day 2 in paris

Not sure whenabouts I'll get to post again after this entry, since we're leaving for Normandy this afternoon and I think there's no internet over there. Although at this time of writing it's still Sunday night. I'm just taking into account that I'm going to post this tomorrow morning. Gosh that's confusing.

Well I guess Sunday afternoon, Blanche, Marin and I went to meet one of her friends and she took us to a museum of sorts which actually turns out to be some rich guy's house in the 18th/19th century. I found it really cool cuz I found a print of Jean Baptiste Chardin's monkey “Peinture” on the walls :O I used him as one of my artist references this year in printmaking haha. It was pretty surprising to see it on the wall... but it was such a beautiful big house/mansion. I can't imagine anyone living there though, it's really big and so... rich? Tapestries on every wall, vibrantly coloured carpets and furniture and gold plated candlesticks with motifs of griffons and dragons and stuff like that. Really rich people... there was probably enough paintings and prints on the walls to start a separate art museum @_@

Then we went to Aude (Blanche's friend)'s apartment where we had some cake and then went on youtube. It's interesting to note that the same popular videos back home and popular here :P we watched potter puppet pals' mysterious ticking noise and some of Remi Gaillard's videos. Hahaha some things never change.

Came home, oh yeah, they have this white harpsichord with black keys and wooden sharps/flats. At first I thought it was a piano with very little keys but it turns out it is a harpsichord. It takes a bit of getting used to because the keys feel very different. I played on that for a while because I'm supposed to have prepared something for some kind of musical gathering in Normandy. This family is very into music. The mother and father both play violins, Blanche plays the violin and the 2 brothers play the harpsichord :O As for me, I haven't touched the piano in like 2 years so yeahhhhhh a bit out of practice...

Anyways the father had some colleagues over, which was nice because there were 2 german people and 2 japanese people, so I wasn't the only one with imperfect french. If anything it was a good opportunity for me to listen to more french, especially by other people like myself haha. Marin let the guinea pigs loose, and their names btw are Champignon and Truf – mushroom and truffle (sorry, I have bad french so I heard it wrong the first time). Well a truffle is another kind of mushroom anyway haha. Yeah, then we had duck for dinner. It was sooo nice :O I realised that it's the first meat I've had since I got here, but it was so good. It was cooked steak style, in the oven. A bit raw on the inside. I like this way of cooking duck, I've decided :)

Hmmm it's 9.40pm. I should probably get to sleep and update this for real tomorrow morning. Ummm yeah. Laters.

NEXT DAY

I realise that I should probably upload more photos, but I keep leaving the cord downstairs and I can't be bothered going to get it. Typical lazy me eh. Leaving this afternoon at about 6pm apparently. I still haven't got a simcard or exchanged my 500 euro notes which I have been told nobody will accept because nobody uses them. :O thanks dad, now I have a lot of money that I can't use.

Otherwise I have nothing of note to report. I guess I'll update with a massive update in 5 days after I get back from Normandy? I think I'm going to take my laptop with me so that I can write as I experience things rather than trying to include everything at once which will probably lead to me missing out 80% of the stuff I wanted to talk about (Yes this always happens when I put off blogging).