Walking Around in Paris

                One big thing that I noticed yesterday was when my host mother was looking in shop windows. Most places were closed, because it was a Sunday, so we didn’t actually go in any of the stores. But when I look in a window, I stand in front of it, and look it. Not so much here apparently. She would walk right up to the window and press her face and hands to the glass. I might do that if I was searching for something specific and planned to come back the next day to the same shop if they had it on display, but when I asked her what she was looking for, she said she wasn’t looking for anything in particular. She was just curious and liked looking at the shops. Then she said something really neat: Paris is for looking at. As in the point of Paris is for people to look at it and marvel at its beauty, which is completely true. Every side street we walked down or looked at was beautiful. It was made to look nice. Also, her behavior gives new meaning to the French phrase for window shopping, which is “faire du lèche-vitrines” and translates to “to lick the windows”.

                And I must comment on the roads and traffic. The streets are better than in Japan because they are laid out somewhat more grid-like, except for the random diagonals and the crazy roundabouts within roundabouts. And there aren’t as many bicycles around, though they make up for that in motorbikes. But both of those stick to the streets, instead of the sidewalks, so I don’t have to dodge them on a regular basis. Also, there are sidewalks on every street I’ve been on so far, which is a great improvement many of the streets I used daily in Japan. To make up for that, the pedestrians are insane. It’s like they feel cheated out of dodging danger and dismemberment on the sidewalks, and decide to go searching for it! There’s these nice things called walk/don’t walk signs on just about every crosswalk, but they don’t seem to exist in the eyes of the Parisians. It doesn’t seem to matter if the light for walking is green or red, if there’s a crosswalk; they use it without pause unless there is a vehicle actually in the middle of said crosswalk. If it’s only approaching the crosswalk, “Well, it’s not there yet!” seems to be the attitude. Now, keep in mind that I grew up in a small town where you didn’t need to check the roads before you crossed, because there was hardly ever any traffic, but I still did. I ALWAYS check both sides of the streets and err on the side of caution if there’s a car anywhere in sight. So, walking around Paris is going to be quite an adjustment.

                Today was the first day of orientation. I had NO problems getting to the school on time! I was early even! We spent a couple of hours going over things like our home stays, the metro system, the bank system, the classes, the trips, and we took the language placement test (which I did horrible on since I haven’t studied French since May and French grammar since freshman year). Then we broke for lunch. I went to a small café with two other students and we had sandwiches, on long pieces of baguettes. I had ham and cheese, of course. The cheese was really good and I wish I had asked what kind it was.

                We met up again at 2:30pm and took the metro to the Musée de Cluny, which has a collection of art from the Middle Ages. We saw lots of tapestries, including the Dame à la Licorne (The Woman of the Unicorn) which were pretty. We also so some stained glass windows, lots of statues, religious sculptures, and reliquaries. Then we were done with the scheduled activities and turned loose. Most of us went to a nearby phone store and either bought prepaid phones, or phone cards.

                I went home after that. Madame was watching a political discussion of the upcoming election and President Sarkozy’s chances in it so I joined her. Afterwards we had dinner, which consisted of fish, broccoli, and salad, with bread, cheese, and apples for desert. I was a bit worried about the dinners, because Madame is a vegetarian, and I am definitely not, but apparently fish is allowed, and I’m used to eating quite a lot of fish, so it should be fine.