Tuesday 27 February 2007

I wish I lived on this street...

posted by Gigi @ 2:09 am 3 comments

Saturday 24 February 2007

Cimetière du Père Lachaise

I always think it's kind of strange that a cemetery can become a tourist attraction but I have to say that after visiting, it is why to understand why Père Lachaise is so popular. The place is massive, gorgeous, and (the factor that lures most of the tourists) it is full of famous people; we literally kept stumbling across them without even trying. The person whose grave I found most interesting was not the cemetery's most famous residents (Jim Morrison or Oscar Wilde) but rather the grave of VICTOR NOIR, a journalist from the 19th century. It stood out because it has a life size bronze statue of him, and what made it stand out even more was that the statue appeared to be rather worn and tarnished in some specific areas, namely the feet, lips and genitals. It seems the story goes that touching the statue will bring you increased fertility.

We never would have know any of this if it wasn't for a random guy who walked by and stopped just long enough to explain the whole story to us. We weren't sure whether to believe it or not but being techno-savvy and living in this modern age afterwards I did a quick search on wikipedia, which confirmed the whole story.

posted by Gigi @ 2:22 am 0 comments

Tuesday 6 February 2007

A New Post

Well I've kind of fallen off the boat recently with my blog (and my travel diary too actually, bad Gigi!). So much so that my most avid reader, my Mum, is complaining and requesting a new post, so here goes...

I have my french exam tonight for the evening classes I've been taking (hence this post which is really just a form of procrastination from studying). The classes have been pretty good, I do them through the Mairie de Paris so they're cheap and because my class is held in a "not very nice" part of Paris my class is quite small (usually less than 10 people). I know that my french has improved A LOT since I first arrived but I still think it's fairly sub-par. It really is just so easy to live in Paris speaking english, and a lot of it is my fault because I get tired and lazy and generally choose to be in a comfortable situation with my english speaking friends rather than pushing myself into french ones.

Many of my friends from my first six months here have left, though a couple of them have returned (!!!). It's been a bit weird adjusting to life without them but c'est la vie, especially the life of a trainee. But being a trainee also means having trainee friends and I recently found out that a friend from Ottawa just accepted a traineeship in Berlin (Go Rita!!!), I can't wait to visit her!!!!

I've already been here 9 months which is kind of freaking the hell out of me. It only hit me a few days ago that I'm definitely not one of the newbies anymore, in fact I'm one of the old hats. It's good and bad, I love that I feel comfortable in Paris and that it feels like home and know my way around but I hate it that I'm not as excited about 'Paris stuff' as I used to be. But most of all I hate that being here 9 months on a 12 month contract means that I only have 3 months to go. Scary! I'm definitely going to have to make it count and try not to think about it too much.

Anyway, at the moment my hope is that I can come back to Paris in a few years and live here again. And to do that it means I'll have to improve my french, so enough procrastinating and back to the books it is for me!

posted by Gigi @ 3:06 am 2 comments