La Vie en Rose

Salut mes amis!

This week marked the beginning of my overseas adventure. I arrived in France last Saturday and have since been all over the city. After becoming more than comfortable with the metro, I even ventured to try the bus today. The metro closes at 12:30AM but the buses (in a limited capacity) run all night, so I thought it might be a good idea to see how they work, before it becomes necessary to use them. I feel très parisienne with my carte de navigo which even has my picture on it (the card gives you unlimited access to the metro, RER, and bus system within zones 1 and 2, which includes more than all of Paris).

The class so far has been really interesting, albeit with a heck of a lot more reading than I was expecting... Thursday's reading was 176 pages in french... yes, you read that correctly IN FRENCH. The kids on the program are hyper-cool and our excursions this week were to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd arrondissements. Basically we're split into groups of four and assigned a location to visit and then talk about the next day, but we're also encouraged to visit the other sights (duh..) because this is of course Paris. My assigned visits so far have included the Palais de justice, La Conciergerie (where Marie-Antoinette was held before her execution), and la Sainte-Chapelle (amazing stained glass windows) in the 1st (it was so cool to see the judges and lawyers all dressed in their traditional garb, we even caught a quick glimpse into one of the court rooms), Place de la Bourse/ Palais Brongniart (which is technically closed to the public, but the nice lady at the front desk let us sneak in to have a peak at the frescoes on the ceiling) and the Opéra Comique (which was also closed, but has a beautiful facade and we were able to pick up programs for the upcoming season and see a replica of the interior) in the 2nd, and in the 3rd, after I man-handled those in the group who were kind enough into following me to L'as du falafel (delicious!) we visited the Mémorial de la Shoah (Shoah is the French transliteration of the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, it is usually translated into English as the disaster, destruction, calamity... you get the idea) which was appropriately sobering, yet very moving at the same time. As you walk in there is a circular pillar with the names of the death camps inscribed around it, as well as stone blocks with the names of all the French Jews who died during the Holocaust, listed alphabetically by the year in which they were deported. The permanent exhibit focuses on the history of the Jews in France during the Occupation and in particular children and the few survivors. There's one room which is back-lit from floor to ceiling with pictures of all the french kids who died. Additionally there's an exhibit which focuses on how film was used after the war to try to rationalize what had happened. Next there is a crypt with an eternal flame which is very reminiscent of the one at Yad Vashem. Interestingly enough, there's also currently an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. If you find the time, there was a really interesting radio show on the BBC in April about the trial (I think you can still find it on the BBC iplayer).

And that's not all, though feel free to stop reading. Last night we went to see a musical in French entitled 1939 that as I'm sure you could figure out was also about WWII. What was interesting about this particular pièce du théâtre was the audieces response. This old-ish blonde lady came out on stage to sing her relatively miniscule part and the crowd when wild. I think everyone besides our group was filming it and taking pictures with the flash. This was, I might add, after having been explicitly told not to use flash. The guy on the loud-speaker even yelled about it during intermission. At the end of the play we asked the professors who she was. Loren (who went to Amherst, and is therefore automatically awesome) apparently said that she's the French Celine Dion. My question is that since Celine Dion speaks French (she's from Quebec), why do we need another? I mean "my heart will go on" only for so long.

I also briefly saw Professor Hewitt on Wednesday. She stopped by Reid Hall to pick up Loren for lunch- she was Loren's thesis adviser. And yesterday I used my Louvre id to get in for free! We walked around for a couple hours and then through the Tuileries-- it was tons of fun!

Today I decided to just walk until I got tired. So I walked from my house in the 16th to somewhere in the 7th to the 15th back to the 7th before getting tired and hoping on the metro towards the Latin Quarter. But, by this time is was about 3pm and I was hungry. So I got off the metro and walked until I found a reasonable restaurant where I read/people-watch. I ate a huge croque monsieur with french fries, had a glass wine and tried to take in the atmosphere before walking off lunch and then trying out the bus.

The French have bizarre sign-offs, so I'm sticking with English.

Love,

Jenna

p.s. It's currently the time of the soldes (sales) in Paris and everything is marked way down, but ever since the heat wave broke I haven't been able to convince myself to be inside and longer than necessary and haven't even walked into a store, unless that store contained food I was hungry.

p.p.s. That hint about the sales also means if there are any requests this is the time for them.