Vignettes from the City of Light

After a month in Paris, lots of little things are still exciting, but they are also becoming part of (a very wonderful) vie quotidienne -- pain au chocolat at the boulangerie, leisurely four-course meals with my host family, strolls down Boulevard Saint-Michel, mornings studying at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève next-door to the Pantheon. Ste-Geneviève is a library that is full of beautiful books, beautiful people, and beautiful architecture: everyone sits at long tables in the one, grand reading room that forces you to feel studious. Still, when your vie quotidienne consists of things like this, it's hard not to feel happy all the time.

The weekend of February 12-13, I stayed in Paris and went on two walks organized by CUPA. The first, from Mouffetard to Saint-Germain, very pleasant neighborhoods, was followed by a dinner with friends of duck in grape and honey sauce at Le Zèbre de Montmartre, a free baroque lute and flute concert at a church near the Hotel-de-Ville, and late-night nutella-banana crepes. Two days later, on Valentine's Day, I met up with two friends for hot chocolate at an outdoor café on Ile Saint-Louis, overlooking Notre-Dame, then went with others to Montmartre to eat (more nutella-banana) crepes outside Sacre-Coeur while we watched the sun set over Paris. At dusk, the nuns in the basilica began to sing. We then went and bought ourselves fancy chocolates from the Maison du Chocolat and ate them while we read the city government's electronic message boards, which were showing declarations of love submitted during the past month -- even the city council has a sense of romance here!

View from Montmartre at sunset on Valentine's Day

Example of the city's message boards

I also went to see a contemporary French ballet, Caligula, about the Roman emperor by that name, last Tuesday. The music alternated between "Spring" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and primal sounds that seemed to be paired with the passages of madness in Caligula's mind. The dancer playing Caligula's horse was wonderful, as was Caligula himself as he danced a frenzied solo between his stabbing and his death, but the star was really the principal violinist. Also, CUPA had bought box seats for us, which was pretty luxurious.

Box seats at the Opera Garnier

I'm also making good friends here. A couple weeks ago, I was invited to a party hosted by the French girl who lives upstairs and met lots of really friendly young French people, most of whom are studying business at the top private schools here (which are still a lot cheaper than American colleges, but a lot more expensive than the 300 euros it costs to spend a year at the Sorbonne). Some of the other CUPA students also have their own apartments, and we spent one night last week cooking crepes of all kinds - apple and cinnamon, apricot and cassis jam, caramelized onions/tomatoes/goat cheese - at my friend Claire's.