Epilogue

Alright, I got home yesterday. The flight was good and all that. I'm glad to be home, really. I've missed American food and language quite a bit in my absence from the country. I had an amazing time in Paris, of course. I know that I won't trade that experience for anything in the world. I might end up posting some more pictures every now and then, but unless there is some sort of revolt, I guess that this blog has served its purpose. I'm glad that I kept this sort of open diary. It helps me remember things that have happened and of course I don't have to tell all my friends everything that I did, they can just read it in excruciating detail.

I think I'll have easy mac for lunch.

C'est fin

It's like a dream come true! At least for a bio-nerd.
Baleeeeeeeeeeeeen
Looks like a frickin' Pokemon or something. Silly ancient form of armadillo.
From the RER window. The RER is like the Metro, but on steroids.

Well, today was my last day here. We leave tommorow and I'm all packed and set to go. I have my passport and ticket and all that cool jazz. As much as I do want to go home now, I am going to miss it here. I had a great time living with the Ketrons for 6 weeks and I know that I'll miss them. They're pretty much like extended family. I mean, Marsh and Nathan are sort of like my other little brothers or something. Anyway, enough of the much, I'll tell you what I did today.

We went to Jardin des Plantes, which has a ton of museums in it. Kristen and Marsh went to the newer natural history museum while Nathan and I went to the old one. The place looked like a storehouse for a university comparative anatomy department from the 1800's or something. Half the skeletons all had handwritten labels and there were so many specimens that there is no way anyone who works there knows where everything is. They had everything from frogs to whales and even a few malformed things in jars. Cyclops kittens and two headed pig babies, that sort of thing. The place was almost deserted too, which made it better. Creepier, I guess, but easier to see what I was looking at. I'm pretty sure I probably could have swiped something because the one guard wasn't paying attention at all. Getting it past customs would be another matter entirely, though...

They also had dinosaurs and other fossils upstairs! I think that the scariest part was going up those stairs. They really didn't look safe. I'm sure that they haven't been inspected for safety since the 1920's. I ended up taking about 70 pictures of bones and dead things in jars. Mr. Poster would be proud.

Let's see, we took the RER back, which was much better than the 3 buses it took to get us there in the first place. Had dinner in Periere. I had snails again. I would have had my staple of soup de poisson, but they were out. Then we went to the Monoprix nearby and did some last minute shopping. I got some nutella and sirop de menthe, and some sweets for friends and family. I'm really bad at buying souvenirs. Really bad.

At any rate, ta-ta! I might post something tommorow for an epilogue. We'll see how I do with the 8 hour plane ride and all that.

Pizza night

Pretty day
It's a Kiwi!

Not too much happening today, though I probably should have started getting packed or something. Yeah, that probably would have been a good idea. Oh well. Marsh and Nathan finished school today and I went to pick up Marsh from the bus stop, which led to a bit of a freak out because I miscalculated where the bus stop was but everything was cool because the bus waited until I got there to pick him up. Hung out at the park for a little while and then came home. The toy store down the street changed its display again (the third time since I've been here) and they have a stuffed kiwi in the window. It's cute, I sort of want it.

I have a sunburn on my right arm from sitting in the sun. I also wore a shirt with short (as in no) sleeves so that contributed. I also wore a skirt all day, which doesn't happen often. It does seem to be a slightly more common occurance though, I admit. Maybe bimonthly at this point, up quite a bit from my old average of never. Not sure what the plans for tommorow are, but packing is certainly on my list.

It's the final countdown!

Do do dooo, dododododo, do do do dooo....
I hate that song.
Crow, one of many.
It's like Medieval Times, but with utensils and less jousting.
I swear my Grandmother has this plate in her house.
Sort of hard to see, but there is a giant ball of garlic in the background. Delicious garlic... mmm...

Sorry for not posting last night, we got in a bit late and were very tired. Ok, so I picked up Marsh from school and we went to a different park, one that's pretty much right by the school because we had to stay around and wait for Nathan's 8th grade graduation. The park was interesting, they had this giant wall of rocks for climbing on. Not a rock wall but more like...uh, je ne sais qua. At any rate, there was a murder of crows living in the park. They seemed to act more like pigeons, they weren't all that afraid of people and they were just as likely to eat stale bread as the next bird.

We went back to the school after a little while for Nathan's graduation. One of the students wrote a speech and presented it in English, and Nathan gave the French version. The class was pretty small in size since it's a private school so the ceremony was short, but it was nice.

We then took the very hot and sweaty bus to the Ile St. Louis for dinner. For those of you unfamiliar with Parisian geography, Notre Dame is on an island (Ile de la Cite) in the middle of the Seine river. Right next to that island, is another island. We went to the other island. We had dinner at this awesome medieval themed place. Exposed wooden rafters and stone walls and all that. The cool thing though is that those were probably all actually medieval rafters and stone walls. Anyway, the appetizers were a basket of sausage and a basket of raw vegetables and a bowl of soup. They just give them to you like that and you get to pick and choose and slice for yourself. I had a Bourgandy beef stew for my main course, and I'm not entirely sure that they cooked off all the wine. It was delicious, though. Then there was a cheese course, which I found out is sort of like olde tyme Tums. The calcium makes you want to eat dessert, which most of us had in the form of the best chocolate mousse I've ever eaten. All in all, it took us about 3 hours to eat dinner. That's normal here. But we didn't get home until about 11:30. Then we started watching YouTube videos and I didn't get to bed til about 1am. It was a very fun day.

Hummus

Luxembourg!
EU flags!
Bald Jokes and Lens Flare!
I don't know what this is, but I'm guessing something to do with theatre!
Pigeons!

Sorry for not posting a blog yesterday. We finished watching season 4 of Lost last night so it was about 2am before I got to sleep. I think I'm a Lost addict now. That show is so frustrating to watch because you always get about 4 times as many questions as answers every episode. And yet, it drags you in relentlessly.

Other than the Lost marathon, all I did yesterday was go to the park. I looked it up on wiki and it turns out that Parc Monceau was used for a while during the time of the Paris Commune, and during the bloody week, they were all slaughtered on its grounds. That was sort of the reason I went to the park yesterday, really. I walked around and tried to imagine what it must have looked like as a battleground, but it's almost impossible. It's just too pretty and vibrant there. Then I ended up getting distracted and taking pictures of fish and pigeons for about half an hour. Yeaahh...

Today I went to pick up Marsh from school. Neither of us really wanted to take the 10 minute walk back to the metro so we took the bus instead and ended up going to Jardin du Luxembourg. It's one of the biggest parks in the city and is crawling with statuary. Luckily the modern sculpture is kept to a minimum there. I took a picture of what's probably the most famous sculpture in the park which is of course the first one. For some reason the French find it fitting to charge you money to let your kid play on a swing set or a jungle gym. But the sandbox was free at least.

We had Lebonese for dinner, which was quite awesome. And last night we went to San Remo again, an Italian restaurant in Paris run by Pakistani chefs. This is such a great city.

shuffle

I'm currently in the middle of trying to make some more space on my SD card because today was Fete de la Music. Every summer solstice (the longest day of the year) the city of Paris has a giant music festival. Basically that means that anyone from pop-stars to vagrants are welcome to pull up a street corner and start jamming for the entire day. In fact, as I write this, it's almost 1 am and I can still hear drums coming from Periere. Anyway, since it's hard to capture sounds with images, unless you have synaesthesia or something, I took films of quite a few of the acts that we saw during the day. That said, it's eaten up all the data on my SD card and I don't have much space on my flash drives because I've already stored a boatload of pictures on them already. Oy, at this rate I'll need a new hard drive to store all these pictures when I get home. Which is next week.

On a side note, before the fete, we had lunch at KFC. We were going to go to Mumble Crepe, which has the best Philly Cheese Crepe you'll eat in your life, but it turns out they're Jewish. And it's Saturday. So that didn't work. The chicken at KFC here is... weird. It's much more lightly breaded and the sauce choices were BBQ, Curry, and Sweet and Sour. That was it. And the only side they had was french fries. Something you all should know right now, never get french fries in France. You WILL be disappointed. They just don't know how to fry things here, I guess. Too used to fresh and fancy gourmet food or something.

A clarinet player from one of the bands. He was entertaining, to say the least.

Sake is pretty gross

Marshall and Nathan both had end of the year school plays today. Marshall's group (all the primary students) went first, with an Olympics theme merged with animals. There isn't anything much cuter than a bunch of first graders dressed up like marsupials singing "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". Then we went to a small going away party for one of Marshall's classmates, and I found that I would really like to have a gerbil for a pet. They're like rats, but have furry tails, thus boosting their cute quotient by quite a bit.

Then it was time for the older students to give their plays. The first group performed and abbreviated version of Electra (the Greek tragedy, not the super hero). The second group did an amazing rendition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Nathan playing the role of the Monster. The best part was when the Monster gave a heartfelt monologue and the background music was another student playing blues guitar (and very well, might I add.) The last play was a modern and comic version of Faust that was written by the students themselves. Each of the plays was very ambitious, and like all good shows didn't come together until the last minute, apparently. But they were all great, considering that it was performed by 7th, 8th, and 9th graders.

After the plays we went to the Mandarin Courcelles for dinner. I had a duck, mushroom, and bamboo dish that was delicious. I've never had mushrooms like the ones that I had tonight and I have no idea where they came from, but I want more. We had complementary sake shots (Rob, Kristen, and I, that is) after the meal. I've never ingested something so disgusting. At least not to my knowledge, and not willingly. I've never tasted kerosene, but that does seem like the best description. I think I'll stick to the occasional glass of wine with dinner.

Oranges

Uh... it's Degas I'm pretty sure. I saw waaay too many impressionists today...
Picasso used cubism to hide the fact that he failed at human anatomy. At least that's what I'd like to think.
All the different patterns on this are just different types of marble.
Vincent van something or other. Some no-name impressionist wannabe, I guess.
Whistler's Mother. It's alot bigger than I thought it would be.

Went to the Orangerie today. It used to be used as a greenhouse for growing oranges (which were very hard to come by, otherwise) and has been turned into an Art Museum. The French, what can I say? They recycle everything. It only took me about 30 minutes to go through the Orangerie, and I took my time. It's noted for having Monet's ginourmous water lily paintings, and I saw those first, of course. They are big, and fairly sloppy, but you can't really blame the guy, he was going blind at the time he painted those. I was really surprised at how quickly I went through the place. Even though the building is obviously not that large from the outside, I still didn't expect to go through it as fast as I did. I even took my time.

After my experience in the old Orange place, I went back to d'Orsay. I'm so happy that I did. I went to the top floor and worked my way down, which really is the best way to go. Don't be lured by the pretty statues when you first walk in! Take the stairs hidden in the corners! The impressionist stuff was all upstairs and that means only one thing... it was crowded. I saw some cool paintings, Lautrec, Van Gogh, Degas, and all those guys. I took about 100 pictures today so you get a small taste. A very small taste. A nibble, a crumb, even.

I got in a few sketches and saw some great early photography. Like, 150 year old pictures and they have a huge section of daguerreotypes, or however you spell that. They're on metal and they look really neat. Olde tyme type photographs, if you know what I mean. I went to pick up Marsh from school, getting there a good 10 minutes early, as I hoped to be. That just proves that I really can successfully use public transportation and estimate time in doing so. At least when there isn't a protest going on. And here, there is almost always a protest of some sort happening.

I think that's all I have to say for tonight. I just got done watching 4 episodes of Lost with Rob and Kristen and it's 1 am, much to my surprise. I'll post some more pictures or something tommorow, perhaps.

Ou est la gare?

Manet's oh so controversial Dejuner sur l'Herbe. SHOCKING!
Manet's oh so controversial Olympia. INAPPROPRIATE!
I think it's called Le Dance, or something to that effect.
Lolar bear!
Tick tock, huge train clock.

This painting is probably about 20X30 feet. It's HUGE.
This is what the Paris Opera looks like on the inside. Yes, the same opera that that little musical about a phantom is based on.
Right in the ear!

Let me just say that this mouse isn't quite my favorite. Twice now I've been almost done with writing my blog and accidently hit this weird little side button that makes it go back, which wipes my entry. Ah, well, c'est la vie.

Went to the Musee d'Orsay, the train station turned art gallery (quite a French thing to do, really) and it was like walking through a living Art History text book. Almost every time I turned around I spotted something that I had seen before, courtesy of Houghton Mifflin, or Harper Collins, I'm sure. And I just made a joke that probably only teachers will get. Not that I'm pandering to my audience or anything like that. Hehe...

We only got to stay for about an hour or so because the museum closes at the ungodly early hour of 18. Or 6, for those of you on a 12 hour clock. At any rate, we did manage to get quite a bit in. We went through the main statue gallery, with plently of sketching and picture taking, and managed to squeak in a few paintings along the way before we got le boot. I didn't get a chance to see Whistler's Mother, unfortunately. Another art class favorite, that. At any rate, I'm planning on going back tommorow morning for a solo trip (speaking of which, I still need to make a solo expedition to the Louvre as well, time seems to be running out.)

Oh, and lest I come off as some sort of Manet superfan, they really just happened to have some of his better known works present and I couldn't help taking pictures of them when I spotted them. There were a few Monets and Renoirs (and probably pretty much every other impressionist) I skipped over though. There's always tommorow!

Maybe not so Lazy

Arc Arc Arc was almost an elephant. Wiki it.
It glows... Doesn't it?

I went to pick Marshall up from school today so I could take him to the park. His school is, quite literally, on the other side of town, so it took about 45 minutes worth of Metro sitting to get there, but it all went smoothly. Kristen gave me directions and I had gone there twice with her before, so I remembered the way easily enough.

We went to the park for a nice amount of time. I sat on a bench in the shade and tried to figure out how clock gears are able to keep time whilst Marshy played with some of his friends from his old school. It was nice. I got some good pictures in as well. I'm quickly falling in love with black and white photography, I have to say.

So VERY lazy

Good day, Peacock, and how are you, sir?
Contrasting colors!

Poppies will make them sleepy... or whatever these things are.
Rawr-gurgle-splash

Hey! Look! Be distracted by all the new pictures I haven't posted yet and rejoice! Ignore the fact that well... I did nothing today. Nothing at all. Well, I did draw and read quite a bit of Kafka on the Shore, which is an amazing book, I have to say. I'll need to go to Barnes and Noble when I get home and purchase more books, I seem to have gotten my bookworm streak back. I'm going to pick up Marshall from school tomorrow, so wish me luck with that. I should have some nice park pictures, I hope.

I have quite a few books on my reading list for when I go back to work after I get home. Speaking of work, I guess I should start saving up for a Macbook Pro. I might have enough by next summer to buy it for VCU, if I can still afford to buy gas, that is. I just hope I can figure out how to use the Operating System before I head down. If I'm unable to do basic maintenance on my own machine, I shall be rather vexed.

I went to church with the President

I was in the pew across from him. The security was crazy tight and they had a couple of blocks surrounding the church barricaded to traffic so the only way to get through was by walking. It was eerie just how silent the city was with no traffic and little to no other pedestrians, but certainly swarming with police and guards of various types.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really not a fan of the President, but famous people are famous people. We all had the mutual thought that if it was a President we actually liked we'd have been even more excited than we admittedly were. The Secret Service was EVERYWHERE, as would be expected. And on a side note, the President wears reading glasses. He had them on the whole time except when he knew people were taking pictures of him.

The Bishop and the Archbishop of Congo were there too, but their thunder sort of got stolen, as you can well imagine. In other news, my English skills have greatly suffered as of late. I have to keep double checking my blogs and when I talk I tend to muddle things. My words get all jumbled and such. It's sort of funny, actually.

Artsy B&W

Ka-shing!
Color just doesn't do as good a job sometimes. You can almost see the blue anyway, somehow.
Such a pretty courtyard.
Only Anglophones find this a funny name for a Chinese restaurant. There are no real curse words in French anyway, so it would be nigh impossible to explain to a Parisian. Perfect timing on this from a moving bus, though.

I went to the Ketron's church (or Cathedral, if you like) today. They were having a rehersal and BBQ for the Rite 13, which is sort of like a coming of age thing for the 13-or-so-year-olds at the church. During tommorow's service they're going to have a little thing where they recognize the kids and all that.

I had a hamburger at the BBQ, which I am pretty sure I haven't eaten in a very very long time. Kristen has promised me fried chicken which is impossible to get here unless you go to KFC. Um. Yeah. I actually saw a Starbucks here the other day which made me do a double take and then wonder if I had stumbled into the Twilight Zone accidently.

Well, church tomorrow so I should get some sleep. There might be an interesting guest at the church tommorow anyway, so I certainly plan on attending.

Cloud Drama

In the back is me and Richard, with Cathy (left) and Doreen (right) in the foreground. Kristen's Aunts and Uncle.
SNAILS NOM NOM NOM
The clouds were perfect for statue pictures today.
Fly horsie!
This... is Cloud Drama

Today was fun. Cathy, Richard and Doreen are going back home tommorow so I hung out with them. We went to the center of the city, which was a bit hectic because Dubya is arriving today and our bus stop was right by the hotel where either he's staying or some of his people might be. Security everywhere, you know. We got lunch at this nice place near the Louvre and I had escargot and onion soup. The escargot was superbe and the soup was good too, I was able to finish most of it, which is impressive for me because I'm not really a fan of onion soup (which is strange because I love onions in any other preperation.)

After lunch we went to the antique mall attached to the Louvre, which is filled with some amazing stuff. There were so many old pocket watches that looked like they were in mint condition and I wanted one so bad, but I think that a 700 Euro Louis XVI era silver pocket watch is a little bit out of my price range. Just a little. I think I'll have to go back and just window shop. It's sort of like the Louvre, except free and with things for sale at insane prices. (20,000Euro rings were not uncommon)

Apres la, we walked back to the bus through the Tuleries where I snapped some more pictures. The clouds were just amazing and perfect for dramatic statue backgrounds. I took a picture of the Eiffel tower, a proper picture I suppose. We ran into another Gypsy in the Tuleries. They're really easy to spot for me now, actually. I can spot 'em comin' from a mile away. I think I might be qualified to write a travel book now. Hmmm.... yes... that could pay for my college tuition, couldn't it? At least for a semester of VCU.

Meander

It's not by Picasso, but it's still weird.
Blurry...**
And technically upside down...**

I didn't do too much today, mostly just hung out and then went with Kristen to pick up Marshall. I'm going to be picking him up from school sometime in the next few weeks and we'll go Jardin Hopping together. I have my sights set on Jardin de Luxembourg, which is on the same bus route we use to get home alot. The 84 bus is my favorite. I finally made a list of all the things I want to do in the next few weeks and it's rather long. Quite a few of the things written I would consider optional, however.

I got to check out some cool shops and by check out I mean I walked by them because I'm not going to spend 50 Euros on a Summer dress. I checked out that statue that I thought was by Picasso and it's actually part of a State cultural commision for the National arts fund or something like that. It's a pretty weird sculpture.

I found that the best way to watch people without them knowing is glass reflections. It looks like you're looking out the window, but really you're looking at a person. Yes, that does sound creepy, but people watching is entertaining. Especially when you're people watching an extremely attractive boy on the Metro that keeps flipping his hair. Just saying...

** These two pictures are from yesterday. On the train to Giverny, I found that the luggage rack had a reflective surface on it, I thought it looked cool, and so I took a picture. Low and behold, on the train back, the same brownhaired boy (or at least his long lost twin) was in the same car on the same side as before, leading to another, unfourtunaly, blurry picture. They are out of order, the bottom one was taken first. I flipped the pictures so that it's easier to see what's going on, the normal orientation would be upside down.

Picture Dump

This is the ceiling in the Louvre. JUST THE CEILING.
Michaelangelo's 'Dying Slave'... that's all I have to say about that.
That's not a carpet, that's a stone mosaic.
RIDE THE HIPPOCAMPUS YEEHAW!
Port des Lions, the secret entrance.

There's a casting of this same statue in the National Gallery of Art in D.C. It's on top of a water fountain.
Da Vinci. The glass makes it look a little weird. It's either St. Sebastian (in which case I have 5) or Bacchus, or Bacchus as St. Sebastion or something. The placard/name tag thing was in French so I'm not too sure.

Mayan somethingerother.
Egyptian Somethingerother. Stupid reflective/protective glass...

For Jenny, because she wants more Louvre. And because I was transferring pictures to my flash drive since my SD card is almost full (turns out 1gb=apx. 400 pictures) and found out that my Beirut album was still on there so listening to that has put me in a great mood, combined with the awesome of the rest of the day.

OMG IT WORKED, I CAN UPLOAD MORE THAN 5 PICTURES. WINDFALL!