A Good Day

This blog actually starts with a look at my old roommate!  Last night while Kelli and I were doing homework on my bed, all of a sudden her eyes got huge and she was looking right over my shoulder.  I looked back and jumped off the bed and we both just stood there looking at this very big, very black spider crawling down the wall very close to my bed.  There might have been a few screams, and a bit of panic as we chased him under the bed and finally caught him and ran him upstairs and threw him into the driveway.  I do okay with little spiders, but this was just too big and black to share my room with me-he had to go!

Today's adventures were fairly calm, but they included too much decision by committee, if you know what I mean.  Every day it's a different configuration of students that end up together to take the required walks or go museum hunting.  The groups form rather spontaneously and never have a set leader, so today there were 8 of us trying to come to a consensus of how to spend our time, and then trying to read the subway maps and agree on how to get places. And that can rapidly morph into a long time spent in a subway station looking at maps!  I tend to stay out of these conversations for the most part because I have learned by experience that my age commands "too much respect," and the last thing I need is to be the bossy old lady on this trip, so I just sit back and wait and watch.  I find the whole experience mostly entertaining, but sometimes......

So, today we found ourselves off the beaten path eating in the basement of one of Paris's many churches.  One of the girls french mother told her about this place and it was pretty fascinating. We entered in this side door....

and then wound through these catacomb like halls, through the kitchen, through a very narrow arch way and then into.....

...an interior room where they feed us some mass produced food that was better than any cafeteria food I've had in America.  I know these vegetables look sketchy, but they were really good, I don't know how they do it, it must be the butter.

After lunch we got back on the subway so we could go visit the real french catacombs, but when we got there there was an hour and a half line (and it was raining), so after much more discussion, this plan was abandoned and we got back on the subway and went to the Musée d'Orsay.  This museum is housed in the old Paris train station.  The entire ceiling is glass so the building is flooded with natural light and the walls are filled with Van Gogh's, Monet's, Manet's, Renoir's, and another of my favorite, Jean-Fancois Millet.  It was such a pleasant couple of hours just wandering around. I felt like I had just jumped into an Art Book, Mary Poppins style, so many familiar paintings that we only see on pages of books.  A true treat.

Mark, this painting made me think of you.  Do you have this print?

What's not to love about this!

I took this picture and call it "Paris through Time"  Get it??  Clock, window, lot's of old Paris on the horizon....Actually it's pretty cool

I love these Millet paintings and was having such a great moment looking at them. I took a couple of pictures (which I had seen others doing) and promptly got scolded by a docent.  Apparently I was standing right by a sign that had a picture of a camera with a great big red X through it!  Ooops!  My faux pax for the day!

After the museum we headed home since our family, the Julienne's, were hosting a dinner with one of their former student guests, and we were pretty excited to be there since we discovered that the guest was our teacher from fall semester, Haleigh Burgen.  She is the one that wrote the letter to the Program Director that helped me get accepted into this experience, so I'm pretty grateful to her.  It was a delicious dinner that ended with the most amazing chocolate mousse I have ever seen.  Next time I will take a picture, but for now, just imagine a giant goblet that holds maybe half a gallon, and then imagine it full of very creamy chocolate mousse.  Yes, that was dessert tonight!  And any day that ends like that is a good day!!