Back to Paris and RM's visit

Basically, I had an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime sort of spring break...but after 10 days worth of travel and sight-seeing, I was very happy to come home to Paris. The moment the plane landed, when the flight attendants began making the announcements in French first, instead of Italian, I felt a wonderful yet odd sense of relief. After all, France is not my home country, and French is not my first language...yet I have made a home for myself here over the past 3 months. I had to leave for a little while in order to realize that.

Unfortunately, I had little time to relax and enjoy being home. I spent just about every waking minute of last week preparing for "les galops", a.k.a. midterms a la Sciences Po. Warning: the next paragraph contains a linguistic digression that I find hilarious but most normal people will probably find less so...

As I already explained, Sciences Po calls their midterms "galops". This is apparently intended to be a wryly humorous allusion to the fact that one must "gallop" through them -- they appear out of nowhere and are incredibly strenuous. However, as a native English speaker, I have another, slightly darker, association with the word "galop", which is pronounced "gallow"... I'll leave it to you to decide which is more appropriate!

I had to sit galops for both of my cours magistraux, my large lecture classes. The first, on the construction of the European Union, was a 2 hour exam where we had to write on 2 topics out of a choice of 3. This was the "sprint" portion of the galop. After a 3 hour break, I came back to sit the second exam for my political sociology class -- 1 question, 4 hours, or what I call the "marathon" portion. I only lasted 3 of the 4 hours before deciding my "dissertation" was as good as it was going to get and handed it in early (however, to my slight comfort, a number of students, both French and international, finished before I did).

My memories of the 5 HOURS of testing are still somewhat vague, but I think it went as well as could be expected. I certainly had enough to say on all 3 topics, it's just a matter of whether it was what the professors wanted to hear -- that is a much more important factor here than at home.

Thankfully, the weekend was not all bad because one of my close friends from Georgetown was visiting. She arrived on Friday evening and left Tuesday morning. Not only was I thrilled to see her for the first time since last May (she's been studying in St. Petersburg all year), but it was nice to have an excuse to do fun things in the city -- sort of like my spring break, part 4. I got to show off all my favorite spots in addition to doing and seeing lots of new things.

I met up with RM after my exams on Saturday, and after a very necessary coffee and pastry break to revive my poor, foggy brain, we wandered through the Jardin du Luxembourg and caught up on each other's lives. We had dinner in a little restaurant off of Rue Mouffetard that my parents discovered during their visit. It was at this point that we made a very good decision. Neither of us wanted to turn in early, so we decided to go and look at the Eiffel Tower (it is illuminated and lovely at night, plus it sparkles every 15 minutes). It didn't even occur to us that we might be able to go up because the lines have been horrendous for the past month.

However, when we stepped off the metro and into the square under the Tower...there was no one there. And that is how it came to pass that finally, after living in Paris for 3 months, I made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower. And it was magical. :-)

On Sunday, RM and I pilgrimaged to the American Diner for a pancake brunch before embarking on an inadvertently morbid itinerary: the Catacombs followed by Pere Lachaise Cemetery. However, we re-embraced the world of the living by munching on a bag of Tollhouse cookies in the Promenade Plantee. We had dinner in a Lebanese restaurant that I've been meaning to try for ages, and then we saw "Coco Avant Chanel" at the movie theater down the street.

Side-note: I had been wanting to see that movie for a while, but I was a little intimidated by the French movie theater set-up. Essentially, the lobby of the theater is too small for people to stand in while waiting for their film, so after you buy your ticket, you have to go back outside and queue up under your designated post. It makes sense once you've actually done it, but otherwise it just looks very confusing!

On Monday, we started out at the Jardin des Plantes to take advantage of some unexpected sunshine. I had to go to class for a few hours, but afterward we went to the Musee de l'Orangerie, now one of my favorites, strolled quickly through the Tuileries with crepes in hand, and stopped by one of RM's favorite gourmet candy shops -- think Honeydukes from Harry Potter, only chic-er. We got stuck in the rain but remedied the situation by darting into a cafe until our dinner reservations at one of RM's parents' favorite restaurants. This place was amazing -- one of the best meals, and definitely the best chocolate mousse, I have had in Paris.

RM left early Tuesday morning to go back to the Russian hinterland, and I finally settled back into a normal routine...until today. I'm leaving for Barcelona in a few hours on a trip sponsored by Sciences Po, and while I'm there, I will get to gallivant about with 3 more of my close Georgetown friends who are studying in Spain. I suppose this would be spring break, part 5?