Giverny

So to my great surprise, after being out of France for 10 days and speaking pretty much English the whole time with the people I was with, I come back to find that my French has IMPROVED. Or rather, I've just gotten less anxious about speaking it so it's just easier to let it flow. The accent isn't perfect, nor will it ever be I suspect, but it's a little easier to make work the majority of the time. Actually, when I think about it, I was practicing French while I was gone, because 3 out of the 4 books I brought to read while on trains and whatnot were in French, and I did read them often. So I guess that was practice. It's really helpful, too, I've picked up a lot of useful everyday phrases to make my speech more natural. I love being able to read in French!

So dinner with my host family the other night was just fine, I could even jump into a discussion and contribute stuff at one point, and when I think about how huge of a change that is from the very beginning, I'm blown away.

Today was my second IES field trip, a visit to Giverny, a very small village where Monet's home & gardens are, and where a lot of American painters came around/after the time of Impressionism. It was veeery cool, I loved it. We left by bus in the morning and once we got there divided into two groups. I was in McKenzie and Allie's group that went to see the Musée d'Art Américain (Museum of American Art) first, hosting paintings made by said American artists, which was... interesting, mostly because we had to have this guided tour by this woman who just would go on and on about a particular painting, and even though she had been told we understand French she would keep interpreting what she was saying with an English translation every couple sentences, which got annoying fast. I just wanted to be able to browse freely, and I'm sure we all did too, but nooo, we had to be led around by her. Then, with 15 minutes and a couple more rooms left, she just says "Okay, I'll leave you here!" and those last rooms turned out to be the best ones and we were annoyed that we'd only gotten 15 minutes to look at them because she wouldn't stop going on about stuff!! Ohhh well. It's a very nice museum in any case, I just don't see why we needed the guided tour.

After that it was LUNCHTIME YAY at this restaurant called Les Nymphéas, which means "Waterlilies" (Monet's favorite subject, you'll recall), and it was delicious. A wonderful salad with carrots and hardboiled eggs, then a main course of roasted chicken and fries, then apple tart dessert. It was soooo good. One thing I've gotta say for IES, you do not dine badly when they do the planning!!

And then it was finally time for our group to explore Monet's house and gardens. Which was, of course, AMAZING. Just amazing. There's the main gardens which are in front of his house, which is filled with Japanese woodblock prints (and I mean filled, they cover every surface) and has nice open-looking rooms painted in different colors, and those are wonderful, and then you go under a road outside and you get to the water gardens, where the famous Japanese bridge and the waterlilies are. Oh, I loved it, it is beautiful there, with the weeping willows hanging over the pond. The bridge had a wooden canopy bursting with lavender flowers arching across it; it was amazing. I took many, many pictures. So, so pretty.




McKenzie


I had to once again play with the 'digital macro' setting on my camera...








Allie






We decided that this cat contained the soul of Monet. And was also mean.


Water garden!!!













In the gift shop I got a couple of Monet prints for my room next year, and then it was time (before stopping for ice cream at a very cannily located ice cream truck) to go home. As we were driving through Paris, my friends (who live also in the 16th, but in a different section farther away from me) were like "Hey, I recognize this! Can we just be let off here?" and the bus driver actually let us all off there. I got off too, although I had farther to walk from there. But it was a beautiful cool day and I didn't mind the walk at all. I just kept heading for the Eiffel Tower and walked along the river. Finally I got to Passy station on the 6, and it turns out there's this really cool looking pedestrian walkway over by that area...



...then some outdoor escalators that take you up to the station platform. I hopped on that, rode in one stop to Trocadéro, and then walked home from there. Lovely, lovely day.