The French are small, but they were even smaller in the 19th century!

Last Sunday I went to the Musee de la Mode (that's right, the museum of fashion; they have that here) to see an exposition of 19th century fashion. Everything essentially looked like a magnificent, ruffly cupcake with a corset and really skinny sleeves attached. All the gowns (and jewelry, shoes, combs and little doodads including dolls) were originals in amazing condition. And they were all absolutely tiny. Think my height, but more waify than Keira Knightley and corseted to a lung-squeezing, rib-cracking point of skinny that gives me the vapors just thinking about it. Anyway, the expo was gorgeous and, because of our art history cards, free! There was also an area for little kids to try on a mini crinoline, which I totally would have done had there not been scary French people on the alert to judge me. After the expo my friend Kristin and I walked home--from the Champs Elysees to Montparnasse where we finally decided we had to take the bus in order to be home in time for dinner.

Tuesday was my first Litterature et Cinema class which seems good. We started off with La Reine Margot, a novel by Dumas and a film which is basically a lot of visually pleasing sex and violence with some 16th century history thrown in and a heaping side of symbolism involving the color red. Needless to say it was awesome. Later that day was my first art history class, L'Art et societe du moyen-age, with our Star Wars-loving tour guide/professor. We have classes on Tuesdays and visits on Wednesdays, and this Wednesday featured a walk in the Marais where we were shown the "vestiges" of the middle ages. It just so happened that, being in the Marais, amny of them were situated between clubs and bars which Laurent deemed "un peu speciale, quoi." But we saw some fragments of old wall, some half-timber houses, a fabulous bibliotheque and probably the prettiest church ever, l'eglise de Saint Jervais.

And although I am in Paris, the tasty-stuff capitol of the world, sometimes you just have to have a burger. So today we did Breakfast in America for lunch--with an 8 euro formula, how could we not? It's been pretty lovely out for the past few days (especially Wednesday--it was so sunny that the stained-glass windows in Saint Jervais were glowing like crazy) but sadly it's going to rain/snow tomorrow. Obviously when I said that Spring had come to Paris, I meant it was just passing on its way to somewhere like, you know, Florida, where it is a reasonable temperature.

This weekend is our group's excursion to Lyon where we're seeing the old city and a silk museum. Remember that horrendous movie with Keira Knightley where she plays a French silk merchant's wife but has a really awkward American accent? I do, and my god did it suck. Don't ever see it. Okay, I'm done with Keira Knightley references, and this entry.

A lundi, mes chouchous.

PS - OH YEAH! Okay, so apparently the word "chou" does NOT come from the word for cabbage like I thought it did! It comes from chouchote, the word for "teacher's pet" or "favorite." That is so disappointing, isn't it? All this time I thought I was saying "my dear little cabbage-cabbage" and I wasn't. Damnit.