le 9 juillet: Pere Lachaise

So a short(er) post to follow previous gigantic post. :)

Thursday we ate at our newly found boulangerie from which we bought the chocolat pastry. I bought a fougasse (some weird kind of stuffed bread) that was tres bon. Then we both broke down and both got huge pastries. I had an almonde/croissant thing with powdered sugar. My mouth is watering thinking about it.

(I forgot to take a picture of the pastry but this is my fougasse)

Yeah, we felt like pigs. My fougasse was huge and my pastry was huge and now I will be huge lol. For photo class, we talked about surrealism in photography. First we talked about its base in painting and how surrealism was the first era in which photography made a significant impact and changed the direction of the movement. Interestingly enough, surrealism lead to photojournalism.

I was surprised by how posed the surrealist photos were. They were all done with manipulated lighting and in highly controlled studios. I was thinking they'd be like random bad shots of stuff lol. I didn't really like most of the slides we looked at but there were a few cool ones. We talked about Lee Miller. She was a model turned photographer in Paris who later moved to New York then acted as a correspondant during World War II. Her photographs from the frontlines were the begining of photojournalism. And were surrealism met realism in a world where reality was surreal. That was a horrible sentence but we can pretend it made sense and move on.

So after we had our little surrealist chat, we went to the Pere Lachaise cemetery to take pictures. It was big and beautiful and creepy all at once. There were like little house things where people could go in to pray. There are alters inside and glass windows in the backs with representations of Mary or the crucifix. I was wondering around and got separated from my friends and kind of spooked. But I met the sweetest old woman. I saw her from afar at first, she was dusting off a tomb with a lace handkercheif and arranging flowers on it. She saw me and we smiled at each other. I wanted to take her picture so I came up to her. She asked if I was alone and I said yes. She told me to be careful when I walked between the little tombs/buildings. It is not dangerous she said but be careful when you go through the little pathways. It kind of made me nervous but it was sweet that she was watching out for me. I could feel her sweetness. It was just in her face and radiating out of her. I asked her if I could take her picture and she said yes, with her family and she stood by the grave. I took my picture and thanked her. I felt like I was intruding a bit so I left her quickly although I would've liked to have stayed just to be near her and feel the love that she had for her family.

I saw another woman on my way back to the front of the cemetary. She was also taking care of a grave. Dusting it, sweeping away fallen leaves, and carefully removing dead leaves from floral arrangements. I clumbsily asked to take her picture. She also immediately stood by the grave she was attending to and I took it. She told me it was her mother there. I said that I could tell she loved her very much. I wanted to capture her sweet face but she wouldn't let me take a close picture. She kept saying that she wasn't pretty. Which was so not true.

These women had such a palpable tie to their families. It reminded me of taking flowers to graves on Memorial Day with Grandma Maddie and Nancy. How they know our family and stories about them. I felt as if I need to know these people.

I didn't see any famous graves in Pere Lachaise. They were hard to find. But I did meet two beautiful women. I wish I could have captured their love and sweetness in the photographs but I felt like I was intruding a bit so I didn't stay with them for long.

For dinner, Madame went all out. We had like a three course meal. First, she gave us legume soup. It was very good, it was like vegetable soup but like the vegetables were all purreed into it so like no chunks. Ok, horrible description but then we had pates (pasta) oh my goodness. Brittany was freaking out lol she was like "OH! oh! oh! I love pasta!" and like you should have seen her face lol. Madame was very pleased. She likes cooking for us. It was like that bow tie pasta and she had made a cheese sauce with ham. It had Rochefort and another kind of cheese and cream in the sauce. And I know I say this all the time but it was SO GOOD. I ate way too much and then we had salade. We usually eat salade after the main meal for some reason. I don't know if that's how all the French do it but interesting anyways. Lol but the salade had sprouts in it and we asked how to say it in French and she asked how to say it in English. After we told her, she was like "Sprout, s, p, r, o, u, t. Sprout" lol like to remember it or something, I don't know but it was cute.

O and then, she brought out the chocolat noir glace much to Brittany's pleasure lol. I think she is starting to like us. We like her very much. I need to take a picture of her so you can see her :).