Rachel in Paris: Petite Sortie

I have an awkward half-hour before I need to leave for class, and instead of working on my horrible dissertation for my scary old professor (who handed back exposés yesterday and made almost all the foreign students rewrite them because he didn't like them/they made grammatical errors... I was lucky enough to not have to rewrite mine, but I'm still scared to turn in the dissertation in case my luck runs out) I am updating my blog. This morning my language and culture professor took us on a little outing to discover a bit of "Secret Paris"; namely, the hidden streets with little houses and winding passages to nowhere. They used to be part of the suburbs of Paris back when Paris was basically just the first few arrondissements, but now they make up the outskirts of the Rive Gauche. Luckily the rain held off and the sun came out so it ended up being quite beautiful!

We first went to Cité Université, which is basically like a mini American university that houses students from all over the world, has all sorts of amenities like pools and restaurants, but no classes. It's basically incredible student housing to make up for the less-than-incredible universities themselves. All of us felt a bit at home walking around the "campus," which was huge! There were tons of buildings, each for a certain country, and many of them were constructed in the typical style of said country (a little pagoda house for Japan, the little windows and mini-doors for Sweden and Germany, etc). It was also founded with the help of Rockefeller, who apparently really wanted to created international housing for students in France. A couple pictures (my professor was power walking through everything so there are only three):

Versailles or student housing?

The British quad

Then we went across the street to the Parc Montsouris, which was incredibly beautiful and so rare for Paris. Surrounding the park were various "Impasses" where we saw all the old-fashioned (and just generally old) houses. We also walked all the way down (all. the. way. down.) to Olympiades to see more of the Impasses. Houses at all in Paris are extremely rare and so while they might seem pretty normal, they cost a fortune here since practically everyone lives in Haussmann-style apartments (which aren't half bad either....).