AL in Paris

As a sign of my solidarity with the Writers' Guild of America, I will no longer be updating my blog until and agreement is reached and the strike ends.

You can exhale now--don't worry. I couldn't deprive the world on my travel blog while it is simultaneously being deprived of Colbert. No, I just haven't written in two weeks because of procrastination. You would think that updating would be a way for me to procrastination, but for whatever reason I put off writing each entry until it's been so long I've forgotten half the things that have happened. But how about that writers strike. It's not a unique position, but I do support the writers and I hope they get what they deserve. If you look at some of my favorite show like The Colbert Report or Arrested Development, no matter how good the actors are, it is all about the writing. But the last two WGA strikes in 1988 and 1960both lasted 22 weeks each. If you're unlike me and haven't counted, that will bring us into the first/second week of April. That's a long, long time without my Colbert. But Project Runway starts Wednesday, and time flies when you spend it with Tim Gunn.

Wow, so when I last left off it was just before Halloween. And Halloween was just as I expected it would be: sad and boring. People didn't really dress up, there was no mischief in the air, and not even a pumpkin to be found. So I improvised and drew a jack-o-lantern face on a clementine. Happy Halloween! The only remarkable thing about the 31st has that I had class that night. Oh, and I got into a fight with a deaf-mute in the Place Palais Royal.

I did get the first of November off from work for All Saints' Day, but since it was a national holiday, there wasn't much to do to take advantage of the day. Most things were closed like they are on Sundays. I did go see Superbad that night--I had been waiting since August to see it since I left for Europe the week before it came out in the states. I was not disappointed in the least, but it was a bit different than what I expected. And whenever I go to an American movie, subtitled in French, here, it's very, very easy to spot the other Americans in the audience. It's impossible to translate pop culture references, and I never really thought about how that does effect communicating until I got to Paris. And since half of what I say is a pop culture reference, and then when you take into account my limited vocabulary in French as compared to English, I can really only say 30 percent of what I would be saying at home. Serenity now!

And as I might have mentioned, Françoise and Soukinia (my French family), went out of town for a week (French students get a Fall break in addition to a Spring break), so I was left in charge of the cat, Tarzan. He's a good cat and we really bonded while they were gone, but I can definitely a dog person. Or this cat be crazy. He either has no idea how sharp his nails are or he knows exactly how sharp his nails are and uses them to great effect. I couldn't sleep much past seven each morning, because, if I did, he would come in and start meowing and scratching until I woke up and fed him. Waking up early was especially hard since I wasn't sleeping through the night well because of Tarzan's new favorite activity. He slept in my bed most nights, and though he started out in the dead center of the bed, I eventually managed to scoot him over to one side or the other, and that was fine. And during the night he would sometimes like to switch from one side of the bed to the other. Fine, except he didn't get off the bed and walk around it. No, he instead would leap over me to get to the other side. Except he would only make it 80 percent of the way over. A cat landing on you is not the best way to wake up, especially at 3:00 in the morning. And for those of you who are curious, I do speak to Tarzan in French, but I swear and yell at him in English. But we're friends and I think at this point he's spending more time in my room than any other.

Monday the 5th was an interesting day because a group of about 45-50 docents from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta came to the Louvre. For those who don't know, the High Museum and the Louvre have a really unprecedented partnership, and right now there's a circulating exhibit of works from the Louvre in Atlanta. I believe the directors of the two museums are old friends. So the docents came to Paris for about a week, and the first day they were given guided tours of the Louvre. Since the woman who organized a lot of this is one of my bosses, I was asked to accompany a group on some of their tours. I don't there was really any point to me going--I think I was asked because they want me to feel like I'm involved in a little of everything going on in the department, and I went because, hey free tour of the Louvre. They went on two tours: the Mesopotamian wing and the Egyptian. In the end; I only accompanied them on the Egyptian tour because the Mesopotamian guide was kind of crazy (she's like I how I picture my high school advisor Ms. Thomsen to be in 20 years, plus a foot shorter, plus French), and refused to go if anyone from the Louvre went with. But the Egyptian tour was fantastic guided by someone who works in my office that I didn't even know could guide tours (his current job has nothing to do with them). But the best was hearing all these people that I work with speak English all day. Even though their English is as least as good, and in a few cases much better, than my French, they all have very, very strong accents and mispronounce many words. It's reassuring for me, because I can hear my own accent and I know/can tell when I'm making a mistake, but at least we're all guilty of the same thing. And speaking of accents, a couple of the Atlanta docents (75 percent were seniors and 100 percent were Southerners) remarked that I spoke English exceptionally well.

Tuesday, I did a test of the children's audio tour of the Egyptian wing, which was very well done I thought. I thought that it was going to be more or less a repeat of what I did the previous day, with different information of course. But I don't think I saw one object Tuesday that I had seen Monday. In fact, most of the tour was in galleries I had never entered before. Even though I spend a lot of time in the museum itself, and probably more than all the other museums in Paris I've been to combined, there is just so much I have yet to see and so many rooms I've never been in. And I don't think I can possibly see them all before I leave, but that won't be counted among my regrets for things I didn't do. People who have been working in the Louvre for years tell me they haven't seen everything yet.

The only thing about Wednesday that I really remember was for class I had to do a revue de presse (presentation about something the EU's doing that's in the news today). So I chose to cover the Romanians immigrants in Italy and how some are going to be deported. Like an idiot, I forgot to e-mail the other two girls to check and make sure we didn't choose the same topic, and by the time Wednesday came around I figured what are the chances two people care about Romanian immigrants in Italy. Good enough I guess. So now I've got to come up with a new topic for this coming Wednesday (and be sure to e-mail the other two way in advance).

Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. . . oh yeah, this was fun. I was feeling a little restless Thursday afternoon, so I decided to do what people have been telling me to do before my internship ends: take the da Vinci Code audio tour as voiced by Jean Reno (that's the actor who played the police chief in the movie and not, as I kept misreading, Janet Reno, which I think would have been more fun). It was silly, and it gives you a lot of false information but some true and interesting trivia as well. It all done in character, like you're actually going to a crime scene, so it is frightening to think that someone (and I'm sure many do) would accept everything as fact. And at least it didn't include that vision quest soundtrack the other Louvre audio tours have.

Friday was maybe one of my best days since arriving in Paris. At 11:30, my office just ran out of computers for me. Everyone was back from vacations, business trips, meetings, etc. and there was no where for me to work. So we agreed that the only thing for me to do is to work from home since it would be a waste of time to stay in the office. I left and then decided whatever I had to do at home could just as easily be done at night, so I decided to take advantage of the free afternoon. I walked to the Causse glove store that my mom told be to just check out and that's right by the Tuileries (it's the brand that make Karl Lagerfeld those fingerless gloves he's never without). I walked through the Tuilerie gardens. I finally went to the Orangerie museum. I had been waiting to go with my mom, but because she got sick the second half of her time here we never did. It was absolutely phenomenal. The Musée d'Orsay certainly has my favorite collection in Paris, in France, in the universe outside Chicago, etc., but I think the Orangerie might by my favorite museum--if that makes any sense. The way they present Monet's water lilies is of course what makes the museum famous, and rightfully so. I had no idea they were so big (50-60 feet long, easy, although you can tell they're each four pieces of canvas pieced together) and the two rooms were both oval-shaped. And the natural lighting filtering in from the ceiling--I hadn't even considered the weather when going to the museum, but I am so lucky that I went on one of the few sunny days we've been having recently because it makes such a difference. And at one point the clouds moved over the sun and the light changed. Everyone at the exact same moment started looking above them, around them because the entire atmosphere changes. And to top the afternoon off, when I got out of the Orangerie I was right by the giant Ferris wheel they have in the Tuileries. So I figured, what the hell and I got in line. And I'm glad because I was spectacular at the top, maybe even a better view than from Sacre Coeur.

My hands hurt. I think you used different muscles when using a French key board.

A bientot,
AL

PS Because of several botched attempts, I'm not going to try to include photos anymore. : (

Bonjour! Okay, okay, I’m sorry. For whatever reason Travellerspoint kept crashing whenever I tried to publish an entry for the past week up until this morning. I didn’t realize how dependant many of you were on my blog for procrastination, entertainment, etc. It took so long to finally post something that it’s already time to update you guys again. So, today it’s a double dose of AL.

So this past Monday it was back to work as usual after my mom left and the strike ended. If you can remember way back to a previous entry a while ago I had dinner with mydadscoworkersfrenchcousin David Benassouli and his family. In addition to just being generally very nice and welcoming, David gave me the name of a student at the École du Louvre. For those who don’t know (all of you?) the École du Louvre is a very prestigious school that’s actually in/under the museum. It’s important to me because that’s where Gloria Groom, aka the person I want to be, attended after(?) she got her masters. Which means I might have to, too, if I want to steal her job. So Monday I had lunch with this Olivier Habib, who like me is an art history student and is specializing in Modern/contemporary art. So it was a fun lunch—we’re both very curious about how vastly different the American and French school systems are. Frankly, I’m glad I was born in the states, where you don’t have to choose your major and thus life career at the age of 16 (not that I didn’t already know at the age of 7, but it’s nice knowing that it wouldn’t be to late if, I don’t know, haberdashery ever called my name). Then again, it is nice that were you can specialize so early, and I don’t mean in art history, I mean in the exact, specific era or country to school of art that you want to specialize in. I guess that’s more of less what I tried to do by taking to by lectures and a seminar with the same professor and covering overlapping topics in my first three semesters at Brown; now I have to take lectures in other, more broad topics to fulfill my concentration requirements, so I’m sort of going in reverse compared to what most people do. But it was a very nice lunch, he paid (which as you know I can’t stand), but he wants to host an art history party/discussion/party in the near future. In my opinion this is a very French thing to do. There are cafés around here that host evenings like “Philosophical Discussion Saturdays,” this week “What is the Meaning of Life?”, next week “Is There a God?”, and the week after, by popular demand, “Why is there Something Rather than Nothing, Part Two?”, which I would like to attend, but I have neither to vocabulary nor internal bibliography to join in, so I think I would just be frustrated that I couldn’t participate and have never gone. That sentence was too long.

Monday evening time, I (finally, thanks) met with my research advisor, who wasn’t too helpful, but I did walk away feeling a bit less lost and knowing what I need to do next, so that’s. . . good. The next day at work I approached one of my bosses, because, until with school research papers, the materials I need to look at are hidden with the the vast databases of the Louvre. But she was more than willing to find some things for me to start reading and welcomed/encouraged me to ask her any and all questions I have. And I’m also just feeling better in general about the research paper because I had a realization the other day. For this research paper, we are supposed to have 30-40 sources in our bibliography. That shocked me considering I didn’t quite have 20 sources for my Vuillard paper last year—my biggest research project to date. But, I realized that I’m not going to be referring to books for this project. Maybe a few, but I seriously doubt having to consult as many as 4 or 5. I’ll be basing most everything on Louvre documents and, if I can get my hands on them, documents from other museums as well to write my paper (which, by the way, is looking like in might focus on the new audioguides and their relation to the museum’s foreign visitors).
I don’t even remember Tuesday.
The only thing of note that happened on Wednesday was that I met the director of the Louvre, Henri Loyrette, which for me was very cool because this is a guy I’ve quoted in essays and have read articles about. He’s basically going from department to department right now “meeting” everyone, shaking everyone’s hand, and, if you’re important enough (which I’m not, saddles) asking you what you’ve been doing. It was also just funny to watch everyone else in the office react after he left. It seemed, for whatever reason, to be controversial that he came because they found it belittling or I don’t even know.
Thursday I wore a new pair of socks.
Friday, you know, work’s work. Another day, another euro. But not of AL. Seriously, who wants to bet on when I will finally get a paying job? This is how I imagine my future:

Interview for European Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, a Tragicomedy in One Act:

Interviewer: Well everything seems to be in order. There’s just one problem with your salary.

AL: That’s fine.

Interviewer: Wh-what?

AL: If you can’t pay me, that’s fine. I can just volunteer.

Interviewer: Well, I was just going to say I think there is a type-o with your street
address, but if it’s all the same to you, you can just volunteer.

AL: Oh. . . . Do I get a discount at the bookstore?

Interviewer: Yes, 30%.

AL: Uh, then we’re golden.

Fin.

Friday night, I saw Rush Hour 3, which I’m going to go ahead and recommend. I liked it. I laughed. But the best was that I know Paris well enough to spot errors in the film. The biggest goof was one, claiming that Rue Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the 6th—uh uh, Brett Ratner, it’s in the 8th—and two, then driving away, while supposedly in the 6th, and pulling out right in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Um, get your banks straight, geeze. But other than that it was totally realistic. Totally. Radical. Gag me with a spoon. AC Slater.
The funniest thing to happen to me Saturday was when I went to dinner by myself and was seated next to a man, also alone. He turned towards be and asked if I spoke English, and I replied, in English, “very well.” He asked me if I was English, as in a knee-jerk reaction I said yes. As a bit of a background, I, along with Madeline and a lot of other American students I know here, often just say that I’m English because, while anti-Americanism has never been a problem for me I just don’t have the energy sometimes to risk it being a possibility and get stuck in a conversation about Bush or the War in Iraq. Another side note, whenever I pretend to be English I say I’m from Bristol (sorry Daniel if you’re reading this even though you’re not), just because too many people know London and start asking questions like “Oh, what neighborhood?”, but when you say Bristol, no one asks questions. Alright, back to the man, he asked me if I knew what “chips” meant, and I gave the English definition first (‘cause I stay in character) and then the American definition. But, no, he wanted to know what chips meant in the “American” expression: “Oh, you’re so chips.” I have no idea what he’s talking about and google agrees, but he was insistent that this is an American expression, so we just both agreed that since I come from England I’m just not familiar with it. Unforeseen problem, this man turned out to be very chatty. Very friendly, nice guy, but he just kept talking to me, which eventually required that I lie and lie some more. And the conversation was half in French, half in English, but I didn’t even try to fake an accent, he just couldn’t tell the difference. Now, being a student of George Costanza, this wasn’t a problem for me. I could go on forever, baby (that’s from Home Alone). The only time I “let my guard down” was when he started asking me if I had ever visited the United States. Eventually my story became yes, I’ve been three times, and I’ve seen Boston, New York and Chicago. He visits the states a lot for business, so he’d been to each of those three cities, so we shared our impressions. When I got to Chicago, I said something along the lines of: “You know, I think out of those three cities, Chicago was my favorite”—you saw that coming, right? And he replied, well, it wasn’t his favorite. The polite simile I had on my face dropped for about 2 ½ seconds. But he did say that Chicago to him was like all the best parts of New York, so that’s something, right?
My French family is out of town for the week, so I’m taking care of Tarzan, the cat. My new goal is to make this woman love me, because as a native-French speaker, and, even better, former journalist I think she’s be perfect to edit my research paper once I eventually write it, right?

So that’s been my week. Two more important notes:

STEPHEN COLBERT IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. Oh em geeze you guys. Finally a reason to care about politics. He is serious about running in the South Carolina primaries, though no where else (we might still be able to write him in in other states, hope, hope). So if any of you know any one over the age of 18 who lives in South Carolina, please give me their names. And address and daytime and nighttime phone numbers. And pictures of their kids and the names of the schools they attend. WE CAN WIN THIS! Kiss just had an army, but Colbert has a nation. Let’s be heroes!

CLEMENTINE SEASON IS HERE! Ye ask and ye shall receive. And I couldn’t be happier. Only downside is that you can’t buy them buy the crate like you can in the states. I attribute this to the buy-only-what-you’re-going-to-eat-today culture in France. They just don’t understand I can eat a crate of clementines in a day. Well, almost. I definitely went through two crates in a three day weekend freshman year. The other day I went to my grocery store, and just after I picked out the five best clementines they had to offer, the bottom of the plastic bag broke and they fell to the ground and rolled under the counters/displays. I made the saddest noise in the universe and turned to the woman who works weighing the fruit next to me like I was hoping she’s pat my pat and comfort me? She just gave me this cold stare and handed me another bag. She just doesn’t get it!

They don’t sell pumpkins in France so I think I’m just going to draw a jack-o-lantern face on a clementine.

À bientôt,
AL

Bonjour! Well, it finally arrived. A little later than usual, but it seems it here to stay. Of course, I am talking about boot season. Which means clementine season is only just around the corner. . . !

I think I left off right before my first European Union seminar. I think the class is going to be better than I thought; the teacher seems like she’s got enough of a personality that the two hours go by as easily as you could hope and the workload shouldn’t be too bad. The only problem was that since she couldn’t make it to the first class meeting the week before, we were held for an extra hour this week and the next. That would be fair, in my opinion, if IFE hadn’t held us for those two hours despite the fact that there was no class. No class indeed.

That following Friday was a busy day. We (I like that I’m using we) had our first test of the new audioguides. Kind of a disaster. The audioguides had more bugs than my nightmares (I saw a cockroach in the Châtelet metro station four weeks ago and I’m still dreaming about it). But it was fun to spend the entire day in the museum and take tours and follow other people taking tours. Plus, as it turns out the French company making the audioguides (Antenna) is partnered with an American company (Discover) based in Washington DC. So there were a couple of guys there to take their own notes about reactions to the system, and between the two of them they probably spoke five words of French. So I spent most of the in between time talking to them, since I’m a sucker for English conversation. And when everything fell apart and the Louvre/Antenna people were going crazy, cancelling tests, making phone calls, arguing, the two Americans kept coming up to me to ask what was going on. So that made me feel like I was being useful. Plus I told them to make sure they climb to the top tower of Sacre Coeur, as I/my cousin Daniel tell everybody to do in Paris. You should, too. In the end I didn’t leave work until after 7:00/19:00. These audioguides were supposed to come out by the end of November, but I now don’t know if that’s going to happen. I hope so, because part of the fun of joining a project too developed for me to actually really be helpful was that I would at least get to see the finished product in use. Fingers crossed.

Both Saturday and Sunday I slept really late, a lot later than I’m usually capable of at home. I don’t know why I’m always so tired here in France. Compared to Brown, I’m getting much, much more sleep. I won’t say how much I get regularly because many of you are in college and never sleeping, but I will say it should be enough. My theory is that constantly translating French in my head is exhausting. I think the amount of energy it takes is more than I realize until the end of the day when I just collapse into bed.

Saturday evening I got lost in Les Halles. Really, really lost. We were supposed to see Knocked Up (alright, one, I never saw it and two, French movies just can’t compare to American movies, so there), but ended up seeing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I enjoyed it, but I was expecting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Instead, I got Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid without a sense of humor. And speaking of American movies, Superbad is coming to France October 31st, and I am so excited. I never got the chance to see it over the summer since it came out after I left for Europe. Yay, American film industry.

Monday morning through Sunday morning, my mom was in Paris, which was a lot of fun. A little less window shopping than usual and a little more shopping shopping than usual. Nice. Unfortunately, her trip was a little poorly timed. As they tend to do, the French decided to go on strike Wednesday evening through to Saturday. This meant no trains, no buses, and very, very few taxis. So basically the city came to a halt, nobody was going to work, and of course this was timed when thousands of people were coming into the city for the Rugby World Cup final.

Some of the highlights from our week together:

• Al Jazeera. The television in the hotel had about seven channels in Arabic, and apparently arabphones have the best taste in movies. So I got to watch movies like Good Will Hunting and The Terminator for freezies in English with Arabic subtitles. Kablammo!
• The Bourne Identity. I’ve been in the mood to watch this movie for a while, my mom’s never seen it but wants to, a good portion of it takes place in Paris, and the hotel offered it. Stars aligning, right? Not quite. Turns out something was wrong with the movie, and after the first twenty minutes the whole television crashed. I had to go through this two nights in a row to be convinces. That, plus a broken thermostat and a hotel safe that reset itself with my mother’s passport inside meant I got to the night technician very well. He didn’t have our room number memorized, but by the third or forth time he knocked on our door and I answered, he just broke down laughing.
• Rugby. Everybody loves hooligans! So for the final match of the Ruby World Cup, it was England versus South Africa. So all week the English were just flooding into the city, and South Africans (supporters), too, but not to the same extent. This was practically the only event the BBC was covering. And England erected a wax statue of English rugby star Johnny Wilkinson in the middle of Trafalgar Square, which my mom and I agreed was a little immature, because England lost. And either that statue was sodomized or the head was chopped off and put on a pike on London Bridge or both. I’m not saying that did happen, I’m saying there were many attempts between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
• The Café Marly. So Friday, after taking my mom through the Louvre to see the museum’s Ingres—one of her favorite artists—collection. For lunch I decided I would like go to the Café Marly—this really ritzy restaurant in the Louvre that overlooks the pyramids. It’s not like I’d go/pay on my own, and I thought it would be fun to go once and try it. The food was good, no complaints there, but the service was the epitome of the stereotypical rude French [waiters]. We waited for over 20 minutes as they seated French group after French group (including a couple other parties of 2) and then finally they came to us. When we tried to stand towards the front—to make it clear that we were there before any of the others—a waitress told us we couldn’t stand there and forced us to move back. And when we were seated, the still neglected us. So how did I react? Passive aggressively of course—you really should have gotten that one. In other words I left a seven centimes tip (basically all the one and two centime coins I’ve been trying to get rid of) and stole a couple ashtrays. They learned their lesson, am I right? Right? You guys? Back me up on this. It boils down to if you piss AL off your going to end up with an odd number of things that you really need an even number of.
• The strike! So it finally happened. I experienced (along with my mom) my first French strike. As of Wednesday evening at 8:00 pm, pretty much all public transportation stopped. No metro, no buses, very, very few taxis. We got around alright, even if that meant waiting in a few 30+ minute cab lines. But Thursday, maybe one third of all the people in my office showed up, many Brown students who has classed at Paris 8 had no way of getting there, and school (high school and younger) was cancelled Thursday and Friday. The good news is that it only lasted 2-3 days, unlike the student strikes of 2006, when the universities were effectively shut down and all the Brown-in-France students had to “attend class” in the Brown office for a couple months.

Less than ten days until Halloween now. And while nobody in France celebrates, I think I should still try to buy a pumpkin. Also, somebody buy me a Gemtastic.

A bientôt,
AL

Bonjour! I think from now on I’m going to be updating on Wednesdays—now that I’m working at the Looouvre, it just works out better with my schedule.

So, what have I been doing? Let’s see, this past weekend was the Nuit Blanche in Paris. That translates literally as the White Night, but what it really means is all-nighter. Basically, the first weekend of October every year for the last 6(?) years now, the city of Paris hosts this big, all-night arts festival. Many museums and galleries open for an extra 12 hours from 7:00 pm Saturday to 7:00 am Sunday. Plus, there a tons of art installations and performances throughout the neighbourhoods that are a part of it (mostly right bank). Chicago actually started doing the same thing this past May (May 11th/12th or something like that) and called it Looptopia. I had to miss it in Chicago because it was in the middle of finals season, but the next time I’m in Chicago in early May. . . .

So I definitely wanted to catch part of the show that the Paris Conservatory was doing in the Louvre (the one that I “helped out” during their rehearsal). Just because it meant not transferring trains and since I wasn’t pressed for time, I got off the metro at the Place de la Concorde and decided to walk through the Tuileries to get to the museum, just thinking it would be a nice walk. Good choice—it was awesome. Some artist(s) had decorated the garden with fire! It was just like Waterfire, only better—sorry Providence! There were fire chandlers hanging in the air; all the fountains were decorated, there were giant fire spheres all around, and giant Bunsen burners that the people could play with so every once in a while you’d hear then see this tower of fire shoot up. The best though were these. . . fire dancers I guess I would call them. No, they weren’t people dancing with fire. They were like iron, mechanic stick-figures that were set to sort of move and dance continually and then set in the middle of a burning fire. That’s the best description I can give. They were cool. The only thing I felt was missing was loud Ancient-Roman-meets-medieval-monastery music playing in the back ground.

Since I’m me, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Paris Commune of 1871, when some radical, rioting Parisians burned down the Tuilerie palace (Wikipedia it). They thing is—and I’m not the only one to notice this, I’ve had this conversation with a few American students here—that the French remain kind of revolutionary. While Americans in the last 230 years have become pretty politically sedentary, the French not so much. I suspect that they’re all just like three weeks of bad political news away from a revolution. Like week one, the president Nicolas Sarkozy decides to join the War in Iraq. Week two, even though taxes have to be raised there will no longer be universal, publicly sponsored health care. Week three, aah Luxembourg decided that they’re going to change their flag to look just like the flag of France, and there’s nothing any one can do about it. Boom, boom, boom. It would be the 6th Republic. . . or the Third Empire. . . or they’d find a Bourbon somewhere.

The rest of the night we spent mostly in the Marais, because it seemed to have the highest concentration of events and art going on. The best was a concert put on by two Japanese drag queens—I still don’t know whether they were singing in French, English or Japanese, but the crowd saw going wild. And speaking of wild, while all this was going on France was I guess playing in a big game in the Rugby world cup. I know this because all the bars were filled and at one point there was this one, collective scream that seemed to be coming from everywhere and then every, yes every, car just started honking. Go Blues!

Sunday was just kind of a lazy day. I spent in after staying up so late. I caught up on some work I needed to do. And Sunday night, in a moment of desperation for the English language, I watched the movie High Fidelity with John Cusack that I had only seen parts of before. I liked, especially because it took place in Chicago and they did a very good job of being authentic, even having the characters wait for Pace buses in the suburbs. I respect that, plus John and Joan Cusack at least are from Evanston, so that probably helped.

Monday to today wasn’t been too eventful. Just work, work, work at the Louvre, ugh. Don’t worry I’m not complaining, but I’m not going to go in to detail about the projects that have been keeping me more or less “busy,” just the basic filing, researching, going t meetings where I have no idea that they’re talking about, typing, etc. There was an all staff meeting yesterday morning, and when it was my turn to say something (we were going in a circle) I introduced myself and got a laugh (that’s good, right?). I just basically said my name, what I’m doing, how long I’ll be here, and then said if and when any of you leave the office for a few days I’ll probably be taking your desk/computer, so thaaanks! I’ve also been eating lunch with some of the people in the office most days, which is good because I get to know them better, they get to know me better, and I get to practice my French a bit more. But the downside is that when I eat alone, I can just rush through and have 45-60minutes just to wander around the Louvre.

This past week has been very uneventful just because it could have/should have been so much more eventful. It’s been fashion week in Paris for the last two weeks (they don’t like to pluralize Fashion Week I guess, like they don’t pluralize the Tower of London even though it’s so many towers). And every night before I go to bed, I like to catch up on current events in the states and go to my favourite news sites (*cough, cough* perez hilton, *cough, cough* tmz), only to see more photos of big celebrities in and around Paris, and I haven’t seen one. And Posh did a photo shoot in the Luxembourg gardens—those are my garden! I see them everyday. And some of the tents are by the Tuileries, so that means they’re around the Louvre as well. Sigh. I think part of the problem, well not really part of the problem but something this lack of luck has pointed out to me is that lately I’ve been going around Paris with blinders on. I’ve just been going from place to place thinking about what I have to do next. Like last night I walked outside and realized how cool it was and that it really is getting to be Fall. Then I wondered if the trees had started changing colors and I realized that even though I walk by trees everyday, I never pay any attention. Not good. Must savor. Three weeks until November! Oh no!

Later this afternoon (yes, that’s right I’ve been writing this entry on and off at work, but half the office is away today and the other half doesn’t have very much for me to do—but this does mean you have to excuse the spelling and grammar even more than usual because I’m using a French keyboard), I have my first Seminar at Europe at IFE. And I don’t know if I’ve complained about it yet (bad AL, no!), but my research paper has to be 30 pages long, 1.5 spaced and size 11 font. So that’s like 40 pages in the “American style.” In other words more than twice as long as the longest paper I’ve ever written and all in French. So scared, so intimidated. *Inhale, exhale* I’ll do it, every body else has, and I won’t do it all the night before. No, AL, you won’t!

Knocked Up just came out in theatres today. I give it 2 to 1 odds that I see it within the next 14 days. Oh! one last thing. HP7, aka Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or Harry Potter et Les Relics de Mort , comes out finally in France (in French, I assume it was already available in English) on October 26th. And I am the only one excited I think. I almost want to wait outside and get it at midnight (and get on the cover of Le Parisian—headline “Jeune fille américaine attend à minuit pour le dernier Harry Potter--qu'est-ce que ça peut bien faire !” – babble fish it). And speaking of midnight book releases, I hope all of you were in costume and waiting at midnight to get Stephen Colbert’s new book I am American (and So Can You!) yesterday. Mine arrives next week with my momma.

À bientôt,
AL

Bonjour! Well, it’s been an exciting week. . . err, ten days (sorry about that). I can’t believe I’ve been in Paris for six weeks now. In some ways it feels like I’ve been here longer. It feels like I’m getting used to everything, and when I come back from travelling I get that same feeling I get whenever I go back to Providence. It’s not quite the same as when I go home home, but I just recognize everything and feel like possessive (?) of the neighbourhood. I don’t really know how to describe it. But at the same time, I feel like everybody back at Brown should still be in shopping period when in reality, Columbus Day Weekend is coming up.

So last, last Wednesday (back when it was still September), I went to Bruges with a tour group. Bruges is a very small, medieval city in northern Belgium that was a major habor for trading from the 12th to the 15th century, until the canals got silted over and the town went into total decline until it was more or less abandoned until the late 19th/early 20th century, when in became a popular tourist destination. Nice little history lesson there, but the point is that the city has remained more or less architecturally untouched since the 16th century. So I found a guided tour of the city online—actually, I found it a few weeks ago when Madeline and I were trying to find day trips for Sundays. She didn’t want to do it because the tour was in English, and I didn’t blame her—I’m trying to, or at least meaning to, eliminate as much English from my life (with the exception of watching The Colbert Report, which I’ve begun buying through itunes—I’ve gots to get me my Colbert). In the end, it turns out that nobody speaks French in Bruges. Well, some of them must, but they really don’t like it. Like, they have a memorial in the middle of their main square dedicated to the one time they defeated the French. They speak Dutch first, then German, then English, and if you speak none of they above, then French. Everyone was warning us not to go around walking into stores and saying “Bonjour,” but instead say the Dutch “Gddnkchhffgt” (I don’t know exactly how to spell it so I just wrote it out phonetically). I just shook my head, refused to speak a language without vowels, and stuck with English.

So it was a long day, the bus left Paris at 7:00 am and it took about five hours to get to the city. The weather was awful—cold, rainy, ick. We get there, and despite the weather (or maybe a bit because of it) the town is just beautiful. It looks exactly like a Khnopff painting, such as the one below (ah, we get to the real reason I went to Bruges—at the end of the 19th century it was a hub for avant-garde, specifically Symbolist artists, such as Les XX—wikipedia it). I would include my own photos just to show you want the town looks like today, but. . . sad story: So, I was taking a ton of picture because neither Madeline nor Kam was there, so it was all up to me. And even though I was consciously being careful to keep my camera under my umbrella, I don’t know what happened. It made sounds like, like what I imagine ET would sound like if you stepped on him and it never turned on again. Goodbye Cammy, I hardly used thee.

The tour guide was just OK—I think English was her fourth language, so. . . . But the best part was when we all went on a boat tour of the city (Bruges has more canals than it does streets and is called the “Venice of the North”). Not only was it gorgeous and did the rain stop for just those 30 minutes, but the guide/boat driver/captain was very good, very informed and funny, too. We then separated, and I found this place for lunch that was great because it was filled with heating lamps and was like. . . warm. I stayed there longer than I should/would have otherwise because of the weather. I then had time to buy some postcards, check out sole lace stores, and run around trying to find the store that was selling wooden shoes (those would have made such a great present for someone) but with no success. At the end of the four hours (yeah, I only got a total four hours in the city), we went back on the bus for another five hours back towards Paris listening to Edith Piaf for the entire ride at a volume of 11.

The weekend was very travelly, too. Every semester, Brown-in-France sponsors a trip to somewhere in France for the kids in Paris and the few kids in Lyon as well. This semester, it was Toulouse, the fourth or fifth largest city in France (depending on who you ask) in the South-West of France. So Friday, once again I woke up before 6:00 am to make my early, early train. The trip was again five hours (ugh), and we got into Toulouse early afternoon. Later in the day, we had this awful tour guide. So bad the adults in charge later apologized to us. The next day we left Toulouse for a small, small town called Cordes-sur-Ciel. Small like the population is about 1,000 people, small like my high school graduating class was the same size as the entire population. It’s another medieval city known for leather work and embroidery. I can’t say which was prettier, Cordes or Bruges. Cordes, definitely had the good weather working in its favor. Bruges was probably the more beautiful city, but there is not beating the views from Cordes. For those who don’t speaking French (or if yours is a little rusty) Cordes-sur-Ciel translates to Cordes on/above the sky. It got this name because it’s at the top of a very steep, very tall hill (very steep—like cars can’t drive into it, so the bus dropped us off at the bottom and we walked up), and every morning the valleys fill with fog and it looks like the city is in the clouds (pictures below provided by google images since my camera died).

Sunday, we left Cordes for a slightly larger, but still small village called Albi, where the cathedral is thought to be the world’s largest all-brick structure, and even more importantly where artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was from. They had a very lovely museum dedicated to him, with more and better works than I would have expected. A few hours later we went back to the Toulouse train station. I had forgotten to charge my ipod before leaving for the weekend, so facing another five hour train ride with absolutely nothing to do, I splurged and bought some American/British magazines. Yes, I should have bough reading material in French, but 1) I was tired and 2) French magazines talk about French celebrities and I don’t care about French celebrities. This is when all the girls on the trip became my best friend. Even the most. . . stereotypically Brown girls were coming up to me on the train and asking to borrow my Cosmo. Sure go ahead, I’m reading about Kate Moss’s wild night out in Reveal.

So then Monday was the first day of my first week at the Louvre. So far it’s been going well and getting better. Working under three different people and not having a set desk/computer is a little harder than I thought I was going to be. So far, everyday I’ve come to the office and have no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing. This will change once I get lore settled into the office and more familiar with all the projects going on. Right now my favourite phrase is: “Est-ce que vous avez quelques choses que je peux faire pour vous aider?”—do you have anything I can do to help you. Monday was a shorter day, and I just took a tour of the office met everyone (half the women are named Sophie the other half amm have names that start with the letter A, so basically I know close to no one’s name). Tuesday I got my Louvre ID (hells yes!) and took advantage of it right away because I spent all of Tuesday (the closed day) in the Louvre. I was helping out a woman in the office, named Sophie, who’s helping to organize a show that will take place in the Louvre this weekend featuring student musicians and dancers from the Paris Conservatory. Sure, sure I’m all for helping out, especially if it means hanging out in the Louvre, but really there was no reason for me to be there and all I did was a lot of babysitting while the woman ran back and forth from the office. Babysitting means sitting around and occasionally translating the kids’ (and by kids I mean my age) American music for them. And I must have taken at least four 25-minute long “bathroom breaks” and just ran around the Richlieu wing.

Thursday was the best though. I got to the office and had nothing to do but check all my e-mail accounts. So I went to the next room and asked another woman (Anne, Alice, Angès—I don’t know) if she had anything for me to do. Not really, she said, unless I felt like taking a tour of the museum. Uhh, I guess I could, I mean if you really need me to. So I tested out the new audioguide designed for the handicapped—and listened as she and another woman debated for 6 minutes whether I should do the test in a wheel chair or not (they decide on not, phew!). I spent the afternoon correcting someone’s Power Point in English. I don’t think that IFE would be too pleased that I was to something in English, and I don’t really want to be either. But since it’s the beginning I don’t mind as much since I do feel like I’m actually being helpful. I think I write good in English. And today was just more filing/general office work.

À bientôt,
AL

PS Travellerspoint isn't letting me add the pictures that I mentioned above. You'll just have to google image them on your own.