Ma Vie à Paris: Consider Yourself Informed.

Whew. It's been a while.

So much has happened since last week that I don't even know where to begin. When we left off I was still cell-phone-less, homeless, and hair-dryer-less. The first two have been remedied, and the third one...we'll get to that.

I found a room in a family apartment in the 4th arrondissment, The Marais. To give you a good idea of how lucky I am to be living in the Marais, I'll relay some of the reactions I've received to this information.

From other people on the program:

"skank"

"bitch"

"uhhhhh luckyyyyyy"

and from Pauline, my one French friend:

"how much are you paying?!"

I live with a woman named Laurence and her son, Camille. We're on the 5th floor without an elevator, but the apartment is so cute and comfortable that I don't care. I don't know if I'll find/be able to afford any hot yoga classes here, but climbing all those stairs is basically the same thing, right? Laurence has had 3 other exchange students, including another from UT, so she's a pro by now. I'll eat with them most nights but I'm pretty much on my own for other meals -- I'll probably be a frequent diner at the CROUS, student-cafeterias in Paris where you can get a 3 course meal for 3 euros. Sweet!

I'm very close to my metro stop, which is on line 7, same line as my (current and future) university. 7 also stops at Chatelet Les Halles, an enormous under/aboveground shopping mall + metro/RER stop, as well as at Opéra. I guess that'll be nice for the one or two times I splurge on tickets :)

Oh, and in case you're still wondering, I'll be using Madame Dubaut's hairdryer.

I also got a cell phone for 1 euro when I signed a contract for a plan. Not bad. The cell-phone-setting-up process was interesting...at least the guy was patient. Patient enough to explain to me, at one point, that 24 months equals 2 years, and also that 38 minus 6 equals 32. Knowledge!

MICEFA - the non-profit office that organized french/american exchanges - has organized several outings for us.

We took a boat-ride on the Seine:

We visited the Hotel de Ville, where the Mayor of Paris works, lives, and receives guests. There are actually 21 mayors in Paris - there is a mayor for each of the 20 arrondissments, and then there is the Maire de Paris, who is in charge of the entire city. Outside of Hotel de Ville is the Place de Grève. A grève is a marshy embankment, but it also the french word for strike, since workers, over the centuries, have gotten into the habit of gathering here when, and not if, they go on strike.

Friday night, we went to the Lapin Agile, french for the "agile rabbit", a cabaret that's been going sine 1860. It's a pretty artsy/intellectual spot, frequented by Picasso in his day. Steve Martin wrote a play called "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" in which he imagined a meeting between Einstein and Picasso there. I couldn't find anything to confirm this, but it seems this would have been the kind of venue/was the venue where Edith Piaf sang her heart out. There was a woman performing last Friday that sounded just like Piaf. The show was pretty entertaining, but it goes until 2AM, and the Metro stops a lot earlier than that, so we had to sneak out early.

I think this also might be in the book "1000 Places to See Before You Die", since they had a quote from it's author in the brochure. Only 999 more places to go!

I've also managed to check out all the major shopping venues in the last week, which should come in handy when I'm actually in the mood to buy stuff (read: during the huge sales in January, when I'll be relying on shopping to pull me out of my bad-weather-induced misery/depression. Winter's coming, I know it). Pauline played the part of the girlfriend/shopping buddy so well as we schlepped around Chatelet Les Halles and Rue du Rivoli in search of the perfect purse/bookbag (found it!) and sunglasses (more difficult to find, since, as Pauline says, there wont be any sun in like 3 weeks). I spent way too many hours yesterday in the Galeries Lafayette, a collection of designer boutiques packed into a 8-story (or more?) department store. Regard:

So that brings us up to today, which was a good day!

Anja, a german girl I know from Austin (she was doing an exchange and lived in my co-op) is now doing an internship in Paris. She suggested we go to the Parc Floral de Paris, a huge park with indoor- and outdoor-gardens, butterfly and bonsai houses, lots of space for picnics (a word and custom that the french seems to adore), playgrounds for the kids, space for conventions, and outdoor concert hall, and (probably) more that we didn't see. I don't know much about flowers, but it seemed like the ones we saw here were much different from any I've seen in gardens in the States:

Or maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

Wandering around the park, we stumbled upon a "gastronomie" fair, where vendors from all over France had set up booths to sell their wine, apéritifs, cheese, chocolate, smoked and raw meat, champagne, macaroons, etc. I think everyone could tell we were "starving students" who wouldn't buy anything, but we (mainly Anja) prodded them into giving us lots of free samples anyway. My favorite was the melon-flavored apéritif, which tasted better than it might sound. Most of the cheese counters were strangely quiet, and although everyone wanted to try some wine or champagne, macaroons were definitely the item of the hour.

You could smell this huge booth boasting dozens of spices from a couple rows away.

After we ate our fill of free food and drink, we headed over to the Chateau de Vincennes, occasional home to French royalty over the centuries. It's also the place where several infamous enemies of the state where kept, including the Diderot and the Marquis de Sade (we get the word "sadism" from this guy, who was imprisoned at the Chateau twice: once for outrageous behavior in a brothel and again for poisoning a prostitute!). Mata Hari faced a firing squad there in 1917. I think the French armed forces maintain offices in the Chateau today.