The view of Paris from inside the Musée d'Orsay clock. The museum is actually located inside of a very large, old converted train station. Since the museum does not let you take pictures of any of the actual art, this is pretty much all we have from it. The museum was nice, though, with Monet, Manat, Degas, Cézanne, and van Gogh. I am not a huge art person, but the paintings were beautiful and I got to see Degas' "The Dance Class" which I have always wanted to see in person. Walking through the museum feels like entering a history textbook because so many are paintings that you have studied in class or that have been used as pictures in books.
The ceiling of the museum.
An accordion and a beret. So French.
More officers that are on patrol throughout the city. They give both a sense of security and intimidation, even for the innocent.
The exterior of the museum.
Cinema Rex, the largest theater in Paris, home to French movie premiers and conveniently located right near school.
Guy Ritchie and Jacqui Ainsely.
The average wait time for a train. It's wonderful.
One of the last original glass-canopy and art nouvelle style metro signs. This one is located at Place des Abbesses, near the Sacré-Coeur and red-light district, where the famous Moulin Rouge is located. Also, this metro stop had an elevator, which we huffed at in dismissal when we saw it. Word to the wise: it is there for a reason. The stairs at this metro station almost never end. We made it up, barely. And back down. At least we worked off the crêpes we got.
Probably the most difficult adjustment so far has been bathtime. Most Parisian bathtubs have the the flexible hose above the faucet with a showerhead on the end of it. I have heard that many bathrooms have at least mounts on the wall to hold the hose while a person showers, but our bathroom does not. This is really a problem for me. When you walk into the bathroom, to your left are the counter, sink and the mirror, and against the wall in front of you, reaching from the counter to the right wall, is the bathtub. The biggest problem is that there is no shower curtain. Every time I shower I get to fumble with the shower head while washing my hair and not getting water over everything, which I always manage to do, and best of all I get to watch myself do this, as the mirror is mounted right in front of the tub. Everything about showering here is awkward.
What is not awkward and completely wonderful about Paris is that all month long in January, and also in July, everything goes on sale. Just like everyone here eats baguettes all the time, and many people's (including middle-aged adults) preferred mode of transportation other than the metro is Razor scooters (had not seen those since fourth grade), a very large percentage of females here use Longchamp bags. I have wanted one for a couple of years now and I had planned on purchasing one when I got here, and I needed a bag to bring to class since no one uses backpacks anyway. I got two bags, and one of them, a bag perfect the perfect for when we travel, costs $155 plus shipping when you order it in the states, but I got it here for much less than half of that. I had to stop myself from spending so much more in that store. Generally I am a saver and not a spender, but handbags are my weakness.
I have also decided that if I ever have children they are going to speak French as well as English because not only will it be good for them to know two languages, but I find small children whining in French to be much less annoying than English-speaking children having a tantrum. Maybe it is the intonation of the language, or maybe it is just because I am not their mother, but the cranky French children I have seen are almost kind of cute.
Speaking of intonation, pronunciation is such a funny thing. It can seem trivial, but it really makes such a difference. My professor was telling us today about trouble spots of pronunciation for native French speakers who are trying to learn English; a "warehouse" can easily become a "whorehouse" and a "sheet of paper" is suddenly a "shit of paper." On my metro line, the names of the stops are announced and my favorites are definitely Franklin D. Roosevelt ("Fronklon Rhosevellet") and George V (think of someone trying to say "Georgia sank" with a French accent). Yesterday, we were trying to tell our professor about our plans to go see Jude Law, as he was coming to the theater next to our school for the French premier of Sherlock Holmes II.
"Jude Law!" we told her. "Jude Law?" she repeated in a near-perfect English accent. "Jude Law. I do not know him."
"Sherlock Holmes?" we asked. "The movie with Robert Downey, Jr.?"
"Ohhhhhhhh! You mean Shood Law! Of course, of course!" The same thing happened for Devan when she had dinner with her family the other night when they were talking about the new movie J. Edgar, a film of "Clinn Eastwood." "Clint Eastwood?" Devan asked. Nope, according to the French, not the same guy.
Going to wait for Jude Law was fun, though. If you have not seen Sherlock Holmes, he has been in many other movies: The Holiday, All the Kings Men, The Aviator, etc. I had never seen a movie star in person before. The term "star-struck" definitely applied. I feel like it is because as a culture, we place such distance between our famous "stars," film or music, that it makes it difficult to comprehend them as real people. So then when you see them with your own eyes, it is like, Hey, you actually do exist. And you move. And smile. And talk. And breathe like me. WOW.
There were not many people there, so we were standing pretty much up against the barriers. He came next to us to sign an autograph, and of course I did not get any pictures of him as he was standing right in front of me because I am incapable of using technology. I did get a few great close-ups of his bodyguards' faces, and also a halfway decent picture of Guy Ritchie and his girlfriend, which I do not even know how it happened because I did not know he was there until he was walking into the building. Typical. After he walked away and we processed the fact that he was in front of us, one of the girls from school yelled "We're from America and we love you!" and he looked up and looked STRAIGHT AT ME and smiled and waved. Eeeee. :)
This morning Devan and I went to Rue Cler which has many little shops, mostly of food as we found out, and we walked around. We once again stumbled across the Eiffel Tower. Every time I have seen it, I have not known it was around us. I will just happen to look up and, hey, what do you know, there it is. It is no less breathtaking every time.
Before I go to sleep, I learned one more interesting thing today, regarding food (surprise). I said before that Paris would be a really cruel place to bring my grandmother or anyone with a gluten allergy or Celiac, and apparently the French government realizes. Because gluten-free foods are more expensive (and I think also secretly because the government pities them since this is baguette nation), the government compensates those with a gluten allergy for the price difference between gluten-laden and gluten-free food. I guess Paris would not be such a terrible place to live with it after all.
And now I am off to sleep as I need to wake up in seven hours for a day trip with the school to Metz. I do not know much about it, but it is supposed to be really historical. I am also pretty certain at this point that most of France is "historical," so that description does not exactly satisfy me.
Bonsoir!
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