Final season hit early this year...

Stanford quarters go by quickly as it is, and the effect is even more pronounced when there are no national holidays because, well, we're not exactly in the nation right now...

I'm smack dab in the middle of my final season, which doesn't remotely resemble any final season from quarters past. I'm a little under half done working on papers (plural, yes, this is new to the techie) and I don't understand how you fuzzie types out there ever get up the willpower to go from one paper to the next. I find myself longing for good ol' problem sets and programs. (Then again, give me a few months till I'm trying to juggle nothing but statistics classes and I may be singing a different tune.)

In between all this paper writing (which is really cramping my style) I have had the chance to be a bit of a tourist. Last Thursday morning it was sunny and I had the chance to go to Sainte Chapelle. Absolutely incredible. Sainte Chapelle is a small chapel built in the middle of the Ministry of Justice by a King Louis (there were many) to house the alleged Crown of Thorns he paid a fortune to buy in order to symbolize his own dedication to the poor. This all seems a bit suspect to me, but apparently he actually was a very generous king. Anyway, Sainte Chapelle.

This chapel is unique for a couple of other reasons. First, it was built on the second floor so that it could connect directly with the King's private chambers. The royal entrance is very grand, but now leads into the Ministry of Justice, so tourists don't generally get to see it. Instead, you have to climb up this incredibly narrow staircase that was originally for the servants. The first floor of the building serves only to create a platform for the chapel on the second. Well, and now it is also ye old chapel gift shop.

Second, the King and his architects decided to scrap the whole idea of walls and instead only put in stained glass windows. Pretty much the entire Old Testament is in these windows in picture format, along with much of the history of France leading up to the chapel's construction. It's really spectacular. There are so many images and stories that there's no way I would ever be able to have distinguished any of them on my own, and some people of dedicated their entire careers to studying them.

Then, on Friday, I got to spend the day with Esther!

It was a less-sunny, more-rainy day, but we still did a lot of touristy things. We tried very hard to go inside the Opera house, but discovered that it was exceptionally closed. I think this was in fact because the Opera went on strike again. Heh.

We also went to the fancy tea shop, Angelina, by the Tuileries. This time I had their signature hot chocolate. I understand why it's famous. It was like no hot chocolate I have ever had before. It was incredibly rich, and thick, like they'd melted chocolate and put it in a cup to drink. So if you're ever there, indulge in it.

Heh...delayed pictures too!

Apparently I skipped a week of uploading pictures...oops!

Anyway, below is the Institut du Monde Arabe. It's a very, very cool building. It has a museum of Middle Eastern art inside it, the best part of which was a gallery of amazing rugs. I was not allowed to take photographs inside, however...

I took this picture of the Seine and Notre Dame after I left the Institut. I love it.

This is a picture of one of the fabulously eccentric metro bands. The spot they're playing at is right in the heart of Chatelet, the biggest metro station in Paris. There's almost always a group here, and they're usually pretty cool.

Some ISEP friends of mine learning how to salsa! I was at a birthday party that somehow turned into an impromptu dance lesson.

This is the window display of the strangest store in Paris. They sell umbrellas. Fancy umbrellas. Umbrellas that costs multiple hundreds of Euros to buy. Inside, there is fake snow everywhere and an enormous dog lying in the middle of it who raises his head halfheartedly when someone enters.


And then you have "Molière's Chair." This was the actual chair Molière sat in when he played the lead role in his play L'Invalid Imaginaire.

Pictures of Normandy!

So this first picture is not actually of Normandy, but I took it right before we left Paris. It's a statue of General Lafeyette presented to France "by the American schoolchildren." I find this hysterical.

Rachel, who I went with to Normandy, in the Norman forest. Look at all the leaves on the ground!

Two things that look like wild beasts but aren't. In the background, you have a frighteningly life-like statue of a stag. In the foreground is Watson.

The adorable house we stayed at!

And, yes, the beach at Deauville. I like seeing the coast every once in a while.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a while since I had a proper Thanksgiving dinner. One year ago, Thanksgiving found me barely off vicodin in the slow process of recovering from wisdom teeth removal. My dad did a wonderful job of preparing soft, mushy foods I could swallow down, but it wasn't exactly a eat-till-you-roll-out-of-your-chair meal for me. And this year...who knows what I'll have for dinner. Wenqi is going to dinner with an American family tonight, so it'll be just me and my host family. I'll be content with anything so long as we aren't having leftovers. (I have no objections to leftovers normally, but I feel like that would be just too far removed from what a Thanksgiving dinner should be.)

But, in the spirit of the holiday, I am thankful for:
*The opportunity to see Europe and spend a few months in this amazing city
*The 66% of buses that aren't on strike anymore
*Mostly good weather this fall
*The friends I've made over here (Stanfordiennes and Isepiens)
*Friends from back in California, wherever they happen to be these days
*All of the e-mails, facebook messages, and cards I've received. It makes me really happy to know that there are people thinking about me. Thank you!
*My family, immediate and extended, who are so incredibly good at supporting me even though I'm in Paris where none of them live!
*Being basically in good health and good shape. It would be a lot harder to enjoy Paris otherwise, especially with the strikes.
*A dorm next quarter that will be 2 minutes instead of 2 hours from class :-)

Normandy

This past weekend, I went to Normandy with another Stanford student and an older couple. The wife is a Stanford alum who married a Frenchman that she met while studying abroad in Germany a long time ago. Now she relives her Stanford days by inviting Stanford students studying in Paris to spend the weekend with them at their second home in Normandy.

Normandy is beautiful. Their country house is this adorable cottage complete with thatched roof in the middle of a former hunting resort. I cannot tell you how nice it was to look out a window and see trees instead of buildings, or to go outside and really smell fresh air. On Saturday, we took a tour of the nearby town of Deauville to admire the beach. Pretty cool.

Apparently it entertains this couple immensely to "corrupt" Stanford students. They wanted to be very sure that we adequately tasted every time of alcohol Normandy (and France, I suppose) had to offer, mostly wine but also shots of this fermented apple liquor stuff. The most notable wine would have to be Beaujolais Nouveau, not because it was the best, but because it was the most interesting. Apparently Beaujolais Nouveau is a big deal, but I hadn't heard of it, so I'm going to explain anyway:

Beaujolais is a region in France known for its wines. The Beaujolais Nouveau is a wine that you drink starting on November 15 (not before or after) of the year it is vinted, but it's only good for a couple of months so you have to drink it all soon. It's a red wine, but you have to chill it before you drink it. I guess it's a bit sweeter than most other red wines I've had, but to me it basically tasted like cold red wine. However, I participated in a French wine fad. I feel cultured.

It's very strange to say, but the most memorable part of the weekend was probably their dog, Watson, named after the human genome guy. (After the recent scandal, they were told they should rename their dog, but they decided it was probably not worth the effort.) This dog is huge and shaggy. It's a Deerhound, which is apparently the type of dog Sirius turns into in the Harry Potter movies. Watson was probably about 4 feet tall and 5 feet long without stretching out his 3 foot long tail. He looks downright frightening, but he's incredibly low-energy. He sort of has the air of an old deaf man. They said they wanted a dog that was friendly but would scare away any potential burglars. They chose correctly.

Next quarter I will be living in Faisan!

I spent this weekend in Normandy, which was grand. Hopefully I will get a chance to write about it, and various other Parisian experiences, soon. But I'm a touch behind on work at the moment, and anticipating a long commute to class tomorrow. Oh strikes.

And what is that supposed to mean?

Ok, so this is possibly my favorite language barrier confusion yet, because of the situation in which it came up.

Yesterday after class I was hanging around in the Foyer at ISEP waiting for a dance class to start and talking to this guy I'd met over the weekend. He was very proud to point out to me on the board where all of the student activities were posted that he was the student body Vice-President and the President of the "FISH Club".

He was less proud when a friend of his came over to explain to me what the "FISH Club" was.

What is it?

Here's a hint: "Fish" isn't a word in French. They got the name of the club by translating (directly) from French into English.

Photographies!

Mmmm, pictures. My favorite!

I didn't write up a blog entry about my trip in Sweden because I didn't do a lot of "blogable" things, except possibly eating and helping prepare a lot of vegan food. It was a very nice trip, though, and I spent a lot of time visiting with family over there. But I do have pictures!

Speaking of family...here's a picture of me and a handful of cousins taken at a dinner party the night I arrived.


Ah! And here is the narrowest street I have yet seen! It's a real street too. It has a name, and two doors that open off of it.

And a lovely view of Stockholm, taken from the top of an elevator named Katarina.

And finally, the vegan sushi feast my last night there, with two of my second cousins. Admire those sushi rolls. I rolled almost all of them! It was very cool.


I also finally got my hands on the rest of the pictures from Vaux-le-Vicomte, including the ones of me! So with no further ado, and in reverse chronological order, I present to you:

The back of the castle and it's lovely fountain!

One of the amazing tapestries inside. They had tons like this all over the castle.


Me, opening the door to my home. Err.....


The front of the castle! This place from the outside reminds me of the Darcy mansion. It has grounds like it too, with places to go fishing and hiking and all.

Metro musicians

I owe the fact that I contemplate this every time I'm in the metro to this article.

The metro is filled with people asking for money. Mothers sit against the walls holding their children (usually infants, though I've seen them do this with much larger children as well) with cups in front of them. Men attest to their unemployment in the cars and walk up and down the aisles with hands outstretched. Musicians of various caliber take up residence in trains or in the corner of a coveted transfer station. I've even seen a guy with a portable dancing puppet show going on and off trains.

Some of the musicians are really terrible. You get a lot of tone-deaf "singers" and amateur clarinetists in the trains themselves. But there are also some pretty good musicians, often the ones playing in the stations because they have to get permits to perform. Some of my favorites include a 16-piece orchestra I saw last time I was in Paris, a gypsy folk/banghra fusion group that I wish I'd had more time to listen to, and a woman playing an instrument that looked like a cross between a harp and a guitar. Not what I expected to hear when I stepped out my door, but very cool. It was the kind of music that puts a bounce in your step.

The problem with all of these people asking for money, musicians included, is that generally speaking I don't want to give them money. It sounds terrible, but it's true. There are so many people asking for money that I can't afford to give to everyone, but then I also can't come up with a good basis for determining who "deserves" money and who doesn't, so I'm one of the thousands of stingy people riding the metro day after day. Actually, I usually adopt the rather shameful attitude of appearing to ignore them altogether because it's easier to ignore someone than to look at them and tell them no. But maybe that will change.

Today as I was changing trains to come to school I heard a violin playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik rather well. I like the song, so hearing it made me happy, and the sound echoed very nicely off all of the tunnel walls. When I got to my platform, I noticed to my great delight that the musician was standing on the other side of the tracks. I could listen to him play without feeling guilty for not giving him money. Unless I wanted to take my life in my hands to cross the tracks, there was no way I could get money to him. And the little sign told me that my train would arrive in 1 minute.

So for 1 minute I listened happily. I could be critical of the performance if I wanted - it wasn't perfect - but there was more good about it than not. At one point the violinist looked up and smiled at me, and I figured there was no harm in smiling back. (Smiling at strangers is another thing one just does not do in Paris.) When I got on my train to go, he stopped playing to wave goodbye. I was really touched. All I'd done was listen.

Cookies!

Today I baked chocolate chip cookies. This was a first in many ways. It was the first time I baked cookies on my own from scratch instead of from a can. Not only that, but I had my mom's recipe, which is in cups, and my host mom's measuring cups, which are in grams.

So in many ways the metric system is much nicer than the English system, with the exception of baking units. All of my host mom's measuring cups have at least 5 different systems of measurement on them, depending on the type of thing you're measuring. There's the flour marks, the liquid marks, and then the mysterious sugar marks. The trouble is, there are at least three different kinds of sugar with different weights and I used two of them in my recipe. How do I know which type of sugar those marks are for? And what if I want to measure something that doesn't have tick marks? She doesn't have a kitchen scale!

Also, why is it that America has managed to export McDonald's and Converse shoes and, of all things, Claire's (the tween girls' accessory shop), but not pre-packaged chocolate chips? I looked in two grocery stores and could not find them, so I gave up and bought chocolate bars with the intention of chipping my own chocolate. I don't know quite how I envisioned doing this in the store... After bashing the chocolate against the counter a few times with no remarkable progress, I pulled out a cutting board and the largest knife I could find and whent from there. Apparently all it takes for me to set aside my fear of large, sharp objects is the quest for chocolate chips.

All difficulties aside, my chocolate chip cookies are delicious. It was altogether a wonderful experience worth repeating.

I have also decided to amend the old adage that first children are like the first batch of cookies - they never turn out quite right. I have decided that they are also the most enjoyable. :-)