City Canine

Since it takes me forever to shop for groceries anyway (what with the language difference and products I've never seen), I decided why not make it even longer by walking across the bridge to go to a different Franprix (please don't read that with a French accent, it's funnier that way). I've gone by here on runs but previously failed to notice City Canine! This is pretty much like Dog Services, where my brother works, so I had to take some photos.

City Canine, right next to Franprix!

You can even see the dogs inside - that note on the window asks passers-by not to tap on the glass. I think that white dog was excited to see someone in the window.

Saturday night, Philippe and I got sandwiches for dinner and ate them by the river. When I was in Denmark, Elisabeth and I noticed Pizza Kebab places all over Copenhagen and Helsingborg (Sweden) - Pizza, Kebabs, Falafel, all in one convenient location! Paris has lots of kebab places, but I have only found one that also had pizza. Turns out it's probably best to let them specialize because my falafel sandwich was not as amazing as the last one. For lack of any other photos from the weekend, here are ones from where we ate.

After I took this beauty, a man walking by offered to take one for us...I think he did a better job.

I wish I'd had my camera with me yesterday! My friend Molly and I met up to find the Paris Food Not Bombs group - I'd gotten an e-mail from them about when and where they were meeting but still no luck finding them! I e mailed back asking about the next meeting and will probably ask for a phone number so we can finally track them down. When we quit the search, it was only 1:30, so we hopped back on the metro and headed to the Musee D'Orsay, which has works by the likes of Rodin, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and van Gogh. We ran into her roommate there, who got in for free by explaining that although she is not a student from an EU nation, she's a student with a French visa. Why didn't we try that? The museum was well worth our 5.50 euro and a reasonable enough size for us to wander through the whole thing in one afternoon. Granted, we did walk through the "Art Nouveau" aka random furniture collection pretty quickly.

Louvre pt 2

After our failed attempt to take advantage of the Louvre's extended hours on Wednesday, in true nerd form, Philippe and I spent our friday evening at the museum. It looks so pretty lit up at night!

We spent most of our time in the Egyptian collection, which was super cool. They have so many artifacts, from everyday life pieces like jewelry, those things they used to prop their head up when sleeping, and all sorts of jugs and boxes to paintings and sculptures and of course, mummies. Lots of mummies. Mummy cats. Little baby mummy cat. Mummy people. Unwrapped mummy alligator. And lots of sarcophagi.

They liked gold. I'm wearing gold. This is pretty historically accurate.

We found some opportunities for silly pictures.

As you can see here, the building itself would be pretty amazing even if they didn't put anything else in it.

After seeing all things Egypt-related, we looked at some famous art like the Mona Lisa, Liberty Leading the People, Oath of Horatii, and a room of shiny things to make up for the fact that the crown jewels are not on display for the public. There were a few actual jewel-like pieces though, like, oh say, Napoleon I's crown (on the right). And for my Danish best friend, the piece on the bottom right has something to do with the Danish Order of the Elephant.

Montmartre + Le Marais

My dad just reminded me that I haven't updated the blog in a while, hopefully because I'm having too much fun. Unfortunately, it's more like the terrible combination of having too much fun AND having to study! Shouldn't study abroad just be about having fun? I had a test in my phonetics class today, my second test in the main (10 credit) course is tomorrow, and I have to turn in the final version of a composition Monday! It's not really that much work, tests just make me nervous so I study a lot.

On Sunday, a friend from class and I put my Paris Walks book to use and explored Montmartre. The guidebook doesn't include directions, just maps, and twice friendly locals stopped to help as we looked down at the book and up at street signs with confused expressions on our faces. We walked past the same crossing guard at least 5 times towards the end of the tour. Another detour occurred when we were so distracted by the ice cream we bought that it took a minute before we realized we hadn't consulted the map before wandering down the street. The scavenger hunt nature of our tour only added to the adventure!

It's hard to see them, but there are two musicians performing on the steps of Sacre-Coeur, performing American hits from the '90s. The book said this is the second most popular tourist site in the city; we had to fight our way up the stairs and move through the church at a slow crawl because it was so crowded.

The climb to the top was worth it for the view of the city.

I had to take a picture of this statue of St. Denis after we read about him in my book, "brought here by Roman soldiers to be executed at the Hilltop Temple of Mercury. Too exhausted to complete the climb, the soldiers decapitated him halfway up the hill, whereupon Denis picked up his severed head and staggered on for another 4 miles stopping only to wash it in a nearby fountain." (If you can't tell in the photo, he's holding his head)

My book didn't include the Moulin Rouge, but luckily Molly brought a good map with her, so we found it at the end of our tour.

Other notable activities since my last update include my discovery of the vintage stores and another attempted visit to the Louvre. I did some shopping in the Chatelet area but found that a lot of the small stores outside of the mall carry some of the exact same items that only come the vague sizes of small, medium and large. It's pretty cold by the time classes finish and I only have one jacket here (a red one at that-it doesn't even match everything!), but I returned from Chatelet empty-handed. I think the concept of thrift stores is widely unknown to most Parisians, but thankfully, le Marais has at least three! Although, I think they are "vintage," aimed at the styles of yesteryear, rather than simply secondhand. I'm not sure I'll find many actual clothes at any, but they all had a lot of (modern/normal) jackets and I found one for only 10 euro. I think I'll keep an eye on those stores, even on a tight budget, how could I come home from a semester in Paris without any new additions to my wardrobe?

I went from the Marais to the Louvre to meet Philippe for dinner and an evening at the Louvre (open til 10 wednesday and friday!), but our quest of inexpensive eats led us astray and by the time we finished dinner around Chatelet, it was time for me to go home and study. But we're tentatively planning on making tomorrow night a Louvre night...

And as a preview of what's to come, I now have a ticket to see one of my favorite bands, the Mountain Goats, play here in mid-October AND a plane ticket to meet up with my best friend in Amsterdam! I hear wonderful things about biking in that city...

Classes start

Classes started Monday and I found out I made it into the advanced level (I tricked them!), which is a French literature course and will hopefully count as such at W&M (language courses won't count for me, but literature and culture will). That course is 2 hours a day and I'm also in three lectures - french literature, art history, and class that appears to be on francophone studies. For the first month, we also have 1 hour a day of phonetics.

The class locations are sooo annoying! Since this is the Sorbonne's program for foreign students, we aren't actually at the Sorbonne, which I luckily already knew or else that would be a real bummer. On lecture days, I start with a lecture at noon (until 1), then have phonetics 1:30-2:30 and the 2 hour class from 3-5. The catch is, the phonetics class is in a different building and metro stations around the first building are all 5-10 minutes away. The first lecture day, a few classmates and I walked to phonetics and got there 10 minutes late...then we returned by metro and were five minutes late. Today we walked both ways and made it on time! So even with two half hour "breaks," we're still busy the whole time. Next, we're going to try the bus...

But even if we aren't in the Sorbonne, there is no lack of historic buildings and I walk past the Pantheon a few times a day (sometimes dodging tourists).



And the trees in the back there are part of the Jardin de Luxembourg, which is really pretty. We actually cut through there to get between buildings (this was taken from the Pantheon, I would turn to the left to get to class). The tiny line between the trees is the Eiffel Tower.

So far homework isn't bad - the only class with real homework is the grammar/literature one because the lecture professors don't care what you do. For the literature lecture, he gave us a list of books we might want to read; he'll lecture on 19th and 20th century French literature and if we want to read on our own, we should (and I will, because there's an exam at the end which I don't think you can do well on without independent work). Since the homework doesn't take all night, Philippe and I found a new hangout - along the banks of the river. We found an inexpensive Lebanese take-out place near my classes one night then discovered the local picnic spot by Ile de la Cite with stairs that lead closer to the water.


Here's our view from where we sat and the photo below shows the tour boats that went by regularly, with their blinding lights.

Louvre, Pt I

Classes haven't even started and I'm already slowing down with the posts. That means I'm keeping busy though!
Anyway, here are some photos from my first venture inside the Louvre - I went to the courtyard years ago with Elisabeth's family and even though Philippe and I went in this time, we weren't there for long, hence the Pt I title because I'm sure I'll be back. There seem to be lots of loopholes to get in for free - my Sorbonne student ID alone was not enough, but that with my driver's license was...whereas Philippe's French passport worked for him.
We went to the sculpture section and saw busts of French royals, big statues that were in front of the Louvre when it was a palace, and Mesopotamian work, including the Code of Hammurabi.

Unfortunately, the Louvre doesn't have as many opportunities for funny photos as the Danish National Museum, so here is Philippe looking at art...so exciting!

I took the photos above and below in the same room, I think they were Egyptian.

I also made some new friends at Philippe's apartment - his two dogs! This one is Max. They're so much fun.

Versailles

Carrying on with our adventures, Philippe and I went to Ile de la Cite and Il St Louis last night, visited Notre Dame, then wandered around the Latin Quarter.

I took this on the bridge to Il St Louis (I think), and you can see Notre Dame in the background.

We went in and it was so eerie! They were playing a film, which seemed to be about the history of the church, so it was really dark with a few lights around statues.

This morning, I went on a run at le Parc Andre Citroen and found another one nearby too. I think it's time to find another park though, before I start getting bored! By the time I got back, Philippe was almost ready to go to Versailles, so I met him at a metro station and we began another journey. Our Navigo passes technically don't cover the whole trip, but the station at Versailles is undergoing construction and not making you re-swipe as you leave, perfect! We spent at least three hours there and were pretty exhausted by the time we got back on the train.

Philippe just so happens to know everything pertaining to French history, especially Versailles, and is the perfect travel companion. I learned so many little things today (did you know that the bunnies at the farm are retired show-bunnies? Or that Marie Antoinette distributed extra food grown at Versailles to the poor?), I could point at any random thing and ask a question and he'd have an answer. I was pretty jealous of the people riding around on bikes, that would be so much fun. However, I was not jealous of the people who made use of the golf carts for rent, because that is just lazy.

From right inside the entrance. Oh, by the way, we didn't actually go in. Philippe got in for free as a European, and when I showed the guard my Sorbonne student ID, he told me you have to be an art history student. How do they check that? I think I am even taking an art history course, but we decided to just do the gardens instead (but at another building when Philippe told the guy I'm studying art history, he passed it off as if it didn't matter...).

So many fountains and lakes! And gardens, at that.

Evidently there weren't originally donkeys there, but if they add random modern art, such as fountain centerpieces made of sprinkler heads and colorful hoses, why not add some donkeys for good measure? I think the donkeys were cooler anyway.

Sooo, Marie Antoinette had a cave built to see people approaching the grounds, I believe. There's a tiny hole there that I'm looking through.

And there's Philippe outside! Taking this was awkward because other visitors came into the cave as I was giving him directions on where to stand; I think they were thrown off when they walked in and heard, "Step forward a bit!"

After such a long day, watching French television with Carina was a perfect way to relax. Although there might be easier things for me to understand than mystery dramas!

Registration + Free Time

Until yesterday, I was only a pre-registered for classes, but I am now a legit student of the Course de Civilisation Francaise de La Sorbonne and have a student ID to prove it. I also have a month-long metro pass and a cell phone, so official. I took a placement test today - the majority of it was written, which was easy, but the oral part was not so great. I spent a lot of my time yesterday studying grammar (which paid off!) and now have until the 7th to amuse myself in Paris without any commitments.

There's a metro station right around the corner from where I'm staying, but the line does a loop, so it's faster to take that one when I'm going out but stop at the one before it when I'm coming back - plus I get to walk across the bridge and see this.

Here's a photo of my host sister and me - she's so much fun!

During my first full day here, Philippe and I walked around the city a bit. First stop, Eiffel Tower.

There are about a million cannon at Les Invalides, Philippe said they were maybe captured in battles. This one had dragons on it - best cannon ever.

Our last stop was the gardens at the Rodin Musem, here you can see Le Penseur with Les Invalides in the background.