in which i hit the Big Three of paris tourism.

I am on vacation, but vacation so far has mostly consisted of coughing and sniffling in my room. Sucks. Plus, one of my four classes isn't on vacation, so I had Translation yesterday. (Okay, it's kind of a poor excuse for a class, but still.) I have that class with Skye, who's in London, and Bin, who is here. So after it was over, Bin and I walked to Notre Dame.

Bin lept in front of my mounted-policemen picture. Lept, literally. He jumped off the curb into the middle of the street. Say hi to Bin.

Notre Dame from the back.
And the front.
I want to go to the Crypte Archeologique at Notre Dame, but we didn't have time before it closed, so I'll have to go back. Instead we went to Trocadero, which is a plaza flanked by the Musee de l'Homme on one side and the Musee de la Marine on the other. From the plaza, though, you have a fantastic view of the Eiffel Tower and Paris across the river. I ate a sugar crepe. It was delicious.
And today I went to the Louvre. Because I have that silly student ID card that says I'm studying art history, I get a Louvre pass for free; but the woman there sure didn't want to give it to me. She told me the stamp was insufficient. I found this amusing because everyone else in my program has the same stamp, and got their cards with no trouble. I told her this. Actually, I said, "Well, that's strange, because my friends--" and she said "Oh no. It is not strange. No."

Well. I just sat there and stared at her until she gave in and made me a card. In revenge, my picture looks intensely odd.

Anyway, this is the Louvre. I take that back. This is something outside the Louvre that looks like the Arc de Triomphe. Only small. I have no idea what it is, but every Japanese tourist within five miles had come to take pictures of it. I found this vaguely amusing, because inside the Louvre, it was entirely populated with Italians.

That is not the Louvre. It is across the river. I do not know what it is either.

This is the Winged Victory of Samothrace. I love this thing. I spent all my time in the Louvre on ancient Greece and about half of Egypt before I got exhausted. I don't know if you know this, but the Louvre is really freaking big.

I was putting my Greek Art and Archaeology class from last semester to good use. Unsurprisingly, lots of the pieces we studied in that class were in the Louvre. I set myself to finding them. I actually did find quite a few. The class was incredibly easy while I was in it, but turns out it was worthwhile, because things made a lot more sense after we studied them. And by things I mean "Greek art."

So I took lots of pictures of random Greek things because I was so excited that I knew something about them. Look! Black-figure vases!

White-ground lekythoi!

A sphinx! Oh wait.
Bye!

adventures in haute cuisine; or, i'll take the green beans, thanks.

I would like to submit a nominee for Creepiest Thing in the Whole Entire World: the whole, dead, skinless, earless, and footless hare that was, for an extended period of time, lying in a mixing bowl on the kitchen table in my host family's house.

Oh my god.

I found it at 11 o'clock in the morning, which is entirely too early for me to even be awake, much less confronted with the evidence that my host family is, if not entirely insane, marginally demented. I was getting out my cereal. The hare had other plans. I had to control my impulse to retch all over the floor. It was ... defrosting, while curled up like a baby, its little pawless arms drawn up to its skull, eyes shut. The ears themselves were gone, but there were still little ear holes in its head.

As I contemplated this thing (while also contemplating vegetarianism, my own mortality, and whether or not I would eat ever again), my host father came in the room. In a voice that could best be described as jolly, he said, "Oh, that's not for you! That's for us."

Yes. Yes, it had better be.

The hare remained in the mixing bowl on the kitchen table for a good two days, during which I was put on a forced crash diet, because I couldn't bear to get anywhere near it. I got my cereal box out of the cabinet by sneaking up on it and holding one hand between my eyes and the hare like blinders. I did not snack, because snacks were in the kitchen and so was the hare. Eventually it moved to a covered pot on the stove, or so Skye told me; I was not opening that thing up to verify. By the end of the second day, the hare had started to turn a little purply around the edges, and that had made me nervous enough.

Just when I thought they must have eaten it already and we were free of it, yet another mixing bowl appeared on the kitchen table. It was the hare, only the hare in a sort of shredded-pork-and-bones form. Its skull was still intact, but the rest of its body had turned into dark brown mush with ribs sticking up from it at random intervals. The head looked a bit like a pterodactyl.

Today it is gone. Yesterday the host family had a little lunch party, with two of their sons, a sister and a brother-in-law. I can only assume that the hare was meant as a delicacy for this Big Deal Party.

Ever since I got here my host mother has been trying to convince me to eat meat. She has just set her cause back about seventy-five years.

Also, recently I am sick. I have the plague. I blame this entirely on the hare.

Update: I FIND THAT THE HARE IS IN THE REFRIGERATOR. I SHALL NEVER BE FREE OF IT.

in which skye gets hit on by a famous author, and hates it.

My roommate Skye has a little problem.

She looks like a nice person.

This leads to endless irritations for her and endless amusement for me. Random people approach her, usually in the metro, and start chatting. Men in stores refuse to give her her purchases until she gives them her number. (It never works.) Skye thinks she has a sign on her forehead that says COME TALK TO ME; I think she has a magnet for crazies. My favorite is the time when she was trying to get something out of a vending machine.

Man: So ... Buying some chocolate?
Skye: ... Water.
Man: You're not French.
Skye: English.
Man: What's your name?
Skye: ... Jan.
Man: Joanne?
Skye: YES. METRO'S HERE.

I never have these interactions, because I look mean. Apparently I also look like I know what I'm doing, because I get approached all the time, except solely by older women who are lost and who ask me if I am familiar with the neighborhood. Generally, no. I usually tell them I'm lost myself.

On Monday, Joseph Joffo came to speak to us. Joseph Joffo is the author of Un sac de billes, which is read by pretty much every mid-level college French class ever. So of course we'd all read it and we got to hear him recount it. Which was fine, how often do you get to meet people who escaped the Nazis and wrote books about it? I left right after. Skye stayed. She approached Joffo, who was talking to the program director, to ask him a question about his books. Joffo immediately turns to her and says, How beautiful! Look, look how beautiful this one is! Are you engaged?

No, for real.

Skye stammers for a second until the program director jumps in and says, Skye is much too young for that, Monsieur Joffo.

He shoots her a look like, get out of here now. She scrambles. When she gets home, she takes her asthma inhaler in a panic, and I laugh for about an hour.

新年快乐!

Today is the Chinese New Year in Paris's Chinatown. "Chinatown" here has to be taken loosely; there were definitely just as many Vietnamese or Thai places as there were Chinese, and a couple Japanese restaurants floating around. When I showed up, at about 1:15, there weren't many people there yet, but as soon as I got out of the metro station I saw these guys.


They were all pretty young, probably pre- to mid-teens. I saw older groups later, when more people showed up and I got into the middle of Chinatown.


One of the dragons has a moment with an orange.

There were groups of dragons and musicians everywhere, about one per block. Each group (except the kids I came across first) had a string of firecrackers that they set off, deafening everybody in a half-block radius, and covering the ground in this.
After about an hour these guys came walking by, and I followed them.
To here, where they set off their firecrackers.

At this point it was really, really crowded. I climbed up on a fence, but I still couldn't see much. It was me, a few little boys, and a bunch of teenage guys on the fence; I get the impression that French women put way too much emphasis on "ladylike" for me.


The reason I got a decent picture of the musicians for this group is that I was standing right next to them. My hearing still isn't back all the way.

He wins against the lettuce!


Hah. Hahahah.
I ended up covered in pieces of red paper from the firecrackers and completely deaf from the musicians and with about six hundred pictures of dragons dancing. A French woman next to me told her daughter when she was getting bored, "Just a second. On va faire le dragon!" The dragons are going to start dancing; only it sounds much better in French., and by better I mean more absurd. On the way back a little Chinese boy on the metro repeatedly smacked me in the face with his "Happy New Year!" balloon. He was very cute.

touristing it up

Yesterday was freakishly gorgeous. I even took my coat off. Skye and I walked from our house across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower (we didn't go up, it was incredibly crowded) and from there to Les Invalides, where Napoleon's tomb is.

From the bridge looking at the Eiffel Tower:

From the Eiffel Tower side of the Seine, looking back at the bridge; where the bridge goes in between those two buildings is our metro stop, and our house is a few blocks back.

This installation, whatever it was, said "peace" in about six bajillion different languages, including Chinese that looked like it was written by a chicken.
Les Invalides:

Hilarious. It's a little model of Napoleon's coronation, but here I think he's crowning Josephine. For some reason, Les Invalides was really big on dolls.

Above the entrance to the lower level, where his tomb is, is this: "Je desire que mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple francais qui j'ai tant aime." (I want my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, in the middle of this French people whom I have so loved.) (There are a couple of accents in there, but I'm lazy.) Awww, sweet. I don't, um, exactly know my French history, but I do know that there is a continuing Cult of Napoleon in modern Paris.

Napoleon liked his jewelry.There's his tomb! An awfully big tomb for a little man. You could fit about ten of me in there.

It was so pretty out, I just can't get over it. Of course this is our last gasp until winter returns, oh, tomorrow, for a nice long stay. Whatevs. The space under the Eiffel Tower was like Little America. Yankees caps everywhere.

in which "englouti" is the most perfectly appropriate adjective for underwater things that i have ever come across.

In my continuing quest to avoid my Exotisme homework, I went to the Grand Palais, which is this gigantic glass conundrum that houses revolving exhibitions. You know, all museum-like. I approached it from the Champs-Elysees, which means I only have a terrible picture of it through the trees; you can get a better idea of what it looks like here.

So there's the Grand Palais, and there's also the Petit Palais (bet you could've guessed).

Grand Palais.

Neither the Grand Palais nor the Petit Palais; but don't ask me, I have no idea. It was a beautiful day, since it finally freaking stopped raining. I feel like I've been sloshing around in ankle-deep water for weeks.

And it was nice that it was such a beautiful day, since I had a long wait in front of this place. It has been thoroughly established that French people really like going to museums, France, so can we slack off a little bit? I mean, there were lines in front of the display cases. Plus, it was like twenty degrees in there. (Before I left, my host mother told me to wrap up for the Grand Palais. I sort of giggled. But inside, I never took my scarf off.)
Exhibition: Les Tresors engloutis d'Egypte, or, Egypt's Sunken Treasures. The story goes something like this: three big important Egyptian cities, Alexandria, Herakleion, and Eastern Canopus, sink below sea level as a result of various natural disasters. Marine archaeologist Frank Goddio expends a downright foolish amount of energy to bring them back up. (Our hero!) You can read all about it on the exhibition's website. They also have some super-cool photos floating around in there that I recommend.

The website says that there are 500 artifacts in the exhibition. I believe it. I read the notes on each and every one of them. It was a ridiculously large exhibition; they pretty much included everything they could think of. The best were three colossal statues -- a pharaoh, a queen, and oh gosh I forget the other one, some kind of fonctionnaire -- from the temple at Herakleion. They were, um, colossal. Wow.

I couldn't take any pictures of the exhibition -- and they were serious about this, there were uniformed policemen hanging around -- but I took pictures of the ceiling.

Chinese New Year is this weekend, so Skye and I are going to go to Chinatown and check it out. I'll let you know how it goes.