It's not about the Monet, Monet, Monet

Me with plastic bottles of wine

I finally got my first good night of sleep last night and it felt great. We were instructed to meet at the American Library in Paris at noon, so I got to sleep in a bit as well. They usually just tell us where to meet and not how to get there, which is kind of nice because it forces us to read maps and figure out the métro system, which I’ve gotten pretty decent at. The American Library is a library with books in English that also has American TV shows, movies, and magazines available for check-out. Our program fee includes a membership there, so we had to tour it today to become familiar with it. I have a feeling that it will be a good place to study and work on group projects. The American Library is conveniently located right next to the Eiffel Tower, so we decided to grab a couple bottles of wine and hang out near the tower after our library orientation. French people love wine so much that you can even buy it in little plastic bottles to drink it on the go. The wine here is SO cheap. I’m talking 2 Euros (about $2.50). Even the cheap 2 Euro wine tastes pretty good, and that says a lot coming from a person who hates wine.

Entrance to the Musée D'Orsay

Après-ca, six of us decided to walk to the Musée D’Orsay- arguably the best museum in tout le monde. The walk was much longer than we anticipated- about 2 miles on top of the mile and a half or so we walked near the Eiffel Tower. A few of the kids were complaining that we could’ve taken the metro, but I’d choose a 2 mile walk along the Seine River over a dirty metro ride any day. The Accent Center gave us passes with something made-up about how we’re art history majors. They did this so we could get free admission to all of the museums in Paris. If that’s what gets me free admission, I’ll gladly pretend to be an art history major. Because we didn’t need to buy tickets, we got to jump the incredibly long line. Four of us had our student passes, but Peyton and Chris forgot theirs. Since I know the most French, they sent me to go schmooze with the guy checking passes. After a bit of convincing, my gypsy magic worked on him and he let Chris and Peyton in without having to pay. Score!

We didn’t have a whole lot of time to see the museum (only about 1.5 hours), so we went straight to the impressionism room and looked at the breathtaking works of Monet, Degas, Renior, etc. Our classmate Patrick is a huge art history buff, so he was an incredibly knowledgeable person to be with. He gave us tons of history on each painting and its artist- he was like our own personal tour guide. The Musée D’Orsay is magnificent. Every single work of art is an original piece and plenty of the paintings don’t even have glass around them. If you want to reach out and touch Monet’s paintings, there’s nothing stopping you (except your morals).

We didn’t want to be late for dinner, so we left the Musée D’Orsay around 6:30. They typically eat dinner around 8-8:30pm here, so that allowed us plenty of time to get home and rest our tired feet. Madame made delicious crêpes with ham, egg, and cheese inside. She asked me if we have crepes in America and I explained that we do, but pancakes are more common. We also talked about politics and they asked me what I thought of Barack Obama. Each day I find it easier to engage in conversation with them. I showed them pictures of my family- they thought my dog was cute and thought it was funny that my family all has la meme visage (the same face). They invited me to go with them to the French countryside this weekend to visit their grandparents. I think I’m going to go. It will be hard, considering I have to ask them to repeat themselves a million times a day, but I think it will be a very unique, authentic, and magnifique experience.

Affecteusement,
Katie

P.S.  I found out today that my classmate, Zoe, has the same birthday as me. Everyone decided that we'll do something extra special to celebrate that weekend :)