A day of warmth yay!!!

So I'm pretty sure today is the first day over 40 degrees we've had the whole time I've been here. Today was one of the first times I didn't wear two layers on my legs and I could stand to not have my gloves on outside! Maybe I'm just a big baby, but below 40 is really freaking cold for me.

So the other night, after I wrote the last blog, I went downstairs for dinner, which consisted of some kind of soup, a zucchini casserole-type thing with lots of cheese, the usual salad and cheese, and theennnnnnn crêpes for dessert! It turns out that February 2nd is a holiday in France called Chandeleur (literally meaning Candlemas), which, according to Fanou, has something to do with the winter solstice or something, like Groundhog Day here. Anyway, the only way it is actually celebrated now is that everyone eats crepes after dinner! How exciting! Fanou also told us about how it's a tradition that if the chef can flip a crepe with one hand while holding a coin in the other, the family is guaranteed good luck for the year. She didn't tell us if she did it or was able to do it :) We each got four crepes, and we chose either sugar, orange marmalade, or nutella to put on them. I think I've found my favorite French holiday!

Tuesday my friends Nikki and Cathy and I met up in Montmartre to try to find a vintage clothing store we had heard about. We never found it, but we did find Pigalle, the area where the Moulin Rouge and about a million other sex-related stores and theatres are located.


The Moulin Rouge

I think this one speaks for itself!

There were phallic salt and pepper shakers and all sorts of other cool things haha! I met Nicté on the way home and we went to the patisserie (the pastry shop- the best of all shops!) where I bought a millefeuille au rhum, which literally means a thousand papers in rum, which definitely describes the flaky pastry with some sort of cream-type thing in it.

A Millefeuille

Yesterday, I went on a guided tour of the Musée Pompidou, the modern art museum. I've been there before, but it was cool to have someone talk about the art we saw. It made me appreciate it more than I would have otherwise.

Afterward, I hurried home to shovel down some pasta and then Nicté and I went to the Grand Amphithéâtre de la Sorbonne, where we saw the CROUS student orchestra play a piece by Wagner (it had something to do with a Tempest), a Tchaikowsky piece, and a Mendelssohn piece. It was really good! When Nicté and I got to the metro to go home, one of the trombonists was about to get on our same train. He only had played for the first half, and he sat right in front of us with his friends for the second part. Not knowing his nationality (I heard him speaking odd but rapid French with his friends), I took a chance and told him (in French) that the concert had been really good. We chatted for a moment about the concert before he asked, in French, if I was an Anglophone. I responded, in French, that yes, I'm American. And then he responded, in English, that he's from British Columbia! Yay for Anglophones! He told me and Nicté on the metro that most of the CROUS players were amateurs who just wanted to continue playing the instruments on the side while they studied other subjects in Paris. Most of the players are French, but many are also from all over the world. I'm pretty sure there's someone from IES (an American) playing the clarinet in CROUS, so I'll have to do some detective work. So that was cool- taking on someone who could have been a rude Parisian actually paid off!

This morning we had a test over the grammar we've been reviewing the past week and a half. I think it went well. We'll see on Monday! After class, I went to the Musée D'Orsay for another guided tour, which was really really good. If all tour guides are like ours today, I really recommend a guided tour. But (listen up parents!) you should reserve them early. I was told to go ahead and reserve one now for my family in March.

Tonight Nicté and I are going to another concert. This time, it's choral. She wants to join this chorus and they gave her a ticket to come watch them before she joins. She talked them into giving me a ticket, too- yay! Since that's way in South Paris, I'm just going to go straight to my friends' apartment which is really close to there and hang out tonight. We're going to go to a restaurant they've seen that serves chips and guacamole- I'll let you know how that goes! Should be just a nice, relaxing night after our first full week of class (even though they were only two hour classes!).

Real quick, here's a list of cars that I have really been surprised to see over here:
Ford Fiesta
Ford Escort
Range Rover
Jeep Grand Cherokee
Chrysler Sebring
Chrysler 300

And I did see a Mazaratti drive by! I actually heard it and then saw it, so that was exciting! All those other cars look incredible out of place here. They're all big (except the Fiesta) and just very American looking. Just thought I'd let you know about them.

A too-da-loo! (American version of tout-à-l'heure)
Ellie