Massive Paris Update

So I have been neglectful of both writing in my journal and blogging about what I've done. Which has got to stop, because I want to remember what I did here. So today I am going to dump all the information of what I've done since my last blog post into this here blog post. And starting tomorrow I am going to be better again. (At least with the journal thing - being better about blogging is going to have to wait until a week from tomorrow after we get back from London.) So, here we go. I shall try to keep it quick but not leave anything out.

So pretty much all I have blogged about is first getting here, seeing the Eiffel Tower, and Laduree pastries, right? Whew. Okay, this is going to be fun. Time to start.

Here is an angry bird. That I saw in Paris. Which makes it photo worthy and blog worthy.


One day, I do not remember when, some of us went to a free concert at the Madeleine Church. It was beautiful and the singing was nice. I fell asleep during the last half (which has seemed to happen a lot since I've gotten here - but I think I am finally adjusting to the time and everything) but it was still great. Here's me in front of the church.


The view from the steps of L'eglise de la Madeleine.



So, as you can obviously tell, my classes here have started. So I have been spending time doing homework for those. One of those classes is a photography class. Another one of my classes is called Paris Walks. We have a book that some BYU professors wrote, including my program director here in Paris. He is teaching the class. It's the one class we were all required to take, and it's the time when we go over any official business we need to also. For this class, we meet every Tuesday for two hours. And then we have to do two walks in our book each week. They are step by step instructions about where to go. Like, one of the first walks I went on was the Metro walk. It told me what station to start at. Then what lines to get on. Where to get off. With cool facts about the metro along the way. It was pretty cool, but I was glad when I finally finished. Three hours underground on the metro is a long time. The other walk I did the first week was "The Anti-Walk Walk." My director, Professor Olivier, wrote it. It's all about being a "flaneur" (or flaneuse in my case). So the idea was to pretty much get lost and just wander around aimlessly for a few hours. It was wonderful and I felt like I learned a lot more about the Paris culture during it. It was nice not having a goal in mind. I just walked and absorbed my surroundings and thought deep thoughts haha. The third walk I did was the Montmartre walk. This walk was AMAZING. And it was the perfect day to do it. We pretty much started at the Sacre Coeur Basilica. So beautiful.

The view from the Basilica.


I could not help but take a picture of this couple taking their wedding pictures in the entrance of Sacre Coeur. I have seen so many brides around Paris. And, knowing me, I have taken all their pictures when I could. I should seriously start a brides around Paris series haha.


After going into the church and looking around (and taking pictures until I found out that wasn't allowed thanks to an angry Frenchman), we went to a church nearby. It's the Saint-Pierre church, and it has been a parish church since C.E. 1147. Can you believe that? I couldn't. And all I am going to post on this is a picture of the door. Very cool door if I do say so myself.

We then went to Musee de vieux Montmartre, the oldest house on Montmartre, built in the early twelfth century. It was a cute little museum and I loved it. One of the rooms was a Moulin Rouge room and it was awesome. And they had some of the original Moulin Rouge posters. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed. We then walked to Au Lapin Agile, the oldest cabaret in Paris.


Montmartre was so beautiful and cute and I loved it. I took SO many pictures just of the streets and everything. I won't share them all though. I'll just post the pics with something meaningful in them haha. Instead of narrating the rest, I'll just show you a few.

La Maison Rose - a favorite of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein.


Van Gogh used to live here.


The Moulin Rouge. Enough said.


That's enough of Montmartre. But remember that I highly recommend it. We also went through the little square where there's all the artists and everything. I fell in love with a lot of paintings. Particularly with two certain ones though. They were a set. And they were both parts of the Eiffel Tower. Like you'd put them a few inches apart from each other on the wall if that didn't make sense to anyone. And they were black and white. With hot pink, black, and white paint splatters. Not the best painting there, but it was like my style in the form of a painting. And I have to admit I coveted it a little haha.

Now I'm just going to just go through some things I've done. If I think of anything as I'm doing it, I will elaborate on certain stuff.

The Arc de Triomphe. I have yet to go up in it. I unluckily started my "flaneur" walk here. I walked out of the random Metro stop and was like, "Seriously?" haha. I took this picture and then started my walk (no pictures could be taken during the walk - that'd be a goal).


The Gardens at Versailles. This deserves a whole blog post, but this is just going to have to work. But I'm sure I'll be going back to Versailles again so I will give you more details next time. Here's just some pictures.


Haha. Another bride. I promise I was having fun. The sun was just in my eyes.
I wish I could post pics of all these statues, but I won't. They were amazing. They had all the Roman gods and goddesses lining the path.
Haha so funny. And yes, another bride. They were doing a double photo shoot actually.




That was a lot of pictures. Whew. And I had the best chocolate ice cream I have ever had there.

So, this is the LDS Church building in Paris. It's where I have my classes and where church and institute are held. It's right by the Centre de Georges Pompidou and the Hotel de Ville.



And a picture of the Hotel de Ville.


For another walk, I walked around La Defense. It's like a business district.
A French woman asked me to take her picture, in French, and I did of course. And then she asked, STILL IN FRENCH, if I wanted my picture taken. So I said sure haha. Pretty much it made my day. So many people talk back to me in English when I speak in French to them. And she was one of three French people who asked me for directions or other stuff that day. I was quite proud.

The largest mosaic in the world.

An awesome statue/sculpture type thing that just looks like a bunch of straws. Loved it of course haha.


The Grand Arch at La Defense.


I struggled with actually getting my face in the picture. But I just loved these bench things.


The sleepwalker or dreamwalker or something.

Giant thumb.

Cool fountain.

The La Defense statue. And me.


The view from under the Arch. You could see like all of Paris. If you look closely, you can see the Arc de Triomphe in the middle all the way back.


Zoomed in a little bit - now can you see the Arc?


So now, the moment you all should have been waiting for . . . the reason why I fell so behind with the blogging. It's not because I have just been having too much fun (which I have), but because of some nasty little beasts. Les punaises des lits. Aka BED BUGS. Gag. But yes, it's true. The room where I am staying had a bed bug infestation. I started feeling itchy right after I got here. And then last Sunday I looked at my arms and they were COVERED in little red dots. That night I woke up in the middle of the night, turned on the light, and saw little nasty bugs scurrying away from me and into the crevices of the bed. Needless to say, I freaked out. And I have been dealing with them and trying to get rid of them this whole week. It's been a crazy and rough week, but I think we finally got rid of them. I hope. So here's some nasty pictures to show you how gross my arms were. And the rest of me for that matter. Just sime numbers . . . I had/have 30 bites on my right hand and 31 on my left. I have about 60 on my left arm (not including the hand) and about the same on my right arm. I have about 35 or so on my legs combined and about 20 on my back. I have like 6 on my neck and, luckily, none on my face. And sorry the pictures are blurry. It was hard taking pictures, especially without the flash which drowned out the bites. And no, I did not exaggerate the numbers. I counted. Numerous times. And I usually lost count and gave up. So these were all AT LEAST numbers.

I know they are hard to see. But hopefully this gives you an idea. And these seriuosly don't even do it justice. A lot of them don't show up in the pictures because of the bad quality.



And then, I got bored and nervous and antsy one night. And I decided to circle all my bites on my hands and lower arms so we could see if I got any more bites during the night. This was after we had had an exterminator come and yet I had found one on the wall the next morning. I killed it of course. So here's pictures of that.


Gross, right? Shudder. Worst experience ever.

So to end on a better note . . . here's this picture that I took of the Madeleine church. It really is a beautiful building.



P.S. I HAVE gone to the Louvre. But I didn't spend much time there so I'm just gonna wait to talk about that until I REALLY experience it.

Religieuse au Chocolat

Oh my goodness. I had pretty much the most delicious pastry ever today. It was my first experience with a real French pastry. I had a pain au chocolat for breakfast, but it was at a little place in a metro station. Still authentically French, but not in the same ballpark as Laduree. Which is where my delicious pastry was from today. Laduree is a famous patisserie (pastry place) and M. Olivier said it's his favorite or one of his favorites. I can't remember. But when we had our big official meeting today, he brought in two beautiful boxes in an even more beautiful bag. Laduree puts their delicious pastries into delightful containers apparently. So he brings in this bag and tells us that there is a pastry for each of us in there. So he opens them up and we could not help but stop and have a photo moment, they were just so beautiful!

Beautiful, no? And so deliciously divine looking.

I had a Religieuse. A chocolate one. It was seriously like utterly divine. Definitely the best pastry I have ever tasted. Oh my word. It was good. Like wow. I am officially a huge fan of Laduree and their Religieuse. I can't wait to try more pastries!

Me and Jennette, each with our own Religieuse. Mine was chocolate. Hers was currant or something.

Yes, I know my hair is quite nasty looking. It isn't faring Paris very well thus far. Gotta figure that out...

My Paris Adventure Begins

Saturday, September 12, 2009 - 9:56 a.m.

I am in Paris!! Yay. How crazy is that? I still can hardly believe I’m finally here. It’s like totally surreal. Right now I am sitting in my hotel room at the Etap Hotel in Saint Vincennes. I just had my first French breakfast. Woohoo. Haha.

So since M. Olivier isn’t going to be here until 11:30 to check us out and send us off to our host families, I figured I’d write this post and fill ya’all in on my first day in Paris.

My flights went well. There wasn’t any problems. I unfortunately could not sleep at all on the planes and was therefore extremely tired when I got into Paris at 8:30 in the morning. I couldn’t seem to stay awake on the plane but I couldn’t fall asleep. My head must have like dipped and jerked up like a hundred times. Haha. Lovely. It was a long eleven hours of flying. But. I did get to see The Proposal finally. Loved it. And Air France had some Friends episodes that they offered. I chose one randomly and it was the one where Rachel is going to Paris. And has her goodbye party. Go Air France for that selection haha. I found it wonderfully perfect.

So anywho. I got there at 8:30 in the morning. I talked to this cute old couple in the line where we got our Passports checked. And then some man heard me tell them I was from BYU, and he came over and told me that he went to BYU. Small world I guess. Not that small unless he was actually on my flight from Salt Lake in addition to the one from Newark. A Utahn would be way less surprising to have come from BYU. Anyways. Boring tangent. I’m tired, so this whole thing will probably be a big old boring tangent. Sorry bout that.

I made it through the line and followed people to get to the main place of the airport. I was quite proud of myself at that point. Except that people kept asking me questions in French or just about which way we were supposed to go and I was like, “Uh…” Somewhat embarrassing haha. But I survived. And when I reached the main area, I saw signs saying what way the taxis were. But somehow I missed the next sign for it and ended up going right past them. So I started to get a little confused. So I turn around and start going back to the last sign I saw for the taxis, and I saw Monsieur McBride, my 101 French teacher from BYU and the person who is the teacher for my French 202 and 211 classes here. I was inexplicably relieved to see someone from BYU haha. I guess I was more frazzled than I thought. He asked if I needed help and I said something lame like “I don’t know. I’m just completely lost and confused.” Haha. But he didn’t know where the taxis were because he had never taken them. So I went off to find them by myself. Which took me like 30 seconds haha. I had a not particularly fun experience with the taxi (funny how my French seems to be fleeing my mind when people talk to me), but I eventually made it to the hotel.

Then, for the next like six hours, people trickled in and we walked around or hung out at the hotel. Check-in wasn’t until three. During that time I bought my first French sandwich - a huge baguette sandwich called a Camembert Beurre. It was yummy. Of course. FINALLY check-in time arrived and Marc showed up. We got our roommate assignments and we took our stuff up to our rooms and dropped them off. Marc also gave us papers regarding our host families. My roommate’s name is Kamryn (I think I spelled that right) and our host family sounds cool. They live in the suburbs. The couple has five children, three of which still live at home. There’s a 24 year old daughter, 20 yr old son, and a 14 yr old son. We each have our own “petite chambre,” share a bathroom, and have our own separate entrance – which will be nice. I’m pretty much way nervous to meet this family – I don’t do well in situations like that ha ha and added to the French, this could be bad – but I am also excited. In a little bit me and Kamryn are going to go down and buy some flowers for our family. I will let you know how it goes with the host family meeting haha. It should be a funny story.

After we dropped off our stuff, Marc took us to where our classes and church will be. Then we walked down to Notre Dame. Amazing. And then we walked to Pont Neuf, where we went on a boat tour of Paris. It was amazing. Like so great. I am so excited to be here for three months ha ha. After that, we all split up. Me and four other girls went to this little restaurant and had some dinner. I had Soupe de l’oignon gratinee. I don’t know why, since I don’t like onion soup. But nothing really sounded good. I was starving, so that didn’t make sense. But that was the case nonetheless. I am so glad I got my first restaurant experience out of the way, cuz it was totally scary. Haha. But it wasn’t too bad. After we ate, we took the metro back to our hotel and I crashed within like ten minutes of getting back. I woke up at like midnight and couldn’t fall back asleep for a few hours. Go jet lag. So I’m still exhausted, but feel a little more like myself. But we are going to go now, so I gotta go. Go Paris! haha

Saturday, September 12, 2009 - 10:04 p.m.

What a day. Wow. After writing the stuff above, I couldn't get internet to post it. So I decided to just keep it anyways and just have a really long post today. So. I pretty much left off with getting ready to meet my host families. Well. M. Olivier called our host families yesterday to see when they would be ready for us. And all of them but one (Tim's - the only boy in the program) said sometime between 4 and 6. My host family said 5. So we talked to the hotel people and they let us put our luggage in their luggage room. Then M. Olivier gave us all an all day metro ticket, and we split up into groups to explore Paris. Before M. Olivier had arrived, Kamryn and I had gone to buy the flowers for our host family (which surprisingly didn't look too shabby at all even after hours in the room), and we had seen a big flea market thing that had been set up. So the group I went with went to that first off. But it was big and crazy and before we knew it, Jennette and I couldn't see anyone from our group. Then we found Kamryn and Rachel. And the four of us couldn't see the others so we just went off on our own. We decided to make the trip over to the Eiffel Tower! Yay. But the trip was . . . interesting. We are still metro newbies, so we got a little confused and whatnot. We ended up getting off at a stop that was the closest one on the line we were on (yellow in case you wanted to know) but that was still quite far away. There was some confusion about whether or not our tickets worked for the other lines so we decided to just walk the rest of the way. And find Le Tour Eiffel by ourselves. It's funny how it's so big and yet it disappears from sight so very easily. We finally found our way and saw the fantastic Eiffel Tower. It's really completely magnificent. Very awe-inspiring.

I mean, seriously. Do you see this? Amazing, right?

Me standing all awkwardly for my picture in front of the Tower. See how far away it is? Well, we so walked all the way there ha ha.


Me and my roommate, Kamryn


After that, we got some lunch and got lost on the metro basically. It took us forever to find a station and then forever to get to where we wanted. It was bad ha ha. But at least we got that over with. Now we can just become masters of the metro. Although I still do not know how I am ever going to find the stations themselves. I understand the metro perfectly, just not how to find the stops haha. After that we... met our host families! I was so nervous in the taxi ride to our family. But we showed up at this cute house and our host parents are like the nicest people. Me and Kamryn are like way lucky. They are really so nice. I was a complete idiot upon meeting them (I am shy, but not THAT shy - today I reached new levels of shyness and awkard though). I like couldn't even say anything. And I felt bad cuz they are like so nice. I am sure I will get over my awkwardness soon enough I guess. They showed us our rooms and then gave us a tour of the house. Then we unpacked and they took us on a drive. They showed us how to get to the RER station, which we will need to know when we go to church in the morning. Then they showed us around Le Vesinet. And finally, they took us to the chateau where Louis XIV (is that 14? haha) was born. It was beautiful. And we walked around the grounds. They took us to see the view of Paris from the terrace. And then we walked over to where the castle is and then back around to the car. The whole place was beautiful. And huge. Massive grounds. Wow. When we got back, we ate dinner. And then M. Martene walked with me and Kamryn, and their dog, to the RER station to help us buy tickets for tomorrow. And to make sure we could find our way haha. And now I am back in my room, totally ready to crash. Which I am going to do now.