aimer c'est du désordre…alors aimons!

Today was a hectic day.

Our class went to Montmartre on our excursion today. It's the artist district of Paris and it's situation on several hills that overlook the rest of the city. Our professor told us that Montmartre started a revolution to become their own city instead of being part of Paris. The residents would throw bottles from their homes down into the streets to deter police; the police, in turn, covered the streets with pitch. The rebellious neighborhood is beautiful and peaceful, and is now my favorite part of Paris.

We met at Accent, and left a few minutes late. I was wondering if we would meet our professor there or in Montmartre, but she hadn't said anything about a meeting place. Turns out Carole no longer allows our excursions to meet anywhere other than Accent; a waste of valuable time considering that our excursion was only supposed to be two hours. When we finally got on the metro is was way past 10.

Our group almost lost a few people who had stopped to buy tickets. When we got on the train, however, we had discovered that we had lost crazy Kelly! And another one bites the dust. We got to Montmartre and answered the questions on our worksheet for a few too many minutes so that we could wait for Kelly; she never showed. Our first stop was a square that Parisians have lovingly deemed "Je t'aime square". There's a piece of street art that says "aimer c'est du désordre…aloes aimons" with a woman in a blue dress next to it. Under the woman, a large area of the wall has been tiled with blue tiles and the word "love" is written in many different languages in white.

A really bad picture of the wall

The woman

We walked through several small passages, up many flights of stairs (did I mention that Montmartre is hilly?), that were covered with various forms of street art; I took a picture of all of it. We saw the moulin du vent (a windmill), and numerous other beautiful homes and locations. My favorite was Le Bateau-Lavoir where Picasso lived. It was an artist workshop. It's not spectacular to see, but Picasso lived there!

Our last stop was a square where artists congregate. In the center of the square are two open air restaurants, and around the restaurants and in the surrounding small streets, artists set up their easels and do all kinds of art (portraits of tourists, watercolor, caricatures). It's so cute! I should get my portrait done there if I go back to Montmatre (or have the money for it). I rushed to finish that part of the worksheet so that I could get some delicious looking gelato that we had seen. I got a small cup of nutella gelato (which had some hardened nutella in it). It was totally worth 2,50.

The street artists

At this point it was 12:45 and we were supposed to be in class at one. Our professor said that we should meet back at Accent at 1:15, and that those who wanted to could follow her to the metro. I left with her, and we got on the metro. After we changed trains, onto a very small rickety train, we rode the metro for a few stops until a voice came over the loudspeaker. Everyone grumbled and promptly got off the train. That's my first broken metro! We waited for the next train with the other zillion people who had gotten off the train with us, and then got on the next train.

By the time we got to Ledru-Rollin (right outside Accent) it was 1:10. I didn't have my books with me so I literally ran (okay, I speed walked, but everyone knows I'm a slow walker so it was practically running for me) home to get my books. I shoved a petit pain au chocolat in my mouth, grabbed my books, and was out the door without even closing the door. I ran in the door with about a minute to spare (we were starting late), and everyone was calmly munching on lunch.

Jim was there to talk to us about a serious issue; noise complaints. I guess the neighbors are emailing Accent and complaining about our behavior and have threatened to call the police. I beg them to do it. I agree with them! In fact, I had already complained to the RA about the noise on Friday. It's out of control. To top off our visit from Jim, we also received two emails on the subject.

Class was bad. Everyone was hot, tired, and irritable and we had to learned the day's material with less time than we were alloted. We were forced to speedrace through the material, and I don't feel like I learned anything at all. If anything I feel more confused and less confident than I did before, and we have a quiz tomorrow. I also didn't do very well on our dictation exercise. At least I'm taking the practicum pass/no pass.

I stopped at the boulanger for my delicious bread, and then came home to spend the rest of my evening studying. I will now be going to bed so that I can wake up early to study before class. Ugh.


Oh, and I took the law into my own hands tonight and told the girls down the hall to close their doors. Ain't nobody got time for their noise! Also, they're all in my class….shouldn't they be studying?