Then I chuckled and continued writing.
Despite the Act I/Act II format, I'm essentially lumping this past week together. And I feel okay about that because each day's formula was basically the same:
--Wake up at 7:30
--Eat breakfast at the house
--Commute to Reid Hall
--Class from 9:30-12:30
--Get lunch with a few VWPP friends
--Stick with those friends (or maybe change the combination slightly as the day wore on) for adventures to various museums, cafes, restaurants, movies, tourist sites, and other adventures.
--Go home (sometimes in time for dinner) and crash.
I call this "tourist week" because it's that unique time in the semester when we're enough on our feet to find our way around, but still enough in orientation to be together as a group every day and do stuff in the afternoons. Basically, this week was the vacation I felt slightly jipped out of by flying away on January 7.
I want to share a few thoughts about the metro, since I've gotten really familiar with it this week. It's very reliable, with trains coming every two minutes and going virtually anywhere you could want to go. If you buy a monthly pass, you have unlimited access to the system until the end of the month. Here's what you get: not having to think about money each time you swipe in and simple mobility to wherever you want to go each time you want to go there. If you suddenly get an idea for an activity, you can just go there and do it. The cost of failure for exploring new places, therefore, is very low.
Connected to that theme, I commuted this week for, really, the first time in my life. From Marcel Sembat to Raspail (in context here: http://www.ratp.info/orienter/cv/carteparis.php) is pretty far.* The upside is that, after the first half of the trip (transfer at Trocadéro), 6-line goes elevated for a good, long stretch. You get a gorgeous view of the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, Invalides, and many tall residential buildings with thousands of balconies altogether. Gotta' love those balconies.
Classes were not that bad... half was necessary grammar review (when was the last time YOU reviewed the subjunctive?) and half was culture exercises of varying usefulness. For example, useful: giving us handouts on French slang. Useless: making us devise social slogans modeled on "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" and making us explain why these made an ideal society. Just to give you an idea of how fed up we were, my partner and I came up with one for a society of dinosaurs.**
Hey! My first restaurant recommendation is coming up! These will always be in bold, and their entries will be tagged "Recommendation." This way, if you're looking for them, my blog instantly transforms from blog to tourist guide. Just like Transformers, only better-written.
We found a hole-in-the-wall place that makes decent baguette sandwiches pretty cheap (3,50 euros which-- last time I checked the exchange rate-- is about how much Obama promised to give to Haiti). It's at a little clearing where Rue de Vavin and Rue de Bréa come together, just off of the major boulevard Montparnasse. Not a must, but cheap and pretty good if you happen to be in the area.
Monday... a bunch of us just got on the metro and started exploring. We wandered around Le Bon Marché (famous department store at the Sèvres-Babylone metro) and its giant gourmet food store counterpart. No purchases... just some Vitamin Water samples, some ooh-ing and aah-ing, and a rendition of "Foux de Fa Fa," the French song from Flight of the Conchords.***
We then wandered all the way to an EXCELLENT pâtisserie called Poilâne at 8 rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris 75006, or you can go to their website: http://www.poilane.fr/. Go out of your way to find this one, folks. From there, we wandered some more very quaint streets, eventually found our way to the Seine, where we crossed over to the Louvre Pyramid, but were too tired to go in. So, we went home.
Tuesday greeted me with some Reid Hall housekeeping stuff, but I think I'll have all the classes I want at Reid Hall and Paris VII, so that's fine. Even if it meant I also had to sit through a lecture on how you need to be perfect for your host families or they will hate you.**** The program took us to the movies later; we saw a new French film called "Le Siffleur" (English: "The Whistler" and don't say I never taught you anything). Basically, a white-collar mobster in Nice tries to muscle a restaurant out of its property to finish... a gated beach community? Yes, the bad guy's dramatic problem is that he doesn't have the right papers to build. You didn't need to understand French to know this one wasn't going to Cannes.
Afterward, a few of us had dinner in a miss-able restaurant near Chatelet (that station is where the most metro lines come together... also a big underground shopping mall near there). But dinner was fine... not at all bad, and we got to sit and chat and listen to... Lady Gaga? We then went to see the Eiffel Tower, because Becky had never seen it before. We were on the train passing it at 9:00 sharp (if you don't know why tower-on-the-hour is cool, I won't spoil it), which made for a great tracking shot (yes, I'm still a film major, in case you were worried).
Wednesday was actually my day off, in a sense, because I had an upset stomach in the morning and didn't go to Reid Hall. I felt fine by noon, with a little more sleep and a little less tap water. While I did get to catch up on a great episode of House, I was aching to rejoin the group for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and beyond.
Intermission!
* Given Paris VII's location near the southeast edge the city (metro: Bibliothèque-François Mitterand) and my location in the southwest, that's not likely to change.
** "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" --> "Size, Power, RAWR!"
*** I would explain this for uninitiated readers, but chances are that if you don't already know this show, you probably won't be able to appreciate it.
**** In my case at least, that's actually a total lie. My host family's rules are: 1.) If there's anything that will make my life easier, I should ask them for it. 2.) I should speak English with the kids so their English improves. 3.) Do what you feel, and don't feel bad about it. ...If anything, they want me to be less formal (this coming from French people, no less).
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