Soooo I honestly was planning on writing a blog much sooner than this (believe me, I promise!) but good ol' technology decided to get in my way. My computer broke. The graphics card gave out on me and I had to take it into a repair shop in Paris to get it fixed. That was a fun experience. I learned some new technology vocab from this experience. Thank goodness they were able to fix it because 3 other girls have had to get new computers entirely. EEK! I got extremely lucky. There must be something going on with the electrical conversion or something because for 4 computers to have all these problems (they all started with a black screen) so hopefully no more computer problems from here on out!
Anywho, I know I am wayyyyy behind and this blog is about the week after SWEDEN and going to Foutainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte. I arrived back Sunday around noon and I was EXHAUSTED from pulling an all-nighter the night before so I came home and slept a lot of the day. Monday I had Art and Architecture BUT it was cancelled for the day (woo!) so instead of going home and working on my Romantisme paper that was due the next day, Alla, Beth, and I went to the Luxumbourg Gardens because it was nice and sunny out and talked for a couple of hours. We then went to get a crepe and went our separate ways to go do homework. The Romantisme was a bit harder than I expected. It was about Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris" (Hunchback of Notre Dame) but it wasn't even the storyline of it (No Quasimodo or Esmerelda) We read his descriptions of Notre-Dame (he is verrry descriptive) and explain why it relates to Romantisme. It was hard and I kind of made up things - hopefully it will be ok. Everyone else I talked to did the same thing. Wednesday we did some book shopping for our classes, some window shopping, and then Caroline, Ashley, Beth and I went to Starbucks to plan Spring Break! My second week here I bought a 5 euro umbrella. It broke within 30 minutes of me using it. The third week a brought a sturdier umbrella - so sturdy that it does not fold up and is quite large so I forget I need to be careful with it. At Starbucks I knocked over, not one, but TWO glasses they had on sale with my umbrella. Oy. Vay. I was sooo embarrassed but luckily the workers were very cool with it and told me "I wasn't the first, and I won't be the last." OOPS! Remember my umbrella. Thursday for Romantisme we went to Eugene Delacroix' home/museum (!) I like Delacroix so it was very interesting to see how he went through several phases in his life and started painting in different styles. He was never precise with his brush-strokes, which is a big part of Romantisme. In 1832 he went to Morocco and after his travels is when his style started to change and he started painting different things than he had in the past i.e. lots of exotic animals and African people became his subjects for awhile. It was very interesting! That night we went to go see a play for Theatre called "Fantasio" and it was at the Comedie Francaise. The building is GORGEOUS and right next to the Louvre. Our seats were awful - we could see perfectly fine, but the seats themselves were sooo uncomfortable. It was also really hard to folllow the play because it was in French and they spoke soooo quickly. I just made up my own dialogue and plot instead. :) Friday we had theatre class and nothing too exciting happened there.
That day Beth's friend Larry was coming to visit because it was U of I's spring break so we decided to go to Baby Bottles again. Ok, it isn't called Baby Bottles - I just never remember the name! I know what street it is on but that is it. Beth, Larry, Alla, Colie, and I all met up at the metro station to go the Baby Bottles. Brian and his friend Dale were supposed to meet us, but Brian ended up getting extremely lost and didn't get there until an hour later, but the restaurant wouldn't keep our reservation so we had to go in without them. We felt bad but they found a really good dinner down the 
street - so it ended up working out. This time we ordered cheese fondue AND meat! It was delicious and an overall good time! After dinner, we still wanted to enjoy everyone's company and had no desire to go home yet, so we went to Larry's hotel (he was staying at the Marriot - hello swanky and huge) and chatted and hung out for an hour or two. We ended the night (somewhat) early because the next morning we had to be on the bus bright an early for the Chateaux (Castles basically) Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte. When I woke up Saturday morning, really early I might add, the weather was so dreary and rainy. Go figure we would be spending most of the day outside exploring
guide of the inside
the castles and whatnot. Our first destination is Fontainebleau, which is an hour and 15 minutes outside of Paris. This is where the kings of yore, and Napoleon, lived before Versailles became the grand Palace. When they weren't at Versailles, they were at Fontainebleau. Dr. Costello gave us a tour of the outside and we had an audio tour. The building to the right was just the kitchens for Fontainerbleau. Those. Are. Kitchens. You can imagine what the palace is like if those are the kitchens. 
guide of the inside 
Fontainebleau isn't as grand as Versailles, by any means, but there was a lot of interesting history in this chateau! Like I said, today was gloomy, and of course while we were outside doing th tour it was raining. But thankfully I had my handy-dandy umbrella! Except not. I get inside and we start the audio tour when suddenly I am tapped on the shoulder. Some employee said my umbrella was way too large and I had to check it in. What?! I had to pay 2 euro to check it into some locker. I was NOT happy. My stupid umbrella strikes again at causing a disruption. Back to the chateau:There was a room filled with all these plates that had important places, events in history, people, etc on them. Every
inch of the room was filled with plates! There is also a "Hall of Mirrors" which is where the inspiration for the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles came to be. My favorite room in the chateau was Marie Antionette's "White Room" everything was white and pretty! Also, Fontainebleau contains the last throne of France - Napoleon's thrown! It is quite small...but then again so was Napoleon :)After Fontainebleau, we hop on the bus and drive to Vaux-le-Vicomte which is a a cheateau built for Nicolas Fourquet NOT a king or emperor. A picture of it from the gardens is the first picture on the blog. Nicolas Forquet came from a wealthy family and was a politcal man (he was the financier of Louis XIV) and wanted a majestic home for himself, so he built Vaux-le-Vicomte for himself. After it was finally finished he had a huge party and invited the king to see Forquet's new humble 
abode. Louis XIV was so jealous of this luxurious palace as well as the grand party that was held, that 3 weeks later Fourquet was arrested and imprisoned for the rest of his life for treason. He only got to live there for 3 weeks! How sad! first off was lunch at the chateau. It was quite expensive (seeing as there was no restaurant or grocery store near by to buy food hence why they could jack up prices) and I had rabbit for the first time. I honestly didn't know it was rabbit. I need to start learning food names or actually pay attention because that is how I ended up with shrimp pizza bread once because I 
for the word fro shrimp. It was delicious though! So I didn't mind, besides the fact I was eating a poor little Bugs Bunny. The sun finally started to appear after lunch so Larry, Beth, and I decided to check out the gardens first. Oh. My. Goodness. These gardens were AMAZING! Vaux-le-Vicomte and it's garden werer the inspiration for Versailles, acutally. Louis XIV loved the chateau that much. There are flowers, and trees, and fountains everywhere in the back yard, and it expands tons of acres. My pictures cannot even do this place justice. Bet, Larry, and I were having way to much fun in the gardens. hiding behind shrubs, pretending we were fountains (yes, you read correctly) oh and riding on golf carts! Because the gardens are sooo large and because there is a very famous statue of Hercules/Zeus 40 minutes away from the chateux but still in the garden (by walking) they rent golf carts. We are making the like hike to the statue, when suddenly Adam, a kid from the program, comes whiuzzing by on a golf cart 
and yells for us to get on. So we did. We come across 2 others and we tell them to get on too. We start driving up to the statue and pass 2 more and we tell them to get on! That is 8 people on a golf cart...and the weight limit is 800...yep you do the math! It was a BLAST. Maybe a bit unsafe, but who cares! We were so paranoid about getting caught though, but luckily we never were AND we made it to the statue! It was getting close to the time we had to leave so Larry, Beth, and I rushed back to the Chateau (on the golf cart of 
course) and went inside real quickly. We literally went through 5 rooms because there was a big concert going on in on of the rooms, so we couldn't get past it. But oh well, we got to see the gardens which were the best part of the day! In the picture to the left is Sean, our graduate assistant on the trip, and Beth. The picture on the right is John, Me, Lena, and Adam on the golf cart!
abode. Louis XIV was so jealous of this luxurious palace as well as the grand party that was held, that 3 weeks later Fourquet was arrested and imprisoned for the rest of his life for treason. He only got to live there for 3 weeks! How sad! first off was lunch at the chateau. It was quite expensive (seeing as there was no restaurant or grocery store near by to buy food hence why they could jack up prices) and I had rabbit for the first time. I honestly didn't know it was rabbit. I need to start learning food names or actually pay attention because that is how I ended up with shrimp pizza bread once because I 
for the word fro shrimp. It was delicious though! So I didn't mind, besides the fact I was eating a poor little Bugs Bunny. The sun finally started to appear after lunch so Larry, Beth, and I decided to check out the gardens first. Oh. My. Goodness. These gardens were AMAZING! Vaux-le-Vicomte and it's garden werer the inspiration for Versailles, acutally. Louis XIV loved the chateau that much. There are flowers, and trees, and fountains everywhere in the back yard, and it expands tons of acres. My pictures cannot even do this place justice. Bet, Larry, and I were having way to much fun in the gardens. hiding behind shrubs, pretending we were fountains (yes, you read correctly) oh and riding on golf carts! Because the gardens are sooo large and because there is a very famous statue of Hercules/Zeus 40 minutes away from the chateux but still in the garden (by walking) they rent golf carts. We are making the like hike to the statue, when suddenly Adam, a kid from the program, comes whiuzzing by on a golf cart 
and yells for us to get on. So we did. We come across 2 others and we tell them to get on too. We start driving up to the statue and pass 2 more and we tell them to get on! That is 8 people on a golf cart...and the weight limit is 800...yep you do the math! It was a BLAST. Maybe a bit unsafe, but who cares! We were so paranoid about getting caught though, but luckily we never were AND we made it to the statue! It was getting close to the time we had to leave so Larry, Beth, and I rushed back to the Chateau (on the golf cart of 
course) and went inside real quickly. We literally went through 5 rooms because there was a big concert going on in on of the rooms, so we couldn't get past it. But oh well, we got to see the gardens which were the best part of the day! In the picture to the left is Sean, our graduate assistant on the trip, and Beth. The picture on the right is John, Me, Lena, and Adam on the golf cart!After visitng the chataux, we came back to Paris for a little rest and then a bunch of us went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant that has a great deal for pizza, wine, and a dessert. It was delicious! A bunch of the people we went to dinner with were going to the Tim Burton Movie Festival, 3 movies in 1 theater starting at midnight until 8am and then everyone got breakfast. I wanted to go but no one wanted to see the movies I wanted to. There were 2 rooms, one showing 2 Batmans and Sleepy Hollow, and the other was showing Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Mars Attack. Well i have never seen any of the movies in theater 1, but everyone was going to theater 2, so I passed. Instead, Beth was feeling quite sick and tired, but she didn't want Larry to not have fun in Paris so she went home and I took him to an Irish Pub that a bunch of us go to a lot. He works for the IT department down at U of I, in the athletic department, so I learned a lot of stuff about what goes on in the athletic department and sports and what not. It was very interesting! Sunday I hid in my room all day and did work, 1.) because I had a lot and 2.) my host family came back from vacation early and found out I used the stove (oops :-/) so i didn't want to press any buttons at the time.
That is all for now, but next blog is BARCELONA!!!!! I know you all have been waiting for that! until then, AU REVOIR!
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