Il Neige à Paris!

When I woke up at 7:15 this morning, it was snowing! It was so pretty and I was excited to see the city draped in a blanket of snow. It was so pretty, in fact, that I didn't consider the fact that the temperature would probably warm up and the falling snow would become rain and the snow on the ground would become dirty, watery mush. Smart Ellie. I realized on my way to the metro that I should have brought my umbrella, and that I should probably try to find some rain boots.

The view from my apartment this morning at 7:45am.

The courtyard behind our apartment this morning- practically untouched!

Snow in Paris is really rare- our teacher said it only happens every couple of years. It didn't slow the city down too much- there was a guy shoveling snow outside of our apartment building, the metro still ran, cars still drove like normal (which isn't very good in the first place), and women still wore their stilettos. That was the best- watching women pick their way through the snow in their stiletto heels. Haha!

So Saturday was a day of rest for me- I slept till 12:30 and finally went outside when I was going to my friends' apartment in South Paris for the night (like I did last week). This time, things were smoother. I knew exactly where to go and how to go about doing it. I also wore my moccasins rather than heels to wander around the Quartier Latin (the area around the Sorbonne University) with my friends later that night. We ate dinner at the apartment and then headed out. We met some American guys who were studying in Paris, but that made everything messy because rather than having an already large and obviously American group of 6 girls, we had a huge group of like 14 Americans. I skirted the issue by befriending the first foreigners I found at the bar we went to- Welsh karate fighters!

Two guys, 18 and 19, and one girl, 20, were in town for the European Karate Championships over the weekend with their trainers. They were just drinking cokes at the bar, so I kind of think they had gone out to find a place where they could watch the Championships on TV (why else would there have been karate matches on the TV at this bar?). The guys, Rhys and Jordan, were from Swansea (the second biggest city in Wales, apparently) and the girl, Alice, was from Cardiff. At first I thought they were Irish, and that offended them. But they actually said that they dislike the English the most, so I guess it's good that I called them Irish? They started teaching me Welsh phrases, like
-something that sounded like "Oy-teen charrrrret kom reich?" (roll the r) which means "Do you speak Welsh?" and is apparently actually spelled "Wyt ti yn siarad Cymraeg?" to which the response can be "Ydy" (yes I do, pronounced "ee-do"). I think you say "nag" for no.
-someone in a group might yell "All-a-best?!" and everyone else in the group responds "Pants and (bloody) vest!" This reminded me of the Cockney rhyming slang we read about before going to England.
-To say "what's up?" you would say "What's occurrrrrin'?" again, rolling the r and going up with your voice at the end.

That's about all I can recall right now, but I'm pretty happy with that. They thought it was funny that when I wanted an affirmation from them, I said "right?" at the end of my sentence. I was confused as to what else you'd say, but they said they would say "yeh?" at the end. It was also funny to hear them try to do my accent. I realized how stupid I must sound when I try to do their accent!

Anyways, Alice and I are friends on facebook now, and one of my friends from Paris and I might possibly try to go to Cardiff if there happen to be any cheap flights. If all the Welsh are like the people we met, it should be a lot of fun!

Around 1am, my friend Nikki, who goes to Villanova in Philadelphia, and I decided to go home and go to bed so we could get up for the 8:30am Mass at Notre Dame.

Notre Dame at 1:30 in the morning

We walked towards where we thought the metro station was, and voila! There's Notre Dame! She had never seen it before up close and was really in awe, as I always am. So we ended up walking over to Ile-de-la-Cité and taking pictures and walking around it. It was all lit up and absolutely magnificent. Then we took the metro to her homestay and slept till 7:30am, when we got up to go to mass.

Notre Dame at 8:30 in the morning

The girl in the black is me! Just think about how big that makes Notre Dame!

Mass at Notre Dame was really cool. Behind the altar there are beautiful stained-glass windows that were illuminated by the sun rising behind them. The whole thing was, of course, in French, but they had a bulletin with the Bible passages and chants and things in French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish, so I read the French versions while they were read, and the English (and the German and Italian) during communion. I was able to follow along pretty well. Afterward, Nikki and I got crêpes and dropped my overnight bag off at her place.

Then we went up to the Marché aux Puces de St. Ouen, the flea markets at St. Ouen, which had been recommended to me by our waiter at my family's favorite restaurant in Austin, Chez Nous. We met my friends Sarah and Devin up there, but they got there earlier than us and decided it wasn't what they were expecting and wanted to leave. They were disappointed by the fact that it all seemed to be knock-off bags and cheap clothing, and they didn't like being hassled by all the vendors. They left to go to the Musée D'Orsay (free because it was the first Sunday of the month), but I had read that the actual markets are beyond the knock-off stalls and the périphérique (the highway that defines Paris), so Nikki and I went off in search of the markets. We passed dozens of stalls selling all the cheap junk you can get on Canal Street in New York City, until we finally decided to turn off the main road and back into some alleys. We knew we were in the right place when we saw old, beautiful wooden tables and chairs, jewelry, paintings, mirrors, and other such things. These weren't temporary stalls either; they were in little storage buildings that were covered in plants, if I remember right. Nikki and I had a great time wandering around this market, which somehow was completely separate from the knock-off area. We were there for probably and hour and didn't get to see nearly all of it. I loved it! I saw tons of stuff I would love to have, but how would I ever get it home? Ha I guess I'll worry about that if I ever really decide to get that stuff. But I would definitely recommend going to the Marché aux Puces if you ever go to Paris.

Then Nikki and I got back on the metro yet again to go meet Sarah and Devin at the Musée D'Orsay, the impressionist/20th century art museum housed in an old incredibly train station. Not only was it free to enter, but it was also the last day of an exhibit on Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (the lunch on the grass) and Picasso's studies of Manet's work. The line was really long, but we got in quickly and it was totally worth it! Sarah knew a lot about both artists' work, so it was really cool to go through the exhibit with her. I'm going back to the Orsay on Thursday for a tour with IES, so I'll probably say more about it after that.

After the Orsay, Nikki and I grabbed some lunch at a little Greek place in the Latin Quarter, where a pigeon thought it was totally acceptable to wander all the way in to the restaurant and under peoples' feet. Disgusting. But I was exhausted by this time, so I was just happy to have some hardy lamb and fries. I got to the metro to go home and I thought my Navigo pass had expired, but I didn't have the whole 55,10 euros to recharge it for the month, so I ended up buying a single ticket and going home to an apartment full of grandchildren! One of the Schumachers' granddaughters, Chloé, has la varicelle (the chicken pox), and I had forgotten how many spots one gets when one has the chicken pox! Chloé and Axle, her cousin, wandered around the apartment yelling things that I'm pretty sure didn't even make sense in French. It was pretty cute.

Today I had the whole snow thing, and then after school went with Sarah, Nikki, and some other girls to the financial district of Paris at La Défense to go to what we had heard was a huge French Walmart type place called Auchun. The financial district looks like every other big city's financial district, except the architechture was really cool (see the picture of the building below- I think the floor in the middle part is all glass, and you can take an elevator up the scaffolding).

Auchun was in a huge mall that didn't have any American stores in it, so that was fun to walk through. I didn't really buy anything, but it was fun to go along. Now I'm at the apartment smelling something delicious wafting up the stairs. I'm sure it will be included in a future blog.

Adieu,
Ellie