La Cimetière Montparnasse

I was considering going to Versailles today, but after 2 weeks of non-stop guided tours, museums and group activities, I thought it would be best if I took some time for myself. I woke up relatively late, around 10:00am and took the metro to the Montparnasse Cemetery, known for all of the famous people that are buried there. I had heard that the cemetery held the tombs and bodies of such amazing people as the composer Camille Saint-Saens, feminist/writer Simone de Beauvoir, poet Charles Baudelaire, and singer Edith Piaf (one of my favorites). So, I made a plan to go on my own and take a nice walk around the cemetery, enjoy the breeze, the sun, the beautiful trees and go visit some of the people that I admire.
The metro stop where I got out was a few blocks away, I got lost a little bit, but I was in no rush so it was rather pleasant trying to figure out how to get to the cemetery. It was busy in Montparnasse, as usual. People were leaving the local churches, there were families and couples sitting at cafés getting some sort of Sunday brunch, an art sale in the street...but as soon as I entered the gate and slipped inside the walls of the cemetery, it was quiet. I got a map from an information desk/guard post and looked at the locations of the tombs that I had come here to see. I was ready with my camera, a pen to jot down any interesting thoughts, and my map. I had a little bounce in my step, and I quickly came upon the grave of Marguerite Duras, a wonderful French writer whom my major advisor adores. I looked at it for a while, read one of the notes someone had left for her and took a picture. Onto the next grave...and it was Camille Saint-Saens! (This one was for you, John) He was buried with his family, and there was a tiny altar inside a tomb for them. Again, click, and I took a picture.
But it was at this point on this lovely sunny Sunday that my trip took an unexpected turn. I decided to walk along one of the sand paths between the tombs to feel more as though I were within the cemetery rather than walking on a road. As I walked towards Charles Baudelaire's grave, I heard someone sniffling, crying. A woman who seemed to be in her 50s was removing the dried, wilted flowers on someone's grave and replacing them with fresh new ones, watering ones that had been planted by the grave. She was crying softly and looked up at me briefly to see who was passing by. I lowered my gaze and continued walking, and I suddenly felt that I should tuck my map back into my bag. And then, I really began looking around.
To my left, Mounia Bohoura 1968-2008. Her grave was new. Either her family couldn't afford a stone grave cover or had not yet time for there was a hard plastic cover presented by the funerary home over the earth where she had been buried. Brightly colored flowers and bouquets covered its surface. No words, just her name and the years of her life. And then to my right, Tai Shi Cheung, 1955-1980, only 25 years old, who was buried along with her parents beneath a regal black tombstone with gold-painted Chinese characters engraved into it. And yet another grave on the right, the stone so old and weathered that the name and years had been replaced by dark green moss. I had no desire to check if I was on the right track to Baudelaire's grave, to see where I was in the cemetery. I heard children screaming somewhere in the distance and wondered angrily why no parents had silenced them yet. I emerged once more on the road and something caught my eye.
A grave to my left held a portrait of a young woman engraved into dark stone. 1960-1982. 22 years old. It was not the fact that I saw her face because all of these people had faces, identities. But to the right of the engraving was a small pot of flowers. Cheap, tiny, random flowers housed in a thin plastic pot. But on the outside of the pot there was a small piece of paper taped to it, with the following words:

"J'ai encore rêvé d'elle."

"I dreamt of her again". I think you understand why I began crying immediately after reading that little scrap of text. I couldn't stay there. Screw the map, screw my plan, screw the tradition of kissing Oscar Wilde's grave. I couldn't do it. As I walked briskly out of the cemetery, wiping tears from my eyes, I was annoyed at the starry-eyed couples cuddling and reading under the trees. I was pissed at the groups of scantily-clad high school girls posing around tombstones with massive smiles and silly stances for their photos. I was embarrassed that I had walked through the gate with a fully-charged camera and a celebrity map and that it took seeing all of this to remind me that I was in a cemetery, not a museum. I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I had to go.

I walked immediately to the metro station and took it back to my arrondissement. I sat down at a café, ordered a cup of coffee, and I sat. I pulled my cardigan more tightly around my body, my scarf more securely around my neck and I sat. I put the pen and the map to use, but only to write about how I felt on the back of the map. This is why there are no pictures of the letters to Edith Piaf, or the kisses on Oscar Wilde's tombstone.

I will leave you with this.

Chartres

Yesterday, we went on a day trip to the town of Chartres, which lies about an hour and a half outside of Paris. It is most famous for its majestic cathedral, La Cathédrale de Notre Dame à Chartres, which we could see from far away as we approached the town. To the left is a view of the Chartres Cathedral from the bus. It was breathtaking even from a distance.

We began with a long, and I mean LONG, lunch as a group in a cute little country-style restaurant called L'Ecureuil. We ended up sitting there for over 2 hours eating and talking. The number of courses that we had was the reason why it took so long: 1. apératif (pre-meal drink) of kir, a blend of white wine and black currant syrup, 2. entrée (appetizer) of vegetable quiche and a small salad, 3. plat (main dish) of chicken in cream sauce, wild rice, and roasted vegetables, 4. brie and a little bundle of greens (i have no idea what course this is), 5. dessert of a yogurt-based icy vanilla ice cream thing with starfruit and a cherry tomato. Yeah. It was a lot.
The town is incredibly well-preserved, lots of original buildings, parts of ancient walls, beautiful courtyards and flowerboxes. Here's a series of pictures to depict the town to show off how picturesque and beautiful the town is:

And then finally, after a while walking around in really unnecessarily hot French countryside weather, we arrived at the Chartres Cathedral. And there was a wedding there!!! A small wedding, but we arrived at the cathedral just as the bride was about to walk down the aisle. There was a choir and an organ playing and the combination of the music, the astronomically tall ceiling, the overwhelming stained glass windows, the candles...all of it, quite frankly, was very seductive. It is difficult not to believe or want to be religious in a space like that. It's a reassuring feeling to be able to believe that there is something or someone out there to be your guide and aide, and to be able to lose any fear of dying due to the promise that there is something more...but, as I said during one of the conversations with the girls over lunch, I don't think I could support a religion or system that has so much violence and horrific behavior in its history, justified solely by those beliefs. I lit a candle for my family, anyway, though. It's sitting in front of a side altar where there is a reliquary that supposedly holds a veil worn by the Virgin Mary. The candle for my family is the candle immediately to the left of that gap in the front of the picture in the front row.
The outside of the building was JUST as magnificent. Especially out back. There are gardens, and a beautiful view of the rest of Chartres. The detailed stonework around each of the portals of the cathedral were beautiful, as well, although time, weather, and other forces have resulted in some damage to the artwork. There is also a labrynth of grass out back. Apparently when the Crusaders were out killing people under the name of God, people back in Chartres who were unable to go fight for their faith demonstrated their piety in a form of self-punishment by going through the entire labrynth on their knees.
Here is a picture of me with a marvelous view of Chartres and the labrynth below.

All in all, a very hot but enjoyable day in Chartres followed by the most nauseating 2-hour bus ride that I have ever experienced in my entire life due to a lack of AC and a bus driver who seemed to believe that speeding for like 50 feet would get us to Paris faster even though there was bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way into the city.

The Kingdom of the Dead

This past Thursday morning, Ali, Megan, Steph B, and I decided to go to the Catacombs. What are they? Well, sit down and stay a while and I'll tell you a little story:

There was once a little city called Paris (although way back in the day, it was called Lutèce). It was just the right size for the number of Parisians that lived within its walls, and during those sad times when people passed away, there was plenty of space for them to be buried in church cemeteries and city cemeteries.
However, as the city continued to grow and flourish, and as the beautiful buildings added more floors with more windows adorned with flowerboxes, there were soon too many people for the ground to hold. People were buried above other people from years before, and there was nowhere for the corpses to go. The smell of rotting flesh filled the streets and alleyways and in some terrible cases, after a heavy rainfall, Parisians would go down into their unfinished old basements to find that with the collapsing dirt, bodies had fallen into their homes. It was unbearable. Beginning in 1785, the government ordered that the bones and remains of people buried long ago be moved into the quarries below the ground of what used to be just outside of Paris which now constitute the region far below the sidewalks and streets in the 14e arrondissement of Montparnasse in the modern-day city of Paris.

Today, these shadowed rooms of bones and cold, dark corridors of stone, clay, and ancient dust are known as Les Catacombes. We took the metro to Montparnasse and crossed the street to enter this tiny tiny tiny closet of a green painted building next to a church that had the sign in the picture above. The tour began with a 20-meter vertical distance which we travelled via an incredibly tiny, steep, spiral staircase. After some introductory information, we began our walk through one of the most eerie spaces I have ever been in. It was dark and the temperature got immediately colder as we went further into the Catacombs.
Beginning in the early 19th century, the Catacombs were made accessible to the public as their curiosity as to what lay below their feet in the old quarries grew. The picture on the left shows a black line painted above our heads in the rock corridors. This was to show people how to get through and out of the Catacombs. Before this line was painted in, there were times when people would enter the Catacombs and get lost, and die either from starving to death, freezing to death, or getting trapped somewhere with little oxygen. Yeah. Today, there is only one way to get through the Catacombs as all other corridors have been blocked off with cast-iron gates. There have also been emergency exits installed in case one of the bodies re-assembles itself from the bones down there and proceeds to terrorize one of the tour groups. Just kidding.
There was also a very weird part of the Catacombs in which a veteran of King Louis XV's army, known only by the name Décure, made a series of rock carvings based on his experience as a prisoner of the British army in the fortress of Port-Mahon. The picture on the right shows part of the carving series.

I was starting to get really annoyed because the tour guide would stop at random nondescript locations and say a lot of random facts and overly detailed information. It had been over an hour and I wanted to see the freaking tombs already. Finally, we arrived. On the left, a picture of me and Steph B showing how nervous/scared we are right next to the front door of the ossuary. To the right is a picture of an engraving that reads "ARRETE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT" which translates to "STOP! HERE LIES THE KINGDOM OF THE DEAD".

Now, I for some reason didn't think about the fact that it's called an ossuary for a reason. Not a cemetery, not a tomb, an ossuary. As in, like a bone garden. So, really, I shouldn't have been surprised when I walked through that doorway, but quite honestly, if we hadn't just gotten a huge talk in French from the guide about being respectful of the deceased and stuff, I would probably have screamed/shat myself. Take a look.

These were literally just piles and piles and piles of bones and skulls. Everywhere. For like 15 minutes of the walk through the Catacombs. Rooms and rooms of bones from cemeteries around Paris. And it was incredibly cool/creepy. There were some tombs here and there. The tomb shown to the left is the tomb of a poet named Gilbert, possibly the most depressing, macabre, dark poet that I have ever read EVER. Perfectly appropriate for the Catacombs. There were citations from his writing engraved in the rock all over the place. One of them read "Si vous avez vu quelquefois mourir un homme considerez toujours que le même vous attend." Which translates to, "If you have ever seen a man die, always remember that the same fate awaits you." Geez.

We spent 2 freaking hours down there. A little long, I'd say. It was creepy. It was cold. It was depressing and a little gross. It was scary. And it put us in the mood for falafel. So, we went to the Jewish Quarter (les Marais/Quartier Juif) and got falafel at the most famous falafel place in Paris called "L'As de Falafel". Yum.

Paris, je t'aime.

Tuesday night, Claire, Sam, Steph B, Katie, and I decided to go on a picnic on the Champ de Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower. We walked there together with our baguettes and our cheese and our sandwiches and fruit. Yeahhhh my friends are pretty damn cute.
And Steph and I bought the same sandals the other day. Here is a picture of both of our feet. We're awesome.
From what we had heard, the Eiffel Tower is supposed to sparkle on the hour every hour for 10 minutes as soon as the sun has set to celebrate the fact that the French President (Nicolas Sarkozy) is the current head of the European Union. So, we thought it might be cool to take a peek.
The Eiffel Tower, while magnificent during the day in the sense that it is an impressive industrial-looking structure, was not as breathtaking as I imagined it would be during our bateau-mouche tour. However, the Eiffel Tower at night, as is the case with the entire of city of Paris at night, was a whole different story. To the left is a picture of me in front of the base of the Eiffel Tower at dusk. At night, the Eiffel Tower is illuminated in blue light, and it glows against the sky, visible from almost anywhere in Paris where tall buildings aren't obstructing your view. We picked a spot out by the Champ de Mars (a huge long lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower) and pulled out all our food and begin eating a lovely dinner on the lawn. As the sun set lower and lower in the horizon and eventually left us in darkness, illuminated only by an old-fashioned black cast iron street lamp, the anticipation and our excitement for the light show augmented.
Finally, at 10:00pm (or 22.00), in the pitch black night sky above Paris, the glowing blue Eiffel Tower burst into a million stars. For 10 minutes straight, the sparkling lights continued, the entire Champ de Mars and area surrounding the Eiffel Tower silenced or rejuvenated by the magical nature of the event.

It was during those 10 minutes in which we sat immobilized, entranced by the beauty of the Eiffel Tower that we each decided silently to ourselves that, "Paris, je t'aime". Looking around, we could see groups of young academics like ourselves sharing bread and cheese on the grass, romantic couples of all ages holding each other, their mystified faces lit up by the glow of the tower, small children with their parents silent for just a few minutes while they stared up at the evening sky, and we couldn't help but push aside any frustration, boredom, or homesickness that any of us held within our hearts. For just 10 minutes, we forgot that our feet hurt from having to walk a mile every time we need to go get groceries. We forgot that struggling to communicate in a foreign language each day sometimes made us want to scream and hop on a plane back to the United States. We realized that though we were far away from our parents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, and just plain old friends, there are still beautiful things in the world left to see.

After the lights stopped, our eyes adjusted to the night and we could see the shadow of the Eiffel Tower upon the purple, red, black, and blue clouds in the sky. The whole experience was like something from a movie (even the part where I realized I forgot my ticket for the metro and had to hop the barriers into the station and out of the station) and I don't think I could ever adequately explain what it felt like without physically taking you there, but I hope this photos give you just a little idea of how amazing and surreal it was.
Yeah okay, so I went to bed by midnight, but I'd say it was all in all an absolutely beautiful and perfect evening.

"Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre"

FINALLY. On Wednesday, August 28, we took a group visit to the Louvre. We had a 3-hour guided tour (yuck) which took us around to see some of the most famous pieces and parts of the museum: La Joconde (the Mona Lisa), the Rubens painting series of Queen Marie de Medici, La Grande Odalisque, the Galerie d'Apollon (an art gallery holding the crown jewels of France in a room gilded completely in gold and beautiful paintings), La Victoire de Samothrace (Winged Victory), and much more. It was incredibly frustrating because it was literally a jog through the Louvre. We had to speed-walk, almost jog to keep up with our tour guide. I got really pissed because we kept passing by rooms and rooms full of beautiful pieces without a second to see them. However, I guess it was a good way to take a look at some of the really famous pieces of the museum that everyone is supposed to see even if the pieces don't actually interest us.
Even though my feet hurt a lot at the end just from being on them for 3 hours straight, I decided that since I was in the mood for art, I would stay longer. So, from 6:00pm to a little after 8:00pm, I spent some time by myself in the Louvre and looked around at the things that I wanted to see. I think I may have been overly ambitious as I went straight into the 2 hours, totalling to 5 hours of non-stop Louvre-walking but it was definitely worth it. The painting of the partially-nude man seated with the woman at his feet is called Daphnis et Chloe...I just found it very romantic and loved it. Now, there is one statue that I must show you. In high school, I took AP Art History and fell in love with an Italian sculpture called the Barberini Fawn.
While I was walking around the Louvre, I saw the head/back of a statue that looked eerily similar to it so I FREAKED out and thought it was it. I literally started getting nervous and my pulse started racing when I was slowly walking up to it (weird, I know). But then I thought that it looked smaller than I thought it would be, and surely enough, it was a copy of it done by a French sculptor and the sculpture is called La Faune endormi. Still beautiful, though. Seriously. Hottest man ever is a fictional character made immortal in marble.
Here are some more beautiful pieces that I liked in the Louvre. The statue of the 3 beautiful nude women is called "Les Trois Graces" and was carved by a Frenchman named Pradier. The painting of the nude woman seated on her bed is called "La Baigneuse" (the Bather) by Ingres. The picture of the beautifully decorated roof is of the Galerie d'Apollon, or the Apollo gallery.

Overall, the two-hour period during which I wandered around the Louvre by myself were lovely and I think I'm going to go back tomorrow night.

P.S. The quote in the title was said by the painter Paul Cezanne.

La Légende de Saint Denis

Saint-Denis is a suburb that lies just north of the city of Paris and is easily accessible by train, metro, or bus. In my opinion, it is much more similar to New York City or Boston or major cities in the United States than Paris simply because it is much more diverse (socioeconomically, culturally, etc.) and more down-to-earth than the almost-too-beautiful, bourgeois, tourist-filled streets of the French capital. We took the metro there from the center of Paris and were pleasantly surprised by a lively, clamoring street market is present every day in Saint-Denis. Full of shouting vendors, Parisians looking for cheap produce, stands of 5-euro watches and 20-euro fake leather jackets, Muslim women wearing hijabs, men with full beards wearing loose lightweight matching shirts and pants in brightly-colored patterned fabrics...it was so refreshing!
Now, who was Saint Denis? He was one of the people who tried to evangelize France. He was sentenced to death by beheading. There is a legend that Saint Denis, after being beheaded, picked up his own head, and survived long enough to walk to the place where he wanted to be buried...the current location of the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
On the outside front wall of the basilica, there is a stone placard that reads: "En cette eglise le mardi 13 September 1479 Jeanne d'Arc blessée devant Paris en hommage a St.-Denis offrit ses armes." Which translates to English as: "In this church, on Tuesday, September 13, 1479, Joan of Arc, injured outside of Paris, offered her services to Saint Denis."
The outside of the basilica is unfortunately very dirty, as you can see from the first picture. The state doesn't have enough money to fund restoration of all of the historical buildings and places in France, and unfortunately, Saint Denis doesn't make enough of its own revenue through tours, souvenir shop sales, etc., to keep the building maintained. Therefore, you see that the outer walls are filthy, and the windows very dirty, as well. However, the inside is absolutely stunning. The colorful stained glass windows, the varying styles of architecture behind the transept of the basilica (showing how changes over time affected the style of the additions to the basilica)...it was all very beautiful. Here are some pictures to give you an idea:

But the best part of the basilica is that all the kings of France are buried HERE. Think about how much history that is in ONE place! The bodies are in their ornate stone tombs within the basilica or their tombs are within the basilica and their bodies are underneath the floor in the crypt. Whether the tombs were above or below ground, they were all quite creepy and somewhat unsettling. The stone tombs have likenesses of the people that are enterred within them. The older ones all look very rudementary and relatively cartoon-like and impersonal. However, as the tombs get younger and younger, the likenesses become more realistic and detailed, and some of them, even gruesome.

The part that I loved the most was the crypt...although when I first got down there I was super creeped out and seriously considered returning upstairs to ask someone to come and look around with me. It's not that it's poorly lighted or anything, but it smells weird, and well, there are lots of dead people buried down there. It was absolutely amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I ended up spending WAY too much time down there and was late to meet the rest of my group.
While I was down there, I discovered something that almost made me shout down in the crypts because I was so excited. During my junior year of high school, I did research about Louis XVII, the son of the king that was beheaded during the French Revolution. I learned that there was a legend/myth/piece of history that says that this very very young prince was rescued from imprisonment and eventual beheading/death by someone who disguised him and raised him elsewhere. Since then, there have been all sorts of claims that he survived. However, they later found a heart that is supposedly his. And guess where that heart is? Yeah. It's in small ornate glass jar with gold-leaf detailing in the crypt of the freaking Basilica of Saint-Denis. I freaking stumbled upon that thing. Paris is ridiculous. France is crazy. I love it.

It was really interesting to see another part of France that isn't all fine wine, $200 high heels, good cheese, expensive cafés, famous bookstores, artisan bread, aaaaaand only caucasian people. I feel that in general our group has been prone to acting and feeling as if France is some fake fairyland place that we see in movies and that even when we're in the country, we're so outside of the society that people feel comfortable being ridiculously loud and ostentatious. I think that seeing other parts of France and experiencing different cultures and environments will be a good way for all of us to learn that France isn't just la vie en rose through the eyes of Amélie.

Je suis étudiante de français

I had a meeting with the program director, Professor Lydgate, today to discuss course selection for our time in Aix-en-Provence and just to talk with him a little bit about how we're feeling about the study abroad experience so far.
It took about 5 minutes to discuss course selection because I'm a nerd and I've already thought about it and made a list before going to my meeting. There are SO many things that I'm thinking about taking simply because there's no other time when I can study subjects from a different point of view and also simply because I won't have the time or option of studying some of these things when I return to Wellesley, my degree requirements, and my double-major...
Here's a little glimpse at the courses that I'm considering:
- 19th-century Art History
- Art of Love and the Art of Poetry in the Middle Ages
- Civilization: Introduction to the Arabic Muslim world
- Contemporary Arabo-Islamic World since 1945
- Evolution of a Literar Movement: European Romanticism
- French Literature: The Art of Love and the Art of Poetry, Middle Ages
- History of Contemporary Art
- History of the European Union
- Libertine Literature (17th and 18th century)
- Social and Cultural History of Modern France
- The Evolution of Love from Laclos to Proust
- Translation
- Twentieth Century Writers
- North African Anthropology

I want to take an Art History class because in high schoo, I took Art History and learned about cubism, neoclassicism, and other styles of modern art, much of which was born in France! I feel like it would be appropriate to study it here while I have access to the original locations where the pieces were created. As for French literature, well, I'm here to improve my French, and I'm a fan of romantic French literature as well as Romantic French literature (yes, I realize I used the word romantic twice, check out the difference in the capitalization of the r, beeyatchesss. psh, yeah, I'm an academic. BOOYAH). Translation is a requirement for the French major and it will be more fun to take it while I'm in France and I can apply it right away as opposed to taking it at Wellesley where it will seem boring and tedious. Then, for the studies of North African and Middle Eastern areas: because France has a large portion of immigrants from the Maghreb and Middle East, it would be fascinating to see what the influence has been and also hear how it's taught in French universities.
I eventually have to pick 4 of these classes. If you have any suggestions, leave me a comment!

Oh. Okay, so the point of the entry: during the meeting, Monsieur Lydgate asked me how I like my classes and the Citadines where we're staying and Paris in general. Then, he told me that he had met with the professors to discuss how our classes are going and he said that Monsieur Boyer talked to him about how he was really happy and impressed with my French! OUAAAIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!! SO much better than going to dancer à une boite.

Giverny et des autres affaires quelconques

For our first weekend day trip, we went as a group to Giverny, the lovely property that belonged to Claude Monet and his wife, surrounded by hills, and composed of a lovely house, flower gardens and the famous Japanese garden and bridges that were the subjects of some of his most reproduced paintings. It was absolutely stunning.
I took an incredibly number of pictures of the water, the bamboo, the colorful flowers and the way the light hit them, the house...all of it, and it's still really not enough to reproduce the breathtaking view that we got to absorb for a couple hours. I took my time walking through the flower gardens and the house and then took a lap around the Japanese garden with the water lilies. Then, I was considering taking a second walk around just because it was so beautiful but then decided to sit on a bench and read Adolphe by Benjamin Constant, one of the books that I bought from one of the book vendors next to the Seine River that I wrote about earlier.

It's an almost-sickeningly romantic book about a guy named Adolphe who starts out as a cynical, heartless guy who has interest in nothing and has no desire to socialize normally. However, he meets a woman named Ellénore from high society, the mistress of a count, who is equally cynical, and enjoys almost dehumanizing men who seek her love. He falls in love with her, she messes with him for a while and then falls desperately in love with him. That's where I am right now. Not a particularly enriching text but interesting and I'm really excited that I understand all of the writing easily.

Sorry for the overflow of images but it is really quite necessary that I show all you folks at home how beautiful Giverny really is. I would be tempted to go back and spend another day there just reading or writing in my journal...but alas, I don't have very much free time left in Paris! I KNOW. I thought that a month would feel so much longer but when I look at our itinerary (which has been scheduled pretty much minute-by-minute), I realize that I'll barely have any time to do all the things I wanted to do. Things still left to do: visit

Montmartre and see Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge, visit and take a tour of the Catacombs, day trip to Versailles.

I also tried to go out to a discothéque or une boite (a club, in the American sense of the word) last night with a whole bunch of girls in the group but it ended up being a night of wandering around a not-so-desirable part of Paris at like 12:30 in the morning. In heels. And nice going-out clothes. One of the girls invited us all to meet up with some random French guys our age who are college students, as well, at their apartment. Yeah, okay. You can imagine how excited they were when like 20 attractive American girls show up throughout the evening at their doorstep because it turned out that the girl who invited us (from our program) failed to inform us that we were not exactly expected guests. GREAT. GRAND. I headed back with like 4 other people and we had some nice conversation at Bob Cool, a really cute intimate bar around the corner from where we're staying. I went there the night before and it was very nice.

I don't think I'm made for this "OUAI! Vivre à Paris c'est la fête!!! OUAIII!!! ON VA AU BOITE!!! ON BOIT!!!!" kind of going out. I'll stick to my novels from old French men with canes and white hair and conversations with waiters and intelligent professors, merci.