Yes. Yes, it would. I like museums. I like art. I like art museums. But I am never again going on a guided tour of an art museum. I’ll have to go back and shell out the eight Euros to see it myself. (Interesting side note, as yet unconfirmed: I hear a rumor that, if you can prove that you are a student of art history in France, you have free entrance to all the museums. Intriguingly enough, although I am not, in fact, a student of art history in France, I have a little stamp on my bootleg student ID [no, it’s real, but man, it’s a piece of laminated construction paper with my picture on it] that says “Histoire de l’Art, V.W.P.P., Paris.”)
Centre Pompidou:
View from the top:
Inside:
(This shoe is taller than I am.)
Afterwards, I wandered over to Le Marais with Kate, for unsuccessful shopping that deserves no more mention than this sentence. And then! To the 16th arrondissement, metro Passy, to meet the host family.
I feel like this deserves some description. I met up with Skye at the station, Skye being the other Wesleyan student who is going to live in the host family’s apartment with me. Skye is a sophomore and was in my French Ways class last semester. She plays guitar and is generally adorable. So. Skye had a leetle problem with the metro, namely that she’s scared of it, despite being from New York City; but she still emerged unscathed, I think somewhat to her surprise, and we walked to the apartment.
The apartment is on a street full of antiques shops and beautiful old buildings that are all about seven stories high. The street is full of antiques shops because the residents are loaded.
We could get into the ground floor of the building fine, but then we couldn’t figure out exactly how to get upstairs. It was really very confusing and we wandered around into the courtyard etc. for a few minutes before I gathered up the courage to call our host family (M et Mme de Lassagne, which, I’m sorry, I can barely pronounce without laughing) and say, I’m sorry, we’re your Americans. We’re downstairs and we can’t figure out how to get up.
Ah, first impressions.
Anyway, M de Lassagne came downstairs to show us up. He is 75, which makes him more of a host grandfather than a host father; Mme de Lassagne is 65. He took us upstairs in an oldschool elevator that involved both glass and a surprising amount of wicker, and into their apartment. Which, oh God, is amazing. (I was talking to other students about their housing today, and Bin happened to mention that he was being put in a 150 square meter apartment, which general agreement had was quite large. This one where I’m going to be living is 275.) The family that owned the apartment before them were from either the Middle East or North Africa, I forget which, and had decorated the kitchen accordingly. There is an incredibly involved wallpaper in the front hall with scenes from somebody’s 19th century America, and the sitting room involves a rather large amount of gold.
We sat and ate pastries and drank tea (and I liked it? it probably had something to do with the cube of sugar I let dissolve in it) and talked. They seem to like America a lot, and have traveled there extensively, which is nice when one is surrounded by a country that, let’s be honest, doesn’t like America all that much. When I said I lived in Memphis and they didn’t know where that was, M de Lassagne pulled out an atlas and proceeded to look up all the details. “Capital, Nashville? Memphees, Tennessee ... on the Mississippi. A very long river!”
They have three sons, two of whom live in the US (Miami and San Francisco) and a daughter in Provence. The other son lives in Shanghai and does not speak any Chinese. They were very interested to hear that I do, after a fashion. China, M de Lassagne assured me, is the future. The Americans should be afraid; but not as much as the French. No, Mme de Lassagne agreed, the French don’t work. They’re the ones who should be afraid.
They showed us around the apartment and gave us the details. Skye and I have two separate rooms at the back of the apartment, with big windows onto the courtyard, and the biggest closets in the history of the world. We share our own bathroom with a (stand-up!) shower. We get one meal a week with them (Sundays) and they will provide breakfast every day. They travel a lot to their country residences (two) and are very interested in farming (of cows). Which I believe they own. They gave us keys (these keys are incredibly weird looking) and we are to move in Saturday, but we can bring our suitcases over any time before that. They are some of the nicest people ever. M de Lassagne walked me and Skye to the metro when we left to make sure we made it all right.
After which, we took the metro back to the FIAP and push-button showers, stopping at a Chinese restaurant for lo mein and the recounting of boyfriend stories.
2 comments:
don't quote me on it, but you may be right about the free museum thing. i think my sister said that she went to a bunch of museums for free since she had some sort of ID thing for fashion (she lived in this sweet apt. in the Marais that was specifically set aside for int'l artists. it was pretty cool).
weird key, by the way. are you thinking what i'm thinking? that the end of it looks like the death star II? :P
so my sister took my dad and mom to the pompidou, and this was the first time they went to a museum since my sister declared her art history major as a undergrad. she then took us to look at duchamp's "fountain" which was a urinal and got really really really excited and went on and on and on explaing how it was so important.
my dad then got very very sad -_-.
oh well things worked out lol.
also, that are was the second time i got very very very drunk. i was 15 i think. my sister met up with her very attractive friend wilson who kept pouring wine in my cup and was amused
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