Day 3: Chantilly

After another yummy Hotel Ibis breakfast, on Wednesday we headed home. Our only stop was the Château de Chantilly in Chantilly, France. It's comprised of two adjacent buildings. The Grand Château was destroyed in the Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Petit Château was built around 1560. It was very charming--we liked it even more than Versailles because it wasn't nearly as touristy. There was hardly anyone there that day besides our group.
Despite the looming clouds, it was actually a beautiful day.

The separate stables, home to hundreds of horses and even a horse museum!
This is a mosaic from Pompeii, 1st century AD. It's very rare because most of them aren't in color. Cool, huh? Some of this stuff they lend out to museums, but the Duke that lived here brought all kinds of stuff here and requested that none of it leave after he died.
The chandeliers were gorgeous.
The "singerie," or monkey room, one of only five such rooms left in the world. Apparently they were all the rage back in the day when people loved anything exotic. Like the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry that we saw at the Cluny Museum, it portrays the five senses. Our tour guide was super nice...he pretty much risked his job by letting us chill in this room. They usually don't let people stop here. And he didn't speak English, so I felt important translating for people who couldn't understand.
More of the monkey room.
A beautiful bedroom with beautiful chairs.

This harp is "very precious," our tour guide told us. You can say that again! Not only is it b's old, it's covered in real gold leaf!
A big hall with paintings of military victories, similar to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, but with paintings instead of mirrors...and smaller.
We spent quite a while walking around the gardens and grounds. They're beautiful, and huge!
The Island of Love...there was also a cute gazebo with a statue in the middle but it was covered.

With Sarah and Rochelle, Emma's roommate. I felt very tall in this picture. :)
Looking out over the gardens.
Yay for horse statues!

Yay for dog statues! There were lots of those, and paintings of hunting dogs attacking, too. And of guys with their dogs. I thought of you, Dad. But it is a hunting lodge, after all. There's a room called the stag room that puts Gaston to shame. They use antlers in all of their decorating!
I know this is like the 50th picture of the outside, but I saw this one that someone else took on Facebook and had to include it. I also distinctly remember taking pictures of the library but they disappeared. It was really cool...two levels with chairs up top, coats of arms all around the ceiling...more Beauty and the Beast flashbacks. :) I spent a while in there drooling over the 13,000 books and 700 manuscripts, including a copy of the Duke of Berry's Book of Hours, and listening to Dr. Welch expound on the teachings of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, whose works were featured prominently. Very cool castle! It was my favorite stop on our trip.
I added some pictures to the last two posts if you're interested. Also happy birthday to Robby and welcome home, Doris!

Day 2: Mardi Gras, Belgium-style

On Monday night we enjoyed a hotel room with real beds, a real bathroom and a blow dryer, unlike our first hotel in Paris. We also enjoyed a fabulous all-you-can-eat breakfast, complete with pain au chocolat (bread with chocolate chunks in it--I'd like to shake the hand of the fellow who came up with that novelty), croissants, fruit, cocoa, cereal...thank you, Ibis Hotel! Oh, how I took advantage of that. Then we drove to Ghent to pay a visit to Saint Bavo Cathedral. (Anyone ever heard of Saint Bavo? I sure hadn't.) The church was based on an old wooden chapel dating back to the 10th century and finally completed in 1569. But what we really went to see is the famous Ghent altarpiece kept there. It's a polyptych painting (like a triptych but with more panels) by Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert. I learned all about van Eyck last semester in Music Civ 201 (and about Gothic cathedrals, of course) so it was very cool seeing this work with my prior knowledge. The colors are beautiful and the detail absolutely amazing. The original work is in its own room behind glass, but there's also a reproduction that you can get closer to.
Then it was off to a town called Binche for the Mardi Gras parade because apparently it's a big deal there. These guys called gilles dress up in these elaborate costumes that take months to make just for today's parade.
Unfortunately, it was cold and off-and-on raining. Not the most flattering picture of me, but you get the idea. We were huddled under the umbrellas for quite a while because we got there 4 hours before the parade started. (I would've liked to have spent more time at breakfast...) So needless to say (as Dr. Brookmole would say), we had plenty of time to walk up and down the main street--several times--and observe the pre-parade festivities...basically, drinking.
This little girl was unfazed by the weather. She happily threw confetti on the ground for hours.
The parade is finally underway! There are separate groups of gilles who each have their own drummer, without whom they can't go anywhere, and little bands who compete during the parade to see who can be the loudest and most obnoxious. (There was a guy playing an E-flat clarinet...shudder shudder.) The gilles also carry little baskets of oranges, which the little ones hand out and the teenagers chuck as hard as they can. We had several casualties in our group, including a busted lip! Oh, and those huge feathered hats they wear? Sis. Welch told us they cost 500 euros to rent. $750. To rent. For one day. These people are crazy.
Different costumes...I don't really know the story there. Looked like a drum major gone wrong.
And finally, the little kids dressed up in "harlequin" costumes. There also seemed to be a general Halloween mentality...many of the spectator children were wearing costumes. There were also lots of temporary party-supplyish stores and of course, food stands selling everything from bratwurst to pizza and hamburgers to crepes and waffles. It was fun (except for the cold and wet part) but I was a little underwhelmed. There were lots more ordinary people in the parade than costumed people, and they just kept going around and around the block! And we were all barricaded in. When we decided we couldn't stand it anymore, we hopped over the barricade during a lull and ran for it. The police standing guard didn't seem to mind. So really, the only thing I learned is that the Belgians don't understand the concept of a parade. And I think I smoked the equivalent of ten cigarettes. Prepare for my premature departure by lung cancer. On a happier note, I was quoted in the Daily Universe. My roommates were thrilled. :)

Day 1: More cathedral, more chocolate

This week we took a 3-day trip to Belgium! First stop, Amiens (France), to visit the incredible Notre Dame d'Amiens cathedral, home of the head of John the Baptist, complete with silver platter.


It's even taller than Notre Dame de Paris.
Six of the apostles. I can now tell most of them apart in paintings, sculpture, stained glass, etc.


Not a very good picture, but this was my favorite stained glass. Most of the glass actually wasn't colored.
Looking down the nave.
A much better picture of the stained glass, taken by someone else. Thank you!
When the sun came out of the clouds, we saw this reflection on the pillars behind the windows.
Us inside the church...
No, I didn't take these either. Cool, huh?
Diane under another amazingly high organ.
The whole group.
Next stop, Bruges, aka Disneyland Belgium. It's so cute! This is the town hall (so I hear) in the main square. Could double as Cinderella's castle, right?

A big tower in the marketplace.
I thought it was funny that this (in Dutch)
and this (in French) were right next to each other. I didn't know until I looked at Wikipedia that Bruges is the capital of West Flanders. There you go.

We went to a chocolate museum that was not nearly as cool as the Lindt place in Cologne, but still fun (not to mention the people working there didn't seem too thrilled about 25 people coming in an hour before closing time). Reason #1 right here. Is that a gross visual or what?
Reason #2: we were too late to see a demo from this guy, and there was no mini-factory a la Willy Wonka.
But speaking of Johnny Depp, there were lots of amazing chocolate sculptures and figures, including Jack Sparrow and Davey Jones...
And several of these ladies.
And this huge egg made of...you guessed it, solid chocolate...with a picture of their "chocolate fairy." Forget a fairy godmother, I could use a chocolate fairy.
Apparently this was the Spaniards' secret recipe back in the day. Secret's out.
We finished the day with real Belgian waffles and fries (yes, they were created in Belgium). Mmm! Actually, I have to say I prefer American waffles, although it was delicious. (Shout-out to Doris!) We felt guilty speaking English all the time, but surprisingly, we saw almost no French and heard none at all. Also saw lots of adorable shops while trying to find our way to the hotel...chocolate and lace seemed to dominate. Unfortunately, they were closed, but the lace and the chocolate were both beautiful!

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!

An American in Paris

Yes, I'm in Paris! It took a couple days to sink in (it still hasn't entirely). Ever since I left home, I've been blogging things in my head, so I'm really excited to have Internet access again. Wendy, I'm going to copy your good thing/bad thing post to tell you about my travels and my first day here.

Good thing: Because of my layover in London, I am now the proud owner of a passport with two stamps in it.

Bad thing: I had to get from Gatwick to Heathrow (an hour-long bus ride).

Good thing: My few days in Germany were a great transition between home and school. I think coming to Europe helped with the culture shock--it hasn't been too bad. So far. It was also the perfect combination of planned things and non-planned things. Thanks again, Doris! It was great (and when I got here I was the only one in the group not suffering from excessive jetlag loopiness)!

Bad thing: The bus that I was told to take from the airport to the hotel apparently doesn't exist...so I had to take a bus, then lug my luggage into the metro, then change lines, and walk for at least another half hour before I found it, only to discover when I got there that I could've taken a more direct metro route and not had to change lines. The nice lady at the airport information desk lied.

Good thing: When I needed help, I spoke French to the people and they actually understood and spoke back! I thought it was way cool the first time it happened. If he ever reads this, I want to thank the very nice policeman who knows a "leetle beet" of English for making my life easier.

Good thing: SO excited to see my friends Jacqueline (my roommate here, who lived two doors down freshman year) and Emma (her very good friend from home who lived the floor above us freshman year) again!

Bad thing: Our hotel was sketchy (not to mention the clerks hated us), but I guess that's to be expected when you want a relatively inexpensive hotel in Paris. Also, the restaurant where we ate Saturday night was nothing special. I've enjoyed the meals with my host family much more.

Good thing: We had a way fun night in the hotel (despite the unpleasant smells) looking at Emma's pictures (she's into photography almost as much as Kaci is...maybe more), listening to music and eating Nerds, the last American junk food we'll have for a long time.

When I arrived, Bro. Welch took another girl and me (our arrivals were so scattered that it was just the three of us) to the restaurant where we ate in the Latin Quarter and gave us a mini-history/geography lesson on the way. He pretty much knows everything. That was my first glimpse of Notre Dame, the Palais de Justice, and everything in that area. We went inside an old church, Saint Severin. It's on the smaller side as far as churches go so it was cool to see the stained glass up closer.
We went to a Paris branch on Sunday (which meets in the Institute building where all our classes are), which was really cool. There were all kinds of missionaries there and already I've met one who is so familiar...must be the friend of a friend at BYU. After church we went with Bro. and Sis. Welch, the faculty directors, to the Eiffel Tower!
My first view, complete with traffic light. I included that for Matthew. :)

The Seine.
A statue of some guy near the tower.
The view from underneath. That thing is ginormous.
Then we walked to the Welch's apartment where they served us ratatouille (kind of--the pasta was separate) and we watched the Tower sparkle on the hour after it got dark (we could see about the top quarter of it from the living room). It was their way of helping us relive the movie "Ratatouille." This is some typical Paris architecture I saw on the way.


The entrance to the church/Institute/school. There are two doors to the chapel/classrooms inside the courtyard. It was built in the 17th century and after passing through many hands, the Church bought part of the building in 1997. The rest is still private residences. We read all this on a pamphlet the Welches had. I'll have to find one or google the name of the building if I can remember it. It's very interesting.
The staircase that leads to where the institute meets upstairs. I haven't attended yet. This is immediately to the left of the previous picture.
On Monday we began classes and then, after a long bus ride from the hotel and getting lost several times, Jacqueline and I finally met our host family and moved in! We were both really nervous, but they are SO nice. They are Monsieur et Madame de Martene, they have five children of which two are still at home. Their 24-year-old daughter, Amelie, is just staying until she can find an apartment in Paris. We especially like their 13-year-old son, Quentin, because he reminds us of our little brothers (he's even the same age as you, Logan!). Last night he was the only one home at dinnertime but he was very good at making polite, yet interesting conversation (since we weren't really helping) but still letting us know things about himself. (And we had real ratatouille.) I asked him if he likes his school and he said he likes it but it doesn't like him. They also have a dog, but I actually like him and he doesn't make me sick! I haven't had any allergy or asthma problems here *insert sigh of relief here*. This is my room!


Isn't it adorable? That's not even the best part. As if the family wasn't nice enough, Jacqueline and I have our own "flat," as the dad calls it (he likes to practice English with us). It's a basement with two bedrooms, bathroom, our own private door and a KITCHEN!!! And they have WiFi which pretty much = heaven after being Internet-deprived. We were so excited. Also, the neighborhood is adorable and Mme de Martene told us she'd show us around on Friday since we don't have class. In short, I'm doing great! I could go on about my classes, but that's for another post. Hope everyone's doing well!