Pantheon, Salon d'Agriculture, and emotional ramblings

I've been here for 6 weeks now. I would tell you how much longer I have here, but I don't want to think about it. I'm having an absolutely incredible time and I never want to leave. I feel like I have changed so much in the past month and a half. I've progressed a ton with my French and learned so many things about myself and everything take for granted. I feel like a different person. Oh no...this is turning into a super sappy post ha ha. Sorry! On to exciting things!

Last week sometime (maybe Tuesday?) I went to the Musee d'Orsay again. They're doing some construction and I couldn't find everything I was looking for, but it was still awesome. Still no pictures from Musee d'Orsay (they aren't allowed) Sorry!

After the Musee d'Orsay I met my friend at the Pantheon. According to wikipedia, the Pantheon is a "secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens."  First we went down into the crypt to see the tombs. People buried there include Pierre and Marie Curie, Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, and Émile Zola.

And of course the building was amazingly beautiful. 

I'm completely in awe of this city and all the amazing things in it.

Cool pendulum thing that reminded me of Oxy and Griffith Observatory!

Thursday I went with another friend to the Salon d'Agriculture. It's an annual convention sort of thing at an expostion park in Paris. It's kind of like a state fair in the US but much classier. It's indoors with a bunch of different sections (Regions of France, Food of the World, Fruits and Vegetables, Animals, etc.)

 One of the big halls

 Want to drive a tractor? (we decided against it...)

 Discover where your food comes from

 Super weird movie on nutrition for little kids

 This tree had tons of handwritten notes on it. It was adorable!

It was so crowded!

I was kind of split on going to this. Most of you probably know that I was vegan before coming to France. As part of my personal philosophy I boycott circuses, zoos, etc. where animals are used as entertainment and kept in cages. I knew that there would be animals in cages at the salon, but I wanted to see what it was like in France and be able to compare and contrast with the US so I ended up going. I feel guilty for giving money to a organization/event that promotes thinking of animals as property and entertainment, but I can't change my decision now.

This display about eating pork was right next to the pigs...

McDonald's had a big display about environmentalism (no comment)...

I guess I'm glad I went and saw what it was like, but I still feel divided. I also feel guilty for not being vegan right now. It was definitely the right decision for right now because it would be next to impossible to do here, but I can't help but feel bad. I should do some more research on the animal rights/veg movement here. Anyway...enough of my rambling. 

Sorry for all the emotional stuff in this post. I've just been thinking about everything a lot recently. Anyway I need to get focused a bit for midterms next week! In light of that I'm only setting one sightseeing goal for this week: Grand Palais. It was on my list for last week, but I didn't make it. We'll see if I get there this week.

I also forgot about my quotes. Oh well...here's two for today.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.  ~Confucius

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life.  And everyone deserves a little sunshine.  ~Jeffrey Glassberg

Jeanne d'Arc, Belle's house, and way too many pictures

I started writing this post on Sunday night, but then stupid homework got in the way ha ha. Writing blog posts is much more entertaining...

This weekend my friends and I needed to get out of the city for a bit and decided to go to Rouen (a city about an hour long train ride from Paris) on Sunday. I honestly didn't know anything about it before we went with the exception of hearing the name in a couple of French/History/Art classes. Our train left pretty early from a train station across the city from my apartment, so I only ended up getting about four hours of sleep the night before to make sure I made it on time. Anyway, I was excited to go sightseeing and discover a new town. The four of us sleepily boarded the train and promptly fell asleep for the duration of our train ride. We had to force ourselves to move from our comfy train seats and get out into the city. After finally finding a map of the town (which was surprisingly challenging) we headed off to our first stop: Musée des beaux-arts (an art museum). 

Of course I took some pictures:

Jeanne d'Arc hearing voices (I love her face in this painting!)

Butterfly!

By the time we made it through this fairly small museum we were more than ready for lunch. In France almost everything is closed on Sunday. We didn't think about this when making our plans to go to Rouen. The town was practically deserted...really weird, but kind of cool. After searching for an open restaurant for a while we finally found a cute little cafe. I had a cheese omlette (completely acceptable lunch food in France) and fries. It was really good and the cafe was adorable! They did have a bit of trouble with their translations on the menu. One of the funniest...

Glace can mean ice or ice cream but I"m pretty sure they meant to say scoop of vanilla ice cream here.

After lunch we headed out to see the Rouen Notre Dame cathedral. We found not only it, but also another church and an abbey (I think?). They were all amazing! I'm officially obsessed with all the huge gothic cathedrals here. They are so beautiful and make me feel tiny! I love it!

Here's a random assortment of pictures from the cathedral, church, and abbey.

By the way it was absolutely freezing in the cathedral (definitely colder than it was outside). We could see our breath! I can't imagine sitting there for a whole service in the middle ages.

Even just walking through the town was adorable. It looks like where I imagine Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) or Snow White living! So cute!

Huge clock on one of the streets!

Next we hit up the Joan of Arc stuff. First stop was the church of Jeanne d'Arc (her name in French). It was surprisingly modern and (in my opinion) kind of strange looking from the outside. Here are some pictures:

Finally we went to the Tour de Jeanne d'Arc--the tower where she was held prisoner. We got there 5 minutes before the tower closed so we sprinted up the stairs to see the top (which turned out not to be very exciting).

At this point it was time for us to head back to the train station to go back to Paris. I had an awesome day! Rouen is a super cute town with lots of great things to see! We didn't have time to see everything we wanted to. There's also a ceramics museum, a Flaubert museum, and a natural history museum. Maybe I'll have a chance to go back!

Sightseeing goals for the week:

• go back to the Musee d'Orsay (actually accomplished yesterday!)
• Pantheon (actually accomplished yesterday!)
• Grand Palais
• Le Salon d'agriculture (kind of like a state fair in the US)