the missing, profiles of the hijackers (something you really don't learn about in the US), even the twisted remains of the sculptures that used to be around the WTC complex. it was really interesting to get a foreign perspective on the attacks. We had lunch and I got to try kir, which is like white wine with anise in it, it was very sweet. We also got to watch two short films about D-Day before we left in the late afternoon.
We then drove the half hour to our hotel in Asnelles-sur-mer. The main building is a castle that is right on the beach...you don't even have to cross the street, there's just a sidewalk and then beach and ocean. So after we put our stuff down, Megan, Becky, Maria, Amy, and I ran around on the beach for an hour or so, drawing stuff in the sand and wading in the water and jumping around and being completely silly. The water was much warmer than it would be at home this time of year, it was actually pleasant to put our feet in (and the weather in general was gorgeous all weekend). When we looked out into the water, we saw these big blocks of concrete and wondered what they were...we found out the next day. After the rising tide threatened to get our stuff wet a few too many times, we decided to go for a walk around the (tiny) town. Normandy in general is beautiful, if quiet. Then we ate dinner and hung out for a little while before bed.

Saturday morning after breakfast, we headed to Arromanches to go see the Musee de Débarquement. It was only about a 15-min drive away, and there we learned that the big concrete blocks we had seen the day before were the remaining bits of the artificial harbors that had been built for the landings on D-Day...the beach we were staying on was one of the D-Day beaches. We got a guided tour of the museum, where a lot of the logistics of the landings and the building of the artificial harbors were explained to us. They were the original idea of Winston Churchill, and they were built in only 8 months. We then got to walk around on the beach, see one of the blocks from the artificial harbors up close (I even got to take a picture of the inside), etc. Then it was off to an oyster tasting that our bus driver brought us to...I tasted one and it pretty much tasted like salt. Not a fan. Then lunch, then we went to the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-mer and Omaha Beach. There are almost 10,000 men (and 6 women) buried there, and that's not even all the people who were victims of the campaign, since some of them are buried in the US. The territory is technically US soil, a gift from the French government. It's a beautiful cemetery, with statues and a chapel and poppies (poppies are the first flowers to grow on a battlefield). Each grave is marked by a white marble cross, in neat rows for acres. We didn't actually go down to Omaha Beach, since we only had an hour, and it takes 10 minutes to get down and 20 minutes to get back up the steep cliffs. But technically it's the same beaches we'd been on all weekend, just slightly farther west. Looking down the cliffs, it's impossible to believe that soldiers climbed them, and that it was even possible for us to win this battle. The contemplative day ended with an amusing incident...the bus stopped working and the ten guys on the trip had to push it while it was in neutral. This resulted in a bang and a cloud of black smoke, which apparently made the bus work again...

Once we got home, Becky, Maria, Megan and I decided it was time to continue our day in America in France. We went to a restaurant in the Marais called Breakfast in America...a fifties-style diner featuring milkshakes, fries, chocolate chip pancakes, and all the other lovely American food we'd missed so much. We ate until we were stuffed, and it was cheap, too! We sat there giggling for about an hour after we'd finished eating...when you're overtired, everything is funny.

The weekend was really interesting, particularly in terms of US-France relations (the topic of one of my classes, sorry, I'm a dork). Yes, the relationship is complicated, but here's a news flash for everyone...65 years later, Normans are still grateful to Americans, who they see as their liberators. Normandy is a beautiful, quiet region of farmland. Even after seeing videos of battles on the very roads we drove on, it's impossible to believe that those actually happened in those tiny, silent hamlets, and on those beautiful beaches. I have a ton of pictures to share :-) the usual link. I also put it on the left side of the blog, above the slideshow.

Cato, the Pigeon Man, and an afternoon of wandering

Well, I've spent the rest of the time since Monday in class...things are going pretty well. In general, although being in class is harder than at Richmond (due to that whole being-in-French thing), I have much less homework (although it's also harder). My class at Cato is the only one that's really stressing me out. So far it is three hours a week of lecture. The Wednesday afternoon is the worst since it is two hours straight. The professor gives us a 2-or-3 minute break in the middle of class and everyone just kind of puts their heads on the desk with exhaustion. He talks twice as fast as I'm used to, and even the French students are having trouble keeping up with the constant flow of information. They're very sympathetic to we 3 American girls, and always ask how we're doing and if we're understanding. The good thing is that the professor does repeat a lot of stuff and rephrase it, so even if I don't get it the first time I usually can get it the second time around. The French students are also really nice about letting us peek at their notes if we didn't get something.
So there's this interesting thing going on at IES. IES is located in an apartment building, people actually live on the upper floors, and IES has renovated the lower floors to act as offices and classrooms. There's a courtyard in the middle of the building, like a lot of French apartment buildings. In this courtyard (I'm assuming he must live there or he wouldn't be able to get in), most nice days, sits a man with a pigeon in a cage. My art history teacher told us he's harmless and very nice, he just sits outside with his lawn chair and his pigeon and his cigar. I just think it's really amusing so I thought I'd share. Megan hates him because she hates pigeons (there are a multitude of them in Paris so that's kind of unfortunate).
Oh, I am pretty sure I no longer look like a tourist, because today alone 3 people asked me for directions, and it has happened a few times this week. More on that later.
Today was Thursday so I went wandering on my own again. I followed Mom's advice and went to the Ile Ste-Louis. It was really pretty there! There are a lot of salons du thé (tearooms) and cute little boutiques. Most notably, there is Berthillon, which is like the premier ice cream of France. I'd heard a lot about it so I went to get myself some ice cream, a really rich chocolate. I ate it on the steps of the Eglise Ste-Louis-en-Ile, and then went inside. They have a really amazing organ and give free concerts occasionally, so I'd love to go sometime.
However, my nice afternoon turned a little weird when I was walking to the bridge to Ile de la Cité. I was walking along the Seine and a man stopped in his car and asked if I could give him directions. I said ok and asked him what he was looking for, staying on the sidewalk (which was a good 10 feet from his car), since I was the only person within about 200 yards. He asked if I spoke Italian and I said no, just French and English. He was waving a map and kept asking me to come closer to the car, but not only am I not dumb to begin with, but IES had warned us about going up to strangers' cars even when they ask for directions, so I just asked him what he was looking for. He finally started asking if I was afraid of him, and I said no, but I was fine where I was. He then proceeded to get angry and said he would go away and ask someone "plus intelligent" (smarter), and I said fine, so he left. I was a little freaked out after that so I called Megan for comfort, haha.
Luckily I was almost to Notre-Dame, so I went to the Crypte Archeologique underneath the square there! The crypte is basically underground foundations from both the 1700s and Gallo-Roman times, and a little museum about the history of Paris. I saw things like city walls from the 3rd century and a sewer from when the Romans ruled Paris, as well as some foundations and basements from 17th-century shops.
I decided to finish up my afternoon by getting some more use out of my Louvre card. So I went to the Louvre and decided to go through the entire section of Egyptian antiquities...it's two floors and pretty large. But it was really interesting! They organized everything into little sections-agriculture, food, music, games, make-up, magic. And then, of course, came the death stuff. An entire room of sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?), and statues galore. Once I got up to the second floor, the rooms started to remind me that the Louvre was, after all, the king's palace before Versailles was built. The rooms actually got more interesting than what was in them, haha. So I took some pictures of the paintings on the ceilings and such.
Tomorrow morning I have to be at the bus to go to Normandy at 6:45, which means getting up around 5 am. Ick. But it should be a really fun weekend! I'll be back Saturday night, presumably with tons of pictures and a long blog entry.
oh, all my pictures from today are on my Picasa account:
http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarz

Le Marais and Pompidou

So the rest of the weekend was nice and quiet! On Saturday Megan and I slept in because we were exhausted, and decided to go walking around Le Marais and do some more of that walking tour I started last week. We got up to the Musee Carnavalet. On the way we saw an Art Nouveau synagogue, along with some other old private mansions and stuff. The Musee Carnavalet is a free museum about the history of Paris. It was actually not that interesting or informative, but it was really pretty! We also found this American grocery store called Thanksgiving! It's run by Americans who live in France, and they import stuff like Kraft macaroni and cheese, Lucky Charms, Tostitos salsa, Philadelphia cream cheese, and other American goods that you just can't find in Paris grocery stores. They're almost all prohibitively expensive, but we did get a good deal on one thing! They have FROZEN BAGELS IMPORTED FROM NEW YORK!! 5 euros for 4 of them! This wasn't a bad price at all, so we bought them and they are delicious and make me very happy. We decided not to go out for Nuit Blanche (everything in Paris stays open really late and there are cultural presentations and stuff) and stayed in to watch Moulin Rouge instead.
Sunday we did homework and walked around the rue de Rivoli near the Louvre a little bit.
Today after class Megan and I went to the Centre Pompidou, the museum of modern art in Paris. I don't really like modern art, but the building is designed to look inside out, so it's really cool. We saw some Picasso and stuff like that, and then some really weird stuff. Modern art is really strange. But that's another museum to cross off the list!

Rouen!

Yesterday Megan, Maria and I took a day trip to Rouen, a city about an hour's train ride from Paris, in Normandy. It is not only the capital of Normandy but the place where Joan of Arc was tried and burned at the stake.
We got there at about 10:30 am, and spent a little time orienting ourselves. The old part of Rouen is pretty small, so it wasn't hard to walk around. The first thing we saw was the Gros-Horloge, or "large clock," a huge and beautiful clock in the middle of a windy Rouennais street. Rouen features a lot of half-timbered houses, painted in bright colors and absolutely gorgeous. So typically French, haha.
Next, we found the Cathédrale de Rouen, which is famous because Monet did several paintings studying effects of light there. It's incredibly beautiful, the architectural detail is really amazing. We spent a little time walking around the cathedral and taking pictures from different sides...the spire is the tallest in France!
We kept walking and then found the Place du Vieux-Marché, where Jeanne d'Arc met her untimely fate. They have a garden at the actual site where she was burned, and the rest of the square is made up of the foundations of the church that was there at the time of her death, and the new, modern church that was built to honor her after she was canonized (the Eglise Jeanne d'Arc). We found a Tex-Mex place to eat lunch, and to hide out from the intermittent rain showers!
After lunch, we walked around a lot, since everything in Rouen closes between 12 and 2. After a lot of walking and another church or two, we found le Musée des Antiquités, a museum of Normandy artifacts dating from Gallo-Roman times all the way to the Renaissance. Normandy is an area that jumped back and forth between British and French control a lot, so that was pretty interesting to see. After that, we walked back to the Place du Vieux-Marché and saw the Musée de Jeanne d'Arc, part artifacts and part wax museum. The wax museum part was pretty funny/creepy, actually. I took lots of pictures, lol. Then we visited our third and final museum. Gustav Flaubert, the writer of Madame Bovary, was born in Rouen. There's a museum partially about his life and partially about medical history, and since Megan had really wanted to see a medical history museum in Lille that had been closed, we decided to go. It was kind of gross...the things on display included a calcified fetus, a skeleton of an 8-months fetus, old medical tools and drugs, childbirth diagrams, and dentistry stuff. But just weird enough to be funny!
Oh, and then we ate macaroons! Macaroons are a very big deal in Normandy but they are very different from home...they're actually ten times better, I think. They aren't coconut, they're more like sugary wafers with all different flavors. They were awesome!
Our train left at 8 so we went searching for a place to eat dinner. However, people in Rouen have very specific hours for food, and at 5:30 we could not find anywhere to eat. We wandered around for quite a while, had a hot chocolate in the train station restaurant, went into a few shops, but still couldn't find anywhere that opened before 7. So we ended up back in the train station restaurant, drinking red wine (to ward off Megan's and my colds) and eating pizza.
I just uploaded all the Rouen pictures online, so check them out! I took a lot of pictures considering we weren't even there 12 hours...
http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarz

School!

So it has been a busy week--I can't believe tomorrow's already Thursday! It's flown by.
Monday I had class, but I woke up Sunday with a bad cold that I think I caught from Becky, so after class Megan and I went to L'Institut Catholique so that I could find out where my classroom was. The only information I had was the address of the building and that a staff member at IES had said it would be on a bulletin board. We found it ok, but there were a lotttt of bulletin boards and none of them seemed to have the history information. And there were a lot of people around me, mostly my age but all speaking French very quickly, which was kind of frightening. I felt about two feet tall and like I had "AMERICAN" written on my forehead. I eventually went into an office and asked for help and they told me where to find the bulletin board, and I was able to locate the classroom as well. Then we went to a French pharmacy so I could get some medicine...(p.s. after two trips since I've been here, I now swear by French pharmacists/medicines, this is the fastest I've ever felt better from a cold)
Tuesday I woke up and felt icky and couldn't believe I had to go take a class with real French people on a day I felt so awful. My second IES class got canceled so I went home and relaxed before heading over to Cato. I found the classroom but was really early so I decided to wait outside. A girl came up to me a few minutes later and asked if I was waiting for the history class, so I said yes and that I wasn't sure whether or not to go in. She must have heard the accent because she asked where I was from, and we talked for a few minutes--she said that there were lots of foreign students at Cato and I shouldn't be nervous. Her name was Caroline and she was from southern France. I was really happy at how well I was able to keep up with the conversation. When class started, there were 12 students, including 4 foreigners (me, another girl from IES, and 2 German students), and the prof is really nice, which made me feel a lot better. I understood everything he said, but I got confused when he handed us a sheet of paper with a list of about 50 books on it and said "pick whichever of these you want to read, I starred a few that are particularly helpful." Basically we come to class twice a week (one lecture, one discussion) and then read whatever we want on the subject on our own. I'm still really confused about how much we are expected to read but I guess I'll figure it out.
After I got home, Megan and I had to leave right away because one of the chancellors from Richmond was taking all the Richmond students in Paris out to dinner (he was president of UR in the 80s and 90s, he and his wife love Paris and they come every year). We went to a really fancy restaurant near the Eiffel Tower, and we all had three-course meals and wine. I had chocolate souffle for the first time, which was delicious! It was really nice of him. We got back really late, though.
Today I had the first lecture meeting of my Cato class, in addition to two IES ones. But Becky joined my class, which is awesome! But yeah, 2 hours of being talked at in a foreign language is kind of scary. He were mostly talking about the Congress of Vienna and the immediate aftereffects so I was glad I knew a little bit about that from Intro to IR at home. I got most of the stuff from the lecture, and the stuff I didn't I Wikipediaed. I have to start keeping my ears open for a topic for the 10-page single spaced paper I have to write (in French) at the end of the semester...we can choose any topic we want that relates to the period and write about it.
After class Megan met me at the Louvre and we made the quickest visit ever (I had to make an independent visit to see 18th-century French paintings for art history). Hence the above photo.
Oh, I would also like to observe that the people who drive the 1 train on the Paris metro should all have their licenses revoked because they are obviously on some sort of drugs.
So I put all my pictures on Picasa (I think I'll probably run out of space before the end of the semester but for now it works). Here's the link to my "public page":
http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarz