recent trips

ok so here are some pics from the trip to Amiens that the fam and I took 2 weeks ago...
this is the cathedral! its the largest in Francethis is the inside.this is the quire screen. its entirely wood!this is the outside from behind! flying buttresses! the church is a VERY good example of high french gothic architecture!


ok so, now new day trip! yesterday our program organized for us a trip to fountainebleau and vaux le vicomte.
so we left paris at 9 am yesterday morning and drove an our south-westish of the city to fountainebleau. i'm not going to lie, i fell asleep on the bus so i couldn't tell you if the countryside was pretty or not on the way there... :-/
however, we got to the chateau:and we got a guided tour. our guide was hilarious. she would laugh at her own jokes, when we got to the ballroom she started dancing, quite entertaining. i thoroughly enjoyed her. haha. but fountainebleau was originally a hunting lodge and each successive monarch put their mark on it by making their own apartments, or wings, or whatever, instead of re-doing one set of rooms all the time. so its pretty cool. we saw stuff from Francis I:
this is a wall in the first gallery of France!
this is the ballroom completed by Henri II (Francis' son, who was more in love with his mistress Diana than his wife Catherine de Medici)see: more in love with mistress a "D" and "H": not to mention that the whole room is decorated with the mytholicial Diana!ok, so lots of other people lived here too, such as Napoleon I who had a secret library, and also bid his farwell before being exiled Elba here. this is his throne:


i personally thought it wasn't that great and that his bumblebee motif looked like a fly, but whatever. one piece thing i thought a little ironic: marie antoinette lived here for a bit (obv) and she ordered a bed that never got to the chateau before her death. however, napoleon's wife josephine did sleep in the bed even though it had marie antoinettes intials on it... i thought it was a little funny... anyways.
Napoleon III was the last to live there.
ok, now vaux le vicomte
this chateau is where tony parker and eva longoria got married. so its really pretty:
however, the inside was not that well reconstructed and had an exhibit set up that WAS SO CHEESY. the exhibit was telling about the constructor of the chateau, Nicolas Fouquet, and how he met his end. so Fouquet brought together le vau (an architect i'm pretty sure), le brun (a painter), and le notre(a landscaper) for the first time with great success. he was so proud of his new chateau that he threw a party in honor of it being finished and invited the king, Louis XIV. louis obv liked to be the best and center of everything, hence the nickname "sun king" so he wasn't too pleased about this guy who built this amazing place. (louis still didn't have versailles done at this time) so he arrested fouquet on some trumped up charges and had him thrown in jail and thats where he died. SO. this exhibit has mannequins set up in the rooms and there are speakers playing dialouge, in one instance there was a projection on the mannequin's face to make it seem like the mannequin was actually talking (the projection was of a real man talking). in another room there was a video of a dance of the time. it was so cheesy.
the gardens were the redeeming point of this place: and this last one is me just playing with settings on my camera:

ok and that was our day! we ended up back in paris around 5 pm!

ok in other news: spring break is soon, and i'm sure i've said this, but i'm excited! i'm hitting up madrid, lisbon, las palmas on the canary islands, sevilla, granada, and avignon!

and then the first weekend in may i'm going with some friends from my program to the south of france: nice, monte carlo, marseilles, and aix-en-provence!

and then the weekend after that i'm going with my friend ariel to ISTANBUL! i'm pretty excited!

anyways, thats all for now!

the visit

so last week my mom, dad, sister, and aunt and uncle came to paris.
friday night dad came into town since he was already in london. we had dinner at this really cool old 12th century church, def something you would have just walked by if you didn't know about the restaurant, cause you had to walk down stairs to get to the church bit. on saturday mom and laura got into town and we did a whole lot of nothing.. but on sunday we rented a car and went out to amiens where the biggest cathedral in france is located. it was a very small, pretty town, but it was quiet since it was sunday. we did however have a very delicious lunch of crepes. we then went out to thipvaal (or someting like that) which was a WWI battlefield and saw a monument to all of the lost and missing soldiers. it was really nice getting out of the city just for a day, but when we came back into paris the traffic was horrendous. i guess everyone leaves the city during the weekend at some point! we then went to this really good restaurant for dinner that my host family recommended, we met up with doug and cheryl there... delish dinner.
monday i met up with mom and laura after class to see the louvre! i felt very smart when i could explain art history things to them....
the next day i had class all day so they went to versailles and i didn't see them until basically dinner. on wednesday i met up with them for lunch at my fav boulangerie and then we did the pantheon, and then ihad to go to the musee d'orsay for class so they decided they were going to do it that day too... that night we went to a ballet at the opera garnier! it was an interesting ballet to say the least, a little furturistic in spots, but a good experience non the less (well, laura and i had much better seats than mom, dad, doug, and cheryl did... since i had to buy them seperatly..)
thursday was stike day here in france, it was supposed to be a transportation strike, but unless you were needed the RER B or were in place de republique or bastille, you didn't really notice anything about the strike...
funny story though. i genereally take the RER B to class, but because the RER B is notorious for being really slow during strikes i was like, i'll take a diff metro stop that is a little farther for me to walk to, and a little farther for me to walk to class to, but i won't have to change or deal with the RER. so all's good, until i exit the station and realize i have no idea where i am going. i end up being 15 min late to class, not because of the late metro(i had to wait 2 min for a metro, the same on any other day) but because i got lost walking.... go me.
anyways on friday i met up with them again after my class and we did a boat ride! laura and i also did some shopping on thursday and friday!

i have to say, one of the things i was a little worried about was where i would suggest going out to dinner the whole time we were here, because we don't really go out for dinner that much, and when we do its like, a greek sandwich or a crepe or something, but we managed to eat VERY well the whole time they were here!

the other good thing was that this week has been ABSOLUTLEY gorgeous.. a straight week of cloudless blue skies and relatively warm temps...until today of course. it got cold and cloudy again. they were so lucky with the weather... it could have easily been gross they whole time they were here....

i'll post some pics when laura puts them up, because i let her take them all! haha

i don't really have much more to say, just that i can't believe april is almost here!

obsessions

so these are some of the things that i'm obsessed with at the moment:
1) the boulangerie right next to the building my grammar classes are in. they have the BEST pastries and for all around 1.50 (under a euro if you just want a plain crossaint...i, of course, do not just want a plain croissant). this tends to constitute my breakfast after class on days when i have phonetics class (don't worry i have cereal and juice before class... i'm not COMPLELELY unhealthy)

2) the tabac right next to the building my grammar classes are in. on the days that i don't have phonetics, i go to the tabac instead and get coffee (love of my life) and days when i'm really hungry, they have a great "formule petit dejeuner" for seven euro i can get a big cup of coffee (which, is expensive..like 3 euro generally) a glass of juice, a croissant, and 2 tartines (buttered bread you dip in coffee..delish). i can also get a ton of my reading done in that little tabac because its not that busy at 10 am and i'm not distracted by my computer/friends/etc (ok, maybe i should explain what a tabac is...they sell cigrettes and calling cards and all sorts of stuff, and a lot of times they are attached to cafes, like this one)

3) to-go coffee places. there is one next to the accent center and one on my walk to my phonetics class. this is glorious because while you can get coffee lots of places you can't always take it away. and while there are coffee machines (like in the metro,or in crus) they are tiny. you know those cups you get to put in the bathroom to rinse your mouth out with? with like..princesses or whatever on them? thats the size cup in the coffee machines. the to-go coffee places are legit size coffees.

4) paris in the sun. so its getting nice here, and i'm in love with it. i did homework outside in the sun the other day, sans coat! this also means that i am in love with sunglasses too. i've gotten 2 new pairs of them.

5)that obsession leads will into this one: shopping. a new goal for my time in paris: to come back with a completely new wardrobe. its even better now too that its getting nicer out... much better weather for wandering around outside!! i think this goal is furthered by the fact that i loveeeeeeeeee spring clothing lines...and thats whats out right now.

6) my paris civ course. ok, maybe i'm not obsessed with it, but i'm highly enjoying it. its a good mix of art history, history, and lit... its like my perfect class. it might be a lot of reading, but thats only because we're abroad and are expecting no work, at AU it would be so little... today we went to the louvre and i thoroughly enjoyed myself. i'm also getting excited to write the paper... we get to choose whatever, and i think i'm going to choose to write on delacroix or gericault... love both. but maybe my mind will change, however i do know that i want to write about art.

ok, now some things i'm not so in love with

1) the RER B. it smells. and is dirty. and it smells.

2) the chatlet-les halles metro/RER station. its huge, and not huge enough at the same time. soooooooooooo many people go through that station, its so difficult to move around the number of people. its also just so gosh darn big! there are moving walkways and everything. hate transfering through that station

3) when paris plays with my emotions weather wise. after a nice couple of days today i woke up and it was raining...and FREEZING...again. i also was stupid and walked out of the house in connies...and then stepped into a puddle.

4) the amount of people at the louvre at any given moment... seriously, get out of my way.

ok, those are my only problems at the moment.

life

so life here has been going so quickly!

two weeks ago i started my conference course at the sorbonne. its about french cinema, and all we've done so far is watch a french movie in class, i'm not 100% positive what the test will be like, but, there ya go. i've also started my phonetics classes, which are kind of helpful, kind of boring... i mean they are helpful, but its just boring to sit and talk into a microphone, play it back, listen, rewind then repeat for an hour. my paris civ course is going really well, i actually really enjoy it, i could probably somehow use it as a history credit because its all about the history of paris, and we're reading a book that is by a historian, which at first i hated, but i'm growing to like it... we've done visits to notre dame and the cluny musuem. the cluny museum was actually pretty cool, in a really old building and just had some cool stuff in there, like tapestries. including the lady and the unicorn tapestries. this wednesday we go to the louvre as a class.

speaking of the louvre, some of my friends decided that they were going to make wednesday "louvre" day and try to see every room in the louvre before we left, i'm going to join as much as i can..haha. so far i've done ancient egypt... i have a long ways to go still.

last week i also booked my spring break tickets! i'm going to madrid, las palmas on gran canaria, lisbon, sevilla, granda, and depending on how tired i am of spanish at this point, i'll do avignon or valencia. i'm thinking probs avignon cause i really want to get there and don'tknow when i will. (so i guess i should say that i have the first part of the 2 weeks all planned...i stll need to look at the 2nd week, lol)

and i have to say, i don't know how people get up so early all the time. having class every day at 8 is HARD. it really hit me this week, i had to get up on wednesday at 7 after going to sleep at 2 and i just wasn't happy about it. so dad, while you may make fun of me for having to wake up at 7, i do go to sleep later!!!

yesterday was a gorgeous day here, like, 55 degrees and sunny. really sunny. so i met up with some of my friends around 1 and we had a picnic on the grass by the eiffel tower! it was so nice just lying out in the sun NOT wearing my wool coat! you can tell its spring vs fall because 55 degrees in the fall would feel cold, but not in the spring!

thats basically my life right now. everythings going so quickly, i can't believe i've been here a month!