Lots of visitors

So the family left on Friday, after I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in class. Thursday we went to the Musee d'Orsay and the Cite d'Architecture and Patrimoine (museum of French architecture), and then Kara, one of my sorority sisters, arrived from Spain! We took her out for some nice snails for her first night in France.

In the morning, Kara and I went to say goodbye to the family, and then started out exploring Paris with visiting the graves of Sartre and de Beauvoir (yay for Core), and then the catacombs. So, it may or may not have been raining and I may or may not have slid for about a foot and almost fallen in the catacombs...I'm a klutz, what else is new? Then we spent the rest of the afternoon in the Louvre just wandering, which is a good Louvre strategy, haha.

Yesterday we accomplished a lot! We spent most of the day in the Latin Quarter, and saw Notre Dame, the Ile Ste-Louis, Ste-Chapelle, and the Musee de Cluny. After dinner, we finished the day at the Eiffel Tower, where it was so cold and windy we almost froze/flew off the tower, haha. But we survived. We saw several interesting characters at Notre Dame--and by characters I mean characters, as in dressed up in funny suits. One guy was dressed as the rabbit in the advertisements on the metro and was yelling "Je t'aime, Caroline!" Another was dressed as the Abominable Snowman, and accompanied by a husky, was advertising a ski resort, I think? Oh, and we've also been taking pictures with every Obama ad in Paris.

Today, once we're all ready, we're going to head out to Montmartre and the Marais. Yay for fall break!!

OBAMA!!!

So since Saturday the family and I have done lots of touristy stuff. Sunday we went to the Basilique of Ste-Denis, which is where all the kings and queens of France are buried. Megan and I have been wanting to go there for awhile, but since it's in kind of a sketchy suburb, we didn't want to go alone. It was an amazing trip, the area was not nearly as sketchy as I expected. The basilica was beautiful and it was so cool to see the tombs and monuments to all the French monarchs I've learned about for years! And I survived my trip to the French "banlieues"! One of the cool things we saw there--the preserved heart of Louis XVII, the son of Louis XVI who died at age ten for the crime of being the king's heir after the king was guillotined. After that we ate lunch and went to the Eiffel Tower! The line was incredibly long and it was cold, but it was cool because we got to see the view during both day and night, since it was dusk when we went up!

Monday we went to L'Arc de Triomphe (and climbed 284 steps to the top--cool view though!) then walked down the entirety of the Champs-Elysees, to the tune of Alexa's complaining, and then to the Opera Garnier, which made Alexa happy because I told her it was where the phantom lived. Next, the Galeries Lafayette, already decorated for Christmas, then Notre Dame and the Ile-Ste-Louis. We finished off the day with dessert in my host family's apartment! Everyone got along really well, which was fun.

Yesterday and today I had class, so I just met up with the family for dinner, but yesterday was SO EXCITING! Unfortunately, we don't have a TV and I did have to go to class today, so I didn't stay up all night, but Megan and I did set alarms for 3 am and 5 am to get up and check our computers. When we woke up at 3:15 it was 177-63 Obama, so we woke up again at 5:15 to find out that McCain had just conceded and the race was being called for Obama. I was SO happy. I wore my T-shirt today and was so proud. I felt really, really patriotic for the first time ever. Being in a foreign country, we can sometimes get anti-American sentiment, but today all of France loves America. I am so excited for the next four years!

Halloween in Paris

It's been a busy few days!
On Wednesday and Thursday I had four midterms, three of which went really well! The good part was that I got to leave Art History super early when I finished my midterm, and go wander around Paris for hours! I started at Ste-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the church where Eva Longoria and Tony Parker got married. It's really old, right across from the Louvre, and absolutely gorgeous. I was going to head straight to the Louvre but then I saw a sign saying Ste-Eustache was in walking distance, which I hadn't known, so I went there too. It's gigantic and gorgeous, about 500 years old. Louis XIV received his first communion there, Mozart's mother's funeral was held there, and Richelieu, Madame Pompadour, and Moliere were baptized there. Next to Ste-Eustache was Les Halles (or under it, I suppose). It used to be a big aboveground covered market, and now it's a huuuuge underground mall. I walked around in it a little bit, and got ice cream and took in just how huge it is. It's pretty huge, just for clarification. Next up, I went to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, which my host dad has been recommending for the last two months. It's basically all about interior design and furniture and art from the Middle Ages til now. It was pretty cool to see. Finally, since I'd wanted all along to spend a rainy afternoon in the Louvre, I made visiting the Code of Hammurabi my last stop of the afternoon.

Friday was Halloween, obviously, and Megan, Maria, Hayley, and I went to celebrate! We went to Disneyland Paris, which was having a special Halloween celebration, and basically had the time of our lives running around, acting like little kids, going on rides, eating junk food, and taking pictures with pumpkins and Disney characters. It was so much fun!!!! When we got back to Paris, we tried to go get rush tickets to Edward Scissorhands: the ballet (for real, yes) but it had already started, so we got a Pariscope (a little magazine with all the shows and movies in the city that week) and checked out the movies. We found a showing of the Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D!!! (and in French, which was just amusing) We finished off our Halloween with an amazing movie...after some guy tried to pickpocket me on the metro, but he was unsuccessful.

Today Mom and Dad and Andrew and Alexa arrived! I went to pick them up from the airport, and then we checked in at their hotel and ate lunch. Since it was raining, we decided to go to the Louvre instead of the Eiffel Tower. Poor Alexa was so tired it was hard to keep her focusing on the stuff in the museum, they were all jet-lagged and hadn't slept at all on the plane. So eventually we put her out of her misery and went to dinner and then I sent them to their hotel to go to bed. Then I met up with Megan and Maria and we succeeded in getting rush tickets to Edward Scissorhands this time! It was sooo good. The ballet was choreographed by the creators of Swan Lake, and we paid 15 euro for 3rd-row seats! Gotta love student rush.

Anyway, I'll upload the Disneyland pics soon, so check them out!

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