La Semaine de la Pré-Rentrée

As orientation week continued, we all tried to take advantage of having a week in Paris without having to worry about school work. The Reid Hall program did a pretty good job of taking us around the city. We all got little doses of Parisian modern art, classic museums, monuments, etc. Below is a hazy shot of the city (and a barely visible Eiffel Tower) from the top floor of the George Pompidou center, the largest collection of modern art in Paris.
On Tuesday, my group visited the very new Musée Immigration (Immigration Museum). Formerly a museum of French colonial expansion, the city created this new museum to celebrate the diversity of the French population. (I guess it wasn't very PC to have a museum dedicated to the brutal invasion of African countries...just a guess). Anyway, this museum is only about three years old, and they just introduced a new exhibit. We just so happened to be there right when a camera crew from France3 (like your ABC, NBC, etc.) was taking footage of the exhibit. They asked if they could film us looking at the exhibit and listening to our tour guide, but unfortunately, our tour had just ended. So, the very persistent camera crew asked to interview us, despite the fact that we were all American... Three girls from the group (myself included) shared our thoughts (all in French, mind you) about immigration and the differences between French and American immigration. If you search hard enough on the internet, you might be able to find me making a fool of myself on French national television... Off to a good start Nikki...

Anyway, after our interesting encounters at the museums, a few of us did some of our own sight-seeing. We figured we should get all the touristy things covered relatively soon. So here, on the lovely Île de la Cité (Island of the City), is the recently cleaned and very white Cathedral of Notre Dame.
FUN FACT: The cathedral is actually called Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens (Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens) or just the Amiens Cathedral in English. We just messed up the name over the years...way to go us!

And here is the former Gare d'Orsay (Orsay Train Station) that is now the Musée d'Orsay. I'll be checking out the huge collection of impressionist art very soon. Thanks to the fact that my Reid Hall ID says that I am an Art History major, I can get into any art museum free of charge. Very crafty Reid Hall....very crafty...

As the sun goes down (at 5pm btw, very sad), the night life begins. A group of us has done a very good job of checking out the local bar-hopping streets. Thus far, we've explored St. Germain des Prés, Montmartre (my neighborhood), and Oberkampf. Pretty successful all around. Although, we did run into some very drunk locals one night. It was a fairly friendly encounter, despite the two beers that were spilled on my poor friend, J. Oh well. One of these days we'll master the art of going out and not sticking out right away as Americans...