Enjoying Paris

I have seen so much! I am thrilled at how much I have gotten to see and do in Paris. This truly is a beautiful people and we are learning that as long as you are polite to the French, they are incredibly friendly and welcoming.

Friday morning we started our day with an incredible walking photography tour! Our tour guide, whom I got in touch with through a friend that I taught with, is a journalist, a photographer and an American who married a French man. She was absolutely wonderful! She was able to talk to us about local culture and compare it to our southern culture as well as act as a local and show us around parts of France that we never would have made it to ourselves.

She told us that our southern culture is actually adapted from the French culture since they were the ones that first settled in that area. She told us that if we greet the French with a "Bonjour madame/monsieur"(spelling?) that they will help us with whatever we need, just like we say "Yes ma'am/sir" in the south.

Apparently inviting people to your home is not really done here. At home, it is a casual thing and everyone does it, but here, if you are invited over, it is on very rare occasions and when you are invited that the meal prepared for you is extravagant. This custom appears to go back to the time that Louis XIV was invited from his home, the Louvre to his financial advisor's home. When he arrived, he thought his advisor's home was much nicer than his, so he had his advisor arrested and used his architects to build Versailles. That is why no one invites their bosses over to their houses!

Our guide took us to the north side of Paris, the hill, Monmartre that overlooks the city. We walked in the footsteps of artitsts! This beautiful, almost small town on its own, was home to many artists we all know. We visited a cemetry and saw the grave of Van Gogh's doctor. Considering he cut off his own ear, I assume the doctor was a busy man!

We tasted chocolate that won best chocolate in France two years in a row. I must say that I agreed with the award-givers. It was delicious. Dark chocolate that just melted in your mouth like a brownie. It was just a cute little Chocolatier and I was thrilled that she showed it to us. She told us that the government here actually regulates the chocolate and that for it to be called chocolate, they can't add much butter or sugar. That is why you won't see much Hershey's here!

Speaking of government, I must mention this now... The French here are so excited about Obama. I have seen posters of him, t-shirts with the word "Progress," and yesterday I read in a newspaper that the French haven't been this excited about America since they gave us the Statue of Liberty. This same article said that the French see him as a mixture between MLK Jr. and JFK. I won't get into any politics, but I just found it very interesting.

Back to the tour though... She showed us a school, just the outside of course, because children here are still in school. But of course, being a teacher, I was curious about how the schools work. There is a school, I guess similar to our day cares or preschools, for the children under six, and then starting at age 6, as I remember, the children go to school from basically 9-6:30. She said that they work very hard and that at about age 14 they choose a career path and that it is incredibly difficult for them to change their minds. At age 14 they begin to choose if they want to study science and math or go into the humanities. She said that the people here cannot understand when people from America decide to switch jobs or careers so easily and frequently.

We also visited a church on the top of Montmarte that was build in the 1100's. It was actually the church where the Jesuits were founded. It is now dwarfed by the Sacred Heart Basilica, a church that was build only a couple of hundred years ago. This giant creatation overlooks the whole city of Paris in its gleaming white. As we entered the church we were greeted by the beautiful soundings of the nuns singing. What incredible acoustics!

I am sorry, but as there is a beautiful blue sky this morning, Paris is calling and that is all that I have time for right now. I will try my best to update you soon on the rest of our Friday including the Champs-Elysees, the Arc de Triumph, the Louvre, the Metro and our day yesterday at Versailles! Hoping you are all doing well!