Last day

I can't believe that I just finished my exams. I'm back from the IES farewell luncheon and some walking with Megan (we walked around the area near school, went to Trocadero to say goodbye to the Eiffel Tower, and then walked around Neuilly for a bit), and I can't believe that tonight our host parents are taking us out to dinner and then it's all over. What a semester. Even though I'm excited to go home, leaving Paris is making me so unbelievably sad. It's really like another home now. But I found a really great French song about Paris! It's called "Paris, tu m'as pris dans tes bras" (Paris, you have taken me in your arms)

J'allais le long des rues
I went along the streets
Comme un enfant perdu
Like a lost child
J'étais seul, j'avais froid
I was alone, I was cold
Toi, Paris, tu m'as pris dans tes bras
You, Paris, you took me in your arms

Je ne la reverrai pas
I will not see her again
La fille qui m'a souri
The girl who smiled at me
Elle s'est seulement retournée et voilà
She only turned around and voila
Mais dans ses yeux j'ai compris
But in her eyes I understood
Que dans la ville de pierre
That in this city of stone
Où l'on se sent étranger
Where one feels a stranger
Il y a toujours le bonheur dans l'air
There is always happiness in the air
Pour ceux qui veulent s'aimer
For those who want to love it
Et le cœur de la ville
And the heart of the city
A battu sous mes pas
Beat underneath my steps
De Passy à Belleville
From Passy (neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower) to Belleville (in the eastern part)
Toi, Paris, tu m'as pris dans tes bras
You, Paris, you took me in your arms

Le long des Champs Elysées
The length of the Champs Elysees
Les lumiéres qui viennent là
The lights that came there
Quand j'ai croisé les terrasses des cafés
When I crossed the terraces of the cafes
Elles m'ont tendu leurs fauteuils
They gave me their armchairs
Saint-Germain m'a dit bonjour
Saint-Germain (abbey in the Latin Quarter) said hello to me
Rue Saint-Benoît, Rue Dufour
Rue Saint-Benoit, Rue Dufoir
J'ai fait danser pendant toute la nuit
I made dance during the whole night
Les filles les plus jolies
The most beautiful girls
Au petit matin blême
Pale in the early morning
Devant le dernier crème
In front of the last cream
J'ai fermé mes yeux là
I closed my eyes here
Toi, Paris, tu m'as pris dans tes bras
You, Paris, you took me in your arms

Sur les quais de l'île Saint-Louis
On the bridges of the Ile Saint-Louis
Des pêcheurs, des amoreux
The fishermen, the lovers
Je les enviais mais la Seine m'a dit
I envied them, but the Seine said to me
Viens donc t'asseoir avec eux
Come and sit down with them
Je le sais aujourd'hui
I know that today
Nous sommes deux amis
We are two friends
Merci au fond de moi
Thank you from the bottom of me
Toi, Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras
You, Paris, I am well in your arms
Toi, Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras
Toi, Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras
Toi, Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras

back to Richmond?

Today Megan and I got our housing assignment! We are going to be roommates in Richmond in a suite in the Freeman dorm! It seems a lot more real that we're leaving and going back to Richmond now that I know exactly where we'll be living. The study abroad office also sent us an email with re-entry materials, including the date and time for a pizza party, haha.
But it still does not seem quite real that this entire experience is wrapping up. 4 finals down, one more tomorrow morning, then a farewell luncheon. We had our last dinner with our host family in the house tonight. Tomorrow night they are taking us out to dinner, and then Thursday morning we are up at 8 and leaving for the airport by 10. It's really, really strange, to say the least. Our host dad asked us if we'd had a good experience at dinner and when we said yes, he said that it was good, because we did something courageous and we were rewarded.
Paris has just become so normal that I can't believe we're leaving. I know the city better than I know New York...I've memorized the metro map, pretty much, haha.
I am looking forward to getting home but not to a flight that appears to be 8 hrs and 55 minutes long!! boooo. Hopefully the TVs will work.

Finals=reflecting on cultural differences

So I have two finals and two papers down, three finals to go! My poli sci exams today were easy but tomorrow's French grammar and history should be harder.
Some cultural differences to reflect on...
--in France they don't preserve food. At all. Leftovers get left out on the counter or on the stovetop, sometimes in the refrigerator, but without a covering. I think this is due to the freshness of most food here. They don't like to eat preserved things. Food here is much fresher and less artificial, even when Megan and I buy frozen meals at the grocery store they can only be frozen for 3 days.
--although we were told at IES that the French are very private about their homes and their personal spaces, and that guests are rarely invited over, this does not extend to the significant others of children. French teenagers start having sleepovers with significant others at the age of about 16, and it becomes very frequent after that. Megan and I have noticed that our host brother's girlfriend is here a lot, but we figured it was just our family. A girl at IES who has a French boyfriend apparently shared that his mother told her it's very normal in France. Our host brother's girlfriend does everything from shower to do laundry here. Interesting, no?
--bathrooms. The toilet is in a separate room from the shower and sinks. And the showers have handheld shower heads but no hook on top so you have to hold them.
--customer service=NONEXISTENT. example: Megan and I waited for an hour in the post office today.
--smoking breaks...the staff at IES is never there because they are always outside smoking.
--PDA. All I'll say about that...
--Christmas decorations are much more prevalent which is fun!
--possibly more hatred of Arabs than in the US.
That's all I have for now. But this is technically part of my studying for my French exam! (our essay is on cultural differences) Check out new Picasa pics!

One last Parisian weekend

This was our last weekend in Paris, which is sad. :-(
Friday Megan had a class visit, so I decided to wait for her by taking myself out to lunch at Angelina's, one of Paris's most famous tearooms. It is most well-known for its very dark, rich, African hot chocolate, and its millefeuille pastries, and I decided it was time to try the hot chocolate. Going to a cafe or tearoom by yourself is very French, so I took my copy of Orgeuil et Prejuges (Pride and Prejudice) and went out to lunch. I ordered the hot chocolate and a croque-monsieur, and took my time admiring the tearoom and reading my book. The menu said that people like Coco Chanel, Marcel Proust, and some other famous people had eaten there several times. The room itself is absolutely beautiful, and really big. Ornate decorations, a pastry counter, etc. I had a great time people-watching, reading my book, and enjoying my delicious hot chocolate and sandwich. The hot chocolate was just as delicious as its reputation would have you believe. The cafe is on the Rue de Rivoli, in between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, so I decided to walk up to the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysees. I walked from metro Tuileries all the way to George V (about 6 metro stops, or maybe 1 1/2 miles) in about 30-degree weather. Looking at the shops on the Rue de Rivoli and then the market on the Champs-Elysees made it go by fast though, and I felt very Parisian with my tearoom lunch by myself and my walk. Then I went home to warm up and wait for Megan, and later that night we went out to dinner with the rest of our crew, Becky, Hayley, and Maria, at a really good Chinese place in the Latin quarter. Then we met up with Maria's cousin Orlando, and went to Shakespeare and Company (the English bookstore near Notre Dame), before heading home.

Saturday Megan and I decided to explore Chinatown. Yes, Paris has a Chinatown. We checked out my guidebook and went to a restaurant (that actually turned out to not be that good, but it was still interesting to go!), and saw one of the strangest McDonald's I'd ever seen. It was shaped like a Chinese temple and had a take-out window on the side. The highlight of the trip was that we got to take the tram home. After a few hours warming up and getting dry at home, we went out to see some Christmas lights! (even in the rain) We started at the Champs-Elysees to see the lights on those trees and the Ferris wheel at the Place de la Concorde, then went to the Hotel de Ville to see the lights show there, and finished up at Notre Dame to see the big lit Christmas tree. Then we went to our favorite Latin quarter hang-out, Indiana's, for our last Mexican-food-in-Paris, haha.

Today we went to the Louvre for the last time, because our host dad had been telling us we needed to go see Napoleon III's apartments, and I wanted to see some Italian paintings that weren't the Mona Lisa. Not only did we see all of those things (Napoleon III's rooms were beautiful, his interior decorating style is really nice, and full of lyres, yay for Alpha Chi!), but we almost walked into a fight...After pressing the button for an elevator to head up to the Italian paintings, the door immediately opened onto three guys wrestling and yelling "Bouge-toi!!" and "Ne me touche pas!" We walked away really fast so we wouldn't get hit as the noise spread and Louvre workers came running...we still don't really know what happened but we saw one of them walking away in handcuffs about 20 minutes later. Good stuff. After that, we finished up our souvenir shopping, and went looking for some of the chocolatiers that were in this NY Times article that Gabby sent me, but of course they were closed :-( I figured since they were near the Louvre they might not be closed on a Sunday, but ah well.

And now I have no more procrastination methods to avoid studying for my first two finals and finishing the bibliography for my last paper...
Last night/this morning Megan and I were very happy to learn that UR football won the semifinals game against Northern Iowa!!! The championship game is against Montana on Friday night and I am so glad I'll be home to watch it! Even though I hate football it's still exciting that UR is in the championships!
4 days til home...both a sad and happy thought.

No more pencils, no more books...

Well, not quite, but I can dream!
Today was the last day of class! After a long week of classes, last lectures, reviewing for finals, and paper-writing (I am ALMOST done with my 10-page single-spaced paper, and my 5-page 1.5-spaced paper has been done since Monday, luckily), classes are fiiiiiinally over. Plus, we got to fill out evaluations for all our classes, our host families, and the program itself, which is always fun. Oh, and I almost forgot--it snowed this week! When I left French on Tuesday I was greeted by ice falling from the sky, which quickly turned into thick flakes that lasted an hour or two...unfortunately nothing stuck but it was really pretty!!

So I decided to celebrate the end of classes by going to the Grand Palais. It's a big exhibition hall with a glass room at the very end of the Champs-Elysees, that was built for the 1900 World's Fair. Chanel hosts many fashion shows there, Wikipedia just told me. Currently they're showing a very popular exhibition called "Picasso et ses maitres", for which they have stolen many paintings from many large museums--the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, etc. My art history professor advised us to go and even arranged for IES to reimburse us, so I decided to head over there today. However, I couldn't figure out how to buy tickets online, the websites were really confusing and seemingly didn't allow you to buy tickets in December, only for Jan and Feb. Even though my friend Hayley had waited 3 hours when the exhibit first opened, I decided to go. (Before I go on I have to note that the HIGH for today was 35 degrees, and this is not counting wind chill or being in the shade of a large palatial building). The line didn't look too long, so I put on the Les Mis soundtrack and chilled out with my Ipod. After an hour I was just about frozen. (and this is with a trenchcoat, scarf, gloves, and two shirts on) My feet got that painful too-cold-and-immobile-to-circulate feeling. Everyone was complaining and freezing together. But at that point we'd all waited too long to leave, so after an hour and 20 minutes we got let in, finally. It took me the entire half hour I spent inside the exhibition to thaw out (it is BRUTAL out today, there was still a thick frost in the Bois du Boulogne when I left the house at 10 am).

Anyway, enough about the cold. The exhibition itself was really cool. The main focus was Picasso and who he drew his inspiration from. I hate modern art and I'm not really a huge fan of Picasso, but seeing what his cubism was imitating made it a lot easier to understand and sort of like him. And I saw a ton of paintings I studied in art history this semester but that we weren't able to see because they'd been stolen for the exhibit, (I keep thinking of the French word enlever instead of the English word) like Nicolas Poussin's self-portrait, Manet's Olympia, a painting of a woman in a cafe by Degas, etc. There were also a lot of paintings by Goya, Ingres, El Greco, etc. Lots of famous artists, but most of all Picasso. The exhibit was organized into sections like portraits, the blue period, nudes, etc. It was pretty cool! And then I went outside to the Champs-Elysees's Christmas market and bought a Nutella crepe. I only have a week left to eat as many as I can!!!

So as far as work goes: my art history paper (due today), done. My history paper (due Monday), almost done. 5 exams, 3 of which will be easy. I can't believe I'll be home in a week. Well, more accurately, this time in exactly a week I'll be on a plane, but who's counting?

An odoriferous day, to quote my guidebook

an actual Parisian sewer tunnel

Megan did not like the smell...

First off, YAY for the last week of classes! To celebrate, Megan and I did something we have been joking around about doing since we got here. We went to the Musee des Egouts de Paris...aka, the sewer museum. Yes, Paris is the only European city that offers a guided tour of its sewers. It was the most amusing 3 euros/20 minutes I have spent in awhile. The first thing we noticed was the guidebook telling you not to eat in the museum and to wash your hands after finishing your tour. Joy...then the smell hit us. Definitely smelled like a sewer. Other than that, it was pretty interesting and amusing. They had a small exhibit about Les Mis, which was cool. Other than that we were educated about the water cycle and the way water is cleaned, and got to see actual water going through the actual sewer, because yup, that's where we were. Definitely an interesting experience.
Then we made possibly our 4th or 5th trip to the Longchamp boutique before going grocery shopping. We made delicious pasta all'arrabiata! It was almost as amazing as it was in Rome. Love arrabiata sauce.
Anyway, now I'm listening to Christmas music, secure in the ideas that I do not have to go purse shopping for another ten years because now I have two Longchamp bags in different sizes (haha), that my boyfriend can definitely come to Ring Dance, and that I only have to write 3 3/4 more single-spaced pages for my history paper in the next 6 days. Not bad, right?
3 3/4 pages, 5 exams, and 10 days between me and the USA!

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes...

Christmas market at La Defense

Becky, me, Maria, Megan, and the tuba player from the band...

my host mom's nativity!

Yup, I really want to watch Love Actually, but with finals there is no time. This is a sad byproduct of school.
It's been really nice to have a weekend in Paris without either guests or travel plans. It's the first time in ages. Friday Megan and I tried a Moroccan place in the Marais that our professor from Richmond had recommended, Chez Omar. We both ordered chicken couscous, which consisted of a huuuge platter of couscous, two chicken breasts that were marinaded in really yummy spices, and a bowl of vegetables in a spicy broth. It was yummy, not my favorite ethnic cuisine but good. And the waiter really liked us so that was fun. Next on our list was the Musee du Vin. My high school teacher told me about this little wine museum hidden away a few metro stops from the Eiffel Tower in a residential neighborhood. It's a short museum about the history of wine and process of winemaking, and at the end you get a free glass of wine. After seeing a lot of different corkscrews and wine bottles and presses, we got to taste a glass from the southwest of France that was a mix of 5 different kinds of grapes, I don't remember all the kinds but it was pretty good.
That night we had dinner at the French version of Friday's, which is called Hippopotamus (which cracks me up because the French don't pronounce the letter h, so they say it more like "eeeppo"), and I tried New Orleans chicken, which was a nice spicy chicken breast. It's always funny to try "American food" in a French restaurant. Then we met up with Becky, Maria, and Maria's cousin Orlando at les Feeries d'Auteil, a Christmas fair. What was special about this one is the "Mille et Une Creches", or 1001 nativities. There aren't really 1001, but there are a lot! My host mom teaches at a school nearby, and each class in the school had to make a nativity scene. Florence has been going crazy working on her class's creche, because it's a contest and she really wants to win. So we finally got to see the fruits of all her labors, and vote for it, too! But in addition, we got to: see firebreathers, hear a French gospel choir, try hot spiced wine (not a fan of it, but everyone else liked it), see nativities made in gold and silver all the way from Poland, see all the other nativity scenes, shop in craft stores, hang out with Maria's fun cousin, listen to a band that kept following us around, meet up with my host parents, and buy chocolate-covered marshmallows! mmm. My host dad was so cute, he kept following us around to check in on us and then came in when they got home to make sure we had gotten home OK.
Saturday Megan and I went out to lunch with our friend Amy, then spent most of the day doing work, since we have a lot of papers to write, and catching up on American TV. I can't believe that I'm only going to have to watch 1 more episode of Grey's on a semi-legal website.
Today was fun too! Megan, Becky, and I went to a Christmas market at La Defense, which was really fun. It was a gigantic craft fair, tons of stands and food everywhere, lots of shopping. I might go back there with a list of stuff I still need to get for people. It was very Christmasy and fun. And now unfortunately, back to the grind of papers....
I can't believe I'll be home in 11 days. I'm stocking up on Nutella crepes because I'll really miss them, haha. It's hard to believe I'll be home soon because I just finished a paper and still have one long paper and 5 exams to go. It seems like there's a lot to do before we leave!

Noël

post office box to write to Santa

Rue Daguerre shops

near my house in Neuilly

tree in front of Notre Dame

mall at La Defense

So even with the stories of homeless people freezing to death in the Bois de Vincennes, and Wal-Mart workers being trampled to death on Black Friday, it's still Christmas in Paris!

December?!

So apparently I woke up yesterday morning and it was December? Megan bought both of us Advent calendars from Monoprix a month ago and now we were finally able to open them! Yummy chocolates to count down the days of Advent.
There are Christmas decorations all around Paris--lights on the Champs-Elysees and several other streets, a huge Christmas tree in front of Notre Dame, Christmas trees in lights in front of most of the stores. Florence, my host mom, is preparing for a holiday pageant at her school, where each class makes a nativity and there's a contest for the best one, along with a craft fair where all the proceeds go to charity. I think we're going on Friday. I also saw pigeons kissing at my French university the other day...even pigeons have Christmas spirit?
Unfortunately the end of the semester always means lots of work! Several papers and presentations and stuff like that. Fun, fun, and more fun. We have another week and a half of class and then three days of exams, then they kick us out of Paris.
Megan and I are currently figuring out how we can smuggle our host parents out of France and into America in our luggage. We seriously want to take them home....we totally lucked out with our host parents. They're so funny and nice. Last night dinner turned into a quiz show on European capitals, thanks to Paul-Henri. He was impressed with our knowledge.
I don't really have much else to say other than that, so hope everything in the US is going well!