Découvre Le Louvre

I amend yesterday's claim that an extra hour of sleep is a great way to start a day. Having ample extra time to eat breakfast, and conditioner in the shower, is far better, even if it means getting up half an hour earlier (for the breakfast, not the shower!).  Arriving to class early was definitely more of an elementary and high school habit than one I have followed assiduously at Stanford, but it is quite relaxing.

If you a) understand french and b) know a bit about Parisian culture, the video Ç'a m'énnerve is worth a view, as I learned this morning. I also learned that the use of sarcasm in other languages cannot be reliably understood, and that being taken seriously can make for funnier jokes. It also turns out that sunny days in Paris can happen more than once a week.

The glorious view from the Stanford Center (being on the 6th floor means LOTS of exercise, but there has to be some advantage, and this is it)

If you find yourself to be a student near ISEP, hungry and unwilling to pay a lot, I highly recommend Coeur de Blé, a boulangerie I stumbled upon today when searching for a cheap and tasty lunch. For €3,60 after the student discount, I bought a hot baguette sandwich (panini tomates et mozzarella) that was unbelievably delicious.  Even better, they hand out a punch card, so that after 10 sandwiches, you get one free! Life just became delectable.

The afternoon was a bit more exciting (how can it not be, after starting off on such a positive, and tasty, note?). After an interesting lecture on French history from a professor at the Sorbonne, and a workshop on family life here, we had the option of meeting the director of the program (also an art history professor) at the Louvre for a brief tour.

We adventurous members of the Cours de Français Intensif Avancé II tromped off to the Marais first, to reclaim a certain mobile phone that one of us had left at L'As du Falafel (I didn't do it, I promise!). There really is no other neighborhood like it.

We made it to the Louvre just in time for the tour. With our special amis du Louvre cards, we get to enter from a secret side entrance and skip all the lines and tourists, you see! The tour was fascinating. Besides the fact that the professor shares my passion for the Dutch realists (and showed us both a French nature morte influenced by their style AND a van Hoogstraten), the information she shared about both the museum and the five works we examined was fascinating.

From the second floor, you can see much of Paris, or, at least, the Louvre pyramids

From here, you can see all the way to La Défense, with the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, etc. included. That is, you would be able to see them if I weren't too impatient and had held the camera steady. What can I say, I was off to see Monet!

I stayed on my own after the tour; there is an interesting temporary exhibit in Journeys, including several intricate drawings of highway robberies. Naturally, I found my self drawn to these. Of course, life would be too simple if I left on time, and so I walked two thirds of the way back before realizing that, if I continued, I would certainly be late. Luckily, I realized this right outside a Métro station for the line that stops across the street from my famille d'acceuil. 

I was not even remotely tardy for a delicious steak-pommes de terre dinner, with la gorgonzelle for dessert and les salamis au cornichons for goûter. I still am blown away by the incredible quality of the baguette. My père d'acceuil explained the situation with France's Ministre de l'Ecologie, who today announced that, contrary to François Hollande's campaign commitments, France will try to go from 75 to 100% nuclear. He leant me several fascinating/useful-looking books/journals on the renewable energy situation in Europe that I look forward to reading. In fact, since I've finished my homework, perhaps it is time to stop looking forward and start looking downward (at pages). Bonne nuit!