Se sont les vacances

My, how I miss you all.
This week is fall break for the Sarah Lawrence Program. For me, it means little more than not having to go to French class and my Multicultural France Seminar. The art studios are still open, so I still have to go put in my hours as usual. It will be nice though, to focus only on art for once.
Even though I have oogles of free time, I still find it hard to make myself get out of my room and explore the city. There's just so much to see and visit that I don't really know where to start. It's so easy to get into a pattern of just going to the same places every week: The Cité, Reid Hall, the art studios, and back to the Cité again.
This weekend, I did managed to get out and about a little though. Saturday I went to the Louvre with my SLC buddies and Katie from Mills. It was a nice, light visit of the Louvre since we were only there for a couple of hours, and it was very enjoyable because none of us had any expectations to see the whole thing. As students we all have year-long passes to the Louvre, so we can go there whenever we want, however many times we want. It's amazing how much less stressfull the Louvre becomes when it's free! This time we sort of wandered into the ancient Egyptian collection. We gawked at painted sarcophogi, ancient tools and jewelry, and took pictures of statues that reminded us of people we knew. Here's one that resembles someone in our program... but I won't say who.

On our way out we stopped at Starbucks and watched French students enjoying their large, over-expensive cups of sweetened coffee drinks. However much I detest Starbucks as a corporation, I have to admit that there's something wonderful about being able to order a huge, iced and creamy cup of caffinated sugar, or even just a large coffee for that matter. Here coffee is served strong, condensed into little mini cups that look like they're made for a child's tea set. It's generally very good and very strong, but it's a bit like taking shots. Nowhere can I find a nice big milky version that I can sip for hours on a cold morning.
Sunday I finally made a call that I've been meaning to make since I arrived. I called up my friend Zara, a woman from Niger that I met back when I was an exchange student in Belgium, visiting Paris. She was a friend of my host mother's, who lived in Africa for several years. Zara married a French man and moved to Paris, and has been living here ever since with her husband and now three beautiful children. When I called her up she proposed an outing for the afternoon, and an hour later we were on the metro, on our way to l'arc de la défense, an area of Paris that I had never seen before. Below are a few pictures...
.....or there WOULD be, if the internet would only work!!!!!
While I'm at it, here are a few more photos from Paris.
The first is of the Luxembourg gardens, in front of the palace of the Senate. The next one is of the back of the old Paris opera house, Opera Garnier.

Autumn

It's fall in Paris. The leaves are changing colors in the parks and on tree-lined streets. Despite the best efforts of the street cleaners to keep the sidewalks free, the leaves keep falling. In the Garden of Luxembourg, the largest and most cared for park in Paris, the ground is littered with crumpled brown leaves and round, hard chestnuts from what seems to be Paris' favorite tree. Along big important streets they are carved into square shapes, for a tidy, formal, and very geometrical look. In the summer they are great for shade, and in the fall they provide street vendors with something roast and sell to tourists. Kids enjoy picking them up and throwing them around, and I like having something to kick absentmindedly as I walk to class.
The sky has been getting greyer, too, and there's been a lot of that light-but-constant rain that I saw so much of in Oregon.
For the past couple of weeks I've mostly been going to classes and hanging out with my Sarah Lawrence friends here at the Cité. There are 6 of us living at the Fondation Americaine, and it's starting to feel like a little family. We often get together in the evenings to cook dinner or drink tea in one of the little kitchens that are located on every floor. We've even had a couple of crêpe nights, (which in my opinion are really just a reason to eat a lot of nutella), and I'm starting to get pretty good at flipping crepes by tossing them in the air. None of them have gotten stuck to the cieling yet, but there's always a chance...
Oh, and I almost forgot about the cabbage! Thank you all for all of your wonderful suggestions. I finally finished off Mr. Cabbage in a stir-fry at the beginning of this week. He got put into soups, fry-ups, salads, and whatever else I could squeeze him into. I still can't believe how well it lasted. It's been almost a month since I bought the thing, but every time I went down to the fridge it was still firm and leafy-green. No wonder cabbage is what people eat during famines in cold, northern places. It lasts forever!
For classes, I finally ended up taking a print-making class, a painting class, a seminar at Reid Hall called "Multicultural France," and, of course, French. The painting class is in a little Atelier about 45 min. away from the Cité, with a model who comes in daily and 2 still-lifes set up for students to paint at any time. It's a crowded studio, with unfortunately many Americans as students, but the people are nice and I think I can do pretty much whatever I want there.
My print-making class is a ton of fun. The work is meticulous and takes a lot of patience but the ambiance in the studio is great. The students are mostly older, and very nice. I've made friends with a woman who is also a beginner like myself, and whose children both live in the US. The leaders of the studio are really the ones who give it it's character though. The head boss, Joelle, is an older lady who is very loud, opinionated, and has a rather dirty mouth. She doesn't think twice about swearing if she finds the coffee cups sitting dirty by the sink, or chewing out her poor assistant, Nicolas, for almost anything that isn't to her liking. She isn't really mean, though, she just doesn't worry about trying to be polite. This can sometimes put everyone a little on edge, but on the whole it's quite hilarious.
Besides classes, I have had a chance to do a few activities on my own. I've gone twice to this enormous flea market in the North of Paris, where they sell everything from antiques to the latest fashion knock-off. It's crowded, but fun. Last week I went with Katie(from Mills), who's taking a break from school to spend a year living and working in Paris! She's very courageous; I wouldn't have had the guts to go without a program.
The week before last the mother of the two boys I tutor in English invited me to dinner, which was very kind, and it ended up being a huge feast lasting until 11:30 or so at night.
Hmm... Well, I've got to go to class, but I love you all and will write again soon!