Mes Classes, et le Louvre.

The past two days have been completely hectic. Yesterday (Tuesday 20 May), we had orientation at the IES building and a pizza party in the garden courtyard there. I wasn't that impressed with the pizza.. which surprises me, because I assumed pizza would be amazing almost anywhere in western Europe because of the position to Italy. I guess Bloomington, Klint and Avers' Pizza have turned me into a pizza snob, if there is such an oximoronic sort of thing.

We spent much of Tuesday meeting the people at IES and talking about course objectives, as well as touring the area around the IES center and the Citadines, and becoming more familiar with getting around.

Our class in the Salle Agnès Varda (the nouvelle vague director of Vagabond and Cléo de 5 à 7, among other amazing films - more things should be named after her).

A pigeon outside of the IES center. Fulfilling an assignment from K. Tacklebox Eash.

On Tuesday we also took a Bateaux Parisiene along the Seine river, and saw lots of things from a boat's eye view - like the Palais Bourbon, Musée D'Orsay, Musée du Louvre, Pont Neuf, Notre Dame, etc.


dans le bateau




Musée D'Orsay

Le Tour Eiffel was a lot smaller than I imagined it, as are a lot of things about the city of Paris, but I somehow still couldn't fit it into the frame of a photo?

After the tour on the Seine, we walked around the area near Rue de Rivoli (also near the Champs Elysées).

I believe this is Av. de L'Opéra, near where we got crèpes.

Prof. Jeff Wollin was convinced that this was the site of the world-famous crèpes made by a man with no teeth. They were pretty damn good, but this dude had plenty of teeth and we found out later that he was an imposter who rented the toothless crèpe guy's old location.

Mine had nutella, bananas and coconut. It was the raddest sugar trip I've ever been on.

Cassie "double fisting" some crèpes. Dang!


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Today (Wednesday 21 May) we had our first supplementary French class... Maggie and I are the only relatively fluent students on this trip, so the class was a bit 'ennuyeux' in that respect, but it was a nice brush-up. My French skills are not what I thought they were as far as fluency goes, but I am getting better every day. I have noticed that everything I say in English I think about how I would say it in French, even down to the pronunciation. I hope to come back completely fluent, but I have some grammar skills to work on in the meantime.

We also had our first Art History class and Photography class. Both were mainly instructional, but after we were done with classes for the day we met up with our Art History Professor, Lee Allen, at the Musée du Louvre.



Guy sleeping by his bike in the central courtyard of the Louvre. I wish you could see this in RAW format.



Dans le Louvre.

Winged Nike of Samothrace. A Greek statue recovered by a French archaologist. Nike (the goddess of victory) is thought to be donated by a Mecedonian general after the naval victory at Cyprus in 306 BC.


The Mona Lisa is tiny in comparison to most of the paintings around it. It was pretty, but kind of disappointing, and one of the only things I saw encased in glass.

Delacroix - Liberty Leading the People

Antoine-Jean Gros - Napoleon at the Pest-House at Jaffa.
This was one of my favorite paintings that I read about in Boeckl's Images of Plague and Pestilence. Commissioned by Napoleon, this painting was used as propaganda to dissuade the public that there was any truth to the "rumours" of Napoleon's mercy killings of his own plagued soldiers. Gros cleverly portrays Napoleon touching a buboe, not unlike plague saints like Charles de Borromeo. His stance is also referencial of Apollo de Belvedere, a Roman god.


The Greek Statue room.


Lovely Louvre fountains.

The famous pyramid at the Louvre. You may have read about it in such fact-meets-fiction books as The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons.

I would have liked to stay longer, but the Metro workers are striking tomorrow, and the usually goes into effect at 8 p.m. the night prior, so we couldn't risk getting stuck across town.
In France, (according to Jeanne, a french woman who works at IES) unions don't use striking as a last resort. They strike first, then talk about, strike again, talk some more, and usually never solve anything.