glass pyramids and pickpockets

Yesterday we started off with a nice little meeting on safety and health here in Paris. We were lectured for about an hour on the dangers of being inebriated in public since we're loud and obnoxious by nature just from being Americans. The next hour was dedicated to warnings of the interworkings of the pickpocketing world, how they work exactly, who they target, how YOU can be a victim ever-so-easily.

We were then taken to the area most trafficked by pickpoketers, to test what we learned that morning: The Louvre. Tourist central. Pickpocket heaven. They threw us to the sharks, but this is a happy story I tell from France, and I can attest to the fact that we all came out alive.

We were sheparded around the Louvre by one of the professors we will be taking classes from. He was very informative, and took us to all the "hidden treasures" of the museum. We didn't see the Monna Lisa (it has two n's, I never knew that until I saw the for it sign yesterday), and we didn't see any of the other main pieces, but I think we're all planning on returning to the Louvre at some point so it wasn't an issue. The professor told us about the history of the museum, how it was built, destroyed, rebuilt, how most of the pieces came to it (lots came from when France seized the Church's works of art and gave them to the people through the museum, and he picked a few rooms and sculptures and gave detailed descriptions of the symbolism in the piece and how it changed or was a result of a change in France. I'm taking his class this semester, Romantisme, which I predict from that tour will be very interesting, but a lot of information to sort through in a short amount of time. It'll be good though.

We were free to wander around Paris after our little tour of the Louvre, so a little group of us decided to walk down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a long, commercial walk. It looked like Michigan Avenue. I saw the Louis Vuitton store (but dared not step in until after my Style and Fashion class this semester). Regardless of the overwhelmingly commercial atmosphere, there was this overlying charm and novelty of actually walking from the Louvre through the Jardin des Tuileries to the Arc. I feel like a tourist.