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?
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