Tuesday and wednesdays are all-day class days (9am to 6pm) and all-day class days suck. I cannot begin to explain how much I look forward to college hours back home. French classes are a little too long for me to handle. I haven't been at school for over nine hours a day since high school so it is a bit rough. I never thought I would be excited for two hour long classes and how short they will be. I even have an 8am class twice a week and I'm still excited which must says a lot.
In french class on tuesday my teacher asked who there was from los angeles. I raised my hand thinking I can't possibly be the only one but apparently I was. Luckily he didn't ask me too many questions. He loves watching movies and I guess one movie he had seen recently was based in los angeles. He asked me if I lived in the heart of los angeles and I said no and that the heart of los angeles isn't the best place to live (I was thinking of downtown as the "heart" of la.) I don't know why I felt the need to explain that not living in downtown is a good thing. After that he asked me if I had heard of sunset blvd and I smiled widely and I said yes, I live off sunset. He looked at me like I was some sort of mini celebrity. He then told the class that sunset blvd was really long so I told him that I live closer to the beach than to the hollywood part of sunset. You could tell that he lost interest in me once I wasn't actually from hollywood and I was glad that the short q and a session had come to an end because obviously our conversation took place in front of the entire class, in french.
For lunch I had wanted to eat at this place right near school which sells chic looking croque monsieurs (remember, it's like a toasted ham and cheese sandwich I've talked/made before) and I'm pretty much obsessed with croques for the time being. This croque tasted very different from the others I have had here. It was made with one piece of bread (usually it's two), ham, swiss cheese and creme fraiche. The bread was made out a dark wheat so it had a different unique taste and the addition of creme fraiche (which means fresh cream in french but its more like a thick yogurt/soft cheese instead of whipping cream) added a new delicious element.
Dorene and I were both pretty tired once class was over on tuesday so we just spent another night at home cooking our own dinners and attempting to do school work. We are going to miss watching the show friends in french while eating dinner. We finally figured out what channel and the timing so we've been watching french friends consistently for awhile now. Thank god we've both have seen every episode of friends in english because I'm pretty sure I would have no idea what was going on if I hadn't. I feel bad for the french though, the characters just aren't as funny without their actual voices. All of their voiceovers don't do them justice but at least the french are able to somewhat experience the amazingness that is friends.
Dorene is the one who flips through the channels and knows how the whole french television thing works. I know it's not super complicated but she's always done it so I just sit back and semi watch. The other night she had left it on a french sport's interview because she thought the french soccer player looked cute but after awhile I had to tell her to change the channel. We've been able to watch the devil wears prada, grey's anatomy, dawson's creek (dorene was obsessed), my wife and kids and a few more I can't remember the name of right now, all in french. If you saw how big or should I say small our television was you would be shocked that we actually even use it.
Wednesday at the end of art class, which is usually not as exciting as it sounds, we went to le marais (the jewish quarter in paris where we go to eat falafel) to visit a few contemporary art galleries. I fell in love with the first one we went to. It was this exhibition by a man named farhad moshiri (yes, he's persian!!) I actually wasn't a hundred percent he was persian until I got home and googled his name but I was pretty sure that all the farhad's in the world are persian. Anyway, I loved his work before I even knew who he was. He made a bunch of paintings using some paint but mostly beads. It was incredible. He had sewn on thousands of thousands of beads on canvas for just one painting. My two favorites are below.
The first one is called Yipeeee and the second piece is called Red Head. Just looking at Yipeeee up close made my head hurt thinking about how much time it took to put all of those beads on. The colors he used looked amazing.
I also loved Red Head because all of the hair in that painting was made of beads which looked gorgeous because of the way the light hit them. The fake diamond heart earring was super cute too. He had another piece but I don't know what it was called. It was made up of different color paint blobs that were piped out of one of those icing piping bags people use to decorate cakes. It was insane.
Lastly, you can see another favorite of mine below, the piece was called Life is Beautiful (his work is creative enough so I forgive him for not being creative with his titles.)
He wrote out what you see above with knives! I thought it was so cool.
Maybe the most exciting part for me was the fact that I noticed a farsi word on some of the knives that were used and was able to figure out what it said. Some of the knives had the word "tongue" on it in farsi. I realize that after two years of studying farsi in college I should be able to read books but being able to read one word on a knife is still a big accomplishment for me.
After the gallery visits dorene and I went and got gyros again for dinner since we're addicted and realize that we don't have much time left to eat them. It wasn't as good as last time because the guy was different and didn't listen to all my requests despite the fact that I asked him twice. I wanted the guy who called me princess back, he knew the proper gyro-making way. Then we got home, did some work, watched some friends and eventually went to bed. I would say the past two days were a bit uneventful but there is no such thing as an uneventful day in france. Oh boy, I'm going to miss paris so much.
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