Rain Rain Go Away!

Flat Audrey and I trying to figure out the French keyboards at the school during our lunch break.

• Our first week here was beautiful sunny days and now we've been stuck in a rainy rut for a long time! This photo is a view from mine and Karen's bedroom window from a few minutes ago. Sometimes the clouds will sputter a little while other times the heavens completely open up! (Such as yesterday while leaving the Grand Palais) Which is unfortunate, because we have barely over a week left here, and there is still so much of the city I want to explore! A few of us were going to go to Montmarte/Sacre-Couer tonight to view the city lights from up on a hill, but the current rain has definitely dampened those plans! Oh I am so cunning :) Maybe tomorrow night?
• I guess other than the rain, there isn't a whole lot else to talk about considering we spent 6 hours today in class, and 8 hours total at the school. During our morning class, we focused on listening to and writing our own dialogues of conversations that could take place in shops. This includes vocab of clothing, sizes, numbers, comparisons, greetings, and so on.. We've been working really hard on pronunciation in our morning class; today we practiced a lot of different kinds of liaisons (basically slurring the ending of one word with the beginning of the next). In our afternoon class, we worked more on writing and giving directions in French and then watched a few short films ("un court-metrage" in French). Titled "Paris: Je t'aime," (Paris, I love you), these shorts films presented all sorts of different situations somewhere in the city which we watched and then discussed and filled out worksheets about them. They were quite humourous!
• Tomorrow brings us a day of morning class, then a free afternoon, then an evening tour of The Louvre! During our free time, I hope to visit two different photo exhibits that I read about in a magazine that are currently on display and also grab some lunch. One of the exhibits is war photography from three different recent wars, which caught my eye after visiting Les Invalides the other day. The other exhibit is a photographer's work of capturing the city of Paris, minus any idea of tourists. This description really appealed to me because not long after we got here I realized that when I am taking photos of any of the monuments or places we go, I've challenged myself at times to get as few tourists in them as possible. I'm doing pretty good so far, but some things such as the mosh pit in The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles are somewhat inevitable. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to these two photo shows!
• And looking forward some more, this weekend brings us a group excursion to Normandy!

Afternoon Delight!

Reading up a little on the Andy Warhol exhibtion in the park with my sidekick Flat Audrey :)

Something makes me feel like we're not in Paris anymore!

Corey, myself, and Jayna with our usual mid-morning Coca-Cola! Only here it is a lot sweeter because it is made with real sugar!

• We had a picnic in the park this afternoon! After our 3 hours of class this morning I mailed my postcards (finally!) and got a crepe with egg..Mmmm! Then the group met at Bois de Boulogane, a huge park on the west of Paris. It almost didn't feel like we were in the city anymore! We had a picnic of baguettes, ham, many kinds of cheeses, apples, sausage, pate, and more! We read, journaled, and chatted while we sat there enjoying the afternoon together. Then a few of us rented bikes (with front baskets!) to go explore this huge park! There were trails all over the place, some paved, some a little more primative. We road around somewhat aimlessly for awhile, which was a super nice change from the directiveness of Metro stations! We saw a lake and some ponds, and even a swan!
• Last night as we were finishing supper my host dad handed me these two little pieces of metal that were intertwined...you know, one of those little puzzle things you have to pull apart? Well, it really made me laugh because this is totally something my own dad back home loves (right Dad?) and just because my host dad always makes me laugh no matter what. I couldn't get the first one apart; in fact I am still working on it. He gave me another one, this one looked a lot more complicated and I had it solved in about 2 minutes. I took it out to show it to him, then he ended up grabbing a whole box of these puzzles from the cupboard! Now I've got something other than my blogging, homework, and photos to distract me! (not to mention this gorgeous city!)
• After our picnic and bike ride through the park, I ventured off to the Grand Palais to see an Andy Warhol exhibition! Which was really exciting, it was awesome to see all those works in person. Sometimes the sheer size (or lack thereof) is the part that surprises me the most! The only disappointment came from no photos being allowed (which is definitely understandable, but still disappointing to me!). If you ever have a chance to see this marvelous collection of pop art, I recommend it! It was totally worth 8 Euros and then a run in the pouring rain to the Metro stop afterwards! I also bought a book about the gallery show the other day (written in French of course) and have been reading it to learn more about Andy Warhol and to work on my comprehension skills!
• 6 hours of class tomorrow...Oh I cannot wait!

Nothing like a Napoleon Monday!

• This rainy Monday morning we had three hours of class once again. We focused a lot on "real" conversation skills and our prof was working on teaching us the more "normal" ways of saying common phrases. The French language very much flows, things all sort of run together, so normal pronunciation is very important for our new skills to actually be usable! We do a lot of partner work and she always moves us around in class so that we are not with another person that knows English well, forcing us to work even harder on our French, but in a good way!
• During our mid-class break, my "Flat Audrey" (a paper version of my roommate who is back in Iowa who has been traveling all over Paris with me) caught the eye of the guy next to me in class who is from Taiwan. He was curious as to what this little paper doll was doing in my folder so I explained it to him! This turned into an interesting conversation because he was under the impression that all American students have their own rooms and was surprised to find out that back at home I actually live with 3 other students! He was also very interested in my major (Communication Design) because he works in the marketing department of Proctor and Gamble back in Taiwan. I was impressed by his great English skills!
• Speaking of speaking, conversations here are always entertaining. They often tend to be a mix of French, English, sometimes Spanish with lots of hand signals thrown in! Verbal communication is just so much more dynamic when there are all these different cultures and languages to confuse things! But its fun, I'm learning so much more about English too!
• Then this afternoon, our group visited Les Invalides, which was built by Napoleon as a military hospital, which it is still partially used as today (since that was the purpose). There were so many war artifacts! But reading the poorly translated English was a lot of fun. The cathedral was very impressive, you can tell that Napoleon had no problems with his ego.
• I found out today that the Grand Palais is currently showing Andy Warhol! I bought a book about his work today and plan on going soon to see this display! (plus it gives me more motivation to keep on learning French, seeing as it is written in French!) I'm very excited! Please feel free to leave comments on here so that I can hear what you all think about my adventures thus far!

Le Week-end

• We didn't have any structured activities planned for this weekend which was nice, at least for me to relax a little and breath! Karen and I were even doing laundry today and I cleaned up our room a little! Some people visited the Catacombs this morning but I decided to sleep in instead!
• I spent most of today sitting by the Seine River, right next to the Louvre, people watching and playing cards with Jayna. Prior to that we wandered through Notre Dame, which is incredible! This cathedral is the epitome of Gothic architecture! I had the chance to see it a few years ago when I was in Paris on a band/choir trip, but it was still majestic a second time! Its hard to take something that large and incredible all in at once but we managed. And the best part about this visit was that it was free! Free is always good! (especially when 1 Euro equals about $1.30 American).
• I am very much addicted to the Coca Cola here! It always comes in a thick glass bottle and it is so much sweeter than the Coke we have in the US. I want to bring a bunch back with me! Though I've noticed that while I've been here I don't drink nearly as much milk, water, or sports drinks as I do back home. I had milk tonight with my bowl of cereal; its a tradition for my host family to eat breakfast foods for supper on Sunday nights! Its actually been a pretty quiet weekend around here though because my host mom and host brother have been gone!
• Well, tomorrow is another day of class and a visit to Les Invalides!
• (Oh, and all the photos I put up here are mine by the way, they aren't just taken from Google or something like that!)