Happy 100th Blog Post
Friday, January 19th - Monday, January 22, 2018
Paris, France
That's right! My 100th (published) blog post! I'm not sure if I'm super proud of having 100 blog posts, or a little concerned... We'll go with proud. Anyway. Paris.
Theatre de la Huchette
Now, I've studied Ionesco and read some of his stuff, and at best, I can describe his works as avant-garde. At worst, disturbing, although I can appreciate it from an academic point of view. And to be fair, I might be more generous towards Theatre de la Huchette if I didn't have a slight run-in with one of the ushers. Please enjoy this Cristiana original script.
So we regroup to discuss strategy. We want to get into this zoo, but we're not paying 13 euros a piece. That's when were notice the school group rate. 2 euros a person... WHICH IS WAY BETTER THAN 9! And we're totally a school group. So Drew, bless him, goes back up to the billetterie, and asks if we can have the school group rate, since there's a bunch of us, and we ARE a school group. Technically. And she tells him no, we don't have a teacher. (Keep in mind that I'm 90% sure a school group rate would be for visiting elementary schools, not college students, and that she already wouldn't give us the normal student rate.)
À bientôt,
Scène: Theatre de la Huchette
The theatre is small. You enter through the back, with a black sheetrock wall on your immediate right. There is a second door set into the wall about halfway down the aisle. The aisle runs along this wall. To the left are rows of 85 red seats that run right up to the stone wall. Immediately in front is a small stage, with a living room scene set for the play "La Cantatrice Chauve". A group of 15 St. Olaf students are sitting in the back two rows. The rest of the auditorium is full.
[Enter usher from the right side door. Walks up the aisle.]
Usher: Des programmes! Programmes! Voulez-vous des programmes?! PROGRAMMES!
One St. Olaf student (Cristiana obvi), pressed up against the wall on the far left side, raises her hand
Cristiana: Programme?
Usher: Oui, 2 euros s'il vous plaît!
Cristiana waves her hand in dismissal, clearly not about to spend 2 euros on a programme for a show she doesn't particularly like
Cristiana: Oh, non merci
Usher walks by, then turns around, almost like he's forgotten something, and walks back towards Cristiana. Leaning over a row of students,
Usher: Du chewing-gum?!
Cristiana chews her gum hesitantly
Cristiana: Oh, umm oui...
Usher: NON! PAS DU CHEWING-GUM! Ça ruine les sièges!
Usher rolls his eyes and marches out the main enterance
Cristiana, a little startled, but not one to ruin theater seats, and dedicated rule follower, starts rummaging around in her bag for a wrapper to spit out her gum. The other students try to muffle their snickers with their hands.
Usher marches back in, and shoves a crumpled and quite questionable napkin down the row of students to Cristiana, and speaks in accented english
Usher: Spit eet out! Into zee napkin! Geeve eet to me!
Cristiana takes the napkin, and spits out her gum, and with few options, being pushed up against the wall, she has no choice but to pass her gum back down the row of other students. The usher takes the napkin with a huff and marches back out of the theater. The St. Olaf students, with the exception of Cristiana, dissolve into fits of giggles.
End Scene.
To make matters worse, I fell asleep for a good 20 min in the middle of La Cantatrice Chauve... It's only an hour long... So I didn't have the best time. But Theatre de la Huchette is really interesting, especially if you're interested in post-war absurdism or you're a theater student. If that sounds like you, I would put this on your bucket list. But don't bring your chewing-gum.
The next story is better. So Paris has this great campus with a bunch of natural history museums, a garden, greenhouses, and a zoo. (I of course, wanted to feed my Natural History Museum obsession, but that wasn't in the cards today.) A group of us were walking around, and we decided it would be really fun to go into the zoo. (Drew and Bjorn were particularly enthusiastic.) So we walk up to the ticket booth, and Drew pulls out his (useless) student card, and asks the woman working if he can have the reduced student fare (which was still 9 euros by the way, but cheaper than the 13 euros standard price.) The lady takes one look at his international student ID and tells him he has to pay the full price.
So we regroup to discuss strategy. We want to get into this zoo, but we're not paying 13 euros a piece. That's when were notice the school group rate. 2 euros a person... WHICH IS WAY BETTER THAN 9! And we're totally a school group. So Drew, bless him, goes back up to the billetterie, and asks if we can have the school group rate, since there's a bunch of us, and we ARE a school group. Technically. And she tells him no, we don't have a teacher. (Keep in mind that I'm 90% sure a school group rate would be for visiting elementary schools, not college students, and that she already wouldn't give us the normal student rate.)
Not to be deterred, we text Laura. Laura works at St. Olaf and she isn't our professor, but she's along to help out Professor Cisar. And she's the best. Universally loved by all the students on the trip. So we text her, and ask if she happens to be close to the Jardin des Plants, and what do you know, she was on her way! So round three. We go up to the same lady, and proudly gesture to Laura, and tell her we have found our teacher! Could we please have the school group rate? Laura flashed her teacher ID (which is apparently worth more than our student IDs), and the ticket woman gave us such an exasperated look, and told us our group technically wasn't big enough to qualify, but that she'd give it to us. (I think she just wanted us to stop bothering her.) AND WE GOT INTO THE ZOO!!!
Cristiana, Drew, Alanna, Jenna, Laura, Bjorn, Nick and Katie, at the zoo
Saturday night Alanna got tickets for the two of us to go see her favorite string quartet, Quatuor Ébène. They've been her favorite group since she was 14, so she was really ecxited, and I'm glad she brought me with, because they were so good! We took the metro way out to the 19th arrondisement, and on the way back, it was so crowded with the concert rush that we could barely walk! Luckily we changed trains pretty quickly.
Alanna and Cristiana at Quatuor Ébène
When we got out of the subway, back in our neck of the woods, there was a little Saturday night dance party going on. So we joined in and danced for a while. A good ending to a good night.
Metro Party
Sunday was our last day as a full group. We had lunch all together at Procope, which was founded in 1686, and is known for being the place where famous dead people hung out. Rousseau, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are a few frequent visitors. The food was good, but it felt a little tourist-trappy to me, personally. That might be because there was a huge tour group in the next room over. Still, we saw Voltaire and Rousseau's tables, and tried a dessert called "floating island", which I would recommend.
Floating Island
We ended our last evening together at another performance at the Theatre Mouffetard, called Vies de Papier. It wasn't so much a play, as an autobiographical performance piece. It was really interesting. It was about these two guys, who were on stage, who found an old photo album, and they track down a bunch of places in the album to try and uncover this woman's story. They combined storytelling, video, projection, maps, drawings, photos... All to piece together this story. I thought it was really well done, and so creative, visually and conceptually. They kind of made the show right in front of you. Click on the website link to see some pictures from the performance because my description didn't do it justice.
And that was our last evening as a full group. Today, Gervonne, Angela, Nick, Katie, and Kaitlin left for Rennes, where they'll be studying for a semester. Which brings our group down to 8. We were sad to see them go! The rest of us spent the day working on our final projects -- Alanna and I holed up in Starbucks to steal their WiFi.
Saying Goodbye
Only one week left. The introvert in me is getting ready for some alone time, but the adventurer in me will be really sad to leave.
À bientôt,
Cristiana
