Around Paris

Hi All,

Despite being in school, I still do have the joys of being in Paris (even if I have to do schoolwork as well.) As I have been promising, an update on the actual classes that I am taking, which are: French, Economic Integration of Europe, and Women in French Cinema. So from here on out, I will talk about one class in each blog entry. First: French!

This Tuesday, I have an exposé (presentation) to do for French on the Musée du Quai Branly (as seen below.) Last Friday I went with my partner, Ben to the museum, which displays native art from Oceania, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The following picture is from the garden in front of the museum, and in which the famous tower of Paris is obviously visible.
The museum opened in 2006, after lots of pushing from former President Jacques Chirac, who really wanted an indigenous art museum/exhibit. (The first idea before building the new site was to put all the materials on display in an exihibit at the Louvre, which did not go over well.) Although the opening ceremony was attended by many people, including Kofi Annan, it has raised lots of controversy from how the art is displayed (lack of barriers/information cards) to not repatriating Maori heads to New Zealand at their request (they aren't even on display.) (I do have to agree with some of the critiques of the display, all the art pieces end up mushing together, and the museum treats all four regions as if they were very similar pieces of art, even if from different sides of the planet.) The next picture is of the plaque comemmorating Chirac's commitment to the museum

Besides this exposé I am working on, the French class is what one would expect: conjugations of verbs, vocabulary building, etc.

Last Saturday, with my French language partner Guillume (who attends ISEP, the engineering college that hosts Stanford in Paris) I went to a Rugby game in which the Parisian team played a team from Edinburgh in the "Heineken Cup." The stadium for rugby is just outside of Paris, but one can still see the Parisian-looking apartment buildings in the background behind the rugby field.

Although I found the sport of rugby fun (although maybe not the type of fun I would play), the game itself was not very interesting as the Paris team jumped to a very quick large early lead. Also, we were very unlikely as all of the tries (equivalent of touchdowns) were scored at the other end of the pitch (field) than the side we sat on. Too bad, but there were many 'goal-line' stands that I got to see well (such as the following picture.)

Finally about rugby, I have never been part of such a successful stadium wave before. It actually went around the whole stadium twice!

Lastly, on Friday, I went on a learning trip about the area of Bercy, on the far east side of the city. What it is probably most known for now is its park (that remains from the old château that used to be there) as seen in the following picture.

Bercy is also a newer neighborhood of Paris, and it has commercial office buildings as in the following picture (definitely not typical of Paris, but is in the borders of the city.)

Well, that will be all for now, later!
-Andrew

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