Ben, oui!

So, some more notes from Paris. Mostly in the past week or two I’ve been running around being touristy: I went to Rouen and Giverny last week; Rouen to see the famous Cathedral, the place Joan of Arc was burned, which is now marked by a very nice tall cross and a church that feels like the inside of a ship. But a nice, light, airy, colorful ship, and Giverny to see Monet’s house and gardens. Let me tell you, the guy had it good. I would definitely live in that house—it made me want to buy a summer house in France, actually, and the gardens are full of all kinds of beautiful flowers. Thankfully we were there in the sunshine.

Then this weekend, after a few days of orientation at the Institut Catholique, we decided to take a break before classes started and head to the beach. So we caught at TGV to Nice Thursday morning and came back late last night. Nice is very sunny and slightly touristy in areas, but I loved the Mediterranean feel of Vieux Nice and I especially want a house with a red tile roof. The beaches are nice too, even though they’re rocky and I didn’t have a bathing suit with me (too cold for swimming, anyway). The middle of Nice looks very futuristic, the place has checkered tiles and there’s a tram that runs through it. You know when you look at the designs of buildings and things and they’ve drawn in plants and people and colored it all in? That’s what it looked like. The hostel we stayed at (my first hostel experience, guys!) was Petit-Prince themed, which brought back nice memories of high school French, but was run for the most part by Australians, so I was immersed in English for the weekend.

Yesterday I took a day trip to Eze village, a medieval castle about 20 minutes outside of Nice and way up the hill. It was gorgeous, especially from the top of the hill, where the ruins are set into an “Exotic Garden” with cacti and goddess sculptures. But the French Riviera is amazing, guys, and the water is very very blue. I then started a hike down the hill but had to come hiking back up when I realized I no longer had my camera. Which I never found. RIP.

On another note, I started classes today (after a horrific registration process that took two days, countless trips to the boards to look up schedules, and appointments made with the secretary—you people in the US university system, thank your various deities), and it looks like I’m going to vaguely enjoy at least one of them. I am taking Geography of the EU (which I had today), Introduction to Linguistics, Comparative Literature, Language and Expression (focusing on a novel by Balzac), and History of Political Ideas in Europe. All of which I am quite looking forward to, except the four hours of Comparative Lit. in a row.

Other random things:

In the train station, there’s a waiting room with a bathroom (which they charged you 50 centimes to use), and while I was waiting an hour for my train yesterday, I’m pretty sure the lady cleaned the floor three times. Life must get boring if all you do is take people’s money so they can pee before a long train ride.

The title of this entry is my favorite French phrase, I think. Pronounced (for you Anglophones) bah, we!, it is used all the time in daily conversation. More than just a “well, yes”, which is what it means literally, the French manage to add a connotation of, “well that’s obvious” (there’s also “ben, non”, which can invoke a sense of, “obviously not, what were you thinking, idiot?). But the real reason I love this phrase so much is that even the little kids use it. The two-year old I baby-sit cracked me up one day when she showed me a drawing and responded, when I noted that it was pretty and asked whether she did it herself, “ben, oui!”

My internet is finally fixed!!! After a month of struggle. And I have put up pictures.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119715&l=7cb7b&id=7412579