Huelga, part deux!

Hey guys!

Alright, think back to a time, long long ago, when I was in Bolivia. Do you remember me telling you that the way things get done there was to have a strike? While I was in Bolivia there were several strikes. I have recently learned that this is how people express their opinions in Paris as well! Tomorrow there will be a strike..I forgot why.. someone told us last week..but regardless the outcome is that public transit is going to take like 10 times as long. I don't have to worry about this because I'm a 15-20 min walk to class and I don't take the metro to get there. My french teacher warned us today that she might be late tomorrow because of it. After class today I was walking home and saw the roads blocked off and tons of people walking around with stickers that I couldn't read. Maybe it's already starting? It's only a one day strike though so who knows.

Ok let's get down to business. I have a lot of reading to do today and tomorrow so instead of telling you all about Normandy on Friday and Saturday, I'm going to talk about my Thursday and show you some pictures from that day!

Thursday:

Last Thursday we had french placement testing in the morning. After testing we walked over to Ladurée, a famous macaroon place, and picked out a few macaroons to eat! My favorite one was vanilla because it tasted like ice cream in a cookie sandwich. I'd never had macaroons before but they're delicious and they are in all these bright colors! They even have mimosa flavored.

Later, one of the French students in our program, Camille, told us she wanted to show us where the Jardin du Luxembourg was. It's a garden we all kept hearing about but no one had seen yet. What I thought was going to be a 15 min walk to the gardens ended up being a 2.5 hour tour around part of the city.

First we walked back towards school and Ladurée, and up to the Seine.

This is the beginning of Pont Neuf, the island in the middle of the Seine on which Notre Dame sits.

Our first stop was to be Notre Dame. (Again). This marks my fourth time inside Notre Dame. But this time was a bit different, outside one of my friends pointed out something really cool! There was this really old man feeding the birds (enter the Feed the Birds song from Mary Poppins) and the birds were actually on his hand! Then the birds were landing on the shoulders of this old lady chatting to another old lady, and she didn't mind at all!

After Notre Dame we walked past part of the Sorbonne (famous public university), and entered the Pantheon. the Pantheon is where lots of famous dead people are buried, and it is located in this odd but beautiful area next to a law school and what amounts to like a regional government building. Here are a few pictures from outside the Pantheon and inside it.

This is the bad guy from Ocean's 12! I've found the Night Fox! He's in an ad for cologne that's on bus stops all over the city.

Inside the Pantheon:
In the basement of the Pantheon where most of the graves are:
Voltaire's body is in the casket behind his statue:

Outside of the Pantheon were two groups of college-aged kids. One group was in all red, and the other in all blue. Most of them had odd random squiggly lines in face paint on their faces and they seemed to be standing around. Camille said it was their form of hazing for "associations" or college clubs. Their hazing is tame and all in good fun, it's not harmful according to Camille. After a stop for gelato we walked into the Jardin du Luxembourg.

THIS PLACE IS AMAZING. First of all, we had a beautiful day to be walking around outside. It was in the 70's and sunny. I don't know how I've been to France twice and missed this. I've always come in March when it probably isn't as magical, but in September at least it was heaven. I can't really describe it in words, but I'll start by saying this place is huge. I didn't see all of it because our feet were hurting and I didn't know exactly how far it went. We walked to the center by the fountain and rested for about half an hour. There were people all over the place going for walks, reading, chatting, or eating. Here are some of the pictures I took:

This is the senate building:

Alright folks! That's it for now!

I'll update again soon!

Love, Hillary