So despite every other blog post, I also have been going to this thing called school here. See, it’s called study abroad, although my blog makes it seem like it’s a go-out-and-have-fun abroad, which is basically correct. We all attend classes at the Institut Catholique Internationale à Paris and are broken up based on our French skillz that they have deduced from an online test we took before arriving and an oral test the first day of classes. I was placed in Intermediate 1, which I was happy about, since I didn’t want to be in over my head, especially while I’m abroad.

My professor is really cool. She’s actually just a great educator. She knows how to explain everything pretty clearly, and its almost magical how we always complete our work within the day, even after going on random tangents. The classes are only in French. (Even my roommate Apurva who is in Débutante, a class specifically for people who barely know Bonjour, speak in only French. It basically descends into a multilingual game of charades.)

Since it’s an international school, you have students from really any part of the world. In my class, most were from the United States, but we had a few students from Brazil, Japan, and China. A friend of mine had a student come from North Korea. Incroyable. Yet, we all find a way to communicate with each other through French. So even though we are from different corners of the world and speak completely different languages, we can still get meanings across.

Our classes would often go on tangents about these little nuances found in our respective languages. One day she asked the class if, like French, other languages had an informal “you” and a formal “you.” English, of course, has nothing like it, but it lead her to ask how you’d normally address another person. Well you can use Sir or Madam. What’s madam? Well it’s like Madame in French except with an apostrophe. But don’t you guys say ladies, like ladies and gentlemen? (That’s a lot funnier when she said it with a French accent). Well, yeah, but you can’t say just lady, that’s considered very rude, like “Hey lady, give me the pen,” but “Hey, ladies” is completely acceptable. It’s funny to consider all these little things that if you do incorrectly can make you sound like the rudest person imaginable.

My favorite thing our teacher brought up was when we were outside eating my daily pain au raisins and she smoking her cigarette and drinking her café (She is French, after all…). She told us how she found the history of the United States to be incredibly interesting, how we revolted from the English and established this country and only 300 years ago. The French history, she said, is all about how some person lived in one chateau and then lived in another chateau. It was so funny, since we literally came 3000 miles to see these chateaus and to learn about their history. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side (of the Atlantic).

Today’s the day! (Well actually, July 17^th was) We finally climbed, no conquered, the Eiffel Tower. This was definitely one of the more memorable days in Paris since the views from the tower are unbelievable. They are so unbelievable that I just used a thesaurus to find out different words to convey unbelievable. One can say it’s beyond belief, inconceivable, unthinkable, farfetched, or (informally) hard to swallow. The Eiffel Tower is hard to swallow if just for its large size.

It’s not even like only the view from the very top if amazing; there are two levels of the tower that you can get amazing pictures of the entire city of Paris. Plus, the Eiffel Tower gives you a great workout, which is something desperately needed in Paris after all those pain au chocolat. We took the stairs because the line was literally a 20-minute wait as opposed to 3-hour one.

But we reach the summit of the Tower and we all begin to ooh and ahh at the view and take enough pictures to make Instagram swoon. While I’m taking some pictures, this man approaches me and tells me, in broken English, that his camera has died and he wonders if I could take a picture of him and his daughter (I assume) and then email it to him. So, I’m like sure! I take the picture of him, hand him my iPhone for him to write down his email, and we’ll be good.

When I get back to our dorms, I get the picture, attach it to an email, write a little note telling him to enjoy his stay in France and send it out to my friend with the broken camera. But, right when I send it, Google sends me an email telling me that his email address doesn’t exist! How could this guy write down the wrong email? So now I feel terrible, this guy is probably still waiting anxiously in front of the computer thinking that this stupid American wearing plaid will soon send over this perfect picture of a great memory with his daughter that he will cherish for years to come. But no, I tried some email addresses that were similar to the one he gave me, and one did go through, but I’m not sure if it was the correct one. Just like how many licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world will never know.

One of the first days in Paris, we decided to head into the center of the city to do…something. I guess we felt the center is where all the action is, so we went to the Ile de la Cité, which has a few notable monuments, including the Notre Dame. But we didn’t really want to see anything just yet, we wanted what anyone else wants when they get to a new country: a great profile picture.

So we went and took a bunch of pictures in front of the Notre Dame. And then it took us about two weeks, on July 16^th, to actually go into the church and see all of the stained glass windows, the huge high ceilings, and maybe, just maybe see Quasimodo.

While we didn’t catch a glimpse of the famous hunchback (imagine being famous for having a hunchback? Imagine him on the cover of People Magazine.), we did see the unbelievable Rose stained glass. It’s one of those things that you can just stand in awe of for about ten minutes. And your camera can’t even begin to capture all of the different colors that are in the glass. Oh and on the opposite side of the Rose stained glass, is another Rose stained glass. It’s incredible. I only wish that I could have gone to one of their free concerts, but I guess we’ll have to save that for next time, right?

One of the best things about going into the Notre Dame was that there was a giant sign telling you to help celebrate the Notre Dame’s 600^th birthday. Something tells me that a silly tie won’t suffice for a gift.

We were going to wait inline to go to the top of the tower, but the lines are horrendously long and we only had a limited time until people had to meet up for a tutoring session. So we decided to do that another day, although it never happened. We’ve seen enough landscapes of Paris and they are probably a lot better than at the top of Notre Dame. Oh my God, I’m turning into a snobby Parisian tourist.

And so we slept. But you can never leave a day to do nothing while in
Paris, so a few of us met to go and check out these open air markets
that take place every Sunday. So we left for the Metro with at least 4
on our list to check out. Unfortunately these markets close early, but
a few are open up later.

We first checked out this one that specialized in art. Up and down the
street there were little vendors selling their creative creations,
from paintings to sculptures to jewelry to pottery. It was interesting
to look at all the art, and it’s pretty incredible with how talented
people are, but I’m not exactly in the market for artwork, just
because it takes up so much space.

We ended up talking to one artist in both English and French and he
was super friendly. When we told him we were from NY he went on to
recount a time when he visited NY back when he was in his 20s and
lived on Christopher Street for a week. He told us that some famous
band used to rehearse near where he lived (or lived in the same
building, you know me and my memory…).

It was great to just talk to “the locals” but most of the time they
aren’t the most welcoming of people. It’s not that they aren’t nice,
it’s just that they keep to themselves a lot, even more than NYers do
(which is REALLY saying something). New Yorkers will at least approach you if you look completely lost in the subway, or at the least will tell you “Bless You” after you sneeze. I have sneezed in the train and have seen others do the same and I have never seen a stranger say “À vos souhaits” to another person.

So we finished up at the art open air market and decided it was time to head to the next one, which was pretty far from where we were. Luckily in Paris, everything within the city limits is only a half hour away by the Metro. So we take our trains, get out of the station, and…nothing is there. So we decided to roam around, check out some boulangeries and just take in Paris. After that, we decided to go to the last one on our list, which was also a little ways away, and see what they had. Again, we took the train, got out of the station, and…nothing.

The best laid plans of mice and men, amiright?

So we roamed around some more. I hate being without a plan when something goes awry, so I wasn’t exactly the happy the way the day panned out, but you can’t say you wasted a day if you roamed around the streets of Paris.

Up Next: The Notre Dame

After our late night Party with a Parapluie, we somehow were able to
get up in time to travel to the Champs-Élysées to watch the parade.
The thing is, this wasn’t any ordinary parade. There were no dancing
tuba players, Garfield didn’t make an appearance and neither did
Santa. There wasn’t even one marching band. Thats because it was a
military parade. Like North Korea.

It started off with fighter jets flying over the Champs-Élysées
letting out Blue, white, and red smoke and then followed by formations
of bigger jets, bombers, and helicopters. Then the soldiers started to
march. Then the humvees. Then the tanks. Then the bigger tanks. Then
the artillery. The city’s fire department were the ones to end the
parade, further evidence that you are totally screwed if you have a
fire during Bastille Day.

This is something that is completely foreign to Americans, which is
funny since America has the world’s strongest military, hands down.
You’d think that we would be the ones to show off our military, not
the French. I mean the two words French Military is literally some
joke’s punch line.

And if America did have a parade like this, there would be so much
protesting during it, it would be ridiculous. I didn’t see a single
picket sign at the parade, not even a disgruntled person.

After the parade, we did what anyone would do during a national
holiday: do our laundry and take a nap.

But once we finished our Errands of Independence, we headed to see the
fireworks or as they say in French the feu d’artifice.

Now I know people who arrived at the Eiffel Tower at 3PM to watch the
fireworks at 11:30PM. We left a little past 9PM and made our way to
this part of the Seine by Les Invalides and had an unbelievable view.
I never expected us to get a view like that. We saw the whole tower
and all of the fireworks, which lasted around 45 minutes. We all had a
blast that night, and it made up for us missing July 4th. We were
thinking of singing the American National Anthem (as a joke) but
didn’t want to be THAT disrespectful.

The commute back actually wasn’t as bad as the commute back from the
parade in the morning. We walked to the nearest station, kindly waited our turn and headed home.

Up Next: Open Air Markets

Or The Tour of the Musée du Louvre and the Party With A Parapluie.

On Friday, we were to meet at the Louvre and go as a group to go through the galleries, and after some difficulty all finding each other, we headed through our tour of the Louvre. To get a sense of the scale of the Louvre, our tour guide explained that if you spent one second at each piece at the Louvre it would take you a full month, day and night, to complete. So he’s basically saying, you’re screwed.

Another interesting thing he said was that we were standing in one of three of the world’s most important art museums, one being a Museum in Germany that I can’t remember and the other being the Metropolitan Museum of Art in good ol’ NYC. And I thought, that’s incredible. Here we have the United States, which is a relatively new country, that didn’t act as the home to many artists, and here we are having one of the most important art museums in the world. How’d we do that? (This is just one example of so-called American exceptionalism that I will definitely go into in another blog post.)

But anyway, our tour guide was incredible. He was cracking all kinds of jokes (in English!) and had a real thorough understanding of the artwork, even if people fielded him crazy questions midway. We’d stop and talk about a single piece for ten minutes, examining all of the hidden meanings that were placed by the artists as well as examining what is (and isn’t) found in each painting. One painting (it’s the Coronation of Napoleon) depicts a completely false representation of the actual event. It was moments like those where I wish I took an art history class before coming here.

So the place is massive. It reminded me a lot of the Met. They both have these ridiculously long rooms that contain hundreds of pieces of art, from paintings to statues. Both museums have ridiculous collections spanning millennia. But what really separates the Louvre from the Met is that the Museum used to be a palace, and the building itself is a work of art. I found myself frequently ignoring the artwork on the walls to gaze at the unbelievable ceiling paintings.

We began the tour and we went through a lot of the big name pieces:
the Venus of Milo, these two Michelangelo statues (the only two that
are not in Italy), and of course the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa is the Justin Bieber of the Louvre. There is always a
huge mob of people waiting to see it, it’s protected by bulletproof
glass, and people think she’s smiling cause she’s having a baby (baby,
baby). But yeah, you basically have to fight yourself through to get a
good glance. But when you do, it really is an incredible painting. I
don’t know if it’s just because it’s so well known and you are just
happy to see it in person, but you could really stare at the painting
for a good amount of time. There’s something so captivating about it.

When our tour ended, he brought us outside to return our headsets
(that make you feel like the secret service btw). I figured we’d be
able to go back into the museum and check out, you know, that
thousands of pieces of art, but no! If you wanted you had to pay to
get back in. The tour was for the tour only. So we decided to make
plans to come come back, since it was party time.

The next day was Bastille Day, which is basically France’s 4th of
July. They have a big parade and lots of fireworks. But they also have
this very unique thing called the Bal de Pompier or the Fireman’s
Ball. For two nights, every single firehouse in Paris is opened up to
the public for music, dancing, and a good time. It must be illegal to
have a fire during Bastille day, apparently.

We really didn’t know what to expect, we heard dancing and firehouses
so I thought it might be like traditional dancing, which would be
great to experience. But then we found out it started at 9 and ended
at 3am, so I figured you aren’t ball room dancing at 3am.

So we arrived around 9:30 at a fire house by where we take our classes
and it was raining, of course. Like that steady rain rain, not the on
and off drizzle or the torrential downpour, just consistent rain. But
we’d soon be indoors dancing and sliding up and down poles right?

Of course, the party was outdoors without any sort of cover. So we did
what everyone else did. Danced in the rain. Or danced while holding an
umbrella.

The music they played was interesting since it went from this really
random French song to the latest thing on American radios. The best
thing is was that even the French preferred the American songs, as
soon as they came on everyone would cheer.

The DJ was that he’d say things in French that would rile up the crowd
like “Est-ce que vous avez prêt à faire du bruit?” But the best thing
about the DJ was at random times he would just start shouting “Money
Money Money Money!” over and over again, in English. It was so great.

We got really soaked, but we had a good time. You know what they say:
When in Rome…get out because you are supposed to be in Paris.

Up Next: Bastille Day, or Le Quatorze Juillet

The Musée De L’Orangerie is the strangest name for a museum ever. The first thing that you think this museum exhibits is orange things. Their big claim to fame, however, is that they have two very large round rooms that contain nothing else but Monet’s Water Lilies, which is exactly how Monet wanted his paintings to be exhibited, that egotistical bastard.

Turns out Monet was right. You could spend an hour in each of the rooms just trying to wrap your head around Monet’s Water Lilies. You can literally transport yourself into the scene that he painted. Each painting is of the same subject, but is always different, whether it being set at night or day or painted in a new direction. The best thing to do is to put your face an inch away from the painting, see the brush strokes, and slowly move back until the full painting comes into view. It’s really incredible. Since most of the brushstrokes are so small and unique, it’s almost like the painting is a giant mosaic of brushstrokes.

The Museum also had lots of the famous people: Renoir, Cezanne, and Picasso. It’s a small little museum, but it was one of the most enjoyable museums that I’ve been to. They even had this interesting movie on Monet and his time spent at Giverny, which is where he painted his Water Lily series, that was really interesting to watch. We all almost fell asleep, sure, but that’s mostly because…wait, sleep? What’s sleep?

The best thing about these museums is that they are all relatively cheap. Everyone museum I have been to has been either free for students or given at a reduced rate. Even the normal rates are reasonable; the most I’ve seen for a Museum is the Louvre which is 10€. Considering the MoMA’s $25 entry price, that’s not to shabby for literally an infinite amount of art.

Up Next: Musée du Louvre, Part 1

It’s sad to say that this must have been the first thing that we’ve done that I’d describe as forgettable.

The Musée Carnavalet is a Museum that chronicles the history of France, which would be very interesting to learn more about if only the museum was better laid out. It felt like they were purposefully hiding all of the interesting parts of their museum. At first, the museum consists of just different rooms that are set up how they would normally be in the time period. It’s interesting…for the first 5 minutes and for the first two rooms. I literally had to go up to the third floor to get to the good stuff, and then afterwards the museum was actually pretty cool. They didn’t have any big name artists (that I could see) but they had a lot of Parisian paraphernalia and it was enjoyable to look at. It’s just like three hours later, I felt like I didn’t even go to the museum.

After the museum, we started walking around the neighborhood and noticed something very interesting; we were in a predominately Jewish neighborhood. It literally was like stepping into Borough Park. It’s incredible when you think about it. Regardless of where you go, you will have different groups of people congregate together. We stumbled into a great falafel place and inside they had a live webcam feed from Israel.

This is one kind of realization that I have made while on this trip. America has been described as a nation of immigrants and I think we have these preconceived notions of what a stereotypical French person (or Italian person or Greek person or Spanish person etc.) looks like and behaves. Yet, when you look at Paris, you see just a diverse a people as you do in New York, from different faiths, races, and walks of life. Immigration is just as prevalent (if not more!) than in the United States. We may have a giant ocean between us, but I’ve found that many things are very similar here. I could write a whole book, let alone a blog post, about globalization and how I see it constantly in France, but I will save that for another day.

Up Next: Musée de l’Orangerie

Or as I like to call it, Let’s See MORE Dead People.

The Panthéon is pretty close to where we have classes so a few of us decided to go see where more famous people are buried, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Pierre and Marie Curie, and my pal Victor Hugo. And yes I started to sing Master of the House in front of Victor Hugo’s tomb. I was going to ask if Pierre and Marie Curie’s graves glow in the dark, but I thought that was tacky. Guess I will have to live in the dark, even if they don’t.

The crypts were just a little creepy, but they had some useful information by each tomb about the person, which was pretty informative. We also saw Mr. Braille, the inventor of (you guessed it!) Braille. They should have written his tombstone in Braille, but then I guess they don’t want people manhandling the poor guy’s grave.

We went on this tour of the building that actually wasn’t a tour at all. They plopped you into each room and said to go look around. But you could only have access to the observatory deck if you took the tour, so we did. Again, it was the perfect place to grab some profile pictures. I’m literally set for the rest of the year, and I’m only almost half way done with the trip (!).

But what was unbelievably awesome and totally unexpected was that the Panthéon had an entire exhibit on Jean Jacques Rousseau or, as I call him, JJ. Now apparently JJ was a little bit of a snob, writing all these revolutionary texts and influencing things like the writing of the Declaration of Independence. He also apparently composed music. So this entire exhibit had all of these old books, all in french, all with little scribbles in the margins, that were all on display. His original scores that he wrote were also on display, and they even had a little computer set up so that you could listen to recordings of his pieces. It was so cool and I really got a kick out of seeing all of the music. Unfortunately you couldn’t take any pictures, but I did happen to “check my phone” and by accident take a picture of this piece of music that was intended as a song for Desdemona in Othello, which I will post (you guessed it again!) whenever.

I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface with what I’ve seen, but I think the pictures will help shape the story. They do say a picture is worth a thousand words, and at the rate I’m going, I’d have more words than the average 90’s rapper. Word.

Up Next: Musée Carnavalet

After class on Monday, my roommate and I decided to head to the North East part of Paris to go and see what my tour book describes as the most “romantic” cemetery. Apparently the dead bodies there aren’t the only things that are stiff.

Romantic may be pushing it, but it was very park-like. But let’s get real, you’re here to gawk at dead people. Famous dead people, sure, but that sort of makes you feel bad for the non famous people buried there. You step all over their resting places to go see some stone that has a well known name on it. Nonetheless, it was fun. It’s like playing a really morbid game of hide and seek, except the graves can’t move, and the bodies have the ultimate hiding spot. So maybe it’s nothing like hide and seek, but you do have to have some great map reading abilities.

They give you this general location where said dead famous person is buried and its up to you to comb through all these tombstones to find it. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. Search teams are literally formed. This is a normal exchange:

– “Hey, are you looking for Oscar Wilde’s grave, too?”

– “Yeah, where is he?”

– “Let’s split up and look. It’s not like he’s going anywhere!”

And hilarity ensues.

We went and saw Oscar Wilde’s grave, which is adorned with kisses and notes left by passersby, which was really awesome in that defiling tombs kind of way. I really appreciated seeing Molière’s grave. Apparently Jim Morrison of The Doors is buried there, and his was even barricaded. Finding out that Jim Morrison is buried in a Parisien cemetery is like if you found out Santa Claus didn’t grow up in the North Pole, he just outsourced all his labor there. I don’t even know if that makes sense.

We thought we saw Gertrude Stein’s grave. We took pictures and everything. Then I googled her grave when we got home. Not the same grave! We thought Gertrude Stein was some sort of pseudonym, so after 15 minutes of searching we figured this woman named Gertrude with a similar last name must be her. Well some random woman got her picture taken by tourists, so now she can finally rest in peace.

Some other people we saw: Proust, Gay-Lussac, Apollinaire, Georges Bizet, and Chopin. All in all, it was an enjoyable day out being the paparazzi for the passed.

I almost forget the most important part of the story. We took two trains in a half hour ride to get something completely unique in Paris: Chipotle. It was the Mecca of Americans everyone. No really, we dubbed the area Little America. Next to the Chipotle was a McDonalds (colloquially pronounced Mac-Doh here), next to that was a Starbucks, and next to that was a Hard Rock Café. Oh and down the block was the Apple Store. Everyone inside of Chipotle (including, possibly, the person who ran the register) was American. Everyone was speaking English. It was just all a new round of expats hankering for some fake Mexican food from America. And it was beautiful.

Except, the burrito was really small. I’m used to the burritos in America where one is literally the size of a football and could be tossed to you by the server (interesting idea for drive through…perhaps a touchdown-through?). And they only had brown rice here, and had red peppers in addition to green (As you can see, I am a Chipotle connoisseur). It just wasn’t the same though. It wasn’t as fresh as America’s. So that’s settled, I could never move here. That’s a shame.

Up Next: The Panthéon, the one that isn’t in Rome.