Some of today's pictures

CHECK THIS OUT. I was hanging out with my friend Lindsey (an American who I know from my program in 2006, who is married to a French man,) and she introduced me to the wonders of Gelati D'Alberto. They have many magical flavors, and I picked pistachio, (definitely just had to spell-check that,) and rose (yes, like the flower.) It was spectacular. And BEHOLD its beautiful presentation, in the shape of a flower!!

COOL, right?!

I walked through the "Jardin des Plantes" today... "The Plant Garden." A title which has always mystifies me. "I'll meet you in the garden with all the plants." "Oh, right, that one." There were, indeed, plants, and they were lovely.

This is Lindsey, from when we meet up a few weeks ago.

We went to the Pantheon, (I had watched fireworks from outside here on the 14th,) which started out being a church and then became a shrine to the power of men during the Revolution, then went back to being a church, then secularism came back in style, church, memorial to great men, church.... now it's sort of both. A lot of thought went into the sculptures and paintings to either remind you that you ARE in a church, or remind you that you AREN'T (depending on what time they were installed.)

So basically it's a church/ burial ground for important people. The way it works is that if you are very important and die, someone can write the president and ask that you be "panthonized." (They actually have a very for this.) After going through a long series of people, if you get approved, then they exhume your body from wherever it was originally buried, and bring you up here for a ceremony with other important people (except that they are still alive.) Then you get put in a room in the crypt. Unfortunately, as you are dead, you don't have much say-so about this. For example, Voltaire and Rousseau hated each other passionately, but now they are eternally resting across right across from each other.

This visit was somewhat surreal. You walk downstairs to the crypt and everything is white stone, and you're like, "Oh hey, Voltaire. There you are." "What's up, Rousseau?" They are just right THERE, in above-ground stone coffins, in little rooms: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Marie and Pierre Curie, Emile Zola, Louis Braille (you know, of the Braille fame...) Kind of a weird feeling to be in the same room with all these people.



This picture above is a sculpture of the Marianne (symbol of France,) people pointing your attention to her glory, and soldiers marching to defend her. The inscription below says "Vivre Libre ou Mourir:" "Live Free or Die."

In other news, there are plaques like this one all over the city as monuments to members of the French Resistance who were gunned down by the Nazis in the last few months before the end of WWII. This one says " Died for France: Here, Henri Jean Pilot, law student, fell heroically at the age of 23, on the 20th of August, 1944, for the liberation of Paris."

This is an elementary school next to a library I went to this morning.


A picture from the library. Notice anything unusual about the books?

This plaque outside the school reads: "To the memory of the children, students on this school, deported from 1942- 1944 because they were born Jewish, innocent victims of Nazi barbaricism, with the active complicancy of the Vichy government. Let us never forget them."

The "Vichy government" refers to the French officials who worked with the Nazis after Germany took over France. Even the French police conducted raids to capture Jews and other "undesirables." After the war, these officials fled to Germany and were later tried, and many exectuted by the new French government. The truth of the matter is that far more people worked with the Nazis than anyone would like to admit.