Noah's Ark, Paris Style

Long-awaited Paris update!! I have been putting this off because there is oh-so-much to say, but now I realize that the longer I wait the less I have to say because of my lamentable forgetfulness, so here goes... ('tis long but interesting, I promise...)

On Thursday (Valentine's Day), Laura, Josh, and I concluded class and raced to the airport, having cut our time very close between class and flight. Somehow we arrived with time to spare, so of course we sat around in the bookstore and cafe until we had no time to spare, and had to literally run to the gate before they shut us out. So we went Easyjet to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, and the entire flight was only about one hour until we were deposited onto foreign(ish) soil.

We found our hotel (more on this later), and went to a cafe for a late dinner. As I experienced when I was in Paris this summer, France offers very little in the way of meals if the only meat you like is chicken. I know not what the vegetarians do. There is so much ham that I can only think it symptomatic of France's anti-Semitism. Still, I did not end up with food poisoning this trip, which I sadly cannot say for my first Parisian experience. Reason #1 for which this trip was awesome.

Josh had made reservations for the night at a place called "Hip Hotel." When we reached the address listed, we found a building called "Hotel Atlas." First indication that there was a reason our accommodations were so cheap. (More on this later.) We entered and encountered County Man, with whom our interactions went like this:

Us: (breaking out the rusty French) C'est combien? (How much does the room cost?)
County Man: *mumble mumble* the jist is "I owe you 64 cents."
Us: OK.
County Man: *counts some change, gets up to 60. Looks at it. This is incorrect. Tries again. Gets 65. Incorrect again. Starts over.*
Us: C'est pas grave, garde-le. (It's fine, just keep it.)

We are told that our room is on the 5th floor (really the 6th, because Europeans consider the ground floor as floor zero), and that there is no elevator. We climb a very windy staircase. We continue to climb. We understand why the French are so skinny. We arrive at the room with buns of steel.

The room consists of: 1) Tile floors. 2) A cot for Josh, comfortable enough. 3) A bed for Laura and me. We throw our bags onto it, and they do not bounce. We throw ourselves onto it, and experience pain. Turns out there is no significant difference between our bed and a slab of concrete. There are also no pillow cases, but the sheets have been wrapped around the pillows such that we do not notice for the first 2 minutes. 4) A lamp that actually gives off shadow instead of light. It is so dismal that we call it the Light of Despair. We grow to love it as the week progresses. 5) A bathroom that smells like cat litter, in which we find a shower with iffy-looking faucets. More on this later.

The room is so horrible that it is the best part of this trip. Much laughter commences. I will absolutely stay in this hotel should I ever return to Paris.

On Friday, we walked around Paris. My geography is a little iffy, so I may be confusing places I saw on Friday with Saturday. We went to the Place de la Concorde on which there is the l'Obelisque, and from which you can see a straight line both to the Jardin de Tuilleries and the Louvre, and down the Champs Elysees to l'Arc de Triomphe. So pretty.


We also went to the Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris in an area called le Marais. It was lovely to walk around, even though it was horrifically cold. I ceased to feel my body after an hour. But then we experienced the wonder that is Starbucks in Paris. We know we are stupid American sell-outs for not going to a French cafe. But the Viennese hot chocolate (not even on the US Starbucks menu) was heaven in a cup. Got us through the rest of the day.

Place des Vosges:


Also saw the Centre Georges Pompidou, which is a modern art museum whose construction the French were not altogether happy with, although I think it is really interesting and fits with the modern art it contains:



Then at night, we went to a new cafe for dinner and had some delish food outside under a magnificent space heater. I met up with my friend Alex, who I had not seen since the summer before senior year, so it was nice to see him. Then we went to an area called Rue Mouffetard, which had much student life and bars and such.

We then took the metro back to Hotel Questionable. A note on the Paris metro v. the London tube: the metro is cheaper, the tube is nicer, the metro has Kinder Bueno vending machines. Paris wins.


Arriving at Hotel Questionable around 2 in the morning, we found all the lights off and the door to the "lobby" locked. We were not given a key, so we knocked on the door, only to encounter...Grumpy Man! Grumpy Man has the night shift, which as far as I can tell involves being awoken from his nap by stupid hotel patrons who need to get in. Grumpy Man mumbled in an angrier manner than County Man, then let us in so we could stairmaster it to sleep.

When we awoke on Saturday, we realized that we had only reserved the hotel for 2 nights, that we had nowhere to go for night 3, and that it was 11:45 and checkout was at noon. So Josh went downstairs and met Asian Lady, who was talking to a group of students who had clearly been searching all day for a place to stay. Asian Lady was offering the students a room, at which point Josh interrupted to ask if we could keep ours for an extra day, at which point she said yes and told the students that she actually did not have a room for them. We felt kind of bad, but honestly...we would have become the nomads if the other students weren't.

So we decided to utilize our location in the Asian district to get some pho (pronounced: fuh), a Vietnamese soup advertised everywhere, mostly because we thought "pho" was a very silly word. It was delicious. Then we walked around some more, this time to Notre Dame and around the Hotel de Ville, the government area of Paris. We found a yummy rhumerie (rummery? I suppose.) They also had an ice-skating rink set up, along with tubing areas for little kids, and it was all very cute and wintry and festive. Though I will repeat my happiness that I have always lived in an area with real seasons, snow included. Paris and London do not generally snow, and I miss that part of winter. Am very glad that I got to see some snowfall at Yale before I left. But I digress.

Hotel de Ville:


Then we met up with Roland, a relative of mine who lives in Paris, and his girlfriend. They were very very sweet and took Josh, Laura, and me out to a lovely full-course dinner, then drove us around Paris at night. Tres belle. Roland was a jokester; the three of us loved him. We met up with Gerald and Andrea, who had also come to Paris but were not staying with us, for a little while as well.

Then on Sunday, we all split up during the day. I went to the Louvre on my own, which was much fun and very leisurely and a nice little bit of independence (not to mention language practice.) I ate at a very French cafe, then met up with Alex again and went to the Eiffel Tower and ate a nutella crepe. The US needs to embrace nutella more than it does, I think. Though all this crepe consumption does make me miss American pancakes. Who wants to do IHOP with me when I return? (Ella, remember our venture on route 17 when we could barely drive?)

Sunday was also a landmark occasion hotel-wise, when all of the clues came together to determine why this was the best worst hotel room ever. Having asked Desk Man to let us stay another extra night that morning, we reflected that karma would not be pleased. Sure enough, after Josh and I showered in the morning (not together), we made the always-welcome discovery that our shower would not shut off. In fact, although the showerhead was dry, water began bursting uncontrollably from the faucets. I alerted Desk Man, who told me that the mechanic does not work on weekends.

Me: But the water is going to go into the room! (This conversation was conducted in French. Most unfortunately, I could not remember the word for "flood." NB: it's "déluge.")
Desk Man: You can use the public shower.

So we decided to just shut the shower doors and hope that the drain would perform its job well. Which worked, miraculously, all day long. But at around 8 PM, disaster struck. Josh put down his foot only to find two inches of water in the bedroom. Turns out one of our travel-sized shampoos had floated up and lodged itself in the drain, flooding the place. So Josh started bailing out water with the trashcan, Laura started alternately saving our stuff and jumping around frantically on the bed, and Josh discovered after twenty minutes that there was a hole in the trash can and abandoned the effort. He went downstairs to Desk Man.

Josh: We were told this morning there would not be a problem. I think there's a problem. There is water in our room.

Desk Man came up to check, looked around, and left for 30 minutes. Upon his return, he asked if we would like a new room. We said yes, and were given room number 1 in the hotel. What this means is that our window was eye level with pedestrians, and we could open the window and step directly onto the street. Reasons #2 and 3 for which this was the best worst hotel room ever. We found the entire fiasco utterly hilarious.

We awoke at 5 AM Monday morning to catch the plane back, having gone to sleep only two hours earlier. We were tired indeed, but too afraid to use the shower. Laura, always unusually chipper in the mornings (I love it), was especially awake and without groggy morningness. I cannot say the same for myself.

So we returned from our Great Paris Noah's Ark Adventure and got ourselves to class by 11. By 2 we were at the Royal Academy of Arts in London for a personal tour of their new "From Russia" exhibit, featuring loads of famous art by Matisse and also modern art.

This one was my favorite, by Kandinsky. I love the colors:


The constant activity did not stop there. Tuesday morning we woke up early to catch a train to Oxford for English class. We spent the day touring Oxford, where most unfortunately we were unable to enter the dining hall where they film Harry Potter. To be honest, I found Oxford surprisingly disappointing. Yale is based on Oxford and shares much of its architecture, though in a smaller and admittedly grittier area. But I guess this is why I was mostly unimpressed. Also, I think Sterling is the most beautiful university library in the world. Oxford's felt cold and unwelcoming by comparison.

We also ate lunch with students and chatted about the Oxford educational system, which is so incredibly different from the American system that I don't think you can even really compare the two. You go to college for 3 years, choose a "major" the second you step foot in the door, ONLY take classes within your major all three years, don't have "class" in the traditional sense but instead meet with the teacher individually for one-hour "tutorials" about an ungraded essay you research and write every week, and have no tests at all until one huge exam at the end of the third year that determines your graduation rank. It sounds like absolute hell to me.

Basically: I love Yale. But Oxford IS beautiful from above:


Us in the Oxford library:


And now, I have been procrastinating on two rather large research papers both due this week. I must go work on those. Women in 17th century England were a remarkably boring group of people.

P.S. I made cupcakes and frosting from scratch on Thursday night! Like, no mix involved. Big deal stuff.
P.P.S. Those of you who have been reading will know that this is mostly cribbed from this blog, but ah well... http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=6218


In conclusion: Paris was the best weekend ever. I did not stop laughing the entire time.

Evidence, in the metro:

love

this is neither the forum nor the time for this kind of sentiment (i have two essays due tomorrow that i should really work on, seeing as it's 3:15 AM and i still have to pack for Paris tomorrow), but i am just feeling so grateful for my wonderful friends from home. not that i don't love and adore all my Yale lovelies...but i have some of the most incredible and supportive and loyal and always and forever THERE for me home friends. i love them so much after so many years. they are my rocks.

sorry. i was just so bursting with the love that i could not control it. paris tomorrow (today...12 hours...shit not ready) through very early monday morning...i am psyched!! should be a wonderful way to spend the weekend. then it's nose to the grindstone to churn out 2 MORE essays for the next week. eeks!! so much to do, so little time.

happy valentine's day <3... y'all are a few of my favourite things :)

A Rundown

On Friday, Laura, Josh, and I walked down Oxford Street towards Kensington Gardens. I do not know how I could have missed Oxford Street before now, but it was so much fun, very much like the busiest shopping districts in New York City. We passed through a really high-end district, with Louis Vuitton (I can't even spell that) next to Tiffany next to Sotheby's next to craziness. Unlike the cheapie places I populate, the places here gave out free samples, so we all got some delicious Belgian chocolates just for walking in the door to a store we could never afford. A+.

Kensington Gardens was magnificent. So green, so serene (that rhymes), and so many birds! Ducks, geese, swans everywhere. I have never seen so many swans just chillin' in all my life. It was really beautiful. Not to mention the fact that the weather was LOVELY, warm and sunny and rain-less, a rare thing for London.

One of the few pictures sans birds:


Swans!:


Then we had tea at the Orangery, but not before Laura and I indulged in some silly pictures by Queen Anne:




Then on Saturday, Laura and I went out to Notting Hill, which was lovely and white even if I did expect Julia Roberts to come out of a bush at any moment. We went to the Portobello Antiques market, which went on for blocks and blocks and sold incredible old books and silverstuff and relics and etc. And I got some delicious spiced apple drink, which made me reminisce about going to farms with my family when I was little, picking apples and going on hayrides and buying apple butter. I hope I did not complain about that at the time; it is a really sweet memory now. I am thinking Autumn might be my favourite season. I would never want to live somewhere without it. Thanks, Mum and Dad.

Classy Notting Hill sign:

May I quote, "Come and snog in safety! They'll never know." Ooooh, the British. I love the word snog. Will introduce it to the Americas when I return.

Below, we have the most intense matryoshka dolls I have ever seen. They actually got bigger to the left, out of the frame of this picture because it was just too much for one small camera lens to capture:


Me being superfly in front of a leopard car. Unsure if this was an antique, or if someone actually drives this:



Then yesterday, we went to Trafalgar Square intending to see a Hogarth we had talked about in art history class at the National Gallery, but we ended up dead in the middle of Chinese New Year: London Style. Apparently, London hosts the second-largest Chinese New Year celebration in the world. That's second to China, people. Do not ask me why. But it was crazy--hundreds and hundreds of people crowding block after block of the city, firecrackers going off in Leicester Square every other hour, paper dragons all over the streets, piano prodigies on the stage, the works. Quite an experience:


Then later that night, I went over to the boys' flat and received a lovely meal, then hung out with Gerald's two friends from Spain who I could not understand at all. Must learn Spanish, would be helpful in my life. I did hear the Spanish lisp, though, so that was something. We also watched a Cuban movie, and I have learned that the word for bus in Cuba sounds like "wawa." This, incidentally, is also the name of a rather delicious chain of convenience stores along the Jersey Shore, and it really made me want some Arizona Sweet Tea and a hot dog as per my beach days with Debbie long ago.

Also, I made dinner all by myself for my two suitemates and myself on Thursday!!! Homemade tomato-basil sauce with zucchini, over whole-wheat spaghetti, side of honey-glazed carrots. It is the shining accomplishment of my LIFE. No joke. I am putting it on my resume and I don't care how many potential employers laugh and throw away my file.



In other news...I am going to Paris this weekend!! Thursday through Sunday. Exciting stuff. Also, Miss Samantha Lil Bo is coming to visit me over spring break!! This makes me immensely happy.

What makes me less happy is summer. Freaking out over summer plans over here. Considering Kentucky. Someone please tell me how ridiculous an idea that is.

Word of the day:
Sheets = turns out it just means pages, like in America. Couldn't we have said this in the first place?

Contemplation of the day:
Will being in Paris on Valentine's Day make me barf?

Insanity

Tuesday was NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY and quite possibly my craziest day in London.

After class, we all ventured to All-Hallows Church right by the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, where we entered two teams into the Pancake Race!!! I was the original Team Viv, and the other four were Team Viv 2. (Viv is our Yale-in-London program director. She's hilarious.) So we all decked ourselves out in blue--I could say that this was an example Yale spirit, but actually it was the most common color we could find that didn't need some serious laundering--and put on warpaint that turned out to be Gerald's old ProClear face cream. I am currently the proud owner of a remarkably clear T-Zone. And I had an apron.

Team Viv below:


So we brought our own skillet, the church provided pancakes (crepes, really), and we had to race across the ground, flip the pancakes twice, and hand over the skillet. Team Viv 2 (not my team) made it to Round 2 out of 3, which was really QUITE the accomplishment. This was some high-stakes food-flipping skillet sprinting.

About to run:


Then we ate crepes with lemon and butter.

And THEN, best part of all, the church guy (minister? vicar?) comes over to us and starts quizzing us. A sampling below...
Question 1: Is your boyfriend left-handed?
Me: (humoring him) Yes.
Question 2: Does he have trouble opening your blouse?
Me: ... what what now?
Him: That's because the buttons on a woman's shirt are on the wrong way for a lefty!

Question 3: (Indicating Josh) Does he get grumpy?
Me: Sure.
Him: You just tell him to keep his pecker up.
Female vicar/ministress person: What on earth is going on here!?
Him: Calm down, it just means chin!

Question 4: (To Josh) Do you knock up your girlfriend in the morning?
Collectively: W.T.F.
Him: It means wake up, people, get your mind out of the gutter!

We then ask for a picture with him. To which he responds by posing, then saying, "What don't you get? Don't say cheese, say sex!"

The man, the minister, the legend--getting his sin out before Lent:


And the craziness did not stop there. I got back to the flat only to receive an e-mail from my father, informing me of a group called Democrats Abroad that apparently held primary races on Super Tuesday in London. So I ran over there, where there was this huuugee rally going on. I had never been involved in any political rally on a grand scale before, but it was really quite energizing and inspiring and also frightening. The Obama supporters on one side of the room were screaming, "YES WE CAN!", the Hillary people screaming, "YES SHE CAN!", the people in between just generally screaming. It was muyyy intense.

Plus they had candidate cookies, with print-out pictures of the candidates attached in frosting. We were told to take off the picture and paste it around the room, so there were tons of Baracks and Hillarys all drooping frostingly down the wall.
See:


So that was my Shrove Tuesday / National Pancake Day / Mardi Gras excitement. Happy (unhappy?) Lent to all those who celebrate. Laura told me of an interesting tradition in her church, where they add on a good habit for Lent rather than taking away a bad one. This sounds more difficult to me.

Wednesday (yesterday), we saw a play for class called "Land of the Dead / Helter Skelter," by American playwright Neil LaBute. It was a combination of two one-act plays, and the most disturbing night of theater I have ever witnessed. Each one was just a man and his wife talking to one another, covering issues of blame and abortion and 9/11 and commitment, and they featured such an intense level of human tragedy and trauma--not to mention truly unsettling acts of violence at the end--that I was actually nauseated. The production was damn good, just disturbing.

And today the lead actress came to our class to talk about it, and she described at least the first play as a love story, which was a really surprising interpretation that changes how I view the whole thing. Such interesting stuff...

Word of the day, American-British this time (brought to you by your friendly neighborhood minister):
Fanny pack = obscene reference to female genitalia

Whan that april...

I visited Canterbury on Saturday! With Laura, Tanya, and a whole bunch of international students. Twas so nice to see a part of England that is not urban like London is. Apparently there's a whole other world out there, just like you really can't judge the US by what you see in New York. I am ignorant enough not to have realized this until Saturday.

So Canterbury is kind of a funny amalgamation of the really really old with the modern (see: the Jaguar store beside the Nordic ruins.) We saw the Canterbury Cathedral, the ultimate end of pilgrimages such as the one described in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" (thank you, English 125.) Then we climbed on the Nordic castle ruins-- so much fun, like some giant medieval playground.




After that we walked to the real playground and chilled (literally) on the see-saw-like contraption into which Laura and I could not fit our legs. It was such a beautiful park/play area--reminded me of one that I saw in L.A. but a lot colder, and also everyone had British accents.

Other fun things about Canterbury: The Black Prince is enshrined there. The grass is beautifully richly green, which I have not seen for a while living in the city. They have fresh crepes with butter and sugar--mmmmmm. And best of all, they have a Winnie-the-Pooh store!! I loved it. I have discovered since being in London that I adore children's literature, and should probably try and do something with that at some point in my life. This is an odd little passion and one that I don't really know what to do with, but for now I'm content just to read about the Hundred Acre Wood.

Then today in our history class, we were talking about how the US still observes Blue Laws in some areas while England does not, and our sweet benign little 80+ year old professor said: "Well, you are Puritans, after all. You're descendants of the people we got rid of." Love it.

Then Laura and I walked around attempting to find the UCL Hillel House and failed miserably, but did discover the University of London Union house, where they had a little student hang-out place.

We then attempted to make pancakes in honor of NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY tomorrow(!), but the Brits' version of pancakes are crepes and not the lovely fluffy things we have in the US of A, so we got burned and eggy and confused and ended up switching things up in the middle and converting our batter to Yorkshire Pudding batter. Which turned out AMAZINGLY. I do not really understand the concept behind Yorkshire Pudding, but I do know that it is a) not pudding b) deformed mutant batter that puffs from the tray and sprouts branchy little offshoots c) most perfectly made by Courtney and Laura's Home Cooking (brought to you by the 10-Second Rule.)


Thought of the day:
I miss American pancakes.

Word of the day:
Flapjacks = NOT pancakes. They are little granola cookie snack-like thingies.

Distinction of the day:
Sweet v. Savoury. Sweet foods are sweet and dessert-like (self-explanatory), i.e. jam, honey, ice cream. Savoury foods are heartier, more meal-like, i.e. meats, potatoes, pasta. I did not understand this until today, which is highly unfortunate, since British people use this overly frequently to ask what kind of crepe, pie, etc you want when it can go both ways.

Uncertainty of the day:
Sheets = ? As in, "Professor, how long should our essay be?" "About six sheets." "Do you mean six pages, or the front and back so it's twelve pages?" "Don't worry about that; just make it six sheets."

Records and Rip-Offs

I actually cannot believe that it is already February. Why does life pass by so quickly the older I get?

It's been a fun few days. Wednesday night I saw a play called Dealer's Choice for class. It was really really good, an all-male cast dealing with poker but really with the gambles and stakes and choices we encounter in all aspects of lives and relationships. And it dealt a lot with father-daughter father-son relationships, which for some reason always really gets to me. So all in all a very good night at the theatre.

Then yesterday night, I babysat for my professor's 2 year old (so cute!) in the afternoon, then took a class at the gym.

{{Heretofore unrecorded event: I bit the bullet and joined the Y here, and took a trampoline class Tuesday night!! It was so much fun; I now have a trampoline coach every Tuesday who will attempt to restore just a tad bit of my former gymnastics-y glory. He has failed thus far (by which I mean, I have failed), but at least he's cute. }}

Yesterday's class was called "Abs Blitz" and was, I swear, taught by a Nazi. He actually gave time penalties for letting your feet hover more than an inch above the ground. And had a little pencil mustache. And was evil all over. My abs do not thank him.

So thenn I returned home to a delicious dinner of chicken salad curry and naan prepared for me by my dear wife Laura, and Gerald joined us, and we drank wine to the iTunes party shuffle feature that changes songs every 40 seconds to the sound of Homer Simpson saying, "Did we drink enough yet?" And we used my iTunes, which guarantees not a single good party song but plenty of Broadway, Backstreet, Spice Girls, and Dirty Dancing. Lovely.

Then we decided it would be a good idea to seek out a pub called The Cock (hilarity ensues when asking passersby to help me locate the cock), which in fact does exist a few blocks down. Since the wine had affected me the most, I was nominated to go up to random Brits and exploit my American stupidity, so in conclusion we met a few London college students who we will never see again. Fun times.

And today, Laura and I had afternoon tea at the National Portrait Gallery with the BEST. DAMN. SCONES I have ever tasted. I cannot begin to explain the deliciousness. Served with clotted cream (still unsure just what that is) and black currant jam, scones are my new favorite.

We also looked at the special exhibit (oh, it turns out museums are for art, not food) showcasing the winners of the Photographic Portrait Prize 2007. This is a movement to use photography as portraiture, aka as a means of capturing who a person is more than the special effects and such that photography sometimes gets caught up in. (Though I can't speak to this, because I know very little about photography.) Some of the photos were incredibly moving, though interestingly I don't think they translate quite as well on the computer screen as they did in the gallery-- http://www.npg.org.uk/live/PPP2007_16.asp and forward and backward for more.

We then went to Brick Street, which is basically Indiatown (as opposed to the Chinatown we have in most US cities and also a block down from me in London.) We don't tend to have Indiatowns in big cities, but this was CRAZY. Every single restaurants had really aggressive people standing outside trying to talk you into going to their restaurant, and even when you pass by them, they actually walk next to you still convincing.

We ended up in this place because they gave free beverages, and got utterly delicious Indian food-- chicken tikka malayan, yumm--but ultimately got ripped off because they offered us bread and we said yes and then they charged us for the bread, which is all well and good if not something that generally happens in the US...but ON TOP of that, they made us pay for the sauces it came with that we hadn't ordered and that seemed as natural and, may I say, as included as butter is with bread in Italian restaurants. Ridic. So we payed them 5pence short (wanted to make it the entire price of the sauces short but didn't have the cajones), and left. Bitter but still a good night.

And now we are going to watch Reentttt! :) Woooot.

Word of the day:
Busker = entertainer in the tube