Paris you are very full and busy, it's exhausting

On September 4th we woke up at a fairly early hour in order to go to the Rodin museum before it got too busy. But before we left we had a nice breakfast of croissants du chocolate and brioche (it's like a giant bun of goodness) Once again, we WALKED to the museum. Normally walking is not a bad thing, but in Paris it is beyond stressful. There are so many cars and so many people (and mopeds and motorcycles that jump curbs despite the fact there are bars on the sidewalk to prevent them from doing so.) I find myself tensing up before I even leave the house.
Ok, so we walked to the Rodin museum. What a pretty museum! For all of his big sculptors they are in this wonderful rose garden which has views of the Eiffel Tower and the Palais Royal (maybe? My details are a little fuzzy...) if not the Palais Royal other impressive French buildings.
After wandering the garden for a little bit we went into Rodin's house. Which is a giant mansion. Usually when you walk into an artists house (at least in my experience) it's a tiny little apartment or something. Oh no, not Rodin. He has a house fit for a King (although, based on the size of the Louvre I don't think Louis XIV would have been happy). In said house there were many more sculptures (not all by Rodin) and there were mini models of his work. Making a giant bronze statue seems to require a lot of effort and many steps. This is probably why he reused many of his previous works in his newer ones (par exemple: The gates of hell has both The Thinking Man and the Three Men, only a bit smaller, to avoid squishing the Devil I assume)
All throughout the museum Matt's friend was explaining everything, in French, because she is getting he doctorate in Art History, or something of that nature. She was clearly very knowledgeable, although most of the knowledge was wasted on me and my minimalist style of French.
When we left the museum Matt's friend left us and we ran into people assembling for the demonstrations. It seems that the French protest everything, or go on strike. It's basically impossible to fire a worker because if they do all their employees will strike etc. etc. Although, this time there motivation for protesting is a little more pure. The president of France has kicked out all the Romanian Gypsies. Besides the fact that it's just mean, it goes against everything the EU stands for, and they are not amused. One last fascinating thing to note about protesting in France, they rarely get violent, probably because the police men wear armor.
Later we managed to find the other Western student going to Bordeaux and we hung out with her and her mom (we drank wine in front of the Eiffel Tower, quel francais!) Then that evening Matt and I walked through the quartier gay and the quartier juif in order to find Paris's best Falafel and then to find Taylor (the other WWU student) and hang out at her appartment for the evening with ANOTHER western student who's studying in Paris. Then we went home...and slept.