A Trip to Champagne and More of Life in Paris

Bonjour!

Due to our internet provider canceling our apartment service for a whole week (with no warning), it has been a rather long time since I updated this blog - so brace yourself, there is a lot to catch you up on! Life in Paris continues to get better and better. Today the sun came out in full force and it was nearly 60 degrees! 

On March 7 we went on a CEA trip to the Champagne region of France. We spent the morning at the Notre Dame in 

Reims. It is a beautiful cathedral that is the site of the baptism of the first king of France, and has since served as the place where every king of France was crowned. The church itself was damaged during the second world war, and one of the major windows was replaced with a stained glass design by Marc Chagall- it is beautiful. In keeping with the tradition and legacy of the region, one of the other stained glass panels shows the production of wine- we thought this was awesome and definitely not what you would expect to see in a formal cathedral. After a wonderful lunch in the town center of Reims, we spent the afternoon at the Cordon Rouge de Mumm museum. Cordon Rouge de Mumm is one of the most famous and largest producers of champagne. We watched a very informative video on the history of Cordon Rouge and the Mumm family, and then took a tour of the underground cellar space. There are 16 miles of cellar space, and we saw the "secret" room of rare and vintage bottles of champagne. We soon realized that the $5 bottles of Andre we buy back in the states can't legally be considered champagne since it is certainly not produced in the Champagne region of France. We were then taken to a taste test room where we sampled two varieties of champagne- one was a sweeter version of their original drink, the other was a more "brute" or dryer and stronger taste. It was a really neat experience.

That same weekend I had 4 visitors! One of my best friends from Wisconsin, Molly, who is studying in Israel came for the weekend. It was so amazing to spend some time with her and show her around le Marais. Three of my best camp friends also stayed with me that weekend- Liz came from Florence, Katie from Copenhagen, and Hank all the way from the states! It was a wonderful reunion of sorts. A jam packed weekend to say the least!

This past week my French class went to the movies to see a new film called Welcome. It was an incredible experience. Part of the dialogue was in broken English, spoken between a young boy from Iraq and a middle aged Parisian man (with subtitles in French), the rest of the film was in French (no subtitles). It was a challenging but extremely fun experience and I loved the movie- if it comes to the states I recommend it to everyone. The entire metro ride home I spoke only in French with my teacher who, I quickly found out, lives 2 min away from me! We talked about our neighborhood, the old man at the Picpus fruit stand and which streets we take to the metro. It felt so nice to be able to converse entirely in French with my teacher about something other than the class lesson. I really feel like I am getting better and better each day and doing more local activities like getting my shoes fixed at the shoe repair store- maybe now I won't feel like I am waking barefoot on the cobble stones!

I will make another post soon about my weekend in Prague, but for now I am off to cook dinner and then celebrate St. Patrick's Day at an Irish bar in the Odeon area of the city!

-Lauren Jill