allthingseurope:

Mont-St-Michel at night (by thetzar)

Whenever someone talked to me for the first month in Paris

thetimeistudiedabroad:

*thanks riley

When someone wakes you up…

whatshouldwecallme:

Greeting people in the morning…

whatshouldwecallme:

When you’ve had enough sleep:

When you haven’t: 

(Source: liveheartdance)

allthingseurope:

Sous le ciel de Paris (by nicolasv)

(Source: plblk)

Morning in Montmartre, Paris (by Irina_C)

Paris

"

Dance for yourself. If someone understands, good. If not, then no matter. Go right on doing what you love. ~ Lois Hurst.

Story of my life.

"

(Source: balletconnections.com)

An Observation After the Thought

I wasn’t going to make any more blog posts, but something interesting occurred to me just now about Paris and my experience that I just had to write down. 

I’ve been doing an independent study this term with the French department entitled “L’Opéra à Paris: The Relationship between French Opera and Parisian Culture at the Fin de Siècle” (long-winded, I know, and a difficult topic since it’s so FREAKING broad). My biggest problem at this point is that I have a lot of stuff to research and a lot of material to work with, but I don’t know quite exactly what I’m studying. 

Anyway.

I’ve found a lot of really interesting and beautiful things in my research, but most of them all point to the same thing, a thing that I knew subconsciously, but didn’t really believe. You see, for a long time before Paris, I genuinely believed that I was not a 21st century girl. I thought that by some cosmic mistake, I ended up here, and I didn’t know why or how that happened. I’m a very formal person. I like etiquette. I like classical music, history, ballet, and I really appreciate those who have good manners and fashion sense. I like when men are chivalrous and treat me like a lady. I have high expectations for marriage and I am happy to be Christian. Therefore, as society doesn’t hold these things in high esteem anymore, I didn’t think I belonged here. 

So when I went to Paris I found a world that maybe doesn’t hold all my values in high esteem completely or fully, but as a culture they’re still more refined than I am. They operate in a structure of formality, where they value high art, specific etiquette, where a lot of men still give respects towards women like opening doors and handing them things when they drop them. The French invented ballet, and helped to compose a good bit of my favorite types of music. And since all these beautiful French things are most clear in Paris, I was happily overwhelmed with them while I was there. There’s the glamor of Coco Chanel and Yves Saint-Laurent, where people care about what they wear, and still put on Dior and famous perfume in the morning. 

These people and this culture were what I was always looking for in life, so it’s no wonder I was happy there. 

What’s cool though is that the Paris I love now wasn’t around 200 years ago in the time I so idolize in modern history. I’ve been reading Shelley Rice’s Parisian Views (which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Parisian Culture in the 19th century or art history as it examines both side-by-side), and in it she talks about how beautiful Paris was after the reconstruction, and that it became even more beautiful before the first world war, in what French people term La Belle Époque (literally, the beautiful era, not to be confused with le Fin de Siècle, which is the last 25 years of the 19th century; I confused them quite often before I began my research), because it’s the era during which the French government obtained true stability and could seriously develop their culture (this was also possible in Fin de Siècle, but even more so in Belle Époque), showing it off to the world with new marvels such as the Eiffel Tower, the newly renovated city, and Sacre-Cœur. The Paris in the time I love only had Notre-Dame, and Hôtel des Invalides, which are beautiful nonetheless. However, were I to go back to 1860s Paris, I would perhaps be let down. Like other big cities in the world, the sewer system wasn’t great, people didn’t bathe very often, and a lot of disease circulated and killed thousands of people. 

So essentially, I’ve learned that I was meant to go to Paris at the time I did and that my existence in the era isn’t just a cosmic mistake. Paris has all the charm, beauty, and inspiration of the 19th century with all the governmental stability and modern convenience of the 21st. 

And if you know me at all, you know that it makes me happier than anywhere else in the world.