Musee Mardi

I've decided that Tuesdays are now "Musée Mardi," since I only have one class in the early afternoon and the rest of the day is mine! This particular Tuesday I went to the Musee Lumiere which is in the mansion of one of the founders of cinematography. It is excellent! (my roommate even says it's her favorite museum in all of France. I just haven't seen enough museums here to make such a jugement!) The mansion-now-museum is absolutely gorgeous and they managed to keep that same feeling of decadence. They have lots of video clips and pictures to look at so it is one of the more entertaining museums I have been to! They also track the development of the video camera from its early days. My favorite part was the movie theater in the basement where they showed and explained lots of the first movie clips ever, including some of Lyon! super cool!

Today was a little success as far as communicating with people goes! At the afore-mentioned trip to the museum, the woman at the desk was automatically like, "do you speak french? where are you from? would you like the english guide" (sigh. Sure.) This happens on a semi-regular basis. But! Today I went to the SNCF boutique to get tickets for my winter break voyage (yes, you HAVE to pronounce it en francais), and I explained exactly what I wanted, which was a rather complicated set of plans, all in French, and she didn't once try to explain in English or do anything else different! I definitely got my point across without too much "gee, what is the word for this" and she didn't give me the "what the heck are you talking about" look. Hurrah! Maybe she was just nice and used to dealing with exchange students, but still, it went very well!

Speaking of my trip, here is my itinerary for my winter vacation!
Friday-Sunday = London with Whitfield!
Monday-Wednesday= Normandy (Honfleur) to stay with Greg!
Thursday-Saturday=Paris!
Sunday=Mozart concert, furiously trying to get papers done