Week 1: Père Lachaise and more

Wow, it feels like I've been here a lot longer than a week! I'm starting to get settled in and start a routine. Trying, anyway. I really enjoyed all my classes this week and am excited for more. They are:

French 345, "Paris walks," done on our own
French 454R, Molière, taught by Jeannie Welch, MTTh 11:15-12:15
Fine Arts 270R, European fine arts, taught by Véronique Obrecht, W 9:15-12:15
Rel C 350R, History of the Church in France and French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland, taught by Christian Euvrard, M 1-3
Honors 303R, "The Book of Mormon as an ancient book," taught by John Welch, TTh, 12:30-1:30

So as you can tell, we have lots of non-class time and no classes on Friday. We did lots of exploring this week and I'm now very familiar with the train and metro lines I'll be using regularly. A little summary of every day:

Monday: It was Monday afternoon in our religion class that we were all shocked and saddened by the news of President Hinckley's passing. Frère Euvrard acted like we already knew, but without cell phones or Internet access, of course no one did. After class we had a little time before we had to meet back at the hotel to take the bus out to meet our families, so we explored a neighborhood calles Les Halles that I really like and saw a cool gothic church called Saint-Eustache with a giant head statue in front. Emma took some fun pictures with her awesome camera...but I don't have them. Yet.

Tuesday: Went back to Les Halles for some shopping in the huge mall there, including H&M! Yay! The twice-a-year-country-wide sales are happening now. (It's so foreign to me that stores can't have sales whenever they want.) Had fun trying stuff on.

Wednesday: For the museum class, we went to the Cluny Museum (officially the Musée National du Moyen Âge). It was way cool! The building is the former residence of the abbots of Cluny, begun in 1334 and made into a museum in 1843. Among its famous former occupants is Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, who lived there after the death of her husband, King Louis XII. It has lots of medieval art and artifacts, including a famous tapestry called The Lady and the Unicorn, and is partially built on the 3rd-century remains of the Gallo-Roman baths, which we saw. On the way our teacher Véronique and Bro. Welch, who was with us, told us some cool stuff about Notre Dame (some of which I'd already heard--can't wait to go inside). I learned that the statues of Old Testaments kings on the outside of the church aren't original--they were knocked down during the revolution. In 1977, someone digging a new safe for a bank found the heads, but it was April Fool's Day, so no one would believe it until the next day! Crazy, huh? Anyway, now the original (very damaged) heads are in the Cluny. After class we went to the Louvre to get...get this...our free passes! I can go to the Louvre anytime, as often as I want, for free. Which is good because there's a lot to see. Then Jacqueline, Emma, Emma's roommate Rochelle, and I did a little walking on the Champs-Elysées and spotted the Arc de Triomphe. Can't wait to go back there either.

Thursday: We went on our first "walk" for the walks class. (We have a book of walks written by BYU professors that we have to complete over the course of the semester and write about. Some of them just cover one thing, like the one we went on, and some are more like guides for exploring a certain neighborhood.) We chose this time to go to Père Lachaise, the biggest cemetery in Paris and one of the most-visited in the world, with 70,000 tombs in 188 acres! It was incredible. We didn't finish (because we kept getting stopped by a crazy man obsessed with Jim Morrison's grave...that's another story), but we spent the good part of 2 hours exploring. We saw the tombs of George-Pierre Seurat, a post-impressionist artist (think Sunday in the Park with George); Enrico Cerniuschi, who donated his collection of Far-Eastern art to a museum in Paris; Jean-Charles Aphand, who is responsible for the creation of many parks in Paris; an early 20th-century novelist who went by her first name, Colette; Louis Visconti, arcitect of the expanded Louvre and Napoleon's tomb; the great opera composer Rossini, whose body was given back to Italy in 1887; writer Alfred de Musset; Georges-Eugène Haussmann, 19th-century Paris remodeler; François Arago, who helped abolish slavery in the French colonies; Chopin; and of course, Jim Morrison. The list goes on, but those are the ones we got to this time. A few pictures to give you an idea:
Typical family tombs. Some of them were huge, the size of a small cottage or house. A few had busts or statues, or stained-glass windows on the inside.
It's so big that it's divided into sections and the cobblestone streets, which are wide enough for cars, all have names.
One of the few very modern graves.

I'd like to go back when it's warmer. It was b's cold and windy. When we finished that, we went back to "school" for Institute, which was good but really long. Our religion teacher, Frère Euvrard, is also the Institute director and a counselor in the stake presidency (I think). I like him a lot.






Friday: It was Jacqueline's birthday! I was worried that she wouldn't enjoy it--because who wants to spend their birthday away from their family?--but it turned out great. We went to Versailles with Emma, Rochelle, and a few others (there were ten of us) and...get this--got in FREE! I love those art student cards. We're definitely going back when the weather's better, like not rainy and cold. I didn't take any pictures because my camera batteries were dead (hence the not many pictures from the cemetery), and part of the chateau was closed, but it was way cool, especially because I had done research and a presentation on Versailles for the prep class and knew a lot about it. They had a special exhibit of silver furniture, which of course is rare because most of it got melted down. It is over-the-top-ridonculous-incredible. After that we went to the Welch's (Welches'?) apartment and hung out, trying to decide on our next step for the birthday festivities, which ended up being exploring the Latin Quarter, window shopping because the shops were closed, and eating pastries and gyros. (They were similar to the döners we had, Doris. Same meat-on-a-spit concept, and they're just called Greek sandwiches here.)

So all-in-all, a good week! Jacqueline met up with the others today for some more shopping but I stayed home, caught up on my journaling/blogging/Skyping, and did a little homework. I get to attend my real ward tomorrow. Last Sunday we all went to a Paris branch that meets in our school building (I don't remember if I mentioned that or not), but those of us in the suburbs will be going to the Versailles ward. Jacqueline, Emma, Rochelle and I live in Le Vésinet, which is the furthest out of all our houses. Next week it's off to Belgium for Mardi Gras!