L'Opéra Garnier

So it's starting to dawn on me that I'm not gonna be in Paris for much longer. I am sort of excited to get back, but I'm also gonna be pretty sad to leave. I have the rest of this week and then two weeks of vacation. The first week of vacation I'll be in Greece, and the second I'll be going to Biarritz in southwestern France for a few days and spending the rest of the week in Paris. Then I'll have two weeks of classes, then one week of finals, then a plane back to the States on May 26th. So let's see: what happened? I got sick again, but just a cold which has given my voice a gravelly quality. Not sure if it makes the French sound better or not. Learned a lot about protein structures Thursday and Friday...I had dinner with Glennis Friday night and we finished a whole bottle of wine. Yes it was pink wine, and yes she drank more than I did. Saturday I met up with my cousin, Nate, who's here doing research for a few months. We checked out Notre Dame and the Musée Quai Branly. Sunday we got a tour of the Opéra Garnier, which was cool because it was the first tour I've gone on here where I haven't zoned out for the majority of it. That's where I took my two pictures:


Here's a shot of the seats:


And here's the painting on the ceiling, done by Chagal for free. Unfortunately I couldn't get the whole thing in one photo, but it is pretty.So the Opéra trip was pretty cool and we're going to see a piece there in a few weeks. After that Glennis and I got together with some French guys for go-karting, which was 16 euros for 10 minutes! That's more than 24 dollars! Crazy! I also got my grade on the Mouse Development course: 55/100! I know that sounds terrible, but it was actually right around the class average. So I passed my first science class in French! I also have a phone interview for the Beckman scholarship, a scholarship for undergraduate researchers, on Friday, and I'm starting to prepare for that. In fact, in order to get ready I should probably go write a paper that's due Thursday. The grading is very different here: this particular professor doesn't seem to care if you write well, all she cares about it is that you argue and discuss exactly what she wants you to argue and discuss. She gave me a 5/10 on my last composition because I didn't answer the prompt the way she wanted me to. Sorry, small rant. Oh, lastly my Mudd email account seems not to be working anymore: I'm trying to clear it out, but I'm not sure that that's going to work. My main email address will now be facehugger200@gmail.com. Well, tomorrow includes a visit of the sewers of Paris, so hopefully I'll be able to post on that before going to Greece.

Le Weekend (continué)

So I actually took a ton more photos this weekend, but I tried to pick the best ones for posting. Glennis is posting thousands of them to Facebook, too. I did want to share a video I took of this guy I've seen perform in the Latin Quarter a few times. He and this other guy have a great dance routine where the other guy makes you laugh and this guy just does a ton of insanely cool stuff. I think I might ask him to do a backflip with me in a photo before I leave. Anyways, here's the video. My goal is to be able to do one of these things by the end of the summer.



I also feel I should share one of my most horrible nightmares ever. It was last night, and the dream starts with me looking in a mirror. I'm just patting down my hair when I notice a small patch of white. So I push the hair aside and notice that I have a bald spot. I keep moving my hair around and discover two more that I had combed-over. It was awful. No offense to my dad or anyone else who is successfully bald, but I think I'm gonna look into Rogaine.

Le Weekend

So this weekend Kerri visited us in Paris and was nice enough to bring Barcelona sunshine with her. Friday was definitely the nicest day we've had here thus far. We went out to dinner and to a club with some French guys we had met at Reid Hall and some of their friends. It was a little awkward at times since their English isn't great, our French isn't great and Kerri's French is pretty much nonexistent. It was still fun though, and that's what counts. The next day, after my encounter with the strange Italian man, I met Kerri and Glennis at the Musée d'Orsay, where I particularly appreciated a Renoir of a cat.We also checked out the big stuff at the Louvre: Venus de Milo, Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa, as well as l'Arc de Triomphe and the Latin Quarter. Eventually we wound up at the Eiffel Tower at 1 AM to watch it light up, which it does every night at I think 9 PM, 10, 11, 12 AM and 1. The next day we went on a boat tour of the Seine and then took Kerri to the airport. Unfortunately on our way back from the airport, some metro police checked mine and Glennis' cards and saw that we were out of zone. They charged us 25 euros! That's more than half of what it costs if you buy the tickets in advance. Anyways, we were pissed. Overall, it was really cool to do some touristy things this weekend; I think after being here for a while you can start to forget just how awesome a city it is. Thanks Kerri. Ok: other photos. This is a very original jumping photo of me and Kerri at the Eiffel Tower at 1 AM.
And this is my attempt at an L-kick in front of l'Arc de Triomphe.
Lastly, we decided to be really touristy and imitate statues at Musée d'Orsay. I'm imitating Cupid being stung by a wasp on his right foot.

Une histoire

Ok, so I did a bunch this weekend, but I'm gonna wait to post about most of it because it's late here. However, there is one story that I want to post now before I forget vital details. So I was leaving my apartment around noon yesterday when this guy called to me from the street. He was in his car in the middle of the road and I just figured he needed help with directions. Feeling more confident about my direction-giving capabilities than I should have, I asked him what was up. He was Italian, but we started out speaking in French, then in English. He pulled over to get off of the road and the sketchiness began. So first he shows me this map of Paris and I figure I was right and he just needs directions. Then he starts telling me about his career. It turns out he's a fashion designer who did a show at the Louvre the night before. He shows me this little album of photos and shows me a few pictures of a jacket. I think he claimed it was Gucci or some other famous Italian brand. Then he shows me the contents of a bag in the passenger seat and it's the same suit. He says it's not even on the market yet and it's for next season but he wants to give it to me. He adds that I appeared to be the right size from the sidewalk. It was a really nice suit, so I was a little intrigued. I asked him why he wanted to give it to me, and he just said he wanted to give it to a tourist in Paris before leaving. At this point I'm kind of torn; it sounded like I didn't even have to do anything for it. Then he goes on about the suit and says that it's worth 2000 euros. I'm impressed. Eventually he gets to his point: he tells me he has to be in Nice, pretty far from Paris, in 9 hours for another expo and then he shows me he's almost out of gas. He explains that he went to a casino on the Champs Elysées the night before and lost 5000 euros. He can't use his credit card because he just went over his limit. That's when I decided to leave. I said I didn't really know where any gas stations were and that I didn't have a French credit card, which I said you needed in order to by gas in Paris. I wished him good luck and left. I felt a little bad for several reasons: he may have been serious, Nice is a good drive from Paris, and he probably spent about 10 minutes on his unsuccessful pitch. Overall I have no idea if he was serious or not: he was in a nice car, he had a nice suit, his story was pretty elaborate, he had a real-looking business card. He also had a very strong Italian accent, which I found fairly amusing when he was speaking in French. Anyways, my sketchiest story in Paris to date, unless you count Versailles a few years ago. I'll post on other stuff soon!

St Malo et le Mt St Michel

So I'm back from my trip to St. Malo. It was really great and I took a good deal of photos. Unfortunately not as many as last time. It's starting to look like Glennis is gonna beat me in the study abroad photo contest next fall. We spent most of the first day in St. Malo, which was a city for the Corsaires, basically pirates hired by the French government a long time ago. Unfortunately I didn't really take any good pictures there. Instead, I have a picture of a German bunker from World War 2 on a beach not far away from St. Malo.
I'm gonna try and get to the D-day beaches someday before I leave, but this one was not involved as far as I know. In a town nearby, I had to take a picture of a restaurant named after a book every French student of a few years has to have read.


Sunday we spent the day at Mt St Michel. It's a gorgeous location, but in all honesty, the buildings aren't particularly spectacular. We saw the church and a number of other buildings. Don't get me wrong, it was really awesome. It's just not too many things struck me as really photo-worthy. I really liked this relief on one of the walls, though, even if I didn't know what it represented.
After a tour of the buildings and lunch, we got a tour along the bay. It was either with boots or barefoot if you didn't have boots. I didn't have boots. It was cold. At the same time, it was awesome to feel the mud between my toes. Right at the end of the tour it started raining and hailing, so we all headed back, most of us with the right side of our pant legs completely soaked. Anyways, here's a picture of the abbey from the bay.
Yesterday we did a trip to the St Chapelle for my history of parisian art class. It's an incredible church and we had to wait about 45 minutes to get in. Here's a picture.
After that we went back to the classroom and took a quiz which I'm pretty sure I failed. I also was in the middle of swearing loudly when the professor walked out of the building to find us outside on the sidewalk. Not good. Tomorrow I have to write the intro, conclusion and an outline of a paper in my Arabic Literature class. The prof's going to give us a short text from each of the two books we've been reading and we have to figure out a thesis and set up the paper. Crap.