A quick entry. Class has kept me busy, with a test today and a phonetics section beginning yesterday. The phoentics section is my first time in a "language lab," and it's great; the teacher reads, we repeat. This is all recorded. Then, we go back and listen to our own recordings, and the teacher interrupts us (individually) to help work on our pronunciation as we listen. Then, we re-record the same material a second time, with the teacher listening in and, again, correcting us when we stray from the correct pronunciation. It's a great learning tool and, because we each have our own cubicle with a headset, there's no embarrassment in front of the entire class. One just assumes that the teacher is listening in on you the whole time, but you never know for sure...

I've been researching potential campsites in the south of France, and have found a few winners (links below).

http://masdenicolas.celeonet.fr/index.php?params=article/nos-hebergements/emplacements-camping

http://le-moulin-neuf.com/anglais/interface_us/interface_us.htm

http://www.camping-barralet.com/acceuil.php

I'll post when we choose, but hey, maybe let me know what you think in the meantime. These all come recommend by my recent purchase, Nos meilleurs campings en France, published by the "Routard" division of Hachette.
In order to organize my information and trip-planning, however, I bought a little notebook and scratch pad. Very nifty, cheap, and neat; great for jotting down random thoughts. I'm especially pleased with the little pad, which has a kind of graph-paper pattern. (In fact it's not standard in notebooks here, it seems, to use horizontal-ruled lines.) Simple pleasures, I suppose. Speaking of, I think I will go for a short walk.

I switched levels in my class to Elementaire from niveau Debutant, and am much happier. The book is actually intermediate level; it's appropriately challenging. I'd say that I still understand about 95% of what the teacher says (all in French, obviously), who's a very good teacher, well organized, clear, etc., and my experience with other languages has been as useful as I expected.
I've also met some interesting people in this class: a Syrian Kurd, a Slovak, about my age, who is a professor in the U.S. in my field, a Mexican girl of Lebanese extraction, etc. Remarkably, the four of us had a conversation yesterday at a cafe after class entirely in French. Crazy, but great, and the type of experience one hopes for.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do today. Some technical difficulties and a couple of dumb moves on my part meant that my plans for last night fell through. No big deal, but I got all the way to the building and couldn't get in, so was a bit frustrated.
I do miss my car. And I miss coffee-to-go. The exclusively leisurely, sit-down cafe culture here dictates that it would be anathema to rush off with any beverage. But almost everywhere I go back in les Etats Unis, especially while driving, I have a cup of coffee. And, gauche though it may be, I also miss gulping said coffee. Since the coffee beverages here are exclusively espresso-based, even the notoriously un-American "Cafe Americano" (espresso plus hot water does not equal american coffee, sorry), they don't last very long unless you are extremely disciplined and know how to ration appropriately your micro-sips. I thought I was having trouble in this regard merely because I was drinking coffee in cafes on my own, but no. Now that I've met a couple of people and have had some cafe experiences that include plentiful conversation, I still find the quantity/size something to which I cannot adjust.
Speaking of small things, the car that Devon and I are renting is a Yaris (left; www.toyota.fr/cars/new_cars/yaris/gallery.aspx) by Toyota. I'm psyched about this because we have these Yareis back home, and I've always thought they were cute and sporty, for a small car. Plus, since we're in Europe, I don't have to worry as much about the relative size of the car; yes, there are a few SUVs and minivans here, but when a Toyota Corolla looks big compared to the other cars on the street, as it does, it's safe to say that cars are generally much smaller, as is well known. Anyway, I think this will be a fun car to drive and handy since it's a hatchback (good for campers/travelers). If I like it enough, I might consider it for my next car back home, depending on where I'm living at the time; the hatch is only about 2 feet shorter in length than my Prizm, and this can be accounted for easily because of the lack of trunk on the hatch model. Anyway, enough about cars.
I did a bit more shopping yesterday, in search of good jeans and a couple more t-shirts. All the guidebooks, even the allegedly "hip" Let's Go guide, warned against wearing T-shirts and shorts. Shorts, maybe (I've gotten a few funny looks when I go for my afternoon run, but those might be on account of my running at all. One older woman said to me, "Quel coureur, monsieur!" (What a runner, sir!), which I think was a compliment...I think. At first I thought she may have said "Quel corps, monsieur!", which would have been flattering but weird coming from a woman of 58 or so. It took me a minute or to connect Latin currere ("to run") with what she'd said; I blame the delat on the weirdness of French vowels.) Sorry for all the parentheses, btw, but I'm not in the mood to edit right now. Anyway, shorts and t-shirts. I haven't seen many people wear shorts, but then again, it's been rather mild. Neat T-shirts, however--not undershirts, mind you, but dyed, slightly more substantial t-shirts--are everywhere, especially on men my age and younger, and often combined with blazers like back home. Just goes to show how international public trends in "fashion" have become. The shopping center itself, Forum des Halles (left), was pretty awesome. And I'm not likely to say this about anything that amounts to a mall, vel sim. It was a bit like a spaceship of commerce.
slightly less at a CVS/Walgreens, and cheapest at Target or Wal-Mart, owing to t All right. I have to find something to do today. But one final addition, both mundane and interesting. I bought some floss the other day, and some scissors. Now, the floss cost me $6 (would probably have been about 70 cents at Target back home) and the scissors $5 (probably would've been about $2 at Target back home.) What's interesting (to me) is that I bought these items at what some would say is the equivalent of Target, "Monoprix." Generally, one's instinct back home is that small items like this are most expensive at a small local market,he economies of scale at work in the latter examples. Here, these items were extremely expensive at the Target equivalent and cheapest at a local Pharmacie. I'm still not sure exactly why, but I guess it has something to do with 1) Europeans' expectations about where one buys things (i.e., you don't by floss at Monoprix unless you want to spend a fortune) and the fact thbat 2) the consumer economy is strucured differently on account of these preferences. It's likely that these Pharmacies somehow have different relationships with distributors, perhaps they're even chains? I dunno. Anyway, I found it interesting. Also interesting is that the floss is refillable. I.e., one buys another spool of floss to put in the same dispenser, thus saving materials in the long run. Woah.

Second day of class today, with a pop quiz included. There's a chance I'll be elevated to the next level (Elementaire as opposed to Debutant), and I will very likely insist on it given my language experience and the fact that I actually do know some French. Dinner was tasty tonight, and it's amazing what one can come up with, even with limited ingredients. A kind of marinated chicken with haricots verts and herbed potatoes, bread, butter, some cotes du rhone. Remarkably tasty. The very local supermarket seems to have inexpensive and fresh tasty baguettes, which is a plus.

So, and addendum to yesterday. I went to see Sacre Coeur (left), yes. But I neglected to mention how much it looked like Minas Tirith (well, other way around) from LOTR : The Return of the King. I've posted below three pictures, one of Sacre Coeur and two of Minas Tirith, from the german LOTR website.
See what I mean? Particularly the way the building kind of juts out at apparently random points. In the movie, too MT seems gleaming white, as does Sacre Coeur. Anyway. This is a little silly, but amusing to me. I was a bit dissapointed to discover, though, that I wasn't the first person to notice this resemblance. I'm sure it was in part the inspiration for the drawings upon which MT in LOTR is based, but someone had a picture of Sacre Coeur up on the web labeled "Minas Tirith a Paris!" Tres bien.

It's been a busy few days, so this entry will perhaps be somewhat abridged. Saturday I went to the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, specifically the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution. A nice time--I learned about early methods of cultivation and domestication of animals, notably, as evidence of man's effecting kinds of evolution--something other species don't seem to have done. The museum itself (barely visible at left) definitely had the feel of a 19th-century exhibit hall, though updated, as opposed to some of the museums back home which seem to proceed through individual rooms rather than several floors that all open up to a main section below. The Museum was on the grounds of the Jardin des Plantes, which was a nice place for lunch.

On Sunday, the Louvre had free admittance, so I went to check out some of the Classsical stuff in detail by myself, at my own pace. It's amazing to me how many people stand slackjawed in front of things like Nike from Samothrace and the Venus de Milo, when in actuality these pieces are arguably no more notable than other pieces in the Museum. I'm not sure how many people really care about the "audacious twisting curve" of the Venus any more than they know they're supposed to stand in front of the statue and gawk. Honestly, I prefer the bold--and more directly politcally contextualized--appearance of Roman portraiture. Check out Agrippa, who no doubt changed the course of history in aiding Octavian (future Augustus) at Actium to defeat Marc Antony and Cleopatra! Clearly, the man means business and has had his portrait idealized to appear truly "Augustan." Also see (pseudo-) Seneca (right), which I've made black and white to heighten the contrast. Is that a man care-worn with the pain of being Nero's tutor or what!?

A couple other notable include the Pan (right/below); lively and stirring up the pastoral song, presumably, and then Geta, ill-fated brother of the emperor Caracalla. Geta's memory was officially "condemned" after brother Caracalla took power and had Geta killed, but it's interersting to see how this portrait is nearly identical to that of his brother's, and truly conforms to the dynastic aesthetic. (You'll have to look up photos of Caracalla 's young portraits, as well as those of the dynast M. Aurelius, yourself.)

Today's main sight seen was the Eiffel Tower. I have to admit, I didn't expect it to be very exciting. That's because I completely underestimated its size, as well as its beauty. I took the stairs to the second floor, which is about halfway up the tower. (I think to that point it's about 500 stairs or something.) The view was great, and allowed one to get a good glimpse of the city. This was especially beneficial for me, as I'm still trying to get myself oriented. For instance, I wasn't aware of the significant turn in the Seine; most maps I have are of individual sections and the turn isn't discernible in most of the sections I'd been consulting.

I walked from there to the Arc de Triomphe and the tomb of the unknown soldier (WWI), and from there along the Champs-Elysees (which means "Elysian Fields" on its own, so it's really the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, since the Elysian Fields are themselves located in a nice section of Hades.) Lovely, but long. My feet were tired, but I refused to take the Metro until I got to Place St-Michel, where I could get my monthly "Carte Orange", which is a much better value than the packets of tickets I'd had to use until 1 June. I bought a baguette and some chicken drumsticks from a local rotisserie and had that, with salad, for dinner. I'm lucky enough to be going out tonight with some friends of friends (although realistically my friends, too, I haven't seen them in ages), and I may supplement my evening meal then.

I discovered that the has free admittance on the first Sunday of every month, so that's my Sunday plan. I'm sure I'll go back with Devon, but at least I'll have a chance to scope out some of the antiquities at my own pace.

Gotta run. Tomorrow I think I'll check out the Museum of Natural History's exhibit on Evolution. Take-that, Creationistas! (You know they just opened a Museum of Creationist History somewhere in the midwest...? True. Sad, but true.)

Well, I'm a bit tired after today, so I don't plan on writing too much. I managed to wake myself up a little bit earlier than yesterday (10 a.m., I think). Since there's no toaster in the apartment I had to grill my bread on a frying pan with a tiny tiny bit of butter. That, with some confiture de fraises (strawberry jam) and a hot cup of coffee from the french press got me moving pretty quickly.

Due to some communication issues the previous night, I decided the first order of business was to purchase a headset compatible with Skype. This makes talking to folks back home inexpensive, and will also be handy to contact people here in Paris without blowing a dollar per minute. I brought it home and quickly hooked it up. Luckily, James was awake (I imagined he would be even though it was before 8 am, seeing how he's a worker and often an early riser) and answered the phone more politely and enthusiastically than I could've expected anyone to do so early. We had a nice brief chat, but I had to run off to see sights before the sunshine--yes, we actually had sun today--disappeared.


I opted to give Notre Dame a second chance, since I was in the neighborhood again. In fact, I was glad I did. First, I was able to swing around to the south side of the church, where the "spidery" section of buttresses is located (see left). I was duly impressed both by the engineering and the beauty it conferred upon the structure's exterior. I also got a close look at the lovely "Pieta" group (see right, 19th c., I think?) in the altar area. I still think medieval architecture is a bit dull when compared with its Renaissance counterpart, but I guess you can't get to B without starting with A.

Speaking of Renaissance architecture, however, I made a bee-line for l'Eglise St. Eustache, a truly great church in which Louis XIV (the so called Sun-King) was baptized and Mozart's mother had her funeral. In its architectural style, it represents a transition from Gothic to (Italian-inspired) Renaissance, but many of the paintings and sculptures on its interior come from the 18th century and later. Immediately noticeable, however, is the structure's tendency to pull the viewer upward (see right) via the brightness of the clerestory, especially to the impressive vault of the transept (the area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform/cross-shaped building.) The "verticality" of the structure is also emphasized by means of the secondary columns, engaged with the main ones, to create more vertical lines. (I.e., look up close at the vertical columns and you'll see, especially by the upper windows, that other columns are carved into the main ones.) These lines carry all the way from the floor to the vaulted ceilings, and it's worth comparing this to the picture of the nave of Notre Dame, where the capitals on the first-story clearly interrupt their vertical movement. On the other hand, the first-story columns of St-Eustache are much taller; that couldn't hurt their vertical pull now, could it?

Notable at Saint Eustache also is the great organ (installed 1989), which was massive and beautiful-sounding during the rehearsal that I heard while walking around. The picture's perspective is actually thrown off by the organ, which appears so big in the frame that it actually "shrinks" the size of the nave. I think the audioguide (3 euros) said it was like 40 feet across. Perhaps it was more... Anyway, I think there are concerts here in June, so I may try to go if there anything like what I heard today.

Ah, and now the truly important stuff: the clothing I purchased. A place called Mirene (6 rue de rivoli) had the sweater I was looking for and desperately in need of in this cool weather. It also had a great brown jacket (spring/fall) which I couldn't resist to purchase as a replacement for the brown GAP jacket I bought in 1997. Yes, that's 10 years ago. Both jacket and sweater appear below, albetit in kind of blurry, dark pictures. I'm sorry but you'll just have to wait to see them in person!


Time for bed, I think. Til tomorrow, when I'll describe the crepe I had. Yum.

I've realized in part why is hard for me to get on a normal schedule here: it stays light until about 10:10 pm. So here I am thinking that I'm going to be up for another 4 or 5 hours and then I realize, "Wait a sec. It's 10:00. I should go to bed -- soon!" I'm sure my bedtime will change once I get a chance to meet some new people next week, but for now, bedtime comes (relatively) early.

Went to Notre Dame today, which was nice. I think it would have been more spectacular on a non-rainy afternoon, when all of the stained glass windows would really be gleaming, but it was still nice. Flying buttresses aside (see left, but I didn't get a picture of the better view of those on the end), I wouldn't go so far as to call its interior "beautiful" or "magnificent." It was too medieval for those descriptors, and I feel compelled to reserve those terms for St. Peter's which unequivocally deserves them. Sorry, Notre Dame. That said, the exterior was decently impressive, and the pictures I took bring out some of the finer, more evocative aspects of the inside as well. From one of the side-chapels, I took the above picture during Mass (sans flash, of course). You have to imagine some high quality organ music and mid-quality vocal accompaniament to complete the scene.

Any big church (NB, I didn't say "Megachurch") is bound to have its agglomerations of votives. I thought these were a particularly fine example, especially the way they fill up the photo frame, as if a kind of spiritual brick-layer's pattern, one prayer next to another, next to another, costing about 5 Euros (~ $7 !) each. (I'm not trying to be cynical.)

Perhaps my favorite art-part of the Notre Dame experience was the equestrian statue of "Charlemagne et ses Leudes" (see below). The piece just emanated nobility, and the "Leudes," apparently some sort of Teutonic aristocracy, have big, hollow eyes and enormous moustaches that evoke the line of the eyebrow and so extend it, in a fashion, and thus emphasize the somber nobility of the eyes. I imagine the moustaches were somehow influenced by the late 19th-century styles (I think this is 1880s or 1890s), but still, it's a great piece.

After buying a spatula and some ground boeuf at Monoprix, I went home and had dinner. I didn't get a chance to describe the excellent lunch I had today--a variation again on the croque monsieur--but I'm going to have to let that wait. Time to listen to those French tapes and go to bed. Bonne nuit, my avid readers.

Oops. So maybe I'm not quite over the jet-lag yet. I slept until about noon today. Hmmm. Well, in my defense I had nothing specific to wake up for, the sky was very cloudy, and my alarm didn't continue to go off after I hit the snooze button twelve times. Oh well.

I'm going to get moving quickly here and figure out what I'm going to do today. This is the first day when I don't have a specific task that must be done. Yesterday's registration and test was fine, although the test a bit demoralizing. I am excited for the class to start, however (Monday), when I will hopefully meet some more English speakers and actually begin formal instruction in French, which was my goal in coming here!

As you can see, I've begun to add some pictures. Top left is the view of the Tour Eiffel from my apartment building (but not the actual apartment), likewise this picture is
of the general surroundings as viewed from the apartment building. Finally, I have a added a couple of the "Pantheon" (hardly compares, at least on the exterior, to its probable model in Rome). I'll leave you to read up on this building, but it does have an interesting history and the interior, from the looks of this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth%C3%A9on%2C_Paris) from wikipedia, is probably stunning, too. It's right near the University, so I'll head back there next week when I know an English tour is being given. That's all for now. Au revoir.