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

I've climbed a lot of stairs in the past two days...

Yesterday Megan and I decided to take a trip to the northern part of Paris...first stop, the Opéra Garnier, which is the place that Phantom of the Opera is based on. I went there the last time I was in Paris, it's absolutely gorgeous because they just finished restoring it a few years ago. There really is a gigantic chandelier, and a Box 5, for those of you who have seen Phantom. And it was pretty cool for Megan and me because the lyre, one of the symbols of Alpha Chi, is a "prominent feature of decoration". We tried to get a picture with one but they were all very high up on the walls...sad. We were unsuccessful in our search for the Phantom, but we did see some very pretty dancing costumes!
Next, we headed to Montmartre. We hiked up the high, high hill (after stopping for some souvenir shopping-I bought scarves! yay!), in the process skillfully avoiding "souvenir sellers" aka potential pickpocket (at IES they told us about a trick they will use, they'll show you a toy that traps your fingers together while they steal your wallet...someone actually approached us with it but we knew better). Eventually we made it to Sacré-Coeur, where there were street performers abounding, from living statues to a guy doing tricks with a soccer ball to a flutist. We walked around the church, then decided to climb the 300 steps to the top. I don't know why I thought doing it the second time would be better than the first time I did it, but never again, lol. 300 tiny windy spiral steps. The view is really nice though--it's much more enjoyable to see Paris from above now that I can identify stuff. So we walked around a bit more, I showed Megan some of the things I saw on my guided tour, and somehow we ended up taking a realllllly sketchy metro station to get to dinner but luckily all my stuff survived.
We went to the quartier Latin for dinner, and for 12 euros got a great 3-course meal (I was STUFFED) afterwards. I chose to try escargots for the first course (figuring I had nothing to lose since I was already saving money by choosing the prix fixe menu). They handed me six snails in the shells and two strange tools. So eventually I figured out how to eat them, and they were so good (once I got over how weird they looked). They were in a garlic and butter sauce, and they were amazing. The other two courses were equally great and we left completely stuffed to go home and watch a movie (a documentary about Marie Antoinette that did not have subtitles, but I think we understood most of it).
Today we woke up and met our friend Amy in the Bois du Vincennes (the woods on the eastern side of Paris) to have a picnic lunch of cheese, bread, and Nutella. It was pretty yummy and it's been gorgeous weather the entire weekend so it was nice. Then we got back on the metro and went to the Château de Vincennes, a castle that I think was built by Charles V and then eventually also used by Louis XIV, and was recently restored. We wandered around the donjon, or keep, and walked around a bit. It was pretty cool. More windy stairs though!!
So now we're at home relaxing before another week of class begins!
Oh, I had my first two dreams in French this weekend! Apparently that's a good sign when you're learning a language.

photo album links:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053167&l=c788e&id=15805278
(album with Musee de l'Armee, also includes some opera pics)
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053217&l=aac3c&id=15805278
(opera and Montmartre)
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053264&l=dbcd7&id=15805278
(ch. de Vincennes)

Hanging out with Napoleon

So today Megan and I slept late, which is always really nice. I don't know if it's spending so much time on the metro or always doing stuff or being in a city or what, but I am always so tired here. Maybe it's my really comfy bed. But yeah, we got up late, and I found a Thai restaurant in my guidebook that was near the Place de Châtelet. It was cheap and really yummy! We have decided that going out to lunch is a better idea than going out to dinner, it's cheaper. It made me miss Thai Diner in Richmond a little. But yeah, it was awesome. Really good spring rolls.
After that we took the metro to Les Invalides, where Napoleon is buried, and spent the afternoon there. It was actually built because Louis XIV wanted a hospital for wounded soldiers. The first stop was the Eglise St-Louis, because the veterans needed a chapel to go to with their king, but they needed separate entrances, of course. The church was really pretty. Then there is the Eglise du Dôme, where Napoleon's tomb is. His coffin is pretty huge, it's actually a series of 6 coffins, one inside the other. His son and some other family members are also buried there. Lots of statues and prettiness. It was pretty cool. I always kind of thought of Napoleon as a bad historical figure, but the French love him, I think? I'm still not really sure about that. But there's a quote of his plastered everywhere, the English translation is "I want my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine where I can be near the people of Paris that I have loved so much" or something similar.
So our entrance ticket also bought us admission to the Musée de l'Armée. It was a museum of war and army stuff (obvi) that started from the Napoleonic Wars but focused mostly on World Wars I and II. You would really like it, Dad, you guys should go when you come visit. It was sort of interesting but I have a feeling Robi or Dad would have appreciated it more, haha. I was more amused by all the different colored uniforms and the mannequins than anything else. It was informative, though.
Then Megan and I walked around the Seine near le Musée d'Orsay for awhile, before coming home and cooking for the first time! Well, cooking that didn't consist of microwaving a frozen meal from Picard, which is quickly becoming my favorite store, I wish they had them at home. We made pasta and sauce, and the jarred sauce I picked out was yummy so yay for that! That plus fresh French bread and a chocolate caramelly dessert we bought at Picard=yummmmm. We then proceeded to be total Americans and watch the season premieres of Grey's and The Office.
Last night was one of our dinners with our host family, which was pretty awesome. Megan and I really look forward to dinners with them even though they last forever, since they are just so enjoyable. They just found out they are going to be grandparents for the first time and they are so excited! It's so cute. They've been married over 30 years and they are very silly and fun and we have really great conversations with them. Florence is so cute and Paul-Henri is just so informative and always so interested in what we've done for the day. They encourage us to explore so much and are always telling us about museums we should go to or places we should see. Florence actually told us last night that two of her good friends are Becky and Maria's host moms, which is pretty funny! They keep telling us that we are very well-brought up, and very good girls, and that we speak French very well considering the short time we've been here. Our host dad asked us about how we feel we're improving and I said that my comprehension has gotten a lot better (I can understand them when they talk to each other, not just to us, and salespeople have stopped looking at me like I'm an idiot) but there still seems to be a delay with the speaking part. He said that will come in time. I still feel like I learn five new words every day but immediately forget them....marrant means funny, orloge means clock, attaque cerveau is a stroke. And I'm constantly messing up genders of nouns and prepositions, and my accent sucks. Florence tells me when I complain about how hard the accent is that the accent is just for aesthetics, really. She says knowing the vocabulary and the grammar is much more important.

OK, I think I've written enough for now. Here are my Facebook album links from today (which feature not only Napoleon and the museum but Amanda and Megan's Cooking Adventures)
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053166&l=18b1a&id=15805278
and
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053167&l=c788e&id=15805278

More class, Louvre, and solitary exploration

So my first week of class ended 3 1/2 hours ago! Yay! And I came out of it with very little homework. The best part was yesterday...my poli sci professor told me and the other 2 kids who are taking both classes with them that we didn't have to stay for the second class, since we were just discussing the same thing in both classes (a basic intro to French political parties). So we got to leave 1 1/2 hours early, which was sweeeet. Megan and I used the time to go book shopping and relax, because later that night I had to go to the Louvre for my art history class. We walked around and talked about Nicolas Poussin and Charles LeBrun, two French painters, and guilds and academies and lots of stuff. It was cool.
Just a side note about buying books for classes in Paris (and prob all of Europe): A HUGE PAIN. There's no such thing as a university bookstore. You're given the info about your book and then you can go find it on your own...and bookstores don't stock more than a couple copies of each book. There are big chains like FNAC (a combo of Best Buy and Barnes and Noble) and Gibert Jeune, but the book for my history class isn't at either...this is going to be fun. And books in both stores are organized really oddly and it's just very annoying. End culture shock rant here.
Today I had class til 2 again. Art History is interesting, but it's kind of hard to keep up with since I've never taken a class in art history before and I don't really know anything about it. Since all of my friends still had class after I was done, I decided to do what I did on Tues. and pick something to do by myself. This time it was Ste-Chapelle and the Conciergerie, so I hopped on the metro.
Ste-Chapelle is a church built in the mid-1200s to house holy relics. It's actually now contained inside the walls of the Palais de la Justice. I waited on line for 40 minutes to get inside because of the security checkpoint. Once I got inside, it was absolutely gorgeous. The bottom level is all beautifully painted scenes and statues, and the top is breathtaking because it's ALL stained glass. It wasn't very big, so it didn't take very long to explore, but it was beautiful.
Next was the Conciergerie, which is a building along the Seine that looks like a castle, and was used as a jail. It's where Marie Antoinette and Robespierre spent their respective last days. I explored that for awhile, saw Marie Antoinette's chapel and the recreation of her cell, saw reproductions of what other cells were like, etc. Once I got out, I walked around the Seine for awhile, bought some raspberry sorbet, and walked around the Place Châtelet and the Pont Neuf (oldest bridge in Paris) for awhile, and sat in the park where the Tour St-Jacques is.
I think Thursday afternoons are going to be a lot of fun with just me, myself, and I exploring the city :-)

Here's the links to my Facebook albums:
#1: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053144&l=81ba1&id=15805278
#2: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053145&l=73239&id=15805278