In which the sun consents to appear…

Well, I can now officially attest that Paris is completely different in the spring. Last Sunday was the first warm day we’ve had, followed by another one on Monday. The sun was shining, flowers were blooming, I heard birds chirping, and everyone was much happier. Amazing how the weather affects people’s moods! Anyway, while it hasn’t stayed as warm as it was those two days, it has definitely been much nicer weather. I’ve finally been able to shed my winter coat and boots and start moving into (gasp) sweaters and “spring shoes.” That may not seem like such a big deal, but it’s huge for a Californian girl who isn’t used to having winter for more than a week. It’s a joyous occasion indeed to see the sun!

Most of my time since I last wrote has been spent doing schoolwork or going to class. I’ve had more classes than usual (to make up for holidays that we’re going to have in the second half of the semester) and more work than usual, because midterms have started. This past weekend, however, I did manage to squeeze out some time to go to the Louvre and the Musée de la Vie Romantique. At the Louvre, I finally got to see the Mona Lisa (that was my third visit, and I still hadn’t seen it!) and I also got an annual pass to the museum, so I can now go whenever I want! The Musée de la Vie Romantique houses artifacts from the lives of Romantic-era French figures. I was particularly interested in Georges Sand, a 19^th-century French woman who left her husband and moved with her children to Paris. She was a feminist before the feminist movement really started, dressing like a man and going out unescorted with the great male philosophers and artists of the time. The museum visits were a really nice way to break up my studying.

Next week is my spring break (a nice reward for getting through midterms). I’m going to Italy for the week. I’m flying to Rome on Saturday, staying there through Monday, and then taking a train to Assisi where I’ll spend the rest of the week. I take a train back to Rome and fly from Rome back to Paris the following Sunday (Easter). Then I have a day to recover before classes start again, because, in France, Easter Monday is a holiday. I won’t have my computer with me over the break, so I’ll tell you about Italy next time I write!

In which I eat couscous and describe a protest…

I know it’s been a little more than a week since my last e-mail. I’ve gotten so busy! But that, of course, means that I’ve got a lot of wonderful things to tell you about! To start, last Tuesday I attended a school-hosted couscous dinner where, in theory, we American students could make friends with some French students. Unfortunately, however, there was only one French student able to attend. And the funny thing was, she wasn’t actually French! She was a German student who had been studying in Paris for about four years. That didn’t faze any of us, however; we simply befriended her and spoke in French for the duration of the evening. The food was very good, but very different than most found in the US. The table was served a big bowl of couscous, a pot of vegetable stew, and huge platters of meat, from which everyone ate family style. Each person had a bowl, and the idea was to put couscous in the bottom of the bowl, top with veggies, and put the meat off to one side for cutting. The whole meal was excellent. We had baklava for dessert, and a delicious Arabian mint tea. The ambiance only added to the fun of the evening: The restaurant was set up with couches, instead of chairs, and very low tables. They’re really comfortable, and give you the urge to lounge for hours drinking tea (good marketing strategy!). We had a wonderful time (we had the entire downstairs of the restaurant to ourselves) until, as we were sitting around talking after our meal, a mouse popped out of one of the cushions. Fortunately, it was the one male in our group who saw it first and, being the collected guy he is, told the girls to move before we all started screaming. So, we were all safely away from the mouse before we had the urge to jump on chairs and shriek. Needless to say, we left the restaurant after that! But it was still a fun night, mouse and all.

Sunday, I went back to Versailles for my first day as a nanny! It went very well overall, though I did discover that it’s a challenge to nanny for children who don’t speak English. It didn’t matter very much with the ten-month-old, but I really had to focus to understand what the two-year-old was asking for. Excellent practice for me! Excellent practice for her, too, because the parents want me to speak English to the kids, so she had to try to understand what I was saying as well. I think my biggest accomplishment for the day was teaching her how to high-five. It was a long day for me (about 12 hours, nine of them nannying and three of them traveling to and from Versailles) but quite enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to going back this Sunday!

One final thing before I end. You may have heard about the protests going on in Paris right now against the CPE (an action affecting the 26-and-under workforce). The protest is actually a really neat thing, and a very historic event to be experiencing in Paris. The demonstrations are actually taking place all over France, but they’re centered in Paris and Lyon. Parisian universities have been shut down for almost a month now (this happens almost yearly when the students blockade the doors, refusing to let in teachers; however, this closure has lasted an unusually long time), and the Sorbonne is occupied for the first time since 1968. Last Saturday, there was a nation-wide protest involving one and a half million people, several thousand of whom were in Paris. These protests are usually very peaceful (at least until the sun goes down) and very exciting to watch. Prime Minister Villepin was given until 5 p.m. last Monday to withdraw the CPE, or all union workers (this includes transportation and post office workers) would go on strike to show solidarity with the students. Villepin refused, prompting more protests, with still more to follow this coming weekend. Next Tuesday, there will be a massive strike that will likely absolutely paralyze the city. Their planning to strike for just one day to shock the government into action.

What, you might wonder, does this mean for me? Well, actually, I’m not concerned. I’m rather excited. Everything I need next Tuesday is within walking distance, including my classes. Of course, if the strike is as big as expected, that will be a moot point, since none of my teachers will be able to get there to teach! The upshot is that it will be a really cool thing to tell my children about in 20 years (when they read about it in their history books—and judging from what I’m told, it will be in there), that I was in Paris when the CPE protest was going on. Plus, what’s the joy of being in Paris if you don’t get to experience one of their infamous strikes? I’ll keep you all posted on what ends up happening.

Until next time!

Another message from the past and from Paris, in which I learn a valuable lesson about Mexican food:

My, this past week just flew by! Time has really started to go by quickly with classes now in full swing. When I last wrote I was preparing for my school-arranged day trip to Versailles. The trip was absolutely amazing! The sheer size of the palace was awe-inspiring, but the really incredible thing was the ornate attention to detail. Everything was decorated and, even more than that, tied in to a common theme. Our tour took us through the king’s rooms, the hall of mirrors, and the queen’s rooms. Each chamber had its own Roman god theme. Louis XIV was known as the Sun King (le Roi Soleil) because he compared himself to Apollo, the Roman god of the sun. Thus, the throne room was Apollo-themed and place in the center of the king’s other rooms, each with their god or goddess accoutrements. It was truly beautiful, and I can’t wait to go back when it’s warmer to see the Versailles gardens in bloom.

This past week in Paris brought me a particularly happy surprise. Thursday night, the UC Center here had a reception for some French students who will be studying at various UCs next year. It was really neat to get to talk to French students my age, about everything from what it’s like in California to the recent French student protests against the CPE (which, incidentally, took place just outside my door this past Tuesday). I made a particularly strong connection with a girl who’s actually a native of the Caribbean island of Martinique. She came to Paris to study and is hoping to be accepted at UCLA for next year. She’s also really interested in San Diego, so I may have a visitor for a few days when I get back to the States!

Other than those events, my week mainly consisted of school and homework. So I’ll give you the food update to finish off this message (since food happens to be a central part of life here): Friday night at a small café, I had the best escargot I’ve ever tasted. This is the second time I’ve had escargot in France, but this round was much better than the first (and yet, cheaper), and I’m definitely looking forward to going back and having it again! Also, I’ve discovered the one type of food the French don’t do well: Mexican. Since my program cohorts and I are all from California, we’ve been suffering from Mexican food withdrawal. I didn’t even realize how often I ate it until I didn’t have it anymore. Although my cravings weren’t quite as bad as those of some of my friends (I wouldn’t kill for a burrito), I had noticed a distinct lack and a certain craving for guacamole that just wouldn’t go away. Anyway, after our group Versailles trip, we managed to find a Mexican restaurant. We were so excited! We couldn’t wait to finally satisfy our cravings! Our first indication that French Mexican food might be different than California Mexican food was when our waiter was not familiar with the term “carne asada.”

Uh-oh.

In the end, our food could have been very loosely termed Mexican. Very, very loosely. For the most part, it looked like Mexican food. My quesadilla, for example, looked like a quesadilla. It was just that it didn’t taste like a quesadilla. It tasted like a lot of melted French cheese, which wasn’t a bad taste in its own right. It just wasn’t anything like the taste of Mexican cheese. The good news is that this experience pretty much took away everyone’s craving for Mexican food—or if not the actual craving, at least any desire to try to find Mexican food in France! And, in the end, we were all just laughing at the situation. The morals of this story? Californians are spoiled when it comes to Mexican food, and countries are best at making food that originates from the same continent.

And with that lesson, I shall end for now. I hope all of you are doing well, and I will write again soon.

More from the City of Lights…

It’s so nice to be back in touch with the world! As you all know, I had some computer problems. The end result is that I’m writing this to you on a brand-new laptop, which my wonderful parents were kind enough to mail to me from the States. Although it was probably a good experience to be without a computer for a while, I must admit I’m very happy to have one again.

So, to catch everyone up…

I finished my first week of classes, which—computer problems aside—went very well. In my Parisian history class, the focus is on “reading the city” through its architecture. Last week we visited the Louvre—but we didn’t look at any art. Instead, we studied the structure of and under the building itself, and the many transitions they experienced. It was a fascinating new way to experience a museum!

Last weekend, I went on a school-arranged trip to Chartres, a small town famous for its cathedral, about an hour and a half outside of Paris. It snowed quite a bit while we were there. It was beautiful, but not really conducive to walking around. Actually, come to think of it, it has snowed almost every day of the past week. Tuesday night I was studying, and I looked up and saw a blanket of white out my window. The sight took my breath away.

Anyway, Chartres is a very peaceful, beautiful little place. And the cathedral, which is bigger than Notre Dame, is absolutely amazing. You could spend days looking at its huge collection of stained glass windows, and deciphering the Bible stories they tell. In fact, we took a tour given by a British man who has spent 50 years doing just that. He went to Chartres as a grad student to write his thesis on the cathedral, and just never left! But the cathedral’s real claim to fame—for almost the past millennium, in fact—is that it houses the veil of the Virgin Mary. Only a small piece of the veil remains today, but it was still an impressive sight.

Back in Paris, my weekdays aren’t quite as exciting now that I’ve started school, but this past Tuesday, I did go to a school-arranged fondue dinner in the Latin Quarter. It was wonderful! I’d never had fondue before, and I’ve discovered that not only does it taste fantastic, but it’s also really fun to eat! My friends and I all agreed that we will need to return to that restaurant before the semester is over.

On a side note, it’s official: I am more than a tourist here! I went into Les Artisans Café this morning (the café that my friends and I frequent, and the place I eat breakfast every Friday morning), and the server knew what I wanted without my having to order. I’m a regular at a café in Paris!

Tomorrow I’m going on another school-arranged day trip, this time to Versailles. The center here does a really great job of providing students with opportunities to see and do as many French things as possible; it’s really quite wonderful to not have to go through the huge effort of organizing a group of people on our own.

Until next time!

The third part of the saga, for your enjoyment:

Well, quite a lot has happened since my last report. To begin with, I took my first weekend trip outside of Paris! Two of my friends and I took the train to Bordeaux for the weekend. It was so much fun! I’ve discovered that I really like taking the train. I don’t particularly like to fly, nor do I like to drive for long periods of time (not on my own, at least). So, having now ridden the train a few times, I’ve decided that it may just be the perfect method of transportation. The train trip to Bordeaux took about three hours. We left around eight o’clock Friday morning, which meant that I had to be up much earlier than usual. But on the bright side, I’ve never had so little trouble finding a seat on the métro!

After we got to Bordeaux and found our hostel (which was really more like a hotel), we walked around the city. It had been raining in Paris for the last week, and Bordeaux was no different. Fortunately, the rain was more like a sprinkle that day, so we were still able to explore quite a bit of the old city. That night, we walked around until we found a quiet little restaurant called Tio Pepe. It was a Basque restaurant, and we had a lovely three-course dinner, complete with wine from the region. It was a really wonderful evening.

Saturday afternoon, we went on a group tour of the Saint-Emilion region, which is part of the wine country surrounding the city of Bordeaux. Our experience included a winery tour, wine tasting, and a tour of the local village. The way that this particular winery makes its wine is fascinating to me. They don’t actually crush their grapes; they just raise their temperature and allow the natural yeast of the grapes to open them. The little village was equally fascinating, home to an underground church that we were able to visit. I could have spent days exploring that little village alone.

After returning to Bordeaux, we found a spot for dinner and then walked around the city for a while—a particularly enjoyable experience since the sky had finally consented to stop crying. Bordeaux is really beautiful at night, particularly when viewed from the bridge that connects the two banks of the city (there’s a river that runs right through the middle, separating the old part from the modern one). All the lights made it look a little something like a fairy tale.

Sunday was a short day of sightseeing because we had to catch our train back to Paris, but we made the most of the time we had by exploring the side of the city that we hadn’t had a chance to see yet. Bordeaux is filled with beautiful churches and statues, little gems of which we found quite a few simply by strolling around the city.

Back in Paris, I had the last week of my language practicum and started my “real” classes for the semester. So far, I’ve attended my French language class, my Paris literature class, and my “Women in 20^th Century France” class. They all seem exceptional, with professors who seem genuinely interested in what they’re teaching, and in getting the students interested in it too. Tomorrow I have my other class, Histories of Paris. The most wonderful thing about my classes is that they all involve study of the place that I’m living. It’s a remarkable thing to study a book that was written in and set in Paris, while actually being in Paris and able to visit the places described by the author. It makes school a lot more interesting and exciting when you’re studying something you visited yesterday, or, in the case of the Bastille, something you can see when you step outside your door.

Thanks for all the good wishes you all are sending my way. It really warms my heart to know that you’re thinking of me. I’m thinking of you too!

Here’s part two of my trip down Parisian memory lane:

Let me start this by saying that I love living in a city where there’s enough going on to discover something new every day—even when you don’t leave your neighborhood. I’m having so much fun simply figuring out how all the streets connect. I’ve gotten completely lost twice in the past two days—within a few blocks of my apartment!—just because the streets intersect differently here.  And what they say about French drivers is only partly true. Yes, they drive less cautiously than American drivers (though I think they might actually get in fewer accidents; I have a theory that they can do this because they’re actually better drivers than those of us in the States), but the drivers are no match for the crazy pedestrians. I don’t know why they even bother having a green and a red pedestrian light. Nobody pays any attention to the red. I’ve actually seen people step out in front of moving cars…on a regular basis. But here’s the strangest part of it, for me: I’m doing it too! Me, who absolutely refuses to cross against a red light, even when there’s not a car in sight! It must be a contagious disease.

Enough about the streets. Since the last time I wrote, I’ve visited the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay (my favorite museum so far), the Picasso Museum, the interior of the Opèra Garnier, Belleville , and the Père Lachaise cemetery (burial place of many celebrities including Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, and Chopin). It’s incredible how much history is packed into a single city. And it’s even more amazing that it’s kind of thrown in amidst the modern-day buildings and offices. I’ll be walking in a business district, and all of a sudden, there’s some museum or monument that seems to appear out of nowhere.

On the less touristy side, I’ve had some really fun nights closer to home, too.  I’m starting to develop some good friendships here, which of course means late nights going out or just talking until all hours. This past Friday night, a group of us went out for a drink then went to a club (called Wax, interestingly enough) and danced until almost four o’clock in the morning. It was quite the enjoyable evening, though the enormous amount of cigarette smoke everywhere we went took some getting used to. Saturday night I had a girl’s night with a few of my friends. We went out for coffee, picked up dessert on the way home (we ended up making friends with the man running the boulangerie; he even gave us some free pastries!), and watched a movie while we ate our dessert. It was a nice break from the more lively nightlife.

The food here is still amazing, and I’m still enjoying every bite. I’d like to write a letter thanking whoever invented the baguette. That person deserves a medal of some kind.

I’ve stumbled across a series of emails from my days as a college student studying abroad in Paris. These were emails that I sent to an often-growing group of people back home in the US who wanted to experience Paris through me, and I thought I’d share them here for old time’s sake. Enjoy!

Let me start by saying that I’ve fallen head-over-heels for Paris. It is such a unique, interesting city; it’s nearly impossible to be bored. Even taking the métro is exciting! For example, in a métro station I ran across an eight-piece string orchestra playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D. It was gorgeous! Another time, a group of guys in a métro car burst into “Hey Ya!” (the Outkast song) and sang the entire thing, complete with background vocals. Only in Paris!

I’ve started touring the city, and so far I’ve seen Montmartre (home of the Sacre Coeur, with the best view of Paris), le Centre Georges Pompidou (a modern art museum), the outside of l’Opéra Garnier (setting for Phantom of the Opera), the Eiffel Tower, and some other smaller, quieter areas of the city. I’ve also managed to find a favorite boulangerie (bakery), café, and soup place. It’s the most amazing thing to be able to sit and have a café au lait, and maybe breakfast, before class, go to class, go see some sights of the city, then buy a warm baguette on the way home (and, of course, having eaten half of it by the time I get there). It’s even more amazing to do all of that in the snow, which I did yesterday. It was snowing off and on the entire day—not a lot, though, and none of it stuck to the ground. Still, my black coat had little white flecks all over it by the time I reached my destination. So amazing! And yet so cold.

I’ve now finished my first week of class. Right now, everyone in my program is just taking a three-week language practicum, with a three-hour class Monday through Thursday mornings and afternoon excursions into different parts of the city two afternoons a week. It’s nice to only have about fifteen students in the course, and I think it’s really going to improve my language skills, especially since our teacher (who’s French, of course) speaks only in French. After the practicum, I’ll start my regular classes: French literature, history, and women’s studies, plus a French language course. I’m really looking forward to them.

As for the language, well, I’m definitely speaking quite a bit of French! It’s empowering to walk into a store or restaurant and get what I need without speaking any English. It’s not always easy, or even possible, but my skills get better every time. I find the grocery store to be most challenging. But I’ve managed to find laundry detergent that won’t bleach or ruin my clothes and have yet to give myself food poisoning. I consider that quite the accomplishment!

The food here is amazing; anything with flour tastes absolutely incredible. I don’t know how they do it! I’ve become a carb addict. There are at least two boulangeries on each street, and they all sell baguettes for less than a dollar. Temptation city! I was also surprised to find that Nutella is a staple food here. I’ve never seen so much of it in one place before. It’s literally everywhere! That’s not an altogether bad thing, though. Nutella happens to taste marvelous, especially on (you guessed it!) bread. And crepes. Ooh, the crepes are extraordinary, too. Okay, I just made myself hungry. Moving on.

I’ve just gotten a wonderful opportunity here. I heard through our academic center here that there was a business student trying to improve his English and that he was looking for a conversation partner. I happened to be the first student to respond to the e-mail, so I’m now in the process of setting up a meeting time. I’ll be speaking French to him and he’ll be speaking English to me, so it will be a great chance for me to improve my French skills! That should be happening early next week.

I hope you all had a wonderful week, and have a good one next week too. Thanks for the e-mails. I really do love to hear from you; those little connections to home. And, if any of you get a yen to visit Paris in the next few months, I’d be happy to play tour guide and show you the insider secrets of the city!