Sorry it's taken me so long to update! There's been so much to do and see that I've been trying to take advantage before it gets too cold to want to go anywhere.
As I had only seen Notre Dame at night, I went with a couple of friends to see it during the day.
The inside was very dark, and since flash wasn't allowed, I didn't get many good pictures of the architecture inside or the things on display. I like these, though.
On Tuesday, on the recommendation of my French conversation helper (our French class has assigned a young Parisian, usually a student, to all of us Americans trying to learn French), I went with two friends to an art supply store to pick up some sketching materials, and got to wander around an area I hadn't seen before - which is the point of the trip, right? We were right next to the Jardin du Luxembourg, a giant beautiful park with lots of trees and chairs and a circular fountain - I will be coming back there soon!
Wednesday night we were taken to see the ballet. I was very excited for this, but when we arrived at the theater I found out it was a modern ballet, not classical. Now, I don't know very much about dance, and I'm sure there are lots of people out there who appreciate modern ballet, but apparently I am not one of them. The show was in four parts. The first and third had no music at all, and the fourth had a rather headache-inducing cacaphony of dischordant tones. When there was no music, all that could be heard were the dancers' toes squeaking against the floor, which was very distracting. The beginning of the second part was the only part I enjoyed: they rigged up two female dancers to wires, and they floated and danced gracefully across the stage. The effect was like watching them underwater or in space: they weren't affected by gravity. They were also accompanied by classical music, which was a relief. I loved that and was very disappointed when it ended. Oh, well. One day I'll get to see a classical French ballet.
I discovered on Tuesday evening that I had somehow lost my notebook/sketchbook, and so on Thursday I went back to the art supply store to get it, picking up one of the most delicious and rich scoops of chocolate ice cream along the way. Now, I should mention that at this point I've had a total of six hours of French instruction, and I've been managing to get around extremely well, considering that. I know the greetings and please and thank you and numbers and how to ask where something is, so I've squeaked by. Additionally, some of the people in the group speak almost fluent French, so I hadn't had any major language problems yet. However, when I arrived at the art store, I realized I had absolutely no idea how to say, "I think I left my notebook here on Tuesday, have you seen it?" After mangling the word for Tuesday (I mixed it up with the Spanish word) and realizing the lady behind the counter had no idea what I was trying to say, I started miming what I wanted to say, which I was hoping would be so hopelessly funny that it would charm her. She was rather less than amused. I have a sneaking suspicion that she spoke way more English than she was letting on (I've heard this is quite common), and after letting me pathetically mime everything, she looked at me with this half disgusted, half pitying expression and said - in perfect English, "You really don't understand, do you?" And I said, "No, but I'm learning," and she said "Good," but not in an encouraging way, in a thank-god-you-won't-be-mangling-my-language-and-insulting-my-country kind of way. It was disheartening. It was not helped by the realization (only after I had left, of course), that I had had a bit of chocolate ice cream on my nose. I can only imagine what that did for my credibility.
Our school arranged for us to meet some Parisian students, and during that get-together I (and many other people in my program) experienced similar attitudes. Many of the Parisians were quite rude about our method of study (being taught in English by our own professors which our school flew in) and our lack of French. Now, I understand that Americans are known for speaking only English, but all of us have taken multiple years of, or are even fluent in languages other than English or French - it's part of the core requirements at UChicago, and many other American universities. In our class of 12 alone, we have four Hispanic students who speak fluent Spanish, one who speaks Russian, and me (I just finished a year of Arabic), not to mention the three people in our class who actually DO speak French. We were not pleased with their attitudes. That being said, those two times have been the only occasions in which I have encountered the famed French snobbery - everyone else has been extremely helpful and welcoming. I've found that what I heard before I came here is for the most part true - as long as you make an effort to speak French, however slight, they will help you and eventually take pity and speak English, if you really can't communicate through French and gestures. It's only if you assume that they speak English that they will be offended.
On Friday was a field trip to the Vallee des Singes, an animal sanctuary a few hours north of Paris. We had to be out the door by 6:15 am (ugh!), but we got to nap on the train and the bus. We were going to see the primates in preparation for our next paper (which I should be writing right now, actually - yay procrastination!). Although it was colder than anticipated, it was fascinating seeing the apes we've been studying in real life! We saw gorillas (my favorites), gibbons, lemurs, bonobos, chimpanzees, and many others! I particularly loved the male silver-back gorilla, the head of his group; he was so regal!
One of the females in his group had a baby recently and he was so cute! When they are so young, the mother won't let him out of her sight for months, and barely lets him crawl even a few feet away. Usually he clings to her forearm as she moves around, or she cups him in her hand and walks with only three limbs.
The pictures are a bit blurry, but you can see how adorable he is. For size reference, he's probably about the size of my forearm right now - it's hard to believe he'll one day grow to be around 400 lbs!
The sanctuary itself is a very interesting place - they take apes and monkeys who have been abused or used for medical treatments (those two are not mutually exclusive!) and give them homes and try to imitate their natural habitat as much as possible. This is not a zoo, and they do not participate in the breeding that many American zoos do, sending individuals across the country to mate to produce genetically viable offspring to keep the gene pool diverse and large. The people at the sanctuary don't believe in that because they think that any infant born should be returned to the wild, and since many infants don't survive well in the wild, they prefer to prevent any pregnancies at all. Thus, the females are all on birth control.
The biggest difference, though, is that when the animals are in their outdoors environments, they are not separated by fences from the spectators. For the larger or more violent ones, like the gorillas and gibbons, they live on an island and we are separated from them by a small river, perhaps five or ten feet across - that's it! For the smaller and gentler ones, like the lemurs, there is no separation! We walked among the lemurs, who for the most part were completely uninterested in us, which was great because we got fantastic pictures, like this one of the ring-tailed lemur!
I wish we had had more time to wander around on our own and observe; we only got ten minutes to ourselves. For lunch, we went to a local small restaurant which was excellent. They had tomatoes that tasted like they were from the middle of summer instead of the middle of October. Unfortunately, the French don't know what to do with vegetarians, it's like we're a foreign breed of human or something. So while I enjoyed the appetizers and drinks and dessert, my main meal was a plate of noodles and rather flavorless tomato sauce. I've had much better luck buying my own food, going to street carts, or small crepe restaurants than at the fancier restaurants for this reason, which is good for my wallet, at least!
Yesterday about half of our class decided to have a sight-seeing day. We started out with Sainte-Chapelle, the most beautiful church I've ever seen. Apart from the glorious gothic architecture, the main attraction is the stained glass windows, which were made in the 1200s (like the church itself) - and 70% of the original glass is still there! It's in the midst of being restored. The walls and ceilings were richly painted. I'll stop rambling and just show you some pictures:
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| The first chapel, underneath the main one. |
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| This color is much truer to what I saw than the one above, much more golden than blue-grey. |
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| First view of the main chamber as you walk up from the spiral staircase. |
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| What I love about this is you can see how the colored light from the stained glass is dappled across the painted parts of the interior walls. Stunning. |
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| This was on the underside of a smaller side arch. Every inch of this place was deconrated luxuriously. It was, after all, a place where only kings could worship. |
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| Remains of the excavated Roman bath house. |
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| Old musical notation written on what looks like parchment. |
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| Swords! |
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| A hand-painted book illustrating fighting techniques from a tutor to a young duke (I think). Unfortunately we could only see this page, and the screen which was supposed to show us the rest of the book was out of order, but you can imagine the time and effort it must have taken to plan this out and illustrate it by hand! Amazing. |
The group exited the museum at different times, and eventually we were only waiting for one person, who took a very thorough trip. It was nice to sit in the sun for once, though, since it had turned out to be a beautiful day.
We also found on the side of a wall an old sun dial built in 1674!
The time was off by about an hour and fifteen minutes, so my guess is that slight shifts in sun-earth relations over that time and the whole daylight savings thing accounts for the difference. If anyone has a better/more detailed explanation, let me know!
And that brings us to today: a lovely lazy Sunday in which I will knit, read, and eventually write this paper. Hope you're all doing well!
Love, Naomi
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