The architecture's not too shabby...

So it's been a while since I've written, mostly because of wireless issues...France is not as obsessed with this whole internet idea as the US is, so finding really good wireless has been an issue. For example, in my new host family's apartment, I don't get wireless in my bedroom, but I get it in the kitchen. That's right - I moved! Here's my new home and the view from my room.  

My host family is an older couple with two kids, one of who

m is moved out. Their daughter is 24 and lives at home, but I barely see her. I really onl

y see them when I'm scheduled to have dinner with them 2-3 times a week because our schedules are so different, which is nice because I have some autonomy. I'm right near the Trocadero metro stop and the Eiffel Tower is basically on the end of my block - not too shabby.

Last weekend, the program took us on a day trip to Reims, where there's a really famous cathedral.  It was where the kings of France used to be crowned and was built in the 13th century.  A lot of the sculpture in this cathedral is really important, and I remember studying some of the sculptures at the entrance in an art history class at school. Reims is in the Champagne region of France, so we went to the Pommery champagne caves in the afternoon. The caves are about 100m underground, and inside is also a modern art exhibit. We also did a champagne tasting of some of their different wines which were both delicious.

Jessalyn came to visit this past weekend which was so much fun!  It meant that I got to do a lot of the touristy things with her that I hadn't had a chance to do yet. The first day she was here, we walked from the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre (long walk, but along the Seine so it was worth it).  She got to see the Mona Lisa, which we both agreed was somewhat of a let down (it's the smallest painting in that museum!) Then I took her to my favorite restaurant in Paris. It's right near the Sorbonne and really french. I had been there the night before and the waitress recognized me and was like again? really? But the food was really good, and it's the one place I've found that isn't swarmed with tourists and americans. The second day she was here, I showed her my program center and we went to a little outdoor food market. Then we went to the Orangerie museum, a smaller museum where Monet's nymphéas series is.  It's a series of paintings of water lillies that wraps around the entire room.  We then went to Café Angélina, where they serve famous hot chocolat à l'africain and mont blancs - chestnut and whipped cream pastries. Today we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral and ate lunch in a cafe near the Sorbonne.

Classes don't start for another week and a half, so there's no news on that front, except that my grammar teacher has made it her personal mission to eradicate my French Canadian accent. I'm looking forward to classes starting so that I actually start to feel like a real person again.

Stephanie

Flâner: (v) to wander

Finally the weekend! I was anxious to get out in Paris and be able to do my own thing. I will admit that the orientation was good in that I saw things that I wouldn't necessarily have visited otherwise, like the Paris Mosque.

It was built as a gift to the Arab community in Paris to commemorate the military service of the North African colonial soldiers who fought with the French during World War 1. For a while it was the only mosque in Paris, and the intensity of feeling and attachment to it is evident. Every few years, the mosaic tiles are replaced by Moroccan artisans especially selected for the task. The building itself is beautiful, but you aren't allowed to take pictures of the inside since it's disrespectful to the people attending services, so I took a lot of pictures of the garden in the back. We also went to the Institut Arabe, which was designed by the architect Jean Nouvel. The outside is really interesting because it's a modern take on the mosques: the panels on the outside walls open and close in relation to how much sunlight is entering the building. The Institut didn't house art so much as objects - lots of old ceramics and different versions of the Koran.


On Saturday I had time to go to the Musée d'Orsay, which I think is my favorite museum I've ever been to. It's in a converted train station, and the first floor is this massive display of sculptures. Lots of Rodin and Maillot. I actually didn't think I liked sculpture that much until I came here. While a lot of the sculpture from this period borrows from classical style, it seems more relatable or emotive in a way. One of my favorites was in the entrance court and is called "La Jeune Tarantine."
I took a class in 19th century French painting, and I think I saw every single work that I studied last semester. With that said, it's a museum that anyone can enjoy because so many of the pieces are iconic - Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, lots of Monet's, Degas' dancers, etc. Even the Monet reproduction that mom had in her bathroom for years was there!
One of the things that was really funny was a display of figurines that were caricatures of aristocrats or elected officials in France. The French seem obsessed with caricatures. The front page of a newspaper that's the equivalent of our New York Times will have a half-page cartoon or drawing on the front.After the Musée d'Orsay, I wandered over to Shakespeare and Company, across the Seine from the Notre Dame cathedral. It's an incredible little place - writers in residence live there and you literally stumble onto sofas that are converted into their beds once the store closes. There was even a copy of a Robert Parker Spenser book there, so I made sure to snap a picture for dad.
Saturday night I went to a nightclub called Étoile that I guess is a huge deal here.  Huge deal apparently means a 25euro cover charge to walk in the door.  Luckily I was wearing heels, because the person behind me was turned down for wearing flats.  I come from a world where missing 1cent drinks at Toads amounts to tragedy, so I assumed 25euro would get me something.  I asked the bouncer what table to sit at and he looked me up and down and said "Non mademoiselle, une table c'est 250euro par personne.  Mais on vous donne une bouteille de champagne."  I thought that meant getting a table for the night, but apparently sitting down is not allowed either.  It was fun, I guess - I met the US olympic long-distance track runners, including one I saw in the trials on TV.  Just my luck that the only olympic athletes I meet in Paris have ponytails and weigh about as much as I do.

Sunday we went on a river cruise on the Seine with the program, but the weather was pretty cloudy. I did manage to get a decent photo of the Eiffel Tower

 and learned that the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay were actually right across from each other. The métro is amazing, but one of the downsides is that when you go underground and emerge at your destination, you barely get a sense of how the city is organized. Going along the Seine is a good way of understanding where things are in relation to one another.

In home news, the cat is winning. In a cage match, Youffi would knock me out in a second. Not only does he have about thirty pounds on me, but that thing shows no mercy. I'm still trying to find a new place, which has been hard since the housing coordinator decided that the first week of the semester would be a great time to take a vacation.

I started my three week intensive french class today. It's awkward because I don't have a lot of written training in French, so they had no idea where to place me. Still, I'm getting a good review of things that I know sound right but never knew why, which will definitely help my writing. I'm planning on taking three classes at the Sorbonne and Paris VII, so I need to brush up on that.

Definitely feel free to post on this blog or get in touch with me by e-mail.  That way I don't feel like I'm baring my soul to an empty internet room...Also, my first column for the Yale Herald is coming up this Friday, so I'll make sure to keep you posted on that.

XO

Stephanie

First week in review...

So it's been about a week since I've been in Paris and it's been an eventful one.  

To the left is a very blurry photo of the Eiffel Tower at night - I walked by it the other day, but it was raining so I couldn't get a better shot.  This view is from the Pont des Arts, a popular late night picnic spot for students and tourists.

As some of you know, I'm having some housing

 issues here.  My host families got switched at the last minute so I stayed with the housing coordinator in the 10th arrondissement.  This past week I moved into my homestay, which is in Levallois-Perret...not Paris.  I share the apartment with the biggest cat I've ever seen outside the zoo.  I'm not kidding, this cat must weigh 40 pounds.  It's also her son's cat, but since I'm staying in her son's room, the cat sits outside all night crying to be let in.  I can't touch it because I'll get sick, so Youffi and I have developed a very peculiar relationship.  Basically, he sits in front of my door, the bathroom door, or the front door.  He has an uncanny ability of choosing the door I'm about to use.  Since I can't touch him, I've had to nudge him out of the way...emphatically...with my foot.  Youffi and I are not getting along.  Regardless, I've never been so happy to have an allergic reaction, because now I have a legitimate reason to move...for the third time.  It takes me an hour to get to school by metro and it's the suburbs, so in a week or two I should be settled in somewhere closer to school.

I feel bad because my host "mom" is really nice, but I can't pretend I won't be happy to leave.  She's very...enthusiastic.  She went on and on about how she was so excited I liked food because she considers herself a great chef (not cook), and loves organic ingredients and so on.  Let's just say...the food is interesting.  And I'm trying not to eat dinners at home.  There's another student staying there whom I was sure was a model.  She's about six feet tall, Swedish, possibly the most beautiful human I've ever seen.  She's sixteen, doing her gap year here, and speaks no French.  

Next Monday we start our three week intensive french course that counts as an entire semester class.  It's strange being a Yale student on a Columbia-Penn program.  There are a few students in my position, but the interactions are strange - the Penn and Columbia girls don't talk to each other, and I feel like I'm being courted by two separate tables in a high school cafeteria or something.  I'm just anxious to get started in classes and meet some French students on my own.

One of the most exciting things going on is that I'm going to start a creative writing workshop at Shakespeare and Company in October.  The workshop is a seven-week series where professional writers in Paris come and join aspiring auteurs in a part-reading, part-workshop atmosphere.  The coordinator really liked my portfolio so I get to start in a few weeks.  Shakespeare and Company is a literary icon in Paris, so I'm really excited to get this kind of introduction into the writing scene here.  The workshop will also keep me motivated to write as much as possible, which was one of my goals in coming here.

This past week was orientation, and I was put into a group called "Paris Communities."  Our tour around the city was focused on cultural minorities in Paris, so we visited the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial and Jewish Museum, the Mosque of Paris, and the Museum of the 1931 Colonial Exhibition.  

To the right is the Shoah, or Holocaust, memorial.  It's a long wall with the names of the French residents who were deported to concentration camps and killed during the Shoah.  "Shoah" is a Hebrew word for "the catastrophe," which is used in France because it encompasses both the political and religious aspects of the period.  France definitely struggles with its Vichy history.  Anti-semitism is definitely an issue, yet there is a huge thriving Jewish community in the Marais.  The memorial is particularly moving because of how it's set up.  The year of deportation, which is essentially the year of death since most French jews were sent to Auswitch, is on top, and next to each name is the year of birth.  It's incredibly disturbing to see entire families next to each other, or a name with the birth year 1940 under the deportation year 1941.  

Today I had my first stressful-disaster-dirty-metro event.  I generally love the metro - it's super easy and goes within three blocks of most destinations.  Today, however, someone decided to clip my heel as I was stepping out of the metro and my shoe fell underneath the train.  I had to walk for 10 minutes underground with one shoe trying to find somewhere to get new shoes.  While I was hobbling around one-shoed, I had my first extremely unpleasant interaction with a man in the metro.  People definitely aren't ashamed of staring at you here, and people will tell you they think you're pretty as though they're letting you know it's a Tuesday, but this guy wouldn't leave me alone and kept following me and grabbing me.  I yelled at him in French, so it was either that or the sight of my very dirty right foot that finally got him to go away.  I bought shoes, and finally made it back to school.  An eventful day, not of the best variety, but I'm crossing my fingers that this kind of this can only happen once.  At least I wasn't wearing heels, at least it wasn't snowing, at least I got off at a stop with an underground mall...I might treat myself to a crepe later to make up for it.

Tomorrow if finally the weekend, and I'll get some time to myself to explore the city.  Paris is truly a walking city and I still haven't been down along the Seine.  I know this is one of those frustrating transition weeks, but I'm sure that once I finally move into a new place and settle into a daily routine, I'll have much more to report.  More pictures are sure to come.

A lot of you have asked what the best way to get in touch is.  PLEASE GET SKYPE!!! It's amazing, and so much cheaper than regular phones.  My skype name is stephanie_richards, so just add me and we'll have ourselves a chat.

XO

Stephanie

Some Louvre Pictures

Winged Victory at Samothrace:

Venus de Milo
Georges de la Tour's "Le Tricheur"
David's "Madame Récamier"
The Outdoor Pyramid

A Welcome Note

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all of Paris is a moveable feast."  ~ Ernest Hemingway

Welcome to my blog "A Moveable Feast!" I just arrived in Paris yesterday, and already there is so much to tell.  I created the blog mainly to keep in touch with those at home and to let you all know how my semester abroad in the city of lights is going.  The title is a little nod to two things I am particularly fond of: food and pretentious references to über-macho twentieth century American literature.  More seriously, the quotation above is one I am hoping to keep with me during my time here.  Four months seems like a short time, but I hope to absorb enough to bring the experience with me after I leave.  

I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport yesterday morning and took a cab to where I'm staying for the weekend.  There was a last minute problem with my housing assignment, so the coordinator, Katrien, has kindly allowed me to stay with her family until Tuesday, when I move into my permanent homestay.  My cab driver seemed very surprised that I could be American and tell him my address in French at the same time, as though simultaneously living under the Bush administration and breathing should have exhausted all of my energy by this point.  My first French friend then proceeded to tell me everything I would need to know.  I'll pass this list on in case any of you visit me in the near future...

1. The doors on the public street toilets WILL CLOSE, you just need to press a button.  Apparently, this has caused some distress for tourists in the past.

2. Paris is filled with bike stands.  You pay for a bike at one, ride it to another one in another part of the city and park it there.  You are not, however, allowed to ride your bike in front of taxis carrying passengers back from the airport.  This seems to be the stupidest thing anyone could ever do.

3. America is cheap.  And California has a lot of asians, most of whom are related to my cab driver.

4. Wearing a short skirt and doing some kind of behind-the-wheel-crazy-arm-and-shoulder-dance is just asking for it.

While his advice was appreciated, the only thing I was prepared to do after dragging my suitcases up four flights of stairs was pass out.  I slept for a few hours and then took myself out to a 15euro salad and water.  I will say, the goat cheese croutons on the simple salad seemed worth it at the time, but are not a habit I plan on maintaining unless I plan on looking like the representations of ideal beauty in the Louvre.  On the other hand, if I do gain a little love around the middle, I have a valid excuse - I'm listening to centuries of established ideal proportion theory.  Take that!

I had dinner that night with Katrien, her husband Joël, her two boys, and a girl on my program who also had to wait for her housing.  This was the full dinner experience: champagne first, then a salad, then wine and an entrée, then cheese, then dessert.  Marissa, the other girl from our program, and I held our own.  Katrien noted that it was obvious we both came from multicultural families (Marissa is Mexican) because we appreciated the food.  She told us about another student she had stay with her who planned her trip around where the Paris McDonalds were.  Everything was delicious.  Katrien and Joël are very typically European - she is Dutch, but has lived in France for twenty years and speaks six languages, and her husband is half-Algerian.  It's funny how different people react to my French.  Usually they have a difficult time placing my accent because it's not French, but doesn't sound like an American student either.  Joël corrects every mistake I make while Katrien constantly mentions how well I speak.  It's definitely an advantage to be able to get around.  Even when I'm clueless and ask for directions, I don't seem as hopeless, which is always a nice thing.

Today I slept off my jet lag (or travel fatigue, as Katrien says) and went to the Louvre for four hours.  It's simply indescribable.  There's no denying that the collections are incredible, but I just couldn't get past the building itself.  It is simply the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  You'll be walking through a minor room with Etruscan jewelry in it, but the ceiling will be the most ornate thing you've ever seen.  Even the stairwells have major sculptures in them.  I talked to a student who said they visited the Louvre every day during their first week in Paris and I could definitely see how that's possible.  I took a class on French 18th century painting last semester, so I got to see a lot of the works I had studied up close, like David's "Madame Récamier" or Ingres' "The Bather."

I also loved La Tour's work, which I was surprised at, since I don't usually like 17th century painting as much as the later periods.  There was one in particular that I liked called "Le Tricheur" in which a young man is playing cards with three players representing the temptations of the time: gambling, wine and luxury.  

The greek art is also amazing there: friezes from the parthenon, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory at Samothrace - all sculptures I had studied, but which are so impressive in person.  

A lot of people have complaints about the Louvre's pyramid, but I thought the contrast in style between that and the surrounding structures was really interesting and gave more visual interest to an otherwise massive courtyard.

I planned on walking to the Orangerie Museum on the other side of the Tuileries Gardens.  I walked through the gardens, which are beautiful - as many statues on the grass as there are in the Louvre itself.  I paused to read on a bench for a while and the cutest two year old boy starting flirting with me.  We played cache-cache for a while but I was getting worried that he was so into me that he would lose his sister, but he quickly lost interest.  My the time I got to the Orangerie it was closed, so I walked across the Seine to take the metro to Reid Hall, the home base of my program off of Boulevard du Montparnasse in the 7th arrondissement.  It was closed, but I wanted to know how to get there by metro by orientation tomorrow morning.

I will try to update this blog frequently, but if you're interested, I'm also writing a bi-monthly column for the Yale Herald which you should be able to find online in a few weeks.  Just google "yale herald" and they put the weekly paper online.  Also email me at stephanie.richards@yale.edu.  If any of you are in Europe, I would love to meet up!

Stephanie