Mon premier weekend à Paris

Samedi

On Saturday, we had to be at the Stanford Center between 9 am and 2 pm.  We had a small breakfast at our hotel and then headed over around noon.  The Stanford Program is located on the sixth floor of ISEP (Institut Supérieur d'Électronique de Paris), which is one of Les Grands Écoles (more selective and specialized than regular "universités") in Paris.  We were greeted by Sofia, one of the adults on the Stanford in Paris "team."  First, we had a meeting with Roberto, who is the head of academic related things in the program.  Then we hopped over to Fabienne, who told us about how our money would work during the quarter.

Next, I had to wait around in the student lounge for a while because Elizabeth, in charge of housing, could only meet with us one at a time.  While I was waiting, though, I got to meet some of the other students in the Program.  I sat down next to one girl (Ashley) and it turned out we had the same address!  We assumed that we would be roommates, but we learned later that we just lived in the same building.  So eventually I got to meet with Elizabeth and learned that I would be staying with Martine Cholet!  She's retired and lives alone.  However, she has a daughter and grandchildren who come over to visit often.

So after the meeting with Elizabeth, we had a brief meeting with Estelle, the program director.  She just gave us some friendly words and encouragement.  Then Ashley and I took an uber to our host families' apartment.  Our Uber driver was very talkative - he was from Turkey and only spoke about 5 words of English - but luckily we could understand most of what we were saying.

After arriving at our destination and struggling to find the correct entrance, we were greeted by Martine and her granddaughter, Joy.  We were welcomed with bisous and managed to not make complete fools of ourselves.  We went up to the first floor (floors start at 0 in France) and dropped off my stuff in her apartment.  Then she took Ashley up to meet her host mom.  Meanwhile, I met Martine's other two grandchildren, Lenny and Evan.

For the rest of the night, I settled in by unpacking my stuff and having dinner with Martine and the kids.  We soon got onto the topic of how much of a picky eater I am.  So a lot of the dinner was them listing foods and me saying yes or no - including Joy repeating pâtes? (pasta) a bunch of times.


Dimanche

Rue Roquette with Tour Montparnasse in the background

On Sunday, I had breakfast by myself and lunch with Evan, Lenny, Joy, and Martine.  Afterwards, they went to a park to meet up with the kids' parents - Martine's daughter and son-in-law, while I decided to explore the neighborhood a little bit.  I wandered along some of the side streets and didn't find anything too exciting, especially since most places are closed on Sundays.  However, then I came to La Cimetière Père Lachaise.

The entrance to Cimetière Père Lachaise

 

SpOoKY

At first I was a little hesitant about exploring a cemetary.  I thought it would be creepy and seemed like a rather odd thing to do in general, despite there being many other people doing the same thing.  I also have a (somewhat) irrational fear of dead bodies - like, I just never want to see one ever - but it turned out not to be creepy at all.

Family Saligny from 1824 to 2002

Well, this family was rich

Okay, this was kind of creepy...

The Crematorium

These mini-graves surrounded the entrie Crematorium

What I noticed was that, despite it being a graveyard which is associated with death, there was so much life in it.  Aside from the many human visitors, there were also lots of birds and all of the plants were in full bloom.  The man-made part was mostly stone, but everything else was bright green!

The Chapel

Well, that's all for now!