Highlights from the last few weeks

Hello all, sorry about the delay in posting, with a full schedule of classes in swing and IES excursions starting time has been more limited. Although in exciting news for all of you back in the States, I figured out how to change everything back into English on the blog page! Since there's a lot to update, I'm going to do my best to organize as logically as possible, but with my penchant for ramblings we'll see how that goes...

Weekend adventures the 22 and 23-

-Friday: Went to a famous teahouse in le Marais, Mariages Freres, for afternoon tea with a couple friends. It was very cool, the walls are lined with hundreds of varieties of teas, all in tins. I had orange-cinnamon, and it was delicious. Then we walked around for a while, ended up at Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris built by Henri IV. I'll have to go back sometime to see Victor Hugo's house, which is there. I headed home for dinner with my host family- I don't usually eat with them on Fridays, but they were leaving on vacation for a week so we did an extra dinner. It was fun, my host dad was home and I almost never see him so that was nice. Afterwards Louise taught me how to take care of her pet mouse, Pistachio, and then I played twister with her. Twister was absolutely hilarious- it's one game where the language barrier doesn't matter whatsoever. Then I met up with an Oxy pal and his host brother Tybault (sp?) to see a movie. It was great to have an evening out speaking only French, normally I'm with American students so that doesn't really happen. We saw Juno, which I'd seen in the states, and the French subtitles were terrible- although I can see how it would be a difficult movie to translate. Afterwards Tybault commented on the fact that we as anglophones had been laughing a lot, but in French the movie wasn't funny at all- heartwarming and charming, but not funny. It was an interesting reflection on language, and translation, and the nuances that go along with it.
-Saturday: Took one of my CityWalks cards and saw the Palais Royal, which was lovely. Then that evening I met up with a friend and we went to see a play- although we were terrified we wouldn't understand much of it. Actually, we understood just about all of it, except for the parts you weren't supposed to understand (it was theater of the absurd). It was a great experience because it was one of my favorite writers, Eugene Ionesco, and although I've read his work I've never seen it on stage. It was his first play, La Cantatrice Chauve, (The Bald Soprano), and I loved it- phenomenally acted I thought. What was cool was it was playing at this tiny little theater- I couldn't believe how small!- where it's been playing for the past 40 years, and this version is actually a revival of the original by the director, Nicolas Bataille, who originally staged the play when it came out in 1950. So my first foray into actually French French theater was a success, and there's another Ionesco play at the same venue that I'll probably see soon. After that we met up with another friend and grabbed dinner, then some of the best gelato ever- nutella flavored.

The week of the 25-
-Host family: this pas week my host family was skiing for their winter vacation, they got back today. Which meant that I had the apartment, and more importantly the kitchen, to myself to use without being in the way. I've noticed that my host mom makes most of our meals using simple ingredients, but it's delicious because everything is fresh here. So I tried to do my own French style meals, simple but fresh. I bought my first baguette, as well as supplies from the fruit, cheese, and pasta stands, and had some nice simple meals, my favorite of which was toasted brie and apples on a baguette.
-Classes: still busy, work picking up a bit. That's all I have to say about that.
-Tutorial: I have a paper due soon in my Sorbonne class, and for outside classes you can arrange through IES to do a tutorial with a French doctorate student in your field. My tutor is very nice, and extremely helpful. French composition forms are much more complicated- there are several specific types that adhere to strict guidelines, so it's nice to have someone making sure I'm writing a commentaire compose and not an explication du texte.
-RestoU adventures and our architect friends: Tuesday night I went with a friend from IES to the Porte Royale restoU (student cafeteria), which we'd heard was very good. We ended up very confused though, because the items on the menu didn't seem to be there. I got beef, which was pretty good, and she got... well. We thought it was eggplant, but it was definitely not eggplant. Most of our meal was spent trying to identify her mystery dish, and laughing uncontrollably about it. Finally this gentleman seated next to us leaned over and told us it was "blood." We've since discovered it was blood pudding or blood sausage- I've definitely never seen that in the MP at Oxy. RestoU's are nice because you can stay as long as you want- at a nomral restaurant you would have to keep paying for coffees or something every half hour/hour or so to continue "renting" the table. So we were there for quite a while, chitchatting away in rapid English, and eventually one of the French students sitting next to us leaned over and asked if we were American. We said yes, and he replied that that was a relief, because our English was so fast that he couldn't follow it at all and he was feeling discouraged about his English skills. We laughed and said that we had just been saying how we feel like that around French students, and soon his two friends were in on the conversation as well. They were very nice- all architect students, from I believe Algeria. One was studying architectural sociology, urban planning and development and such, one was studying feng shui architecture and was a singer in a "metal" band, and one was shy. It was nice to have someone be so patient with our French- they all speak Arabic and French fluently but are more limited in English so I think they related a bit. They eat there every night, so we may bump into them again- although unfortunately Chelsea and I couldn't understand any of their names!
-Thursday falafel day: Often on Thursday nights we end up at L'As du Falafel, the amazing falafel place in the Jewish quarter. It's a pretty good deal when a good number of us go because then the table can share a couple orders of fries, and it's just so delicious! Afterwards we went back to Chelsea and Lauren's homestay in Le Marais- it's adorable! It's all purple and small and cute, decorated by their interior designer host father. The building they live in is the same as in the Maggie Gyllenhal vignette from Paris, Je T'aime, if anyone's seen it. There were about six of us there, and we played a hilarious game- simple but fun. Everyone has a stack of paper, as many pieces as there are people, and you write a phrase, quote, word, name- anything- on the first one. Then you pass it to the right, and that person looks at it, puts it on the bottom of the stack, and has to try to draw it. They then pass there drawing to the right, and the next person looks at it, puts it on the bottom, and has to write what they think it is. So on and so forth, until it gets back to the person it started with and each person shows the contents of their stack to the circle. Hilarious, and just a nice low-key evening.
-General week sentiments: Busy busy busy. Classes, and the commute, take up a lot of time, as do all the readings/papers for my lit classes. It's a good busy though, I'm enjoying it.

Weekend of the 29/1-
-Centre Pompidou: Friday was officially one of my favorite days in Paris. I met up with a couple friends and we grabbed a simple, French lunch at a brasserie, then met up with another friend at the Centre Pompidou. The Centre Pompidou is, simply put, massively entertaining. It is Paris's modern art museum, famed both for its contents and its decor. I remember learning about it in high school French, and how the architecture is very controversial as it's aggressively modern and built "inside out," with the tubing and piping on the outside. I never truly understood how aggressively modern it could be until I came to Paris- the buildings here are so old and so classically beautiful that there's just nothing as jarring as the first time you stumble upon the Pompidou. So we went in, and made use of our student ID cards to get in for free (hooray!). To get to the museum you take this outdoor tube escalator up over Paris- as always, Paris from above is a phenomenal view. We started at the top floor, and although I'm not usually a huge fan of modern art, there was some really amazing stuff there- I was particularly into the Georges Braque and the Kupka, and we also saw the Matisse, Duchamp, Picasso, and related sections. There's also loads of other cool stuff on that floor that we're saving for another day. Then we proceeded down to the 4th floor, which is the infamously so-modern-it's-bizarre floor. It was so much fun- we saw some crazy stuff. One room had an artist's "self-portrait" that was an apocalyptic bird/horse made out of bones and sticks that was attached to a moving pulley- very horror film, especially with the creaking and groaning noises playing in the room. One room was just full of rolled carpets, to allow one to be both protected and removed from society. There was a giant red plastic rhino, a video of marionettes, an inflatable furniture room... Really just no end to our amusements. There was also the anti form room, that included giant sticks covered in cotton, a rope hanging from the ceiling, and a pile of rocks and hubcaps. I should add that there was some stuff on the floor that was pretty awesome- like the prism room specially designed for the museum where as you move what you see changes, or the artist who had come up with seven childlike uses for war materials. There was also a giant wicker flying monster that has knives and scissors and such impaled in it everywhere- we thought it was odd, but then we read the description. All the implements had been taken from day-to-day security screenings at an airport, and represented a world gone mad- it was cool actually. But then came the day's crowning triumph- the minimalist room. I've seen minimalist art before, so it wouldn't have been more than perhaps a passing chuckle of confusion, until events started to unfold. In the minimalist room there are three blank white canvases on the wall- no they're not optical illusions, they're really blank white canvases. The description informed us that the minimalist movement focused on basic elements, such as color, often with a predominant use of the color white. We were considering this oddly phrased explanation when a guy about our age started contemplating the three white canvasses with intensity. He was really into it- he spent several minutes at each canvas, seemingly not concerned that they were all white. And then came the day's shining moment- after about 5-10 minutes of contemplating white canvasses, he went and contemplated the blank white wall. Yes, I have a picture of him staring intently at the wall. For a very long time. Then he called his girlfriend over and they contemplated it together. It was absolutely priceless.
-Provins: Saturday I went on one of my two IES excursions, to the town of Provins, which is a world heritage site. It's a medieval town, where most of the houses are still in the 13th century style, and it's surrounded by rampart and archery towers. We started out taking a tour of the ramparts and wishing we were archers, then walked around the town. We toured the church- beautiful, I love European churches- and then toured the medieval tower. It was like Bishop's Castle, but for real. And with less crazy. Although there was no dragon, like at Bishop's Castle. Then we had a nice three course lunch at the Table St Jean- hearty, old-fashioned French food, definitely hit the spot. After lunch we took a tour of the town's sous-terrains, which are underground catacombs/quarries. They were so cool- an elaborate series of underground rooms and halls, and a lot of the walls had inscriptions in them from centuries ago. It was only about an hour and a half out of Paris, but it was overwhelmingly rural- so much green. So that was cool, and I enjoyed it.
-Saturday evening: Had dinner with some friends, then headed to the Lizard Lounge for our friend Scott's birthday. So that was very fun, spending time with a great group of people, and just rounding out the weekend nicely.

Today I've just been doing some homework, my family's back so I have dinner with them tonight. Looking forward to this week- universities are on break so I only have IES classes. So tomorrow I don't have class until four, which means I get to spend the day at the Musee d'Orsay, where I haven't been yet- super excited. Next Saturday I'm going to Versailles, so I'm excited about that as well.

I'm going to try to post some pictures on here if I can figure out how, so hopefully that will happen in the next few days. As always I send my love, miss you all!