L'étrange histoire d'Ellie Nash (the foreign story of Ellie Nash)

Thursday evening, right after I wrote that last blog, I went to another orchestral/choral concert with Nicté waaay down in South Paris, outside of the Periphérique at Cité Université. Nicté wants to join the chorus (in which a coordinator from IES sings), so she was invited to the concert and managed to get me a ticket as well. This orchestra and chorus was also made up of amateurs, who were all very good, but I thought the musical selection did not allow their talents to be displayed at their best. It was all really modern stuff and it was full of soloists who took away from the chorus and orchestra we had come to see. The Schumann piece in the second half was a lot better than the first half, but by that time I had gotten really ansy.

Friday was even prettier than Thursday! It was around 50 degrees and sunny- amazing! So I went with my friends Cathy and Nikki towards the Eiffel Tower. We found a boulangerie (bakery) and a grocery store right next to each other a few blocks away that weren't overpriced. I bought a Pinky Lady pomme (apple), some fromage camambert (camambert cheese), a baguette, and jus du pamplemousse (grapefruit juice) all for around 4.50 euros. We walked over to the Tower and ate at a bench nearby, taking in the day.

Our view of the Eiffel Tower from our lunch spot.

Then we walked around a little more until we came to a monument to peace near the École Militaire (Military School) on the opposite end of the Champs du Mars from the Eiffel Tower.

Peace Monument on the Champs du Mars

It was still a little chilly, but it was wonderful to be outside! Then we got on the metro and went to the Place de l'Opéra (where the Paris Opera House is! as well as the National School of Music) and tried to take advantage of the final days of the massive soldes de Janvier (January sales). I found a black and pink shirt/tunic/dress thing for around 6 euros, so I'm content. I just need to figure out exactly how to wear it...

Nikki and I went back to her place to hang out for awhile before we all got together that evening. We bought some more baguette and cheese (édam, for those who are interested, which is a mild smoky cheese that you can find at any cheap grocery store) and some wine. Also, look at the fun things I found at the little grocery store:

French cereal selection- I particularly like the idea of Nestlé Crunch Cereal...

Dr. Pepper!

We hung out at her place for awhile and then headed over to Sarah and Devin's apartment, which is a ten minute walk away, expecting to leave soon to go to the Nocturne (free night for students) at the Louvre. No one was really ready to go and people were kind of on the fence about going. Devin had seven (seven!) of her Penn State sorority sisters visiting her from Florence, and getting that whole group to get up and go was a little hard. Sarah had just gotten in from Dijon, where she had spent the day with a friend and bought me some peach and chili mustard (interesting combo, I haven't tried it yet), so she was pretty tired. Nikki and I finally just decided to go ahead and go to the Louvre since it was already 8:30ish, and meet the other girls after.

Nikki and I got to the Louvre right at 9 and went over to the entrance at the Pyramide du Louvre. The guard there told us that no one was allowed to enter after 9pm. We thought that was stupid because the website said the Louvre was open to students under 26 from 6-10pm on Friday nights, and we told him to inform his manager of that, which he shrugged off. Disappointed, we instead took lots of pictures of the plaza at the Louvre, and then were pleased to see the flash bulbs go off on the Eiffel Tower at 10.

La Pyramide at the Louvre

We decided that we were content for the moment to just have gone to the Louvre and made the best of our time there. However, when we got to the closest metro, we were informed that the metro line we wanted to take closed at 10pm but only at that station. Frustrating!!! We just seemed to be running about five minutes too late for everything that night! We ended up taking another metro on a roundabout route, and arrived to the bar, Frog and Princess in Saint-Germain-Des-Prés, safe and sound. We had been hoping this bar would maybe have some more locals, but it was mostly Americans and other foreign students. It was fun, and we did eventually meet some French people, but it wasn't exactly what I had hoped for.

We all left around 12:30am and headed to the metro. Mind you, this was a group of about 12 American girls. Needless to say, we stuck out. When we got to the metro, each of the seven Penn State sorority girls bought a vending machine snack. I almost never see anyone buying stuff from the vending machines, so it was just amusing to watch all seven girls buy things- kit kats, lays potato chips, etc. etc. Then they spoke loud English the whole ride back. No one was hurt or mugged or pickpocketed, but I feel like these girls were very obvious targets.

Nikki and I got back to her apartment and hung out for awhile, eating a bar of milk chocolate I had bought earlier in the day (not from the vending machine!). Right after we got into our beds (she has a trundle bed, which is so convenient!), we started hearing a scratching noise coming from about three feet away from our feet. I waited a moment before asking Nikki if it was her or not. She said it wasn't and she asked if it was me. Nooo it wasn't me. We immediately turned on the lights and jumped up on our beds. I ended up crawling onto her bureau and desk to peek behind her bureau, where I swear I saw a piece of crumpled up paper moving. I used a wire hanger to pick up the paper, which was chewed up. We also saw a decent sized hole in the wall where the pipes came in. We tried making some excuses for why the noise and paper and hole could have happened, but we did finally plug up the hole and set out an old-fashioned mouse trap she found in her bathroom (which, might I say, are pretty tricky little things- they snap as soon as you set them down!). Nikki named the mouse Desperogal (like Despereaux, a French mouse explorer movie), and we tried to get some sleep with our new company.

Saturday at noon we had an IES Welcome Lunch at Guy Martin Atelier, an upscale restaurant owned by Guy Martin (some famous chef?) where we made our own lunch (so Top Chef!)! It was fun and all in French- always good- but fenouil (fennel) was the main ingredient! Anyone who knows my dad and me knows that fennel (from the same plant as cilantro) is NOT the way to my heart! Fennel, in France, is a really popular winter vegetable, which super sucks in my opinion. My host family asked me at the beginning of my stay here what I didn't like to eat, and the only thing I told them I refused to eat was cilantro, which they didn't get until I said anise and fenouil. I think they're totally fine with that seeing as I eat everything else (including dried bananas every morning in my cereal! I've come so far!).

Nikki and Cathy in the middle of plating our meal

Anyway, fennel was a prime ingredient in a lentil salad we made, along with tomatoes, these orange-lemon citrus things, string beans, and onions. I decided not to put up a big fight, although Anthony, our chef, probably would have gone out of his way to make sure I didn't have any fennel in my dish. I even ate a piece of fennel as it was being sautéed- bad idea because it coated my mouth with an black licorice taste. I took a few bites of the lentil salad stuff, but decided it wasn't worth it. The partially sautéed, partially baked chicken with part of its skin still on it was delicious though!

Our Top Chef-style meal at Guy Martin Atelier

So was the individual chocolate soufflé I ate for dessert! We didn't get to make the soufflé, but I learned that you should coat the inside of the ramakin with melted sugar and then butter so the soufflé doesn't stick (so it rises better). One of our IES people walked around with the dish full of pre-baked soufflé (aka chocolate mousse). Absolutely divine!!

Souflé au chocolat-yum (it didn't come partially eaten- I did that :) !

While we were inside Guy Martin Atelier, it started snowing outside. I felt like I was in Texas- 50 degrees one day, snowing less than a day later... Walking home in the slush with my overnight bag from Nikki's wasn't too fun, but at least I had a parapluie (umbrella) with me this time! I came back to the Schumachers' apartment and relaxed before dinner.

Dinner last night was really good- some sort of orange soup, a vegetable lasagna, pâté, and a leftover slices of a tarte au fromage blanc (tart with white cheese) with mango sauce that Fanou had made for a dinner with her friends the night before. I think she already knew I would want it, but I definitely asked for the recipe for that dessert!

Today Nicté and I went to the 11:50am showing of L'Étrange histoire de Benjamin Button. It doesn't have the nice alliteration that "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" has, but at least it was in VO (version originale) with French sous-titres (subtitles). Maybe I'm just in a fragile state of mind because I'm studying abroad, or maybe it really is that good of a movie, but I was teary the whole time. I recommend that movie for sure. On the way home I bought a bag of Cacahuètes (peanuts, which apparently is the same word in Spanish) to replace the bag of American trail mix I have finished.

I'm excited for classes to really start tomorrow. I have my class on French comics and society as well as a Foreign and French politics class tomorrow. Bad news: we received an e-mail from IES saying that the staff of the Sorbonne is starting a strike tomorrow. I should have seen this coming! If it doesn't end immediately, it looks likely that we'll have to switch our exterieur courses to be either at IES or at the Institute Catholique. At this point, I say whatever. I'm just enjoying life here in Paris!

Bonjournée,
Ellie

P.S. I accidentally posted this blog entry on my other blog- EllieinPerugia. It was kind of funny.