Long-Overdue Update...Part 1

Vendredi, le 26 janvier:

I woke up late, and went for my run in the Champ de Mars. Afterwards, I met up with Sara by my metro station and walked over to a café Darcy had found near her apartment. The café was kind of crazy—it was trying to be an outdoor-Italian-style restaurant (I think). It had fake grass floors, lawn furniture, and a big TV playing MTV. We tried to order paninis for lunch, and ended up with nutella paninis…a French specialty none of us knew existed. The café did, however, have free WIFI (“wee-fee” in French), so we were able to plan our upcoming trip to Prague, and book our hostels. Around 3:30 lots of French high school students came in, so we decided to relocate to a new café. We wandered for a while, found a really cute hole-in-the wall bookstore, and ended up at Café Flores, one of our new favorites for cheap (and good) kirs.

I came home and had dinner by myself, because my host parents were meeting up with friends for dinner. Then I metro-ed over to the 5^th, and met up with some friends from Sweet Briar to go to their favorite Aussie Bar…which was extraordinarily sketchy and filled with 30-year-old French policemen…so I came home.

Samedi, le 27 janvier:

After my run in the Champ de Mars, I met up with Sara and Darcy for lunch in Saint-Germain-des-Près. We ate outside near the fountain, and then wandered down Boulevard St. Germain, where we found a cool/creepy taxonomy store, complete with stuffed hippos, and also the worst patisserie in Paris. We finally reached our destination, the Institut du Monde Arabe, and after waiting in line for 30 mins, we saw the exposition “Venise et l’Orient.” It was definitely worth the wait – a really fascinating exhibit about the history of East-West interactions in medieval Venice.

Saturday night, Sara, Darcy, and I went to dinner in Montmartre. We were originally planning to go to some fondue restaurant where they give you wine in baby bottles (I really don’t know, it’s supposed to be great), but it was packed with Americans, including lots of Sweet Briar students, and we decided to try something else. We broke out Sara’s new “Dinners in Paris under 12 euro,” and picked an Italian restaurant just a block away. Afterwards, we metro-ed all the way back to the 15^th (a 45 minute ride), and met up with our friends Vincent, Antoine, Marco, Jean-Baptiste, Valentin, and others, at their favorite bar, Le Breguet. It was our first time there, but it was really fun (or “sympa” as they say in French)—it is just a neighborhood bar, but they had a live band, and it was a very fun atmosphere. My host mom was really excited that I went there because her son, FaFou used to go there all the time with his friends.

Dimanche, le 28 janvier:

Sara and I decided to spend this rainy morning at a flea market…we had 3 options, and went for the “less touristy” one, which is in Montreuil. After an hour-long metro ride across Paris, we found ourselves in what felt like a totally different world. Montreuil is in Western Paris, basically at the end of the city – the metro is actually “Porte de Montreuil,” which means it is one of the doors out of the city. There were lots of highways, and the area was just generally pretty impoverished and creepy. The flea market was not so much a collection of cool antiques, as an assortment of used hair-dryers, clothes, cigarette lighters, you name it. Sara actually bought a 6 euro hairdryer…which caught fire 5 days later. Needless to say, we had no desire to stay long, so we got back on the metro and went to the 6^th for lunch and a movie. We saw “Les Ambiteux,” a new French movie about a writer and an editor, etc etc...not the best, but good for practicing French.

I came home, and had the most insane dinner of my life. The last Sunday of every month is “family dinner.” That means that all of the family living anywhere near Paris (including 2^nd cousins) comes for dinner. This week that meant about 19 people, apparently next month it will be more like 30. From my room I heard people arriving, but I didn’t want to come out until someone invited me. About half an hour later (vers 20h) my host dad invited me out for aperitifs, so I came out, and saw about 10 French 23(ish) year-olds, who all clearly knew each other very well. So I sat down, and didn’t really know what to do. In the US, since you are the “new” person, usually someone will start talking to you, to ease the awkwardness. But that did not happen. People kept arriving, and I sat there for a good hour listening to at least 8 different conversations. Finally we sat down for dinner, which was also awkward – in France there are lots of rules about where to sit people during dinner (alternate boy/girl, age, and something about your “importance” relative to the other people at the table). So that took a good 5 minutes of sorting out (“Pauline is more important than Bertrand (her boyfriend)! Put her here! Oh no, there is one more girl than boy!”). Anyway dinner took forever, and then afterwards everyone helped clean up. But then the adults sat around the table looking at family pictures, while the younger people went into Pauline’s room. I had no idea what that was about…so I sat around in my room awkwardly for 5 minutes before deciding to go back out to the living room, where the young people were all smoking and talking about their mutual friends. Finally everyone left. Except for one guy who slept in the room next to mine, and stayed up until 1am and then woke up at 6am (after his alarm clock had gone off 3 times).

Anyway, it was the most awkward I have ever felt in my life. Just imagine the most awkward dinner-party experience you’ve ever had, where you know no one, and then add the fact that they are all speaking really quickly in a language you can only sort-of speak. My friend Darcy had had a similar experience that morning, however, and it was interesting to talk to her about it. Since this dinner I’ve had a few more of these family dinner experiences, and am realizing that I think that’s just the way things go in France. It’s definitely interesting to see the difference in “party manners” between the US and France.

Lundi, le 29 janvier:

Monday was a pretty unproductive day. I went for a run in the morning, as usual, then met up with friends in the afternoon. We went to BHV & the Hotel de Ville area to “profiter” (French people’s favorite word, I think) from the sales. After about 2 hours of browsing we were all exhausted, so we went to one of our favorite cafés in the Marais…to find out that it becomes a gay bar in the evenings. They gave us some flyer about getting our makeup done by a professional artist and then getting photographs taken…and we looked around and it was completely filled with men. Anyway we hung out for a little bit, then decided to rentrer. I had dinner with my family, and watched Amelie for a while before going to bed.

Mardi, le 30 janvier:

After going for a run, I walked over to Sweet Briar and had lunch at a student café with Darcy and Janice. Then I had my Atelier d’Ecriture class, where we learned our requisite romantic phrases/constructions (“Où que je sois, je pense toujours à toi; quoi que vous en pensiez, je sortirai avec lui,” “Je ne t’aime plus, c’est la raison pour laquelle je pars,” Je ne veux pas rester ici, il n’y a personne d’intelligent”).

After class, I went to the 8^th to buy new sheet music for the Bach Cello Suites…my viola teacher told me that the music store was “right across the street” from where I rented my viola…well that’s only true if “right across the street” actually means “in a different arrondissement, across one of the biggest train stations in Paris, and 4 more blocks away.” I eventually did find my music, and by that time it was too late to do anything more productive with my day. I went with Darcy to Rue de Clers, because her family friends had said it was a really nice shopping area, and it was pretty cute – we just stopped at a patisserie (our new goal is to try every kind of patisserie in France before we leave…it’s a good thing I run almost every day), and wandered around a little bit. I came home, wrote an essay for my Atelier class, watched the news with my host parents, had dinner, and went to bed.

Mercredi, le 31 janvier:

Wednesday was a pretty exhausting day. I had “une panne de réveil,” aka I slept through my alarm. I ran to my History of Paris through Its Monuments lecture, where we talked more about the development of Ile de la Cité, and the Seine. We had an hour to have lunch and get to St. Denis (wayyyy north, not even in Paris anymore), and that was interesting. I was with two other girls, and we waited for a sandwich for 15 minutes, then got on the metro to find that it was running slowly because of an accident, then finally got to St. Denis after 2 train-changes…we were 15 minutes late, but everyone else was, too, so it wasn’t a big deal. Class was really interesting – St. Denis is beautiful (see pics on my picasa website), it’s where all the French kings and queens are buried. It’s too bad that not many people go there – no one in my host family has been, and they’ve lived in Paris for over 20 years!

After class, I had a 45 minute metro ride home, grabbed my viola, and had an hour long metro ride to another edge of Paris for my viola lesson. My lesson was at my teacher’s apartment in Paris. It turns out that he has a job teaching in Paris, but also a job in Brussels, so he and his family live in Brussels, and each week he takes the TGV to Paris to stay in his studio for a few days and teach. My lesson was great – he’s a wonderful teacher, with lots of good insights, and is very encouraging. It’s also really nice because he speaks fluent English (he studied viola in NYC and Boston), so taking lessons isn’t much of a “French cultural experience,” it’s more something connecting me to life in the states.

I came home, and my host parents wanted me to tell them all about the lesson, as usual…they are really cute, and kind of obsessed with me and my viola. Every day that I don’t practice, the dad asks about it at dinner, and then the mom complains b/c she says that she likes to come listen to me when I practice… :o)

Jeudi, le 1 février

Woke up planning to go running, ended up sleeping in another hour before heading to Atelier. We learned about constructions of “façon” (“Ne me regardez pas de cette façon,” “Il explique les choses d’une façon claire,” “les jeunes veulent vivre à leur façon,” “Et maintenant, mesdames et messieurs, je vais chanter une chanson à la façon d’Elvis Presley”), quitter vs partir, plaire and manquer (“Je te manque, mon amour?” “Je suis desolée, mais tu ne me manques pas”), and passive voice (“Ils ont été vus ensemble”).

After class, we met up with Sara and had lunch at a boulangerie near SB. Then we did a little shopping at H&M in our constant endeavor to find cheap clothes that will somehow make us look more “French.” Afterwards I went to Gibert Jeune to get some more notebooks, and then I went home & practiced. As usual, after dinner we went to the Cristal, but after being hit on by 2 married guys, we weren’t really feeling it. We ended up going back to Le Brégeut with Vincent and his friends, which was more fun and chill.

I had been looking forward to February 1 for a long time. It was the day that smoking was banned in public spaces. On February 1 I found out, however, that “public spaces” do not include restaurants, cafés, bars, tabacs, or any other place that I would be. :o(

Vendredi, le 2 février

Fridays are great because I have no class. Unfortunately, that will change next week when Sorbonne starts. But this Friday was great. I woke up at noon, went running in the Champ de Mars, then met Darcy for a picnic at the Tuileries. It was cold and drizzly, but we have given up on buying lunch, because it is expensive, and have taken to buying a baguette, cheese, and fruit each day and eating it outside, whatever the weather.

After lunch we went to the Louvre to get our free student pass, and then decided to profiter, and check out some Greek Antiquities. I think my goal for the next four months is to go to the Louvre at least once a week, and spend quality time in a few rooms, so that by the end of the semester I’ll have a decent grasp of the museum.

After the Louvre, we went to the café with the grass floors, and wrote postcards while listening to the high school students gossip and smoke cigarettes. We got sick of the amount of 17 year olds, and relocated to a café nearby for aperitifs. I walked home, had dinner, and then went to Sara’s house to watch “Comme t’y es belle” (the French movie version of Sex and the City).

This has already been a journal entry of epic proportions, and I will hopefully finish up tomorrow…think of this as installment 1. Bonne nuit!