I've sort of been museum-hopping for the past few days, as well as trying to work some scheduling things out. Concerning that, let's just say I'm registered for three out of four classes at Paris 3, and working starts on Tuesday! I'm really looking forward to it all, but I'm nervous, too. I'll definitely report in a lot next week.

The museum tour started on Thursday, when Sasha and I went to the Conciergerie. It was really pretty small...unless I missed something, but it was really just a couple of 'grandes salles' and some reproductions of people's cells (like Marie Antoinette's). The courtyard was really nice, and of course the architecture was amazing, but there's really not that much to tell. There was some information about the revolution and some busts of Robespierre, as well as old letters transferring prisoners from one place to another and stuff like that. Luckily I got in for free because ACCENT gave me an 'art history student' card, and apparently art history students can get into museums for free. :-)

Yesterday, MICEFA had organised a tour of the Hotel de Ville, which is a really beautiful building both inside and out. It was funny because 40 people had signed up to come, but only 9 showed up - I almost missed it; I didn't remember until Thursday night that we were having the tour! Luckily my friend Cory was there (she was in my MICEFA class) so I got to hang out with her. I really enjoyed the tour - it was in French, so it was extra cool. Basically, Paris has had a sort of Hotel de Ville since the 12th century - apparently then there wasn't really one 'Hotel de Ville' building, but the idea of a central place for the people of Paris has existed since then (hopefully I'm getting my dates right). The first building was built in the 14th century, but it got too small, so they built another on in the 16th century, and that one got too small, so they built another one in the 18th century, I think this is right. Either way, the Communards burnt that one down, as they liked to burn many of Paris's nice building, so when they rebuilt it, they did it in the same style as the 16th-century one. Or something like that, numbers are hard for me. One way or another, it's still the building of the people, so there are lots of awesome things there. The main room is divided into three sections, one for Literature, one for the Arts, and one for the Sciences. They are all decorated with all sorts of paintings with those themes - there are portraits of famous people (e.g. Moliere in the Literature room) and other paintings that go with the sections, like the Elements in the Sciences section (some are masculine; some are feminine, it's really interesting to see how they're done). Plus, you can see all kinds of cool things, like Notre Dame, right out the windows. The next room is the place where they put all these plaques from when the mayors of Paris welcome the new presidents - apparently the new presidents have to go there, meet the mayor, and they sign this thing and it's displayed in a case. Foreign leaders who visit the Hotel de Ville on official business do it too - so there's one from the Queen of England and Ronald Reagan, who was apparently the only president to visit the Hotel de Ville officially - go figure. There are awesome paintings in that room, too, like one of Louis XVI greeting the first mayor of Paris, whose name completely escapes me, and there's another painting of people getting pissed off at a king. Apparently all these parts of the Hotel de Ville were rennovated by Chirac (who I believe was elected mayor of Paris 3 times before he became president), but the last room we went into wasn't, it wasn't rennovated until his successor. Its theme is agriculture, which is, of course, an integral part of French life - there are paintings of things like vegetables, animals, wheat, fruits...etc, and then statues of the 'parts of the meal,' which begins with a woman and a glass of champagne and ends with her singing because she's had too much to drink! It was so cool because they were having a Ramadan concert there, so there were all kinds of 'ouds and other instruments - unfortunately we didn't get to stay for the show. The last thing we saw there was a corrider of chairs where all the heads of state sit when they come visit, it was cool. Then we had to leave and go back out into the rain, I had to go to the bank and pick up my credit card, which was exciting. :-) Last night I went to a bar with Elly and we watched Tonga get their butts kicked by England in rugby, it was sad, everyone there was rooting for Tonga.

Today I went to the Invalides (Musee de l'Armee) with Sasha, and it was really a huge museum! I got in free again, excellent, and we went to see Napoleon's tomb first. It was huge, I thought it was going to be small because he was really little. I mean, it was pretty short, compared to other people's tombs, but it was tall and grandiose - that should not have come as a surprise! The museum was interesting, I've never seen so much armor and swords and guns in my life! I was kind of overwhelmed, seeing as I was sort of trying to read the French, didn't know any of the words, tried to read the English, and realized I still didn't know what they were talking about!!! That part of the museum was probably really exciting for medieval warfare buffs. The sections on the World Wars was more interesting, they had uniforms from all different groups and in all different styles, and they showed a ton of video footage from both (which was somewhat interesting and somewhat distracting). It was strange because I really felt like it was military propaganda, or something...it's hard to explain, and I guess it's not a history museum, it's an army museum, so that was probably why it felt like it was glorifying the wars. I mean, it was cool to see one of the taxis from the Battle of the Marne in WWI, but it felt weird to see so many pictures of bombed out cities and towns all over Europe...and of course, the WWII section was basically over after the liberation of Paris, there was just one small corner about the part that continued with Japan. Though I did learn why there's a metro station called 'Bir Hakeim,' apparently the French fought there (it's in Libya) and won the place back, and it was really important for French military morale.

After the museum, Sasha and I went to find some food, and we were just going to get crepes but we could not find a crepe place anywhere! Usually, they're on every corner, but this time we walked for 30-45 minutes and ended up getting sandwiches from a Greek place...the guy was really nice and funny, he was really excited that I'm from the US, and I think he thought Sasha was from there too! It was really entertaining to have him try to speak English to us...Sasha and I figure if we go back there and be nice, they'll probably give us free drinks because they'll be so excited!!!!

Tomorrow I think will be laundry day (how fun!) and then Monday's my meeting for all the assistants working at Creteil! Hopefully everything goes well and I get my student card at some point, too, so I can register for Finnish before the class starts on Thursday!