Bonjour tout le monde!
This past week marked another
week with no plans other than soaking up all that Paris has to offer—oh and
completing some final term papers. This past week was particularly exciting as the
temperatures have been very agreeable with an average temperature of
low-to-mid-60s. As I am typing this now, it is currently 70 degrees—sorry east
coasters, I’m sure spring will come soon?
With my
semester coming to and end (only four weeks left!!!) I have created a bucket
list for everything I would like to have completed before I pack up my bags and
head back to Toronto. Somethings on my
list include, but are not limited to, a sunrise run at Jardin de Tulleries,
finding a speculose éclair, picnic on the Eiffel Tower lawn, trying escargot,
marché aux puces…just to name a few. I was actually pretty pleased with myself
because after googling many ‘must-do while abroad’ lists, I realized that I had
completed quite a bit on each list, woot woot.
Anyways,
last Wednesday, Madame said she wanted to change things up a little bit and
offered to take my roommate and I to the cinema. She had one of her coworkers
meet us at the cinema and all four of us were off to see ‘Gazettes’ which is
essentially the francophone version of ‘Bridesmaids’.
When the
movie was over, I was a little nervous because it was very much a movie for a
younger generation filled with youths getting up to all sorts of tomfoolery! After
the movie Madame looked at my roommate and I and said wow, your generation is
all about their vodka shots—shots shots shots. I gulped thinking that we had
collectively selected the wrong movie. But then she smiled and said to us,
‘when I was your age we were all about the gin, I remember staying up till 5 in
the morning and then trying to sneak back before my parents woke up oh là
là…you girls are much better behaved than I was.
Fast
forward to the weekend, overall, it was a very low-key weekend. On Saturday,
myself and two friends from Lehigh who are also studying in Paris took a
‘promenade’ around the St. Michel area where we stumbled upon île-de-la-Cité
which is a little island situated between the 5th and 3rd
arrondissments. We sat down and grabbed a cappicuno in the main square where
four cafés met around one cobble stone street and street performers continued
to serenade the diners throughout the afternoon.
Sunday was
a particularly exciting day for me as it was the day I was going to get my
“Paris thing.” I didn’t want to drop a lot of money on a lavish Parisian
designer nor did I want to get some small kitchy souvenir that would end up in
a shoebox somewhere. For a brief moment I considered bringing home macaroons as
a souvenir for myself of my wondrous semester in Paris…as if I could make it
back to Canada without eating them first. So, I settled on an idea that I
borrowed from my friend Marni.. Instead of collecting shot glasses or tshirts
from every city she visits, Marni has been collecting street art. With this in
mind, I knew that a painting from Painter’s Square in Montmarte would be the
perfect, timeless and most fitting souvenir from my adventures abroad. So on
Sunday I took my friend Maddi to Montmarte with the painting I wanted already
in mind.
Because it is a real open-air
market market, this means that bargaining is a must to get a more reasonable
price. So, if you know me, you can already guess that I was absolutely fantastic
at being a assertive, cunning and argumentative with the painter. I approached
the artist who was the creator of my designated painting and then began to tell
him my fabricated story of how I was a lowly student with no income and my
mother wanted only this one thing from Paris and how it would mean so much to
her but I barely had any money blah blah blah. He looked at me smiled and asked
me how many euros I had with me; I said 40 (which was a total lie). He wrinkled
his forehead and then told me that the painting was already marked down from
150 euros to 85 euros (he was also lying as this is a well-known painter’s
tactic) So I batted my eyelashes and then let out a very big sigh to which he
replied (in English) that I was an awful bargainer and that he would give me
the painting for 60 euros because I was Canadian and had a beautiful smile. So,
in conclusion, thank you (once again) to Dr. Fasken and my immigrant parents
for getting me a discount on my beautiful impressionist painting of Montmarte
at dawn.
That night, as my roommate was
still in Barcelona, Madame and I sat down to a traditional French meal of
curry, naan and couscous. Even though I have yet to try much authentic French
cuisine such as escargot, it’s a naan-issue for me (see what I did there?)
Middle-eastern food jokes aside,
it was a great week in Paris and I am looking forward to spending some more
time in Paris before my twelve-day spring break extravaganza
À bientôt!
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