Le Seizième

Saturday afternoon we had lots of fun doing the "seizième (16th) arrondissement" walk--you can probably tell by the length of this post! This is only a fraction of 100+ pictures I took. (Word of explanation: Paris is divided into 20 sections called arrondissements. The body of water on the map in the 16th is the lake in the pictures you'll see at the end. FYI.) We started by meeting Sarah and Diane (it's their hood) and Lauren and Ashley at the market that was in full swing on the other side of this square.
Don't know who he is but I like all things horse, including equestrian statues. Word on the street is if the horse has one hoof up, it means its rider was wounded in battle. If he has two hooves up, he was killed in battle, and if he's standing on all four legs he died of natural causes. (The man, not the horse...isn't language a curious thing? Free back rub for anyone who gets the reference.)

I'm a fan of markets in general (and there are lots here) but this one was cool. We wandered around for a while before we found the others, so I took video clips. I tried to be discreet and fast but that proved difficult as it was crowded, and I was interrupted by a panhandler and people trying to get me to vote in the upcoming neighborhood elections. If nothing else, it's true-to-life. :) I saw everything from doghouses to fresh sea urchins. Note the disgusting array of fresh fish (Aladdin flashbacks) complete with teeth.


In this one, note the ginormous hunk of cheese, where I slow down. :) The real fun part was when we returned to a pita/falafel stand after finding the others. While his buddies were making our food, one of the vendors from whom Sarah ordered struck up a conversation, and the poor girl couldn't understand a thing he said (the rest of us weren't doing so hot either--strong accent and disjointed sentences). He was thrilled when she said she was from LA, a city which with the French seem to be obsessed, and then proceeded to ask us all where we're from and our names. (I had previously chosen and used the name Véronique for such occasions. I've had a affinity to it since high school when I first heard it.) He was so funny though.
The view from the middle of the street...doesn't really look like a happenin' place, but it was.
My self-portrait skills only got worse throughout the day (and as the wind tangled my hair)...i.e. Eiffel Towers growing out of my head. I didn't post any of those.
I love walking along the Seine...I just try not to think about what's in it.
We could see yonder business district skyscrapers.
Goofy lunch break pic.
Tourist moment.
Cute merry-go-round.
I think this is my fave Tower photo of the many I've taken.
It was a beautiful day and there were lots of boats out! I like this one.
An old couple chillaxing and people-watching in their apartment.
On this edition of Name That Paris Tourist Trap: what's that white building in the distance?
Roommies.
Crossing the Pont Bir-Hakeim, the only bridge in Paris that accomodates cars, pedestrians, and the metro.
Where we came out. Passy is the name of this neighborhood.
We strolled down a very long man-made island called...you guessed it...Allée des Cygnes (swans...although there were none). It was built in 1825 as a dyke to protect the right bank.
At the top of the island.
The metro crossing the bridge. I love the few places where it goes above ground.
Jacqueline started a trend when she took a picture with her beloved cherry tree (she's from DC). Okay, I couldn't actually hug the tree but I could hug its fence friend! Spring is coming! (Read with foreshadowing for future blog posts...)
This boat's named the Seine Princess, but I like to think of myself as the Seine Princess.
A model of the Statue of Liberty Bartholdi used to create the big one. In 1886 when the statue was given to the US, rumor had it that her face was modeled after Bartholdi's mother's. We couldn't figure out how to get to the front, but there's another one somewhere else in Paris. Sources (Logan) have just informed me that this "fake" Statue of Liberty "played a key role" in National Treasure 2, now playing in France and known as Benjamin Gates and the Book of Secrets.
For some reason I wanted to take a picture of this Porsche place....a sign of things to come? :) I actually really like the brickwork but you can't really see it.

The 16th is very posh but suprisingly residential and quiet. This is Castel Béranger, an apartment building designed in 1894 by art nouveau architect Hector Guimard, who also designed some of the metro entrances.
His "signature."
Art nouveau street sign.
More of Castel Béranger.
It's off-limits to the public, of course, but I stuck my camera through the gate for a shot of the inside. It looked cooler in real life.
Masks on a balcony.
Cool windows.
Rue Berton, a street that supposedly has hardly changed in the past 200 years. If you ask me, it's more like an alley.
Sarah's attempt at being creepy. I think it looks artsy. Kaci?
Ignore the face. I wasn't ready. Just admire the S that someone put there hundreds of years ago, knowing I would come along and want a shot with my favorite letter.
Many street signs in Paris look like this: name of famous person, what they did, and when they lived. We had also just passed a street named for Jean de la Fontaine, of whom you will see more later.
We stopped for a breather in this cute park. Unfortunately, the grassy part was blocked off--apparently it's on winter vacation until April. It was sunny and so beautiful!

My attempt at being artsy. Kaci? (Actually it made me think of you...that work of art at one of the museums Mrs. Cooke took us to where you sit and look up at the sky...)
Me chillaxing on a bench...ahhhh
Them chillaxing on a bench.
The Texas flag was never a more unexpected sight: Susan's Tex-Mex restaurant! (There's a Mexican flag on the other side...just to be fair, I guess. Although we all know which is the better half of Tex-Mex.) Very appropriate timing, too, because Texas' Independence Day is today! (March 2) I hope you all remembered! Thanks, Susan. :)
Mmmm, artichoke baby food. (This is chronological, I promise. We stopped at a grocery store. When you're bored, what's more fun than taking pictures?)
Here's Jean de la Fontaine, a 17th-century poet and fable-writer (fabulist, if you read Wikipedia) in another park we stopped at. Jacqueline was able to recite "Le Corbeau et le Renard" (The Crow and the Fox, as seen on statue), which she memorized in 10th grade!
Cute playground. They had those awesome side-to-side swings that fit 4 people. That was my second favorite playground thing when I was little, after the tire swing. Those were the bomb.
Another statue and more flowers. Us sitting again. We did a lot of walking!
Our final destination (after discovering the nearby museum we were going to visit wouldn't let us in free with our art cards...who cares, it was too nice a day anyway) was the Bois de Boulogne, a HUGE park complete with horse racing track. It'd be fun to play with one of those remote control sailboats (funny that they all belonged to grown men). On this edition of Name That Paris Tourist Trap: what can you spot in the background this time?
Potential make-out spot #1...jk. It was beautiful though.
Parisians sure do love their parks!
Diane, Jacqueline, me & Ashley. Aww.
And finally, on our walk back to the metro, I had to pose with Rodin's Victor Hugo on the appropriately-named...you guessed it...Avenue Victor Hugo. He's the man!


Is it March already?!

Leap Day

Leap Day makes me so happy. I don't know why. Nothing special happens on this day. There's just something about its rarity that I find charming. Maybe because when I think of things that only happen every four years I think of the Olympics. :) Maybe because it's an extra day. And this year, it's an extra day in Paris! One of my classmates emailed us the link to Wikipedia's Leap Day page and I enjoyed reading it (thanks again, Wikipedia!)

Père Lachaise again

We finally went back to the cemetery to finish the walk we halfway completed about a month ago, before being scared off by a creeper. ("Jeem Mor-ee-zun, Jeem Mor-ee-zun!") It's a cool place. This is very incomplete because we were all taking pictures with each other's cameras. I'll add more later. The highlights for me were Chopin, Molière, and Oscar Wilde.
A nearby café. Instead of Father Lachaise, Mother Lachaise. Clever.
I always stop to drool over pastry shop windows, but this was the most beautiful I've ever seen.

The Happy Family!
Enrico Cernuschi (1821-1896), a politican and banker who donated his collection of Far-Eastern art to found a museum named after him.
Earl?
Louis Visconti (1791-1853), architect for the expanded Louvre and Napoleon's tomb.
Rossini (1792-1868), the great opera composer. His body was given back to Italy in 1887.
Writer Alfred de Musset. His sister is just behind him.
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann is responsible for the gentrification of Paris that took place under Napoleon III between 1853 and 1870--large boulevards, parks, and the architectural style that dominates the city today.
Jim Morrison. The walks book (Marc Olivier, for those who may know who he is) says "the scent of marijuana will almost lead to this site of rock pilgrimage. You will see what it's like to have groupies even in death."

Paying homage to our favorite French playwright, the great Molière. La Fontaine is next to him. Their remains may or may not actually be in the graves, which were transferred to the cemetery in 1817--basically a publicity stunt.
After this adventure, we had another...we killed some time before a movie we were planning to see, but got separated in the process. You really appreciate the convenience of cell phones when you don't have one. Fortunately, I was not separated by myself but with Sarah. We explored the Les Halles area (where I get off the train for school) and between the two of us were able to remember the metro stop where the movie theater was (Jacqueline had the information in her Pariscope). Then, geniuses that we are, we were able to remember the name of and locate the theater on the neighborhood map. Once we found it, there was no one there, but we nevertheless congratulated ourselves on leaving early enough that we made it by the appointed meeting time despite the long delays on metro line 4. We finally gave up and decided to do more exploring when we ran into the rest of the group, who had been delayed on said line 4. In trying to plan our next move, Sarah and I were distracted by a nearby shoe store (we had been looking at shoes all day). Took the metro to a place loaded with theaters, decided on a movie, found out student discounts don't apply to Friday nights, decided it was too expensive, and wandered for a while until we found a gelato shop. It was fun. And I bought shoes.

Special delivery

Matthew, look what was waiting for me at breakfast yesterday! Thank you! I love it! You wanted to see one picture, and you got four! Quadruple prizes! And thanks for the picture of Audrey, Andra.
Sorry for the long delay on all these posts...it took me that long to buy a new battery charger, so since then I've been very camera happy. I'm changing the post dates so that if someone looks at them a long time from now, they will hopefully forget my teenage blog deliquency. and not judge me. In my defense, a couple of them I started and never finished. I have a problem with that.
(I recently discovered that my window opens, which made me so happy! Don't ask me why it took me so long to realize that. I love sitting on the sill, as pictured.)

















In other news:
-The highlight of the week was going to see L'École des Femmes, the play we just finished reading, with the Molière class and some of the 202 girls at the Odéon theater. It was AWESOME. The humor was a lot more apparent watching it than reading it. The main character was especially good. Can you imagine memorizing around 900 lines?
-Today marks one month in Europe. Feels like way longer. Not that is hasn't been a way cool month.
-I'm roommateless for the weekend as about half the group took off to Spain. But I'm spending the day at home getting over a wicked cold, so it's just as well. The first thing my host mom said to me this morning was not "bonjour," but "You have a cold?" I didn't look so good. The family is going on vacation next week so we'll have the house to ourselves.

Week 3 Summer-y

Foreword: I recently discovered that I forgot to bring my camera battery charger, so I didn't take any pictures this week. I could take some of my classmates' pictures from Facebook but they're not that great. That and I'm too lazy. And most of the recent stuff hasn't been posted yet. But I'm determined to post at least once a week, so if anyone wants a play-by-play of my life, read on. Also, I will hereafter refer to our school/institute building as "Saint-Merri," the name of the street it's on, because everyone calls it that and it's easier.

Sunday Went to our ward in Versailles for the first time. Although it's about 9 miles south of us, it takes an hour and a half to get there because we have to take a train east to to edge of Paris and then switch lines. Makes for a long Sunday, but I love church! Everyone was so sweet to us despite the fact that some of the girls make no effort to speak French...kinda bugs. It was nice to meet in a real chapel in a real ward with cute children and everything. (Is it bad that the talk I could understand easiest was the one given by an American?...I'll work on it.) Met Sis. Jones, an American who has lived with her family in Versailles for 18 years! The de Martenes' oldest son, who happens to be really good-looking, ate dinner with us. Since you all wanted to know. :)

Monday Pretty uneventful. Went to class, went home and fed ourselves dinner because Quentin was the only one home, then watched some TV with him.

Tuesday Same, except we ate with M. de Martene and Quentin. More entertaining conversation. Quentin likes to make fun of us and I think most of the time we don't catch it because he mumbles. Sometimes we just smile and nod.

Wednesday Had our second fine arts class, this time in the Louvre. We'll be meeting there for the next few weeks. Lesson 1 was Mesopotamian, Greek & Roman art. Took a lunch break and then Dr. Welch's class met back at the Code of Hammurabi (how often can you say you met at the Code of Hammurabi?) and had a fascinating discussion of some of the artifacts we hadn't already looked at. That stuff is right up his alley. Jacqueline & I have to go back tomorrow to pick an artifact on which to write a paper relating to the BoM...should be interesting. I love the Louvre! Can't wait to go back and see more every week. (Plus I can get in free whenever I want with my student pass...without waiting in line!) Spent the rest of the afternoon reading and people-watching in a huge park, the Jardin de Luxembourg, then went to the Welches' to call home and share the very fresh, very yummy bread they had just gotten. :) Hurried home for dinner, where there was another missionary letter waiting for me. Yay! Thanks, Kristin!

Thursday Another long but fun day. Finished our discussion of L'Ecole des Femmes, our first play, in the Molière class. In Dr. Welch's class, discussed parallelism in the BoM and he told us the story of how he discovered chiasmus on his mission in Germany, complete with a slideshow of pictures. Then J & I and our friends Diane and Sarah bought pastries and ate them under the Eiffel Tower. And moaned with happiness at how good they were. And took pictures. No wonder we looked so obviously American that a guy walked by and said, "Good lunch!" I think he was just jealous. Then J & I did the Place de la Concorde "walk," which included the French White House (the Elysée Palace), the American, British, and Colombian embassies, pricey boutiques like Chanel, Cartier, and Hermes lining the Rue Faubourg St Honoré (2000-euro vest, anyone?), and Place de la Concorde and the famous 3000-year-old Luxor Obelisk in the center. It was getting dark and we were just in time to see the obelisk light up from where we finished with a stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries. Went back to Saint-Merri for Institute and stayed for choir practice afterward with the adorable Hawaiian senior sister missionary who's in charge of the Easter program.

Friday Slept in...went to Saint-Merri for another choir practice with just the BYU girls, then spent the afternoon doing a walk in a neighborhood called the Marais, which the school borders on. Saw some cool hôtels with cute gardens, a beautiful church called St. Paul's, remnants of the old city wall from the 12th century, the Jewish neighborhood, scratched the surface of the Musée Carnavalet, and visited Victor Hugo's old place in the Place des Vosges, Paris' oldest square. Whew! Then we headed to Versailles for the ward Valentine's Day shindig. It was way fun, and guess what the dinner was? Mexican!

Saturday Spent all day at home chilling and doing homework, then went to Saint-Merri for the YSA Valentine's dance. Two dances in a row was kind of weird after not going to dances for so long. It was a painful reminder that I can't dance. And they really like techno music. But we also heard "La Bamba" and "Cotton Eye Joe" both nights, which made me feel more at home. I decided we'll have to teach them the real dance sometime, the spoke-line version.

Today Church was good. My goal was to only speak French and meet at least one new person. So I sat down next to a unfamilar girl in Sunday School only to find that she's German and doesn't speak any French. But we had a good conversation anyway. :) I did get to meet a few people and bond with the adorable little girl of the American lady who spoke last week, Margie. Met the de Martenes' other son at dinner. His mother seemed very happy to point out that he's a few days older than me. And that wasn't the first time she told me. Interesting. Had the best dessert ever...it was similar to ice cream cake. The homemade crème brûlée a couple weeks ago wasn't bad, either. :) I was reminded how funny Quentin is. I missed that kid over the weekend when we weren't here much.

Here's a map I threw together if you want to see where everything is.

That's it for now. Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day with their sweetie! Tommy, hope you had a good birthday and I'm glad you and Doris got to go to Oregon! Matthew, I can't wait to get your letter!

Tagged

Here are 7 random things about me for you to read if you feel so inclined...

1. I don't like being scared. I don't like rollercoasters or scary movies. I couldn't even handle "The Others," so watching "When a Stranger Calls" last year in the David John basement with some girlfriends was a big mistake, especially after all my babysitting experience. Never again. I just had a nightmare the other night after briefly talking about Edgar Allan Poe with my roommate.
2. I really enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.
3. I love looking nice, but sometimes it's not worth the effort.
4. I think TV in general is a waste of time unless it's Monk. :) Or you're multitasking (see #7).
5. I'm obsessive about saving everything, thinking that I'll want or need it later, no matter what it is. I've gotten better over the years, but I used to be a total pack rat.
6. I love getting mail! Even if it's not important, if it has my name on it, it's exciting!
7. I love multitasking. I feel like I can justify a little fun TV-watching if I'm keeping my hands busy with knitting or something else. (I miss my knitting!)

Since this is a special Europe edition, I'll give you 2 bonus top 7 lists!

Things I miss most about home (besides family and friends, of course):
1. rill Mexican mills
2. Blue Bell ice cream
3. Monk
4. my books
5. my clothes (I brought hardly any)
6. my iPod (can't complain though, I have iTunes)
7. White family lingo

Things I like most about being here:
1. Rocky isn't
2. my host family
3. Dr. Welch's Book of Mormon class...amazing!
4. the history!
5. the free time (I only have 7 scheduled class meetings per week)
6. no testing center!
7. the food...mmmm

On an unrelated note, I haven't been doing a good job taking pictures since our trip last week...sorry. It was a good weekend, though. Our host mom gave us a tour of the town, including a national archaeology museum and a cool market. We did one of the "walks" for class--went to Notre Dame, climbed to the top, visited the crypt underneath the square, and the famous Conciergerie prison...and got in all those places for free! Also discovered a beautiful park yesterday where we watched swans and did homework. Happy one month, Olivia!