A Day in Bayeux

Things last week were so busy, I had almost no time to myself except occasionally when I was working/doing homework, so on Thursday night I decided to book tickets to Normandy for the weekend! It was entirely spur of the moment, but the price wasn't too bad. I booked an "aller-retour" to Caen, going up on Saturday and coming back Sunday.

My train was at 7:45 on Saturday morning, which was a little early, but I dozed on the train ride (the ride itself was really beautiful). I decided that I wanted to spend the day in Bayeux, which is only another 15 minutes by train from Caen, so that was easy to do. 

The cathedral there is really impressive. Here it is from the outside:

The original structure was built in the XIth century, but has mostly been renovated. You can still see some of the original Norman details, though; look at the little carvings on either side of the arch.
Bayeux is particularly famous for the tapestry there, also from the XIth century. It tells the story of the Battle of Hastings. If you walk along it fairly quickly, it's kind of like watching a stitched film of the battle!

I think one of the most striking things about the tapestry was the depiction of war. If you look at the bottom of this panel here, you can see the dead and dismembered bodies that have fallen in battle. Then went on for so long in the tapestry. It is amazing to me that after a millenium (okay, more than a millenium) of the horrors of war, that we are still waging them. Anyway...
This part is also really cool. That is Haley's comet up at the top, which they took as a bad omen, apparently.
The architecture was really different from Paris (of course), and it was nice to see something a little different. 
There were also trees! And grass! That is mostly why I left Paris, actually. I wanted to walk on grass for a little while. It doesn't take too much to make me happy, clearly. 

And, being in Normandy, I had to find cows, of course! This ones were right next to town, and the rain didn't seem to bother them too much. I'm sure they're used to it, living up there.
When the rain let up, I got a very nice surprise! This huge rainbow came arching across the sky and the sun came out, just as I was walking back to the train station (I decided to go home on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday, because while beautiful, there is not too too much to do in Bayeux). The scene was so astoundingly beautiful, I was nearly crying. Enjoy!

And I'm back!

I've been so bad about writing in this blog, but things have been so crazy. I begin my internship at 10 AM from Monday to Thursday, and have classes until 5 PM each day, except Wednesdays, when I go until 7:15, and Friday mornings I begin at 9 (with a rather incompetant professor, I might add). On top of that I work a few evenings a week, and I try to balance all of that with some semblance of a social life. I manage, but am often very tired, and blogging kind of gets put on the back burner.

But anyway, things are mostly good. There have been a few less-than-ideal things that have happened with my internship, but I think it would be inappropriate to go into detail since I must not forget this is a public space. Nothing unmanagable, though, and I think soon I will be working on some new and more current projects rather than just doing translations. 

I try to go to a museum each weekend, and here are some pictures of the Cluny/Middle Ages Museum! I went her the weekend before last, because I'd had a pretty so-so weekend (which included seeing the last metro pull out of the station and then spending an hour and a half on the Noctilien). And apparently there is nothing quite like hundreds of representations of Christ crucified to cheer me up! Just kidding. But I do think the Cluny is incredibly beautiful, and the garden is so tranquil, despite being right next to Boulevard St-Germain. 

Halloween in Paris ended up being lovely! Gregg (a friend from home) was here visiting me, and we cooked dinner with some friends at Cité Universitaire. Dinner included lots of cheap champagne, of course. 

I will try to post again soon!

xxxxx

Very Belated!: My trip to Cateau-Cambésis

A couple weekends ago, I went on a trip to a town in the north called Cateau-Cambrésis. It was organized by one of the professors who taught a couple of our orientation-week classes, and it was mainly to see the Matisse museum for a gallery talk by an artist who is currently exposing there. I love Paris, but it was lovely to get out of the city for a bit. We started here:

This is a pigeon house. This region used to be known for it's messenger pigeons, and is still a bit of a hobby. This roost was designed by a contemporary architect who has had his work featured in MoMA.

And here is a view of the countryside there. It was very flat:
The church in Cateau-Cambrésis. It was constructed in the 17th century by the Jesuits, and the stained glass windows feature scenes from the life of St. Martin. That's all I've got...

This is Kees Visser, explaining some of his work. He is mostly self-trained and lived in Iceland for a number of years, but is orgininally Dutch. The art is not really my sort of thing, but I thought it was really interesting nevertheless, and the gallery space was really nice. 
Here is his biggest work in the gallery. It is meant to correspond a bit to the Matisse stained glass window (picture later on):
There was an incredible park outside of the museum, and it was possibly my favorite part of the trip. It was perfectly tranquil, and the afternoon light was marvelous:

The town was having it's local festival! Sadly, we didn't have time to go, but the gauffres were so tempting. 
Here is that Matisse window! It is installed in an elementary school. Can you imagine being in school with something like that? Unbelievable. 

Here is what little French children do in school!
And then, as a perfect end of the day, we saw a hot air balloon on the bus ride back to Paris. For those of you who do not know, I somewhat inexplicably love hot air balloons.

Since then I have remained really busy, hence no blog posts. A week ago from Monday, I went to a nearby bar for a poetry reading put on by Shakespeare & Co. Two weekends ago was also Nuit Blance in Paris, which was an all night art party, aka my dream! But more about all of that later.

Portes Ouvertes à Ménilmontant

This weekend was Portes Ouvertes in Ménilmontant, which is the neighborhood where I live. There are lots and lots of artists in my quartier, and maybe 100 of them opened their studios to the public, so we picked up a map and went exploring!

The artists worked with all different sorts of media; some was fine art, and some was more folk art or craft-y. One artist did paintings and drawings, but also had these wonderful whimsical animals lanterns:

I think one of the coolest parts of Portes Ouvertes was seeing the hidden places of Ménilmontant. There are an incredible number of gardens and courtyards here that I never would have imagined exist. This is a little dark, but there was so much green back here!:

And another little alley:
Here is one of the ateliers (workshops). Lots of the spaces were set up like galleries, but in a lot of them it was very apparent that it was also the artist's work space, which was really interesting to see. 

Soon I will have a post about my trip to Cateau-Cambrésis! There is always too much for me to do here. 

Monuments are Better at Night

The monuments of Paris are even more spectacular at night. Last weekend some of us went out to Montmartre, bought a bottle of wine, and sat on the hillside looking out over the city. It was pretty perfect.

The Louvre is open late and free for all (though it is always free for me!) on Friday, so Natalia and a couple of people we know from the foyer went over that way. The building is lit up spectacularly, and it looks even more grand:
The pyramid is equally beautiful, lit up from the bottom.
We arrived a little late, so we couldn't see all that much, but we saw some French sculptures and then found Napoleon's appartments, which are absolutely spectacular. The picture does not do it justice, but here you go:
Then we hopped on the metro and went to the Eiffel Tower. It was my first time there ever! It's less crowded at night (so I am told, and it seemed to be so.) I couldn't believe how big it is, because it does not seem nearly so large from a distance. 
After this we hung out on the Champ de Mars for a little bit, just being Parisian.

Amazing Encounters

I have stories! (As always, but these are a little more suprising)

On Saturday, I was sitting by the Medici Fountain in the Jardin Luxembourg, waiting for Sam and Michelle, when who finds me but a Goucher student who graduated last spring, and had been in the same fall semester French class as me. A couple minutes later, his friend also found us, and she had also been in the same Cinéma Maghreb class. Just so you can appreciate the unlikelihood (I'm not quite sure that's a word; my English is beginning to fail me) of the situation, Goucher has about 14oo students in total, and the French class we had together had nine students. So basically, we had a third of Flo Martin's class standing there in the Jardin Luxembourg, an ocean away from Goucher.

Second story: Tonight Natalia and I decided we needed chocolate, so we trekked over the the ever-open boulangerie on Rue de Charonne. On the way back we thought about taking the Rue des Amandiers shortcut back to the foyer, but opted to go via Boulevard de Ménilmontant instead. As we were passing a cafe, I heard someone yell "America! Goucher!" and turned to see two girls from Marseille who I had met when they came to Goucher a year and a half ago to put on a play in French. It turns out they recently moved to Paris.

Evidently I have a talent for meeting people I would never expect to run into. This happened to me when I was in Poland a few years ago as well. It's so funny how these things happen. I wonder who else I will meet here?

In other news, I began my internship at Ni Putes Ni Soumises on Monday. It is a 10-minute walk from where I live, so I am very lucky in that respect. People seem really friendly, and it sounds like I will have some choice in terms of what projects I work on, so I will get to do things that really interest me personally. 

First Visit to the Louvre/Fun at Museums Part 1

I went to the Louvre for the first time on Sunday with Natalia and Michelle. It is free for us to get in whenever because of our Sorbonne student cards, so I can take my time and stay for as long or as short a time as I want to without having to worry about trying to get the very most out of each visit.

We mostly saw Northern art this time: German, Scandinavian, and lots and lots of Dutch. There was an entire gallery of works that Reubens (I think?) had done for the Medici family. 

I found some Friedrich works, which made me pretty ecstatic. I love how he does landscape, and the expression he puts into it. This is a bad picture, but here you go:

One of my favorite things about art/art history is the humor that one can find in it, so I think I am going to start doing some blog posts with the funny art I find. Here is today's! I have no idea what is going on on or in their heads. Feel free to create captions for this one:

And a detail, just so you can appreciate that face:

In other news, I had my interview with Ni Putes Ni Soumises, the organization with which I will be interning beginning next Monday. The interview was a bit more rigorous than I'd expected. The woman I spoke with asked me questions about the motives and goals of the organization (which I just know about at a very basic level), what I knew about cultural relativism, my knowledge on the issue of the veil in France. And keep in mind this was all in French. I feel I did not express myself quite as intelligently or eloquently as I would have liked, but I had an hour-long written exam to look at my capabilities in written French. One of the questions was about my motivations in working with the organization, and I felt pretty good about that one.

Thomas, my program director, got a positive response from NPNS, so I guess it went okay. I will have real projects to do there ("pas de photocopies!" she said), which makes me both excited and a little nervous, because while I'm fairly certain I will be quite capable, there is always that grain of self-doubt. 

A Very Parisian Weekend

I have survived my first week of classes! We began phonetics class on Wednesday and that one is particularly interesting to me, as it breaks down the sounds and constructions of spoken French, and already after three days I feel like I have a better grasp on how to actually speak French. That is a very welcome change, since it is terribly frustrating not being able to be understood all the time. I manage all right, but it can be rough sometimes.

Anyway, it is nice to have a couple days off for the weekend. On Friday morning, Natalia and I went to the market on Boulevard the Ménilmonant, which also continues on to Boulevard de Belleville. I picked up some veggies, etc. to put in the fridge we bought. The grapes were especially delicious and also super cheap, making them even better!

On Friday night, Natalia and I went with one of my neighbors to a night club called Duplex on the Champs Elysées. I had some reservations, since that is not really my scene, but I actually had a great time. We didn't get back to the foyer until about 6:30AM. 

After that, I took it kind of easy on Saturday. I did homework in the morning/afternoon and then later went with a friend to Parc Buttes-Chaumont, which I think might be my favorite in Paris. It's not neatly designed like Luxembourg or Tuileries, but rather has a kind of savage quality to it. I didn't have my camera yesterday, but I took some pictures the first time I was there with Michelle, Sam, and Natalia. Enjoy!

So I AM actually here to study...

I finally began my classes at the Sorbonne on Monday! I am in the "avancé" level, and my professor is a very classy French woman who (as one would hope) speaks beautiful, flawless French. People in my class come from the US, Sweden, the Netherlands, England, Indonesia... I loved being at liberty to explore the city, but it is nice to finally have some semblance of a regular schedule.

Today was particularly long; I left my foyer at 9 AM, and didn't return until 8 PM (that was after a disappointing search with Natalia for "box pasta"- sort of like fast food pasta, but really delicious and good quality, and portable since it is served what is basically a Chinese food container). She and I did buy a fridge today to share, so now we can cook and eat real food!

The foyer had a samba class tonight, and it was fabulous. Right now I am watching The Office in French, and it is also fabulous.

A Busy Weekend.

I've spent a lot of this weekend doing mostly touristy things, but I think that is also an important part of being in Paris. The weather on Friday was pretty nasty: chilly and rainy, so Sam, Michelle, John and I went to Angelina on rue de Rivoli for some of their famous hot chocolate. As we were about to go in, we saw this:

It's a little tough to see, but these were two models doing a fashion shoot. I don't know if it was for a label or some editorial, but rue de Rivoli is beautiful and chic and very Parisian, so it is a good place for that. 

The Angelina hot chocolate is rather expensive, but a pot can easily be shared since it is almost like drinking melted chocolate. 
After that we went to Les Halls to do some shopping. I bought a dress and I think I will wear it on my first day of class tomorrow.

On Saturday we went and walked along the Champs Elysées and wandered around some of the neighborhoods around the Arc de Triomphe. We didn't do any shopping there (trop cher!) but the people watching was excellent.
After that, Sam and I went to find a photography exhibit in the 8th which apparently didn't exist, so instead we hopped on the metro to the 9th and went to the Musée de la Vie Romantique. It is tucked back in this little alley, which then opens into this amazing court yard/garden. The picture doesn't do it justice, but here you go:
The museum is small, but very pleasant. The house used to be owned by the painter Ary Scheffer, who held salons attended by Chopin, George Sand, Delacroix, Ingres, etc.

The first Sunday of every month is free museum day in Paris. Michelle, Sam, Max and I really wanted to go the Musée d'Orsay, so we showed up at 9:00, half an hour before opening and were some of the first ones in.
There is a Max Ernst exhibit that is in its last week, and I am very happy I was able to see it. I feel like I need to read some things on Dada now, though. We didn't get to see everything we wanted to, but there is plenty of time to do that. 

The view from the museum terrace is magnificent:
Bisous!