01 July 2008

day 2

Mood: Refreshed
First things first: Happy France-Assumes-EU-Rotating-Presidency Day. I missed the celebratory light show on the Eiffel Tower but I don't think I missed much. (I watched it on YouTube because I thought I had missed something spectacular.)

But anyway, all those naps I had yesterday didn't help me get over my jet lag. I woke up this morning at 5:30 A.M. and tossed and turned in bed trying to get back to sleep but eventually climbed out of bed at 6:00 A.M. I bummed around and dabbled in some reading until about 7:45 A.M. when I met up with some friends for some petit déjeuner. I grabbed un croissant, yaourt de fraise, un petit bouteille d'eau, et deux poires. Yum. After that we had orientation which consisted of some cultural tips from Christine and a "how to use the metro" lesson. We were issued our Residency Cards and proceeded to sit around until class time.

And then we had class. We covered St. Denis, St. Geneviève, and Clovis to kick off our ERC 103 course. The sites we visited this afternoon were the Panthéon (I hope whoever is reading this appreciates all the accents I'm taking care to insert via copy paste! hehe.) and the church Église Saint-Étienne du MontParis. The Panthéon had some great murals but mostly it was just an impressive building on its own with high ceilings and leaping domes. I was intrigued to see a Focault Pendulum, primarily because I had seen one a week ago at the San Diego Museum of Natural History and was eager to show off my knowledge. (Something I rarely get to do around the braniacs and Wiki-philes that I hang out with.) In any case, I'm not sure what the significance of the pendulum was, but I thought it was interesting.

Then, of course, there were the crypts.
I got a picture of Pierre & Marie Curie's tombs. I felt a little bit intrusive as I walked around the tombs, I have to admit, especially the empty ones... A tad eerie, despite the neat little museum piece descriptions for each significant French man (or woman, or sometimes not even technically French). We visited what was Clovis' tribute to St. Geneviève, an abbey dedicated to her.



It's now a church known as Église Saint-Étienne du Mont and sports the stone that was on her coffin and a few relevant relics. The neatest architectural aspect of the church was probably the spiral staircases, mostly because spiral staircases are nifty. I have to admit, I was starting to feel tired again after this...


After the planned event we had 90 minutes of free time. I was hanging out with Andy, Aria, Vicky, and Zak. We sort of wandered around at first, mostly in search of water and a place to rest from the hot hot heat. We walked through the Luxembourg garden and rested a bit on a park bench. (I fell asleep for a bit.)


Aria finally caved to his thirst and got a bottle of water. And then Zak caved to his hunger and we piled into the Metro to go one stop down on the RER-B to St Michel-Notre Dame to the eatery part of the Latin Quarter for some Shwarma. Yummmm... I didn't have any (I had some for Lunch.) Shwarma in a pita with some steamy hot french fries wrapped inside--couldn't ask for anything better! Except maybe a Cinnamon crepe which I indulged myself with. Then we stopped by a water fountain, filled up our water bottles, and returned back to the meeting point. We were three minutes late because, coming out of the metro, we made a right turn too early, then we tried to weave our wayarkthrough via a small alley and then ... well I was pretty perplexed but we got out eventually. Our big group then trekked back (yes back to the metro station our small group had just exited...hehe) and headed home.

After that I explored a park and the school campus with Zak. The Grand Lawn at Cité is quite grand indeed! There were so many people just sitting on the lawn having picnics, playing guitar, juggling, playing football (soccer to the Americans), and having a nice time. There's something wonderfully free about being able to wander in a city. Having a month long Metro pass is liberating. I'm a little tired for today but maybe tomorrow or some other free evening, I'm just going to ride the Tram. I wish I was staying here for a whole year so I could become completely immersed in the unique culture that is Paris. Even though I only have five weeks here (relative to spending a year abroad) I think I'm going to make the best of all the free time. I'm going to keep that little phrase book in my pocket and try to expand my meager, meager vocabulary.

On a separate, unrelated note: I'm excited to go to Montmarte!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The whole time I was reading all I could think was, "Wow, Katharine did an amazing job with the accents." Very nice.
Not that I know what letters should be accented or anything, but it looked very correct to my uneducated eye.

You make me want to go back to Paris...