Wednesday, February 25, 2009

This past Sunday my roomate and I decided to do something touristy involving food. We spent an hour at the Louvre just wandering around and took the 5 minute walk to Angelina. It is a "salon de the" which has been in Paris for over 100 years and hasn't changed much. We ordered a pastry and the old-fashioned hot chocolate, which is basically melted chocolate and a bowl of real whipped cream. It was so great! One of our friends was supposed to join us but opted out...we decided she was very silly.

Today we went to the Musee Zadkine, which is literally in a big apartment where the artist Zadkine used to live. I had never even heard of him or his work before and I was totally impressed. Everything was beautiful and the sculptures were in a very modern style. It was also an absolutely beautiful day. After we were done with our visit, I realized we were right across from the Luxembourg Gardens. Nobody wanted to join me because they had other classes, etc. so I decided to go alone. I actually walked through the entire garden which was great. So many sculptures and the beautiful Medici fountain. I spent almost an hour there and had a great time walking around.

Now I am just home doing homework. The editor in chief of Bon Appetit is coming to visit NYU in France and I am defnitely going to her talk tomorrow.

Friday, February 20, 2009

This week was pretty busy but nothing too crazy. Monday we had the first event for Coffee and News. It is a club I am on the organizing committee for where students are invited to come and discuss different topics in current events. We organize things on the NYU France end and our staff gives us cookies and coffee and invited French students to come. This week's topic was the Gaza Conflict. I can honestly say I was pleased and surprised about the direction of the conversation! 10 students showed up which is pretty good for a first time in the middle of classes. I have been involved in a LOT of Israel-Zionist activities and had the same conversations with the same types of people. I love it still, but I am kind of tired of the discussion when nothing new gets accomplished. In this particular context, it turns out a lot of students are just confused about what is going on in Israel right now and were eager to learn as much as possible, including some of the staff. I ended up sort of being a spokesperson, at least in terms of information about Israeli society and the army culture. I always say that I try to advocate for an image of Israel "beyond the headlines," sharing the struggles and experiences of normal Israelis who I am proud to call friends. The other people seemed to be really open to this approach and were interested in talking about Israel in a setting that wasn't too political, just understanding the facts of the war on both sides so I did the best I could. I did say that I was very much on the left of Israeli politics and in an American Jewish setting I am usually in the minority just to make sure they knew where I was coming from. The Student Life director had invited her friend who is a journalist for a French news station so she offered a very unique perspective as well. She told me afterwards a bit about herself and she seems so great! Her parents are Algerian and very anti-Israel, but she recently traveled to Israel for work and loved everything about it, so she was happy to talk about Israel with students in a way that was not so biased or black and white. Overall I think people came away a little more engaged in dialogue and a little more well-informed.

Classes are going fine. I had an oral presentation for one class and had to recite a poem for another. I have done both of these before for French classes so I didn't think it was too difficult. Some of the texts I have had to read have been really challenging and sometimes downright incomprehensible, but I am doing my best. My dictionary is my best friend still but thinking in French is gradually becoming more natural. I am doing better than some but all the people in the all-French program are sort of together in solidarity in our classes so we can just complain and help each other.

Friday I decided I didn't feel like going to synagogue. My friends and I were craving spicy food yet again so we went for Indian. The place was really good and everything was delicious. We had a friend with us who had never had Indian food before...she was a good sport but I think she will stay away from it in general. She tried everything but ended up ordering a salad with grilled chicken. We all enjoyed the samosas and curries and bread and left in total bliss. They are going to Chartres tomorrow, a medieval town with a totally breath-taking cathedral. I have been before and as much as the stained glass is awesome, it is kind of a once in a lifetime experience. I am going to come up with a brilliant plan to do something in Paris.

Sunday I have plans to go to the Louvre and to Angelina's (the best hot chocolate ever) with friends. NYU in France came up with quite a clever trick to get us into every museum for free. 99% of museums let you in for free if you are an art history student, so all of our student IDs from NYU say that we are Art History majors...completely untrue but totally to my benefit so it's ok. I could probably fake it if anyone asked me though! At the Louvre I can get a special student card that gives me access to skip the lines! So I am going to do that while I am there.

That's all for now. A la prochaine!

PS If you want to comment on any of my entries feel free to. It will let me know that someone is reading this and that I am not wasting my time : )

Sunday, February 15, 2009

I had a really fun weekend. I got all my work done, but my roomate and I managed to make some plans with our mutual friends and it was very interesting!

Friday, my roomate and I slept in. When we were talking, we both realized that we were sick of French food and needed something with real flavors, like Asian or Mexican food. Not that we don't eat well here, just in New York we are used to MUCH more variety. So we wandered around our neighborhood, went to the market for groceries, and had a lunch at this Chinese/Thai place in the area. It did the trick and we were glad we wandered around. I also was able to find a organic grocery store that sells soy products! I was so happy because I really haven't been able to find it anywhere else and I was able to buy some fake meat things and get a little closer to how I normally eat.

Saturday I met up with my friends at the Orangerie Museum, which is in the Tuileries Gardens. It is were the Monet Water Lilies series is housed, as well as a huge collection of Impressionist and modern art. I had never been before, but it was cool to see some of my favorite Renoir and Matisse works in person. We went and had some coffee and hung out at one girl's apartment and we decided to find something to do for dinner. We flipped through my guide book and found one places called La Refuge des Fondues. They serve two things: wine and fondue. Apparently it was pretty touristy but it was quite the experience. You get an appetizer, meat or cheese fondue, a dessert and wine for under 20 euros. The most crazy part: the wine is served in baby bottles! It was really bizarre at first and I have no idea where they came up with it, but we just took it as part of the gimmick. We had a good time anyway and I recommend it to anyone who thinks they would find it as amusing as we did. If you don't like crowded spaces and abrupt waiters skip it.

Sunday I had to go meet my friend at a museum for a presentation we were working on for our class. We went through the exhibit fairly quickly and got what we needed. I was also able to meet up with my other friends again and we grabbed some brunch at anohter place we found in my guide book called Breakfast in America, an American diner in Paris. It passed the diner test for us because it had refillable, American coffee that wasn't hot enough and one of my pancakes wasn't totally cooked. Anyway it was a nice little nostalgic place. I don't need to eat that crap every day, but once in a while it is fun to have some comfort food. The crowd was mostly American with some French people who I think think it is cute and funny. Overall it was good.

Now I am just home finishing up work and getting ready for the week ahead. I volunteered a few weeks ago to help run a club called Coffee and News, a student group with American and French students to discuss current events. Our first official event is tomorrow and we will be discussing the conflict in Israel. I am a little wary of those kind of discussions in general with people who don't really understand Israeli politics or who get out of hand with their point of view, but I hope it will be engaging and respectful for everyone. We prepared a lot of background stuff and did what we could to set up a good discussion so I hope people show up!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Last Friday, we took a trip to a National Museum of the Renaissance, which is housed in an actual Renaissance chateau about 45 minutes from Paris. The chateau itself was beautiful and they have some really cool objects in their collection. One pretty amazing collection was a full tapestry series of the story of David and Bathsheba. Another that everyone loved was this old music box shaped like a gold ship. The little figures move around, play music, etc. It is pretty amazing to see that kind of technological sophistication in an almost 500 year old music box!

That afternoon, NYU organized a lunch for us at an old abbey from the same time period. They rent out a large space for events, and we got to have a wonderful 4 course meal, complete with 2 kinds of wine and a lovely chocolate mousse. Everyone was really impressed by what NYU put together and we were really grateful they care so much about us! Because I thought it was cool, I want to share some of the history. The abbey was built in the late 12th century and was one of the oldest in Europe. Monks lived there for centuries and it was quite famous and. During the French Revolution it was up for grabs as most Church property was seized by the state. The man who bought it basically destroyed the church on the property, taking the stones to build crummy housing for his workers and used the land for his animals. When I read that on a sign and told everyone (we were wondering what it was) everyone was pretty mad the church wasn't there as it was supposed to be beautiful. If you want to see photographs of this trip, go on my Facebook profile and it is the only photo album I have. If you don't know what that is (Nanny) ask my mom or my sister to show them to you. I am being really good on trips and I hope to post more pictures soon!

That Saturday night I had such a crazy encounter! I was walking with my friends to a party and all of a sudden, someone yells "LORI!" in the middle of the street. My friends kept walking but I turned around, and there was my friend Sam from Kutz Camp (about 4 years ago)! He heard English so he turned around and there I was. He is studying abroad in Paris as well, and we have plans to go to Shabbat in the future and just generally be friends and catch up on life. It was totally unexpected for both of us. Such a small world!

My classes are going well so far. I am still a little scared of writing a lot of papers in French, but so far I am doing ok. I participate a lot in class and thinking in French is coming more easily every day. For two of my classes I have to go to the same exhibit. It is about the history of the Universal Expositions (like a World's Fair) that took place in Paris in the late 1800s until 1937. I have already toured it once for my art class, and now I have to go BACK and look at the information for one specific exposition. At least I will know all the information thoroughly...

Last night, our host family wanted to have a special dinner for us before they go away on vacation for 3 weeks. We were allowed to bring a friend from school to come for cocktails and dinner that night. My roomate and I have many mutual friends, and we ended up actually inviting the same girl! We were to lazy to find someone else, so she just came and had a good time with us. She lives by herself in a studio and doesn't have the kind of atmosphere we do, so we wanted her to enjoy real French people and a home-cooked meal. It was a great little break from work and everyone had a wonderful time.

Tomorrow I hope to go to a different synagogue for Shabbat. This one is English-speaking and was founded by an American Conservative rabbi. I have heard it is a really special community and I hope that it is! I am interested to see how their services are and what kind of population they have at services. I am glad that I have been seeing some of Jewish Paris as I kind of miss my Jewish life at home. Finding a place to go for the holidays is important to me so hopefully I will make some new friends!

That's all for now...hopefully something more interesting will happen soon and I will post. I have a cold right now, but I was able to successfully negotiate the pharmacy this morning describing what I wanted (after looking up everything in the dictionary at home) and I hope I will feel better next week!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Classes are underway and I think I picked some good classes. It is a little overwhelming and exhausting to think in French all the time, but I am sure as the weeks go by I will get used to it. I am taking Spoken French, The Birth of Democracy in France, Contemporary France, and European Painters: Post-Impressionists until WWII (focusing on the avant garde). Right now my brain is just tired but I still think I made the right choice to take all French classes.

Yesterday, I was able to meet up with Astrid. For those of you who don't know, I met her last summer and her father was the exchange student of my Auntie Becca when they were in school. She is French and goes to French schools, so Wednesday she has a day off (some have a half a day I am not sure actually what she had). She picked me up at the NYU campus, I showed her around, and we took the metro and a bus back to her house. They live in a beautiful apartment in a suburb that is technically just outside Paris city limits. Her mom made a lovely lunch and the four of us had lunch together, including pate and a great macaron cake. It was really delicious and so nice of them to have me over. They were excited that I spoke French and were very impressed, even though I know I made some mistakes. They all speak English as well but only to me when I was confused. I have plans to see them again for lunch at some point and maybe have a few outings together. I am so glad I made this connection and now I have French people to go to if I need anything.

Last night I also got to go to the opera. Every semester, NYU arranges for each student to have one free trip to either a ballet or opera. I chose an opera because 1) I like the opera and 2) I wanted to be nice to the kids who didn't know any French and would have been lost because the opera was in French. It is a rather obscure opera called Fra Diavolo. It is rarely performed becuase it is so random, but it is actually based on a true story of a highwayman who was captured by Napoleon's soldiers. It wasn't one of those amazing, mind-blowing performances, but the opera was fun and all the singers did a very nice job. The opera house itself, the Opera Comique is actually a beautiful space. On all the walls there is beautiful gold colored moldings and painted murals. The entired top of the house is made of mosaic tiles which is pretty amazing if you think about how much work went into it. I still hope to be able to see a ballet or opera at Opera Garnier (the one made famous in Phantom of the Opera) and they have student tickets, so that should be doable.

That's it for now! I look forward to the weekend!

A bientot

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Classes start tomorrow and I decided to make some plans with weekend and relax.

Friday afternoon my friends and I went shopping at the largest designer consignment shop in Paris. They have one that is women's clothing and shoes and a store entirely devoted to purses and jewelry. It was heaven! We has such a great time drooling over all the designer stuff and I found a great bargain- a pair of Repeto shoes. They look like ballerina slippers with a little heel...they are 150 euro shoes and I got them almost new for 30 euros.

Friday night I went to services at CJL, one of the liberal/progressive congregations in Paris. That night, services were being led by the high school youth group in French and Hebrew. They kids were great but slightly off-key. There were a few moments were everyone cringed but overall it was really lovely! Everyone was really welcoming and friendly with me. I met up with a friend of a friend who is the Israeli shaliach to the Reform movement in France. He invited to me to stay for the youth shabbat dinner which was delicious. French Jews are amazing cooks! Everything was fun and they kids were pretty excited that I was from New York. I hope to be able to visit some of the other synagogues in the city and keep getting invovled in the community. Maybe find some place to go for the holidays and a babysitting job or two.

Saturday afternoon my friend and I walked around the Left Bank's trendy shopping area. I didn't get anything except at Bon Marche. Bon Marche means "cheap, a good deal" in France but this store is anything but that. It is pretty much Bergdorfs in French. We were able to go to the gourmet food hall and that was an experience. So much delicious food and amazing sights and smells. They had so many interesting products including wine in a juice box. Before we leave, we are definitely going back there to buy them as souvenirs for people...yeah we are classy. We wandered around for a while and got some reasonably priced things for lunch and ate in a nearby park. Later on we went back to her apartment and made ourselves dinner with her roomate who I also know. Just enjoyed some homemade food and red wine and had a great time.

Today (Sunday) I went with my friend Deirdre to the Marais, a very trendy Jewish/LGBT neighborhood. We went to the museum of Jewish Art and History, which was very nice. It is not as big or really in-depth as some other Jewish museums I have been to, but it gave a nice overview of the history of Jews in France and how the community developed. In some of the exhibits it included little stories from modern Jews in France talking about what being Jewish meant to them which I thought was the most interesting. We then walked around the Jewish quarter and got a fantastic falafel and browsed the Jewish bakeries. Wandered around until we got to the Place des Vosges and all the way to the Bastille.

Overall a great weekend and I am excited for school to start!