the paris underground

sssssso. life in paris after amsterdam.. not too shabby. 

class was rough our first full day back. but we made ourselves a fancy night at "le 138"--a nouveau chic bar near the bastille with mismatched victorian furniture and vintage stevie wonder in the background. we certainly enjoyed ourselves. 

the next day i met up with a friend at the Institute du Monde Arabe (the Arab Institute, basically). she's a middle easter studies major and i was intrigued by the contemporary palestinian art exposition... and i had every reason to be. as with a lot of contemporary art, i didn't understand a lot of it. but the really excellent pieces made up for that. to the left is a still from a video installation by artist Larissa Sansour. the opening line of the short film was "Jerusalem, we have a problem" as she takes off in a spaceship towards the moon. very powerful. 

the architecture of the building was also very impressive (pictured below is a shot from the interior of the windows that make up the facade... interesting mix of traditional arab art and modern industrial materials)

that night we were all feeling a little rowdy so we had an american nostalgia night at the dorm... beer, beer pong, and flip cup. it got pretty intense. the only problem is that they don't sell red solo cups or any equivalent in france! our plastic cups were too small for beer pong, but flip cup worked out pretty well. i'm not used to playing games like that but it was actually pretty fun. 

"what is this?" you ask. they're bones. six million bodies worth of bones. a few centuries ago, the french government was doing work on the left bank of the seine near a cemetery. however, all the water work was washing up all the bodies... so they decided to move them all to one place underground--the CATACOMBES were born. they've been there this whole time, and now you can tour the mystique underworld for 4 euro... which we did, of course. it was kind of a gimmicky tourist trap, but the eeriness of it all made it kind of exciting.  

that night we ventured to the "bateau concorde atlantique"... a boat party club to make a long story short. it was a cool crowd... euro-hipsters and the occasional famous dj lurking in the corner trying not to be seen. i wore my new amsterdam leather mini-skirt--it was definitely a leather mini skirt night. fun music, but the drinks were expensive. we didn't get home till 4am.. so you know it was a pretty good night. 

ughhh can't wait for the weekend!!