Day 18 and 19: Take a Bow

Day 18 is the very exciting Bastille day.  For most of the group, this also marks the last day we will be spending in Paris before they go home early the next morning.  I was planning on spending an extra day in Paris, so I was putting off packing while everyone else was running around trying to get their bag under 50 pounds.  Me and Vanessa instead just went walking around Paris, not really having any place in mind to go, just enjoying Paris as our time there started winding down.

We had our last official group activity at a restaurant for dinner.  First off, this was probably the best food I had while I was in Paris, and it was probably the only time I saw vegetables served with my meal.  I got the Scallops with vegetables and a brownie with ice cream for dessert, all of which probably could not have been better.  Before dessert, Herman asked us to go around and name our POW and WOW moments.  At first I was like, "ah, this will be easy," but I was trying to think of what I was going to say, I realized that I couldn't think of many specific moments that really stood out.  It seemed that this trip just had to many WOWs and not many POWs.  

The day ended with a truly amazing firework show.  I have seen some really fantastic firework shows, but this was definitely the best I had ever seen.  They were literally shooting fireworks off the Eiffel Tower.  Simply beautiful.  

When I woke up the next day, me and Caroline were the only ones left.  After three weeks of being in Paris, I felt as if I had been there too long, and also like I had not been there nearly long enough.  I was ready to come home, but I knew that as soon as I got off the plane I would want to climb right back on.  Even though I spent the day with one of friends from back home, it was really different not spending a day in France with the people I had become so close to.  I honestly don't know if I will miss the city or the people the most.  And now as I sit here, writing my last blog post, the end of our trip and the end of our class come closer to an end.  Although I feel like this isn't really the end, more of like taking a break.  I promise, I will go back, I will keep in touch, and I will travel more.  

Day 17: Invading Paris

This day was street art day.  Honestly, I may have loved some of the street art better than most of the art in museums.  There were just so many types, and so many of them make such a statement.  You may see a poster giving an opinion of a political figure on one wall, an artist's tag right off to the side, and then simply a work of art completely from spray paint around the corner all on the same building.  It almost felt like a scavenger hunt, walking around Paris looking for all the different examples of street art.  It's like all of Paris was the museum, and you were scrambling to try to see everything it had to offer.  Needless to say, I could never see it all, but I think I got a good sense of it all.

After seeing all the different examples of street art in Paris, the class went to a skate park to make our own piece of street art.  At first, I was kinda dreading it, just cause I thought we were each going to have to do our own piece of art, and I am no artist.  It was a very pleasant surprise that we would all be working on one big piece as a group.  The only piece of art we had to do was draw an initial design and pick one to put on the wall.  Even though I thought my drawing looked fantastic, we choose a design I really did like.  Lessons I learned from spray painting: it's much harder than it looked.  The two hardest things for me to do was to spray the paint without it dripping, and spray a sharp, clean line.  Somehow the guy teaching us (who was really good) seemed to make it look easy.  It's kind of amazing how talented some of the street artists.  A lot of people may not consider their work true art because its on the street and not in a museum, but being in the skate park and seeing al the talent around me, I don't see how anyone could not consider it art.

Day 16: You Haven't Seen This

This day mark the almost end of my trip in Paris.  Our trip in Paris.  By now, I have spent so much time with the other ten students, we are practically best friends.   Me and my new best friends started off the day by going to the Picasso Museum.  Got to say, I am not the biggest fan of Picasso.  I know that he is one of the most well-known and respected artists in history, but his art just leaves me thinking, "Who has a face like that?"  There were a couple of pieces I really did like, but overall i would give it a 5/10 rating.  The architecture of the building, which was actually really neat, may have been my favorite thing.

This day ended by going to the the play, The Lesson.  On the syllabus, the title of the day is "Avant Garde" Paris.  This play definitely qualifies.  It was just weird.  The story line seems to make no sense at all, and then at the very end the girl dies for just being annoying.  You can't go around killing annoying people!   For me, this line is balancing between completely insane, and a work of genius, and I haven't decided one yet.

Day 15: Where's Hemingway?

On this day, I decided to do the Hemingway Hunt.  This involved going around Paris, and seeing some of the sights described in his novel, A Moveable Feast.  Reading the book before I came, a lot of the places were just a street name and a couple of numbers.  It took a complete new meaning once I was in Paris, and saw the things being described.  Below is the trip I took:

Other Places During My Adventure:

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Day 14: Additional Places #2

Even though today was not officially a work day, we had so much free time it might as well have been.  We've progressively been getting more and more solo time as we get later and later into the trip, which is definitely a plus.  I don't know what I would have been done if I had time to roam Paris by myself at the beginning of the trip.  Nancy tells this story of the first time she went to the Louvre without Herman, and she says that she was curled up in a ball in one of the many, many corners of the museum.  I assume it would look kinda like that.  Now I think that I confidently say I can navigate nearly anywhere in Paris, and get lost a minimal amount of times.  

This was the second day where I decided to go to a place that was not on syllabus.  Today I went to the Natural History Museum of France and saw the evolution exhibit.  A big plus, it was free for anyone under the age of 26.  The only downside about the museum was that all the exhibit descriptions were in French, so there were somethings where I had no idea what I was looking at.  The stuff I could understand, I really enjoyed.  There were exhibits over the origin of the species, prehistoric birds, and creatures of the sea.  I would definitely say that it was worth the money.

We ended the day by going to the Comédie Française where we saw Un Fil à la Patte.  If I had not read the play before hand, I think I still would have found it funny.  Knowing what was happening was just a bonus.  For me, a lot of the comedy didn't come from what the characters said.  It was the the reaction, the way they said it, or the overall character profile of a specific person.  Bouzin may have possibly been my favorite person I have watched in any production.  He was just a very quirky character, and he was played by an amazing actor who was able to portray his eccentric character with movements alone.  Put simply, the actor was a genius.

Day 13: On my Own

While it seems as though I've had multiple favorite days on this trip, Paris solo day to date is my actual favorite.  I was sent to the Musée Cognacq-Jay in the third Arrondissement.  We were given about 5 hours to find our destination, experience it, and make it back to the island we were meeting on in the Seine.  Now walking is usually not on my list of top things to do (we all know how much I love the metro) but there was something so relaxing about the journey there.  I was walking the street of Paris as if I didn't have another care in the World.  I took my time, had lunch, stopped at a few stores when I wanted, and actually ran into a friend from school as she was walking to the Louvre.  That still amazes me: randomly running into someone you know walking the streets in a foreign country, especially since she was suppose to be studying abroad in Germany.

When I got there, I had this overwhelming since of pride that I was able to navigate myself all the way to the museum (and it was a far walk).  Above ground, I usually tend to let whoever I am with take the lead navigating, so this was actually a big accomplishment for me.  Going through the museum, it definitely stood out from other the big museums, and not really in a good or bad way.  It was just different.  Walking through, I felt like I was going through someone's house, and it was very small.  From what I gathered, Ernest Cagnacq and his wife owned the site where the museum sits, and when he died he donated his private collection to make the museum.  A lot of the things in his collection really stood out, in the sense that it wouldn't be things you'd normally find in an art museum.  There were boxes, fans, a pair of scissors.  All of which had more jewels decorating them than a jewelry store, but it was still unexpected.  In one of the floors upstairs, there was a lot of sculptures and figurines inspired by Greek and Roman mythology.  These really caught my attention, because I remembered a lot of the stories behind the characters depicted.  Overall, I am really happy I got to see this museum, mainly because it gave me a sense of how the upper class lived in the early 20th century of Paris.  I also really appreciated that it was way different than the other museums like the Louvre.  While I loved the big museums, and probably liked them better than the Cognaq-Jay museum, I don't think I could have handled another big art museum without going into sensory overload.  This was a nice change of scenery, that was still very interesting to see.  

Day 11 and 12: Ballet at the Palace

Day 11 was the first time we left the city since we arrived in Paris.  While I absolutely love it here, the change of scenery was definitely nice.  Unfortunately this change of scenery came with a heat wave.  While I know its probably way hotter back in the US, days like this make me miss air conditioning and cold drinks.  Despite the heat, The castle of Versailles was great.  Literally every inch of it was ornamented; not too bad for a hunting lodge.  If I had to, I could live there.  My favorite thing was probably the row boats.  Going out in the water was just a really relaxing way to see the grounds and people-watch.  It also helped that I was not the one rowing the boat (Caroline is practically a professional).  The one weird thing that really stood out to me was Marie-Antoinette's Hamlet.  I don't really understand why she would want to create a "play" village where she and her friends could go when they were bored.  It seems to me almost like she was mocking the lifestyle of the everyday person.  I can see why she wasn't very liked.  I wouldn't have liked her.

Day 12 was a much needed break.  Instead of going out, I decided to do some much needed laundry (my first time using the laundry mat was a success), go to the Franprix, and do homework for most of the day.  In the evening, we went as a class to the Paris Opera to see a contemporary Ballet.  Like every other building in France, the Opera building was beautiful.  The ballet was split into three parts.  It was really different in that I had to watch all three parts in a different way.  The first part was just two dancers, but a series of words came down in different patterns so that the interpretation was different with every new order.  It just really had me thinking about what that dance was about, and what the message was suppose to be.  Honestly I still don't think I completely know what was trying to be said, but the fact that I keep thinking about it makes me like it much more than I initially did.  My favorite was probably the last part of the ballet.  To me, it seemed to be the most modern.  The music to this part was the only one that had words, and it was in English so I could actually understand it!  I think it was also the only section whose music was not set in a minor key, so it didn't seem as weird or sad.  While I did not do a lot of thinking or interpretation for that part, it was definitely my favorite to watch in the moment.