l'Ame Vagabonde

14 Juillet!

2009-07-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

So I've made it back on for the promised posting of unrecorded events. I thought that I would start with the July 14th celebrations, which were pretty exciting. It started the night before with Balls all around town, one big one at the Bastille, but the rest were at the fire stations in honor of the firemen...which Shelby decided and I agreed, that we should go to. The boys were out, so we went and checked it out, managing to somehow get our pictures taken with some of them. There's a fire station right on the canal, so it was close.The morning of the big day, there was a military parade which included a fly-over. Jeff went to go see the parade and agreed to meet Shelby, Garrett and I afterwards. Garrett decided that he wanted to stay in (see Malade). So Shelby and I had plans to meet in the Tuileries where we were sure to see the fly over nice and clearly with out having to fight all of the crowds. Unfortunately, it was closed, and we couldn't even get to the closest entrance. Luckily, we happened to run into each other. Garrett came towards the end, and we waited on a wall. I was confident that since Shelby and I had found each other, surely we would find Jeff. And we did, he walked right by. I don't know if I mentioned how really, really crowded it was, but it was.In the evening we gathered together oodles of yummy picnic food, met up with Juraj and staked out one of Garrett and my favourite sunset spots. A spot on the Tuileries overlooking the place de la Concorde. We got there a couple of hours before fireworks so that we could get chairs, and enjoyed a very nice French tradition...the picnic.Note: If you insist on making funny faces at your cameraman, she will then post them on her blog.
I took several videos of the fireworks, all of them without looking throught the camera, which is why it wanders around a little bit...I wanted to watch too. But this is the best one I got, just to give you some idea of what it was like.

Wall of Death

2009-07-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

So I have mostly tried to take "glamour" shots of the apartment...or at least try to show it at the best angle. But since I can't help but see this everytime I come in, I thought I'd share one of the grosser bits. This is the wall behind the Shower of Doom. It is a wee bit warped and peely from some other past leak, probably from an upstairs apartment. And then the repair guy helped it along by begining to tear it down sometime during our many problems.
That's Garrett's laptop on the table. That behind it is the door to the toilet (seperate room from the shower).

Zut!

2009-07-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

Moreau "L'Apparition" Watercolor, Unknown Location

So, the good news is that we managed to finish up the Louvre this evening. The bad news is that I was really looking forward to seeing a large version of the tiny painting above, which I talked about for at least a few pages in my thesis. I had been writing, and had been told, that it is in the collection of the Louvre. However, upon going through the French paintings, I found no Moreaus. I asked the guy on guard, and he said that it was probably at the Orsay, since all artists with a birthdate after 1920 (Moreau's 1926) got moved there. I researched online and at the Musee d'Orsee's floorplan. I found that the Orsay has about 8 Moreau paintings...none of them Salome. Other people say that the painting is in a drawing collection at the Louvre...the Louvre site itself is somewhat unhelpful, or my French isn't good enough. Maybe it's in storage (??!!). So alas, I will never know what the colors really look like.

La Chambre

2009-07-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

So we're back from England and now scrambling around to pack and fit in a few last minute Paris things. I thought, though, if anyone was still checking on the blog, I'd put up a couple more pictures of the apartment (though I imagine I've bored my readers away).

This is the bedroom. That's the bed on the floor. We have nice French windows (of which I am a fan).

I will be trying to get a selection of pictures up (England, Bastille Day, Jeff in Paris, etc.) but some of it will have to come when I'm back in Nashville.

Malade

2009-07-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

Whooping Crane picture by Brad Harrison

So Garrett's had this cough for a couple weeks and yesterday we finally managed to get in to see the doctor. Apparently, he has Whooping Cough...something that was not on our list of suspicions. I would like somehow to blame it on the shower, but I don't think I can quite manage to.
Today we're off to London and Jeff is off to Amsterdam. I'm not going to bring my laptop with me, so we will once again have to continue the state of post-less-ness. I have some good pictures for you though when I get some time!

The Shower of Doom

2009-07-13T23:47:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of the Shower of Doom, which still electrocutes us if we attempt to use it. It now seems that it is actually the floor that is electrically charged (everything being wet because of the leak). Apparently we should be okay if we wear our shoes and don't touch anything.

Champagne

2009-07-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

So it's not all waiting around for showers to stop killing us. Saturday we did make it out to Champagne. Where we drank Champagne. Garrett can't quite keep a straight face while looking suave

Maren and Shelby also try to look suave in new clothes while drinking champagne.

We had a lot of fun and learned a lot about champagne (under no circumstances put it in the freezer).

More on the Shower

2009-07-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

This morning I got zapped by the shower.
I had just gotten out of bed, was still drowsy, and went in to take a shower. I was holding the shower head in my head (detatchable) and turning on the water until it got warm. Suddenly my hands felt tingly and I dropped it. I being drowsy, was completely confused. Tried again. My hands went numb and started shaking. Dropped the shower head, called Garrett in and told him that there was either something wrong with me, or with the shower. Of course, when he touched the shower head, nothing happened. Until we turned on the water.
So creepy repair guy is coming back half an hour ago to fix it.
We've discovered it to be a grounding problem....in the pipes...

Excuses, Excuses

2009-07-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

In about an hour, my friend Shelby will be arriving on a bus outside of Gare de l'Est, and we will then be an unstoppable force of Paris appreciation. Which makes me suspect that I will not be getting much posting done. Most of you don't know Shelby, but she was in the same study abroad program as I was and we did our adventuring together. We haven't seen each other in about 5 years, so me being back in Paris made a good excuse for her to come visit.
Also, in the realm of people that you probably do know, Jeff Heron will be in Paris starting Sunday, so we plan to make him do stuff with us.
I will try to get some small posts up whenever I can, since exciting things are afoot: two more planned museum trips, a trip to Champagne, July 14th celebrations, etc.
But in case you don't hear from me, it's unlikely that we're dead and more likely that we're just having a good time.
Also, it's been raining the last couple of days, so I have some incomplete and water-warped sketches that just aren't quite worth posting about, so I give you this picture of a post that's been on the back burner for a couple of weeks-Versailles.

Good Luck

2009-07-08T03:02:00.001-07:00

Image by Carlos Paes

Wishing Colby luck in Boot Camp!

Sortie: Jean Paul Sartre

2009-07-07T02:03:00.000-07:00

On RER line A between Paris and Marne-la-Valley/Chessy, there is a stop called Noisiel. From the window we could see the exit signs, one of them: Exit Jean Paul Sartre.

4th of July: the Catacombs

2009-07-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday we celebrated the 4th of July by taking a trip through the Catacombs with a couple other Vandy people who are here, Jonathon and Natalie. There's another girl here too, Ayla, but she couldn't make it. When they all got to Paris (about a month after us) we all met up for lunch and walked around a bit. They're all pretty nice and while we haven't seen much of them, we've had fun.
The Catacombs were created at the end of the 1700s when complaints of disease spreading from the Cimitere des Innocents prompted the government to start lightening its, and several others', loads by bringing a large number of bones into empty underground limestone quarries.
The tourist path begins through a cave, with any alternate route blocked off by creepy-looking iron gates. There's a black stripe painted on the ceiling, which was meant to help people find their way when one could wander around freely. Apparently the part that we get to see is only a small portion. I was kind of surprised that there were no barriers between us and the bones. They do check your bags at the end to make sure you haven't taken any, but otherwise, it seems that you are free to touch, which we prefered not to. Although the paint on that column came off on my arm when I moved away.
We were amused by some important people near us, who seemed to be planning a movie. "..And then he comes up next to her and you can't see his shadow..."
The path goes around for quite a ways, to the point where you're kind of bored seeing all of the structured bone walls. Some of them (and they didn't allow flash photography, so we were a bit limited as to what we could get good pictures of) were rather decorative. Some people found this morbid, Garrett decided it was a particularly French thing, but I'm pretty sure that if my job was stacking bones all day, I wouldn't have been able to help myself. None of it seemed disrespectful to the dead, I would say that it made it a bit more special for them.

Jonathon and Natalie then had to go catch a train for Switzerland (they had the most unfortunate conferance locations, including Athens and Rome). Garrett and I headed out to dinner at Disney, where we had found some tasty hamburgers. We cheersed our hamburgers as a fourth of July salute.

Post Card Jeu de Piste!

2009-07-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

So, I had been wondering what to do with two of the postcards: the Katy postcard and the Grandma Johnstone postcard. Both featured a picture of what was called the "Grand Roue" or the great wheel next to the Eiffel Tower. I knew I could always do yet another Eiffel tower sketch...but I was sort of putting it off. But then, Wednesday night after the Louvre, lo and behold a ferris wheel. And it's called the Grand Rue de Paris! It's not the rickety one in the postcards, nor could I get a view of it with the Eiffel Tower without getting on top of those apartment roofs (not interested in visiting the Hotel de Police, thank you), but it is a big ferris wheel in Paris! Yay for not failing the scavenger hunt! I couldn't get the side angle in the Katy postcard, so again, I'm afraid you'll have to share. Next up was the Grams postcard. Unfortunately, in order to sketch the Arc de Triumph, one would have to stand in the middle of the road for a long time...or know someone who knows someone with a really fantastic view.

So, I'm afraid that it's kind of a quick sketch, but I think that Grams might be happier with me not spending time in the Paris traffic.

Unfortunately, I had already done the Jamie postcard before leaving for Montpellier, but when I went to take a picture of it today, I found that it had gotten completely smudged. In order to lighten the packing, I had torn out the filled half of the sketchbook, leaving the half-page postcard sketch at the beginning. The cover smudged it into an ugly mess. I think that this is sketchbook failure. So unfortunately I will have to redo the Jamie card. And then two left!

Louvre: French Sculpture, Napoleon III Apartments and objets d'art

2009-07-03T00:29:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night we had another Louvre session. This time we takled a large chunk of the museum since I've spent a lot of time already in the French sculpture section, and the art objects couldn't always hold our attention.Bust of Garrett between Voltaire and Diderot

Pascal and Garrett discuss Geometry.Maren in her new dress takes pictures of more chandeliers.The Napolean III Apartments, I think, used to be a seperate part of the Louvre, requiring a seperate ticket. It isn't any more. I got a special tour with my study abroad program when I was here before, but it still fun to see as it is very over the top. Garrett decided that Napoleon III had picked a good part of the castle to make his home as it got a lot of nice evening light to set off the gold walls.We were pretty tired, but we still wanted to come out to watch the sunset, and then we saw a big ferris wheel in the Tuileries garden. Apparently there's a little fair going on here through August. I'll probably come back to take pictures of the pretty food stands. You can see the churros off to the left.

We went out to the other side of the Tuileries this time. Also, this time the Eiffel Tower did it's cool new glitter effect.

If you click below, you can see the Eiffel Tower sparkle (I couldn't really figure out how to take the sound out or cut the film short) And I'm sorry for the unsteadiness, I was holding the camera on my knees.

We walked over to Pont de la Concorde (see the Belle Postcard) and Garrett took some more pretty pictures.

Montpellier

2009-07-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning, after blow drying Garrett's shoes, I went back to the zoo before it became unbearably hot and practiced drawing animals. I spent a lot of time quietly watching the monkeys be monkeys. Eating mites off of each others backs, ants off the ground, and the little ones being very silly. There both a couple of baby reses monkeys and a couple of baby ring tailed lemeurs. It was a lot of fun to watch them jump at things and miss, attack one of the adults and then run away, and play keep away with sticks.
In the evening I met up with Garrett and pretty much the rest of the conference for a wine tasting tour. It had been organized by the office of tourism and was a combined city tour and tasting. We got split into three groups and went to three different places, starting with the opera house. This was the red wine station, so we learned a bit about the opera house (had a really nice view of the town square) had some really good wine and tried some pugassi, the traditional local bread.
Next stop was an old pharmacy for some white wine and pugassi. The white wine lady questioned us a little too intensely about the other wine we had just tasted and then talked for a long time...we assumed so that she wouldn't have to give us seconds. The pharmacy was really cool. Apparently the city had recently bought it and was turning it into a monument, but they had all of the original 1800s ceramic jars that were specially made for medicins, as well as the lab that they used to make them in. Apparently they crushed a lot of things in giant mortar and pestels.
Then we continued on to the last location, which was probably the best, to top of their arc de triumph. Apparently in the 1800s the mayor wanted a champs elysee, but there were some hotel particulier owners (private mansions) that refused to let their homes be torn down. So there's a straight, but not very big road that goes for a block or two and ends in the arc of triumph. We got the special key to go upstairs and learn about rose as well as try some. And some pugassi.
Then we headed over, late of course, to the conference dinner. We somehow managed to find the most awkward table. We did our best to get conversations going, but mostly failed. The food was really good, and once we got to dessert and had some wine, conversation got a little easier. Lucky for me I think that most of them had had enough math talk for the week. Once the restaurant closed, we headed out for drinks and then walked back since the trains had stopped running.
We did not so much get sleep during the conference.
The last day was just a half day, but since we had a late train, we and Juraj walked around town for a while exploring. In the morning I made sure to take advantage of the sale and buy a couple of 10 Euro dresses. I have a very good sense of what french size I am now.
We checked out the old cathedral above as well as the medical school (still a medical school after about 1000 years), the aqueduct, the botanical gardens, and then had a very hard time getting dinner. Most places don't open up the kitchens until at least 7. We actually sat down at 3 places, one didn't open until 7, one only served lunch, and then we finally found a kebab place across from the station where we ate as quickly as we could.
We didn't have a seat with Juraj, but rather were with a group of about 7 women who were going to Paris for the weekend and had brought their own bar with them. There was a lot of partying going on that we both managed to sleep through. I was having a strange dream about Fraggle Rock when I awoke to them singing it at the top of their lungs.
We then slept for most of the weekend.

Montpellier: When Garrett fell off the Sailboat and had to Swim Ashore

2009-07-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning I discovered that it's sale time. I'm not sure I mentioned this, but sales in France are government regulated and only happen twice a year. Different areas are on a different schedule. So I spent a good amount of time trying on 30 Euro dresses that were once 100 Euros, but only bought myself a pair of shorts, since I didn't bring any (we were trying to keep luggage down) and Garrett another polo shirt. Then I walked around town, discovered the aqueduct (again, new, not Roman), the botanical garden which was founded by monks and then used at the first medical school in France (Italy beat them to first in the world) and is now owned by the University of Montpellier. I read for a while on that bench in the cyprus shade.
On my way back to the hotel, Garrett called me to say that we'd been invited to go out to his boss-ish's sail boat. So I changed to the new shorts (yay shorts), sunscreened, and then we went out to meet him with Juraj. Michel (the boss-ish) was in a meeting, which of course ran late, and then we raced to the coast because he had a friend waiting for him. We saw flamingos on the way...apparently there are flamingos in France!
We got out to the boat around 8pm, and then Michel and his friend busied themselves about the boat with Garrett's help while Juraj and I did our best to not be in the way. We mosied out to sea where there was a brisk wind. Everyone but me helped get the sail up and we cruised around to check out the bay from the sea. It was a beautiful night and we got out just as the sun was starting to set and everything was getting all pinkish and pretty.
Michel's friend often sails with Michel and is in the role of the "piano player" as apparently it is called, which means he handles the middle area around the mast and messes with all the ropes. Interestingly, he is in real life, a violin maker. Michel says that he therefore likes to mess around with the tensions of the rope and suggests things that would have never occured to Michel. He is also very meticulous about cleaning the boat and before races throws on some scuba gear and scrubs down the bottom of the boat. He had recently cleaned it and asked us if we could feel how smooth we were sailing because of it. We of course lied and said that of course we could.
As we were getting ready to come back in, we were warned that we were all going to have to switch sides under the sail as it switched sides. They told us it would happen quickly. We were all on one side balancing out the boat, with our feet under the wire of a rail over the side of the boat. I don't really trust myself to know what to do on a sailboat, so I pulled my feet over and got myself ready to not get knocked out by the boom. Juraj was next to me and did the same. Suddenly they started releasing the ropes and bringing us around the other way. Juraj and I started scrambling for the other side, but Garrett, whose legs were still under the rail, found that he was half in the water and pretty well stuck. To Garrett, things were moving in slow motion. He noted that he was in the water and made sure to keep his shoes on his feet (he only had the one pair). He then noted that he was rather stuck. He considered his options and thought that perhaps the only way out was to go in the water, calling out his intentions first, of course. From my point of view, Michel's friend was over there giving him a hand up before I had reached the other side of the boat. We had a bit of fun at Garrett's expense, but he took it good-naturedly, and no, he didn't actually fall off the boat and swim to shore, but it might have been more fun to tell that story...
We got back in after the sun had set and the tiny sliver of a moon had come out in the green/blue sky. I made myself available for help but again decided the best way to help was to not be in anyone's way. When all was tied up and washed down we discovered it to be after 10pm, which explained why I was ready to start fishing with my bare hands. We hurried over to the town area, checked with the restaurant and they agreed to feed us (as I was explaining to Juraj, who didn't understand the hurry, eating is not something you do quickly in France and we needed to make sure that they would be open for us for another couple of hours). The food was cheap and fantastic. I had oysters for appetiser and mussels for dinner and they were fresh and fantastic. Garrett managed to find a non seafood meal of pizza, but still braved the goat cheese salad. He has a new food theory that he is willing to try most anything in France.
It was a wonderful evening, and probably the best one that we had while we were there.

Pendent ce Temps...

2009-06-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

In case you were curious, yes, I am still doing my sketch work. I made this one yesterday at the parc buttes-chaument. This time I had lead. And it was hot and sunny making my shady spot very wonderful.

Montpellier

2009-06-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

Monday was the official start to the conference, so I headed over to the Musée Fabre, which is the big fine arts museum. For the first time, though, I was more interested in the well-advertised temporary exhibit than the permanent collection. Mucha. Mucha was a chec-born artist, who spent most of his time in France and helped spawn the Art Nouveau movement, which is one of my favorites. Mucha became famous for his posters for actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was the superstar of her time. His posters were usually very thin and vertical with a prominent woman figure and flowey lines and flowers and such. I really wanted to take pictures, but I got yelled at, so I can only give you links for pictures. Anyhow, I was not disappointed, it was all very pretty.
While at the gift store, I got a call from Garrett saying that it was just a half day of conference, so we met up to go to the zoo. The zoo turns out to be free, and also turned out to have some good photo opportunities.
This dude lion was doing laps around his pen, giving Garrett an opportunity to get some good lion pictures in. I'd never seen a lion active like that. He also roared a few times, which hits that vibration frequency that you can feel in your heart...I would be rather terrified if he had been roaring at me like that in the wild. I'm sure that no one will be surprised to know that the little French kids call lions "simba" too.The cheetahs were also pacing, and Garrett got a number of good pictures of them too. Again, I've never seen a cheetah not napping, so that was fun. I also learned the French word for cheetah, thanks to a helpful boy who was pointing us to the best place to see them.I caught this goofy lemeur playing with his tail. He was very entertaining.

When we got back, we were once again sunburned, again because we didn't have enough planning time, but we showered and then headed over to the wine and cheese reception.

The reception was very carefully laid out by the French hosts, with one table offering red wine and cheeses for red wine, and the other white wine, with its cheeses (note: often French menus offer things that come with other things that belong to it, ie. a scoop of ice cream, with its cookie). The cheeses were also numbered by the order in which you should try them. It was supposed to be in order of stregnth, but we weren't always sure that that was the case. It was all very tasty.

We managed to meet a few people. Other than Juraj and Daniel, who is a German working in Norway who came to work with Garrett and Juraj for a couple months, we met George who is Greek (thus pronounced something like Yorygos, which we all failed at) and working in Germany. This kind of international moving around was very common. George was very patient about correcting my bits of Greek that I threw at him, and seemed pleased that my mother loves his country so much. I made a brave attempt at introducing us to a guy working at Leeds and his girlfriend who was a non computer scientist. But he was shy beyond our best efforts and bolted as soon as Garrett went for more cheese. We also met an American couple who are tentatively working in Australia, but tend to be anywhere else. They were so happy to hear our American accents, they just wanted us to talk at them. There were a lot of very shy people, but not so many as to make it impossible.

We then took our free bottle of wine and headed out to icecream with a small group of stragglers. We had a very good time and a not so healthy dinner.

Montpellier

2009-06-29T01:47:00.000-07:00

Last week was the WG conference, which is a conference for theoretical computer scientists. I came along for the chance to visit another part of France and for the free wine and cheese. And because Garrett was going.

Montpellier is in the south of France, a little ways up from the Mediteranian, and is, what they call, a "new" city. Meaning that it was not founded by the Romans, but rather in the 900s. Most of the buildings have a mideival core, but were built up in the front in the 1800s with Haussmanian style (the style that's most prevelant in Paris). They also have a lot of contemporary buildings and sculptures and do a good job of making it all work well together.

When we got to Montpelier, we thought it might be paradise. A lot of that had to do with our hotel room, which was about the size of our apartment, but without the creaking floors, and with a wonderful, spacious shower, a nicer stove, a microwave, and a dishwasher. It was also beautiful and sunny pretty much the entire time. The climate is much like Provence and the air smelled piney and lavendery and was ringing with cicadas.

The city is also very progressive in its take on transportation. Very recently they took out the road circle that was in the main square of town and filled it all in with cobblestones. They currently have two tram lines that are very colorful and and brightly designed that run througout town and apparently there's a third one coming soon. A lot of the tracklines have been planted with grass, and it all looks very nice and clean. Apparently it's pretty hard to get around by car, which is probably what has to happen for the public transportation to cover as much area as it needs to to work really well. For less travelled areas, they have a good bus system too.

We got into town the day before the conference started after a nice scenic train ride down. Garrett had a meeting with the people he works with, so we checked in, went out to the University, and then went our seperate ways. Garrett had to skip lunch since we didn't find anything on our way, but I got to go back into the central area for a panini by the fountain.

I wandered around the city, spent a lot of time in the bookstore picking out my book for the week, and then headed back to the hotel for a luxurious shower. Garrett and Juray came back and we got some traditional (very kidding) Indian food and had wine and cheese in the hotel room until late.

More installments on Montpellier to come

Off and Away

2009-06-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

This morning we're off to Montpelier for Garrett's conference. I'm not sure exactly what the internet situation will be like when we get there, but be assured that we are alive and I will do my best to let you know what we're up to as soon as I can.
Hope all the Dads had a good Father's Day!

Post Card Jeu de Piste 2-4

2009-06-19T01:52:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went out to the Trocadero to get 3 of the Postcards finished. Two were taken from the Trocadero, and one of the Trocadero. The problem is, of course, the Trocadaro of postcard land is not the same Trocadero of today, which is both significantly shorter, and rather less attractive. Even its own website calls it ugly. But I could not get the view for one of the postcards (sorry Cathy!) so I used one sketch for the both. I know. So cheating.

The Alyssa postcard:The Cathy postcard:And, the Michelle postcard (sorry for the ugly building!):

There were at least three wedding photos being taken while I was there, generally on the grass at the Trocadero looking up at the Eiffel tower. Apparently its a good view. Also, there are signs all around saying that the grass was forbidden, but people were practically sitting on those signs...apparently there is lighter grass security at the Trocadero.

Louvre 2

2009-06-18T02:08:00.000-07:00

Last night was step 2 of our Louvre exploration. I went earlier in the day to draw, and then Garrett came to meet me after work and got a reduced price ticket. We finished up Ancient Egypt and then went through Greek, Roman and Etruscan Antiquities.

Yes, Garrett shaved by the way, so we should probably do something similar to what Parker did for Leia with pictures. Luckily he doesn't look like Uncle Colby or things would get really confusing ;) Garrett thought this cat and I shared some resemblances.

Garrett is apparently unhappy to be stuck in the Greek Pottery section.

This was a much nicer trip since, as you may imagine, the Louvre was pretty crowded on free Louvre day. We got to the pottery section at the very end of our visit, and we were pretty much the only people there.

In this area of the Louvre, there is a lot of the original chateau's over the top decorations. Some of the ancient Egypt stuff was in Louis XV's bedroom. So there were a lot of odd juxtopositions of styles.
It was also coming on sunset, so the lighting was really fantastic in some of the rooms:

When we were done, it was so beautiful out (both lighting and temperature wise) that we took a walk down through the Tuileries and to Place de la Concorde, where we watched the sunset and Paris light up. I've never been at Place de la Concorde when it's time to turn the lights on. They all come on at once, it's like lighting up a Christmas tree. Garrett took a lot of good pictures:

It was a terrible, terrible evening, we absolutely hated it.

Oh, and here's the one (mostly) successful sketch I did:

And, I bought a new bag! I've been carrying around my big backpack or laptop bag because they are the only things that could carry my sketchbook, but they're bulky, and have rather more padding than I need, so I've been scoping bags, specifically messanger bags because I like them. Last time we were at the Louvre, we saw this bag at the post office there:

It was more reasonably priced, and it's just more fun than anything else I'd seen, so I grabbed it when I got there and I'm becoming more and more attached to it.

Work in Progress

2009-06-17T01:25:00.001-07:00

Since I spent most of the day yesterday at Notre Dame working on the Garrett commission, I thought I would show you the work in progress. Each sketch is on a 9"x12" sheet of paper and took about an hour of live sketching (except for the first one since I was setting up the proportions for the rest):

Ensemble

Sorry about the image quality, I always have a hard time trying to get pictures or scans of sketches to come out right. Also, in real life they line up better, but the perspective from the camera screwed it up a little bit. And I think I'll have to do 6 again, something's not quite right about the proportions. But it was at the end of 3, so my back hurt, I was in a hurry and there was a drunk guy who insisted on touching the thing while I was trying to work on it and wouldn't go away, so I'm not blaming myself too much.

The whole thing will be in the same monochromatic style of the stained glass window, except probably in brown. It will take me at least another 10 hours to do the rest of the sketches and an unknown (but significantly longer) amount of time to do all of the shading. I'm trying to get all of the sketches in live, but I certainly won't have enough time for the shading while we're here. Nor do I have nearly enough color stix. The final thing will be about 36"x48", or 3'x4' thus becoming the largest project I've ever worked on (not counting the giant bird cage).

Musée Gustave Moreau

2009-06-16T00:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was supposed to be the only rainy day this week, so I had no choice but to make it a museum day and headed over to the Musée Gustave Moreau, which is reasonably walkable...if one doesn't get lost...
The museum is in his house and he actually started planning for it before he died. He decided that his individual works didn't convey who he was as an artist and but that together they said something. The house is pretty small, and the museum is closed during lunch time. It was nice and quiet. It starts out with his greeting room, and then dining room, bedroom, etc. All of which are pretty small and gloomy and have his collection of paintings and sculptures all over. I was beginning to feel pretty disappointed, when I went upstairs and came upon this room:
Which is suddenly enormous and full of enormous paintings. I began to wonder how many tubes of paint it took to fill some of them. It was really pretty fascinating to see. A lot of Moreau's paintings were unfinished. He seemed to have a tendancy to work on them for over a decade. But the ones that are unfinished usually have a whole lot of the detail already outlined so you can see exactly how ambitious the paintings are.Moreau tended to rework certain themes over and over again, some of them done more than once the same way on the same size of canvas. The theme I know him most for is SalomeMoreau took up about half a chapter in my thesis. So I took a picture of every Salome I saw and present some of them here for you.

Post Card Jeu de Piste!

2009-06-15T01:29:00.000-07:00

For those who weren't there, my Bridal Shower had a bit of a Paris theme to it, since Michelle knew I so love Paris (and probably because it tied in well with the seperate lingerie theme). Each place setting had its own Paris postcard, so each lady there wrote her name and address on the card so I could send it back to her from here. Since I had been planning on sketching as well, it became a goal also to sketch every postcard. So here is postcard #1, the Belle postcard. La Seine as viewed from Pont de Concorde.
This was my first choice for a number of reasons. 1, it was pretty easy to find because it actually told me where the perspective was from. 2, it still exists (apart from that building on the horizon). 3, it's really easy to get to.
Some of the remaining postcards are not going to be so easy. At least 3 of them are of things that no longer exist (see that building on the horizon), and another 3 are from perspectives that I don't think I can get to. But worry not, I will do my best. I will draw what's in the place of the things that are missing as best I can.

After doing the sketch, I went for a walk in the fancy schmancy area of town just on the other side of Place de la Concorde. Here I looked in windows and admired the dresses that were, instead of the 200 Euro level of out of my grasp, more around the 4,000 Euro level of out of my grasp. Somehow there are still a lot of independent boutiques in this area, the kind where the owners make all of their own stuff, where you can find things for very reasonable prices.

Above is one that I'd never seen before but plan to see again. At first glance I thought, my, how frilly those sweaters are (frilly not usually being a good thing in Maren's closet), and then, gee, I really want one. I'm not quite sure that I could actually wear it outside of France, but I do think that I might have to go back during the sale time (sales are government regulated for unknown reasons).

A weekend summary:

Saturday we went to check out the Marché aux Puces au Clingencourt. Garrett's been interested in checking out the markets, so this was actually his idea, though it wasn't really up his alley. In the core area there are a lot of antiques and chandeliers and silverware, and while I get super excited about little aperetif glasses, he doesn't really (can't blame him). The outside is full of brand-name-knock-offs and potentially-stolen-cell-phones-and-watches. As well as a number of booths that somewhat remind me of Portland's Saturday Market, or the Pike Place Market (smell of incense will do that everytime).

Since that wasn't as riveting as hoped, we then headed over to the other end of town to the book market, which did prove to be more intersting. They have a lot of history and art books, as well as a good collection of comic books and childrens books, which are always the most fun to look through.

Then, since it was such a wonderful day, we went for a walk after dinner by the canal. The canal was pretty well lined with young people with their picnics or fishing poles lazing about. The street was also full of people dressed to go out, or carrying baguettes and bottles of wine on their way to dinner parties (very much the thing to do here). It was very lively.

Yesterday we went out to another market, this one most definately my idea, the art market. It was fun, reasonably small so as not to drain all of Garrett's enthusiasm, but big enough to satisfy me. There were a number of artists that I could definately appreciate as being good and a handful that were really very impressive. There were also some fancy hats that I knew I would never have anywhere to wear, and some very very tempting feather headbands that I would make an occasion to wear.

Then we walked up by Montparnasse and down towards where I used to spend a lot of my time, by the center of the study abroad program. It was nice to see the cafe where I spent many a euro on crèmes (lattes).

And then we were tired :)

ConGraduations!

2009-06-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

Picture by Harrison Keely

Congratulations to Colby who graduated on Saturday! We always knew you could probably do it! ;D

Le Metro

2009-06-12T08:02:00.001-07:00

I thought I would put a post up on one of my favorite metro stops, Cité. It's the only stop on Île de la Cité and the one I most prefer to get to Nôtre Dame, for a number of reasons: it's on one of our three lines, it's not the stop the tourists use, and it puts you out right at the Marché aux Fleurs, which is pretty and smells good.
But it's also very interestingly designed. It has the big ball shaped lights with their arching stands, and big riveted plate metal walls. It's also undeniably greenish, now that I look at my pictures. I actually made the top one a little bet less green because it was a little eerie.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours working on a giant sketch of Nôtre Dame (comissioned by Garrett). It's not really showable yet as I only have 3/16 of the sketches done and they're rough sketches...Then I went over to Les Halles to meet Garrett and check out cooking shops, which was cool and dangerous. I managed to only buy a cook book of the basics of French cuisine, with some good pictures and clear directions. But I was very tempted by the madeline forms, something I never knew I always wanted...I mean when I'm not using it (which would be most of the time) I could hang it in the kitchen as decoration right?

Maybe I'll find one at the flea market.

Encore la Petit Palais

2009-06-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a seriously rainy week, which somewhat limits my outings. Yesterday I went to the Petit Palais to do some more serious drawing. Or at least to do some more drawings. I have pretty much covered the things that can be drawn from benches, so this time I stood, or sat on the floor like the school kids on field trips (except without a brightly colored cushion). This lead to odd findings on things that can get sore. When I had finished my first drawing (see scary face below), I moved my left arm for the first time in about a half an hour and discovered that my elbow can get really really sore. I had only prepared enough to wear good standing shoes, I have no idea what to do about the supporting arm getting sore. Oh well. These first two drawings are from the Carrière room. Carrière is an artist I was not so familiar with, but he's really pretty interesting. He was mostly self taught and prefered to do portraits from memory rather than in person so that he could get the real personality of the person, rather than their features. He was the one who does these really cool frogs:

Some of which have rabbit ears, like the proud warty one I sketched above. He did a lot of grotesque faces, which were interesting but not something I would want in my home so much. Both the frog and the face came from pieces of an archway he was making for an American woman's home, so apparently she disagreed. He never finished it, though, he died pretty young of tuberculoses.

For a change of pace, I then did a quick sketch of Truth, at least her head. She seems to be a very gentle Truth, Justice, on the other hand, seemed a little more no-nonsense.

Musée Rodin

2009-06-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

Eve Rodin

So on Monday, I had a late start because I had actual work to do in the morning (yay work!), so I decided to head out to the Petit Palais for a short visit. It apparently is closed on Mondays. As is the Grand Palais across the street. So, checking my map, I decided to head over to the Musée Rodin, which was about as close as the Louvre (which I now know is closed on Tuesdays), but I hadn't been to it the day before. It was a little bit of a walk, and as I had somehow sprained some little muscle in my foot, I was trying to take it easy. When the Musée Rodin was closed, I went home and did more work. Yesterday it was a dark and stormy day. Today too really. But it made for a good day to visit a museum in an old, mirror-filled home with creaking wood floors, so I went back. When I went to the museum when I was here before, I sort of skipped most of the gardens, which was a mistake. The gardens are beautiful. Full of roses and sculptures. It turns out that you can pay a Euro just for the gardens, which could be a good deal for sketching in the future.

The museum itself is filled with chairs and little canvas stools that you can move around for sketching, which is super convenient. I drew these hands:

Well, from the window side:

I felt pretty good about it, especially since I'm not much of a cross-hatcher. Until I finished and I realized that I had forgotten a couple fingers...oops. And then there were a couple of other sketchers who were better than me, so I got a little bummed. But I enjoyed the rest of the museum anyways :)

If you happen to be wondering who this Rodin guy is, and I couldn't blame you, here's his most famous work (I think it's his most famous):

The thinker.

Le Louvre

2009-06-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Sunday was another First Sunday, which meant that most museums were free. Last month we went over to the Orsay. This month we decided to brave the Louvre, with the understanding that we would only go for a short period of time, so as to not be overwhelmed. We spent a little under three hours and covered all of Asian Antiquities, half of Egyptian Antiquities with a little bit of Greek Antiquities on the way. Above is the Venus de Milo amongst her adoring fans. When we were planning our route, we didn't realize that we were headed to a wall of tourists.
The Asian Antiquities area was pretty interesting, and it's not one of the bigger draws. My favorite part was the enormous winged bulls that were apparently once a part of a palace:

With a random guy to give you some perspective. Garrett's favorites were the little scroll stamps of which there were probably hundreds made out of various stone (quartz, hematite, jasper), and which when rolled out across something malleable made a pattern:

Here's one of quartz with a couple of lions and a goat on a pedestal. We're not really sure what they were for, but they were interesting to look at.Here's Garrett among the ancient Persians.
The Ancient Egypt area was also very cool. The mummy got the big crowd, but I like the statues of animals.The hawk is probably my favorite, and since it was Horus' favorite too, I tend to like Horus.Here's me with some baboons that used to guard the temple at Karnak...but now they guard a room with some statues of kings with missing noses (a very sad condition that we noticed seems to have plagued most ancient Egyptians).
Garrett with Rames II (also unfortunately lost his nose, not Garrett, Ramses)Me as seen through Diana's arm.

Garrett taking a picture of the pyramid in a room with sculpted stones that appeared to be very old...

We then wandered up and looked in the windows of the closed shops...and continued wandering until we got all the way back to the apartment.

We estimate that it will take us about 4 more trips to see the whole thing. We get one more free trip, and then there are cheaper tickets Wednesday and Friday evenings after 6pm....so we think we can make it!

Joyeux Anniversaire

2009-06-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

Friday was my birthday and it had been Garrett's plan ever since he heard that we were going to Paris to take me up the Eiffel Tower on my birthday. He got the second half of the day off so that we could go in the afternoon. I spent the morning reading by the canal and doing some careful picnic preparations. And I was prepared, I put together a feast complete with plastic wine glasses and a surprise strawberry shortcake-ish that they happened to have in the bakery. Quelle chance!

We gathered our foods and headed over to the Champs de Mars for the picnic feast. It was a nice day but pretty windy so we had some incidents with the plastic wine glasses (which all managed to miss the white dress, phew). Once we got really, really full, we headed over to la tour herself. I had never been up the Eiffel Tower when I was here before. I had been on top of l'Arc de Triumph and up on Mont Martre and had kind of felt that getting the up high view from one monument was just like the up high view from another, except that on top of the Eiffel Tower, you can't see the Eiffel Tower. I hadn't quite taken into account how very very tall it is.We had been a little bit worried before hand because rumor had it that the Obamas would be eating in the Eiffel Tower. When we approached the line however, it said that the very top was temporarily closed. We were a little bummed, but decided to go up as high as we could and then try again later. When we bought our tickets, however, he said we could get tickets to the top once we got to the second level. We found out later that Michelle Obama and the girls had gone to visit the Eiffel Tower on Friday as well, and we suspect that was why it was closed. We walked up the first two levels (about half of it) which was rather dizzying and unnerving. (Note: I was off duty camera-wise, so I apologize for the parade of Maren with Eiffel Tower pictures). Already from the second levels you could really see a lot. We could pick out the statue of liberty (above), Notre Dame, la Defense, l'Arc de Triumph, Mont Martre (which kept looking smaller and smaller), etc. I watched some rather disappointing soccer while Garrett took some pictures, and then we had an espresso and got in line for the the elevator.

The Eiffel Tower is really really tall. That grate is there to keep the wind from blowing me off. But you could even see the edge of the city and the beginnings of countryside. You get a good sense of the curviness of the Seine. We could make out the zoo in the distance!

It was a cool experience. We were very glad that we did not have to walk back down again.

We then headed over to the restaurant I had picked out for us, le Procope, which is advertised as being the oldest cafe in Paris. Apparently a lot of famous people (now dead) used to eat there. It was a cool old building with a lot of paintings of various famous dead people. We had a nice meal, I got onion soup (somehow still not as good as Dad's), a whole trout, and some not quite good sorbet that was made from a pistachio liquer. Garrett had salad, steak, and creme brulee (he's getting a multiple restaurant comparison going). It was somewhat beyond us to finish. We were seated behind a couple of Americans who kept making us cringe with how difficult they were making things. I was exploring the bathrooms while they ordered, but Garrett says it was quite an ordeal. When they got their salads, there was some waiter switching while they asked about the dressing (there was one english speaking waiter who seemed to get to run around to all of the english speaking customers). The waiter didn't know what was on it, so he went back to the kitchen, explaining that the dressing was comprised of balsamic vinaigre and oil of tournesol. The american customers wanted to know what tournesol was and the english speaking waiter hurried off to find someone to translate. We had already been somewhat uncomfortably embarrassed for the difficult customers that our compatriots were becoming, so I called to the French speaking waitor to explain that it was sunflower oil. I was very willing to admit to eavesdropping if it would stop the poor guy from running all over the restaurant like they were his only customer. Sigh.

Je Vais à Disneyland!

2009-06-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

It has been our plan for a while to squeeze in a little trip to Disneyland Resort Paris while we're here. They have a specially priced ticket for Paris residents...or anyone, it isn't really clear, but you have to buy them in advance and they're only specially cheap on certain days. The only one of those certain days that we had available, was Monday, so we maneuvered the website and bought us some tickets. Then I bought some super duper sunscreen.
I've been once before, when Jamie and Saeed were so kind as to let me come with them while they were visiting 6 years ago. Since then, they've added more hotels, a Downtown Disney (Disney Village) and another theme park, Walt Disney Studios.

Another noticeble change was that Indiana Jones (et le Temple de Péril) now goes forwards again, but it is still super fun. I still somehow get a headache, but I think it just must be the chairs...and also just me.

Garrett was impressed by the fact that they seemed to put more effort into making all of the non-ride buildings look super detailed and cool.
Here were some of our favorite bits:

Alice has her own labrinth, which was cute and quirky and seemed to me to be a good reference to the movie

This Disneyland also benifits from having been made more recently, so some of the attractions that they know are already popular, got their own cool buildings:

Pirates of the Caribeen gets its own castle.

Speaking of castles, the castle of Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty), is not only pink and funly stylized on the outside, with the really cool boxy trees and swishy landscape like they have in the movie, but is super decorated on the inside:

Full sized, expertly done stained glass was probably the coolest bit, but they also had tapestries and (snoring) sets of armor.

Thunder Mountain is its own island, the ride goes under the lake. We were somewhat disappointed in Space Mountain Mission 2, which had a very cool steampunk/Jules Vern look to it. The inside was darker and had some cool floating planets and comets which were visually better done than the other 2 we're used to. But the ride itself is less fun. It's super short, and it's just not the same.

However, out at Walt Disney Studios, there is a new ride called Crush's Coaster. It was the longest line we waited in (1.5 hrs) and it moved very, very slowly. But the ride itself was super fun, and definately one of my favorites. It too, was really way too short, especially for the wait. You sit in a shell, four people to a shell, two facing one way and two the other. The shell sort of rotates a bit through the roller coaster, which is part of the novelty and successfully super fun in my opinion.

We did some of the other small rides too. Here's Garrett in the Pays des Contes de Fées. A peaceful (and pink) boatride through little miniatue cartoon sets.

We stayed until close to closing, headed over to the Village, ate some hamburgers, bought some souveniers, and then headed home way past our bedtime, accompanied by fellow exhausted vacationers (collapsed on top of each other with their mouths open).
It was a lot of fun despite the number of line cutters who we considered taking pictures of to post up here :)

New Illustration

2009-06-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

Phew, managed a new illustration:

la Crosière des Fleuves: la Seine et la Marne

2009-06-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

So Friday evening found us searching around on the internet for a thing to do for the weekend. I had been trying to pressure Garrett into doing one of the classic 1 hour Seine cruises where you just sort of go up and down through Paris and get a nice view of a lot of major monuments. While I had been researching, I had found some cruises that go up the Seine...and then out into the countryside. We decided that this sounded like fun, but it was unlikely that we were going to be able to get it pulled together in time. Especially as the people I found needed phone reservations...and it was after 9pm.
But then we found Canauxrama, who was offering a special internet deal for 10 euros off per person to go the next morning. So we took it!We had a hard time scrounging up our picnic lunch, since everything was closed and wouldn't open until after we left. But luckily the bakeries open early, so we gathered up our picnicable food, got a baguette and some water bottles and headed out to the Bastille, where we would launch into our relaxing cruise. It was a clear crisp morning and as we headed out of the canal into the Seine, we got the above view of Notre Dame.The commentary was all in French. Garrett was able to pick some of it up himself, and I did my best to fill in on some of the more interesting stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of what seemed cool to the French passengers, was sort of lost on me, so I didn't bother. There was a lot of "if you notice this building/restaurant/island over here, it had such and such a small history and you may recognize it from the movie Blahdeblah starring Gerard Depardieu>." Cue oohs and ahhs.

Some of the information was interesting, but we spent a lot of time checking out the transformed cargo boat-to houseboats that were passing us by or hanging out with us in the locks, noting the ones that had put together nice sunny rooms on the top and wondering about how much they might cost...I personally was noting in my head the usage of deck space with furniture and potted plants and picking out my favorites for a good bit of tea and novel reading.

We stopped somewhere out on the Marne for some lunch, had our picnic with a nice swan family that was out for a cruise and worked on our cherry pit spitting (no, not at the swans). Then we went over to the restaurant and had some icecream and coffee (oh the things you have to do to gain access to a restroom). The two lunch hours passed amazingly quickly.

For the way back on the boat, they replaced commentary with accordian music. And I don't have anything against accordian music, I promise, Joe, but he had a sort of back up machine. They have the same ones on the metro. And it makes it instantly cheesy and it was rather unfortunate. But oh well.
So we had a nice, relaxing day, which ended in sunburn. We didn't get a chance to buy any sunscreen before leaving and we did our best to stay in the shade, but we still ended up the pale-masked bandits.

No Post for You

2009-05-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I didn't get a chance to get the pictures loaded and edited today, so I'll have to post later. I won't be able to post tomorrow either, we have another France holiday so we've got a day trip planned. But I'll certainly have it up Tuesday morning!

La Vie en Rosier

2009-05-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the Jardin des Plants (the botanical garden) to do a bit of art. When I was studying here, this was the closest garden to my main university, so I would sometimes come here to eat lunch. It is also the site of a menagerie and the Natural History Museum (see "Nuit des Musees). Somehow, though, there were still places that I hadn't seen, such as the rosarie. I of course got a talking to for stepping on the grass to read some of the plaques about the roses. It turns out though, that if you go on the other side of the walkway in the shade, you can take a nap there without being yelled at...there were several people en repose.
I made me a little painting:

It was a wonderful day (we're getting more and more of them), and somehow most of the roses were just completely loaded down with flowers. It was very nice and apparently very popular for people to walk through on there way to somewhere else while talking business on cell phones.Another newly discovered place is the labrinth, which while walking through I just thought was accidentaly confusing. It's mostly just a spiral through hedges up a hill to this gazebo-ish:

And yes, the woman on the right is wearing 3d glasses that seem to have small Mickey ears on them...I wasn't sure if she was making a statement or conducting an experiment of some kind.

And then the really cool jardin alphin, which is locked most of the time and hard to get to, so I can't really blame myself for missing it before. It's a collection of mountain plants from all over the world, but it's so beautifully put together. You can also, in some spots, cheat and look right in to the menagerie with a better view than the paying customer gets (only on two deer exhibits).

Tune in next time for Garrett and Maren's adventure on the River Cruise...

Cimitière Père Lachaise

2009-05-29T12:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry it took me a little while to...decompress...after the shower incident. The shower by the way has not yet fallen through the floor.

Yesterday was pretty cloudy and a bit sprinkly, but I decided to head outside anyways, I had already been to my museum of the week. The Cimitière Père Lachaise is apparently one of the most visited cemetaries in the world due to the number of famous people buried there as well as some of the rather overlarge tombs that some of the richer dead people have. Jim Morrison's buried there, Proust, Chopin, Sarah Burnhardt, Edith Piaf, Colette, Seurat, etc. etc. I went and sought out two of the graves (it's huge and I didn't have a map).

Oscar Wilde's was first:

It's covered in lipstick kisses as high as lips can reach and people have left notes and flowers. Interestingly, on the back it says that he is the author of Salome and other beautiful works. Go Salome. Here's the inscription:

And alien tears will fill for him

Pity's long-broken urn

For his mourners will be outcast men

And outcasts always mourn.

I also went and looked at Héloise et Abelard's graves (famous lovers as it says on the map). I'm reading a book that's sort of based on the famous love letters they sent to each other. Unfortunately it was being restored so I couldn't get any good pictures.

Otherwise, I just walked around and enjoyed the peacefulness and quietness, and really neat doors:

Which, yes, I took a lot of pictures of.

The family tombs are like little mini buildings complete with doors and windows and often stained glass, so they make for good little sketching projects, though I have none worth showing.

l'Apartement Fini...peut-être

2009-05-27T02:26:00.000-07:00

The Louvre was closed and apparently it being Tuesday was a good enough reason. It was pooring down rain and it's somewhat a big courtyard so I was soaked despite my umbrella by the time I found cover. Luckily I had noticed the decorative arts museum when I was out there last time. It's in a wing of the Louvre. So I went there and spent several hours trying to get back to a good mood.

When I got back, I found that our apartment guy responded well and quickly. He called repair guy and the apartment management people who order repair guy around. I had a message that repair guy was going to be coming back sometime that day. Which meant no groceries, but that was fine. He came after a couple hours, and after a lot of banging and swearing and breaking of tiles (and telling me about how my posture was bad and the light bulb needed to be fixed or I'd get headaches and some coments on showering), he found the problem. He needed a replacement part, but unfortunately the pipes are all of a smaller diameter than today's pipes and it would take him a while to find it.

I had Garrett go in late to work this morning so that I could sort of limit the flirting. It did take him a long time to get the part, but once he did, it didn't take him long to install it. Of course the bathroom will still need to be taken apart, and there were all sorts of complications for apartment guy about insurance and the owners and paperwork that I'm glad I don't have to deal with....but it seems...I think...that we're done with the shower issue.

I still feel a little bit like it might be about to drop down into our neighbor's apartment, but, you know, we'll see.

It also seems as though we are not going to get thrown out.

Feat of Strength: Fixed the leak in the apartment, while getting yelled at by neighbors, speaking a foreign language, and not getting thrown out by the owners.

Chocolate

2009-05-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

I would like to also note that chocolate in cereal is both brilliant and completely reasonable and I don't know why there isn't more of it in the US. I'm talking chunks of chocolate in my granola. Yummy.

l'Apartement 2

2009-05-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

I'm really not leaving you hanging to build suspense, I promise.

So I called the fixer guy and left my terrible message.

Yesterday morning he called back, said he hadn't heard about the neighbor's problem and would verify it and be here around noon. He came around 1:20, very apologetic saying he was going to run down to the restaurant where the neighbor works (just downstairs) and then come back.
He checked out the neighbor's place and then came up again and measured the water level in the walls.

I was meanwhile pretending that I had every right to be here. He didn't seem to care. He was flirty, dissaproved of my pc, and our sinus medicine, wanted to know which boy I was dating and insisted that Yahoo had the best weather predictions...at least that he could get on his iPhone.
The general shower consensus was, not surprisingly, that everything was going to have to be taken out and redone. And also that it would take a long, long time to get approval from the proprietors. He pointed out all of the places where people have been waiting for over a year. And the business across the way that had been waiting for two that he might be able to fix soon.
I told him that we had told our neighbors that we would not take a shower, and he said that their apartment could not possibly get any worse and that we should go ahead. Then he kissed my hand and left.

I was pretty sure that I had taken it as far as I could take it and that responsibility was now off our shoulders. And I got to take a shower. And, after sending the neighbors an email explaining that I would be and why, I did.

As did Garrett this morning. And while he was in the shower, we once again got a knock on our door. It was, again, the neighbor, shirtless and yelling that water was now pouring through their ceiling. Worse than ever. He dragged me downstairs again to look, me protesting that it was really pretty neccesary for us to take a shower and that we had done everything we could. Here was his girlfriend hurriedly cleaning up the water away from the bed they had just made for family to come and stay in.

We got very little accomplished. Garrett came down in a bit and reitterated the neccesity of showers. They of course, well at least the girlfriend said that of course we did, it was hot yesterday of course your going to take a shower. The neighbor offered to call somebody, and we explained that we couldn't pay for that...so...um. yeah.

The neighbors are angry. At least the guy is very angry and we could sort of sense that he was ready to just go have someone kick us out. Which would clearly be the easiest thing to do. And we don't really have much that we can do.

After trying to think of what to do for a while, we emailed our apartment guy. We explained to him the situation. Said that we could call some plumbers but that it was unlikely that anyone would be able to fix it, especially as the fixer guy said everything would need to be re done. We noted that he probably had a case against the proprietors that he was living in an unsafe/unhealthy environment and that he could take legal action against them, but that we can't really help with that. We said that we were willing to help him do whatever we needed to to get things fixed up, but that also, it might end up being better to leave before we all get in a bad situation.

So.

That's the current state of things.

I am now going to leave the apartment and go to the Louvre and hopefully forget about the mess for the moment.

l'Apartement

2009-05-25T09:19:00.001-07:00

Sorry about that. I intended the post the "to be continued" this morning, but I was busy waiting nervously.

So word may have spread, but at 10:30pm on Friday after our wonderful day in Whipped Cream Land, we got a knock on the door. I was already in my pjs, since I was, like I said exhausted. So Garrett had to answer the door. After I got some jeans on, I came out to hear, "Il y a une probleme." Apparently our shower is leaking down into his appartment. He kind of invited himself in to see where the problem was coming from. He had suspected the shower (he can pretty much hear what's going on), and he looked in to confirm that it was in the right spot.

He then had us follow him downstairs to see his wall, where indeed pools of water had gathered behind the paint. He seemed to know that it wasn't our apartment, and warned us not to call the proprietor. He said that regardless of our actual situation, it would be assumed that we were subletting, which is against the rules and that bad things would happen. He apparently was not a fan of the proprietor.

So after agreeing not to use the shower until we had someone look at it, we went back to our apartment, looked to see what other apartments we could get and how quickly we could get them. It appeared to be possible to find a place at the last minute, so we emailed the guy whose apartment this is and went to sleep.

He emailed us back in the morning without much of an idea of what to do...we talked him into looking up plumbers phone numbers and said that we would call them to find out what to do. And then around 11am, we get another knock on the door. We're thinking maybe it's the neighbors again, but it's a couple of people we don't know...
So I open the door and they look a little bit shocked...like they were not quite expecting me to be here. They asked for the apartment guy, and I said I was his friend. He explains to me that he's the guy who does the repairs and that the woman is who decides what gets to be fixed and that they've come to look at a leak in the shower.

I'm a little bit confused about how they got there...but I insist that they come in. I'm pretty sure that things take a long time to get done so turning away these people would probably not help. They take a bunch of pictures and I do my best to listen in on their conversation about the shower, and then they hustle out talking among themselves and apologizing for the intrusion. After talking to our apartment guy, he had apparently called in a leak months ago and hadn't heard anything back...And he just happened to show up right after our neighbors found a problem.

We got his phone number and I called him and left a terrible, terrible message in french (apparently, talking at a machine is even harder than talking on the phone) and sent an email asking our neighbors to call him and report their problem.

Meanwhile we're doing our best to cleanse ourselves in the sink....
To be continued once again...but sooner I promise

Chantilly

2009-05-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

So Friday, as I may or may not have mentioned, we went up to Chantilly (shan-tee-yee). It was a short train ride up, maybe about 35 minutes, and we left around 9:30 so we could get there nice and pre-tourist rush. It was a glorious day. The sky was a beautiful blue and it was warm with a nice light breeze. Chantilly itself seemed, well, charmed. The town was full of chocolate shops, patisseries, and clothing stores. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up pique-nique food (alas we didn't bring a corkscrew) and continued around to the Chateau grounds.Unfortunately, the tickets were somewhat more expensive and less inclusive than our book said, so we just got the tickets for the chateau with museum and the gardens. There are also extensive stables. And when I say extensive, I mean one of the Princes of Conde (all very into hunting) thought he would be reincarnated as a horse and had the stables built to be very castle-like and comfy. It turns out we had plenty to walk through, so we didn't miss them.

We started out with the museum, which was a little bit dull. They have a huge collection of Rennaissance art, but not really a lot of big works that...well that I would know. Surely someone else could get excited about them. That's not to say that I didn't recognize some of the artists. There were a number of Rafaels and Ingres'. But when the art doesn't mean anything to you it all kind of blends together. So I was mainly looking at the Chantilly lace samples, the cool chandeliers, interesting seat embrodery, etc. In the first room we came to they had iron sleeved arms mounted on the wall holding long fake candles. Unfortunately my picture didn't come out. There was also some interesting illuminated books and stained glass. And then of course there's that moment when you suddenly come accross something famous:

(Sorry about the blurry picture) So suddenly you feel all special and priveledged. This is Raphael's "Three Graces", which is much tinier than I expected. And I don't mean Mona Lisa tiny, I mean even tinier, like 6"x6"...maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's close. So that was exciting.

There was also the really cool library, full of beautiful old books:

Then, as it was lunch time and we were hungry, we ventured out into the huge gardens for our picnic. And had this view:
I know you can't really see, but on the opposite bank over to the left is a herd of horses. And they pretty much had the run of the bank and would, between snacks, race back and forth, occasionally roll in the grass, and once we caught one bucking friskily. They were good entertainment.

Then we spent about a good amount of time in the labrinth, which had the added difficulty of clues that you had to work out in French and enter into a number pad to open gates...most of them were broken, but we spent a good amount of time trying to figure out the clues anyways.

As this was the birth place of whipped cream, it was my plan to eat it. In our book they reccomended a restaurant that is right in the middle of the gardens in an area called le hameau (which I think means the hamlet, a little village). Apparently the chef there has been making the traditional whipped cream there for 30 years or so. The place was adorable and there were little tables set all around the wandering hedges. We approached and were told tragically and abruptly that we could only have their dessert if we ate lunch there too...of course with the desserts being around 9-12 euros, I quiver to think what their lunch costs are. So, with our wonderful day threatening to become slightly less wonderful, we wandered through the gardens, taking time to sit in nice places every once in a while and just sort of relax and enjoy everything.
When we had gotten our fill of gardens, we made our way back through town, checking out all of the menus as we went along, looking for our creme Chantilly. And then we found it. A place with both ice cream and their very own house creme Chantilly. So we ordered a couple of scoops of icecream, added on some whipped cream and an espresso each...

Perfect.

We spent a good hour and a half at that little cafe. And then relaxed and sun-dappled we grabbed a train back to Paris, where we had dinner and were ready to head to bed early since we were exhausted from all of our walking. It was a fantastic day.

That is until around 10:30pm...

Mont Martre

2009-05-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

Sacre Coeur picture by G

Thursday it was supposed to rain, but since it was sunny throughout the morning, we decided to head over to Mont Martre and Sacre Coeur since Garrett hadn't been up there. We stopped around midway up to have a very French lunch. Meaning very long. We probably offended them by asking for a menu...they brought back the chalk board. But the food was very good and there was plenty of it. Then we hiked our way up the stairs.

The reason for the day of was a Catholic holiday, so we poked our heads inside Sacre Coeur, but felt like we were intruding and didn't stick around. We walked around to a park where you can see the Eiffel Tower and spent a lot of time trying to get a good picture of me in front of it.

Me picture by G

We then wound our way back down, enjoying all of the funness of how Mont Martre is set up. We couldn't really spend any time in the little courtyard where all of the artists sell their Paris paintings because it was way too crowded. It was also interesting because the portrait artists had spread out from the square and were wandering around with drawing boards trying to grab people before they even got in. There were maybe 6 or 7 of them in the narrow street.

Overall, despite the huge crowd of tourists (which is pretty much the norm) we had a good time with our wandering.

Nouveau Illustration

2009-05-21T10:33:00.001-07:00

Made a new picture! Follow the link to check it out.

La Semaine

2009-05-21T02:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm sorry for the lack of posting yesterday. On Tuesday I went back to the Parc au Buttes-Chaument, the one that's nearby-ish (about a 25 minute walk). I had a little picnic on a hill and then found that my pencil was out of lead. I did a little bit of watercolor practice, but it's not really worth showing. I had a nice view though. And then it started raining again. So I headed back and spent a lot of time trying to plan a last minute trip.

Unfortunately, since it's so last minute, most of the train tickets were more expensive than they would normally be (about three times the cost to go to England). The only ticket I could find that was reasonably priced was to Orleans (the birthplace of Joan of Arc). While it seemed like it would probably prove to be historically interesting, I couldn't get myself excited enough about it to warrent all of the immediate planning that had to be involved. So we've decided to stay here and take some day trips around.

Yesterday, still out of lead, I decided to go draw bridges. And when I got out to the bridges it didn't really seem to be working out for me. It was a beautiful sunny day and in the high 70s. I ended up walking over to the Louvre and sitting in the garden there. I attempted a pen sketch (above). Got hit on by some guy who unabashedly didn't care that I was married, which I had always thought would be a nice shield against the hitting on-ness. He did go away politely when I made it clear that I would not be having sex with him. Walked through the Tuileries, back across the Seine and then decided I was feeling rather hot and icky and might not make it any further. When it seemed like the only option was to head back to the apartment, early though it was, I realized I was right across the Seine from the Petit Palais. I revived myself in their cafe and then proceded to wander leasurly, managing to get another sculpture sketch in nonetheless. It's really nice to go to a museum without feeling the pressure of trying to see everything and attempting to be interested in the supremely ugly blue velvet chairs with the gold unicorns. I like just wandering and noticing things, picking favourites and just hanging out in front of them for a while.So today I think we're going to do some more Paris exploration, but tomorrow we'll probably go out to Chantilly, the birthplace of whipped cream (yummy).

Jardin de Cluny

2009-05-19T01:47:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, since it was supposed to be only partly cloudy, I decided to head back to the Cluny gardens, this time taking the metro just in case. It turned out to be open, and, as I had gotten there around 1pm, packed with people, mostly students, filling in all of the wooden walkways. You see the French are excellent at taking advantage of their gardens, and if there is a bit of sunlight, all of them are pretty packed. So I found myself a small square of walkway that wasn't completely overgrown with roses and spent a very nice afternoon sketching and getting frustrated with watercolors (which are the most travel friendly since they come in such small tubes and fit so nicely in our ikea tupperware)

I have a tendency to try to force watercolors to do something that they don't want to do, which is what happened in the lefter painting. In the righter one I more...went with the flow with better results.

I did decide to walk back, since everything had been going so well and I had spent a good 3+ hours or so in the garden. The way back goes straight in front of Notre Dame (bummer, I know) and I found that they were having a bread feastival, and oddly enough, beach volleyball tournament. They had filled in a space with sand and there were bakers out there in their chefs hats fighting it out. They had some samples (yay!) and places where you could watch people baking:

It was fun to watch them shoveling baguettes in and out of the ovens. It was a nice little happenstance.

This week has one of my favourite Thursday Holidays. Not that I know what the actual holiday is, I rarely did, but what happens with the Thursday Holiday is that it's implied that no one will actually be showing up on Friday. So I'm doing some last minute research into where we can go to take our four day weekend. We were thinking about London, Garrett wants to try out the Chunnel and then he can show me around London and Leeds, where he was doing his studying. I'll let you all know what we end up deciding!

La Nuit aux Musées

2009-05-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

Saturday we came up with a fine plan. We would spend the day at the Paris Zoo and then head over to the Natural History Museum where we would meet up with Juraj and take advantage of la nuit aux musées. Apparently one night a year, all of the museums have something going on for free. Some of them just show off all or part of their exhibits, some of them have films or plays or tastings. But all of them are free. Of course I missed all of the ads because there are so many ads for la Nuit au Musée part 2 (Night at the Museum 2). But anyhow, I think that Juraj was once again the one who found us the free stuff to do.

We both looked up the opening times and dates and prices (these things can get competitive). We took the metro out to Bois de Vincennes, which turns out to be really very nice and headed in the direction of the zoo. And circled the zoo. We noticed a few faded signs on a couple gates that were hard to make out that said the zoo was closed for rennovation. Also signs that warned of the watch dog on duty, which seemed to us to be a bad idea for a zoo. When we got to the front, there was a larger, easier to read sign explaining that there were rennovations going on (seemingly from May to September which didn't make a lot of sense to us) and thank you for your business, patience, etc. When we got back to the appartment, we did find the note that said they were closed (after the hours of operations, dates, prices, etc.). Closed for some years it said. Garrett found on wikipedia that they in fact will not be open until 2012...bummer.

We walked around Bois de Vincennes for a little while, though, heading for the annual funfair. It was again a little drizzly and cold, so there weren't a lot of people out, but we enjoyed checking stuff out. Garrett was scoping games that he could win stuffed animals at, but there was not a single basketball game and there were a large number of shooting games. It was fun to compare/contrast to US carnivals. There was a lot of frightening Disney rip offs (and a scary lipsticked batman) on the mini merry-go-rounds, and a lot of paintings of bikini-clad (or not) out of proportion women on a number of rides and games. The dessert stands were really pretty adorable, taffy hanging from hooks, fancy lettering, a lot of pastel everything, grumpy-looking young people in cute pink uniforms.

Then it was time for the Natural History Museum, which was not exactly what we expected:It was pretty much a whole lot of skeletons stuffed into a little old building. Which, to be honest, was really very striking at first. But after case after case of comparing ear bits (which just looked like unidentifiable chunks of bone to me), we were a little bit bored. They did have some dinosaurs upstairs, and a dodo bird, which I was pretty excited about (yeah, I couldn't manage to not have a reflection):And then we got to make fun of this poor elephant:

In French he's an Asian Elephant, but in English, he's an African Bush Elephant, which seems like a small translation error...at least he's still an elephant?

So it turned out to be more of an experience of what museums used to be like. It's clearly not changed much in the last 100 years. There are still a lot of faded, hand-written description cards as you can see in that top picture of skulls.

Le Petit Palais Deux

2009-05-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was another not very nice day, so I went back to the free Petit Palais. I learned that about half of the museum was for temporary (and not free) exhibits, which was a bit of a dissapointment, but I also found the cafe, which was not. Especially as I needed some :)

I also found that there really aren't many places to sit and draw. I did a quick-ish sketch of this really cool fire screen that I'm sure I could find a place for somewhere...

You know, nothing great, just trying to keep my pencil moving. I also want this necklace, but I think it might not be for sale. Mostly I just looked around and considered it research. I took some pictures of some really cool frames that I might use for graphic stuff, and ceramics for pattern research. I also took some more pictures of things for Mom:

La Grenouille

Le Crapaud a la Grenouille

A Greek Thingy

And then, since the sun always seems to come out right as I'm leaving, I walked over to the pont Alexandre and took some pictures:

Chez Nous

2009-05-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to next-door Gare de l'Est (one of the big train stations) and did some quick sketches of people. Very badly. So no sketches for you today. I have a really hard time drawing people, I don't want to bother them, so instead I sneak around and then feel sketchy...

Then I came back and took some pictures of these tiles that are downstairs kind of minding their own business:

Kind of cool, huh? Of course I got some comments while I was photographing, one making fun, one gushing about how cool it is that these really old tiles are here! I liked the second one better. I then graphicalized them and made some really cool patterns, which I can't yet post until they get released through Pandora's Paper :)

So, sorry for the lack of art, I promise that I did do work!

La Fontaine de Medici

2009-05-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

So yesterday it was supposed to be not rainy with a chance that the sun might poke through, so I decided to head down to the previously mentioned gardens at the Cluny and paint some pretty flowers. I decided too, since I'm trying to not spend too much money on Metro tickets and trying to balance out the bread, cheese and sausage, that I would walk there. From the map I guessed it to be about 3.5km and guessed that it would take me about an hour of normal walking with the stoplights and people maneuvering. Surprisingly, it's a straight shot.

It took me a little less than an hour with speedy walking, and when I got there, I found the gate locked with the sign posted saying that they're open every day...I could see people in there working, but I was a little frustrated. So I decided to walk a little further to the Luxembourg Gardens, which were my favorite when I was here. They too were messing with their flowers and since it's been raining, the tulips only had a petal or two if they had any. There were pots everywhere with bright pink geraniums, but they were all up high and I couldn't get a good angle at them. Finally while walking around, I found this nice fountain. It was a nice quiet spot, and I imagine very cool and comfortable when it starts getting hot.

So I noisily dragged a chair over to the front, waited while a tourgroup swarmed around me taking pictures and then for three hours, did this:Yeah, three hours. But this is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to try to do while I was here. I usually don't have the patience. Or the ability to sit in a metal chair for that long. But I'm quite proud of myself. I actually appreciated the complements this time, mostly because none of them seemed like they were trying to get around to asking me for money. In fact someone actually offered to give me money for it, which was silly, but made me feel good. Especially since he then took a picture of it.

So hooray for me for being patient.

Back in Garrett land, work is still going well. He was bored for a couple of days while he was doing a lot of reading, but now Juraj is back from a conference, and I'm pretty confident that he will keep that from being a problem.

Petit Palais

2009-05-13T02:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on my sketching assignment, I went out to Petit Palace, Paris' only free museum. I've never been there before, and I was expecting something kind of small with maybe some not-quite-great art, but I was happily surprised. It is after all a Palace and I don't think I saw a third of it. They have a pretty varied collection (turn of the century, Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Grecian pottery, Louis XV, Medieval, etc). I made these two sketches, which I think are proportionally better than my last ones:

It's good to know that there's still tons of stuff to see there (including gardens). Since, just like the rest of the hundreds of museums here, it has pretty things in a cool building, with the added benefit of cheapness, I will probably be spending a reasonable amount of time here.

Pretty Screen Picture for Mom:

Berger (goatherd) picking flowers to decide if a bergere likes him (really that's its name):

A Note to Self that teeth in art is often creepy, even if it's supposed to be a happy child:

Monkey Doodles Post

2009-05-12T13:47:00.001-07:00

I managed to get the Illustration of the week finished up on time. Head on over to Monkey Doodles if you care to check it out!

Le Weekend

2009-05-12T02:10:00.000-07:00

I don't have any pretty pictures for you, but I thought I would give a quick summary of what we've been up to so you know we're still alive.
Garrett had Friday off (yay France and it's excessive holidays), so we went and walked around the Marais (meaning 'marsh,' so called because it once was one until it was absorbed by concrete). We checked out Les Halles (the big underground mall), Hôtel de Ville (a big old city hall), walked over to the islands looking for icecream, checked out Notre Dame, the Flower Market, hopped over to the left bank to take a look at Shakespeare and Co., and inspected a game store that was disappointingly mostly in English. When our feet hurt, we went back.
Saturday we took an adventure out to the outskirts of Paris to visit the Ikea. A lot of things that are easy to find nearby in the US (such as towels and sheets) are not so much in Paris. While there we were able to pretty much identify every bit of furniture that's in our apartment. It was a long trip (metro, train and bus) but a successful one. We got real-sized towels, tupperware, glasses, cooking utensils, bowls, bath mat, cutting board, lunch, trash bin, all for cheap.
Sunday we succesfully conquered the French laundry mat, then headed over to Champs Élysées to walk around and then paid an arm and a leg to go see Star Trek (10euro 20 each). From there we walked over to visit the old apartment I lived in before and on to the nearby Parc Monceau.
So that's the gist of it, hopefully I'll have more pictures for you soon.

Musée du Moyenne Âge

2009-05-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

"A Mon Seul Desir" Dame à la Licorne tapestry series. Photo by me

While I was studying abroad, the program I was in gave us all cards that said we were art students, and art students get into the museums for free. My favorite one to stop by was the Louvre, partially since it was on my way home, partially because it's just so cool and there's so much stuff to see. So I would go in for a while if it was raining. Sigh. The Cluny museum I was less excited about, but I went once, since it was free. It's the National Museum of the Middle Ages, which always seems to me to be a rather bummer of a time period.

It's located right next to the Sorbonne in a medieval hôtel particulière, or mansion, which is really pretty cool on it's own. This house also happens to be located nest to old Roman bath (which was unfortunately closed this time). Their most famous exhibit is the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series. There are six of them, made by a master at the time. They're all rather large and pretty well preserved.

I had been thinking of a painting for Illustration Friday (hierarchy) that was going to be somewhat Medieval-ish, so I decided to go to the museum and do some studies. I ended up spending about 4 hours there, 1 of sketching and the rest wandering around in the dark. They have to keep it really dark so that the tapistries and paintings don't continue to fade, which means that you can't see the cool old windows, courtyard and garden. The garden I was unaware of because it's well hidden, but it's a medieval garden that is inspired by the tapisteries and paintings and will be a really good place to go and work in the future.

So here are the sketches I did. I'm including the pictures of the actual subjects so that you and I can keep me in check. I tend to feel like my sketches are good if I add some good shading action, but, as you can see here, I tend to get too into the shading and sometimes distort the perspective:So, you know, room for improvement, but I guess that's the point of practicing.

And now, I present for your pleasure, some more Cluny pictures (from top to bottom, the very fancy chapel of the Cluny house, left just as it is, a very ornate piece of heavy-looking jewelry, probably belonged to a higher up member of the church, and a pretty bit of tapestry that I failed to get any information about):

Also, I bought scarves! I couldn't help myself :D.

A. it's been a little bit colder than we were prepared for, and B. when everybody's wearing them you start to feel like you need one. The good news is that I got some of poor quality, yet reasonable prettyness for very cheap (3 for 10 Euro!) at a tourist shop and will be likely to re-use them in many creative ways. One is begging to be turned into a table runner upon return to the states (the left two are unfortunately a little glittery, but you can't tell from frar away):

Musée D’Orsay

2009-05-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

Clock at Orsay, picture by G

We've discovered, thanks to Garrett's new co-worker, Juraj (pron. yuray), that most of Paris' museums are free to the public the first Sunday of every month. Juraj had plans to go the the Musée D’Orsay, so he invited us along.

The D'Orsay was once what must have been a really cool train station which was turned into a museum (Paris is good at this re-using of cool buildings). They are known for having a really good collection of impressionist paintings, which is art that Garrett actually likes to look at, which works well for me.

We started out trying to look at as much as we could, but I'm sort of a slow museumer and there's a lot of stuff to look at. So we made our way up to the Impressionism collection. Juraj assumed from my profession that I actually knew something about art. Luckily, the time period coincides with my thesis topic time period, so I knew some about the Salons and why the paintings were huge and there were so many naked goddesses. I've also been reading "Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Susan Vreeland, which Grandma Johnstone gave me to read and I've been saving for the trip. Thus giving me some more information on who's who of the impressionists. It was a lot of fun to see a lot of the Renoir originals that I've been reading about in the book and looking at tiny pictures of.

And now I present you with some pictures, One of us, one of Juraj and one of art (all but the one of us was taken by G himself):

La Décalage pt. 2

2009-05-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

We slept all the way through the night last night!
Hooray for us!

Notre Dame de Paris

2009-05-05T09:18:00.001-07:00

Notre Dame Stained glass photo by moi

So my journey yesterday to force myself into some serious art practice fell somewhat short of what I was hoping for. It might have been the excessive grocery store time. I thought it might help me if, instead of exploring new territory, I would venture back into previously visited territory, Notre Dame. In fact, I duplicated the only real live sketch (if I remember right) I made when I was here six years ago, the big stained glass circle as viewed from the outside:

I only sketched it while I was outside and then filled it in with color sticks later. Color sticks are kind of like the insides of colored pencil, and since charcoal and pastels drive me crazy (partially the mess but also they suck every bit of moisture out of my hands which makes me feel like pounding them into powder) so I'm trying them out in the hopes that they will make me less crazy.

Sketching outside proved to be a lot more difficult than I remember it. Mostly because, even though I was off of the tourist path, there were people walking by, most of which wanted to see what I was doing. I understand the pull, because I always feel the same thing, but I get really self concious. Most of them just sort of subtly swerved closer while I subtly tilted my sketchbook towards me. One guy actually came and looked over my shoulder and exclaimed "oh! c'est bon!" or "oui, bon!" every time I made a mark (at this point I was just making reference lines). I was unable to ignore him any longer when he sat down next to me, but he went away when I told him it was impossible to work like that. Not long after, a bunch of high school girls came over asking me if I was a dessinatrice. They also seemed to think it was very pretty (really, just lines and circles at this point). They practiced their english on me a bit before leaving (I have a habit of being unable to understand French when I'm annoyed). I found myself staring down anyone who walked by to try to discourage them from any potential accosting.

Maybe I'll get used to drawing attention (ouch! the pun!), or I might try more crowded places...

So then, since I was freezing and it was free, I went inside. And got some stained glass pictures:Sooo pretty. There are only two of these, one is just two different settings. The far right is the one that I drew. There was also a service going on with some chanting/singing, which was pretty amazing to hear, the music sort of spreads and fills the whole space.

In Garrett land, while we were not sleeping last night, he solved an algorithm he was working on...and then decided it was wrong...and then decided it was right again throughout the wee hours of the morning. When he went in to work, everyone was mighty impressed with him to the point where he's pretty sure that even if he does nothing else this summer, they will still be certain of his brilliance.

La Première Journée

2009-05-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Canals, finally my own picture

So I'm considering today our first real day in Paris. I'll talk about yesterday when I get a chance to seize Garrett's camera and share some pictures. Today, being the day that Garrett started work, and I started figuring out my art regime, seems like a good day to consider the beginning. We'll forget all of that luggage and metro wandering of before.

So I'll share a bit of what Garrett shared with me first. He has his own office (the visitor's office, but he's the only visitor) which has a window, which does show a patch of grass with some air conditioners on it. Also, a lot of building. He seems to like the people he works with, who seem to be interested in the theory stuff that he's interested in and also very friendly. I am jealous of his cafeteria he gets to go to. Apparently the food is really good, and really cheap...I'm planning on attempting a lunch visit some time to take advantage of this. He's generally very excited about the program and thinks he'll get a lot out of it.

For my part, I went to the grocery store three times today, which is more than three times more than I plan to be averaging. I discovered that I could indeed use my atm card, which allowed me to go back later to get the things I didn't have cash for. I went back a third time because I had forgotten flour, which after spending 20 minutes scouring the store (about the size of a 7-11), I discovered they had none of. I'm very disappointed in my Monop' (short for Monoprix because it's a mini version).

I generally intended today to be a day of exploration, but made myself sit down and do a drawing, since I promised myself to do at least one every week-day. I had read about the canals being the center of "bobo" culture (bohemian-bourgeois). The lonly planet people say that it could be the montmartre of today, and it being so close, I had to check it out.

My first impression was not fantastic. Dead pigeon, empty coke bottle, yellow-green water. But after walking up and down it for a while, it revealed itself to be very pretty for large sections.

There were a number of people fishing, which seemed a tad bit sketchy, but maybe they were just practicing. There was also a white haired man with very impressive facial hair and I wish I had asked nicely if I could take a picture of him. And then the rough young guys with peircings and painter's clothes watching these ducklings and expressing their concern to the guy cleaning the platform who said he was really trying very hard not to bother them. Who doesn't love ducklings?

I went back for lunch, and then walked over to the closest big garden, one that I had never been to. I had already done a rather lot of walking, but it was worth it:

Also, they had grassy hills available that you could actually lie on (normally they come after you with guns). I didn't explore the whole thing, because of its hilliness and my tiredness and the sunny grass...but I plan to go back.

So now we're both exhausted and hopefull that we will finally be able to sleep through the night.

Le Baggage

2009-05-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

Image by Antonio Jiménez Alonso

So while this morning didn't hint at it (since we missed it entirely), we had a remarquably productive day. We accidentally slept until 2pm which had a lot to do with us not being able to sleep until after 6am, and thereby completely missing the wussy java alarm clock I downloaded to my computer. We both got up feeling seriously irritated. Mostly about the accidental sleepage, but thereafter about pretty much everything else. Yesterday was a holiday (see previous post) and tomorrow is Sunday, and then Garrett's going to need to start work. So we pretty much needed to do everything today...which didn't seem very possible starting off the block at 2pm.

But we soldiered through. It started with our most revealing phone call yet to the Air Canada baggage ladies. I've gotten my opening line down pretty solid:

"Bonjour, je voudrais savoir si notre baggage est arrivé."

At which point I give them the file number and they go away for a while. After that my French deteriorates a little as I try to manipulate them into telling me something even a little bit different from what they've told me the last dozen times. This time I asked if it was possible that I could go to the airport this afternoon and find that my bags had been sitting there for three days. And she said that yes, it was completely possible...which reveals...more frustration, really.

We figured that getting a phone number for them to call might fix our problems, and that was the first thing on our list. So we battled the fnac (the Borders of France, with an electronics department). Apparently everyone had the same between holiday and sunday problem as we did, and invaded the fnac. The cheapest option being expensive, and alarm clocks unfindable, we left with an extra ethernet cable so that we can both be online at the same time. Maneuvering some metro stop closings, we made it to where Garrett remembered there being a phone store.

Having practiced my "the very absolute cheapest option you have" speach, we made it out after standing in a line that wound out the door.

After finally relearning the word for alarm clock (reveil-'wake up'), we went store to store asking about them, meeting some very helpful (and amusing) people along the way. Got a key copied in under 5 minutes, went to the grocery store (not as productive, raman here is over 1$ per packet!!!, but I'm soooo thankful for our under 3 euros rather good bottle of wine), went back up stairs, put together our cell phones and called the baggage people again. Skipping my first line, I gave her our file number, told her I didn't have a phone number before, but I had one now, she called the delivery people and within an hour they called me back.

I have never been so happy to see luggage. I am floored at how many clothing options I have! No more do I have to wash my undies with bar soap in the sink! No more do I have to air out my shirts out on the window bars!

Triumph!

La Décalage

2009-05-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Lily of the Valley, Photo by Trisha Shears

So we've arrived in France alive and in reasonably good shape. After sleeping for about 16 hours with a break in between to eat some bread and cheese, we're still a bit sleepy and more than a bit smelly. You see our luggage stayed in Canada, and the Charles de Gaule people aren't sure when they're going to catch a flight back here. And of course, since we brought a normal sized tube of toothpaste, it went in the checked bags. With the clothes. Both of us had the forethought to pack an extra shirt and extra underwear...but it's still not quite enough when you have to sleep in them too.

We made a noble scramble yesterday to find some sheets and towels in Paris (which is not an easy task) without having had any sleep and with our powers of communication and conniving rapidly deteriorating. At the end of which, we were only able to manage to buy a wheel of camembert, a stale baguette, some milk, and some yogurt to feed ourselves for the day.

Today, of course, is a holiday. The best I could make out from my study abroad time was that it's May Day, though they've named it after the lily of the valley. I've done some online research to determine that it's a celebration of spring, symbolized by the lily of the valley because it starts to smell really good at this time of year. What I didn't realize before is that it's also a sort of labor day, where they have a yearly grève (strike/protest/demonstration) at the Bastille in protest of whatever's been making everyone unhappy since the year before. Apparently, this year it's Sarkozy.

So, anyhow, that means that a lot of things are closed. Including the grocery store. So I've grabbed us a couple sandwiches mixed (ham and cheese) and another stale baguette to get us through the day. Tomorrow, hopefully we can find some real food (and wine) as well as do the other things we need to get done (cell phones, key copy, cables and plugs, etc.).