Dear Art Nouveau furniture: Why yes, I would like to be a part of your awesome, thanks.

Oh Musée d'Orsay ... I went into you expecting to be thrilled by your display of impressionist art, to have my eyes astounded by Renoir and Degas and Monet, to be fascinated by the adaptation of train station into museum. And just as I expected, I was thrilled, astounded and fascinated.

BUT a new joy also entered my life: art nouveau furniture. A void in my life that I didn't even know existed has been filled!

And ok, yes, I may be letting my inner need for melodrama get away from me a bit there, but really, it's hard to express how much I loved the museum and especially the (wait for it!) art nouveau furniture.

The museum is, simply put, beautiful. It was built around 1900, I think (NB - yes, it was built between 1898 and 1900, as confirmed by wikipedia) as a train station, and it has a huge vaulted ceiling running down the middle of the building, with smaller side, well, aisles, for lack of a better word. The flowered recessed coffers covering the main vault are a little much for my taste, but in between them the vault is made of slightly clouded glass, and the overall effect is of a huge, open, airy space. They're doing some work in one part of the museum at the moment, so some things are a bit rearranged, but I actually liked having the sculpture down the middle aisle. It seemed a bit haphazard at times, but I enjoyed the effect.

Most of the Monets are, sadly, at an exhibition at the Grand Palais right now (thought it's not that sad because if all goes according to plan that's where I'll be on Saturday) so I didn't see many of them. But I did see some gorgeous Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh paintings, not to mention tons of other incredible impressionist, pos- impressionist and symbolist work. Sorry if I'm boring anyone here, but I loved getting to see stuff that I'd only ever seen in tiny textbook reproductions, and I'm still kind of hugely excited.

Okay, I lied, I'm not sorry at all if I'm boring any one - impressionism rocks. So I'm going to keep talking about art. And furniture. Oh, but first! I almost forgot. One of the exhibits was about the Paris Opera House, so they'd done little miniatures of the buildings that were cut away so that you could see what they looked like inside. And set into the floors under (presumably) very thick glass was a model of the Opera as seen from above, including the streets and buildings around it, so you could actually walk over it and look down at the models from above. Super cool, or, as the children would say, hyper-cool (pronounced "eeper-cool").

But my favorite part of the museum was not whay I was expecting because I didn't actually know it would be there: the art nouveau furniture.

Y'all. It's gorgeous. It's all about naturalism and flowing lines and elegance. I loved it. I have, for everyone's benefit and my personal enjoyment, included pictures that I did not take, but that I found through google images. Hopefully this only breaks one or two copyright laws, and not a lot.

That's actually in the museum, although I didn't take the pic (apparently Hervé Levandowski did, but I couldn't because lesser mortals are not allowed to take photographs in the museum). Anyway, I love it. Below are more examples. Feast your eyes.

It is, I suppose, possible that some of you did not want to look at this many pictures of art nouveau beds and would not otherwise have done so. It's okay, you may express your thanks for my broadening of your horizons by sending chocolate.

Also, as I was writing this post I ended up feeling like: 1. It was sort of getting away from the original intent, whatever that was, and 2. It neither had a point nor was particularly enlightening as to my daily life and activities.

I have decided to leave it as it is, though, because my weekends in Paris - and going to museums like the Musee d'Orsay (and seriously, if you don't know what the building looks like, you need to google it) are one of the reasons (second to French) that I'm here. So there you go! You now have your fill of early 20th century French art for the day!

Transportation strikes

This is the new entry for one of the following life lists: "Things I Like" or "Things I Don't Like." Guess which one it's for.

(Psst ... if you guessed that "transportation strikes" goes on "Things I Like" then you should reconsider your answer. Just a hint)

So yeah, there is in fact a large transportation strike going on here at the moment. They're protesting the proposal to raise the retirement age to 62, and there's been pretty wide-spread participation. According to the mom here, who works in the French education system, it's been causing unrest in schools, too, since some of the teachers in public schools are striking and there have been student demonstrations at several high schools, some of which got violent.

My experience with the strike, though, is pretty much limited to yesterday. Or early this morning, if you want to be all technical and accurate. I went to into Paris in the early afternoon to visit the Musée d'Orsay (more on that later, for now, two words: So. Awesome.) and then met up with some other au pairs in the evening. I knew they were planning to stay quite late, but I'm not exactly a night owl, so I decided to catch the 11:23 train from Gare Saint Lazare back to Villennes sur Seine, the itsy-bitsy town a few km from us (no idea why they have a train station and we don't) where I'd left the car.

Yeah, well, because of the strike the online info about train times was wrong and the only train running to Villennes last night was what is normally the last train of the night, the 1:03. I had been told to avoid the last train and the first metro runs because they're super sketchy, so I wasn't about to take it by myself. Villennes, where I get off, is an adorable town of a few thousand, and perfectly safe. Some of other stops on the train are less sleepy and reassuring. Like Poissy which, while fine in the daytime, has been characterized by one of the other girls as "that town where all the criminals live." That is not strictly true, since lots of nice people live there as well, but it is a little creepy to be in the Poissy Gare Sud late at night. Fortunately for me, one of the other girls decided she didn't feel like staying out last night either, so we caught the 1:03 together and everything was fine.

Well, fine in the sense that we got to Villennes and back home without any trouble, not fine in the sense of getting home when I wanted to or in the sense of not having to take the sketchy train or in the sense of not having to sit around Saint Lazare much longer than I planned. Not fine in those ways, but fine in the I-was-totally-safe way.

Actually, because of the strike lots of other people were, just like us, forced to take the 1:03 rather than an earlier train, so I felt more secure than I otherwise would've on a train that late. But that twisted benefit of the strike did not, at all, outweigh the serious inconvenience of having to wait nearly 2 hours longer than I expected to have to wait. At all.

And I know that's sort of the point of strikes like this, to make the public sit up and pay attention to the cause, but I cannot tell a lie: mostly I just thought, "Ok, yeah, they want to raise the retirement age 2 years, but doesn't everywhere else in Europe except Russia have a higher retirement age than 62 already? And seriously, it's cold in this station. So start working again so that I can catch a normal train. Thanks."

This is perhaps not the kindest or best approach to addressing what may be legitimate grievances. But it was cold at Saint Lazare, so my sympathy was kind of (very) limited.

I hope they can get the strike issues worked out though, because while it doesn't really bother me during the week (we have to drive to our French classes anyway because even when they aren't on strike the buses don't run at times that work for us), lots of other girls in my French class need public transportation to get to and from class and aren't able to get - or have to come really early/leave really late because only every second bus is running (there's still some transportation available, it's just limited).

Okay, but my next entry will be about the Musée d'Orsay! I wanted to do one entry for both, so that I could end on a happy note, but this kind of got away from me and is super long, so ... yeah, it'll have to wait. Next time: art! windows! awesome furniture! impressionism! picture taken illegally inside museum! Yeah, you know you're super excited.

Game time

Yesterday, while the girls were doing homework, the youngest and I played his current favorite game. I feel that it merits a description because it's been a big part of my life this week (he wants to play it constantly) and will probably continue to be around for the next couple weeks.

It's called Thief and Police Officer (yes, I'm aware there's a game called Cops and Robbers, but I can't remember it's rules and don't want to get them confused). Anyway, whenever possible he is the thief and I am the police officer. Essentially, the game boils down to this: he pretends to steal something so I grab him and throw him in jail - literally throw, since jail is the sofa. Then I walk away (presumably to apprehend other thieves) and he escapes. So I catch him and throw him back. You get the idea.

I am not allowed to spend very long locking him in his cell because this delays his escape and his favorite part of the game is, of course, getting grabbed by the knees and chucked onto the couch. This does beg the question of exactly what kind of jail I'm running, and how effective police training is, given that he escapes, on average, at least once a minute.

This isn't the only game he's taught me, either. A couple weeks ago his favorite game was a card game called Seven Families. It's sort of like Go Fish, except the cards are specialized so instead of collecting 4s, say, you're collecting all six member of The Family Dakodac in the Mountains. It's not a bad game, all things considered, but unfortunately, being 5 and in kindergarten, he can't really read - problematic when the names of the families are written on the tops of the cards. Yeah, it's a lot more complicated when you're trying to be very clear in your description of the card you need since he's only looking at the pictures. Also, he tries to change the rules, so you have to keep an eye on him.

The other game he taught me was Mille Bourne. Now, admittedly, the last time I played that I was maybe 10, but I'm pretty sure that some of the rules we played by are not actually related to the rules of the game in any way. Also: correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it sort of the point to travel 1,000 miles? Because the other problem (besides some seriously questionable rules) is that he can't actually count to 100, much less 1,000. This did add some excitement to the game ("Ok, see now I've gone 500 miles and you've gone - no, I'm counting, no, I meant, ok, fine. Yes, it's your turn now. Wait, that light is what color?") It made the game ... how can I say this ... an exciting change from ordinary, confining games of Mille Bourne where things like number of miles figure somehow into game play.

At least he doesn't want to play monopoly!

Safety Info

You may or may not have heard, but the US (and now Great Britain and Japan, and possibly others) have issued travel warnings to their citizens who are currently in Europe because of the threat of a terrorist attack, and being a US citizen in France (the warnings were strongest for France and Germany), this is something I'm taking seriously.

Don't freak out, because it's not like I'm barricading myself in the house or anything, and the town I live in is very tiny (aka completely safe) but I am going to be taking precautions if I go into Paris, trying to avoid super touristy areas, that sort of thing.

Anyway, I don't want to alarm anyone, just let you know in case you hear about the warnings that I'm aware of them and should (God forbid) there be a terrorist attack in France I'll update facebook to let y'all know that I'm fine :)

Happier post to follow soon, hopefully!

New French cultural experience: Wednesdays

Wednesdays are, in fact, a French cultural experience when you are with French children. This is because, until 6th grade, when they start collège, they have Wednesdays off. Collège is essentially middle school, though with there are much bigger differences between 5th and 6th here than in the US. This means that on Wednesdays there are lots of different activities the kids participate in, rather than having stuff after school the other days of the week. What this means in terms of 'what Susanna does with her life for the day' is that I spend a lot of time driving.

Not that I mind that, now that I'm a semi-competant driver, though you can see why it was so important to learn how to drive, and quickly, because they started Wednesday activities (at least some of them) the week after they started school. Wait, I think that sentence started out going somewhere different than where it ended up. Crap.

But moving right along, the point is that on Wednesday this is what my life looked like (note totally French time notation):

• 11.00 - Lauriane to pottery
• 12.30 - Lauriane from pottery
• 12.30-1.30 - lunch
• 14.00 - Alix to pottery
• 14.45 - Lauriane to rock climbing
• 15.00 - Aymeric to multi-sport
• 15.30 - Alix from pottery
• 16.00 - Aymeric from multi-sport
• 16.30 - Lauriane from rock-climbing
• 18.00 - Lauriane to catechism
• 19.00 - Lauriane from catechism

It looks kind of crazy, but it was actually fun, mostly. The kids enjoy the activities, and they something fun to do outside of the house. And, to be perfectly honest, it means I don't have to come up with a full afternoon of activities that all three of them will enjoy.

It's a different approach to extra-curricular stuff, though, because in the US you get out of school earlier (I pick them up at 4:30 - 16.30, as it were) and so you do all your activities after school (my youngest sister's cheerleading practices come to mind). I'm honestly not sure which I think works better - because if both parents work and you don't have an au pair, you have to get someone to watch the kids one day a week or you have to have daycare. But the same can be true in the US, where the kids can get out of school before parents are out of work. Hard (if not impossible) to make a judgement call on 'better' or 'worse' between the two approaches.

Woah y'all, I introspected there. Ok, not really, but I did reflect on cultural differences! Win for my blog!

And now I shall leave you with an image from our arts and crafts session a few Wednesdays ago. Behold, here is what I have accomplished as an au pair:

Why yes, it IS a spiral bound notebook that I turned into a sheep, thank you for noticing (when you lift the head you get to the notebook, which is cleverly sandwiched between head and body). I know, I know, too awesome.