Living in Paris is so much more exciting and cultural than Burlington. Yesterday after school I went and watched a burial at the Pantheon. The Pantheon was a church originally, but the Revolution turned it into a Republican monument. Now it is the final resting place to many famous French people, including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Alfred Dreyfus. The burial that I went to was for Aime Cesaire, a poet and politician from Martinique. He helped bring about the end of colonization and drew attention to the extreme bigotry and racism present in the French Republic. Like his close friend Leopold Senghor, he was both a great poet and a strong politician.
The burial was so interesting because most members of the French government were there. I got to see Frederic Mitterand (currently a minister and the nephew of former President Francois Mitterand), the Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, and President Sarkozy. He really is quite short, but definitely thinks very highly of himself. There was a pretty long poetry reading, and then Sarkozy gave a short speech. The proceedings were inside the Pantheon, but the crowd was kept outside. There was, of course, a lot of security, but it was really interesting to see all the politicians.
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