Brr?

It's below freezing in Paris finally- I know that's not like earth shattering for the rest of the world, but i thought i'd share. I don't really have appropriate clothing for below freezing- really looking forward to your arrival mom and dad! Don't forget the coat please!

hmm.. what have i seen lately. a very pretty pigeon, progressively more alarming winter clothing, my horoscope (apparently i ran into someone today who had the same intentions as me, i think we were supposed to fall in love, i think i must have missed him). Today in art history we were studying George Seurat, who happens to have loved painting by "melange optique" i think that makes sense in english too, anyways lots of little dots. All that i mangaged to appreciate today was how much of a headache i could develop after staring at painting after painting made of little dots projected by slides for 2.5 hours.

having completed my middlebury language course I don't have a class tomorrow- so I now have one class left before break - thursday afternoon. vacation schedule :

21st friday- Uncle Russ and family arrive in Paris
Saturday- drive down to Lorgues (south of France)
Sunday- Mom, dad and tim fly into Marseilles
31st- Mom,dad and tim fly out of Paris

New Years eve - hopefully with susan and her family (right susan!? oh and does us watching charlie mean we get to hang out more? I have nothing to do the 1st or 2nd so i'm up for whatever! especially avoiding the musee d'orsay as i've already been twice)

January 3rd- Fly to helsinki
January 7th- return from helsinki.

January 22nd- last final in Paris

parce qu'on vient de loin

Today the woman who’s kids I tutored, as I was saying good bye after our last lesson, asked me if I liked France. I’ve been asked this question a lot- How do you like Paris? I think it’s sort of just one of those questions you ask as a fall back, like you can ask anyone and they can say whatever they want in response. But of course the response expected is always “I love it!” It’s like when someone asks how you are and you’re just supposed to say good- except it’s Paris, so you can’t just say it’s nice- It has to be “genial” which means ‘Great! (awesome, superb, etc.)’ So she asked me, and I responded, but I think for one of the first times I really meant it. I mean I haven’t been asked the question in a long time. When I first got here people would always ask me, in this order, 1. have you ever been to Paris before and 2. Do you like it. What I always thought then was that I liked it better the first time. Paris to me seemed like the type of place that you should just visit. Most of my impressions were based on the fact that Americans just like to take romantic honeymoons to the capital and kiss under the bridges of the Seine and wander slowly down the Champs-elysees.

So the first time I ever came to Paris I was about 7 I think, young anyways, and I was with my family. And all I cared about was going up the Eiffel tower and riding on the carousel. The second time I was 15, a sophomore in High school and with our school group. This was awesome. We were old enough that we thought we could just be independent but young enough that we were pretty convinced that wandering about in Paris and buying crepes was the coolest thing one could ever do. Returning here for the third time left me a little disillusioned I think.

So when people would ask me if I liked Paris and I would say yes, I was really just thinking I liked it a lot better before I had to live here. But slowly over a semester I realized that there was an entire side of Paris that I had never considered, that I had never seen just being a Tourist. I know that’s obvious, but what wasn’t obvious was that I really liked this side of Paris too. In fact I liked it better possibly than the other bit. I mean I think there’s something unforgettable about riding a tourist boat on the Seine at night and seeing the Eiffel tower all lit up and laughing and taking pictures of it with your friends. But there’s also something unforgettable about trying to row on the seine, barely understanding the French commands that you can’t really hear, and pausing to get water under a bridge as the afternoon sun lights up the waves rolling up to the boat.

And it’s not just rowing, it’s the strikes, the rugby, it’s leaving the house in the morning, headphones in, singing along as I dodge around a street cleaner’s broom, scarf around my neck on the way to the metro.

I was talking to a classmate on the way to Art history on Tuesday, talking about the upcoming end of things and how Paris has been. I find myself explaining once again that I was from the country. I don’t know when I finally decided to explain myself in this manner.. it just sort of evolved over the course of the semester. I guess I’ve just never lived in a place much bigger than Westminster in my grown up state and therefore have never needed to describe myself as a product of rurality, but here it has become useful. For example we watched “Babel” as part of a class thing and then had a discussion afterwards. Our language professor was most shocked by the scene when they’re in mexico and a man kills a chicken and then small children chase about the headless creature. He was not only shocked, but sort of immediately tied this to third worldness. But I know people who do this, they live over the mountain from me. Ok, so my family never butchered chickens in front of me – though eating my rabbit was an entertaining joke during my childhood- but it doesn’t surprise me that people would and I wouldn’t immediately use this to distinguish people from myself culturally. Or when people ask me where I come from and I say Vermont and then they ask what city I come from and I just have to say that it’s not a city- In France there are cities and then there’s “Provence”. In its purest form everything outside of Paris is Provence. So people from Paris sometimes only get where I’m from if I say “the country”.

My point of the whole rural thing was just that I was telling this girl how I had been surprised how much I’ve adapted to living in a big city. To the point where sometimes the thought just passes me by, and then I look up and see the buildings and try to ingest the idea that I’m living in one of the biggest cities in the world. Ok, it’s not Tokyo, but you get the idea. I see my screen saver on my laptop of the pictures I took of home before I left and it looks like post cards, like my brain has become so trained to look at buildings that the vast expanses of space are hard to remember. And as a picture is only a two dimensional representation of that space (thank you L’esthetique de l’image) it doesn’t bring it all back. I guess this is what they call acclimation. I just never wanted to have to admit that the stupid culture shock chart was right.. damn them.

Garfield

First of all I just wanted to report that last weekend I went to a christmas concert at the american church and I saw possibly the most amazing rendition of "Hallalujah" aka the pop song, not some sort of church amen, sung by a children's choir. They also pulled off an amazing rendition of the French version of White Christmas, which struck me as ironic since I fear that the children of France, and in fact of most french cultures have very little chance of seeing snow almost any time of year, let alone in December. I would highly bet that the version was made by a Quebequois. But now that it is sung all about it just seems unjust for the poor french children who must sing about wanting a white christmas and then never having one.

Also, during the carol's at the end, I discovered it is very difficult to sing in French. I mean theoretically at this point I know how to sing, and I know how to speak French. But the french annunciate differently and I've never really mastered the French accent where the first sylable becomes softened and you carry out the end. This has been demonstrated many times by our language professor as he excentuates the pronunciation of his name patriiiiiiiiiiiiiccK (the i sort of makes an sound like e), I now find it very difficult to say the name Patrick as most good americans would, but I have yet to arrive at pronouncing my entire french lexicon in such a manner. This doesn't actually really matter, it just means I have an american accent, which is apparently dreamy according to a female proffesor we had- though i'm not sure if it then applies to girls. But let's hope so. But it does apparently matter when singing, because the entire rhythem of the song is changed. I therefore found myself quite consistanlty about half a word behind.

I also this week discovered a Garfield strip printed in French. John is sooo much funnier in French. Actually just the fact that he speaks french is what I find amusing. But it also somehow places him in another context in my mind and Garfield's cold stare just seems to fit then. Like the disgruntled disapprovement of many a frenchmen i've seen before. In this particular edition, perhaps you've seen the english one? John is telling garfield about his light up tie, and the entire punchline is Garfield thinking "you make an easy target" which i guess in english also could have been something like "you make it too easy". trust me, it was funny in french.

What now?

I saw a poodle wearing a red leather raincoat today. Sort of like a little red cherry on the top of the Parisian experience.

New Rowing Club

I'd been waiting to get my camera cable back from the person I lent it to before writing about the new rowing club (Club de l'Aviron), but I'm not sure when that will be so I best just write about it before the impression is gone. For those of you that read the blog post several weeks ago I had discovered that my rowing club would be moving to a new location. When I took the different metro line to the new place, wandered across a bridge over the seine and looked about- there it was. I don't know how much i've described the old place but it was basically an oversized houseboat- though it didn't rock as much as a houseboat, but it did wiggle a little since it was indeed set out on the water. The entire thing was basically two changing rooms, a general erging/meeting room and a couple of offices- the boats were all lining the shore and they had a small boat house too. The new place is incredible- They have four huge buildings- one for kayaks/canoes, one for rowing boats, one for sail boats and the last has the changing rooms, work out rooms and the TANK! An actual rowing tank- I'd never seen one of these things before, but had heard of them from Machi. They're actually still working on this one so it's not finished- but it's soon to be function is an indoor rowing tank- basically sort of like erging, but with water about you and it's set up for four people so you just row like one would on the water. The boat houses would make machi drool I think, they're just amazing. To be fair I've only seen a limited number of boat houses (is that even the right word?) in my life, but as you will see from the pictures whenever i put them up these are definitly the prettiest I've ever personally been in.
Also since it's been raining so often I've just gotten in the habit of wearing my rain coat everyday which I think helps the coaches recognize me- so yesterday as I was walking over to the workout building one of the coaches shouted "bonjour Laurel" at me, and though I could barely see him through the rain and my hood pulled up over my head in the vain attempt to stay dry I was happy to respond with a cheerful "Salut!"

The Consensus

This week marks the third week that the Nouvelle Sorbonne, also known as Paris III, aka my University that I'd been taking classes at, has been on strike. It was, however, the first time I'd actually gone to the A.G.- the big meeting for students and faculty which at this point exists in order to hold a forum to discuss the current situation and then after about 5 hours vote whether to continue the strike.

My expectations for these meetings were pretty low, I showed up an hour late because i knew they tended to drag on forever and I really just wanted to see the end anyways. But I still had 4 hours of sitting through a stream of speakers, mostly students, who just felt like they had something to say and therefore would submit their name to the long list written on the chalkboard. When it cam to their turn they had 3 minutes to get across whatever they felt like saying whilst the amphitheater full of spectators would either support them with silent applause or disagree with very agressive thumbs down gestures. It was actually just fascinating- at least the first two hours, after that I must admit my attention span started to decline. But it was the first time that I'd every felt like the University had a real body to it. Granted there were only around 300 people there probably and the University is much larger. But the students were actually talking as though they belonged to something and that together they felt like they could make a difference. One of my favorite speeches was made after someone had just finished explaining that the students wouldn't be penalised for missing the classes during the strike, the professors were behind it too and in strikes in the past the students always were able to get credit and complete exams anyways. This student then got up and the translation of his speech would be something like "This movement isn't about us, it isn't about the individual. It isn't about here and now. This is about the future. About making a difference in something bigger than ourselves." I think it was much more poetical in French but that's the best I can do. And you have to sort of surround the statement with the ambiance of the surrounding students supporting with cheers and waving hands. And his voice rising and falling with the emotion that sort of swept over the whole room. I sort of wanted to join in their blockade after hearing it.

At the end of the meeting the vote was practically unanimous to continue the blockade- one has to realize that practically unanimous means out of the two to three hundred students that were actually there. But this flew right in the face of the anouncement of the President of the University who just declared that the university would open monday following a silent vote he conducted on wednesday which came back with a vote supporting the continuation of classes. the people at the A.G. were really hyped up about the gaul of the president who would dare take the power out of their hands and try to impose something the they claimed was not his right to impose. So now they think monday there will be a blockade, and the president will probably try to call in the police to end it, and it will not be pretty. So Middlebury has decided to pull us out of our classes there and just have us finish up classes with extra professors that they hired for us.

I will now be taking "Cinema" and "Translation". So weee for starting new classes three weeks before christmas. I will still get credit as usual, and they're still trying to figure out how much work they're going to make us do in the next few weeks.

spies

On my way home last night this man came walking brisquely past- then he pulled out a walkie talkie, said some incomprehensible into it and ducked into a doorway, just like spy people do in movies. I was thinking to myself he wasn't doing a very good job since I could clearly tell what he was up to and i wasn't trying. But then I got really sketched out and walked really fast to my door. I still wonder what was occuring on my street last night that necessitated such espionage activities.

Also pictures from sweden are up on the photo sight : )

Thanksgiving

I tutored English again this week. This time the youngest asked me what I knew about thanksgiving. I got really excited and asked him what he wanted to know. He said he was just supposed to write about it for his class for Thursday. So I was then supposed to just tell him whatever I knew about the story of Thanksgiving. This was about the point that I realized that I didn't really know that much about thanksgiving. He mentioned the Mayflower- but I didn't know the date that the mayflower arrived. I feel that is a failing. So I just told him about pilgrims and indians and how they supposidly had this feast together but I couldn't decide whether this story was just sort of a myth that they tell you or if you're actually supposed to believe it. I just told him that that's what american school children learn. And then I proceded to talk about all the food- which I was much better at explaining. I didn't actually get to talk about the football that also occurs.. but I suppose that's not actually "traditional". Also his mom roasted chestnuts and gave me some to take with me- I had never eaten a chestnut before.

Oh and I just realized that I never recounted my events of Monday night. -

The metro is still on strike here- which really just means that there are a lot less trains running. And those that are running are stuffed with people half the time. So i tried to take my metro line to meet people for dinner across the city and after waiting while two trains came and went- stuffed with people. the likes of which abby so well described on her marshrutka. And I decided to walk to the next station because sometimes that helps. But even there I had to squish myself into an overfull train. This was all uncomfortable but ok until we got to "Charles de Gaulle- Etoile" I think i've memorized every stop on my metro and can even pronounce them the same way the loudspeaker lady does. And I knew that lots of people get off at this stop. So the second the doors opened the entire mass of people I was squished up against gave one huge shove and I was pushed out of the train. This would have been ok but as I stepped backward to catch myself my right foot slipped between the train and the platform and I just sort of fell backward with my leg and ankle caught and people attempting to step over me. I had one of those weird flash backs and I just remembered the scene in the lion king with the wildebeast stampede and all the times I'd ever heard of someone being trampled to death. But I was saved by this group of women that i'd been pressed up against as they started shouting- "hey hey, stop" and various other french words that basically meant "hey, watch it" to the people who were pressing upon me preventing me from standing up again and getting out of the way. I then could lift myself, and leg up off the platform, and other than a twisted ankle and a bump on my shin I had not met the same fate as Mufasa. I also appreciated the woman asking me if i was ok, saying "ca va?" the same phrase as I'd heard some kid's dad ask him after he feel down running one day. And I also appreciated the woman muttering about Sarkozy- apparently blaming him due to his unwillingness to fold to the will of the metro workers and therefore causing all of this. I'm not sure if I'm willing to blame my injuries on the French presidentm, but it was nice that they were upset about it.

I still managed to get to my dinner, after more crammed train riding in which I stayed far away from the door and some limping. But I found the jewish quarter by accident due to my unwillingness to attempt to take the correct metro because I was sure it would just be another nightmare. Now I really want to go buy some bread there. But that will have to wait for another day.

I just heard the news that my university has decided to continue the blockade until at least next tuesday, when there will be another vote. That will make it two weeks since i've had courses at Paris 3. So now the Middlebury center is talking about opening up replacement courses. But for now that means that an exam I was supposed to have tomorrow is definitly not happening. I'm not going to lie, that makes me happy. It's at least interesting to be a part of all the chaos that is currenlty occuring here. Though I really wouldn't mind having a working metro once again.

Fuck

I started tutoring these two boys in english last week (kid previously mentioned) - after going over their english homework I was just talking in english with the older kid and he was telling me about his summer camp and how everyone there just said "fuck" all the time. He said to me "Yeah, I thought fuck was a really bad word- I didn't realize you could just say it all the time like that". I then tried to explain to him that it was considered a really bad word- but that for certain people in certain contexts (like possibly pre-teens at a summer camp) it might be used a lot. But he still didn't seem very convinced when i said that it still wasn't a good idea to use the word unless you were sure it was ok. I wanted to say that if he used the word it was likely that some people might sort of look down on his vulgar speech- but it was hard because his canadian friends seemed to like the word so much. How do you explain to someone that their friends are probably not very respected either? I don't mean to sound condescending to people who occasionaly say "fuck" I just don't approve of it's over-exploitation. But then again that was just my point of view of it- and probably would be this kid's mother opinion too. And what if secretly this kid just wants to rebel against his upper class upbringing and get the word fuck tatooed on his forehead or something? I really shouldn't oppress his freedom of expression. But i probably shouldn't encourage him to say "fuck yeah!" to his english professor either.

Metro and Les Bisous

Well the strike is supposed to stop today. Also my school will probably reopen monday, though we have to wait until the official General Assembly to meet once again monday at noon. But unfortunatly I don't think the students can hold out that long. So I probably will have class next week. Which means the arrival of my Woody Allen midterm. I'm going to attempt to study for this, even though the subject is more painful to study than the time we had to read 5 books on the life of the editor of the Oxford English dictionary. Looking back that actually seemed enjoyable. At least that man was pretty awesome- woody allen, not so awesome. And his movies- well.. they're not the oxford english dictionary. I don't know what i meant by that. I guess I maybe would have thought his movies were ok before attempting to study him. Actually I probably would never have watched them.. moving on.

I've been walking a lot, with all the chaos that i encounter each time i try to enter a metro station. Yesterday this man got onto our already packed train by standing in the doorway and letting the force of the door just sort of fold him into the crowd as it shut. My friend Lauren said it was so tight in her train once that she could feel the heartbeat of the man pressed up against her. Sometimes people will Q up in the hallways that lead to the platforms that let you onto the trains- I once encountered such a line and just turned around and walked back to whence i came. So like I said i've been walking a lot. Which means to get home I've managed to cover the entire length of the Champs Elysees- as well as find many amusing side streets. I found where Christie's (the auctioneer) is located- surrounded by the most expensive looking stores imaginable. I really thought i had found the heart of expensive shopping near the middlebury center- where all the gucci and hermes shops seem to be, but I think it hit a whole new tier when i saw these art deco shops.

I'm about to pack up my things and take the metro across town to a library, where theoretically i will brilliantly outline and find amazing sources for my oral on "what languages should be taught at school?" French schools that is. Apparenlty the current opinion is people worried about the "oppressing influence" of the English language. And then i will study many a things that i'm constantly reminded by the middlebury center that i should be just making up work for myself to do since our proffesors never tell us what to do. I despise making up work for myself- and I can only really accomplish this if I have an upcoming test that i know will cover certain material and therefore can create ways to learn that material- but here it's more like just guess what you think might be good to know and learn that. As the french would say I never "arrive" at that.

Also a dream I had last night in which I returned to the states and tried to greet someone by kissing them on the cheek, only to their great confusion, reminded me that I had never discussed this phenomenon before. I guess I was aware that the French participated in this greeting/farewell ritual before arriving- I just didn't realize to what extent it could become complicated. First of all, as we discussed in my language and society class one day, the French are very bad at shaking hands. This is apparenlty the reason why Americans don't respect the French, according to my professor. Some American students said they tried to shake hands with people that they met here in the begining - but this was laughed at and then kisses were immediatly exchanged instead. But the number of kisses can also be varied depending on where you orignate from. In Paris you're supposed to give two (i.e. one on each cheek). But then there are some people from the suburbs who always give four- This i find to be very excessive and just generally time consuming. I also sometimes become dissoriented when i have to do this because your head is just going back and forth so many times you feel sort of like a chicken bopping it's head about. To make it even more complicated apparently some people do 3- I haven't met these people yet. And i still don't understand what happens when someone who does 2 meets someone who does 4- to whose will must you bend?

The other greeting custom we discussed in my class was hugs- Apparently the french never hug. Someone in my class pointed out that there is a FREE HUGS campaign in Paris though, but of course it originates from the american group. But apparently in general grown ups never "hug" lovers are of course constantly "embrassing" here- but this is not considered the same thing as embrassing generally lasts for extensive periods of time, usually right beside me on the metro it seems, and I will agree has almost nothing to do with a hug. This french high schooler that I started tutoring in English was telling me about his Canadian summer camp he went to and how crazy it was that everyone hugged everyone there- but he seemed really excited about it and thought this was great. So maybe future generations can give it a shot- but maybe he'll just have to move to Canada.

New York Times article

Strike Cripples Travel in Parts of France

check that out.

restless November

after re-reading this I realized i managed to spell blockaded- blocaded like 5 times- but this represents my current confusion between french spelling and english so i shall leave it to preserve the authenticity

so as i tried to sum up with the bbc article - France has lost it's mind. My school is currenlty being blocaded and the metro once again is on strike- same reason as last time: it's against raising the retirement agae of metro workers. But the school thing is because they're trying to let public universities recieve funds from private sources if they can- like U.S. public universities do- but a few people think this means they're going to privitize universities. Which honestly anyone who's ever seen my school would say might be a good idea- but apparently it's not a good idea, so i don't have class tomorrow.

My school just started today (Censier) but Tolbiac, where some other midd kids go has been blocaded for almost two weeks.

We finally had the french middlebury administration here come in and talk to us today about everything that was going on and there explination behind it was probably more honest, though less politically founded than the one given by the B.B.C- apparenlty november is just sort of cold and grey so everyone gets restless and no one want's to do work- so they go on strike. I guess this is what happens when you don't have thanksgiving break.

More strikes

BBC article from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7092336.stm:

Wednesday November 13, 2007

Open-ended strike

From Tuesday evening, the nation's rail network will grind to a halt as transport workers protest at plans to end their special retirement perks, which allow some staff like train drivers to retire on full pensions at 50.

October's strike crippled public transport across France for two days

The strike is their second in a month and this time it is open-ended.

Hot on their heels, Paris Metro workers have called a day of action on Wednesday, which militant unions hope to extend.

The action will be supported by gas and electricity workers, while protests by teachers and students are also planned next week, with the students threatening to block university campuses and train stations.

Plans to overhaul the judicial service and to shut some courthouses have prompted magistrates to strike too - just after a massive one-day strike planned by civil servants on 20 November.

Stubbornly tenacious

Used to protesting on the streets rather than via parliament, the French can be stubbornly tenacious when it comes to striking.

In 1995, three continual weeks of strikes by public and transport workers against planned reforms brought France to its knees and forced the government to back off.

[Mr Sarkozy] will not be trapped in confrontation on the street where it's clear that one or the other side is sure to lose in the end Xavier Timbeau

Mr Sarkozy, though, is made of stronger stuff. So, will he choose to fight till the last and appropriate that famous adage of Margaret Thatcher?

"To those waiting...[for] the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!" she said in a defiant speech at the Conservative Party conference in 1980.

He is unlikely to hold out though, according to the economist, Xavier Timbeau.

"Sarkozy knows that a hard conflict will only strengthen the opposition," he says.

"He will not be trapped in confrontation on the street where it's clear that one or the other side is sure to lose in the end."

"Even if he won a victory, he knows he'd have to pay for it very dearly sooner or later. What he wants is negotiation."

NMR

On crowded metro bus, standing next to girl and boy about same age as me speaking in english- though the girl had a strong french accent. Girl tells boy she's nervous about some test on monday. boy asks what the test is about- girl answers "spectroscopy". She's trying this spectroscopy that has to do with the electrons etc., but she doesn't know the english word- "NMR" I say- sort of random, since i'd been trying to pretend like i wasn't listening to them. But this was just too tempting to pass up- It's called "NMR" I repeat- oh yeah- NMR she says. The boy points out how amazing it is that someone on the bus just happened to know what they were talking about- I agree with the boy. Pretty amazing.

Duel?

So a sketchy man video taped me while i was waiting for the metro today. At first i just thought he was a weird tourist taping people on the platform but then he came up to me and told me i was tall and blonde - both things which i'm fully aware of- and then asked me for my email address or address. I don't know how much of this was wishful thinking and how much was that he was just insane - but i of course said no, he asked "you don't have an email address?" and i just said "non" - he then continued to stand near me, mind you it was a busy platform so i didn't fear for my safety at all, and later he asked again if he really couldn't just have my email address. When i again said i didn't have one he finally walked futher away - now holding his video camera again and continued to film me standing there. Hence i crammed myself onto the next metro train, even though it was way over full and i amost got trapped in the door, and left him behind on the platform. But now some sketchy french man has a video tape of me. I can only hope that a better subject came along and he had to tape over it.

This general harrasment, i fear, has become fairly routine- from my jogging in the park, to walking with friends down the street, to sitting - even with head buried in Harry Potter- on the metro. I think it's just part of living in a city, but it makes one want to carry about a large intimidating looking boyfriend, one that would just rip out the tape from that guy's camera and smash it to pieces. Or at least challenge him to a duel.

Toussaints

i am currenlty eating peanut butter out of a jar- need to stop. It's my last jar- but soooo good.

My metro train ran someone over this week. I'm still really disturbed by this. When the train stopped suddenly and the loud speaker said someone was under the train- that we all needed to get off- i didn't really understand what they meant. Huge crowds gathered by the front of the train and people were taking pictures, I guess they could see the man. Another woman rushing by me asked "Il est mort?"= "He's dead?" I didn't know- I didn't even really know what they meant by someone was 'under the train' until i saw someone else describing the scene to another making choping gestures at the torso. I can only guess what this meant- i chose not to stick around and find out or try to look as the rest of the people from the train were. I caught another train at the same station on another line, but the rest of the ride home was accompanied by the loud speaker announcing that "line 2 is closed temporarily due to a serious accident with a passanger" It sounded more eerie in French where "serious" is "grave" and hence just conjures up images of death.

Ironically this was halloween. Halloween otherwise was very pleasant- not actually a holiday here, but I celebrated by going on a trip to the Catacombs and Pere Lachaise. Pere Lachaise was amazingly beautiful and peaceful, especially for a cemetary. It's on a hill facing west and the sun was setting through autumn leaves. It's also known for the famous people buried there- people used to go to Morrisson's grave to smoke pot, but now they've put up a fence and apparently kick out loiterers. Chopin's there, as are Delacroix, Moliere and Oscar Wilde. There are new pictures up on my link (which by the way seems to only work with internet explorer- at least for me fire fox doesn't show the pictures.)

pancakes, Velib, Louvre and the Red Sox

In reverse listed order- I just watched the Red Sox game. By watched i mean stared at my computer screen which had the "Red Sox game day" on it- an application that tells you what's happening in the game with a play by play- this, i understand, is not really the same thing as actually watching the game- but it was my only option- and they were about to win the world series- and some natural instinct derived from far too many years of watching red sox games at home with pa and grammy made this strange pseudo- ritual necessary. Thanks to aim commentary from Katie who was actually watching the game it was actually entertaining- and of course they won (4-3 against colorado in the 9th) making it only the second time they've won since 1918- the first being my senior year of high school- so now i can easily remember all the dates since one will be my graduating year, and the next the year i was in Paris. Of course it is now almost 6am and i have been "watching" the game since 1 am.. so i have not got much sleep- but this does not currenlty bother me because I have no classes on Mondays.

The Louvre was my sporadic choice of activity today- I finally received my year pass- so it's now free and quick to go whenever i so choose. So today was to be the first day- I checked out large scale french paintings first- I'm always so impressed by these- and I really like them because it doesn't take any sort of artistic taste to appreciate them- They're just so huge and the subjects are either very dramatic or very majestic- even if you don't understand the subject one can easily just look at them and drool.
Afterwards I moved on to the Italian School- not as big.. but of course no one ever walks up to a De Vinci and says.."well, it's not as big as that painting by delacroix". The thought definitly passed through my mind when i was peeping a look at Mona Lisa - but then I always really liked the character of Leonardo in Ever After- and I did this fairly cool term paper on him my senior year of high school- so I get it.
On my way out I wandered through Roman statues- mostly of emporers- and i couldn't help but giggle at the fact that all of the faces I recognized were due to the fact that we watched I, Cladius as a main activity in our Latin 4 class. I honestly can't remember the family tree- but the names were all familiar.

So yesterday I made pancakes for the first time- a few people came over to revel in the amazingness that is american baking powder- now something i will never take for granted again. And i managed to feed one to my host brother who happened to be spending the night here- he liked it, though he's been to the U.S. before.

and the pancakes were followed by Velib riding through the Bois de Bologne- Velib's are the new parisian public bike system. They're stationed all around the city and with a credit card you can take one for for about 2 euros per hour. The bois de bologne is just south of my house- it's a huge park on the periphery of the city, and there's this water fall that i found once called the "grand cascade", though it is not particularly large and seems to have been perhaps man-made. so the round trip included the waterfall, a pond, some off roading and passing the old men who play petanque and hassle all females who pass. I always think "oh, it'd be so fun to play petanque with these sweet old men- just like we used to in french class" and then i run into these men and i see why that's a bad idea.

The strike

I realized that I never wrote about one of the most amazing things about france that happened last week- The metro strike. The French in general are well known for their fondness of striking- but never is it so entertaining as when they basically mangage to half shut down a major metropolitan city. The metro strike was declared for last thursday: what this meant theoretically was that all workers (basically drivers) for the metro, buses and trains would not go to work and the city would be left to suffer until Sarkozy decided to give in. What this actually meant was that they shut down all but two metro lines (one was electronic anyways, built in response to previos strikes and the other was basically kept open because it's the tourist line) and all buses and most trains- the ones that remained came so infrequently that they were just packed with people and getting to and from the airport was a disastor. Thursday is also the day that I have an 8am class on the other side of the city- it takes me about an 45 minutes on the metro- and would take about 3 hours to walk there. The general consensus was that one was not obligated to show up for classes on this day- but many classes would still be going on- so it was a good idea to go anyways.

Thankfully the tourist line i was talking about is actually my metro line- also ironically the line that goes to Sarkozy's neighborhood (not that he takes the metro)- so i decided i would take this to a place as close as possible to the university and then walk and just hope i got there before the class ended. This was actually pretty brilliant- i set out a little before sunrise- 7am- and got out at this metro stop in the Marais- the old art district- and then walked across the seine, the ile de st denis, and another bridge over the seine where i could see Notre dame glowing in the early morning sun. I meandered through small streets where children ran past after the sounding of a bell- and down this staircase that just appeared out of nowhere. I walked past Marie Curie research labs and by butchers and bread makers putting out the morning's offerings. I finally arrived at the school only 40 minutes late (2.5 hour class) and the professor congradulated me on making it and I sat down with the 5 other kids who had showed up.

Friday the metros were just sporatic- most were back up - but the loudspeaker in each station kept insisting that the lines were "very, very, very perturbed" or I guess "disrupted" but i liked the sound of pertubed better. By saturday things were basically back to normal- someone yesterday told me they're thinking about trying it again since none of the demands were met.

And the answer to the viking quote is that I was researching where to go for my Toussaints (All Saints) break and a norweigan tour by train was described as such- i guess it was probably funnier in context- but it made me really want to be a viking explorer. I just bought my plane ticket to Sweden yesterday so i'm going to visit my uncle and his family via a flight by Ryan Air- I've heard scarry things about this airline - a wikipedia article states the following under "incidents and accidents at Stockholm-Skavsta Airport"- "21 July 2005 - A Ryanair crew carried out an "irrational and inexplicable" steep approach at Stockholm-Skavsta Airport according to the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit"

yeah, irrational and inexplicable are basically amazing adjectives for describing a landing.

...as though you were a Viking explorer a thousand years ago.

Procrastination

I'm supposed to be working on this "Rapport" for my art history class right now- I'm going do describe one of Monet's paintings in two pages.. this seems like a lot of pages to describe a piece of art work.. especially when we're not really supposed to research the painting or anything- just talk about the image. But i already gave up on that idea and am definilty researching the painting. At least i'm not attempting to do some sort of modern art piece- I went to the Museum of modern art again on Friday and was given a tour by this Middlebury professor and we ended up looking at this piece - i don't remember the name- but it was three large canvases painted white- not multiple shades of white or anything- but white. I understand the whole modern movement, and i get the whole process behind these paintings. But i think i'm a bigger fan of Monet.

I went to the eiffel tower to watch the rugby world cup on both friday and saturday nights- i feel like i've had a very english weekend- Basically the entire island came down to watch themselves play in the world cup- so everywhere i went there was english- and then i went to the american church which was in english- and now i'm trying to research monet- and suprise- all the web sites are in english. It will be good to go back to class on tuesday and remember that indeed I am in France. Actually i did speak french like once today- i went to the market near my house and bought three large pears - 'poires' had to definitly say the words pear, 3 and maybe something like - thank you sir and good day to you as well! Oh and i had a brief conversation with my host mom while eating my cereal this morning about the weather and then about the dessert she was making. but seriously overall has not been a weekend of great advances.

ok, back to the paper. more to come i'm sure- oh and i'm hoping to remember to take my camera to school this week after purchasing new batteries so look forward to pictures of the hideous building that is the "nouvelle sorbonne" = New Sorbonne- new is not a good adjective in france.. you definilty want to go for anything described as old or classic - but not new. The Sorbonne= beautiful building set in the heart of the latin quarter, Nouvelle Sorbonne= hideous monstrosity in bland neighborhood- this law also applies for potatoe chips and bread specifically, but i'm making it an overall rule.