Day 7- Tuesday 14 June

Geezum, a week, 'nuff said.

Waking up rather early for orientation with the group, I still managed to be almost late. Running from the Port Royal train stop to class, I realized I needed to find me some frisbee to stop me from going crazy, and to this end I have just finished some research to the effect that there may be some pickup down where I used to live, but most games you need to have shoes and pay to access the stadiums. Sigh. Orientation took an unnecessary number of hours, and between tangental spats it was actually somewhat useful, especially the walking tour of the area [like, they sell stamps at the tabac, I had no idea], so I can't even vilify it with any sense of dignity, but I did mingle some more and eat pain au chocolats, explore the buildings better, and later we went together to a museum about Parisian history to really focus our attention, being already in Paris, in a Paris museum, but unfortunately I fell semi-asleep on a couch. Waking up to the abrasive reveille of American syllables, I was reassured that we would be coming back, and felt rather better for my singularly cursory visit.

Afterwards, I got an ice cream [coconut and pineapple, super-yum, especially the pineapple] and walked around Ile St Louis for a bit, and hung out in the parc behind Notre Dame attempting to sort through all of the dendritic carcasses I'd been given during orientation [like, they gave me five different schedules, what the hell, I am so bad with schedules, I was absolutely unnecessarily very unhappy]. And then I had dinner [quiche again] and dessert [yogurt with bread?] with Heloise and Denis, the daughter and father bit of my host family, and should have had enough time to get a jump start on my online class [oops] and Moliere reading, but somehow .... just didn't.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH.

a bit of Reid Hall and its first mini-courtyard, complete with gorgeous roses, where class will be held half the time, and the rest at different places, except pretty much none of the classes will take place at the same time, ever, dang it

Place des Vosges, once frequented by royalty as it was the courtyard of a royal residence, I believe, and is now another combination mall slash expensive place to live

Eglise Saint Paul, one of at least three in Paris, but I did like the inside

Square Saint Jean XXIII, behind Notre Dame

western point of Ile St Louis, tres picturesque

Oh man, I almost forgot today's weird things about France! I know it's the only reason you read this, Tori. Things I don't really think about that are different: I live on the fourth floor here, but in America it would be the fifth. Unlined paper is larger. Lined paper looks like grid paper, because they don't sell lined paper, to the point where their notecards are either blank or grid, too, and sorry, that's all I've got, I'm kinda tired.

Day 6- Monday 13 June

Dudes, I actually did some of my reading today in a new petit parc, after a musee visit didn't pan out [looong line], and had a decently comprehensible conversation with a stranger about frisbee, and a much shorter conversation about the oil spill in the gulf. Today's new words: 'oil spill,' 'blister,' and the French equivalent of 'it doesn't make any sense.' Apparently at least some Parisians have heard of it [frisbee], and of Ultimate [to the uninitiated, it's kind-of like football rules-wise, so it's not totally lame], but yes, it can be difficult to find a game. To make things shorter, because I'm tired, the most major things on my wanderings were getting a ticket to l'Arc de Triomphe and taking les escaliers [stairs] up to the top. Today was a day of spats of hard rain and cancer-conducive sunshine, but I was glad at least for warmer weather. Taking my usual mantra 'pack lightly' possibly, just maybe, to a bit of an extreme this particular trip, you could, in the next universe over, say that I didn't quite pack just enough clothing and that I've been cold since Wednesday, but I would never, ever admit something like that, ever. ANYWAYS, I got lucky and stayed dry and saw lots of large objects and tourists and really enjoyed it up there, I'm going to have to start a ranking system for vista points I've visited.

After walking down les Champs Elysees, because it's just fun, I eventually made my way to the school. Misleading metro signs culminated in my arriving last [half an hour late, nbd people] but still managing to mingle with the help of salty snack foods and faces I actually vaguely recognized from past classes. We jammed the metro leaving as a group and made people unhappy, but ended up at a nice pocket traditional French restaurant with carafes d'eau and vin at the ready. I ended up at the table with the professors, which was nice, and with the daughter of one of them who was tagging along for the summer, and ate pate [just to say that I did], a sort of baked chicken and a fabulous chocolate cake, fabulous, warm and swimming in cream, but I didn't dare to lick my plate; the waiters were unexpectedly friendly and taught me table manners, reminding me that it was rude to put your hands beneath the level of the table, showing me how to place my silverware to signal I was done, useful stuff, but I didn't need to excessively debase myself in front of people who would be shortly giving me numeric values on the quality of my French. Afterwards, I went to the apartment of two other students to check it out with a group of people, and we just chilled and drank wine [or unfermented fruit juice, in my case] and you know, it was nice to be around Americans, unexpectedly nice. I like to think I can get by fine alone, and I can, but yeah, it was nice.

Weird things about France: The groups I periodically see who stick together in approximate phalanxes via the visual aid of eccentric headgear. Today's notable lots included one formation of youths wearing, I don't know, they looked like mushrooms, stuffed felt red fungal caps with large white polka dots, I should have taken a picture, and a loud group of supersized sombrero-sporting Frenchmen.

l'Arc de Triomphe, doi!

la Tour Eiffel

la Defense, the business area, with the modern Grande Arche [think concrete National Geographic logo] visible straight down the boulevard, going to visit there in the near future

Sacre Couer visible up on that hill

part of les Champs

it having just rained, I had to get all Artistic on my walk back from Saint Michel, because my handheld camera, though not a perfect person, does night pictures with fabulous colours [I think]; these are among the more digestible, less abstract pictures: Here you can see a bit of the spotlight atop la Tour Eiffel and an illuminated Notre Dame

a bit of Ile Saint Louis to the right there

the column of La Bastille as seen from the quai along the Seine

a bit of the Blvd Diderot, I guess I have a thing for glass, I'll get over it

Day 5- Sunday 12 June

Blergh, blisters, but only two. Today, as I left Maria was also leaving, so she took me to another market, and the novelty has still not worn off. Held on the Rue and in the Place d'Aligre, apparently it's one of the more famous ones, and once again I very happily wandered and failed to buy Tori underwear or salt shakers. Afterwards, I struck west, passing la Bastille and getting an eclair on my way to the marche aux fleurs. I'd read online that on Sundays it turned into a bird market, but figured it was a bad translation of something else weird because a) the site was in English, and b) a bird market? But a bird market it was, a lot of different kinds of finches, cockatiels, lovebirds, a few parrots, two seemingly-redundant pigeons, doves, only a few vendors but still, very cool. Hanging out in touristy bits for a while, I got jumpstarted on my postcards for this year and just chilled, enjoying watching fellow foreigners walking in front of cars, waving at me from bateau mouches on the Seine, swarming the quais, getting bunched up on corners and in front of large, seemingly-important objects, it was fun.

Ending up doing a fair amount of walking anyways, I re-explored Chatelet les Halles, the Galerie Vivienne and the pedestrian area south of le Palais Brongniart [which used to be the stock exchange but now seems to be rentable?], which was full of cafes and boutiques and things, and where I got some chicken on a stick that made me happy. The rain and the blisters marked the end of today for me, so I guess I'm turning in early ....

Weird things about France: Their aluminium soda cans are heavier here, not by a heck of a lot, but just enough that when you forget you've drunken [drank??] your soda and pick up the can again, it takes several seconds of hanging it perpendicularly above your gaping, gasping oral cavity for you to realize, and to remember. And I'm serious, by the way, I'm not crazy.

Place d'Aligre and the Things part of the marche

part of the bird market

Pont Neuf from the western end of Ile de la Cite

a bit of the Louvre, and its utterly distracting pyramid

part of le Palais Royal [which did use to house royalty, but gradually became a mall-and-a bit of the post-royalty government combo]

Galerie Vivienne, basically an enclosed street, nice place

if you can make it out, this is three levels of a movie theater

Day 4- Saturday 11 June

Getting out of the apartment at a decent time, I decided to walk east today, as the main bit of Paris lay to the west. Walking up the Boulevard Diderot to Place de la Nation, I came across an antiques market maybe four blocks long, not really my shebang, and bypassed the chance to buy Tori a vintage leopard minidress-thing, or a really old chair, or forks, African masks, fake fruit, things. Reaching the place, which consisted of: One (1) really big statue, and at one end, two (2) reasonably tall columns [I can't imagine the amount of history I miss every day [but thankfully remain relatively untroubled]], I chanced upon another marche, this one slightly longer than the Bastille one, and was very happy. Checking my map, I'd say it's around a quarter of a mile long, probably under, but anyways, less clothing, more gore, including featherless decapitated chickens and yet-unmarred songbirds.

Walking past various sports centres on the periphery of the main city, I made my way to the enormous Bois de Vincennes and actually spent most of the rest of my day there. If you google it, you'll see it's reasonably huge, and I did a squiggling path from the north then all around in it, so tomorrow I'm going to have to think of something to see that requires less walking, because my god did I walk, at least ten miles and I'm not kidding, eeeuuuuuaaaggghh. Right, so I saw various lacs [lakes, doi], all of them picturesque with the two largest at opposite ends coming complete with Frenchies laughing in rowboats, women feeding birds and lots of baby birds bread or lettuce, willows leaning out of the water with benches beside placed just so, you get the idea. The westernmost one even had peacocks on one of the islands. In between seeing the various lacs, I got a good view of the eastern banlieus [suburbs] of Paris from a cemetery [waste of a good view? Is that disrespectful?], caught a bit of a horserace peeking through the hedges alongside the Hippodrome de Vincennes, took a minitour of the cutesy neighbourhood of Saint Maurice, was passed by many a jogger and saw a hell of a lot of trees. I didn't realize somehow that the Marne was so close, otherwise I would have visited it, but oh, well, another day, preferably one when I have my metro pass.

The Parc Floral de Paris was pretty fabulous, though I need to go back when the bonsai room is open; it was made of cultivated flower bed bits, as expected, including a lily area, but also had a hilly area and a sort of mirror pond moat facing an open-air theatre where a jazz ensemble was playing. Easily an acre of jungle gym held hundreds, hundreds of children, screaming, and contemporary-looking greenhouses/glass-walled rooms had various different environments inside. One of the better bits was a smell garden that had roses and jasmine and lots of other flowers and herbs and bees and happy people. Exiting the Parc, I saw four wedding parties in an adjoining bit of the Bois and the unexpectedly fortress-like Chateau [castle] de Vincennes, bought food and Orangina at a Monoprix and took the RER back, because my feet huuuuurt.

Weird things about France: The lakes are highly artificial and more like pools that were let go and fish happen to live in than anything else. I noticed the water level was only a few inches below the walkways and lawns, and this is because the excess drains out in these combination storm drain/swimming pool overflow water things and disappears .... Child safety is also less so in France, it seems, as a twenty five foot tall ropes course with gravel underfoot existed.

antiques stands

butcher at the marche

Lac Daumesnil

Lac des Minimes and people feeding various waterfowl lettuce

scent garden, people, visit France in June

the rope thing I was talking about, part of the extensive jungle gym city

part of the very large Chateau de Vincennes

just a random street, the sign says it's only for pedestrians during a certain time frame

Day 3- Friday 10 June

Having stayed up rather early doing my online class [yeah], I got an abnormally late start today. Today's first success was finding the Nutella on my own, and first challenge was taking a shower. One day I'm going to take pictures of all of the rooms in their apartment and post them: The shower is a bathtub, and you hold this shower head-thing yourself and there's no curtain or any sort of barrier to prevent you from trying to, say, rinse off your arm, but missing and typhooning the sugar ants on the tile instead [but I managed not to], and it was reaaaaally cold, and this is apparently normal.

I went to the BHV first and got a watch, because, again, I didn't have one, and previously I'd been checking the time by computer as I have found four clocks in the house but none of them have the right time. In the days of my timepieceness I'd determined the bird clock in the kitchen was the right hour usually and the digital one in the hall closest to the right minute, but that the grandfather and radio clocks were not to be trusted, and I didn't want to mess with any of them because I'm not allowed to flush the toilet past eleven at night.

Impromptu stop in a church, then on to the bookstore, where I got two novels for class that have me thinking I really should start reading ahead [tomorrow] and dallied for a bit, then it rained and I took sanctuary in another, different church, then went to Luxembourg and hung out there for a bit. There was a seemingly-random concert going on, which is completely normal; yesterday at a metro station there was a ten piece string orchestra, and I can usually count on seeing some one-man musical act every other time I take the metro. Add to that random dance acts and accordionists but no magicians doing things for pocket change in the tres tourist areas and Paris is a fun, sporadically musical place to be.

Walking a fair ways to the Eglise du Dome, wherein lies Napoleon, and the Hotel des Invalides, which I had no clue about then but now know is part veteran's retirement home and hospital, as per its original purpose, and larger part museum [like almost absolutely every other large building in Paris, craziness] actually took up the rest of the time that I had until my scheduled dinner hour [salad and I think quiche]. Now I'm working on my final for my online class in the Gare de Lyon, just because :) It takes a long time to walk places, but it's fun to window shop, pretty different from what I'm used to, places selling one thing, which I'm sure there is a lot of in the US but I just don't bother to find out.

Weird things about France: The shower counts, def, also you'll note the escalators in the bookstore? If you are handicapped in Paris, you can walk, because I haven't seen a wheelchair-friendly place anywhere, not in the bathrooms of the train station, not in the train station itself, definitely not the trains, none of the metro stops, not on the buses, the airport has an elevator for luggage but there are still stairs in places, and it goes on. I think I've seen one homeless person in a wheelchair, but that's it, everyone else uses crutches.

Cute tourists shops, and a velib' station, where, if you have a FRENCH credit card, you can rent a bike

See the toilette line? this is at Note Dame

Inside the bookstore, note the conformity, due to there being only a few major publishers, I think

Escalators up, stairs down

Jardin du Luxembourg

tennis in the jardin

Eglise du Dome, Napoleon inside

a random coin, corner [also, I learned how to say coin today, piece]

the Hotel des Invalides, and Tour Montparnasse to the left

Pont [bridge] Alexandre IX [thing with the columns and gold] and le Grand Palais [large ambiguous glass building] opposite the Hotel

Day 2- Thursday 9 June

First thing I did today was [actually, to eat, [or put my contacts in [but I guess technically to open my eyes?]] and then to] pick up a different power adapter, as I was unable to charge my computer, which led to a minor mental breakdown yesterday. Breakfast was actually somewhat amusing; I've been here less than a day but I've seemingly managed to convince Maria [as Mme Laloux wants to be called] that our whole family is mad; last night she made me dinner, and I ate the leftovers when I came in around eleven, and she walked in on me eating the chicken with my hands and was absolutely shocked. She was likewise shocked this morning when I offered to eat cold potatoes for breakfast, that I thought hot chocolate was made with water, that I don't eat nuts but do eat Nutella, that I brought my own toothpaste and that everyone in my family pretty much has their own toothpaste and that this is normal, that I call my mother 'dude,' and so on. But what the hell, her washer is in the kitchen, the dryer is in the bathroom, their jelly is made of figs, all the floors are parquet and I haven't figured out how to close any of the doors, including the cabinet ones. Mostly she speaks to me in French, usually repeating everything twice or so, but my occasionally telling her things like I do all of my dishes by hand inevitably elicit strongly ebonics-accented phrases like "Sweet Jesus!" that leave my ears paralysed by excess culture, and then she has to repeat everything three times for a while afterwards.

My spell check seems to be British now. I thought I was going crazy.

Today at the electronics store I asked the salesdude to give me my change in one euro pieces, and he proceeded to give me directions to the nearest bus ticket booth. I think.

Basically, I just wandered around today, up the something of a very nice brick strip mall Viaduct des Arts with its myriad modern furniture stores and music stores and stores selling blouses made only of fake flowers and just stores, and on top of the length of it a garden, to Place de la Bastille with its commemorative column and picturesque canal stuffed with boats of varying degrees of wealth, where I ran into a marche [market] that, of course, I had to go through. My favorite booths were the ones selling fish, most whole, some flayed open, and mussels in baskets, different kinds of crab carefully arranged, things in shells, all of it nestled in ice. You could also purchase: A lot of fruit, a lot of vegetables, bread, raw meat, farm-made cheese, honey, various cooked things, soap, possibly legal DVDs, shirts, shoes, sewing supplies, beeswax sculptures, flowers, paperweights, and I lot of things I can't remember. Travelling once again to the school, I found my suitcase waiting for me, went back to the apartment, had the potatoes for lunch, unpacked, then went out foraying once more, in the opposite direction, to the confusing Bibliotheque Nationale de France, a library that it seemed you needed to pay to use, across a neat bridge to the Palais Omnisports and the unintentionally eccentric Parc de Bercy, which had everything from a merry-go-round to a sort of fake marsh to a vegetable garden, through the Gare de Lyon again, because it's fun, on to the Hotel de Ville to hang out in their courtyard for a bit. I had wanted to go to BHV to get a watch, as I'd lost mine in Maine last year in a tragic and painful skiing accident, but it closed at an unexpected time. Discovering I can't rent a bike, still, I was late to dinner, but this turned out to be very okay; Maria asked me this morning what I liked to eat, and I said pasta, so she made spaghetti, which is totally logical and, sadly, the one kind of pasta I don't eat.

Let me know if I'm being too boring, okay?

Today's edition of Weird Things About France: They have hobbit doorknobs everywhere. Overlarge and round, they're located in the middle of the door but don't turn. A lot of doors to buildings that use codes to get in have them, you just enter the code and push, and the door to the Laloux flat is like that, only you unlock the door with a key to get in. I think it locks every time the door shuts. Note to self: Do not forget key.

Hotel de Ville on the left, Notre Dame dead ahead

Bibliotheque Nationale de France

a Metro Stop, not sure which

Bastille marche [market]

see, seafood :)

Bastille in the distance there, I'm on a bridge over the canal

Day 1- Wednesday 8 June, written on the 9th

I suppose my getting over here wasn't as easy as it could have been, but at least we're not in the eighteenth century or anything, which neither makes sense nor makes me feel much better. My first flight to Philadelphia was mostly fine, but my Paris flight was cancelled. I took a last-minute one to Frankfurt, whereupon my arrival I [mostly accidentally] passed out on a metal bench at an untimely moment and missed my Paris connection. They took pity on me and didn't charge me for a new one, and I got into Paris around eleven in the morning, only three hours after originally planned. My suitcase, stuck in Germany, I asked to have delivered to the school that evening.

Making my way to my host family's flat, I met Madame Laloux, an American ex-patriot, her very Parisian children Hugo and Heloise, and the American student I was kicking out of her/my room, Cora. I passed out again for five hours and then walked the two miles or so to the school, passing the gare [train station] I'd come in on, getting slightly turned around in the Mouffetard/Monge area, somehow not able to believe I was back. I'm writing this on day two, and I don't know, last time my being here was indescribably real, but now I can't seem to process that I'm here.

I waited almost two hours and my suitcase was not delivered, but took a familiar route back as a sort of consolation, up the Boulevard Saint Michel, past the Jardin du Luxembourg, Pantheon, and familiar main street shops of the student district, past an unlit but not deserted Notre Dame, seeing the Hotel de Ville and familiar bridges and large objects along the Seine, walking with the French, Germans and indistinct foreigners like myself in the neon of cafe signs sheltering small parties of friends, the clouds above orange with reflected light, and it just still didn't seem real.

Charles de Gaulle airport RER stop

The Ministry of Economy and Finances in the distance, on the Seine

The Pantheon down Rue Souffelot