June 25

Today started with a long morning of classes. We had drawing with James for 2 hours then embroidery with Murielle for 2 hours. James taught us how to draw figures for our collections. Embroidery class was kind of like pleating yesterday - we felt like sweatshop workers. We started sewing a sampler of 26 different stitches. I got about 4 done... in 2 hours. After we finish the samplers, we will come up with our own designs and embroider whatever we choose.

We had a lunch break and then headed across town to see Yves Saint Laurent Fondation. We saw an exhibit of his caftans, inspired by Morocco, where YSL bought several homes around a garden in Marrakech. Then we went down into the vaults which hold every garment that YSL sent out on the runway, organized chronologically. We saw several of the originals that are representative of YSL, like the tuxedo for women (Le Smoking suit), African-inspired dresses, the pop art dress with lips on the top, and a safari jacket. I really wish we could have seen more of the clothes, but it was still a great opportunity to see YSL's originals that he sent down the runway.

Lindsay and I cooked again in our apartment, but we're getting a little gourmet each time. We made salad and a low country boil for supper. Dr. Ellis told us about this grocery called Ed that is near our apartment, so we went there, and it is much cheaper and bigger than the others. Too bad we didn't realize that you have to weigh and label your own produce, so the checkout lady made us go back and do it. Thank goodness this nice woman took me back to the produce part of the store and showed me how to do it. Then once I came back with all of our labeled produce, we paid and then were left with a pile of groceries. Some (most) French stores don't give out bags. I was already really embarrassed, so we just started picking everything up and putting it in our purses. This was not a few things, this was a load of groceries - we were even stocking up on things like salt and pepper since we don't have much of anything in our apartment. I kept thinking there is no way all this is going in our bags. I ended up walking down the street with a package of shrimp, a loaf of bread, and a bag of cheese sticks in hand. Overall, it was an experience.