Notre Dame, ENSTA Party, Wine Tasting, Musee Rodin and redeeming qualities of the GRE

So this might be a long post... I have been feeling pretty busy lately so I have been putting of this blog.  So


Last weekend, most of the group went to Marseilles. The rest of us who stayed in Paris had a relaxing weekend and we tried to catch up on sleep. On Sunday, I went to Notre Dame. While I enjoyed seeing the amazing stained glass windows, I was somewhat saddened by way that the church had become so touristy.  The windows were fantastic as ever. Given that the church was completed by 1345, I am impressed by the ability of the French people at the time to construct such a fantastic building. Granted, it took about 200 years to complete, but the windows and all of the sculptures were amazing.   Again, I found the impact of the tourism to be displeasing. The area was flooded by tourists taking pictures and everywhere you looked, there were little trinkets that you could buy. There were also advertisements for the church's program to help other countries spread about that were asking for donations.   Of course I am not religious but I picture a church as a place where one would go to get closer to god and not an institution that fawns over tourists.

I have been busy studying for the GRE so I did not do that much during the week. However, on Thursday night, I went to a party with some of the students who welcomed us to Paris when we first arrived. It was the last hurrah before their final exams started so the event was understandably crazy - they held a shopping cart race where they threw water ballons, pies, milk and many other strange things at the competitors. My favorite part of the party was talking to the french students. I described the various things that I have been doing in Paris to them and some of my general impressions of Paris all in French! Everybody was very friendly and spoke slower to me in French so I was able to understand them. I left a lot earlier than most of the people who went to the party so I missed some fun things but overall it was a great time. I am glad that I decided to go.

This Saturday, I went to a wine tasting with most of the other students. My goal was to attempt to see what people like about good wines. The "Tour de France of Wine" featured six wines from around France and an expert wine maker to explain the wines.  Overall, it was a good experience. I enjoyed hearing about the technique of wine tasting - one of the more pompous things that one can do- and the amazing amount of skill that goes into making great wines. You can read about it more online, but proper wine tasting involves many steps. One starts by looking at the color and viscosity of the wine from which you can predict certain properties of the wine. Then one swirls the wine to let out some of the aromas and to oxidize some of the wine. Then you taste a little wine and swish it about in your mouth. There are different stages of the taste which some pompously entitle the attack phase, the evolution phase, and the finish. Our particular guide did not use these terms but they came up frequently on the internet.   I was impressed with how there were subtle differences in the tastes of the wines. I felt that the wines were okay but I have never had that much wine so perhaps it is not a taste that I have acquired yet. I felt that I got some appreciation for the work that goes into making the wines but I still don't quite see why people find wine to be so fantastic.  After drinking all of that wine, I felt the alcohol a bit but I again I didn't really like the feeling of being a bit tipsy. I felt like I was talking a bit louder than normal and that my balance wasn't quite the same but I still felt as outgoing and the same levels of social anxiety (which is typically quite low for me) as I normally do.  This was a good experience for me but it didn't change my views that much on drinking - others seem to enjoy it a lot but I don't have much of a desire to drink. I am glad to see that my extreme aversion to alcohol at the start of college has relaxed to a more reasonable view.

Today, I went to Musee Rodin because I wanted to see the place that so many people have recommended to me. I was glad to go to a smaller museum where I could both appreciate fantastic pieces of art and not be overwhelmed by too many pieces of art. After you enter, there is a beautiful outdoor courtyard that displays some of Rodin's more famous works. Among others, the thinker, the gates of hell, and the three shades are situated in a beautiful garden.  Rodin was able to capture emotion in his sculptures - the main quality by which I judge art. Inside a renovated hotel, there was a sizable collection of Rodin's other sculptures and a few other paintings like a Van Gogh painting and a Renoir painting as well.

The trip was more relaxed than usual because I went with one other student who has a similar energy level to mine. I liked that we went through the art relatively slowly and that we were able to see pretty much all of the art in three hours. I have found it very overwhelming to go to the Louvre where there are so many masterpieces that I cannot really appreciate any of them.   In the future, I do want to go to a museum and do an audio tour. Even though I went through this museum slowly,  I could have spent much more time reading about the history.  I feel that I have to have at least one museum experience where I take a sufficient amount of time to learn about the history. In order to accomplish this, I think that I need to go alone because it does not seem like this appeals to the people in our group.

So a quick update on the GRE. I have been continuing to study an hour or two a day. I feel that my preparation is going pretty well but it would be nice to have more time. I can pay $50 to move my test day to as late as July 13th (whereas I am currently planning to take in June 27th). As I see it, the reason to take it now is that I would be able to do more fun things during the rest of my trip. The upside is that I would certainly do better on the test if I had two more weeks to prepare. Additionally, I do feel that what I am doing is useful. I should be able to formulate a clear and organized argument in a short amount of time. I should feel comfortable deconstructing an argument. I should have the ability to read through a dense passage and quickly determine the structure and the purpose of the author. I will make this decision in the next few days.  I do wish that I had more experience doing these things at college but I have not taken that many humanities classes.

That's all for now.