Saint Denis

Yesterday we started off the day with breakfast of course (un croissant et un creme- the usual haha). After that I went to my advanced french class where we learned about Fouquet and discussed the novel. Now that was a lot more like the type of schooling I'm used to. After that class we had a class lectured by prof. Delcourt about Charlemagne. We're reading a book called The Song of Roland and it is really boring. It basically just repeats over and over and puts you to sleep. The bright side is it is in English and that prof. Delcourt seems really nice. After about 3 hours of class it was finally lunch time. Helene made pasta salad (with feta,olives and sundried tomatoes-yummmm), green beans, tomatoes with balsamic and mozzarella, meat, cheese, bread. I see myself mainly blogging about the food here because it's just SO good. It makes sitting through hours of class well worth it. After we stuffed ourselves we set off to go visit a church called Saint Denis. For the program each student is required to give a presentation about places that we visit. My friend Seren and I decided to go first and did it about Saint Denis.

Here's some basic history: The Basalik was built where Saint Denis died. He was a man from Italy that was sent with 2 of his friends to convert the Gauls to Christianity. The king didn't like this and had him decapitated on the highest hill in Paris- Montmartre. Legend has it that he picked up his head and walked six miles preaching a sermon all the way to the place where he finally died. Over the years the church appeared, disappeared and is back again. Hundreds of Kings, Queens, and other nobility are buried there. There was a time where they exude the bodies but now they have brought them back.

So we get to Saint Denis and it is so pretty! I loooove all of this gothic architecture. The stained glass was seriously breathtaking. We walk in and there are graves everywhere inside the church. They come up off the ground and on top of them lies a statue of the person buried below. It was really interesting. It was so cool to see the graves of people that we've learned about in our French classes. We saw were the Louis' and the Henris' are. There is so much history here in France which just continually reminds me of how young the US is.

After we were done exploring the crypts Seren and I stayed in the area to get some sodas. We randomly ran into Julie and Amy and decided to stop at the Camps Elyses on the way back to the MEC. We went to a really expensive chocolate store where we decided to buy a box of chocolates for 1,500 euros, great investment! Ok we did not buy that because we aren't lunatics. Could you believe how expensive that is?? Thats Euros-  so lets say about $2,000 for a BOX. No thanks I'm good with my 2.90 euro ice cream we opted for instead (which by the way was about half a kid scoop- I think I'm too used to America's oversized everything). While down there we also saw a double decker bus with men on top partying or something. They were blasting music and there were about 7 police cars all around them. We walked up to where they were driving and just waved and laughed along with them- I snapped a picture of the weird french men and went on. Then all of a sudden it hit me- "l'equipage de francais" was written on the bus...."Oh my goodness you guys it's the french soccer team!!!" It was so cool (and suddenly no longer weird when we realized they weren't just random men). We spent some time trying to stalk the bus and get more pictures but it turns out we don't walk as fast as a car can drive.

It was such a long day and we were happy to get back and watch the finale of the bachelorette on my laptop. OH wait, America made a cool rule that you can't watch any tv shows on your laptop if you're in another country. We were really disappointed and decided to shop for european vacations instead. Any suggestions??