le 10 juillet: La Fille Mal Gardee

This picture is of Brittany and me at the Opera House! We went to the ballet La Fille Mal Gardee today. But first you have to read about the boring stuff:

So on Fridays we have a different French teacher which is kind of a fun experience. My intermediate teacher is a lot different than the elementary teacher I had. She is older and has that mean sense of humor. I kind of like it though lol. She laughs at us but it is fun. She has dark hair with little streaks of grey and white. I think they might come from her running her fingers through her hair after writing on the chalkboard lol not really but it is a funny habit she has.

At lunch, I had to run to Gare du Nord to buy tickets for our weekend in the countryside. We tried to go the SNCF boutique where you buy all the tickets for the high speed trains but they like couldn't do it there for some reason. Finding the ticket booth was way confusing but there was a really helpful guy at the information desk who wrote down directions on what time trains were leaving, which directions we needed to go and where to make our transfers.

I think buying tickets was the first time a french person was really mean to me. The guy we bought the tickets from was so short with us when we were asking questions about how the tickets worked. He was like disgusted that we were speaking to him in english but we weren't sure how to phrase our questions in French and he like had an "I speak English" sign in his window so he was just dumb. The tickets to Auvers-sur-Oise were only like 10 euro round trip which was great. We were thinking it would be around 30.

Christy came with me to buy the tickets and we bought a little pizza thing in the station because we had to run back to class after figuring everything out. We went to Les Halles for photography. It was a pretty fun area. There were a lot of restaurants and boutiques but then it kind of meshed into a sketchy area with peep shows, like there were older women on the streets dressed in skanky clothing and holding like lanyards with a bunch of keys on them. And Brittany and I were like yeah... let's head back to where we were ha ha but we were really bad actually. We saw a shop that had cheaper clothes in it for the first time and we just had to go in. It was called Kookai. I bought a little skirt there. Mom, I know you are going to love it. It is blue and white striped like Maddie's pants that I like to borrow and it has a little bow tie in front and has these sweet little pleats and some pockets. Brittany bought a plaid dress I found for her. It is funny how well I know her taste already. She loved it. She also got a little top that reminded me of Tara for 5 euro! I know, unbelievable.

We got out of the shop and felt pretty bad for shopping on class time but we took a bunch of pictures to make up for it. But we couldn't stay longer because we planned on going to the ballet that night.

We ran home to get ready and Madame made us an early dinner so that we could go an hour early to get standby student tickets. She made us a big salade that was so good. It had rice and sprouts in it and like ham and tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce of course. It was so sweet of her. She is the nicest lady. I am so glad we got her for a host mom. When we left to go to the ballet she made a big show of saying how cute we were all dressed up. She was like, "Oh, wow! Super!" and like tried to do a whistle lol.

So we went to the Grand Opera house and went in to see if they still had tickets. They had us go sit in a line for the standby tickets with a bunch of other students. We stood there for a long time until they finally started moving us through. We had to show our student IDs and pay in cash but the tickets were only 15 euro and when we were seated, we were on the THIRD ROW! like really close to the center, too! It was unbelievable. The seats we had were probably at least a hundred euro.

The ballet was called "La Fille Mal Gardee" or the badly garded girl. It was a comedy ballet and so great. There is like this country girl who has a little love affair with a country boy but her mother wants her to marry the son of this rich guy. The son is this clumbsy little thing that always dances awkwardly and is really childish, like pretending that this red umbrella is his horse all the time. There were beautiful pas de deux with ribbons and there was a May Day celebration where the main girl stood en pointe in the center of the stage holding onto ribbons that corps dancers held the other ends of and danced around her in a circle and she did this arabesque turn while they danced around her, the ribbons kind of acting as her male partner.

The main guy was really great, too. His jumps were breathtaking and so graceful. He did a really great job as well and their chemistry was unlike any ballet I have seen. Ha ha, it was definitely very French, like the two people seriously made out on stage. I really think they must have been dating in real life because they actually kissed all the time.

The mother of the girl was hilarious. It was played by a man dressed as a woman like the stepsisters in Cinderella. He did a really fun dance wearing wooden shoes. It was like a little tap dance and some corps dancers also put wooden shoes on over their pointe shoes and did some of it with him. Everything was very fun and vibrant. There was a beautiful rainy scene during the May Day celebration.

The plot was pretty simple. Girl and guy in love. Girl gets betrothed to the rich stupid boy and her mother like signs her marriage agreement but all the while she is sneaking off with her love then the son and father find out and break off the deal and the mother lets her daughter marry the boy she loves. It was really cute though and so well played. The dances were beautiful and the rich son was constantly in this amazing character of like stupidity and ungracefulness. He wore like this straw colored wig and this face that was like he was stunned and so awkward the whole time it was great.

We all really loved it and the Opera house was incredibly beautiful. There were like four balconies and the ceiling had paintings and golden statues and a gorgeous grand staircase. We had such a great time. It was the first ballet that Brittany had ever gone to and she was loving every second. It was so fun to be with her and Courtney and Christy. We were all really glad that we were able to go.

Me, Courtney, and Christy. Courtney is actually like one inch taller than I am but I am wearing heals.

The beautiful painted ceiling and some of the gold laid sculpture


Another one of me and Brittany in our THIRD ROW seats! Isn't her little dress adorable? She got it at a little girl's dress shop lol. I wish we would have thought to get pictures before we ran out the door because it was really sweet.