the sound of typing - france - internet cafe

so, i suck… a bit.

bonjour.
france
it is wondeful and amazing and urban and beautiful and lit and dark and small and magical and speedy.

lets go backwards.
tomorrow morning at 8:20 AM, (your time 2:20 AM), we leave for Rennes, to go to INSA. An institute that is RIT’s sister school, or so we hear. From there I might be on more, on the computers in their centers, or on my laptop, even though I hear that they don’t quite know what wireless is yet.

Tonight we went shopping a bit and went out for dinner (salade poulet et creme brulee) after we went to a company called Alstom, they make things, mostly trains. That was ok, they were kinda boring, nice facility though. In the morning we wandered around and went to the fabric district, so i got some french silk. Also we saw Sacre Coeur which is far nicer on the inside than Notre Dame.

Sunday we woke and went to Notre Dame (yes even for mass, I attended church in france, mommy will be so pleased) it was very large and very dark and slightly too commercialized. There were people walking all the way around the pews in roped off areas that went the full length of the church behind both altars (one is under construction) and back to the doors. Also there was a small gift shop. Slightly tacky. I also lit candles for people.

Most of Sunday was spent at the Louvre. You may have heard of it, big art museum, lots of pictures, one of some lady. It was quite interesting. There are rules such as: do not sit on the floor of the lobby, which i really wish they would not yell at me so much for. There were some amazing pieces though, such as Victoire de Samothrace, which really struck me, it was just amazingly large and placed and lit. I sat for a while and stared at it and sketched it. Also I saw the original Hammurabi’s Code, which was very small actually. I am not sure how the whole city could see it. There are many other fun things that I could talk about but many of them are explained in the pictures I have taken.

Our first day here was all the classical sight-seeing stops, eiffel tower, arc d’triomphe, notre dame, saw the louvre from the outside, and a bunch of others. Also pictures of those.

I blend in pretty well as a french person, and it turns out that my french is also somehow alot better than i thought. It works pretty well. I have found some gifts for people and will look for more. I am at about 300 pictures, which may slow down in Rennes. I am not ready to leave Paris tomorrow but I have one more day next Saturday before we get back next Sunday.

I will try to be back on soon, or as soon as I can be.
I will try to talk to everyone, and if not I will soon return to the country.

good day and good night

- pat -