Week Two

 Hi Guys!

This week I started my first class in Paris! It’s an intensive grammar practicum, and meets five days a week, through the first week of February.  I don’t know if that really counts as a class, but learning about French grammar for fifteen hours a week has been a good challenge so far, and I think I’m learning a lot.  

When I’m not in class I’ve been wandering around Paris and participating in events that my program organizes for its students. There have been a bunch of “conversation workshops” where we pair up with French students who want to improve their English, and we talk for 45 minutes in French and 45 minutes in English. It’s a lot of fun, especially because when you talk to the same person for an hour and a half and in two different languages you sort of get to know them.  I’ve even met some people I think I might hang out with again, which is great. 

 Over the course of the semester we’ll have lots of little workshops like that, and we’ll also have a few organized trips to places outside of Paris. Yesterday, everyone in my program went to Reims, a town in the Champagne region of France, just outside of Paris. We visited a cathedral there, where almost all the kings of France were crowned (although not Louis XIV or Napoleon (if Napoleon counts…)). The cathedral was beautiful, and had stained glass windows from all different periods in history. I’m including pictures below. The first one is a restored version of a medieval window, and depicts a bunch of stories that relate to the Virgin Mary. The second one is from the 1970’s, and is obviously much less traditional, but if you look in the top right corner of the middle window there’s an image of Christ on the cross. The last one was just created last year for the cathedral’s 800^th birthday, and has absolutely nothing to do with religion, at least not as far as I can tell, but it’s interesting to look at anyway. (I'm having difficulties with formatting, so they're all going to be in a  vertical row... If anyone knows how to make a horizontal row of photos on blogger, let me know.)

 After the Cathedral we went to a Champagne house called Pommery. We went down into the underground caves where the Champagne is aged and learned about the process of producing it. The champagne is kept in caves underground because it allows the house to control the temperature during the aging process. We had to climb down more than 100 stairs to take the tour, and we were 30 km underground…creepy. The thing that was interesting (read: very, very strange) about this particular Champagne house was that our tour consisted partly of a demonstration of how Champagne is made and partly of a modern art exhibit. Every stop room we visited had a work of modern art in it, and that work almost always made noise, which made it difficult to hear the tour guide sometimes, but was also kind of funny. Some of the works were VERY bizarre. There was a row of boots that tapped in time with one another, a video of a giant tennis ball rolling down a staircase and knocking over bottles of Champagne, and a collection of human skulls that appeared to be singing Rossini’s “Cat Duet”. I promise that I am not kidding. I’m including a photo one of my favorites below. 

What an elephant doing a trunk-stand has to do with Champagne, I cannot say.

On a completely different note, I had an interesting misunderstanding with my host family this week. My host brother had gone out with a friend, and when he came home, I asked him what he’d done, to make conversation. He said “J’ai fait caca dans mes culottes.” If you don’t know any French at all, I’ll let you google that one. My host brother’s a kid, but he is old enough to be potty trained, and it seemed like a strange thing to say, so I said “Quoi?” but he just repeated the same thing, and moved on to talking about ice skating and the other things they’d done together. I let it go, but I walked away wondering if this was a French expression that I hadn’t known before, or if my host brother had actually had an “accident” at his friend’s house. A few days later I met some French people my age at a conversation workshop and told them what my host brother had said. After trying (needlessly) to explain the word “caca” to me in French, they assured me that “J’ai fait caca dans mes culottes” was not a French expression. When I came home tonight he said it again, so I asked my host mother why. It turns out it’s a trick he plays on all the foreign exchange students because he knows they won’t understand what he’s talking about. LOL! Speaking of weird French phrases, check out the photo below. It’s a subway advertisement, and I was very excited when I figured out what it meant. 

I'll bring something special back from Paris for the first person who can tell me what it means =)

So that was my week! I’m starting some of my real classes this Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’ll keep you posted. I’m also trying to figure out where I might want to go on weekend trips or over Spring break. Any suggestions?

Until next week,

Emily =)

      

Hi Guys,

Welcome to my blog about my semester in Paris! This is where I’m going to post things, which hopefully will be somewhat interesting, about the stuff I do while I’m here. If all goes according to plan, I’m going to try to update this once a week and add new interesting things. I’m sort of new at using blogger, but there’s a little form in the sidebar for you to put in your email address, and then you’ll be notified every time I update this blog; otherwise, just check once every week or so. And leave me comments! There’s a space at the bottom of each post where you can input text and send comments, for those of you who are not so internet-savvy, but you could also comment on my facebook, if you don’t have a blogger ID. Leave lots! I love comments.

At 7:30 tonight (1:30pm EST), I will officially have been with my host family for one whole week. It’s been a whirlwind! Speaking and understanding French all the time is crazy hard! But I’m also having lots of fun, and my family is super nice. I don’t want to post too much about them or where I’m living on here, because the interwebs can be a creepy place, but I’m in a really safe neighborhood, and my family’s been very welcoming, and Paris is sooo pretty!

Robespierre wanted to call the month of July "Thermidor"

All week long my program has had all kinds of orientation activities for us to do, to get to know Paris (and each other). The other day we went to “La Conciergerie,” the prison where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were held before they were executed, and the place where Robespierre conducted a lot of his Reign of Terror. It was so creepy! There were reproductions of the cells where prisoners were held, and most of them shared cells with bunches of other prisoners, and slept on straw on the floor. If you were a very rich political prisoner, though, you could buy yourself a private cell about the size of a handicapped toilet stall, with a wooden bed and a desk to write your last letters. On our way out, we ran into a security guard who just happened to know ALL about the last 24 hours of Marie Antoinette’s life.  Our tour guide didn’t even know her, but she spent about 45 minutes telling us all about Marie Antoinette’s imprisonment in vivid detail (and very rapid French). From the way this woman talked, you seriously would have thought she was there in 1793. Apparently before they take you to the guillotine, they cut your hair so that it won’t get into the blade, and the security guard said that when the prison guards came up to Marie Antoinette with giant scissors to cut her hair, she thought they were going to use them to cut her head off! We all thought it was kind of incredible that anyone could know so much about something that happened hundreds of years ago, but our tour guide said that records during the time were very good, and there were people who would have documented as important en event as the beheading of a queen down to the very last detail.

And when I’m not taking guided tours of morbid places, and learning about famous deaths, I do all kinds of things! This weekend I spent a lot of time with my host family, because I wanted to get to know them a little better, but all week I’ve been exploring Paris with other people from my program. A few nights ago we went to Trocadero, a famous plaza that has one of the best views of the Eiffel Tower. It was SO cold, but that was actually kind of a good thing, because hardly anyone was there, and so we didn’t have a lot of competition for the best places to sit (Actually, nothing has really been crowded so far. This isn’t a very touristy season in Paris. The only really crowded places are the stores, because there are “les soldes” right now. In France, things only go on sale twice a year, for three weeks at a time, so all the Parisians are doing their shopping right now. It’s crazy!). So, anyway we sat on a bench and saw the Eiffel Tower at night. And in France it’s totally okay to (1) drink before you’re 21, and (2) drink out in the street in public! So we did that a little bit, which was fun. Try not to be too shocked, Grandma, we were very careful =). We learned that the Eiffel Tower lights up and sparkles for four minutes every hour! It was amazing, sooo pretty. I’m including a picture to give you an idea.

So that’s what I’ve been up to! My first class starts tomorrow. It’s an intensive grammar practicum, which hopefully will help me understand all these strange sounds that are flying around everywhere… I also have an “Atelier Conversation,” a lunch with some kids from my program who want to practice French, and some kids from French universities who want to practice English. We’re going to spend 45 minutes speaking in one language, and 45 minutes in the other. Other than that, I’ll be doing some more exploring this week, and trying to choose the rest of my classes and activities. I’ll keep you posted!

Love,

Emily