Getting Oriented

Coucou ! I have now completed two days of orientation with Middlebury and am happy to report that everyone is super nice and friendly. It's a little weird to speak only in French with Americans but il faut pratiquer ! I've also had my very first French lunch since arrival, so I am now well-fed if still quite tired. For the record, I kept hearing warnings about how unfriendly and stand-offish the French can be, especially to Americans (even if they're speaking/attempt to speak French) - but as for me, I have yet to run into an unfriendly Parisian. It's actually wonderful; everyone has been incredibly nice and enthusiastic about speaking with me both in shops and restaurants, despite my rather obvious American accent (Brigitte told me it's "so so so cute"). Hopefully this doesn't mean that tomorrow everyone will yell at me. Anyway, another random trait I've noticed so far about the Parisians is that they are unbelievably quiet! Even on the crowded shopping street of the 15ème (rue du Commerce), you could barely hear a sound. Mice could take lessons from these people! For example, this morning, the subway train was very late, and the platform was unbelievably crowded. We all managed to squish into the subway car ("le wagon," pronounced "le vagon", I learned today), and it's lucky that I live relatively far out on the 8 line because as we got closer and closer to more densely populated areas, we were packed in the car beyond belief. I kept thinking there was no way more people were going to fit on the train, and yet somehow they managed to get on at each stop (including a woman with a ridiculously large cake that she kept shoving in people's faces). But the very un-New York thing about this situation was that the car was dead quiet. Nobody was talking, yelling, talking on the phone (you get full cell service on the métro! This would be useful if I knew any French people to call.), or if they were talking, you could barely hear them. Everyone was calm. Whereas in New York, I was once in a crowded subway car in 90 degree summer heat where people were yelling and screaming at each other to move over and the driver even got on the intercom to yell at people to stop getting in the car. So, okay, that's my French vs USA difference for the day. You're welcome.

I don't have very many exciting things to tell y'all about orientation, if not for the fact that I found out I may or may not have been unknowingly illegally carrying drugs around Paris since apparently drug classifications are different here and I'm supposed to have my prescription for my Epi-Pen with me at all times. Le oops. (I also haven't mentioned my cold urticaria to Brigitte yet because I don't want to freak her out, since it's weird and confusing enough in America and people usually think I'm being dramatic or don't really have an allergy. So I'm kinda just hoping I won't have an allergic reaction and it can go unmentioned. Either that or she'll find me passed out in the entryway to the apartment covered in hives.) Anyway anyway anyway, here are some photos of the quartier (8ème) around the Middlebury Center for your perusal:

This is how the French do churches. (Catholics...)

Les crêches (inside the church)

Chapelle expiatoire. Marie Antoinette and her boy Louis chilled here for 20 years before they moved the bodies elsewhere. We couldn't go inside because it's only open on weekends, dommage.

After the afternoon orientation session finished (featuring a visit from the US Consulate in Paris, aka "Here's a List of Every Horrible Thing That's Happened to Americans in Paris"), I walked to the Musée Jacquemart-André, still in the 8ème and only about 15 minutes away (in heels, no less). It's similar to New York's Frick museum in set-up, since it's a museum of the private collection/home of the obnoxiously wealthy Jacquemart-André family. The museum is basically divided up between the 'apartments' of the family and the 'mini-museums' of their different collections (there's half of a floor called "The Italian Museum." Rough life.) The entire museum was absolutely gorgeous!! Sadly, I couldn't take pictures inside the museum, so here is the link to the website's photo gallery if you're interested: Musée Jacquemart-André (click on "Interior views"). I was allowed to take some of the outside, though. Basically, you enter from the street and walk up a covered driveway of sorts, then you walk into a gift shop/fancy restaurant where you buy the museum ticket (sup student discount) and then you walk out the back of the gift shop and up this gorgeous gravel drive:

This was très amusant in heels.

And after the driveway, voilà:

But definitely click on the link to see the pictures of the interior, the rooms were unbelievable! I did an audio tour (in French, bien sûr) and in most of the rooms, after the description track, there was a second track with music the curators chose that went well with the period of the room. Charmant ! One of the best things about the museum (for me, at least) was that there were only three visitors, so I essentially had the place to myself. I don't think it's very well known on the tourist circuit, and I'm pretty sure it's only in my student guide to Paris because it's so cheap. But it was definitely fun to be completely alone in a room filled with famous Italian art, because that sort of thing doesn't exactly happen to me very often. After I left the museum, my feet were not very happy with me because of all that high-heeled walking (slave to fashion à la my sister/attempting to look less American-casual/shamelessly wearing my go-to dressy Bowdoin outfits) so I took a 5pm snack break -- supposedly prohibited by French customs, but as I've mentioned before this is blatantly untrue and the French are just lying to themselves and calling it "drinking a coffee" instead of what it really is, "eating lots of French desserts." I had my first dessert from a pâtisserie, a chocolate-coffee éclair. Miam miam !! Afterwards, it was getting late so I headed back to the apartment, successfully doing my first métro transfer in the process. I ran into the elusive Charles in the entryway as he was leaving for work, but I find him much more difficult to understand, not so much because he speaks fast but, I think, because he has a rather low voice and he kind of mumbles a bit, so for me it's harder to catch the sounds of his words. But I oui-ed and smiled like a pro and asked Brigitte what he said afterwards and "oui" turned out to be an appropriate response so no worries there. Later, Brigitte and I had a nice dinner of salad, veggies, pasta, goat cheese and bread, and she was super interested in my orientation sessions so we spent a lot of time talking about my day. That's about all I have to say for now, so until next time. . .

x R.