Monday, September 12, 2005

Monday, September 12, 2005
A gray morning. I made my way to class, took a simple test, got back another test (A-‘s on both), and left the center. On my way out, I asked the housing lady to get in touch with my host family to see about paying less rent and fixing my bed—she couldn’t reach them, so I will have to wait until tomorrow to find out anything. I headed on the metro to the Centre Pompidou area and found a nice little Italian place to have lunch. As I was walking towards the museum, I noticed a window that said, “Musee d’art et d’histoire du Judaisme,” so I stopped there first. The museum was filled with Jewish art from Spain, Italy, and France…very informative and very beautiful (and the building was air conditioned…thus proving that the Jews are the superior race) but there felt like there was something missing (too many words and not enough art). I left that museum and headed to Pompidou. I was expecting galleries to be in chronological order, or at least grouped by artist, but the museum recently did a redesign and now presents the collections based on themes—they are doing this because of an idea called the modern “Big Bang.” It seems like a bunch of crap to me…but I went with it. There were rooms with themes like Destruction, Subversion, Sex, and Archaism. There really weren’t any pieces that stood out to me, but I did enjoy seeing my first authentic Warhol. There was also an interesting fountain/pool that overlooked the city. I headed back to the apartment to do homework. I ate dinner with the host family tonight and it went well…at least better than last week. I found out that the bed will supposedly be fixed by the weekend (although I don’t think it can be fixed, I think I need a new one), but that they won’t lower my rent. The food they served was good – some sort of meat (I think it might have been veal, but since I don’t like the idea of veal, I’m not going to try to discover what exactly I ate) with sautéed mushrooms, a cucumber and yogurt salad, cheese and grapes. The French I did speak at the table was broken but understandable, a marked improvement from broken and non-comprehendible. After dinner, I headed back to my room to test out Skype (phone calls from my computer)…and it seems to work pretty well. Let me know if you subscribe to the service and we can talk for free. Until tomorrow…