Week 4

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This week was a little different from the rest as we had all our normal afternoon classes cancelled and replaced with field trips and movies and such. Monday, we were introduced to our wonderfully gay and highly energetic art history professor who was our first non professor teacher. He had us was "Le Roi Danse", an amazing film about the life of Louis XIV and how he made Paris a center of art and culture... highly recommended (stop complaining, I know it's in French but you can add subtitles!). After class on Monday, I had my interview for my internship. I was so nervous going into it as I'm only used to American style interviews where they grill you and analyze every little story you tell to try to paint yourself in a wonderful shining light. Luckily, the gentleman who conducted my interview did all the talking 😊 After saying bonjour, he went into a long discussion about how what I do will be determined by how well I speak/write/understand French so I'll start off doing market research, then go from there. It's a very small 5 person private equity firm that works with small and medium sized businesses. It is located right between La Défense (the large modern "Grande Arche") and the Arc de Triomphe so it's in a very snazzy area of Paris. I'm rather nervous to start working; going from such a large business as Target is (15,000 people at the headquarters alone) to such a small firm seems intimidating as I'm sure they will all be busy the whole time and I won't have a specific mentor assigned to me as I did at Target, but we'll figure it out once I get there. If ya'll want to check it out, here is a website with some information on D&P: http://www.cdcentreprises.fr/portefeuille/fiche/fonds_directs/D208/developpement_partenariat_pme_iv_dp_pme_iv.php. My interview was with the gentleman in the lower picture. Monday night after my interview, Seva and I went out with Ben from MMSS again for dinner, and after dinner, Ben gorged himself on a waffle. See pictures.

Tuesday we had class in the morning, and then in the afternoon we met Jérôme at the church of St. Eustache which is one of the largest and oldest cathedrals in Paris. It is GIANT and they have a lot of modern art that has been added since the church was built. It's cool because when each work of art was added, it was modern for the time, but it was made to fit with the facade and feel of the church. There is a new work of art in the church, and our teacher, Jérôme was the curator for the piece and got it brought to Paris. Although the best part was when this little old French woman started yelling at him about how ugly it was, even though she had no clue who he was, except that he was a teacher talking about the work! He just stood there and smiled, but her, in her little bright orange coat and shoes, wouldn’t stop! It was hilarious! After that, he took us on an agonizingly long tour of a bunch of small private art galleries around the Centre Georges Pompidou. There was one cool gallery with paintings of street cleaning vehicles, but the other gallery had a bunch of paintings of black squares on the wall… apparently in different shades of black and different textures, but it really wasn’t my cup of tea. We then went to a gay bar to recover.

Wednesday, we all met up at Romanville, a little area on the outskirts of Paris that has a lot of HLMs (affordable/government subsidized housing). It was interesting to learn about how the French deal with the problem of housing, compared with how the Americans are doing it. I learned that in France, everyone has the right to have a bed to sleep in at night, so if you don’t, the government has to give you one. Interesting concept. We had the adjunct Major of Romanville come and talk to us, and then attempt to smoke out of a window that opened inwards, while at the same time talking to us. Genius. So the thing that annoyed me the most about the whole day was ironically the best part. We arrived, and they had mini croissants, pain au chocolat, and other wonderful pastries on the table with coffee and tea also around. Then, after a tour of the area, they served us individually prepared lunches with two pieces of meat, potatoes, vegetables, a salad, bread, butter, cheese, and a pastry, and wine. Why does this annoy me you ask? Well, because we were at an office that is in charge of building low-income housing and finding the homeless homes. We’re obviously college students who are there to learn about how the French system works, we are not potential investors, so why waste all that money on us? It makes no sense to me, and kind of angers me. But at the same point, looking at the way that the people who worked in the office dressed, it is obviously not a shabby or lower income job, as it often is in the US, so maybe it’s just a different way of life. Very interesting though.

After lunch, we were released! I went on a great run to the part that I’ve made part of my running route, then just relaxed for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to go to the FRANCE VS. SCOTLAND soccer game! Great experience! A few of my friends (all girls) and I met up to go to a bar to watch the game in the Marais area. The buildup to the game had been incredible all week with Scotts running around the city in kilts cheering and being wonderfully drunk and rowdy as one imagines Scotts to be. We got to the nearest bar with a few flags outside, and settled in to watch the game from the sidewalk, although… we made a “friend.” We dubbed him the “seamonster” because he growled, spoke some form of gibberish mixed with French, and we assume was crazy or drunk. He was old, greasy and smell, and was covered in flakes of what we will assume was white paint. After grabbing my friend’s ass, we decided it was time to force our way father into the bar… we’re 6 pretty American girls… we can make our way to the front, right? Right. We made it to the front and settled in to watch the second half with two banker/lawyer French guys who started chatting to us, although the slightly more attractive younger guy standing next to us was a lot more interesting, and was “eye flirting” with all of us all night long. The atmosphere in the pub was so much fun, even the bar tender was wearing a kilt… which was discovered was an “authentic” kilt as there was nothing underneath!!! After France lost, we decided to leave as it was getting late, although while we were squeezing out of the bar, the cute guy ran up and threw his arms around me and gave me a huge kiss on the cheek… surprisingly the least threatening action a guy has given me since I’ve been here, and despite the fact that his team lost, it was fun and made for a lot of girly giggling on our way back to the metro.

Thursday we went on a tour of the outside of the Louvre and Palais Royal with Jérôme, then got our essays back from last week, and another topic for this coming weekend. Obviously Thursday night was spent in my apartment figuring out what I was going to write. Later on, we had another cooking fest at Geddes’ apartment, this time the theme was Mexican… although someone accidentally spilled cinnamon into the guacamole… which we dubbed “Christmas Cookie Guacamole”… try it sometime!

Friday, we met up at Belleville and got a very energetic tour of another almost Banlieue (almost outside the boarders of Paris), although this time it was the home of people such as JOHNNY DEPP! After our tour, we returned to IFE for a 3.5 hour lecture on a Friday afternoon. Err… smart choice.

My weekend was sort of boring too, just writing my paper and reading my book. I did however find the MOST AMAZING crêperie in Paris and will be visiting there again for lunch tomorrow (I figured I should take Monday off since it might be a little creepy to go two days in a row!) for a white chocolate crêpe!

Bisous!

p.s. if you’re patient, I’ll keep updating… stop getting mad at me! I have to do stuff to write about it!

p.p.s. Italy’s out for the break, so instead my friend and I are flying to PRAGUE, then taking a train to BERLIN! Any suggestions for ways to entertain ourselves while we’re there? Oh, and don’t worry, I’m going to get tickets to go to Bologna when my parents are there, so I will get to see Italy.

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Photos

New art at the St. Eustache
What do you think?

Chopin's grave at the cemetary Père Lachaise
This is the cemetary where I read on sunday afternoon

Comments

[Lara]

Who's mad at you??? Tell them to shut up, I love reading this stuff. Still missing you. But yeah for soccer (and authentic kilts).