Bones, expats, and other mysteries.

It's been a busy week since last I blogged. Although I'm still not fully recovered from my cold -- the cough is particularly persistent, and I couldn't hear much of anything on Friday because of sinus pressure -- I managed to get out and about quite a bit in the last days before classes begin. (Tomorrow!) My list of Things to See and Do in Paris has plenty of items left, but I did manage to see one site that was near the top on Wednesday: the Catacombs.

A quick warning, though, before I write about them. The Catacombs, a massive ossuary containing hundreds of thousands of Parisian skeletons, are deeply creepy. I'm going to post some pictures, so if you don't think you want to read about and see a wall of femurs, please close your eyes tightly and scroll down for a minute or two.

Still with me? Good, because the Catacombs are one of the most interesting things I've seen in Paris so far. I went with three friends from CUPA without quite knowing what we were getting into, and when we got to the end of the long, long staircase that descends into the Catacombs, we found ourselves following narrow, labyrinthine passageways for twenty minutes or so. (No guides and no tours, just four American college kids with a brochure.) We went for so long without seeing anything that I wondered aloud, "Aren't there supposed to be bones or something in here?"

Eventually we came upon a sort of antechamber. The sign over the doorway answered my question:



Translation: "Stop. This is death's kingdom."

But who can resist a welcome like that? Not I! (Also, not the extremely loud group of German tourists who were there, being incongruously merry and chewing gum.) We walked on, and this is what we saw:



Wall after wall of bones, carefully arranged, piled into solid structures and decorated with skulls. Walls with skulls forming a heart shape, walls with skulls forming cross shapes, walls with skull and crossbones at regular intervals. There are no glass partitions, nothing separating the tourist from this incredible, overwhelmingly tangible proof of death except for a sign near the entrance asking visitors not to steal any bones. Walking through the cold, damp halls, beads of condensation dripped onto my head; I shivered as I brushed the water off, looking at a dusty skull with a perfect smallish hole in the temple. Here's me and my friends trying to strike appropriately sombre expressions (except for one grinner, studying to be a doctor and thrilled by all the bones):



I read the brochure after I got home that night, and it turns out they started moving bones down there in the late 1700s, when construction required the digging up of several cemeteries, and continued for almost a century. (Signs in each section indicate when and from where the bones were moved, a good deal of them dated 1859.) The Catacombs are consecrated, and there's a few rooms that have altars; apparently Mass can be held there, although I don't know if it ever was consistently. And ... now it's a tourist attraction!

Moving on to cheerier subjects -- although, depending on your point of view, maybe not -- another cool thing I did this week was watch the VP debate live, very early Friday morning. A group of American expatriates, study abroad students, and a few curious non-Americans gathered at an Irish pub in a swanky Right Bank neighborhood at 3 a.m. Aside from the debate itself, it was interesting to get a glimpse into the expat community here, and to think about what it means to be an expatriate. It's something I've struggled with in the month I've been here: how do you live in a foreign culture, with all the assimilation that implies, and maintain your original identity? Or: how do you live out the contradictions of choosing to live in Paris, but being passionate enough about America to stay out until 5 a.m. on a weeknight to catch the VP debate live?

I certainly don't have an answer, but it was a fun night. I spent much of Friday recovering, and then Saturday baked chocolate chip cookies with my friend Allison. Finding the chocolate chips was the toughest part, because they're somewhat exotic here, like peanut butter and marshmallows, and they turned out to be both hilariously small and moderately overpriced. Baking was a lot of fun, though, and I was happy to hear my host family declare the cookies "délicieux!" Saturday was also La Nuit Blanche, or White Night, but I was pretty wiped out and missed out on most of the concerts and art exhibits happening around the city all night, only making a brief stop at the Eiffel Tower. It was lit up a beautiful blue, but sadly, I didn't have my camera with me...

And today I went to the Cinémathèque Française! It's now one of my favorite places in Paris, and I plan to spend half of my free time there. A film library, museum, and theater, the CF shows six or seven movies a day, most of which are classics, revivals of obscure vintage Hollywood productions, foreign films, silents, and retrospectives (right now, Dennis Hopper). I saw Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" this morning, with a short introduction by a film historian. I picked up the CF's October-November calendar and already have it all marked up with lectures to go to and films to see.

Tomorrow morning at 9 I'll be starting my first university class this semester. All week I'll be attending class -- lots of class, probably seven different courses -- and then on Friday I'll decide on my final slate of four. I'm a little nervous; no matter how old I get, the first day of school always seems to call for one's best dress, sharpened pencils, and a little bit of nervousness. Updates coming soon!