more adventures

Whoa whoa. Even more has happened in these last few days. France is still great. The weather is pretty spazzy. I can never tell if it’s going to be hot or cool, sunny or cloudy. Today it just keeps alternating between all of that. Earlier last week it was kind of cold and a bit rainy, but now I don’t think it’ll go back to that. It’s muggy and warm, even if it’s cloudy out. But we love it. It’s better than being super hot and burning under the sun.

We went to two museums this week, the Museum of Rodin and Centre Pompidou. Rodin was an artist who didn’t like how all of the art around him was so “perfect.” He wanted to create sculptures that illustrated real people. He sculpted a man with a broken nose, a walking man, and other things like that. I enjoyed seeing him create what he saw, rather than the ideal of what people should look like. The Centre Pompidou is the newest art museum in France filled with modern art from this past century. We started with the temporary collection which was filled with lots of new, and often unusual, art. Some people created huge things out of car parts or sheep skin, for example. There was a huge red rhinoceros at the end of the hall, too. So there were some works that were very modern. But my favorite from that section was this painting by Yves Klein, who painted only with this one shade of blue that he discovered. He did that because the way the light shone on it made it the canvas its own. On the floor with the more traditional modern works, I really liked Matisse and Picasso. Matisse and the other Fauvists (not Picasso—he was cubist and surrealist) in the early 1900s experimented painting with bright and vibrant colors, which I find beautiful.

One night we went to see the play, “Fourberies de Sapin,” by Moliere, who was a famous French comedy playwright. It was hard to understand at first because they spoke so quickly, but the longer into it, the more immersed I was into the language, and the more I could understand. It was a really good play. I’m excited to see it next year when SPU puts it on (in English, of course).

The other night we went to a jazz club concert and watched a jazz trio play. They had an upright bass, drums, and a piano. I really enjoyed it—being in Paris at a jazz club, sitting with friends, listening to good music. I especially enjoyed watching the piano player because he was pretty much going crazy. Sometimes he would stand or just go off on some riff that wasn’t part of the song. The other two guys laughed at him when he did that.

We went to Giverny yesterday, which is where Claude Monet painted all of his water lily and garden paintings. We saw his house where he lived for 40 years of his life and walked through his gardens. It’s beautiful. I would have liked to live there as well.

Last night was the Fête de la Musique in Paris, which is a huge music festival. People play music ALL OVER the corners of Paris. You can walk from street to street listening to different bands who bring out their stuff to play. They also have organized concerts all around, too, in different places, outside or even in museums like the Louvre. We started with going to see Fredrika Stahl in this enclosed garden, who is a Swedish singer (though most of her songs were in English). She sounds kind of like Regina Spektor. I really liked her. Then we wandered down the street and listened to some African music and a few other bands. Then we rode the metro to a different part of Paris. There, we listened to some jazz, and then walked a little ways where there was a DJ playing dancing music, so we had fun dancing around there for awhile. And then we rode the metro to the Eiffel Tower and just lay in the grass looking up at it, while in part of the park next to it there was another dance going on with techno music. As we were leaving, the Eiffel Tower started lighting up, almost as if it were sparkling. Apparently it does special light things on special days. It was a really fun night.

At this point, I’m starting to recognize more where I am, and going to places for the third or fourth time, which is fun. The other day we had a picnic in one of my favorite areas, Rue Mouffetarre. We also visited Ernest Hemingway’s house, where he lived while he was in Paris.

So to sum it up, I’m still loving this city!