Weekend
So it's been awhile, I'm sorry. last weekend we were taken away on a lovely trip to the provinces. We had a very comfortable charter bus with a totally awesome bus driver named Hugh. We were fed lots of incredible food and slept in some great hotels. I took some marvelous pictures, and i'll get them up soon, but for now, how bout a day-to-day?
Thursday:
We got up crazy early Thursday morning and took a train to Chartres, where, after getting a cup of coffee to wake us up, we took a tour of the Cathedral, which is magnificent and old, and has a really cool labyrinth in the floor that pilgrims would have to crawl around on their knees. After viewing the Cathedral we went to the first of our wonderful meals, at an adorable french country restaurant all done up in blue and yellow. We then drove to our first hotel - a collection of pretty little cabins in the woods outside the town of Le Mans. After an hour or so of frantic prettifying, we got back on the bus and left for a Medieval Abbey that has since been converted to the seat of government for the department of Sarthe. We had a question-and-answer session and then dinner with a man who is the Director General of the department of Sarthe, and also Vice President of the French Senate. Basically he's like a state governor and a senator at the same time. So as you can imagine, the evening was fascinating and the dinner was REALLY good. How did we get this opportunity, you ask? "Monsieur le President's" son went to the UofC. Undergrad and Masters. Yep. If there was one thing we learned throughout the entire trip, it was that apparently our ridiculously high tuition payments are worth something after all.
Friday:
Friday all day was passed at a Monastery in the town of Sevres, called the Abbaye St. Pierre. They're world-famous as being the preservers of the Gregorian Chants. We went to two religious services - morning mass and vespers, in the afternoon, and had 3 question and answer sessions, two with two different monks and one with a pair of nuns, who had to talk to us from behind a grille because they live a completely cloistered life. I think the day made us all think a lot about religion and about choices that people make. After leaving the monastery we drove through the Loire Valley to our second hotel. This was supposed to be some sort of Youth Hostel, but when we got there it became evident that it was more like a summer camp house, meant for younger children - there were Roald Dahl posters on the walls, and classrooms full of toys and finger paint. The room i shared with 4 other girls wasn't bad, but apparently the rooms our teachers were staying in were terrible, so they decided to find a new hotel for the third night. But that night we still made the best of it, invading one of the classrooms and singing showtunes and pop songs until midnight. (i should point out that we were literally the only people in the building, even the managers weren't there, so we didn't bother anyone.)
Saturday:
We woke up and drove to a medieval town called Loche, which is where Joan of Arc convinced Charles VII to proclaim himself king of France. Loche has both a medieval castle/fortress and an early renaissance royal residence, and we toured both. It was an absolutely beautiful fall day in an absolutely beautiful little town, and it was impossible not to be happy. From Loche we drove to Chinon, which is a wine region and also where Rabelais lived. Leonardo da Vinci, when he lived (and died) in France, had a house near there as well, but according to Sylvie, our head French teacher, "there's nothing to see there." In Chinon we checked into our final hotel, found at the last minute by our inestimable French vamp Program Coordinator Astrid. This was a cute little hotel in the center of the village, built around a courtyard in which the proprietor's adorable small sons were playing. We had 2 free hours to walk around the village, which was nice, especially since by then Malkah and i, in particular, were getting sick of constantly doing things in a huge group. The group reconvened at a cavern for a wine-tasting, which was a lot of fun...i had escargots for the first time - it was good! After we'd enjoyed the wine, a group of us went with our teachers to an "Irish Pub" and sat around talking. It was a lot of fun - our teachers are very cool people.
Sunday:
Sunday we visited Chambourd, one of the most gorgeous castles in the Loire Valley - it was built by Francis I, and may have been partially designed by Leonardo da Vinci. It has this incredibly cool double spiral staircase, among other neat design features. After a VERY special guided tour of the castle (we went into so many rooms with no entrance signs on them!), we had our final lovely meal of the trip, then our final journey with our beloved Hugh, after which Adelle thanked him for his "chauffage" which means heat, (she meant to say "chauffeurage), and finally got on a train and returned to Paris.
And have been here ever since...which has been a long time. I'm a horrible updater. Another weekend has passed since i started this entry. Not that much happened tho...we had a second paper due Friday and have all still been recovering. Celebrated halloween, which was fun. Had today (Monday) off for All Saints Day. But it's a busy week coming up. I'm not sleeping tomorrow night, to watch the elections. Speaking of...VOTE!!!!! (for Kerry, PLEASE!)
Love y'all...i'll try to get more pics up soon.
yay!
Yay! Pictures! Now i'm gonna get back to replenishing my music library by copying Charles' cds, but soon i'll try to post the pictures from Saturday night when we all went out clubbing.
Love y'all
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
This is horrible...it makes me want to cry: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html
School is school, even in Paris
Malheuresement, i seem to have lost my cable for uploading pictures from my camera to my computer. So, while i search for a new one, i'm afraid i won't be able to add any new pictures to the site. Hopefully i'll find one soon. Still, since i should be writing my first paper, i'll take a few minutes to tell you guys about my week.
The two highlights of this week (the things i would have pictures of to post, if i could) were Tuesday afternoon, when Malkah and i walked from the Arc de Triomphe to La Defense, and Wednesday, when we had a "sortie" to Saint-Chappelle.
Alors...Tuesday:
Tuesday afternoon we didn't have french class, so Malkah and i decided to go on a long walk. We took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe, and walked Northwest out into the suburbs to La Defense, a large corporate center filled with modern art, including an arch that is theoretically a modernization of the other arches in Paris (they all line up). I think it's kind of an interesting statement about the French that in the Napoleonic era they built an arch dedicated to triumph, and post WWII they've built one dedicated to defense.
They day was absolutely lovely...we walked up the Avenue Grand Armée, past a flea market selling beautiful but certainly MAD expensive antiques, out into Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of Paris' nice suburbs, as opposed to Paris' inner-city style suburbs. We had a really nice "promenade," not hurrying, but taking our time to inspect shop windows and modern sculptures. Just as we arrived at La Defense clouds started rolling in, and a flash thunderstorm started just as we were ready to catch the metro back to the city. By the time we made it back to the center of paris, the storm had passed. We met Adelle and Sarah in the Latin Quarter, and found a cafe (kinda touristy) on the Place de la Sorbonne to sit and do our homework.
Wednesday we went to Sainte-Chappelle, which was gorgeous. It's a chapel dating to the third century, that used to be the private chapel of the monarchs of France. There's an upper chapel and a lower one, and the upper is known as the "chapel of a thousand windows," because it has stained glass all around that's creates basically an incredibly beautiful glass comic book of the Bible, with a few scenes from early Christian history tossed in for good measure. The only problem with this was that our guide seemed to be tempted to talk us through the entire Bible while we stared up at these windows...luckily after going through Genesis and Exodus he seemed to realize that we didn't have the necessary attention spans, and wrapped it up after hitting just a few more high points.
Wednesday night i stayed up til 5 to watch the debate and um...yeah...Kerry won. Is pretty much what i have to say on that. It seemed to me that even when Bush was presented with a question when he had something good to say, he failed to answer well. (ex. deviating to education on the minimum wage question.) And i was particularly impressed with Kerry's directness in answering the question on homosexuality - given Kerry's tendencies, i would have expected him to give a wishy-washy political answer like Bush's, but instead he came straight out and took a stand - good for him!
Having been up that late Wednesday night, i was too tired last night to do anything other than watch half of Love, Actually with the girls and collapse into bed, but hopefully i can get this paper finished and have some fun this weekend. Guess i should get back to it.
Love y'all
Il pleure dans la ville comme il pleure dans mon coeur...
So our second weekend in Paris was quite lovely. Friday night at the club was fun - lots of dancing to really strange songs, lots of irish people filling the streets on the way home...i watched the debate, and am surprised that they aren't saying that there's a clear winner. Kerry just seemed so much more presidential...or maybe it's just that Kerry actually seemed to HAVE A BRAIN. I don't know, when your political opponent knows your financial holdings better than you do, that's pretty sad.
Saturday I got up (after about 5 hours of sleep), and went to the Centre Pompidou, the museum of contemporary art. With a student of art history card that the University supplies, we get into the permanent collections of most of them museums for free, which is pretty cool. I had a great time walking around the museum and saw some really incredible pieces of art. Their cubist collection is particularly awe-inspiring. I had made plans to meet Adelle and Malkah to shop at 3, so i walked in the rain from the Centre Pompidou to Les Halles, and met the girls to take the train to Printemps Haussman, which is the oldest department store in the world. They were in the midst of their annual sale, and the store was incredibly crowded. Malkah got tired of it after a while and left to find a cafe to do homework, but Adelle and i spent several hours wandering amongst/trying on/buying/wishing we could buy the cool French clothes.
Saturday night i watched the last half of the France-Ireland soccer game. The Irish did surprisingly well...i guess the French really are declining. Later that evening we tried to go to a couple of free clubs on the Champs-Elysees, but Fashion Week begins tomorrow, so all the leaders of the cult of beautiful people in the world are here now, and they were the only people getting into clubs.
Today Malkah and i went to Montmartre and visited the Sacre Coeur before settling into a cafe midway down the hill to do our homework. We had a really lovely and productive afternoon on the North side of Paris. And now i've passed a few hours playing with the computer and should really be doing something else.
Love y'all!
View from Pompidou Centre 4
View from Pompidou Centre 3
View from Pompidou Centre 2
View from Pompidou Centre 1
"Enivrez-vous..."
So it's the weekend, which is beautiful. I may have to make having no class on Friday a priority for the rest of my educational career. Last night, to celebrate the completion of our first week of classes, a VERY large group of us went to a bar, where Paula, who lived here over the summer, is friends with the owner. He's Peruvian, so they play lots of latin music, which is very hip in Paris right now. The bar was too expensive to drink a lot, but we had a great time dancing. We were pretty much the floor show for the rest of the clientele, which consisted of a few Latin American friends of the owner, and a large group of Irish soccer fans in town for tomorrow's World Cup qualifier between Ireland and France. Apparently there are 40,000 Irish people coming to the match...St. Michel was crawling with them last night. The group that were at our bar had extra tickets to the match, and i almost bought them, but by that time we were trying to leave...i regret it a little, i really want to go to a professional football match before i leave.
Today i got up and took the Metro up to the Jardins Luxembourg, a huge beautiful park that surrounds the French Senate building. The Senate meets in this gorgeous old palace that was built by Marie de Medici (wife of Henry IV and mother of Louis XIII) after her husband died. The Jardins are absolutely lovely...i had a great time just walking around, watching all the tourists and all the french people, looking at all the cool statues - there's a small lake in front of the Senate building and it's surrounded by statues of great women in French history...we need something like that in the States! There's a path that goes around the entire circumference of the park that is a favourite of French joggers, and along which are busts of great figures in the arts and men of the Academie. Adam Gopnik has this wonderful line about how the bust of Baudelaire seems to frown kindly down at the joggers as if to say, "Why are you doing that? Stop it, go get drunk!"
I bought lunch at a nearby cafe - a salad, my first green vegetables since the three green beans i forced down on the plane coming here - and returned to the park to eat it by the lake, where i could watch children chasing pigeons and listen to the tourists. One interesting thing...when i returned to the park with my lunch, the gate from which i had left was closed, as were several others near by, and one was open, but had police preventing people from entering. In continuing to walk around the walls of the gardens, i found an open gate, but later i passed many more gendarmes, and four men in suits with walkie-talkies looking very carefully around the statuary. I believe there may have been some concern about the security of the Senate after the bombing of the Indonesian Embassy here this morning. I'm actually rather amazed that this was the only security...if a small bomb went off at one of the embassies in DC, there's no way people would just be able to wander freely around the environs of Capitol Hill. The French attitude, ladies and gentlemen, is called not letting terrorists achieve their objectives.
After lunch i walked around the fence of the Jardins, where there's an exhibit of amazing photographs of China by a french photographer. The French government declared 2004 the "Year of China," and on the occasion of Jacques Chirac's visit to Asia this week, the International Herald Tribune ran a cover story about Europe's new interest in building relations with China, both for the sake of profit and to counterbalance US hegemony. These photographs were just incredible.
When i'd had my fill of them, i crossed the street to a great cafe and sat for about an hour and a half drinking a REALLY strong, really good espresso and reading St. Augustine.
Finally, around 3:30, i started to walk home...it was basically the same route that we took walking home last saturday night, and pretty much a straight shot. I had a great leisurely walk, window shopping and checking out the restaurants as i went, then, when i arrived at the northern border of the Parc Montsourris, the southern border of which is right across the street from the Fondation, i decided to detour through the park. I'd been there before, even sat and done some reading, but i hadn't realized the extent or the beauty of it before. It's pretty incredible, with a lake and waterfalls and all sorts of different gardens. We definitely need more public spaces of that nature in the States.
So on the whole, i had an INCREDIBLE day...now rest, dinner, and then a trip to a gay and lesbian club that Chris has a connection to get us in for only 5 euros, from which i will return, accompanied or not, before 3am, in order to watch the debate, which is being shown in the basement of our building tonight.
So yeah, i've pretty much used up my bandwidth allowance for this month on my photo-hosting site, but i posted four new ones from this week...i'm going to try to create another account with them so that i don't have to wait til November to put up more pictures, but for now, enjoy what i have!
Love y'all!
Medeci Fountain close-up
The statue in the middle wasn't a part of the original Fountain, but was commissioned when Haussman redesigned Paris (the fountain was also moved from it's original location.)
Medeci Fountain 1
This is my new favourite place in Paris. It's a fountain in the Jardins Luxembourg commissioned by Marie de Medeci, and modelled after fountains in Florence. It's incredibly gorgeous and peaceful.
Luxembourg
Looking towards the French Senate at the Jardins Luxembourg...the figure in the red hoody was part of what was clearly a middle school P.E. class running at the gardens. They were in two groups with one group timing/cheering while the others ran, just like we used to have to do.
Cluny
This picture shows one of the places at Cluny where the Medieval architecture of the abby meets the Gallo-Roman architecture of the ancient baths.
Hi
So yeah, we've had classes for 3 days now, and i'm starting to get sick of it. ;-) No, it's just...if you had to read St. Augustine and thought he was boring...he's even MORE boring in French. But we had our first excursion today, which was cool. We went to the Museum of the Middle Ages, which is housed in an old monestery that was built on the site of the old Roman baths, so you can see both all this cool art from the Middle Ages and visit the ruins of the roman bath. I took some cool pictures...they'll be up soon. I don't have a whole lot to talk about, but here's a list:
Top 5 Little things i love about Paris:
1) the fact that the trains on the metro are all named.
2) the way the street signs explain who the streets are named after.
3) the fact that you can eat food on the metro, but they're still not messy.
4) the way people have their little dogs running behind them with no leash and no need to worry that they'll be lost.
5) the community of artists that's taken up residence in the old building near the UofC centre, and are holding out against the ugly modern architecture that dominates the neighbourhood.
6) being able to buy a healthy, portable meal from a sidewalk stand.
I'm sure more will accrue as i stay here, but that's what i got for now.
Love y'all
by the way...
if anyone wants to send me stuff, my address is:
Monica Iyer
15 Boulevard Jourdan
75014 Paris
FRANCE
and if you feel like calling, my number is:
(french country code - i don't know it, look it up!) 01 53 80 6846
ok, love y'all
Pictures! (Part 2)
There we go! All the pics are up and they should be accessible. By the way, it would probably help to go back and look at these from the first ones to the later ones, rather than the way they appear on the site. Bonne Nuit!
Love y'all.
brasserie
The singer at the brasserie at Les Halles. And yes, it's true, EVERYONE smokes, EVERYWHERE.
climbing
Devree and i climbed on this giant stone sculpture of a head and a hand outside of the Eglise (Church) St. Eustace, near Les Halles.
snow 1
So this was taken without the fireworks mode and it kinda focused on Malkah's head, but still, you can see the snow. :-D
snow 2
At Les Halles, for the Nuit Blanche, they had a dance floor with a live band and soap suds blowing like snow...it was really cool...this picture was taken with the "fireworks" mode on my camera.
Paris wedding!
This adorable chinese couple was taking wedding pictures at the Place de la Concorde, looking down the Champs Elysees towards the Arc de Triomphe. The woman's dress was incredible.
Monica B. ;-)
This ice cream stand at the Tuileries was named "Monica B" and being incredibly vain, i just had to take a picture.
Louvre
The Louvre courtyard...it's crazy how awe-inspiring this place is.
Pictures! (Part 1)
Ok, so i got about half the photos from the past couple of days posted before my browser decided it no longer likes my photo program. I'll try to get the rest up later. Last night was fun, but disorganized. We saw some interesting art/music/video installations around Les Halles, spent some time listening/dancing to live music in a brasserie, and then ended up walking home from the Louvre, which was quite a ways, and got us home at about 4:30am. Still, it was a good time. This morning i've been relaxing...walked with Chris (who FINALLY got here late last night) to the boulangerie for brunch, then chatted with him for a while, and since have been playing with the computer, the fruits of which labours are on view here. Enjoy!
Love y'all
Centre Pompidou 1
This street performer at the Centre Pompidou performed these amazing feats of balance. what you see here in this picture was just the beginning.
Centre Pompidou 2
Some guy (tourist? Probably) sketching the fountains at the Centre Pompidou
Centre Pompidou 3
The fountains in the courtyard of the Centre Pompidou
Hotel de Ville 1
The Hotel de Ville (City Hall) of Paris. Malkah, Adelle, Elliott, and Eric are in the foreground at the right of the picture
