Last field trip of 2015: Musée du Quai Branly

For our final field trip of 2015 I took my class to the Musée du Quai Branly, "where cultures dialogue." After a month of Renaissance art, Gothic architecture, white marble statues, and Le Nôtre gardens, it is good to be reminded that the rest of the world makes art too. We had a great discussion about this museum in class today; my students are getting really smart about noticing curatorial choices and how objects are presented. The Quai Branly does a good job contextualizing objects that are bound to be unfamiliar to most of its visitors. Along the way it also shows how universal certain objects and practices are. It's a great museum.

A "soul boat" from a coming-of-age ritual practiced in Indonesia

Masks are everywhere in the Quai Branly.

This shield is from Papua New Guinea but looks like Beowulf could have carried it.

One of the figures in the "soul boat"

Wolf-headed figures representing an Aztec god

Aztec goddesses

Mexican folk art

An ancestral pole from British Columbia

Some of the figures on the pole

A protective statue from Gabon

The Quai Branly's holdings that are not formally on display are shelved behind glass in the middle of the museum.

My standard joke is that these are my students--actually they are slit gongs from somewhere in Africa (I don't remember which country).

These are actually my students. I'm going to miss them.

From the museum we walked to Rue Cler, which is a well-known market street that also contains several cafés and restaurants. Our original plan was to pick up food for a picnic and take it to the Eiffel Tower, but yesterday was chilly and windy and the museum was oddly cold. So we opted to eat indoors instead and wound up in a casual but well-decorated Italian restaurant where everyone inhaled large quantities of pizza and pasta. It was just the right thing after a long-ish walk on a windy day.

I walked back to the métro the long way after lunch: from Ecole Militaire métro stop where I dropped off my students, back past the Eiffel Tower, all the way to Alma-Marceau métro stop. It was a roundabout route but I got a few good photos out of it:

We finished up the day with a very convivial faculty dinner. After running out of wine at our last dinner, we may have overcompensated slightly & ended up with about 4 unopened bottles. But I merely wanted to make sure my colleagues drank my bottle of Vouvray Petillant, which they did very cheerfully. Success! It's great to work with people that you actually want to have dinner with.

5 more sleeps till home. Some students have asked me if I'm eager to get back and I say I'm 50% eager, 50% sad to leave.

2015's first field trip: Musée du Moyen-Age

The program calendar turned out a little weird this year with our first classes happening on a Friday (yesterday) and the first round of morning class field trips today (Saturday). I was very happy with the weird calendar because it meant I could take my class to the Musée du Moyen-Age--that is its official name, Museum of the Middle Ages, but most people still call it the Cluny. It's a natural fit for my class (World Literature I) but it's closed on Tuesdays, which is my usual field trip day, so I've never been able to take a class there before.

The Cluny consists of 2 buildings that have been renovated and put together through the addition of some modern hallways and staircases. One building is the remains of an ancient Roman bath dating to the 2nd or 3rd century A.D., the Thermae. The other is the Hôtel des Abbés de Cluny, a 15th-century hôtel particulier (city mansion) that originally belonged to a monastic order and the abbot thereof. It houses a collection of medieval artifacts of which the best known is probably the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. They are breathtaking!

We arrived at the museum in plenty of time to sign up for a guided tour in English at 11 a.m. and, in fact, to take pictures in the courtyard before the tour started. I saw a group of women--tourists from Beijing, as it turned out--photographing each other and decided to ask if they wanted a picture together. They very excitedly said yes so I took their picture and then they all wanted to take pictures with me! One of my students said that Chinese people are very grateful and excited when Westerners are nice to them. I don't know if that's true as a cultural value but it certainly was in this case and these ladies were very sweet.

After the photo op it was time for the tour to start. Our tour guide was a very knowledgeable woman named Florence who not only taught us all a lot about medieval European culture but also answered the students' questions in impressive depth. The guided tour was worth the extra 4€ we paid for it, I think. Sometimes I scorn guided tours but then they almost always turn out to be good. Let's click through for some photos, shall we?

Wednesday, July 30 and Thursday, July 31: Last class days

Today was final exams, marking the official end of the program. We have taken all the calendars, schedules, and maps off the office walls, and I left my key with Dr. Kirk. No more Institut Protestant de Théologie till next year. It's hard to believe how fast the time has gone. Tomorrow we go to Giverny & Val d'Oise, Saturday is a free day, and Sunday we go home. I am really eager to get home and yet I will miss Paris so much.

Last night I had a great dinner with a colleague at a restaurant in the 14th called La Cagouille. If you like seafood, this is your place. I had mussels as a starter (very good) followed by grilled mackerel (strong-tasting; either you will like it or you won't; I liked it) followed by a clafoutis (bread pudding-ish thing that frankly I did not care for). Desserts are obviously a bit of an afterthought so you can save yourself a few € by getting the 2-course set menu rather than the 3-course one. We also had champagne, which I always like. I think Mireille Giuliano is right: Champagne goes with everything!

After a French dinner (starts late, lasts a while) it was a little hard to get up for classes this morning but fortunately I got to leave the office early and come back to Cité U. for a nap. Minou (the cat I know as Jambon) was in the courtyard when I left this afternoon so I got to give him a farewell petting.

In the evening we celebrated the end of the program with snacks and photos at the Eiffel Tower.

My illustrious colleague, Dr. Kirk

Is there a more iconic symbol of a city?

I was guarding the bags and snacks during the group photo.

Prof. Pukis took the photo.

3 of the 5 MGSC students with Dr. Wengier and me

Time for bed. We leave for Giverny at 9 tomorrow.

Wednesday, July 23: . . .

Don't worry; Wednesday was perfectly fine. But, all things considered, let's just move on, shall we?

Monday, July 21: Woodshedding

Mondays are typically the busiest day of the week for the program but also the least exciting to blog about. Here's how my day went yesterday:

8:30-10:30 a.m.: Taught my class (World Lit. I) about the Qur'an, which was new for me and extremely interesting.
10:30-11:30 a.m.: Meeting with Dr. Guglielmi and Dr. Kirk to debrief the Chantilly trip and plan for next year.
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Ate a sandwich while reading/writing email and working on a new documentation form.
12:30-1:00 p.m.: Faculty meeting.
1:00-3:00 p.m.: Worked (or, some of the time, "worked") in the office--graded assignments, answered more email, helped students print train tickets for the coming weekend.
3:00-5:00 p.m.: Finished up two meeting agendas, some program evaluation questions, and a leftover cookie from lunch. Also ran to the post office.
5:00-6:00 p.m.: Weekly program meeting with entire student body, followed by Q&A, locking up the building, and heading out.
6:30 p.m.: Dinner and some conversation with Prof. Pukis about photography.
8:00-10:30 p.m.: Personal email, call Mom & Dad, tidy up, a bit more work email, Facebook, and BED.

Gotta get up for another adventure tomorrow!

Sunday, July 20: Une grande flânerie

This morning I wanted to get out early and go over the route for my Tuesday field trip a second time. The first time I psyched myself out thinking that getting off at a different metro stop would be "better" when in fact it made my destination much harder to find. Lesson learned: Just do it the way everyone else does! The 5th arrondissement is very pleasant and peaceful at 9:30 a.m. on a Sunday. On the side streets you could hear people's televisions and radios playing softly out their open windows, the window boxes were blooming, and the weather was very mild. I got to the Grand Mosquée quickly, noted the directions in detail, and walked from there to the Arènes de Lutèce. There I was surprised to see the Sapeurs-Pompiers de Paris playing 7-a-side soccer. The game looked quasi-official: they were all wearing matching t-shirts and one team had on fluorescent vests to distinguish them from the other. Maybe there is a Sapeurs-Pompiers league and they were scrimmaging?

Leaving the soccer game behind, I smelled fresh baked goods and followed my nose to a boulangerie for a chausson aux pommes--croissant-type pastry dough with applesauce filling, my new favorite pastry. At the boulangerie an American lady was ordering about 6 pastries and 4 cups of coffee. I wondered where she was going to take them, and how, and whether I should tell her that if she's going to order quantities by holding up fingers she should learn the French way of doing it: thumb first, then fingers--an American "2" is likely to look like a French "3," not that extra croissants are a bad thing.

I put my pastry in my bag (poor choice; it got crushed and made my wallet a bit greasy) for the metro ride to my next destination, viz. the vicinity of Notre Dame where I was trying to find a souvenir to send my my beloved Daniel. Due to circumstances, I have an unused "Postexport" envelope, which is a prepaid bubble-wrap envelope that you can use to send something under 250g anywhere in the world. I knew what I wanted to send because I saw it before but didn't buy it on the spot, so I sort of had to wrack my memory to work back to the right souvenir shop. On the way I slid through Notre Dame cathedral thinking I would attend Mass, but it was 11:00 and the next Mass was the international mass at 11:30, which already promised to be packed. I did learn, however, that when a Mass is upcoming the cathedral staff opens a separate entrance for those going to Mass rather than just visiting the cathedral. Pro tip: there is nothing other than fear of divine retribution (or the possibility of spoiling it for everyone) to stop you from using the Mass entrance and then visiting the cathedral instead.

From souvenir-buying and not-Mass-attending, I walked past the Hôtel de Ville (where the FNAC Festival was already sound-checking at noon for an 8 p.m. start time) to the Centre Pompidou and cruised that area a bit. I went completely around my elbow and kept ending up at Arts & Métiers when I was trying to go to the Place de Vosges. Finally I got fed up and took the metro to Bastille partially just to have a chance to sit down. It turned out to be a good choice--or happy accident--because I discovered the big street market that takes place at Bastille on Saturdays (and Thursdays, the Internet tells me). I could have walked out of there with fish, produce, jewelry, scarves, olives, a marinère, pork chops, men's socks, a new bra, and a fedora. Oh, and some Marseillaise soap.

But I exercised restraint and arrived in the Place de Vosges at last, where gelato was duly ordered and consumed. All due respect to Berthillon ice cream but I go out of my way for Amorino gelato instead. It was a pretty afternoon but some forbidding clouds were piling up. As I walked through the Marais, which was thronging, it started to rain. I stopped into a couple of stores (Lush has been calling my name) but got worried that the skies would really open up. I returned to the Hôtel de Ville, got back on the metro, and was back to home base around the time our students started getting out and about for the afternoon. Talked to Daniel on Skype, worked on my class for tomorrow, answered some email, ate dinner, and soon enough it will be time for bed. Where do the days go?

Click through for pics--I took a few with my phone.

Wednesday, July 16 and Thursday, July 17: Day at the office

I pass over these two days in relative silence as I was mostly
(a) teaching.
(b) tending to issues I can't discuss in detail for confidentiality reasons.
(c) preparing next week's field trip, which I will post about when it happens.

I also made a multiple-choice quiz today; can you tell?

It is hot in Paris today, folks. I got sunburned scouting my field trip and I've drunk a ton of water today.

Relative to (b) I can tell you that I am getting better and less terrified about speaking French on the phone due to repeated, forced exposure and practice. Today I had to take down phone numbers someone was giving me, which is like a pop quiz. French phone numbers look like this:

01 44 37 16 93

You don't say the individual digits like Americans do; instead, you read them like this: zero one, forty-four, thirty-seven, sixteen, ninety-three. Except ninety-three in French is quatre-vingt-treize, "four twenties and thirteen."  An additional problem is that I don't know the number to my "official" phone. It is taped to the back of the phone on a piece of paper (because I am quatre-vingt years old, apparently) but that's no good when I'm making a call on that phone and someone asks for the number. Luckily, in 2014, it seems to be the case that not knowing your own phone number is relatively normal.

Tomorrow may be more of the same as today and yesterday. I'll try to rustle up some good photos or amusing anecdotes to share. Maybe "Jambon" (the cat at our classroom building! He is still around since last year! I was so happy to see him.) will be around tomorrow. Every blog needs kitty pics, right?

First day of classes. Horses. Groceries. Mobile phones.

When we last left our heroine she was trying not to fall asleep on a bus. You will be pleased to learn that the effort was successful. I made it to 10 p.m. last night for a total of 34 hours without (almost without) sleep. This accomplishment was only made possible by the massive level of activity that yesterday demanded. Being a site director is very rewarding but very busy. We're always working on current situations and keeping an eye out for future opportunities or problems. I am pretty proud of myself, not just for high-powered sleep deprivation but also for taking the lead on checking students into our building and other acts of Francophone interaction. This year we are split between 2 maisons. I am in Maison des Étudiants de l'Asie du Sud-Est. The house is very pretty on the outside and nice inside as well. I have a huge desk, more shelves than I can use, and a big beautiful tree outside my window. We got checked in last night in record time, took the students on a VERY short tour of their immediate surroundings, went to dinner, ran over to the Institut Protestant de Théologie (our classroom building) to show some new faculty members where it is, and by the time I made it back from that trip it was time to call Mom & Dad and then go to bed!

This morning started early: I walked a group of students over to IPT at 7:40 before teaching my class at 8:30. It was a beautiful clear, chilly morning that turned into a very warm afternoon, really a perfect day for running around town. Worked in the program office after class, had a nice outdoor faculty meeting in the back courtyard, and then managed to beg off for a few hours to get some much-needed groceries and stuff for my room. After a little bit of excess walking I got to Carrefour, where I managed to remember to buy lotion and sunscreen and thus save myself about 20€ over buying them in a pharmacie. (I do love pharmacies, though. They are oddly clinical and posh at the same time.) On the way back I stopped in at Bazar de Porte d'Orleans, a totally necessary but very weird store of a kind seen frequently in Paris. It's like a dollar store crossed with a garage sale, where you can buy one spoon, an incense burner, a 3€ bath towel, and a cell phone cover in a store about the size of my dorm room here. While the cashier was ringing me up I noticed a piece of Arabic calligraphy on the wall behind her and we had a little conversation about Ramadan and whether fasting is difficult. She says "If you have the will power to do it, you really don't think about it after a while." That is some serious strength of mind, especially since the days are so long here. She said she can only eat between about 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. I couldn't do it, especially not here where we walk so much.

Finally I had to return to IPT to meet students who wanted to go to the Orange store to get phones/SIM cards. It turned out to be a large group and a small store. After taking the first few students inside and using my best translation skills it became clear that another approach was needed. We encouraged independent research followed by a return to the store in a smaller group. God bless the gentleman that waited on us. Customer service gets a bad rap in France but everyone I've dealt with the past two days has been a gem. The front desk staff in our maison has already seen too much of me and been very kind. The lady at the post office gave me directions and was only a little skeptical when I asked if I could use a card without a chip in the ATM machine. (La Banque Postale is a subsidiary of the French postal service--could be something for the USPS to consider as a solution to their liquidity problem!)

Funny things from today:

• On Boulevard Jourdan near Cité U. I saw four large vans (like tour buses but without windows) whose livery indicated that they carried horses. One specified that it contained the horses belonging to Qatar's national equestrian team. I was glad I saw them because it reminded me that I'd seen an equestrian event advertised. Some Googling got me to Paris Eiffel Jumping, which is this weekend and which unfortunately is sold out. Quel bummer! 
• I was asked for directions twice today. Why does this continue to happen?

In short, everything is happening and nothing is happening. It's a million small things a day. To be honest, when I agreed to be site director I was not sure I was ready for it, but having that challenge to rise to is good for me. Pushing myself to wade in and take care of things is good for my confidence. And having been here before makes a huge difference. I'm surprised at how much I remember from last year without even having to try. 

We are all excited for tomorrow evening when we have a dinner cruise on the Seine. Can't wait to get my camera out! Photos incoming!

An Average Parisian Day

I've been meaning to do this for ages and finally got around to it on our last day of classes. Here is my day in pictures. 

Wake up & get ready in my room.

Walk down to the RER station.

Await the train.

CROWDED.

Crossing Place Denfert-Rochereau on the way to the Institut Protestant de Théologie where our classes are held:

Breakfast!

I always wonder where people go when they disappear through doorways. This is the doorway through which I disappear.

The front courtyard at IPT:

Up to my classroom. This is where I am for most of the day.

If not in class I'm in the faculty office:

The resident cat at IPT. Several of the students have given him various names; one calls him Jambon because she feeds him some of her ham sandwich at lunchtime. So I call him Jambon also.

Get the train back at the end of my afternoon class.

Today I did some work on the terrace of the café at Cité U.

Then I had to go into the library to use a computer there. While there I picked up Le Point (Newsweek-type magazine) to read about "Better Living with Aristotle and Plato." (Only in France where philosophy features on high school graduation exams.)

Dinner at FIAP Jean Monnet, another student residence, because our cafeteria is closed for renovations.

Walking back from FIAP as the sun begins to think about maybe setting in another hour or two. (This was around 8:30.)

And so to bed.

Maps Promiscuously Read

Another good day in the classroom today. Yesterday's Bibliothèque Nationale visit dovetailed nicely with today's discussion of Milton's Areopagitica. Of course, no one on a Study Abroad trip can reasonably "praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue" so Milton was a pretty easy sell to this crowd. Afternoon class wrapped up our regular class days with a discussion of an article about the version of France that appears in French cinema. Most students know more about movies than I do, so I'm always happy to learn from them. We came up with some interesting questions about uses of language in movie titles. Why is The Hangover retitled in France as Very Bad Trip? Why was the Edith Piaf biopic La Môme changed to La Vie En Rose for English-speaking audiences? Inquiring minds want to know!

When classes got out, I felt a little tired and out of sorts for some reason, so I went to a café to regroup and decide what to do for the afternoon. The past two days I've been working in my room in the afternoons so today I decided to go out. It was a little late to hit a museum so I thought I'd make my way to Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Hausmann. GL is one of the "grands magasins" that the area is known for--in fact it is probably the best-known and certainly the most posh of the lot. I got there slowly; had a little trouble remembering the exact location and I only had my small Métro map so I had to triangulate a bit. But I was not in a hurry and it was a good geography exercise. I did find that I need to get a Métro map with streets on it. Just as Tour Guide Josh predicted, you start out with the plain Métro map from RATP and pretty soon you graduate to Paris Avec Rues. Dr. Winchester thinks I should buy a Plan de Paris book--it's like a London A to Z (or a Mapsco for you Dallas types). Not sure I would get the most out of it since I still mostly use the Métro.

So at length I arrived at Galeries Lafayette and had my breath taken away at least 3 times. First, it is full of high-end designer brands. Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Prada, Gucci, and many more. Those really premium names each have their own separate niche within the store and they can control how many people they let into their niche at a time. There were lines outside Chanel and Longchamp but barely anyone at YSL or Dior. I did not go to visit any of them--what if I found the perfect handbag or sweater but it turned out to be €6000? Second surprise, it is full of people. Of course it is a tourist attraction and les soldes are still going on, so what did I expect? I did not expect visitors with their suitcases as if just coming from or going to the airport. Third, it is a beautiful space. 6 floors whose elaborate, gilded balconies overlook the ground floor, with an incredible stained-glass cupola overhead. Very "light and bright and sparkling" as Jane Austen said. I did not buy anything although I did check out a perfume display (Acqua di Parma) and had a nice chat en français with the saleswoman about the different fragrances (Parisian Accomplishment). This is a good way to practice your French--perfume talk is heavy on adjectives. Luckily for my wallet the scent I liked best on the sample card dried down on my skin to smell exactly like Dial deodorant soap. 

Near the end of my visit I was looking around for a snack bar or similar and followed the signs all the way up to the top level. The signs said "8th floor" but it is actually an open, Astroturfed roof deck with seating areas and a mind-boggling view of the city. That alone made the whole trip worthwhile and makes me want to go back. The only thing you can't see is Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre and if my mental navigation is right (HAhahahaha) the view of it is blocked by the store itself.

It was close to dinner time when I got ready to leave, so I wanted to take a more direct route back. From the roof deck I spotted an RER station, made my way down to it, and got back to "my" side of town in good time. Tomorrow I'm taking my afternoon class on a walking tour of Montmartre from the Michelin Green Guide. I had better rest up--Montmartre is steep!

Another Parisian Accomplishment: found myself speaking French on my cell phone while standing on a train platform this morning. You know, like you do.

The Hangover, Part (July) 14

I'm afraid Bastille Day celebrations took a certain toll on the student body last night. Apparently the Métro was so crowded after the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower that it took forever for everyone to get back. But 8:30 classes come around just the same. Fortunately the coffee here is strong and, if you know where to look, cheap. A €1 espresso will set you right for at least 4 hours. My students survived the day; we are headed next to our program meeting at 5 and then to our new cafeteria destination, the FIAP Jean Monnet. FIAP is an international education complex kind of like Cité U. In fact, the EC Paris program has been housed there in the past but Dr. Guglielmi (program director) says Cité U. Is nicer and less expensive. The only drawback this year is that Cité U. has closed its "Resto-U" (restaurant universitaire, i.e., cafeteria) for renovations. So for the next 3 weeks we are eating at FIAP a couple of nights a week and getting pizza, sandwiches, etc. delivered to Cité on the other nights. It's kind of a roundabout solution but it will work. I'll be interested to see the quality of food at FIAP. Cité U. was obviously cleaning out the pantry shelves by the end of last week and we found ourselves eating some slightly peculiar things: large quantities of buttered noodles, wax beans (made from actual wax?), frozen breaded fish fillets, etc. Of course, next year's crew will have none of these worries as the renovations will be done and they'll be able to eat at Cité the entire time. And I trust that the food there will be proportionately better as well.

In other news I am very excited that my "Dangerous Liaisons" class is going along with my harebrained scheme to add another novel to our syllabus. Last week at Shakespeare & Co. I bought Adam Biles's first novel, Grey Cats, and devoured it in 14 seconds. It is another expatriate-in-Paris story but with mysterious post-apocalyptic overtones. I was hoping they'd agree to read it so we could all go to Biles's launch party at S&Co. on the 26th and then discuss the novel at our last class meeting. They said they were interested so we are going for it. I'm also welcoming the chance to read the book again. One of the cover blurbs said you will want to start it again immediately after finishing, and that's totally true!

British Lit. class goes to the Jardin de Luxembourg tomorrow and I have cooked up a little assignment involving the garden, their cameras, and Shakespeare's sonnets. We'll see what results. I haven't yet spent any time there on this trip so I am looking forward to the visit as well as the class activity. 

What else? Ah yes--Parisian Accomplishments of the Day:

-- Found post office, used self-service stamp machine, got stamp, posted letter.

-- Stared down a small van trying to cut me off at a crosswalk. 

-- Got asked for directions. Not sure this is an accomplishment exactly, but it Just. Keeps. Happening.

Time to get ready for program meeting. À bientôt!

There's only one thing that I know how to do well

Today was a regular class day plus a faculty meeting at lunchtime and a program meeting coming up at 5 pm. My classes are going well and, in fact, doing parts of my job for me. My Special Topics class ("Dangerous Liaisons: Anglophone Cultures and France") had two short pieces of reading for today, but I had gotten a day ahead of myself and prepared for Wednesday's class on The Sun Also Rises. I had no notes at all on today's reading! So after some general discussion of various impressions and experiences I set the class to review both pieces and pick out the ideas they would want to highlight if they were teaching the material to a class themselves. It is a small group (5 students--small class sizes are a side benefit of study abroad) so this approach worked well; I knew we'd have time to review everyone's conclusions. They re-read everything, made and compared notes, and finally shared their best ideas. The two readings were really disparate (an essay by G. K. Chesterton and an interview from TheHairpin.com) but we found that they highlighted the same idea about experiencing a foreign culture: that slavish imitation is risky and staying true to yourself is best for a number of reasons. I hope wearing a scarf a lot more often is not too slavish. I am still true to myself but I'm true to myself with a scarf on!

During lunch we started talking about next year's trip--I can't believe we are already planning it. It looks like the dates will be roughly the same as this year's but we may structure the first week a bit differently. We are also hoping to add more students to the program. This year, there was a wait list and some students were turned away.

This afternoon after classes I looked up a post office online and went to mail my postcards. Unfortunately the automated machines would only take coins (I didn't have enough coins) or a credit card with an embedded microchip. These cards are common in Europe but only beginning to be available in the US. I was able to get one from Bank of America but not my local credit union. Most of the time I've been able to use my regular debit card with no problem; however, you occasionally run into a card machine--like the ones at la poste--that will only take a chipped card. So I'm waiting till tonight when I can go to the one at Cité and either pay in notes or use my other card. I've been following the advice that it's best to carry as little cash and as few cards as you can get away with. Good advice but with occasional inconveniences attending.

I've also been working on planning my day trip to Caen with the help of Nicole's friend Françoise. She called me earlier today and when I called her back she passed along some facts and figures about the sights we could see in Caen. About 4 students have said they are interested in going with me and I think that's a perfect size for a group. We will probably go to the Abbaye aux Hommes where William the Conqueror is buried, maybe to the Abbaye aux Dames, possibly to the château to see Impressionist art (although Françoise says the best Impressionist art is in Rouen), and hopefully out to Ouistreham to see the Atlantic coast from the other side. She is sending me the opening hours and prices for everything and then we'll have to see how much we can squeeze into a day. The train journey is only 2.5 hours so if we leave a bit early and come back a bit late we'll have plenty of time.

Program meeting is in 15 minutes and I'm desperate for a snack, so I'm going to go and look for either a fruit stand or a vending machine. Have not been able to do pictures today but don't give up hope; it will happen! À bientôt!

Ooh, ooh! Did I tell you I am going to the ballet on Wednesday? SO EXCITED.

Practice Visit

I should have guessed I'd be a good fit for teaching in Study Abroad because I am a big believer in the Practice Visit. I come by this belief honestly: My parents are homebodies who don't like surprises (I am a homebody who doesn't like surprises; let's not kid ourselves.) so when I was a kid, if we had to go somewhere unfamiliar (like maybe a new doctor's office or something) we'd drive over a day or two beforehand to see where it was.

Study Abroad endorses and encourages Practice Visits. Yesterday we practiced going to the IPT (our classroom building), so this morning everyone knew how to get there and was right on time.  The classrooms are very nice: tables in a square like an American "seminar room" with big windows and a good-sized white board. I enjoyed the first day of classes and I hope my students did too. It is interesting to work on connections between what you're reading and what you're experiencing.  Everyone had something smart to say, which is the best possible outcome! 

I have a 2.5-hour break between classes (it's a nice schedule, I'm not gonna lie) so after my AM class I walked out and had coffee in a randomly chosen café. Drank it standing at the counter and felt massively Parisian.  Must quit café crème in favor of regular coffee, though. Un crème is a little pricey (but so delicious!). After my coffee break I walked around some more just to see what was in the quartier. It is not a tourist area at all so it was full of regular people doing regular stuff, which is one of my favorite things in Paris. Pretending to be a local is fun--I don't know why! But it does lead to being asked for directions, which happened to me twice today. I helped the first lady, who was on the correct street but did not seem to know how house numbers work, but the second guy asked me for a particular street and of course I did not know it. He was nice about it, though. Parisians have a huge reputation for rudeness and of course some people are rude (often occasioning mutterings from other locals) but nearly everyone I've encountered has been lovely. If they are not lovely they are at least polite, which is good enough. 

As soon as afternoon classes ended I set out on another Practice Visit, this time to Versailles where my class is going tomorrow.  The train ride was slow--through inattention I did not get on an express, so we stopped at every station between St Michel-Notre Dame and Versailles Rive Gauche. But even with that mistake the whole trip only took 75 minutes door to door, which was about what I estimated. After walking up to the palace gates and being reminded that holy moly, Versailles is enormous, I headed back toward the station. On the way in I'd passed a small courtyard (and its many promotional signs), the Cour de Senteurs (Courtyard of Scents?). So on the way out, I went in and discovered that it's 4 little shops: a restaurant called Le Nôtre after the gardener who designed Versailles' gardens; a glove shop (!!!); a Dyptique shop (fancy candles, €€€€€), and Guerlain which of course is perfume. Guerlain was a really pretty store, and I like perfume, so I went in and chatted with one of the saleswomen for a few minutes. They have an exclusive fragrance at that location (don't they just), called "Versailles." It is lovely and of course it is €210! Ah well. It was a nice little experience to make me feel like I was off the clock!

Back at Cité I went to the grocery store again (forgot dish soap yesterday) and I've finally found a grocery that I like. It's called G20 (no idea) and behind its narrow and slightly grubby facade is a ton of selection. Ended up getting a bag of salad (quote from a colleague: "If I don't eat a vegetable soon I'm afraid of what might happen"), salad dressing, and a bottle of Badoit Rouge (fizzy water that I like) in addition to my dish soap. And I had my Georgia Public Broadcasting reusable bag in my tote so I felt validated in having brought it. Probably the only exemplar ever to visit Paris--I need to take a photo and send it in!

More tomorrow . . . stay tuned!