Hello!
I made it home yesterday after a 9 hour flight to Cincinnati, followed but a half hour flight to Louisville. I was super tired when I got home and unpacked! Jeff picked me up from the airport and made me yummy plain grilled chicken with a salad with only shredded cheese on it! YUM! I have been unpacking, doing laundry and repacking, becuase today I am headed to Colton's!! Then tomorrow morning, we will head to Murray for Racerband!!!
When I went to the airport yesterday, my suitcases weighed 57 pounds and 36 pounds, haha! I had to take 7 pounds out of my big suitcase and distribute it between my garment bag and backpack! My muscles hurt so bad today from lugging those things to the airport (and then up 2 flights of stairs becuase some escalators were out!) haha.
I had the time of my life in Paris! I feel so lucky to be fortunate enough to have been able to go!! I can't thank my parents enough for sending me on the trip of a lifetime!
It's nice to be home, even if it is only for like 5 more hours, haha. Welp, I need to resume packing! I hope you've enjoyed my blog! Thanks for reading!!
Love Briana
Friday, August 6, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
I Have Taken a Ton of Pictures!
Salut!
Today is Wednesday!
Here's some stuff I did to finish off Monday!:
-we didn't go on the boat tour as planned. Instead, we went to Notre Dame and walked around
Here's some stuff I did Tuesday!:
-I took Mom and Alyssa to Giverny to see the house and gardens of Claude Monet. The weather was waaay better than when I went a couple of weeks ago! Also, there were a lot mor flowers in bloom! It was very pretty. I think I have another hundred or so pictures of flowers, haha.
(speaking of pictures, I am up to about 1900 for this trip at the moment, hahaha)
-took the boat ride I wrote about in my last entry. It was fun! (Except for all of the Asian tourists who kept pushing and shoving us!).
Here's some stuff I did today!: (Wednesday)
-took Mom and Alyssa to the Catacombes. It was cool to see all of the bones again. But I got totally grossed out when Mom and Alyssa kept touching them!! Sick, right?! Haha. They are weird.
-went souvenir shopping. I have finally got all of the souvenirs I need for people :D And not a moment too soon!
Currently, I am taking a break from PACKING!!! I'm so pumped to come home!!! I have had a great time, but I'm ready to get back fo sho!
Some things I will be doing tonight:
-Going to the Champs de Mars for a picnic! (the field in front of the Eiffel Tower)
-finishing packing!
Today is Mom's fake birthday since her real birthday is on Saturday and I won't be there. We are going to have the picnic in celebration!
Leslie went home Tuesday and it is super weird to not have a roommate!
A bien tot!
Briana
Today is Wednesday!
Here's some stuff I did to finish off Monday!:
-we didn't go on the boat tour as planned. Instead, we went to Notre Dame and walked around
Here's some stuff I did Tuesday!:
-I took Mom and Alyssa to Giverny to see the house and gardens of Claude Monet. The weather was waaay better than when I went a couple of weeks ago! Also, there were a lot mor flowers in bloom! It was very pretty. I think I have another hundred or so pictures of flowers, haha.
(speaking of pictures, I am up to about 1900 for this trip at the moment, hahaha)
-took the boat ride I wrote about in my last entry. It was fun! (Except for all of the Asian tourists who kept pushing and shoving us!).
Here's some stuff I did today!: (Wednesday)
-took Mom and Alyssa to the Catacombes. It was cool to see all of the bones again. But I got totally grossed out when Mom and Alyssa kept touching them!! Sick, right?! Haha. They are weird.
-went souvenir shopping. I have finally got all of the souvenirs I need for people :D And not a moment too soon!
Currently, I am taking a break from PACKING!!! I'm so pumped to come home!!! I have had a great time, but I'm ready to get back fo sho!
Some things I will be doing tonight:
-Going to the Champs de Mars for a picnic! (the field in front of the Eiffel Tower)
-finishing packing!
Today is Mom's fake birthday since her real birthday is on Saturday and I won't be there. We are going to have the picnic in celebration!
Leslie went home Tuesday and it is super weird to not have a roommate!
A bien tot!
Briana
Monday, August 2, 2010
Horsefeather, Blackboard, Nail Polish (Alyssa Helped Me Come Up With This Title) :D
Salut!!!!
Today is Monday AND I GET TO COME HOME IN FOUR DAYS!!! (counting today). I have been having a blast in Paris, but I am ready to get home and pack up for Murray! And then head to Colton's, HOORAY!!! These past couple days are going to be bittersweet: I'm ready to get back to the states, but it's sad because who knows when I will be able to come back?!
I'm having an awesome time with my mom and sis here, thus far. Saturday we just hung out and then Alyssa fell asleep until Sunday morning, haha. So mom attended my Harry Potter party that Leslie and I threw in our room in honor of Harry's birthday! It was super fun! We played trivia and the who am I? game with Harry Potter characters! We had chocolate frogs and chocolate wands! After that, I went to bed.
Sunday, we got up early becuase the first Sunday of every month, the museums are free! We went to Musee D'Orsay to see Monet's painting (which Mom loves), and the other impressionist works there. Afterward we went to the Louvre! Alyssa and I took Mom to see the Monna Lisa and then we went to the Egyptian antiquities section. It was super jam packed with people though, so we left after that. We then went on a search for a fan because Mom is the opposite of a reptile and requires cool temperatures to live, haha. We didn't find one though, so we went back home. For dinner, we went to a panini stand and grabbed some sandwiches, then headed to the Luxembourg gardens across the street for a picnic! We layed sat on a blanket and had dinner, and it was fun!
Today (Monday), we were going to get up early and I was going to take Mom and Alyssa to the Champs Elysees and to the Arc de Triomphe, but they aren't morning people, haha. I am going to lunch with Karen (my teacher) and the 2 other girls in my lit class for lunch. Mom, Alyssa and I will go to the Champs and the Arc after that. Tonight, I am going to a dinner at this place called Chez Gladines (which I went to a while ago and didn't really care for) with everyone who is still here on the program for our last dinner together! It will be sad! I think that I am going to eat before I go and then just order dessert, haha. You can't go wrong with dessert!!
After dinner, Mom, Alyssa and I are going to go on a boat tour of Paris. Alyssa and I went on one the last time we were here (I thought it was super lame, haha and Alyssa remembers it as fantastic...but I remember her sleeping...haha) and we are going to take Mom. We think she'll like cruising down the Seine at dusk when all of the buildings start to light up! After, or before the boat tour (we're not sure which we'll do first), we are going to go to the Eiffel Tower to watch it sparkle on the hour! I'm not sure if they'll want to go up to the top or not. I guess I'll let you know what happens next time I update!
I would now like to give my Dad a shoutout because I haven't had enough internet connection to call him with skype. Hi Dad!! I still need to know what you'd like for your birthday!! Haha.
Well, I guess that's all for now. I'm going to go try to get the family up and moving!
Bonjournee!
Briana
Today is Monday AND I GET TO COME HOME IN FOUR DAYS!!! (counting today). I have been having a blast in Paris, but I am ready to get home and pack up for Murray! And then head to Colton's, HOORAY!!! These past couple days are going to be bittersweet: I'm ready to get back to the states, but it's sad because who knows when I will be able to come back?!
I'm having an awesome time with my mom and sis here, thus far. Saturday we just hung out and then Alyssa fell asleep until Sunday morning, haha. So mom attended my Harry Potter party that Leslie and I threw in our room in honor of Harry's birthday! It was super fun! We played trivia and the who am I? game with Harry Potter characters! We had chocolate frogs and chocolate wands! After that, I went to bed.
Sunday, we got up early becuase the first Sunday of every month, the museums are free! We went to Musee D'Orsay to see Monet's painting (which Mom loves), and the other impressionist works there. Afterward we went to the Louvre! Alyssa and I took Mom to see the Monna Lisa and then we went to the Egyptian antiquities section. It was super jam packed with people though, so we left after that. We then went on a search for a fan because Mom is the opposite of a reptile and requires cool temperatures to live, haha. We didn't find one though, so we went back home. For dinner, we went to a panini stand and grabbed some sandwiches, then headed to the Luxembourg gardens across the street for a picnic! We layed sat on a blanket and had dinner, and it was fun!
Today (Monday), we were going to get up early and I was going to take Mom and Alyssa to the Champs Elysees and to the Arc de Triomphe, but they aren't morning people, haha. I am going to lunch with Karen (my teacher) and the 2 other girls in my lit class for lunch. Mom, Alyssa and I will go to the Champs and the Arc after that. Tonight, I am going to a dinner at this place called Chez Gladines (which I went to a while ago and didn't really care for) with everyone who is still here on the program for our last dinner together! It will be sad! I think that I am going to eat before I go and then just order dessert, haha. You can't go wrong with dessert!!
After dinner, Mom, Alyssa and I are going to go on a boat tour of Paris. Alyssa and I went on one the last time we were here (I thought it was super lame, haha and Alyssa remembers it as fantastic...but I remember her sleeping...haha) and we are going to take Mom. We think she'll like cruising down the Seine at dusk when all of the buildings start to light up! After, or before the boat tour (we're not sure which we'll do first), we are going to go to the Eiffel Tower to watch it sparkle on the hour! I'm not sure if they'll want to go up to the top or not. I guess I'll let you know what happens next time I update!
I would now like to give my Dad a shoutout because I haven't had enough internet connection to call him with skype. Hi Dad!! I still need to know what you'd like for your birthday!! Haha.
Well, I guess that's all for now. I'm going to go try to get the family up and moving!
Bonjournee!
Briana
Friday, July 30, 2010
Quick Recap of a Lot of Stuff!
Bonjour!!
So much has happened the past couple of days!!
Wednesday:
-Musee de Cluny (a medieval museum) with lit calss. It was awesome! Everything was at least 500 years old, including this series of tapestries called La Dame a La Licorne! Some rich guy bought a chateau like 100 years ago and found the 400 year old tapestries in his basement! They suffered some water damage becuase they were laying in a puddle in said basement, but are relatively unharmed for being 500 years old!!
-Went with lit teacher to a piercing place to get her nose pierced!! It looks super cute on her!! I think her face was made for one!
-Went to the program director's daughter's 7th bday party! It wass a lot of fun! She got a ton of hair stuff and loved the ballerina outfit that Leslie and I got her. I think the last time that I went to a 7th bday party, I was 7 or 8 haha. It was awesome to hang out with a kid! I've never thought about it before, but the only kids I see while at school are kids at walmart, haha. It was nice and I had a great time!
Thursday:
-Went to the Paris Opera house to look at the beautiful architecture and art and stuff!! I didnt see the phantom though :( but I did see the incredibly beautiful and ornate stage and a museum exhibition about an opera star who recently has died named Regine something...I can't remeber her last name, sorry!
-Went to the African quarter of Paris to pick up some super cool African dresses that my teacher had custom made for her! There are a bunch of shops with tons and tons of these crazy African fabrics. So you pick a fabric and pick a dress style, they measure you and you come back in a week to pick everything up! Karen's clothes were gorgeous!! She got two really pretty prints: a skirt and top of each. Leslie bought a premade dress when we were there and I'm super jealous! If I had money and time left, haha, I would go have one made! They're awesome!
-Went back to the Foyer and got dressed for a concert at St. Chapelle! St. Chapelle is a beautiful gothic church in which about 80 percent of the walls are stain glass! I'm a huge stain glass fan and the St. Chapelle is breathtaking!! The church is very small though compared to like Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur, but still very nice. We were told that we were either seeing a concert of Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Pachabel's Canon. We saw neither, haha. I have no idea what was played, nor who it was by, but it was kickass! There were only 3 musicians: 1 played all of these different wooden recorders (and was super kickass!), 1 was an amazing violonist and the other was a fantastic harpsicord player! I loved it! Several of the pieces were just the recorder dude, then some with the recorder guy and the violinist, and then some with all three musicians. My favorite piece though was one played by just the violinist and the harpsicord lady. It was a series of movements and each one was a different bird. It was cute! The first movement was Le Rossignol (the nightingale), then the cuckoo, then the hen and cock, then something I didn't know the word for (I think it might have been an owl? but he didn't say ebu or chouette...two words for owl, so who knows?), and then the last one was about a cat who tries to catch all of the birds. That was my favorite because he made the violin make meowing sounds, haha. It was awesome!
-After returning, I had to finish all of my journal entries for a prompt 8:30 due date. I stayed up till 2:30 :(
Friday:
-I got up at 5:30 (hooray 3 hours of sleep!) and headed to the airport to pick up my mom and sister!!!
-Got to the airport, finally ound the right terminal after walking around for like 45 minutes, haha, and picked up my fam!!! It was great to see them becuase I haven't been home all summer! I think I've seen them each like 3 or 4 times in the past 3 months. So it was awesome to pick them up and get hugs!
-Settled them into the Foyer (they're staying right down the hall!) and went to take my final exams!
-Got an A on my lit exam!
-Got an A on my culture exam!
-Got an A on my journal!
-Went to the grocery store with Mom and Alyssa who preceeded to buy a lot of things and didn't really realize we'd have to walk home, haha. My back still hurts from the 983729583745 pound backpack, haha.
-Rested and hungout
-Went on a ghost tour of Paris!! It was really fun! This strange American guy gave us the tour and took us to different locations around the city and told us of the local lore and legends. It was super cool becuase I learned a lot of neat things about Paris' dark history! Including things like a real Sweeney Todd story, some cool stories about the catacombes and stuff like that!
-Came back to the Foyer and pretty much passed out from exhaustion, haha
Saturday (Today):
I woke up a little bit ago, have had some cereal and am now trying to get Mom and Alyssa up and at'em! I'm taking them to the Cemetery Pere Lachaise today!
Tonight, the kids in my group are having a celebration for Harry Potter's birthday! (Sponsored by my roomie and me, of course, haha) It will be fun! We're going to play trivia games and watch movies and make butterbeer! (which sounds like it will be really gross: club soda + butterscotch ice cream topping + some butter)
So yep! The this upcoming week will be awesome! 1. My mom and sister are here! 2. I am done with class and homework! 3. I will enjoy my last week in Paris!
Bonjournee!
Briana
So much has happened the past couple of days!!
Wednesday:
-Musee de Cluny (a medieval museum) with lit calss. It was awesome! Everything was at least 500 years old, including this series of tapestries called La Dame a La Licorne! Some rich guy bought a chateau like 100 years ago and found the 400 year old tapestries in his basement! They suffered some water damage becuase they were laying in a puddle in said basement, but are relatively unharmed for being 500 years old!!
-Went with lit teacher to a piercing place to get her nose pierced!! It looks super cute on her!! I think her face was made for one!
-Went to the program director's daughter's 7th bday party! It wass a lot of fun! She got a ton of hair stuff and loved the ballerina outfit that Leslie and I got her. I think the last time that I went to a 7th bday party, I was 7 or 8 haha. It was awesome to hang out with a kid! I've never thought about it before, but the only kids I see while at school are kids at walmart, haha. It was nice and I had a great time!
Thursday:
-Went to the Paris Opera house to look at the beautiful architecture and art and stuff!! I didnt see the phantom though :( but I did see the incredibly beautiful and ornate stage and a museum exhibition about an opera star who recently has died named Regine something...I can't remeber her last name, sorry!
-Went to the African quarter of Paris to pick up some super cool African dresses that my teacher had custom made for her! There are a bunch of shops with tons and tons of these crazy African fabrics. So you pick a fabric and pick a dress style, they measure you and you come back in a week to pick everything up! Karen's clothes were gorgeous!! She got two really pretty prints: a skirt and top of each. Leslie bought a premade dress when we were there and I'm super jealous! If I had money and time left, haha, I would go have one made! They're awesome!
-Went back to the Foyer and got dressed for a concert at St. Chapelle! St. Chapelle is a beautiful gothic church in which about 80 percent of the walls are stain glass! I'm a huge stain glass fan and the St. Chapelle is breathtaking!! The church is very small though compared to like Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur, but still very nice. We were told that we were either seeing a concert of Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Pachabel's Canon. We saw neither, haha. I have no idea what was played, nor who it was by, but it was kickass! There were only 3 musicians: 1 played all of these different wooden recorders (and was super kickass!), 1 was an amazing violonist and the other was a fantastic harpsicord player! I loved it! Several of the pieces were just the recorder dude, then some with the recorder guy and the violinist, and then some with all three musicians. My favorite piece though was one played by just the violinist and the harpsicord lady. It was a series of movements and each one was a different bird. It was cute! The first movement was Le Rossignol (the nightingale), then the cuckoo, then the hen and cock, then something I didn't know the word for (I think it might have been an owl? but he didn't say ebu or chouette...two words for owl, so who knows?), and then the last one was about a cat who tries to catch all of the birds. That was my favorite because he made the violin make meowing sounds, haha. It was awesome!
-After returning, I had to finish all of my journal entries for a prompt 8:30 due date. I stayed up till 2:30 :(
Friday:
-I got up at 5:30 (hooray 3 hours of sleep!) and headed to the airport to pick up my mom and sister!!!
-Got to the airport, finally ound the right terminal after walking around for like 45 minutes, haha, and picked up my fam!!! It was great to see them becuase I haven't been home all summer! I think I've seen them each like 3 or 4 times in the past 3 months. So it was awesome to pick them up and get hugs!
-Settled them into the Foyer (they're staying right down the hall!) and went to take my final exams!
-Got an A on my lit exam!
-Got an A on my culture exam!
-Got an A on my journal!
-Went to the grocery store with Mom and Alyssa who preceeded to buy a lot of things and didn't really realize we'd have to walk home, haha. My back still hurts from the 983729583745 pound backpack, haha.
-Rested and hungout
-Went on a ghost tour of Paris!! It was really fun! This strange American guy gave us the tour and took us to different locations around the city and told us of the local lore and legends. It was super cool becuase I learned a lot of neat things about Paris' dark history! Including things like a real Sweeney Todd story, some cool stories about the catacombes and stuff like that!
-Came back to the Foyer and pretty much passed out from exhaustion, haha
Saturday (Today):
I woke up a little bit ago, have had some cereal and am now trying to get Mom and Alyssa up and at'em! I'm taking them to the Cemetery Pere Lachaise today!
Tonight, the kids in my group are having a celebration for Harry Potter's birthday! (Sponsored by my roomie and me, of course, haha) It will be fun! We're going to play trivia games and watch movies and make butterbeer! (which sounds like it will be really gross: club soda + butterscotch ice cream topping + some butter)
So yep! The this upcoming week will be awesome! 1. My mom and sister are here! 2. I am done with class and homework! 3. I will enjoy my last week in Paris!
Bonjournee!
Briana
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Who Would Have Thought!
Bonjour!!
I totally remembered what I did Sunday! I know you’re dying to know because your life felt incomplete without knowing the goings-on of my Sunday! Sunday, I did not only dye a bit of my hair purple, but I did some other things earlier in the day as well. The Tour de France ended in Paris Sunday. They make like 7 laps around the city and the finish line is at L’Arc de Triomphe. Well I decided to go to L’Arche de la Defense on Sunday. The Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the largest roundabout in France (maybe in Europe, I can’t remember what my guide book says…) and there are 6 streets that intersect it (so it looks like a star with 12 arms). The main arm that runs directly through the center of L’Arc de Triomphe is called the axe historique. At one end, there is a mini Arc de Triomphe, then the Arc de Triomphe is in the middle, and then there is the Arche de la Defense at the other end.
Ok, so we have the Navigo passes that allow us to have unlimited bus and metro rides in the first 2 zones of Paris. The zones are concentric circles…there are 4 of them. Everything we’ve done on this trip thus far has been in the first 2 zones, so it’s never been a problem. Well, it turns out that La Defense is in the third zone, and the closest we could get to it was the Arc de Triomphe on the outer rim of the first zone. We (Leslie, Belinda and I) were like, “oh whatevs, it’s no big deal…we’ll just walk from Arc de Triomphe to La Defense. It can’t be that far!”
We took the metro from the Foyer to the Arc de Triomphe and it was INSANE!! We had temporarily forgotten about the Tour de France and there were so many people!!!! And it was around 3:00 and the race wasn’t even by the arc until like 5:00 or something!! I know it is the Tour de France…but it’s a glorified bicycle race people, haha. I think I don’t understand because I’m not into sports or anything, haha. (Sorry if you have an affinity for the Tour!) Anyway! We started walking to La Defense. 75ish minutes later, we finally arrived!!! We definitely walked 4.9 km to get to the arc. I know that’s only like 3 miles…but we did not go as the crow flies. So I’m estimating like 4 miles maybe 3.5. That’s a very long walk when you think it’s only going to be about 20 minutes away! Haha. It looked like it wouldn’t take much time at all to get there though and we figured out why when we arrived: the arc is HUMONGOUS!!!!!!! It is so big that it looked like it would take no time at all to reach…how wrong we were, haha. La Defense is a lot more modern compared to the Arc de Triomphe. It is just a huge, white arc and its angles and the material it is made out of are very modern. After seeing all three arcs on l’axe historique, I will say that the Arc de Triomphe is my favorite. Just because it is the most beautiful I think, what with all of the carvings and statues on the outside and all of the names on the inside.
Tuesday (today) I had my culture class at 11:00 and we went to the Musee Rodin. It is a museum built in this very old house (I think it might have been Rodin’s house, but I have no idea…) and has a lot of sculptures by Rodin…whose first name escapes me at the moment. There is also a big, lovely garden in the back that had several sculptures as well. The gardens were nice, but after seeing the gardens at Versailles and at Giverny, nothing can compare! I did like the topiary though: all of the bushes and stuff were cut into shapes like cones and triangles and things.
The house is 2 floors and there were a bunch of rooms. Every room had at least 15-20 sculptures in it. I know nothing of Rodin, but to make all those sculptures, he must have not had a social life! There were at least 100!! In one room, there were these sculptures that were extremely beautiful and well done. They were the best in the whole museum! Turns out, they were actually done by a woman named Camille Claudel who was a student of his. She was super talented!! And way better than Rodin! Her stuff was amazing! After touring the museum, I learned from my teacher that Rodin and Camille’s brother worked together to put Camille into an asylum!! Just because she was better than him!! Laaaammme!!! But that’s the early 1900s for you, I guess.
After the museum, I went back to the Foyer and did some…you guessed it! Homework! I had my 4 hour lit class at my teacher’s apartment starting at 3:30. We got there a little late because we got separated on the metro, but we made it there around 4:00. We discussed our reading assignment and she made us dinner! Which was not only very nice of her, but very delicious! She purchased premade dinner stuff at a Moroccan market and just heated it up at her apartment. I’ve never had Moroccan food before, but the chicken was delicious! I also really enjoyed the couscous, which I’ve never had before either.
So now my day is coming to a close and I’m doing some more homework before bed. I talked to Colton and Dad via facebook chat before my computer died, which was nice :D
I have a busy schedule tomorrow! (Wednesday)
-Lit class at 11:00
-Musee de Cluny (a medieval museum) with lit class at 1:00
-Going with teacher to a piercing place to get her nose pierced!! at 3:00ish (which I’m sure will make me very jealous of her and make me miss my nose piercing a lot, haha. stupid metal allergy!!)
-Going to the program director’s daughter’s birthday party in the Luxembourg gardens at 6:45
Woohoo!
Bon nuit!
Briana
p.s. some things I'd like to mention:
-toilet paper in France is pink!
-there are no preservatives in the food here
-I have been actively concentrating on not biting my nails and I am proud to say that I 4 out of my 10 fingernails are the longest they've ever been in my entire life!
I totally remembered what I did Sunday! I know you’re dying to know because your life felt incomplete without knowing the goings-on of my Sunday! Sunday, I did not only dye a bit of my hair purple, but I did some other things earlier in the day as well. The Tour de France ended in Paris Sunday. They make like 7 laps around the city and the finish line is at L’Arc de Triomphe. Well I decided to go to L’Arche de la Defense on Sunday. The Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the largest roundabout in France (maybe in Europe, I can’t remember what my guide book says…) and there are 6 streets that intersect it (so it looks like a star with 12 arms). The main arm that runs directly through the center of L’Arc de Triomphe is called the axe historique. At one end, there is a mini Arc de Triomphe, then the Arc de Triomphe is in the middle, and then there is the Arche de la Defense at the other end.
Ok, so we have the Navigo passes that allow us to have unlimited bus and metro rides in the first 2 zones of Paris. The zones are concentric circles…there are 4 of them. Everything we’ve done on this trip thus far has been in the first 2 zones, so it’s never been a problem. Well, it turns out that La Defense is in the third zone, and the closest we could get to it was the Arc de Triomphe on the outer rim of the first zone. We (Leslie, Belinda and I) were like, “oh whatevs, it’s no big deal…we’ll just walk from Arc de Triomphe to La Defense. It can’t be that far!”
We took the metro from the Foyer to the Arc de Triomphe and it was INSANE!! We had temporarily forgotten about the Tour de France and there were so many people!!!! And it was around 3:00 and the race wasn’t even by the arc until like 5:00 or something!! I know it is the Tour de France…but it’s a glorified bicycle race people, haha. I think I don’t understand because I’m not into sports or anything, haha. (Sorry if you have an affinity for the Tour!) Anyway! We started walking to La Defense. 75ish minutes later, we finally arrived!!! We definitely walked 4.9 km to get to the arc. I know that’s only like 3 miles…but we did not go as the crow flies. So I’m estimating like 4 miles maybe 3.5. That’s a very long walk when you think it’s only going to be about 20 minutes away! Haha. It looked like it wouldn’t take much time at all to get there though and we figured out why when we arrived: the arc is HUMONGOUS!!!!!!! It is so big that it looked like it would take no time at all to reach…how wrong we were, haha. La Defense is a lot more modern compared to the Arc de Triomphe. It is just a huge, white arc and its angles and the material it is made out of are very modern. After seeing all three arcs on l’axe historique, I will say that the Arc de Triomphe is my favorite. Just because it is the most beautiful I think, what with all of the carvings and statues on the outside and all of the names on the inside.
Tuesday (today) I had my culture class at 11:00 and we went to the Musee Rodin. It is a museum built in this very old house (I think it might have been Rodin’s house, but I have no idea…) and has a lot of sculptures by Rodin…whose first name escapes me at the moment. There is also a big, lovely garden in the back that had several sculptures as well. The gardens were nice, but after seeing the gardens at Versailles and at Giverny, nothing can compare! I did like the topiary though: all of the bushes and stuff were cut into shapes like cones and triangles and things.
The house is 2 floors and there were a bunch of rooms. Every room had at least 15-20 sculptures in it. I know nothing of Rodin, but to make all those sculptures, he must have not had a social life! There were at least 100!! In one room, there were these sculptures that were extremely beautiful and well done. They were the best in the whole museum! Turns out, they were actually done by a woman named Camille Claudel who was a student of his. She was super talented!! And way better than Rodin! Her stuff was amazing! After touring the museum, I learned from my teacher that Rodin and Camille’s brother worked together to put Camille into an asylum!! Just because she was better than him!! Laaaammme!!! But that’s the early 1900s for you, I guess.
After the museum, I went back to the Foyer and did some…you guessed it! Homework! I had my 4 hour lit class at my teacher’s apartment starting at 3:30. We got there a little late because we got separated on the metro, but we made it there around 4:00. We discussed our reading assignment and she made us dinner! Which was not only very nice of her, but very delicious! She purchased premade dinner stuff at a Moroccan market and just heated it up at her apartment. I’ve never had Moroccan food before, but the chicken was delicious! I also really enjoyed the couscous, which I’ve never had before either.
So now my day is coming to a close and I’m doing some more homework before bed. I talked to Colton and Dad via facebook chat before my computer died, which was nice :D
I have a busy schedule tomorrow! (Wednesday)
-Lit class at 11:00
-Musee de Cluny (a medieval museum) with lit class at 1:00
-Going with teacher to a piercing place to get her nose pierced!! at 3:00ish (which I’m sure will make me very jealous of her and make me miss my nose piercing a lot, haha. stupid metal allergy!!)
-Going to the program director’s daughter’s birthday party in the Luxembourg gardens at 6:45
Woohoo!
Bon nuit!
Briana
p.s. some things I'd like to mention:
-toilet paper in France is pink!
-there are no preservatives in the food here
-I have been actively concentrating on not biting my nails and I am proud to say that I 4 out of my 10 fingernails are the longest they've ever been in my entire life!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Yay Poetry!
Salut!
Where'd I leave off? Saturday, I believe! Right, so Sunday was kind of boring. I pretty much just did homework and...well actually, I think that's it. I can't remember anything else of substance happening, haha. Oh wait!! I dyed my hair purple! I got a purple streak on my last birthday but it soon faded to an awkward pink bubblegum/cotton candy color, so I finally dyed it back to the best color in the universe!! (purple, if you didn't catch my drift)
A Series of Haikus About My Day (Monday):
I woke up later
Than I usually do
For a Monday class.
It was ok though,
Becuase I took a shower
The preceeding night.
Eleven thirty
That's when class began for me
Hooray for French lit.
Group meeting took place
With all of the others
We talked about stuff.
I had another
French literature class
To make up for one.
Where did the day go?
I went shopping for some things
For the week (like food).
I've obligations.
My academia
Never lets me rest.
That was a fancy
Term for, "I did my homework."
There's a lot of it.
It's all completed
And now I am missing you.
I'm ready for bed!
Hooray! Tomorrow won't be as boring as this past weekend I hope, haha.
I am going to the Musee Rodin and I have another 4 hour lit class.
A bien tot!
Briana
Where'd I leave off? Saturday, I believe! Right, so Sunday was kind of boring. I pretty much just did homework and...well actually, I think that's it. I can't remember anything else of substance happening, haha. Oh wait!! I dyed my hair purple! I got a purple streak on my last birthday but it soon faded to an awkward pink bubblegum/cotton candy color, so I finally dyed it back to the best color in the universe!! (purple, if you didn't catch my drift)
A Series of Haikus About My Day (Monday):
I woke up later
Than I usually do
For a Monday class.
It was ok though,
Becuase I took a shower
The preceeding night.
Eleven thirty
That's when class began for me
Hooray for French lit.
Group meeting took place
With all of the others
We talked about stuff.
I had another
French literature class
To make up for one.
Where did the day go?
I went shopping for some things
For the week (like food).
I've obligations.
My academia
Never lets me rest.
That was a fancy
Term for, "I did my homework."
There's a lot of it.
It's all completed
And now I am missing you.
I'm ready for bed!
Hooray! Tomorrow won't be as boring as this past weekend I hope, haha.
I am going to the Musee Rodin and I have another 4 hour lit class.
A bien tot!
Briana
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Petanque, Cemeteries, Catacombes, and Ice Cream!
Bonjour!
I don’t remember where I last left off in my blog, haha. So please forgive me if I make you read about this stuff again…oh wait! I think it is coming back to me. I believe that I wrote about going to Le Paradis des Fruits and getting the yucky chicken curry stuff. I’m pretty sure that was Wednesday! Ok, so Thursday! Every week, the whole group goes on one or two cultural outings together. Thursday morning, the director took us to a private petanque club. What is petanque, you ask? It is exactly like Bocce Ball if you know what that is…The basic premise is that someone throws a little blue ball and it has to land 6-10 meter away from the throwing line. There are 2 teams of 3 and each person has 2 larger silver balls (6 of the balls are the same for team 1, 6 are identical for team 2). A member from team 1 throws one of their silver balls as close to the blue ball as possible, followed by a member of team 2. Whoever is further away gets to go next. The order of succession after that is really confusing…Team 1 (or whoever has a ball farthest from the blue after the initial round of throws) throws until they get a silver ball closer to the blue ball than team 2, and then it is team 2’s turn. It is team 2’s turn until they get closer to the blue ball than team 1. When everyone is out of silver balls, you go over to the small blue one. You decide which team has the closest silver ball to the blue ball. Then you count that team’s silver balls around the blue one (you look at the top 4 closest balls and that is what you choose from). For example, say that team 2’s balls were closest, then you’d count the remainder of team 2’s balls surrounding the blue ball (but you only count the top four closest balls)…one point per silver ball. So if team 2 had the closest ball, but the other 3 closest balls belonged to team 1, then team 2 would get 1 point, team 1 would get 0. The team to reach 13 first, wins. You’re allowed to hit other player’s silver balls out of the way or hit the blue ball to move it away from your opponent or closer to your team’s silvers. It was pretty fun once I figured out what the heck we were doing!! Petanque is mostly played by older people (like bingo or chess in the park), but it was super fun!
My team was comprised of me, Rachel and Megan. We were Team Mermaid!! And we totally won! The final score was 13-6. Poor Team Jacob (made up of Leslie, Karen—my super cool French teacher—and Kiara) never had a chance! Mermaids are way better than werewolves…duh! (If you don’t understand what Jacob and werewolves have to do with each other, I suggest you go see Eclipse!)
Members of the petanque club taught us how to play and our game was the first to end. He took us to the little hangout/bar area and served us beer or wine, haha. The club president brought his puppy too! She was really adorable…a highlands terrier named Eclaire who hopped up on the table and took a nap!
After petanque, the kids in the culture class had to go to the Centre Pompidou (a modern art museum). Before we headed there though, we had lunch at a cute little café across the road from the petanque club. We were in the Montmartre quarter, which I think is my favorite region of Paris. There are a lot of very cute shops and it is a lot more calm and tranquil than the Latin quarter (where I am living). I had the salade chicken, haha. I thought it was interesting that they used the English word for chicken instead of the French one. It was pretty good because I asked for the dressing on the side and then gave my tomatoes and cucumbers to Leslie. The chicken was ok, but it was all dark meat and cold (which I don’t exactly like) and there were cold potatoes on it too. (it was rather strange as well…I’ve never had cold potatoes.)
After that, I went to Le Centre George Pompidou for like 5 hours. It was a humongous place!!! It had art by Picasso and Dali as well as weirder stuff like a video projected on a wall of a woman hulahooping naked…with a barbed wire hoolahoop! Most of the museum just creeped me out. I much prefer impressionist or renaissance art to modern art. I really didn’t feel extremely inspired or changed or intrigued by anything I saw…just weirded out, haha.
Other things I saw:
-these two giant jellyfish looking things strung from the ceiling. One was made of pink material and had crabs and fish eggs all over it. It was emitting music and creepy moans of pain. The other one was made of a burlap material and had giant pictures of tooth extractions on it. I read the plaque next to the “art” and learned that the structures were supposed to be fraternal twins…one was blind but had teeth and the other had cancer but could speak…yeah…I don’t get it either. It was just extremely bizarre and eerie.
-the top floor of the museum/gallery had an exhibition called “Dreamland.” It was a display of big cities their designs, and the effectiveness of their designs. It showcased New York City, Las Vegas, EPCOT (more on that in a minute), some cities in southeast Asia, and more (but I don’t really remember.) The Las Vegas one was my favorite because it had a whole bunch of pictures and the city plans from the 50s. It was neat to see all of the casinos that were super ritzy in the 50s and know how different they have turned out. The EPCOT thing was cool too. We all know EPCOT as an awesome part of DisneyWorld, but it started out as a plan for a utopian society, created by Walt himself! I watched a movie from 1966 in which he explained his plans for creating this mega city, complete with Wedway People Movers, a metro system, different districts for living, working and for recreation, and a dome overtop the town to keep out rain and provide a controlled climate. Walt died in December of 1966 and no one continued with his plans for the utopian society EPCOT, instead the big white golf ball-looking thing was made and placed in DisneyWorld. I had no idea about any of this stuff! So it was pretty cool to learn all of it.
-the level under the entrance level was host to a very strange exhibition. It was titled “Neige Blanche”…Snow White. There was a huge red carpet and a reeeeally long dining table on top of it (think of a table in a king or queen’s dining hall). There were several place settings atop the table, along with baskets of apples, and a dead deer. Sitting in chairs at the table and walking around it, several women were dressed up as Snow White! Some of them were carrying machine guns! And the ones that were wearing shoes, were wearing combat boots! It was very strange. The Snow Whites with guns walked around like they were patrolling the area defensively while the ones sitting at the table ate apples. I have no idea what was going on. There was a dead boar on the carpet, a little bit away from the table. It was rather creepy! I think it was supposed to be some sort of social commentary concerning how different children a couple generations ago are to children now. Before bed children from older generations read fairytales, but children now play violent video games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto. I think the exhibition was supposed to be a collaboration of both: Snow White with machine guns, dead animals all over the place. I’m not really sure though, haha.
After the Centre Pompidou, I went home and did homework before bed. Leslie and I got up early Friday morning because we wanted to go the Catacombes. They opene at 10 but several kids in our group went last week and they said they waited in line for 2 hours! We left the Foyer at 9 and got there at 9:15ish. We were like the third or fourth group in line, but the line progressively became longer every minute! By 10:00, it was wrapped around the corner and went down the adjacent street. We were let in around 10:20 and it took us about 45 minutes to walk through.
Before the mid 1700’s, there used to be a lot of rock mining under the Parisian streets. Once the quarry stopped being used for obtaining rocks, city planners noticed that the Paris cemeteries were extremely overcrowded and they didn’t have anywhere to put the more recently deceased. They thought, hey, why don’t we exhume all of the bodies that have been rotting in the cemeteries for who knows how long and stick them in the old rock quarry? This idea gained popularity, and that’s exactly what they did! To make room for the newly dead in cemeteries, they took all of the old, rotted bodies and carted them underground. The result: the Catacombes! Dark, narrow tunnels underground (under the metro system and the water pipes and the sewage system) are now lined with human skeletal remains!
Before getting to the tunnels, we had to walk down like 150 stairs. We then made our way through winding pathways in semi-darkness. My head touched the ceiling in a few spots and the narrowest of passageways was about 2-3 people wide (shoulder to shoulder). It was pretty fantastic! I pretended I was taking the secret passage from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack. (If you didn’t understand that, I suggest you read/watch Harry Potter, haha.) We rounded a corner and then all of the sudden, the walls were made of human skeletons!! It was so cooool!!!! It would have sucked to be the one who had to build it, but the results were awesome! A line of skulls on the bottom, femurs and humoruses on top of that, then another line of skulls, and so on. From the ground to the ceiling…it went on for about 30 minutes of walking!! I couldn’t believe how cool it was! I thought I was going to be super creeped out or claustrophobic or something…but it was totally neat!
After the Catacombes (aka ascending 150 stairs on an extremely narrow spiral staircase that made me dizzy and feel like I was walking sideways haha), Leslie and I just hung out. We went back to the huge mall so that she could buy something else and then we did homework back at the Foyer.
Today (Saturday), we got up around 8:30ish. There is this thing in Paris in the summer called Paris Plage: they import sand, blow up plastic palm trees and set out deck chairs along the banks of the Seine. People flock to it because it is supposed to be like a beach. There are vendors and other things of that sort I imagine. We woke up with intentions of going, but it was raining and cold, so we didn’t. Instead, we read and did homework (woohoo…) In the afternoon, the rain let up and we (along with some other girls) decided to go to Le Cimetiere Pere Lachaise. I felt extremely emo: 2 cemeteries and the Catacombes in a span of 4 days? Haha. I’m glad we went to Pere Lachaise though, because it was way cooler than Montparnasse! I saw the graves of Jim Morrison (with a gate around it blocking crazy fans from doing drugs and having sex on it…true story! I read it in my guide book), Oscar Wilde (it is tradition to put on lipstick and kiss the tombstone for good luck! I did it and was sort of grossed out because I got tombstone particles stuck to my lips), Colette, George Seraut, Haussman (the guy who designed the roads that intersect the Arc de Triomphe), Moliere, and Chopin. The weather was beautiful once the sun peeked from behind the clouds, and I enjoyed walking around and taking pictures!
Speaking of taking pictures, I think something may be wrong with my camera :( It is having trouble focusing, especially when there is a lot of sunlight in the scene I am trying to capture. I might have to get it checked out. I haven’t dropped it or anything! In fact, I’ve been extremely careful.
Ho hum, what else can I tell you? I was assigned to read 35 pages of the book we’re reading for lit class this weekend. I have about 33 to go, haha.
Oh! After the cemetery today, we went to this legendary French ice cream place called Chez Berthillon. But it was closed!! For their midsummer holiday! (A strange time to close an ice cream shop, I would say.) But it was ok because we continued walking down the street and like 10 of the little restaurants were selling Chez Berthillon ice cream. I had a scoop of white chocolate and a scoop of framboises a la rose. It was probably the best ice cream I’ve ever had (next to the gelato I wrote about the other day, haha). The white chocolate was to die for! and I’ve never had anything as wonderful as the framboises a la rose! It was raspberry and rose! It basically tasted like I was eating rose flavored raspberries and was super delish!!!!
So yup. Now, I’m just hanging out, avoiding homework. I feel super lame because it’s Saturday night and I’m writing a blog and doing homework hahaha. Some of the girls are going to a discotheque…a dance club! I was thinking about going, but I don’t want to put on make up or change out of my pajamas, haha. I don’t know if it’s laziness or fatigue. I’m going to say the latter because I keep yawning. I guess I’ll start reading my book and then fall asleep in like ten minutes, haha.
Bon nuit!
Briana
I don’t remember where I last left off in my blog, haha. So please forgive me if I make you read about this stuff again…oh wait! I think it is coming back to me. I believe that I wrote about going to Le Paradis des Fruits and getting the yucky chicken curry stuff. I’m pretty sure that was Wednesday! Ok, so Thursday! Every week, the whole group goes on one or two cultural outings together. Thursday morning, the director took us to a private petanque club. What is petanque, you ask? It is exactly like Bocce Ball if you know what that is…The basic premise is that someone throws a little blue ball and it has to land 6-10 meter away from the throwing line. There are 2 teams of 3 and each person has 2 larger silver balls (6 of the balls are the same for team 1, 6 are identical for team 2). A member from team 1 throws one of their silver balls as close to the blue ball as possible, followed by a member of team 2. Whoever is further away gets to go next. The order of succession after that is really confusing…Team 1 (or whoever has a ball farthest from the blue after the initial round of throws) throws until they get a silver ball closer to the blue ball than team 2, and then it is team 2’s turn. It is team 2’s turn until they get closer to the blue ball than team 1. When everyone is out of silver balls, you go over to the small blue one. You decide which team has the closest silver ball to the blue ball. Then you count that team’s silver balls around the blue one (you look at the top 4 closest balls and that is what you choose from). For example, say that team 2’s balls were closest, then you’d count the remainder of team 2’s balls surrounding the blue ball (but you only count the top four closest balls)…one point per silver ball. So if team 2 had the closest ball, but the other 3 closest balls belonged to team 1, then team 2 would get 1 point, team 1 would get 0. The team to reach 13 first, wins. You’re allowed to hit other player’s silver balls out of the way or hit the blue ball to move it away from your opponent or closer to your team’s silvers. It was pretty fun once I figured out what the heck we were doing!! Petanque is mostly played by older people (like bingo or chess in the park), but it was super fun!
My team was comprised of me, Rachel and Megan. We were Team Mermaid!! And we totally won! The final score was 13-6. Poor Team Jacob (made up of Leslie, Karen—my super cool French teacher—and Kiara) never had a chance! Mermaids are way better than werewolves…duh! (If you don’t understand what Jacob and werewolves have to do with each other, I suggest you go see Eclipse!)
Members of the petanque club taught us how to play and our game was the first to end. He took us to the little hangout/bar area and served us beer or wine, haha. The club president brought his puppy too! She was really adorable…a highlands terrier named Eclaire who hopped up on the table and took a nap!
After petanque, the kids in the culture class had to go to the Centre Pompidou (a modern art museum). Before we headed there though, we had lunch at a cute little café across the road from the petanque club. We were in the Montmartre quarter, which I think is my favorite region of Paris. There are a lot of very cute shops and it is a lot more calm and tranquil than the Latin quarter (where I am living). I had the salade chicken, haha. I thought it was interesting that they used the English word for chicken instead of the French one. It was pretty good because I asked for the dressing on the side and then gave my tomatoes and cucumbers to Leslie. The chicken was ok, but it was all dark meat and cold (which I don’t exactly like) and there were cold potatoes on it too. (it was rather strange as well…I’ve never had cold potatoes.)
After that, I went to Le Centre George Pompidou for like 5 hours. It was a humongous place!!! It had art by Picasso and Dali as well as weirder stuff like a video projected on a wall of a woman hulahooping naked…with a barbed wire hoolahoop! Most of the museum just creeped me out. I much prefer impressionist or renaissance art to modern art. I really didn’t feel extremely inspired or changed or intrigued by anything I saw…just weirded out, haha.
Other things I saw:
-these two giant jellyfish looking things strung from the ceiling. One was made of pink material and had crabs and fish eggs all over it. It was emitting music and creepy moans of pain. The other one was made of a burlap material and had giant pictures of tooth extractions on it. I read the plaque next to the “art” and learned that the structures were supposed to be fraternal twins…one was blind but had teeth and the other had cancer but could speak…yeah…I don’t get it either. It was just extremely bizarre and eerie.
-the top floor of the museum/gallery had an exhibition called “Dreamland.” It was a display of big cities their designs, and the effectiveness of their designs. It showcased New York City, Las Vegas, EPCOT (more on that in a minute), some cities in southeast Asia, and more (but I don’t really remember.) The Las Vegas one was my favorite because it had a whole bunch of pictures and the city plans from the 50s. It was neat to see all of the casinos that were super ritzy in the 50s and know how different they have turned out. The EPCOT thing was cool too. We all know EPCOT as an awesome part of DisneyWorld, but it started out as a plan for a utopian society, created by Walt himself! I watched a movie from 1966 in which he explained his plans for creating this mega city, complete with Wedway People Movers, a metro system, different districts for living, working and for recreation, and a dome overtop the town to keep out rain and provide a controlled climate. Walt died in December of 1966 and no one continued with his plans for the utopian society EPCOT, instead the big white golf ball-looking thing was made and placed in DisneyWorld. I had no idea about any of this stuff! So it was pretty cool to learn all of it.
-the level under the entrance level was host to a very strange exhibition. It was titled “Neige Blanche”…Snow White. There was a huge red carpet and a reeeeally long dining table on top of it (think of a table in a king or queen’s dining hall). There were several place settings atop the table, along with baskets of apples, and a dead deer. Sitting in chairs at the table and walking around it, several women were dressed up as Snow White! Some of them were carrying machine guns! And the ones that were wearing shoes, were wearing combat boots! It was very strange. The Snow Whites with guns walked around like they were patrolling the area defensively while the ones sitting at the table ate apples. I have no idea what was going on. There was a dead boar on the carpet, a little bit away from the table. It was rather creepy! I think it was supposed to be some sort of social commentary concerning how different children a couple generations ago are to children now. Before bed children from older generations read fairytales, but children now play violent video games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto. I think the exhibition was supposed to be a collaboration of both: Snow White with machine guns, dead animals all over the place. I’m not really sure though, haha.
After the Centre Pompidou, I went home and did homework before bed. Leslie and I got up early Friday morning because we wanted to go the Catacombes. They opene at 10 but several kids in our group went last week and they said they waited in line for 2 hours! We left the Foyer at 9 and got there at 9:15ish. We were like the third or fourth group in line, but the line progressively became longer every minute! By 10:00, it was wrapped around the corner and went down the adjacent street. We were let in around 10:20 and it took us about 45 minutes to walk through.
Before the mid 1700’s, there used to be a lot of rock mining under the Parisian streets. Once the quarry stopped being used for obtaining rocks, city planners noticed that the Paris cemeteries were extremely overcrowded and they didn’t have anywhere to put the more recently deceased. They thought, hey, why don’t we exhume all of the bodies that have been rotting in the cemeteries for who knows how long and stick them in the old rock quarry? This idea gained popularity, and that’s exactly what they did! To make room for the newly dead in cemeteries, they took all of the old, rotted bodies and carted them underground. The result: the Catacombes! Dark, narrow tunnels underground (under the metro system and the water pipes and the sewage system) are now lined with human skeletal remains!
Before getting to the tunnels, we had to walk down like 150 stairs. We then made our way through winding pathways in semi-darkness. My head touched the ceiling in a few spots and the narrowest of passageways was about 2-3 people wide (shoulder to shoulder). It was pretty fantastic! I pretended I was taking the secret passage from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack. (If you didn’t understand that, I suggest you read/watch Harry Potter, haha.) We rounded a corner and then all of the sudden, the walls were made of human skeletons!! It was so cooool!!!! It would have sucked to be the one who had to build it, but the results were awesome! A line of skulls on the bottom, femurs and humoruses on top of that, then another line of skulls, and so on. From the ground to the ceiling…it went on for about 30 minutes of walking!! I couldn’t believe how cool it was! I thought I was going to be super creeped out or claustrophobic or something…but it was totally neat!
After the Catacombes (aka ascending 150 stairs on an extremely narrow spiral staircase that made me dizzy and feel like I was walking sideways haha), Leslie and I just hung out. We went back to the huge mall so that she could buy something else and then we did homework back at the Foyer.
Today (Saturday), we got up around 8:30ish. There is this thing in Paris in the summer called Paris Plage: they import sand, blow up plastic palm trees and set out deck chairs along the banks of the Seine. People flock to it because it is supposed to be like a beach. There are vendors and other things of that sort I imagine. We woke up with intentions of going, but it was raining and cold, so we didn’t. Instead, we read and did homework (woohoo…) In the afternoon, the rain let up and we (along with some other girls) decided to go to Le Cimetiere Pere Lachaise. I felt extremely emo: 2 cemeteries and the Catacombes in a span of 4 days? Haha. I’m glad we went to Pere Lachaise though, because it was way cooler than Montparnasse! I saw the graves of Jim Morrison (with a gate around it blocking crazy fans from doing drugs and having sex on it…true story! I read it in my guide book), Oscar Wilde (it is tradition to put on lipstick and kiss the tombstone for good luck! I did it and was sort of grossed out because I got tombstone particles stuck to my lips), Colette, George Seraut, Haussman (the guy who designed the roads that intersect the Arc de Triomphe), Moliere, and Chopin. The weather was beautiful once the sun peeked from behind the clouds, and I enjoyed walking around and taking pictures!
Speaking of taking pictures, I think something may be wrong with my camera :( It is having trouble focusing, especially when there is a lot of sunlight in the scene I am trying to capture. I might have to get it checked out. I haven’t dropped it or anything! In fact, I’ve been extremely careful.
Ho hum, what else can I tell you? I was assigned to read 35 pages of the book we’re reading for lit class this weekend. I have about 33 to go, haha.
Oh! After the cemetery today, we went to this legendary French ice cream place called Chez Berthillon. But it was closed!! For their midsummer holiday! (A strange time to close an ice cream shop, I would say.) But it was ok because we continued walking down the street and like 10 of the little restaurants were selling Chez Berthillon ice cream. I had a scoop of white chocolate and a scoop of framboises a la rose. It was probably the best ice cream I’ve ever had (next to the gelato I wrote about the other day, haha). The white chocolate was to die for! and I’ve never had anything as wonderful as the framboises a la rose! It was raspberry and rose! It basically tasted like I was eating rose flavored raspberries and was super delish!!!!
So yup. Now, I’m just hanging out, avoiding homework. I feel super lame because it’s Saturday night and I’m writing a blog and doing homework hahaha. Some of the girls are going to a discotheque…a dance club! I was thinking about going, but I don’t want to put on make up or change out of my pajamas, haha. I don’t know if it’s laziness or fatigue. I’m going to say the latter because I keep yawning. I guess I’ll start reading my book and then fall asleep in like ten minutes, haha.
Bon nuit!
Briana
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