La Maison

It's been a little while since I've written anything and truthfully there's not much to tell. I attend classes, do homework, and fight this fat cat for my side of the bed. Not much of an interesting story, but since Jean and I are in the house by ourselves for a week I figured I'd take some more pictures of it for you all. As far as I can tell, it's a pretty typical french suburb except that she uses gas for heat instead of electricity like most of the people here.

And so:

It's a pretty neat little place. There are three other bedrooms aside from mine and another bathroom, but I didn't want to invade her privacy for pictures of those. You might be able to tell from her decorations (she's a fan of magnets) and wall-to-wall bookshelves that she's a bit of a hippie. One of her daughters is named Myrtille, which is french for blueberry. She's hiking through the mountains in Turkey until Saturday so we're taking care of her animals and such. I hope I'm half as cool at her age.

Lastly, I've decided that I want a chicken. Catherine's fat hen shown above, named KiKi, is quite awesome. I've never liked chickens before, and I've known many, because they were always dirty and mean. But KiKi has a bit of a princess complex, it's really funny. She's been lonely since Catherine left so she has taken to following me around the yard during the day.

I was a bit perplexed as to why a vegetarian would keep a chicken, but we feed KiKi our leftovers from dinner, along with some bird seed, and she gives us a single 100% organic, fresh, free-range egg each morning. Pretty cool stuff.

And since our house has become a bit of a half-way home for animals with the recent addition of a chihuahua, making a teeny chicken coop and fence in the backyard wouldn't be so hard. Right, Dad? Right?

Paris and St. Remy

I know it's been awhile, and it isn't that I have nothing to write about but that I have had difficulty finding the time and energy to write. Traveling and classes have been pretty tiresome recently, but I am resting easily this weekend. Last weekend Jean, Antonia, and I explored Paris! And it was amazing.

We took the train Friday night (3hrs) and arrived late to the city of lights and love. Still, it was alive with people rushing back and forth for who knows what reason. Paris was my first major city since I had gone to Chicago with Robert and Sonia some years ago, so I was instantly awed by the sheer size and inordinate amounts of people bustling about in the late evening hours. Magical.

We did all of the tourist-y things, which I think are best explained by pictures, walked a million miles in circles around La Seine river, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Our little hotel pleasantly surprised us by being so incredibly cute for being so cheap. I suspect the distance from all of the major attractions and that it is not yet the tourist season both worked in our favor.

First was the Louvre, where we were treated to a never-ending array of masterpieces so artful it was easy to forget that one human being had actually created them from nothing but paint and a blank canvas. I wanted to get pictures of them all but quickly found it impossible as my camera battery declined rapidly and the photos were never as breath-taking. Also, we stopped to stare at the original of Mona Lisa for almost forever, swamped by strangers on all sides doing the same. Personally, I found the statues most impressive.

Notre-Dame was beautiful, I love all of the old french churches.

And of course we visited the Eiffel Tower, which is intimidatingly tall. We chose to take the stairs due to the long lines for the elevator, and my legs really hated me for the rest of the day, but the climb was worth the beautiful view. All of the lights came on while we were up there, so we were very excited to get down and view all of it from the ground.

These next photos are all from the Hôtel des Invalides, built by Napoléon for the soldiers who were gravely injured during his conquests. His tomb is here, ridiculously large in size, and there's a plethora of war memorabilia that I know my Dad has been asking for pictures of.

A sundial! The coolest one I've seen, but of course it was cloudy.

This is a small model of the tomb. I heard someone to the left of me say "What is this, a tomb for ants?!" A Zoolander reference, in perfect french. Made my whole trip to France worth it.

This is the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs-Élysées, which is really just a street full of high-end stores. Jean and Antonia climbed to the top, but I declined. I am terrified of heights and had used up all of my resolve on the Eiffel Tower.

The Centre-Pompidou is an inside-out building in Paris. We were excited to explore, but found it to be closed when we arrived. Still, the exterior is colorful and pretty neat to look at.

I found the rest of these just walking around the city and from the batobus, a ferry of sorts that we frequented. Paris really loves its statues, as you'll see soon enough.

That's all for Paris. I love places that make you realize how small you and your problems are, Paris is like that. Most of the cobble stones in the street are older than the United States! It's mind-blowing to think about. I'd like to go back over spring break and explore some of the less tourist-y stuff. We'll see!

On Thursdays we have no classes, so Jean, Hanna (the Swedish girl from our class), and I took a short trip just south of here to Saint Remy last Thursday, where Van Gogh was a self-admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum from May 1889 until May 1890. He did a lot of his work there when he was able, including the famous Starry Night painting. We were able to see his room where he stayed and a portion of the gardens he painted too.

It was a very nice experience. The weather was good and St. Remy is just a small town so we strolled pretty leisurely from museum to museum and past groves of olive trees. It seems spring is finally upon southern France because the almond trees in St. Remy were in full bloom and the trees around Avignon have sprouted hopeful green buds as well. I'm so excited!!

Merci!