Versailles, etc

It's been a little while since my last post- since then I've done a few interesting things, like go to the French version of Home Depot and venture down to Versailles for the day.

The school-sponsored Versailles trip last Saturday was nice because I'm not sure I would have made it down there on my own. We took the RER from school to the town of Versailles, only a short ride away. It was a good opportunity to see some of the nicer suburbs of Paris at a glance. Versailles itself was charming, with a completely distinctive feel. Apparently a number of people who live there commute into Paris for work, which really isn't surprising. It was a nice little excursion outside Paris. It made me really want to get out and see some other parts of France, especially the countryside.

The Palace was ridiculous, as was expected. I have never seen so much ridiculous ornamentation in my life. I can see why people weren't pleased with the royal family- not having enough to eat while the Queen acquires more ludicrous dresses (that will only be worn once) would get a little old. We were supposed to see Marie Antionette's apartments on our tour; however, our tour guide was operating under the assumption that we were all fashion students. He therefore parked us under a bunch of different paintings and described in detail the dresses Marie Antionette and other various royalish people were wearing in each picture. Then he quizzed us. He also followed every monologue with "Do you understand?", at which point we would obediently shake our heads so that he could describe the style of dress in another painting. It was mildly entertaining, if not quite what I had anticipated when I was told we would be going on a "tour of Versailles". Afterwords, we wandered around a bit, visiting the infamous Hall of Mirrors. At the moment, there is Jeff Koons exhibition on display at Versailles; walking from room to room, the stark contrast between the modern installations and the absurdly lavish architecture and decoration was amusing.

One of the main reasons I went to Versailles was to experience the gardens. However, for various reasons, I did not get a chance, meaning I will have to go back and see them myself at some point before I kick the bucket. From where we were perched on the edge of the gardens, we could hear the classical music playing from somewhere in the hedges, probably to set the antiquated mood for tourists wandering around with their cameras out and visitor maps open, ready to experience history.

And now its time for pictures, whee.

On our way back to the RER station, we stumbled upon this odd installation piece. I'm still not sure what purpose it served. It just looked like the building vomited empty fruit crates.

We went inside whatever it was. Basically, it was a room. Made of fruit crates. The glue that held this fruit-box house-thing together started to give me a bit of a headache.

After we got back to Paris, we went up to Montmartre, which is one of my favorite places in Paris. I am aware that this is a huge cliché. I'd never been up there at night. The view of all of Paris from Sacre Coeur was gorgeous in the dusky light.


Somewhere in the above picture is a guy in a pink shirt with a guitar playing REM. The way people were hanging out on the steps reminded me of the Spanish Steps in Rome. These pictures were taken with my icky little point-and-shoot. Plus my photography skills are pathetic.

This made me happy. Even though the image is awful.

Aside from my trip to the French version of Home Depot, I haven't been up to much this past week, mostly class work. French Home Depot is called Leroy Merlin. I needed to purchase a few pieces of tile for a project. On the outside, the storefront looks relatively normal and small, which is deceptive because, upon entering, you realize that this store is huge. I talked to the young guy working in the tile department for a few minutes, in half-French, half-English. He told me his name like 5 times. He also pointed to it on the receipt he gave me so I would know exactly how it was spelled. It was awkward.

The view of the sun going down/ moon rising was really beautiful from my windows the other night.

I haven't been up to all that much lately. Mostly just going to class and watching "Arrested Development". I think I'm going on the school sponsored trip to Versailles all day tomorrow, so hopefully I'll come back with some interesting pictures that don't scream "ditzy tourist" too loudly. I'm hoping the gardens are still in nice condition.

Yesterday, I did do some walking around the 15th arrondissement, where Parsons Paris is located. Its a nice area, much more residential than some of the other areas of Paris. There really aren't too many big tickets sights to draw tourists either, especially as you move farther away from the Seine. I like having the opportunity to be totally submersed real Parisian neighborhoods, instead of places that cater mostly to tourists.


While I was taking this picture, a guy working at a fruit stand behind me asked me why I wasn't taking a picture of the building behind me. I told him it wasn't as pretty as this one (it was really ugly). I kind of like the absurd decorative flourishes.

It's so nice to have an X-acto knife again

The Pope was here this weekend. And I missed him. I missed the Pope in his glass-encased Popemobile. I missed him saying papal things. I missed him carrying the Pope-stick. And wearing his Pope-hat. I missed his creepy sunken eyes. My life is officially over.

I've been in class for about a week now. Yesterday I was issued a "temporary" student ID card, which was basically just a laminated piece of paper. It took them about three weeks to get these to us. I'm dying to see how long it takes for them to get around to our "normal" student IDs; most likely they will consist of our pictures taped to a piece of cardboard that will be ready as the semester closes. School is a small, weird place. What should come across as an intimate, close-knit community that emphasizes cross-disciplinary collaboration instead just seems creepy and tiny. Everyone knows everyone. There's nowhere to hide. I've probably already established myself as that weird chick with the purple bag. They all wear ankle boots here. I hate ankle boots.

I don't have any classes on Tuesdays or Fridays. This means that today I had a day off, which I used to go art supply shopping. The store is located over near Nation, which is quite a hike from where I reside in Montparnasse. I'm not sure what arrondisement its in (20th?). I'd never been to that part of Paris before. Even though my time there was extremely limited, it seems like a nice area. I would like go back to explore at another point in time. The art store experience was comforting, sort of like being at Pearl Paint. I had a brief conversation with the man at the door that took my handbag. Apparently, they don't let you carry a purse around just in case the urge to swipe a tube of alizarin crimson is too strong to resist. After a minute or two, he asked me if I was French, thus forcing me to admit that no, I'm an American. This wouldn't have been all that strange if an almost identical incident did not occur about a half an hour later. This time, a guy that I had held a door for coming out of the Metro asked me for directions to a street I hadn't heard of. When I answered that I was new to the area, he asked me what my nationality was. When I said American, he said that I spoke French nicely. I guess I'm not totally incompetent? At least that was two actual (albeit short) conversations in one day where no one switched over to English.

I love being in this city. Despite the fact that my school is full of people that don't seem to know how to do their jobs, living in this city is marvelous. I'll put up some more pictures soon, I swear.

Grr Angry Ann SMASH

Design does not mean FASHION DESIGN. Everyone at this school always seems to have fashion in their heads when they talk about design. I don't think CD, let alone ID, factors into their thinking all that often.

They also love to lump CD in with fine arts. I am not an artist.

My job isn't to make things look pretty. Design is not purely aesthetics, although some of the people here seem to think it is.

Christening the Kitchen, Classes are Silly

Yesterday was the first day of school. Considering the size of Parsons Paris, it felt like the first day of middle school, though I think my middle school was actually larger. It's impossible to get lost in Parsons' tiny building. Seriously, there are only like 21 rooms for all their students and majors. I claimed my own little corner of the school, a shoe-box size locker that can probably only hold a few books before looking uncomfortably full. Because I do not have a work space at school, I do not think I will be needing to put much in there.

I'm taking 5 classes in total this fall: Web Design 1, Advanced Typography, Paris was a Woman, Printmaking 1, and Marketing Strategies for Brand Development. Each class meets once a week for 2.5 hours. Yesterday, I had Web and Paris was a Woman (I have to take it for my French minor; I'm hoping the class isn't as lame as the title). Web was held in their computer lab. It appears that they do not care if you bring food or drinks into the computer lab, like they do in Reese. My ccon instincts had me seriously contemplating picking up my classmates' food items and throwing them in the trash to protect the brand-new iMacs from harm. There is a grand total of 5 people in Web; only one of them has been at Parsons Paris for more than a week. Our professor, the head of the ever-so popular CD department, sat at one of the Macs and rambled off what she was doing for 2 and a half hours with no projector, rendering it impossible for the five of us to follow her and do it for ourselves simultaneously. I thought we were going to be learning HTML, but it turns out we will only be learning the Dreamweaver version. At least we're going to be spending half the semester on Flash, which will be fabulous. Feeling incompetent because I don't know Flash is starting to wear a little thin.

I was supposed to have Paris was a Woman last night. In reality, the professor had to attend her mother's wedding, though this didn't stop her from having us come all the way to school to sit there for five minutes. We received the syllabus, wrote our names on a piece of paper, and were told we were free to go. Because, clearly, an email with an attached PDF of the syllabus is out of the question. Maybe people here don't know what PDFs are?

I didn't have class today, so instead I figured out how to use my local laundromat, which didn't end in tears as I had anticipated. After successfully cleaning my clothes, I made a trip up to Saint-Germain to buy a book I needed for class. It's really nice to be able just to walk around the city and observe people. This is such a great place for people-watching. I then made my way to the Luxembourg Gardens, one of my favorite places in Paris. I had planned on reading my book for class in the park for awhile, however, hunger and the weather interfered. I accidentally took a nap when I got home.

But I finally made a meal in my kitchen! I've been here for over a week and hadn't once turned on my hotplates until a few hours ago. Lately I've been missing Eugene's mashed potatoes, so a few days ago I decided to make some and bought some potatoes. The bag had just been hanging out on my shelf until today. They actually turned out decently, though a little chunky since my apartment did not come equipped with a masher. I had marinated some chicken breasts in some Balsamic vinegar earlier today, as I figured a dinner solely consisting of mashed potatoes probably wasn't the best thing in the world. They were probably some of the best chicken breasts I've made. So now that I have used the kitchen I can officially say that I live here.

Its absolutely beautiful here today. This truly is a gorgeous city.

While trying to work on some final things for Fossil Free Fuel, I'm listening to "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel was immediately reminded of the epic Ikea trip Eugene, Cory, and I took this summer. We drove from our building to Cory's parents' to borrow their SUV, then to Ikea, then to our building, then back to Cory's parents' house, then finally home. We listened to that album in the car (a few times I think), and now my brain permanently associates it with Ikea and the highways of western PA.

Living in the city

I have been in Paris for about a week now. It feels like I've been here for a month. It's sort of daunting to realize how much time I have left here. Of course, I say that now, at the beginning. I'm sure these next four months will fly.

So, I must re-cap this past week, devoted to Orientation activites, as promised. I never imagined that I would be subjected to another week of Orientation. At least this time we weren't encouraged to kill each other because we lived in different dorms, or given awful orange shirts. Instead, we attended "mandatory" information sessions; the one on safety in the studio was especially helpful. I learned that "reading labels on chemicals is important" and "machines can be dangerous."

Parsons Paris had organized little outtings around the city, presumably to familiarize us with the Metro and to show us interesting parts of Paris. One night we went to a dinner at a restaurant over by where the Bastille used to stand. We also embarked upon the aforementioned touristy boat tour of the Seine.

Two nights ago they had us "meeting for a drink" at a bar. At the beginning of Orientation, they gave us a sheet of paper with all the organized activites for the week, complete with the appropriate Metro stops, time, a picture, etc. On the sheet of paper, the name of the bar was written as "La Perle" with a picture of bar with "La Perle" written on the maroon awning. However, the street address listed on the paper was for a bar named "La Perla." It turns out they actually meant "La Perla" but someone had typed the name in incorrectly and included an image of the wrong bar. Two of my friends and I ended up walking around le Marais to find both.

Other than that, I've been wandering around, mostly with the same few people. We've mostly stayed on the Left Bank, leaving the Right largely unexplored for now.

Today I have to figure out how to wash my clothes at the local laundromat, something I've been putting off for the past few days. Tomorrow, a few of us plan to explore the infamous Parisian catacombs. We're also planning on taking off to Barcelona for a weekend sometime in the near future.

I heart tourists on Segways. They remind me that at least I'm not the most awkward American fumbling through Paris.

I intended to update a little sooner, but I haven't been home much the past couple of days. I'll go into what I've been up to in a big, obnoxious, intimidating post that no one will want to read sometime this weekend. I'm slowly getting to know my way around Paris; hopefully I don't look like a complete idiot.

Today we took one of those touristy boat tours of the Seine.