More Pictures

Hey there; I have a little more time today so I can actually tell you what some of these pictures are.

Here's Notre Dame de Reims. Reims is the capital of the Champagne region of France. I spent two days there over my Christmas break. Notre Dame de Reims is where almost all of the kings of France were crowned.

 

Here's the Saint Rémy Cathedral. The first king of France (King Clovis) was baptized by Saint Rémy who is burried in this church.

Here's Saint Rémy's tomb inside the church.

Here's the outside of the champagne cellar I visited in Reims. You can see some bottles in the cellar in my last post.

Here's a picture of some arches that were built by the Romans. This is one of the last standing Roman structures in France that has never undergone restauration. This is in Reims as well.

Here's Notre Dame de Reims at night.

After Reims, I went to Dijon which is the capital of the Burgundy region of France. Here's a picture of some random houses in Dijon. I took this because the architecture is so different than Paris.

All of the dukes of Burgundy lived in Dijon. Here's where some of the most important dukes are buried.

Here's one of the oldest churches in Dijon. This church isn't currently used for anything and isn't open for visits. I love it though because even the religious architecture is different in Dijon.

Here's another church in Dijon. My pictures of churches in Dijon aren't great. In Paris, there is usually a large square where cars can't drive and where there are no other buildings. This makes it easy to get far enough away to get a good picture of them. In Dijon, this is not the case. Often, the churches are just in the middle of downtown Dijon, and you can't get great pictures.

This is a picture of an appetizer I had in Dijon. I decided to have a good dinner there because Dijon is pretty well known for its cuisine. This is a millefeuille pastry with mushrooms, escargots (the large grayish blackish blobs), and frog legs. The frog legs are the small white peices of meat. They taste like chicken, but are a little bit tougher. All of this was in a creamy buttery sauce with parsley.

Here's the main course. Obviously, potatoes on the left. And then on the right, the most delicious beef bourgognon I have ever had. For those of you who have not had beef bourgognon, it is a really rich, thick beef stew with onions and mushrooms and such.

Here's the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve. Sorry it's sideways.

 

Here's a picture of the inside of La Sainte Chapelle in Paris. This is a church that was built by Saint Louis to house Jesus' crown of thorns. The crown is still displayed the first Friday of every month. Unfortunately I did not know this until the first Friday of my last month in Paris had already passed. But it's also known for its stained glass windows; so here you go...

Here's the outside of La Sainte Chapelle. It's a pretty small place.

Talk to you again soon.

Pictures

Here are some pictures. I'm running short on time but I promise to get more up tomorrow.

 

 

 

Hellooooo

Hey there, again it's been a while. I feel like I say that a lot, but apparently this is my seventeenth post in 24 or so weeks, so I've been doing a lot better than one might think. Anyway, I feel like I am starting to get a better understanding of the French than I first had. I admit, it took me a while to get over the "honey-moon" stage of being in Paris. I don't love Paris or the French any less than I did during that stage, but I feel like I'm gaining a more complete understanding of why things are the way that they are. First of all, I attribute a lot of this understanding to Gertrude Stein's Paris France. I don't think the ending of the book is very well written, and of course the book is kind of dated (it was first published in 1940) but it gives insight into the Parisian psyche that I think still holds true today. Anybody who is planning a trip to Paris or who simply wants to better understand Parisians should read it. It's not long (only 120 or so pages) and is a quick read.

Anyway, I think that Parisians are very logical. They often don't like new things because to them, the old things made sense so why would you try something new that may not work. They are very judgemental, and as a result are very worried about being judged themselves. They pride themselves on their knowledge, particularly of history, and even more particularly of French history. These are just a few observations and unfortunately I am running too short on time to provide examples to support these observations. I will try to remember to give you some examples in my next update, which I hope will be next week.

Now to me; I have finals coming up. I had my last phonetics class today; next Friday I have two final exams, one next Saturday, and my last one on the 21st. Then I come home on the 25th. And let's not forget my birthday on the 23rd. I don't expect you to send gifts, you can just hold onto them until I get home.

It's freezing cold in Paris right now. Today's high was 27 but with the wind it felt like 12, tomorrow we hope to get up to 28. That's according to http://www.weather.com/. Next weekend it might get up to 40 I hear. It doesn't snow much here, but when it does, watch out. The Parisans have no idea what to do when it snows. Yesterday for example, there was maybe 2 inches of accumulated snow on the ground and it caused the buses to run 20 minutes late. Nobody owns a snow shovel (or a shovel at all apparently) so they sweep the snow off of the sidewalk. Everybody throws ice on the sidewalk, and if it gets any colder, or warmer, or darker, or sunnier, or later in the day, they put more on for good measure. It's pretty entertaining coming from Colorado where when you get 2 inches, your reaction is "That's it? Really?"

Anyway, I have to go, I have 18 minutes before the cafeteria stops serving dinner. Adios!

Bonne année!

Here's a link to a video where you can see what I did for New Years in Paris. I'll post my own video and pictures soon.

http://31decembreaparis.com

Pictures, finally...

Here's the Moulin Rouge. I'd go see a show there, but the cheapest tickets cost more than 100 dollars each.

Here's the Louvre at night, aint it perty?

Here's the chateau at Fontainebleau. Eight centuries of French kings went to this place. It was also one of Napoléon's favorite haunts.

Here's me standing at the top of the main staircase at Fontainebleau.

A random chandelier at the chateau.

There's a room in Fontainebleau where the walls are decorated with one of the King's (I forget which one) china. Here's a plate with a depiction of Niagra Falls on it. He had it made for him after he visited the United States, before it was the United States of course.

Here's me taking a picture of me taking a picture at Fontainbleau.

Here's the kings' bed.

Here's a room and the bed where a pope stayed for a while when Napoléon held him hostage at the chateau until he would accept one of Napoléon's laws.

And here's the queens' bed. Marie Antoinette ("Anne d'Autriche" in French) had the room redecorated, but she never got to see it before she was executed during the Revolution.

A random hallway at Fontainebleau.

Another random hallway at Fontainebleau. Napoléon III had the shelves on the walls filled with over 1600 books from Napoléon I's personal library.

Napoléon I's throne room. This is the only throne room still in existence in France.

Sorry this picture is sideways. It's a picture of Jim Morrison's grave at Père Lachaise Cemetary in Paris.

Here's another picture at Père Lachaise. I took this one so that you could get a feel for the cemetary. It's like a small town, but instead of buildings, there are just giant graves everywhere; no simple tombstones here.

The next few pictures are of the Christmas window displays in Paris's largest, and ritziest, shopping mall. When you ask a Parisian what to do in Paris around Christmas, their first answer is always "go see the windows at the Galleries Lafayette." They look more impressive in person because all of the displays move and each has its own song. It's awesome.

Here's one of the main entrances to the Galleries Lafayette.

And finally, here's a picture of my school. I don't actually have classes in this building, but this is the Sorbonne.

A few pictures

Bonjour à tous. So I still haven't had a chance to upload any of my pictures. Sorry. But, here are a few that other people have taken of me. I hope this helps you get by until you can see my pics.

So here's the Louvre on a Friday night. This is one of their indoor sculpture gardens.

And here's me standing in front of the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. Apparently they're even more impressive when there are flowers and the fountains are turned on, but I still enjoyed it.

 And here's me (in the back left corner) hanging out with some of my friends from my program on Thanksgiving Day.

And finally, here I am with some of my friends from my program going to get cafeteria food for dinner. We jokingly call it the homeless shelter. The food's not great, but the price can't be beat (it's only 2.90 € for the student meal, that's the equivilent of 4.27 US dollars).

Hey There

Hello... Sorry it's been so long since I've checked in. I feel like I say that a lot, I just get busy and this kind of falls to the bottom of my list of priorities. Anyway, things are still going well here. I had a big grammar test yesterday and I'm not sure I know how I did. That brings me to an interesting point though: the French grading system. Everything is graded on a scale of 0-20 with 0 being the worst and 20 being the best. I have never seen anybody get a 20. The average score is 10-12, decent is 12-14, good is 14-16, really good is 16-18, and anything above that is almost impossible. So what they do is you start with 20 points, and then for each mistake that you make, you lose one point. Unfortunately, that does not leave much room for error. If your teacher is nice (which thankfully, mine are) they will only take off a half point if the mistake is not serious. The difficult part comes when you get your grade. Although a 12 is average, it still has a tendency to remind you just how poorly you speak French. Fortunately, I got a 16...

Anyway, on a lighter note, I saw my first French protest today. For those of you that don't know, France is renowned for its workers going on strike. Some French people even joke that it's France's national sport. Since I've been here, there have been at least three strikes that I know about. Today, there was a strike by most of the high school professors and some of the students. The cool part of it is that they closed down one of the busiest streets in Southern Paris. It was funny, the police knew that they were going to protest so they closed down the street to give the protesters a staging area. Then all of these vans showed up as part of the protest and they tied big balloons to the top of the vans with the name of each school that was there. I felt like I was seeing a practice run of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or something. So then, after about 45 minutes of standing around, things got started and the protesters marched down the street to one of the busiest intersections I know of, right in front of a major train station. Everything just shut down and nobody acted like it was abnormal. It was weird but pretty funny. All I know is that I'm glad I was walking and didn't have to try to drive around all of that mess. Here's a link to a news story about the strike: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article_interactif/2009/11/24/les-enseignants-en-greve-pour-vos-enfants_1271261_3224.html. It's in French, sorry. I'll try to get some pictures up soon.

So last weekend I went to the Cathedral at Chartres. Chartres is a small town about an hour and a half drive west of Paris. There wasn't anything special about the cathedral except for the fact that it's one of the oldest cathedrals in the world. I guess if you include the Druids, people have been worshiping in that spot since 300 b.c. You can see walls that were built in 700 a.d. I will get some pictures of that up soon as well. (It's starting to look like my next post will just be pictures).

I also went to the opera last Thursday. We saw a German opera called Salomé. The story is pretty disturbing. Salomé is the daughter of King Herod from the bible. Well King Herod has John the Baptist arrested for something and when Salomé sees John the Baptist, she falls in love with him. Of course, when Salomé comes onto John the Baptist, he turns her down because he is entirely devoted to God. Well John the Baptist starts telling King Herod that his kingdom will not last and that the only eternal kingdom is God's. So Herod gets sad and asks Salomé to dance for him. Salomé doesn't want to because she is heartbroken over John the Baptist. King Herod offers her anything that she desires if she will dance for him. (That's where it starts to get weird. See, there's a creepy, incestuous sexual tension between Salomé and her father, King Herod). So, Salomé does a dance.

Now, I was disappointed in her dance. It's the infamous "dance of the seven veils" where Salomé is wearing seven veils and she takes them off one by one until she is totally naked. It's supposed to be very sexy and is often considered the first strip-tease. Somehow, the director of this opera managed to make this dance very unsexy and really just weird.

But anyway, back to the story... So when Salomé finishes her dance, Herod asks her what it is that she wants in return. Since John the Baptist denied Salomé, she demands his head on a platter. King Herod tries to talk her out of it, but it doesn't work. So John's head gets cut off (offstage) and then they bring it on stage and present it to Salomé. She gets really weird at this point and starts professing her undying love (and lust) for John the Baptist, to his severed head. There's a lot of writhing around on the floor and then she has a schizophrenic attack and tells John's head that she hates it, then that she loves it, then that she hates it, and so on. Long story short, she makes out with his severed head and then lays on it, weeping. The end. Like I said, it's a weird story. And the opera was in German (they had French subtitles above the stage). Needless to say, I didn't really care for it. But it was kind of cool going to the opera in Paris.

So, I think that's enough for now. I will try to be in touch and try to get some damn pictures up. If I don't talk to you before Thursday, happy Thanksgiving.