I'm going on an excursion with the Accent center tomorrow to Rouen and Giverny to see Monet's house. You can only guess how excited I am. However, this meant that I had to do two days worth of homework in one day. I was a little less excited about that.
I got up and got to work. I did my French vocab review then moved on to reading quotes attributed to Napoleon. Next up was learning how to conjugate -ir verbs so that I can say fun sentences like je m'endors. Soon I moved onto working on my history monument analysis. I've narrowed down my rambling paper a bit, but it still needs a lot of work. Next was reading an article for pop. Despite being a lower division course, pop seems to have a lot of reading. Today's article was a real killer. It was about 30 pages of a lot of theory mixed in with a hint of song analysis. I had to take a break in the middle or else I wouldn't have made it through.
At about one o'clock I decided that I need to have lunch. Even I have become tired of my lunches of potato chips and tears so today I decided to cook. My mom bought me a box of penne pasta when she was her so I made pasta for lunch. She also bought me a packet of what I now find out is sauce intended to go over meat. Fuck the law. It's pasta sauce now. I found some surprisingly large pots in my cabinet and a pasta drainer and set to work on my lunch. On most days I have zero luck with cooking. I'm having a good day if nothing catches on fire. Today I was actually kinda successful, but was still shocked that I could get water to boil without incident. Also, has anyone ever cooked pasta in six to eight minutes or am I cooking the life out of it? Anyway, I managed to finish making lunch. It was bland considering that I don't own salt and added too much water to the sauce mix, but I ate a huge portion of it anyway.
After lunch I worked on my pop paper and then moved on to finishing the dreaded pop article. By this time I was getting an itch; I needed to get out of the house. I was stir crazy. I reviewed chapter nine of French and then got ready for my adventure. I googled walking tours of the third, wrote down the fairly simples instructions, and went out. I chopped off most of the tour so that it would start closer to my apartment.
My first stop was Le Village Saint-Paul. I was supposed to take Rue Saint-Antoine. I was a little hesitant to even get started because of the mix up I had a while ago trying to find a park near the same street. I was better equipped to find it this time, and I knew that I would be successful. I found the street right where google maps said it would be and started walking. Can I stop a moment for a little rant? The system of street signs and numbers was started during the Revolution period, but for some reason it still hasn't been completed. It always seems to be that the street I'm looking for has no sign!! I turned down the wrong street because the street had no sign and I figured it was Rue Saint-Paul because there was a café named Saint Paul on it. Turns out that the read Rue Saint-Paul was the next street. I did find a Monoprix that I returned to later in my walk.
I found Le Village Saint-Paul. It was less spectacular than I was imagining. It's supposed to be a really cool, enclosed artist village which I guess it is. It's more like a series of courtyards with small shops, but it's not that fascinating. On one side of the village is part of the wall that was put up by Phillipe Augustus. I've seen part of the wall before when my French class went to the Latin Quartier. The king put up the wall around Paris starting in about 1190, and was intended to close in the entire city of Paris. I found this piece of wall fascinating. Here is something that dates back to seemingly the beginning of time, and there are kids playing basketball in a park in front of it. It still strikes me as odd that everyday life would continue on around monuments and historic places. I guess it doesn't have another choice.
Phillippe Augustus' Wall
l'amour est mort
I followed my own path back out of the area and back to the Monoprix. Time for another rant. Why in the sweet name of baby jesus do ATMs give you 50s for no one will take them?! Everytime I have to break a 50 I have a miniature panic attack. I decided to try my luck in this foreign Monoprix in the hopes that they'd take it and not give me the devil eyes. I wandered around the store looking for groceries that I didn't really need. I found my chocolate chip cookies, but they're only 80 cents. I had to spend more. I couldn't think of anything else that I needed so I grabbed a can of the canned raviolis again and went to the checkout. I guess the cashier was new because the manager was standing behind her to watch her. My groceries were scanned and the bill came up. 2,90. I handed the cashier the bill and the manager looked stunned. She took the bill while exclaiming "cinquante!". She looked like she had never seen a 50 before. She gave me my changed and I scurried out of the building like a child who had been caught doing something naughty.
I continued my walking tour with my groceries in my purse. Right across the street was Hotel de Sully built by the famous advisor of Henri IV who did a lot of work in the area (including the Place de Vosges). The house is beautiful, and has an adorable garden in the background. Children were playing in the garden while people walked through on their route elsewhere. I walked to the door at the end of the garden and was suddenly right aross from Place des Vosges. The next street I was looking for was Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, which happens to be a street I use all the time.
Hotel de Sully. You just had to be there.
I hooked a left onto Rue Pavée and was thrown into a completely different area. I made a quick right onto Rue des Rosiers (named after the rose bushes that used to be there). The area is the beginning of the Jewish Quartier. I was trying to find Agoudan Hakehilos Synagogue, but got lost in the process. I was perfectly fine with that. The area is covered in really cool graffiti that I had to take pictures of. There's also a falafel vendor that I should visit in the near future. I wandered along the streets looking at graffiti and people watching. I also stumbled upon some famous buildings, but there were so many of them I forget which ones there were. That's the problem with Paris. Everything is important. I do remember passing a museum about hunting. I passed on that one. It was starting to get late so I started to turn back. I had a panick moment when I realized that I was nowhere near where I came from. I thought I was doomed to be stuck in the Paris streets with no ability to get home. I found my way back to Rue des Francs-Bourgeois and started back home.
"Histoire de Paris" street art
I saw graffiti like this everywhere. This work is actually a series, and has really glitter on the wall around it.
A business in the Jewish Quartier.
On the way home I stopped to buy metro tickets at Bastille. Did you know it's actually 20% cheaper if you buy a carnet (10 tickets) instead of buying them individually? It actually says the price on the machine, and it's about 15 dollars for 9 tickets and only 13,70 for ten tickets. Get the extra ticket. I bought my tickets and walked home.
I had to finish studying for French and then packed some snacks for tomorrow's adventure. I have to be up at 6:30 so I better get a move on to bed.
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