A somewhat belated Thanksgiving

Yes, I know that Thanksgiving was Thursday, but I'm a little slow on the draw. Besides, it took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do for this post.

This was my first Thanksgiving without any of my family here. It was ... weird. I confess, though, that if I have to be without family, I'd really rather be here than somewhere in the US but lacking the ability to get home. No one here was celebrating Thanksgiving, so it was easier to forget what I was missing. And thanks to Skype, I did get to talk to the majority of my immediate family (plus Grinky!) which is always wonderful.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are things I'm thankful for:

1. The family I'm with here. They know it's harder to be in a foreign country at holidays, so they made me a "Thanksgiving dinner" over the weekend: turkey, potatoes, and corn (all foods I'd mentioned as being traditional). They've been wonderful.

2. The internet. And my computer. Darling macbook, if my poetry wasn't as the screeching of nails on a chalkboard to the ears of the unfortunate hearer/reader, I would write sonnets to you. After all, I am a long way from family, friends and familiarity (though alliteration hasn't forsaken me) and it's so so so nice to be able to keep up with people through facebook, email, skype and, of course, this blog.

3. Heat. The heat in the house went out last Monday night and was out on Tuesday, but is back. And y'all, and I am thankful. Because it snowed last night and now the temp is hovering around 28 - so a continued lack of heat would not be pleasant.

4. My actual family. Hmmm, somehow I feel like they should be higher on the list. Sorry actual family! But they've been so supportive of me being here, and of helping me mail things and sort out stateside stuff that it's hard to take care of from here, and hey, they're flying me back for Christmas! Besides, I kind of like them. Except my older brother, of course.

5. Friends. This is probably you, the person currently reading this. Know that I am so, so thankful for you, and I miss you!

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

The Louvre

Since I last wrote I have, as you may have surmised from the title of this post, been to the Louvre. I feel like I should have more to say about it, given how I much I enthused in my post about the Musée d'Orsay, but I have to admit, I liked the Musée d'Orsay better.

Don't get me wrong, the Louvre is amazingly impressive. Another au pair and I went together - oh wait, we actually went before my last posting. Oops. Anyway, we went on the 5th, because pretty much all the museums in Paris are free on the first Sunday of the month. I love being here, but sometimes being an au pair is like being in college again, ie I have no money.

Now you may be thinking, Oh my, Susanna, you went to the world's most visited art museum, the one that houses one of the most famous paintings in the world, on a day when everyone and their brother-in-law was going to be there? On an average day there are 12,000 visitors, and many more on a day like that! What were you thinking?

This is a valid question. Mostly we were thinking, "Score! Free museum!" but I should also remind you that the Louvre is 652,300 square feet. That is very, very large. And as an aside, thank you google, for helpfully providing information about the size of the museum and average numbers of visitors. So yes, there were thousands of people there but, frankly, if you weren't in the section with the Mona Lisa or some of the Greek antiquities, it wasn't that crowded. We were in this massive line to get in, but it moved at practically a walking place - you just can't fill the building up.

Which leads me to why I like it less than the Musée d'Orsay. The Louvre is unbelievably, ridiculously, overwhelmingly impressive. We visited several exhibits (Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Near East, and Dutch and Flemish paintings. We visited, maybe, 1/4 of the museum. We were there about 5 hours. The place never ends. In the Dutch and Flemish collection there are rooms upon rooms of paintings, each wall covered in them, and you keep walking through them, in awe of the beauty and artistry and history until you can't even take it in anymore. And then there's the architecture and decoration of the building itself. After all, it was palace before it was a museum and the rooms, and the view of Paris from some of the windows, are breathtaking. But the weight of all that history and beauty and the sheer size of the place is a little suffocating.

I think if I was going to be in Paris for a long amount of time (and really, I would need a couple years for this) I would go on the first Sunday of each month, just for a couple hours, and visit only one exhibit, taking my time. I know I'm here about a year, but there are other museums I want to go to, so that isn't feasible now; I have to visit more than one exhibit each time I go.

I do plan to go back, though. I want to see the African art, as well as the Napoleon rooms, and I'd really like to see the French art as well. For now, here are a couple pictures I took. I only took a few because I quickly realized that if I kept going I'd never be able to stop, but you can see a few things:

My friend is there for a size comparison. I was so excited to see these, because we'd studied them in art history. Which reminds me: I HAVE SEEN HAMMURABI'S CODE. Just saying.

This was another favorite thing. The random person in the corner is for scale. This is the top (the top 1/5, maybe) of a column from the palace of one the Persian kings. There were 36 columns in his throne room, each topped by one of these. That's some serious impressive, people.

And these are views from one of windows. Not too good, as pictures go, but I loved being able to look out at Paris. If you look very, very closely at the first you can see La Defense and the Arc de Triomphe. The second features, obviously, the Eiffel Tower, but very sneakily also has the Grand Palais. Probably no one can see it, but I swear it was clearer when you were actually looking at it, not trying to photograph it through a window.

Other favorite things I saw that I did not photograph: the statue of Cupid and Psyche, paintings by Vermeer and Jan Steen, the huge room lined with absolutely massive Rubens that illustrate the life of Queen Marie de Médicis, and, of course, Hammurabi's Code. Also, lots of truly beautiful gold jewelry (and I got to see some rings like the one I patterned the Egyptian ring in my honors project on!). But while I loved some of the art I got to see, the Musée d'Orsay reigns supreme in my art museum affections. Sorry Louvre!

Vacation and all that jazz

So it’s been rather a while since I’ve posted, but I can’t actually apologize for that. First, because I said I wasn’t going to any more, and second, because I’m not actually sorry.

This is because I’ve only had internet access for half the days out of the past two weeks and during the days I did have internet access, I was studying for the GMAT. La vie! But the GMAT is done now and my internet access is back, so voilà, an update!

The reason I have been sans internet is, well, ok, there are two reasons. Actually, after I took the GMAT Friday the internet was down at the house, but the week before I was on vacation with the family and thus, no internet. And since the last week has been pretty GMAT-centric, and therefore both boring and arduous, I’m going to go back a couple weeks and talk about vacation instead. The second reason is that once I got back from vacation it was super sketchy (and is still kind of so) and it kept (keeps) being on for an hour or two and lulling me into a false sense of security and then traitorously disappearing.

Anyway, vacation. The dad had to work, but the mom and the three kids and I went to Île de Ré, an island of the western coast of France where the maternal grandparents have a house. It was lovely – the house, the island, the extended family, all of it. The mom's older brothers were there, the married one accompanied by his wife and three sons (the youngest is 14 mo).

Mind, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Two of the cousins are twin 5 year-old boys. You may remember that the youngest of my kids is also a 5 year-old boy. Good kids, all, but let me tell you, 3 x (five year old boy) does NOT equal 3 children. The increase in energy and noise levels with each additional boy is kind of exponential … it’s like dealing with 9 normal children.

Here are some other, equally scientific facts that I learned from the boys:

1. The amount of sand contained in one pocket after an hour at the beach = 2 x (volume of said pocket)

2. The amount of sand contained in the shoes of three boys after an hour at the beach does not have an equation because it defies expectation, logic, the laws of mathematics, the laws of physics and possibly the law of gravity.

3. It is only possible for you, the babysitter, to be in one place at a time. When you are with 6 kids, however, it is possible for them, collectively, to be in 15 different places at any given moment, at least 4 of which involve some activity they are not allowed to do.

Looking back at what I’ve already written, I’m afraid I’m making it sound like I spent the entire week running around desperately, frazzled and at my wit’s end as the children apparated around the island. This was not the case. Mostly it was a great week, and it was nice to be away from the routine of normal life - and what a place to be for that! The island is beautiful, after all. Evidence below.

The houses are almost all like this – white, with the green doors and shutters. We were in one town and I got to visit two more, which is where the pictures of the harbors come from. Picturesque, non? And I tried all kinds of seafood: oysters (not a fan, I have say), mussels, shrimp, prawns and goodness knows what else. And while I didn’t love everything, I’m glad I had the chance to try it all.

So yes, I did spend a week with a fair number of children. But hey, I have cousins so that wasn't really anything new. And I did have the chance to explore a really lovely part of France that has a very distinctive culture and ... decor? style? Not sure what the correct word would be there. Regardless, it was very relaxing and I think I'll be going back at Easter!