Filed under "daily"
On Greece
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Sunday, 19 April 2009
The strange thing about traveling, these days, is the sense of having manifested something. When I was younger it was more about the act of departure and arrival -- the sense of moving away from people and coming back, the age-old idea of a trip that changes you, even if it is just for a weekend. While much of that still stands, it feels different. No longer do tray tables inspire scrawled journal entries about how exciting it feels to be in transit, to know the sensation of geographic movement. Now I mostly try to sleep, I get knots in my back, and I try not to drool in public. The taste of once-frozen dinner rolls and mid-morning vegetable spread isn't much condolence.
I think maybe the romance surrounding air travel died on a flight from Atlanta to Seoul, when I spent four of sixteen hours in the airplane bathroom, throwing up and trying to stay conscious. I have worked hard to train myself into napping uncontrollably, if only to avoid thinking too hard about my digestive tract and all the things I have put it through in life. The romance of being in transit has completely fallen away; transit is hardly time to reflect on the places one has seen, or time to ponder where one is going. Rather, it is a miserable experience one must endure between bursts of life. Here are hours not wasted, but folded somewhere into time. Though geographic movement seems to take forever while it is experienced, once you have arrived it seems quite sudden. Suddenly you are home. Suddenly it is tomorrow. Suddenly it occurs to you how terrible you smell, how long you have been awake, that you have been on your computer for six hours, and that, for the second time in a day, the only meal you can assemble is farfalle with butter and a glass of apple juice. It would behoove me to remember to stock a little something in the freezer for Sunday arrivals, when all grocery stores and markets in France are closed.
The strangeness and the delight, as I said, concern the manifestation of a trip -- to plan from start to finish, to assemble tickets, to gather information. Even choosing destinations can inspire disbelief. One moment there is a voice in your computer, and a few years later you are visiting a friend in Bosnia. One evening you see a photograph and decide you must experience its subject directly. One month you are collecting signatures on campus, then suddenly you are alone in an airport, about to move to a foreign country for a year. Each journey can be traced by its own string of events, but as you experience them they can feel quite disconnected. It is hard for me to convey how many times I have stood before monuments or looked out on a view and had an experience that abruptly changes from witnessing the site to an awareness that I really am there, that I decided to do something that seemed impossible and accomplished it. Sometimes it feels almost by accident. So often while traveling you are too overwhelmed for clarity, but every now and then a moment hits you and you realize you are standing in the spot you imagined you'd never reach, or that you'd only be able to visit thirty years down the road. It's freeing. Anything seems possible when, even if only for an instant, you feel you've controlled the course of your own life.
When trying to capture this sensation, I often return to this video, which ends with, "The end goal of this project, both in its vlog and
documentary form is to share people's reasons and motivations behind
their trip. Most importantly, to share what makes or drives a person
to leave everything behind: their routines, their friends, the things
that are comfortable to us and give us a false sense of security.
There's an infinite number of stories and paths chosen that lead to
leaving it all behind. But even more important than sharing these
stories is doing so in a way that helps break down the myths and false
fears that people put up. Because, in the end, it has almost nothing
to do with the bike and everything to do with setting out to accomplish
something that is intimidating, that is unknown to you -- something you
know you have a good chance of failing at, but doing it anyway, and
slowly but surely, proving yourself wrong."
My life, the future, and everything
Wednesday, 08 April 2009
Wednesday, 08 April 2009
A few of you have submitted your votes (it's a good system, don't you think? Let's me know what you think is interesting, and gives me a jumping-off point and a greater sense of purpose), so today's program will include an exploration of the landscape of my life as it has been shaping up recently. I expect by the time I finish, it will have been a long and winding hike through the mountains, but perhaps we'll find a view of the horizon and someone can claim they see what's coming up ahead. That person will probably not be me.
With every month that passes, I toss around phrases like, "It's hard to believe there are only ____ months left in Paris," if only to remind myself that this magical year will come to a close, and that Paris will not, in fact, remain my daily backdrop. Today there remain less than two months, and before long the countdown will be in days. Already I am putting off things like getting a haircut or seeing a film -- things that will be cheaper to do in America.
I have a lot to go back to, so it's not as if I'm dreading my return. But it's hard to fathom what it will mean to leave Paris, and hard to convey to others even a fraction of what I think it will feel like. I suppose the closest I can come with people my age is this: remember your freshman year of college? Your new friends, your new lifestyle, the parties, the road trips, the late nights, the sense of community. Imagine as a freshman on the eve of exams, you knew you'd go back to complete another year of high school in the fall. It's hardly a sentence; there are classmates you'd love to see again, perhaps you miss your hometown, etc. But there remains the fact that life has changed quite drastically, and returning to the same setting you found yourself in a year prior might feel a little strange. Nevermind that they literally speak a different language, don't have delicious bakeries on every corner, and have considerably less museums to visit.
I keep thinking of a Czech proverb I learned recently, "Kolik jazyku znas, tolikrat jsi clovekem." In English, it's something to the effect of "you live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only
one language, you live only once." It's not as if Paris will vanish overnight -- a culture forever lost, a second Atlantis -- but access to French culture and language in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, can be a bit limited, even with the help of French clubs and tutoring jobs. The little songs everyone sings to each other here cannot be exported; the cadence of my usual "merci, au revoir" at the bakery door won't be quite so beautiful and effective when I take my coffee and bagel from the disgruntled old woman at the café in the bottom floor of the university library.
As for questions about the future (to touch on the high school comparison once more), it's a bit like being a junior in high school and having people ask you where you'll be going to college before you've even taken the tests you'll need to apply. So perhaps we'll start with something more immediate. I've applied to a number of internships with museums and magazines, hoping to find some work in New York or D.C. for the summer. Most of what I've applied for involves exhibit creation or research, film archiving/restoration, or art editorial work. So far I have a rejection from National Geographic in D.C., and an interview with Harper's in New York. With about fifteen applications submitted, I hope the net I cast is wide enough, but it's still a bit early to tell. I'm still waiting to hear back from others like the Holocaust Museum, the Smithsonian's Postal Museum, the Notebaert Museum in Chicago, National Geographic Adventure, a book arts internship in Brooklyn, and a number of other small libraries and publications. If I don't find anything I'll spend some time at my parents' and maybe return early to Tuscaloosa for summer school and work.
Other definites: a fall schedule that includes Intro to Linguistics, Printmaking, a seminar on ethnography and culture, Spanish 103, and a science credit I need to graduate. After missing the dark room so fiercely this year, I regret that there's not room in my academic schedule to take photography, but I can still work as a dark room monitor. Hopefully I'll have the time to create more work for my portfolio.
Which brings me to the Post Undergrad Question. What will Glynnis do with her life? I remain of the mentality that opportunities present themselves, and that one needs only to be willing, brave, and ready. And that in the meantime one should work hard and stay busy doing things one loves. This whole Paris for a year thing? A crazy opportunity that presented itself via supportive parents, two generous scholarships, and an academic advisor who asked the question, "Only for the summer? Why not go for the whole year?" Oh yeah. And there was a lot of paperwork.
So with the opportunity mentality in mind, there are a number of directions I'm considering. I'm hoping one of them will suddenly become more appealing and plausible than the others, and soon.
So that's as much an update as I can give you concerning my life, the future, and everything, without degenerating into whines about how all of it will be more difficult and competitive with today's economy. As more news rolls in and as the time inevitably passes, I'll try to keep the internet up to date on any new developments (beats repeating all this uncertainty ad nauseam via email, video chat, and phone calls). But until then, I suppose it's best to enjoy all the questions of youth, eh? The answers aren't always as important as we'd like to think they are.
Oh yeah. Blogging.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
In addition to researching internship opportunities (and mailing off about fifteen applications), I have been my usual busy self, stretching time between seeing the city, reading, school, and social engagements. The good news is that my February intensive six-hours-a-day French course is over, so I have more free time. What's more, I can officially state that I received my first rejection letter from National Geographic. While the intern apps are still rolling out via the French postal system, I've begun a new set of classes at the Institut Catholique de Paris, the school I'm attending this semester.
Here's the course load. Pretend like you're interested:
In other news, travel plans are shaping up for the semester. First up are American visitors. Last weekend Melinda, a graduate of UA's French program, came to Paris. She's been living in Nantes and we finally managed to cross paths. We saw Fontainebleau and Victor Hugo's house (pictures forthcoming). Next up are three other Alabamian friends who found affordable tickets and have nothing better to do for their spring break than to visit me. Immediately following is a trip to Dublin, to see another Alabamian friend from high school who's studying at Trinity for the semester. The following weekend I see Adis in Sarajevo. Then for spring break I'm going to Greece for a few days with friends. All I can say is that even with terrible service and inconvenient airports, thank goodness for RyanAir and easyjet alike. Though most of my savings are now pocket lint, if there's anything left over I might hop over to Casablanca for a weekend. All of which is to say that if you have any tips or recommendations for any or all upcoming destinations, please send them my way.
Things I owe you, now that I fixed Movable Type (it's been broken for about two weeks, making it impossible to update until I found time to reinstall everything):
Cast your vote in the comments for which should come first.
Une aventure amoureuse avec les documents
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
If the French have taught me one thing, its perseverance. Before I left the States, a professor who had studied and lived in Paris for a number of years gave me these sagely words of advice: learn how to argue in French. Loudly. Her suggestion stood out from the more typical "bon voyage!" sentiments I garnered from others, and though I knew I was in for a ride, I probably should have taken to heart what she said. It got me thinking that the entire process of getting settled here
closely resembles a Role Playing Game, be it Zelda, Final Fantasy,
Oblivion, and countless others. There's an overarching story that
you'll be following, but for the most part you're placed in a strange
land with little knowledge of what to do. Your experience points are
low when you first start out, and the only way to improve your standing
-- and get closer to achieving your goal of saving a princess or the
entire world -- is to complete a myriad of seemingly random quests. You'll wander around aimlessly until you get a lay of the land, and
then you'll want to start getting things done. When you're ready to buy
that shiny new sword you visit the shopkeeper but he won't give it up
until you travel to the snowy mountains on the other side of the
continent, kill 20 trolls, and return with their gemmed chalice. When
you finally return to the shopkeeper he notices that one of the rubies
is missing from the chalice, and again, won't sell you your sword until
you commandeer a boat to take you to an island where you need slay a
giant goblin, grab the ruby, and head all the way back to town. By the
time you get your sword it's been three straight nights of playing and
you can't even remember why you were even playing this ridiculous game
in the first place. Rinse and repeat, and you have a pretty good idea of what it's like
to set up camp in a new country. It's an endless stream of running back
and forth, not having just the right things, forgetting the exact thing
you needed, not understanding, and not being understood. You've paid
your hard earned cash for this game and dammit you're going to get your
money's worth no matter how convoluted the storyline is. Now if I can only find that one cave where the +3 Repel Bureaucracy amulet is hidden. When I return to the States, most of my incredulous stories will be not of the places I've visited or the monuments I've seen, but of the hours I've waited in line, the papers demanded of me, or how one completes otherwise simple tasks while a resident of France. Like that one time I tried to make a simple return at FNAC because I'd bought the wrong textbook. I had to go to two separate desks on opposite ends of the store, where two separate women handwrote receipts of very long numbers on carbon paper, and handed me one of the three copies. Only then was I able to return to the caisse, where the woman operating the register handwrote another form full of long numbers, stapled all of them together, and finally gave me my reimbursement. Despite the fact that, like any store in the United States, the French have computer-operated cash registers with barcode scanners. It seems to me that the French like to work near computers, rather than with them. I was pleasantly surprised today when I went to my French bank (my bank account has its own horrific and ridiculous paperwork story) to solve a problem, and accomplished it on the first try. Part of perseverance and part of daily life in a foreign country is feeling like a moron on a regular basis. In today's case, it was asking why I can't access my bank account online (answer: that wasn't part of the contract I signed), why my card didn't work when I tried to buy groceries (answer: there wasn't enough money in my account), and why it seems that a check I deposited didn't go through (answer: I deposited it incorrectly). Sometimes it pays to be an obsessive pack rat and keep receipts so that when a 220€ check disappears into automated teller never-never-land, someone can track it down for you even if it will take a month. After signing a new contract that allows me to see my account online, checking my card to make sure it works correctly, and putting a recherche on the check I incorrectly deposited, the young teller assured me that "Nous sommes vraiment desolee, hein? Je sais que c'est un très longtemps." I assured her that, "Non, c'est vraiment ma faute. Merci bien, c'est gentil," then confessed that "c'est toujours comme ça en France, pour moi. Toujours compliqué! Complètement different aux États-Unis. Je me trompe beaucoup." She assured me that her sister experienced the same trouble when she moved to Rome, then shouted a "bon courage!" as I left. Customer service and efficiency may not be France's forté, but if you get over the fact that you're going to feel like a moron a few times a day and persevere, you can get things done. A little manners and some humility can go a long way; so far I've not needed to resort to the French pillars of argument. Speaking bad French and lightly playing on the "stupid, helpless American" stereotype can apparently be effective, too.
A few days before I left for France, I watched the film Two Days in Paris, which has much to teach about how one argues and accomplishes things with the French language. This scene is particularly helpful. It lacks English subtitles, but it's easy to get the general idea without understanding French. It begins quite innocently, quite formally. And after it escalates, one must always deny that one has argued, that one is responsible for anything. If all else fails, one can insult another by accusing them of slighting France's image, or else one can call them a tourist. These, my friends, are pillars of French argument.
Since my arrival in September, I have run the gamut of French bureaucracy, utterly and completely. After months of struggling for air, I surfaced with the only trophy one can win: the carte de séjour -- a residency card. To get a carte de séjour, one must stand in line for three to five hours with around twenty official documents: an original birth certificate; a financial guarantee from your study abroad program; a financial guarantee from your parents, signed by a notary, stating that they will support you; a bank statement belonging to the financially responsible party; an enrollment letter from any and all schools you plan to attend in France; a copy of your student card(s); enrollment verification from your study abroad program; a copy of your passport; a copy of your visa; a letter from Campus France, an organization one must register with in order to obtain a visa; a copy of your landlord's identity card; a current electricity bill; an attestation de domicile signed and dated by your landlord, who confirms that you do in fact live where you say you do; copies of all aforementioned documents; etc. etc. so on and so on and forever and ever. Should any of these things not be up to par, or perhaps if the woman letting people through the line is in a bad mood that day, you will be turned away without explanation and forced to wait in line again. And to get your carte de séjour, you must make it through before your visa expires or you will no longer be a legal visitor in France.
Once you make it through the line, which of course comes only after several attempts, you get a recipisée (a temporary carte) which only suffices until you show up for your medical appointment where they test your eyes and take a chest x-ray to make sure you're not blind or infectious. If you miss the medical appointment, it cannot be rescheduled, and you are, as the French like to say, dans la merde. I hestitate to describe more of my experience getting my carte, since remembering the whole process is almost as painful as living through it the first time around.
Life in Paris is beautiful, and truly one of the most delightful things I've ever experienced. Whether or not the French planned it this way, it seems one must pay for life here -- especially when one is not French -- by enduring long lines, refusals, mountains of paperwork, and banking errors. Living in a foreign country is a lot like being a character in a game. I frequently return to this entry, written by Mike Cosentino about his own experiences in France. He says it so much better than I can:
Hello from the airport
Friday, 02 January 2009
Friday, 02 January 2009
I'm currently waiting for a flight in the Greenville airport, about to head back to Europe with the family in tow. We'll be in Italy for about ten days before I go back to Paris for my second semester. Not sure what internet access will be like in Italy, but the silence here may continue for a while. It has been a lively break, and though I failed to make it to a Waffle House, I did manage to squeeze in fried chicken, cheese grits, general home cooking, a chocolate malt, and some American cinema. Thanks to everyone who had me as a guest, and if you were my guest it was lovely having you.
See you guys on the other side of the pond. Here are some photos from the break. Happy 2009!
Possibility
Friday, 05 December 2008
Friday, 05 December 2008
Every now and then I accidentally rediscover the sensation of living on the edge of the unknown. There is a checkpoint that, as one approaches it, causes fear and confusion and restlessness to mount. For me it has never been to an unbearable degree, but even as a relatively laissez-faire kind of girl, every now and then I have moments when I feel it imperative to outline a plan: to define something; to say, "I am this"; to chart a course to keep from falling into stagnancy. But eventually the checkpoint of anxiety flies past like a payphone on the side of a desert road, and suddenly the only concerns are mild, and related to momentum. The questions change from "Where are we going?" and "Where can we stay the night?" to "Can we fill up?" and "Should we take some food to go?" in hopes of staying on the road as long as possible.
It is hard to describe the sensation of possibility that brushes across skin at this precipice. I am driving along the time line of my life without many regular passengers, and for a little while I am without destination; I have left one place for another, and I won't know where to stop until I see it. For now, there is the air that rushes in through the windows, and more road ahead than behind.
Sinus infection woes
Friday, 05 December 2008
Friday, 05 December 2008
Do any of you Frenchies out there know the name of a French
decongestant, similar to the American Mucinex or guafenesin-based
over-the-counter stuff? I've been sick all week and I think I've got a
serious sinus infection coming on. A few months ago when I had a cold,
I went to the pharmacy and explained my sinus pressure etc., and they just gave me this liquid to put in
steaming water, which is about as effective as inhaling the vapors of a
strong mint tea. Who knew walking through the aisles of CVS and Walgreens was such a luxury? Hopefully I can pick something up tomorrow before everything shuts
down for the weekend, so if you have any tips, send 'em my way ASAP
(glynnish > gmail). Merci.
Thanksgiving overseas
Friday, 28 November 2008
Friday, 28 November 2008
My friends in the States are a bright bunch, but I was surprised to discover how few of them had considered the difficulty of Thanksgiving overseas. Though most realize that Thanksgiving is uniquely American, what with the history of pilgrims, etc., I find that there's a surprising lack of understanding regarding the food -- that is, nearly everything Americans eat for Thanksgiving feasts is indigenous to North America and not sold elsewhere in the world with any regularity. About the only thing Thanksgiving meals lack in terms of indigenous goodies is peanut butter and barbecue sauce.
And so began the quest for ingredients. There are a handful of "American grocery stores" in Paris, which usually manifest themselves as tiny boutiques that sell Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn, jars of peanut butter, bottles of Tobasco sauce, Jell-O, and a few other random items. There's a shop like this on the way to my art history class on Avenue Bosquet. Also in the city is "The Thanksgiving Store," which, if I understand correctly, is a year-round market that sells American decorations and various holiday goods, as well as food. The map on their website cracks me up.
So which items are difficult to track down, and how much do they cost? Good question. Here are a few.
While at Monoprix shopping for ingredients, I could tell who was American just by how intensely they were searching for things in specific aisles. I overheard some English and approached a young couple. "Excuse me. Are you shopping for Thanksgiving ingredients?" I asked. They seemed somewhat relieved and delighted to find someone on the same quest. I asked if they had found sweet potatoes anywhere in the city, which they hadn't. Holding a crumpled list in one hand, one of them asked, "Have you found pumpkin? Brown sugar? Cranberry sauce?" I gave them the address of the shop on Bosquet, and wished them luck. "Happy Thanksgiving!" they said as I walked toward the check-out.
I think I can safely say this Thanksgiving is the only time I will carry a casserole through the metro and down the streets of the Latin Quarter. Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all, or as the French like to call it, jeudi.
Lutte sans merci
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Paris has been tucked under a cloud layer for what seems like weeks. Though that sort of Parisian weather is often quite pleasant, I miss the sun. It's becoming rather wet and wintery. I have frequently experienced what I now call "Parisian rain," which is a mist without origin or direction; umbrellas offer no defense. Often while wandering through the city during this kind of weather, I feel like a vegetable keeping fresh in the produce aisle.
As the semester finishes, the work load gets heavier. After tomorrow, I have only five days left with my class at the Sorbonne, which has come to rank high on my list of greatest educational experiences. Our final written exam is November 29th, and the oral follows a few days later. Paris will soon begin to empty of the people that have colored my life here. The first goes home Tuesday the 25th without funds to change his ticket to stay for the exam. The next few leave a week later, and with each departure a piece of what I have made here will begin to disappear. They will disperse across the globe like the plumes of a dandelion wish, taking with them the understanding of how I've lived my first few months of twenty-one. Some of them will blow too far to encounter again -- too far to see what grows where they land -- and others I may see again before the summer.
Among the emotions that arrive with impending loss comes a desire for the South that swells, pulsing each time I dream of forests or dirt roads. Though college has often separated me from my family for extended periods, I have never anticipated their embrace quite as strongly as I have this season. That troubles all of us in Paris, I think -- finding ourselves with two places at our fingertips without the ability to touch both at once.
I have not forgotten my promises to report on Istanbul. Finding time between homework, studying for exams, and a ten-pager on Diane Arbus has been difficult lately, but I hope to write again soon.
My suspicious absence will continue through the weekend
Friday, 07 November 2008
Friday, 07 November 2008
Things have been utterly nuts around here, lately. Last Friday I had my usual grammar test, then early Saturday I left for the south of France. I returned to Paris at 1AM Monday, waited an hour for a taxi, finally got to bed around 3:30AM, then left for class at 8:15. Add in an all-night election-watching session at a bar that evening, a nearly-impossible art history exam Thursday (I need to tell you horrendous stories about that class), an oral presentation on Southern BBQ in French right after, another grammar test today, and a flight to Istanbul early tomorrow morning, and you have some idea of why I haven't been hanging out with the internet lately.
So. Turkey. Since there's no class Monday or Tuesday, I won't be back until late Tuesday night, but I'm hoping next week will be significantly less crazy and I can get some substantial writing done.
'Til then!
Bon anniversaire
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
For Julian's birthday, a bunch of us met at the Champs de Mars--the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was a mess of languages, to be sure, but we had a good time.
Bon anniversaire, Julian! from glynnis on Vimeo.
Surreal expatriate life
Thursday, 09 October 2008
Thursday, 09 October 2008
A friend from my graduating class in high school is spending the semester in Europe studying Spanish in Sedona, Spain. We were never close, since at best we said hello in the hallways and sat at opposite ends of Mr. Bolus's Algebra 2 classroom. Despite this, he discovered that I'm living in Paris for the year and let me know via facebook that he planned to visit the city during a week off from school. I helped him find a hostel, and we met for dinner. Raclettes is essentially the French equivalent of fondue, but the burner and serving style differ. Click the picture above for a bit more of an explanation. Despite sitting down in a raclettes establishment, he ordered fondue, and I had coffee and dessert. Afterward, we headed to Shakespeare & Co. to find a dictionary for him. Notre Dame is just a stone's throw from the bookshop, which he noticed immediately. Dictionaryless, we crossed the river as it began to rain harder. We stood before Notre Dame huddled under umbrellas for a good twenty minutes as he stared at the facade in disbelief. My sneakers filled with water. As he marveled at the cathedral--the fact that he "could reach out and touch it"--I marveled at his reaction. Though moments of pure tourist delight still strike me several times a week, many of the city's monuments, in my eyes, have fallen from iconic status to mere historical landmarks. They still hold some magic, but when you study for massive art history exams in a library that's almost literally in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the monuments begin to morph into a pleasant backdrop for everyday life. The longer I'm here, the more I understand how a number of Parisians have never seen their city from atop the Tower, or how New Yorkers have never visited the Empire State Building. The interstices folded into the relative mundanity of daily life still harbor moments of absolute glee--the same kind tourists experience during short visits to iconic cities. My room mate and I attended rescreenings of the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates at the Cinéaqua, an aquarium with several movie screens. The aquarium is situated next to Trocadero, so each night that we attend, we emerge from the dark of the theater to see the Eiffel Tower shining blue before us, the rhetoric of American political candidates still bouncing through our brains. The glee, then, manifests itself at a slightly different level. The sight of the Tower excites us, since we've just been flooded with images of home and the familiar via CNN. But the blue of the Tower also creates a surrealism that, if I stop to think about, exists in most of my daily activity. If the economic crisis we're experiencing really does make the sort of history everyone's predicting, years from now my grandchildren will interview me for homework assignments, and I will tell them that when the market crashed I was huddled in the corner of a Parisian café writing and sipping coffee. That for my twenty-first birthday, as the economy continued to slide, I flew to Prague for the weekend. Though there's no way to know today how the events surrounding the crisis will play out in the coming years, it's humbling and strange to compare my experiences with my grandmother's during the depression of the 1930s. I've interviewed, videotaped, and written extensively about her experiences as a child of the Great Depression and a teenager during the second World War. For her memories of pot liquor, I have memories of pastries for breakfast. For her friends enlisted in the war, I have friends dotting the European continent to attend its major historical institutions. It is an especially strange time to be a member of my generation, which, since its birth, has lived in the wake of the Baby Boomers. As many systems buckle or become outdated beneath the leviathan of our parents' generation, I often wonder how or when we will restore and create new systems. Certainly many of these issues crop up during election season--the depletion of Social Security, the failing health care system, etc.--but I think that ultimately members of our generation must hold offices before these problems will be directly addressed (at least in our interest, rather than in our parents'); the Baby Boomers still comprise an enormous part of the voting population, and not all of them will vote in the interest of generations that succeed them. Though many of these failing systems may be repaired to accommodate our parents and those that directly follow, it's possible that the same repairs might not last long enough for my generation to reap the same benefits. Combine this with the fact that the job market is extremely competitive, that there may be high rates of unemployment come graduation time, that the real estate market may still be suffering years down the road, and that it's harder (or at least less desirable) than ever to take out loans, and you have a strange picture of what members of my generation may face in the coming years. Certainly we will survive--compared to the Great Depression, we hardly ever hear anyone going on about the oil crises of the 70s, and our parents weathered plenty of economic dips during our youth. (My parents have been quick to remind me that I was born just a few days before Black Monday in '87.) But the bleak picture the media has painted in recent weeks creates a strange dissonance with the way many members of my generation are living. Many of us, for one, are studying abroad, as this has become the norm in many college curricula. Others live in the bubble of University Life, settled into large dorm rooms with kitchenettes, sorority houses with personal chefs, or apartments with satellite TV. Some of us can't remember our family's first computer, can't imagine life without text messages, and cannot comprehend how anyone managed to leave the house without a cell phone. It's possible for the less adventurous and more ignorant among us to arrive in a college classroom without knowledge that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exists (I kid you not--in a UA class on social conflcit this summer, one student had never heard of it). Then again, I've met my share of Americans here, some younger than I, who speak four languages--scholars who make me feel I've been fumbling through life and studies with foolishness bordering lunacy. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend from class at the Sorbonne who gave our waiter a lesson on Farsi in French, and bid him goodbye in German. All in all, life as an expatriate is strange. Even without an economic crisis back home, my life wandering through Paris is so far from anything in Tuscaloosa, both figuratively and geographically. Though it's not my first time in Europe, it is the first fall since I began college that I've managed to totally escape football season, which this year is larger than ever. The idea of returning next fall to endure city-wide traffic jams, Wal-mart aisles emptied of beer and soda, thousands of intoxicated fans wandering campus mid-day, and the sounds of Bryant-Denny roaring with 100,000 people kind of scares me. Reverse culture shock, indeed. Still, though, there is something to be said for standing with stars in your eyes before Notre Dame in the pouring rain, nearly brought to your knees in disbelief. This kind of delight, this kind of displacement, this kind of reality check--it's something I'll never get tired of.
I waited in the pouring rain at the Saint-Michel fountain--a popular meeting place in Paris, since it's near a metro stop and in a neighborhood packed with restaurants and boutiques. When he emerged from the metro, we huddled under my umbrella and waded through the flooding pedestrian streets lined with restaurants. I asked what kind of cuisine he'd like, since in Saint-Michel you can find almost anything, and we settled on something traditionally French: raclettes.
Perpetual itchy feet
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Thursday, 25 September 2008
I feel I should begin by describing how I have arrived here this evening. This description will not flatter me, but somehow recording it seems vital to beginning whatever it is I am to say, explore, or discover this evening while addressing a somewhat formless and indefinite audience (Oh Internets, will we ever truly come to know and understand each other?). I woke moments ago after drifting off for what may have been half an hour. I had a tissue stuffed into one nostril, my face propped up with one hand, and a thick drool of sickness rolling halfway down my forearm. In my lap, my computer; I'd made it halfway through an interview with David Foster Wallace, which I say not as commentary on the quality of his writing, but to reveal something about which and what kind of sentences may have helped usher me here.
All of Paris seems to have caught cold. Everyone is sniffling and coughing. Unfortunately I am no exception. My head feels swollen with snot, I can't stop sneezing, and I feel miserable enough to wish I could stay in bed, but not miserable enough to feel justified in doing so. I took notes on Southworth and Hawes in art history this morning, met some girls in my program for lunch, then attended grammar at the Sorbonne, where things began to fall apart. Madame Berthier spied me looking pathetic halfway through her lecture on les adjectifs, and declared, Vous êtes vraiment malade, ma chérie, and advised me to arm myself with more than a bag of honey-flavored cough drops. After grammar I descended the twelve flights of stairs to phonetics to explain, Excusez-moi, je suis très malade--trop malade pour parler le joli français.
I write this not for pity, but for context.
Earlier this week I went to speak with my program director in her office. Primarily, I went to collect paperwork for my trip to the prefecture tomorrow, but I stayed longer to chat. She asked whether my room mate and I got on, if I was enjoying life in Paris. I told her a little about the people I've met, my plans for travel, how every day living here is like a gift. She confessed that even after thirty years of life in Paris, when she wakes up in a bad mood, a trip to the park or a stroll around the neighborhood can quickly lift her spirits. I'm inclined to agree with her.
Certainly there are experiences I grumble about--this cold, for one, or the long line I must wait in at the prefecture tomorrow. I share my hardships with other students, who suffer many of the same experiences. Over lunch, two California girls and I made light of forking over what seems an exhorbant amount of money for shampoo, which comes in tiny bottles. We anticipate our next trip to Sam's Club with both excitement and dread. I know that when I return, everything in America will seem ridiculously large--the cars, the roads, the buildings, the people. The fact that you can stock an American bathroom with gallons of shampoo and a year's supply of toilet paper with a single trip to one location baffles and excites me. The idea of not returning to Monoprix each week for a tiny 5€ bottle of shampoo appeals to me. Simultaneously, there is something to be said for living life one liter of milk at a time.
When I studied creative writing in high school and lived from workshop to workshop, critique to critique, we spent a lot of time thinking about our lives as creative writing students. The more we progressed with our expression, the more it seemed we wrote about the same thing over and over. I often felt like a broken record, and often said so. Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite poems that I wrote (was it sophomore year?), "On Finding the General Vicinity":And I wonder when we will resign ourselves
Though it hasn't quite happened yet, I'm beginning to feel the same way when I write here. If I come to write something personal rather than informative, it is always about the way Parisian life doesn't seem real. Even small things seem the stuff of dreams--the afternoon light, the collective murmur of softly-spoken French in a crowded park, the cobblestone pedestrian streets lined with specialty shops that sell globes, tea pots, or some other equally marvelous and unusual thing. If there is one thing I feel is difficult to capture, it is the sense of well-being and excitement in everyday life, since nearly nothing seems mundane in this city. I hope you will forgive me as I try again and again, with increasing sentimentality, to wrap my brain around the fact that I live here.
to the fact that we write the same poem
our whole lives,
that our existence is a poem
that merely revises itself;
no matter how much we change
we have only twenty-six letters
and a teaspoon of punctuation.
We are our own memories
rearranged.
The feeling only grows, since daily life is growing larger than Paris. I have booked a trip to Prague the weekend of my birthday, and this weekend I will purchase tickets for a visit to Istanbul mid-November. I've asked my parents to consider allowing me to stop in Reykjavik on my way back to the States next year. My program director encouraged me to see Croatia, to visit north Africa--Morocco, Egypt. There are still dozens of places in France that I've yet to see. I have never been to Spain. Though I've been to Austria, I have never seen Vienna. Even with a small budget the possibilities seem limitless. The world seems closer and more accessible than ever, and there's hardly a place I don't want to visit. Ayelen and I are counting the weekends we have left together, syncing our calendars, and creating lists of places near and far that we can squeeze into one weekend and a meager budget. The Canadian man who owns the Abbey Bookshop, an English-language bookstore with a sizeable travel section, is beginning to recognize me. I am leafing through guidebooks and reading literature to accompany the cities I plan to visit. I started The Unbearable Lightness of Being this morning, and have some books by Orhan Pamuk, who writes extensively about life in Istanbul.
It's becoming apparent how quickly I should find employment that requires me to travel. Life as a flight attendant sounds miserable. Do travel guide companies hire undergraduate interns with mediocre writing skills and minor ability to operate a camera?
Les arrondissements
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
After speaking briefly with a friend tonight, it occurred to me that those without French class are not familiar with the geography of Paris. As Joachim said, one forgets "how natural it's for a french person, yet how strange it must be for a stranger, just to know how everything works." So. Une petite leçon, mes chéris.
Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements, or little neighborhoods. We might call them "districts" in the U.S. Sort of like the boroughs of New York, except les arrondissements are much smaller. The arrondissements begin with the Louvre, and continue by spiraling outward, like a cinnamon bun (or, if you want to be French-y, comme un escargot). Notre Dame is essentially the heart of Paris (geographically, at least), since Paris's first inhabitants lived on the île de la Cité, and Notre Dame is nearly at the center. The "cinnamon bun" arrangement makes sense in the context of such an old city; Paris's larger streets and boulevards are arranged circularly, rather than on a grid system.
Often, when asked where you live, you reply with the number of your arrondissement as well as the metro stop nearest your residence. Où habitez-vous? Dans le treizième (13e). Above every street sign in Paris is the number of its arrondissement. You can also discover a location's arrondissement by examining its zipcode. 75005 is in the fifth, 75014 in the fourteenth, etc.
A fun fact about les arrondissements: each is required by French law to have an open-air market at least two days a week. This means that you're never too far from fresh produce. My room mate and I visit our market every week to stock up on cheap produce, which is often half the price of what you can find in supermarkets.
See a map and lots more information about les arrondissements here.
A bad day
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Before I left the States I often wondered how much culture shock I would experience upon my arrival in France. I suspect that, as friends who have studied abroad tell me, the reverse culture shock will be much more severe, if not nearly unbearable. Because I have visited France before, I figured my grasp of French culture would more or less fall into place, and that I would begin life in Paris without too much trouble.
I come from a truly Southern university saturated with Greek life and American football culture. Our stadium is one of the largest college stadiums in the nation. According to Wikipedia, it currently has a seating capacity of 92,138+, and is the seventh largest on-campus stadium in the nation and the 17th largest stadium (by seating) in the world. During the fall, the town population grows by thousands each game weekend. People from all over the South come to see the games. They cook out on the quad, and often the entire campus smells like hamburgers and hot dogs. Sometimes people set up televisions on the quad if they don't have tickets to see the game in the stadium. Hundreds of RVs park all over town. The interstate backs up for hours with bumper to bumper traffic as people go to or leave the game.
I left a campus full of res-rats, sorority girls, boys in polos and baseball caps, students wandering campus early morning in pajamas and flip-flops. I left Friday nights of beer-pong, Waffle House, bowling. I left behind "y'all" and "ROLL TIDE!" and Gordo, Alabama's yearly "Mule Day" craft fair with a parade of livestock. I left behind bluegrass house shows and Mexican grocery stores. I haven't heard the Alabama fight song or Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" since early in the summer. One of the last nights I spent in Tuscaloosa was July 4th, when I went with some friends to a giant field to watch a fireworks show. We found ourselves engulfed in stereotypical Tuscaloosa culture--all the things most people think of when they picture residents of the rural South. But also there was my South: twenty-something men in plaid shirts with full beards, tattoos, and deep Gulf Coast accents; dudes who play in folk-punk or bluegrass bands; twenty-something crafty women in vintage dresses and cowboy boots.
I think it's hard to capture the South as I know and experience it--the South that is truly my home. I find it difficult to explain things that I find uniquely Southern, but that don't fit into the stereotypical picture most outsiders have of the region. The South has given me such a rich life, and such rich experiences, and yet I find its charm and influence impossible to capture verbally. I feel closest to revealing My South when I use images, but they are images entirely informed and brought to life by my own experiences and sentimentalism that I often wonder if non-Southerners can tap into the same magic if they lack the direct experience. My South is full of childhood--catching fireflies in my neighbor's backyard, playing in the creek behind my house, riding bikes through the neighborhood for hours until dusk, baking pumpkin muffins and sleeping over every weekend at my best friend's house a short walk away. It is the heavy summer air and the cicadas singing in the backyard. It is a cookout at my uncle's. It is the pet caterpillar, Wooly, that my sister and I kept for an entire season. We kept lizards in empty strawberry containers. One summer we kept tadpoles in one of the bathtubs, and the neighbor's cat broke in for a snack. The South is driving through the same streets I played in as a child, with the windows down. It is breaking away from a party and sitting on a trampoline in the dark. I am nostalgic and sentimental about the South the same way I am about these memories, and the two are inseparable for me, if not the same thing.
So much of that South--My South--is present in Tuscaloosa, even if it's sometimes eclipsed by the more stereotypical Southern culture of football games and hounds tooth hats. When I finished summer school in July, I felt relieved to abandon that for a little while. It was the people as much as the place--an inexplicable separation from someone I loved, crumbling friendships due to busy schedules, a strange and disheartening short-lived romance. I lived alone in a dark apartment for the summer semesters. I often felt lost, hardened by my fierce independence. The things I created frustrated me further. My photography seemed totally incapable of capturing what I needed it to, yet I often retreated to the dark room to develop sheets of film late into the night, hoping to feel the same catharsis I had during my first photo class in the fall. My work moved from vibrant figure studies to vacant documentary landscapes, from 16x20 high-contrast prints to muddy 4x5 argyrotypes.
When I finished summer school in Tuscaloosa, I was anxious to leave. Just as I tie so many of my memories to their setting, I associated much of the frustration and loneliness I felt with the place I experienced it--with Tuscaloosa--and leaving in July felt liberating, like a gasp of air after a long struggle under water. Leaving the country felt even better. Life in Paris is the genesis of a new character--one that, by the time I return to the States, may eclipse the person I was when I boarded the plane in August.
Last night, I wrote to a friend I've known since kindergarten. College has separated us by five or six states, and we do well to see each other a couple of times a year. When we're able to meet, it's usually for grandiose conversation over coffee; we summarize six months of events and emotional experiences, and try to have time left over to address the philosophical questions that plague us simultaneously. Last night I wrote:Isn't it sort of strange where life has taken us? I suppose that seems
like a pretty obvious question--cliché, even. But I have so few true
friends that have known me so well through so many stages of life, and
vice versa, that it really is an odd experience to reflect on. I feel
sometimes as though we're now living the epilogue of a movie about our
lives. The scenes stopped years ago, and now we are mere sentences in
the final frame of the film. "Glynnis went on to study at the Sorbonne
in Paris." "M. and S. continued to date in college."
Things like that. I don't mean to say that a movie about our lives
would have already ended by age twenty-one, just that our lives as
we're living them today seem removed by epilogue-distance from what
they used to be. Yet we knew each other when. I think I always have that sense with you, perhaps more so than with other
friends, because we really do see each other rarely, and when we do, we
converse in big, sweeping updates about all things philosophical,
grand, and confusing about life, and sometimes lack the time for simply
"hanging out." C'est la vie.
For now, I feel that is the best summation of my experiences in Paris: I am living in the barely-conceivable sentences of the epilogue following a film about my adolescent life.
Just as Tuscaloosa overwhelmed me in the summer--rendered me nearly useless, sucked life out of me--Paris has overwhelmed me today. Though primarily I have good days, I'm beginning to see how the city can get to me. If I were keeping score, Paris would be winning. This, my friends, might be a bit of culture shock. Most of the frustration stems from French bureaucracy, and obtaining all the documents I need to apply for my temporary residency card. I will write more extensively about la carte de séjour later, but essentially I have been using what little energy and free time I have to commute to every corner of the city looking for offices and photo studios, often with very bad or wrong directions. Frequently when I finally arrive at a destination, the people I need to speak to are out to lunch, the location is closed for the day, or the usual office hours aren't being kept.
This, my friends, is France. Where nothing is open on the weekends, everything closes for lunch (sometimes at irregular hours), and the laundromat down the street locks up without warning or explanation while all your clothes sit wrinkling in the basin of a dryer. Thankfully, after several hours of returning to the same locked door, I have pants to wear tomorrow, but it may be several more days before I can wait in line at the préfecture to get my residency card. If you imagine the hassle, wait, and disgruntled workers of the United States' DMVs and multiply it by foreigners, students, twenty more documents per person, taxes, and language barriers, you might have some idea of what I have to look forward to. All this plus the water in my apartment shut off without explanation for most of the day, two repair men who mocked me because they thought I couldn't understand them, and you have a picture of my day. Oh Paris.
But I did score one against Paris today. The lady who works in the pâtisserie next door stopped me before I left with my chausson aux pommes and baguettine to say that she thought my hair was vraiment jolis, très très jolis. Red hair will always have its perks.
I hope that as my relationship with Paris blossoms and my French improves, my score will be higher than the city's. As Hemingway said, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then
wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all
of Paris is a moveable feast." If Paris renders me unfit for life elsewhere, I will consider my year a smashing success. But tonight, I long for the comfortable--for a snuggly couch with a friend on it, for a familiar face across from me at a café, or for a little of my father's cooking.
Je tombe amoureuse de la vie à Paris
Tuesday, 09 September 2008
Tuesday, 09 September 2008
I've already said that I feel like I'm standing in for someone much more qualified--that living in Paris doesn't seem real. Even mundane things seem to bloom with life and excitement. Eating cereal alone at the breakfast table while it's raining outside is, in Paris, a delightful experience. Though I take pleasure in things like carrying groceries through the métro (carrying a baguette under one arm is so far the most delightful--like a food accessory), the thrill will be something I struggle with.
Certainly Americans romanticize Europe. We idealize the study abroad experience, but that's precisely what makes describing life in Paris somewhat difficult. On the one hand, we can all agree: Glynnis living in Paris is probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to anyone on the face of the planet. Nevermind winning the lottery or skydiving. Pssh. Small potatoes, those. And the fact that it's Paris, one of the most mythologized, romanticized cities in all the world, merely compounds the problem. When I say I have been on picnics beneath the Eiffel Tower, there is a resounding chorus of "I bet that was awesome! I'm so jealous!" When I waltz through the Louvre for free with my art history student ID, the masses sigh and say, "We wish we were there!" When I'm stuffed full of crêpes and wine, everyone's keen to congratulate me. Though I enjoy these interactions, each for different reasons, their occurrence often means things remain unsaid. In living up to its reputation, Parisian life--and perhaps any study abroad experience--allows plenty of room for people to fill in the blanks, and little room for me to explain my own experience. Yet, if given the opportunity, so many of my explanations would fall flat as stereotypes.
I feel kind of like I'm arguing in agreement. "You always assume things! But your assumptions are correct! STOP IT!"
I suppose the trouble is that with clichés, stereotypes, or even unique explanations of my experience, it will be hard to communicate the authenticity of my general excitement or the satisfaction I feel when a shop keeper understands a few sentences of my garbled French. You may comprehend some semblance of what I mean, but it will be much harder to evoke those same emotions in you using words; everything seems more grandiose, more genuine, and more weighty than any language has the ability to convey.
Perhaps this can help. A friend of mine has returned to the University of Alabama for summer and fall classes after a semester abroad this past spring. In a letter I recently received, he wrote: Even though I was here [Tuscaloosa, AL] during the summer when I knew close to no one on campus, returning for the fall still seems a bit hollow. Perhaps it's the fact that slowly friends are moving across town and schedules are becoming decreasingly intertwined; perhaps there's some nostalgia residual from Wales, of being a moment's spontaneous decision from endlessly interesting, exotic places and of doing literally everything with a coterie of my countrymen in a foreign place. It seems attractive--if a little self-centered--to think of the detachment between myself and friends as a result of being gone for so long or that someone has changed, dramatically or otherwise. And when I say detachment, I don't mean anything overt, but there exists a subtle sense of removal, a sense that I have to try harder to keep up with friends than before. Now, it may not have anything to do with any underlying sentiment or grand reason; probably it has much more to do with the mundane tangibles: [several friends have] moved to a place off-campus; [one] spends more time out of reach with [his girlfriend]; [one] is working in Birmingham this semester; [one] switched majors away from Mechanical Engineering; Nick Saban [UA's football coach] won't return my phone calls; and you're well out of reach in Paris. (PARIS!!! Am I jealous? Maybe a little more than a little.)
When he and I crossed paths briefly this summer, he tried hard to convey how hollow things felt upon returning home to the States. Though I already anticipate a little of that for myself, I can say that the opposite is true now: things seem much more full here. Life in Paris is sharing a rich cup of coffee with friends, whereas life in Tuscaloosa was a weak cup of luke-warm tea in an apartment, alone.
Tonight after finishing our first phonetics class, my fellow students at the Sorbonne began to scatter just outside the building. I lingered for a moment and caught a few of them--just a handful--and asked if they had any plans at present. Each replied "no" quite eagerly, and we walked together to a café on the corner. So began an evening of excited conversation between two Americans, a Colombian, and an Argentinian--three languages twisting like threads of braided bread. Over coffee we made plans to go out Thursday night, discussed destinations for possible weekend trips together--Istanbul, Prague, Amsterdam. Coffee became shopping at les petits marchés, then a picnic under the Eiffel Tower.
Already I feel I share more with these students than with some of my acquaintances back home. And why shouldn't I? We all chose to live in the same city for the same reasons, to learn the same new language at the same school. The eagerness and excitement with which we converse is something I haven't experienced in a long time. It mimics the excitement felt when getting to know someone with whom you hope to be romantic--a crush you've had for weeks that you finally find yourself sitting with at a dinner table. You both lean in as the conversation gets deeper, and you feel you must have absolutely everything in common. Yet somehow, I don't feel this excitement living life abroad will expire the same way crushes can by the time the second date rolls around.
So. The cast is developing. Meet Julian, a Colombian-American, Rob from L.A., and Ayelen (pronounced ash-uh-LENN), from Buenes Aires.
We had a grand time this evening. Next time we will remember a bottle opener.
A well-conceived post about my life on cloud nine in Paris, which degenerated into ruminating about shared mannerisms of French professors
Friday, 05 September 2008
Friday, 05 September 2008
Rarely have I been in a situation or lived in a place where I can't stop myself from thinking how lucky I am. Certainly I have led a beautiful life, and have had more than my share of undeserved blessings. Life in Birmingham--especially as I completed high school--was a dream, and considerable time must pass before any other place can become my hometown. I have had my share of nostalgia for a number of cities in which I've never lived, Paris and New Orleans among them. But never have I lived somewhere that required confronting disbelief multiple times a day. I feel as though I am an impostor standing in for a more-qualified absent character of a romantic, idealistic novel.
My classroom at the Sorbonne looks out onto clay roof tops. In the distance the spire of the Eiffel Tower stands tall above them. The library at the American University of Paris (AUP) sits practically under one of the tower's legs. Monday I begin studying the history of photography in the country that was its birthplace. Even as I've stood awkwardly in discotheques before the crowd warms up, I've wondered how I landed myself here, how I am now a person who catches taxis late at night to go home to my studio apartment with high ceilings. Though some of it may be the "honeymoon stage" of culture shock, and some of it may originate in the starry eyes of a small-town girl in a big city, I think more than anything I'm just excited to be here. It has been a little while since I've been this excited about something.
My professor at the Sorbonne is perfect. She is the ultimate French professor. I might venture so far as to call her Mme Super. Everything I've ever loved about French professors and their classes is amplified in Mme. Berthier and her classroom. And if you've ever heard me talk about my French professors, you know that I love me some French professors. If any of you have had different experiences or disagree with my assessment of les profs de le français, it is probably because you haven't had the joy of experiencing a true French class. Please don't hesitate to share stories about French profs in the comments. Let's all take a moment to worship the French classroom, shall we? For you non-francophiles out there, French professors go something like this: they are French in appearance, whether by small detail or by mannerism. This means they dress well, have a wide grin, are perfectly accessorized, make French thinking noises (you know, blowing air out of their pouty French-lips, making whistle-y sound effects). They have a sharp wit, which they exercise frequently with students. They are strict, but warm. They adore their students, which for women manifests itself via frequent use of mes chéris. And lastly, but most importantly, they are a little nuts--some more than others--but all of them have a silly or forgetful quality, which makes them all the more endearing.
Last semester I had to drop my French class, both because it conflicted with photography class, and because the graduate level was a little too advanced for me. I spent several weeks mourning the loss of M. Robin, the professor, who was perhaps the loveliest French man I have ever seen. He always wore dress shoes with jeans and a button down shirt, had a sophisticated haircut that also brought to mind Tintin. Because he grew up in Tours, his French sound effects were the best of all my profs, and his mannerisms the most authentic and entertaining. Believe me when I tell you that I've scoured YouTube looking for some video example of the noises and effects I'm talking about. I know there are some via Kevin Kline in French Kiss, but can't find any clips. Anyway, M. Robin's French was immaculate and mesmerizing to hear, since the Loire Valley offers some of the purest spoken French known to man. Parisians, on the other hand, speak a little more sloppily, more quickly, and with more slurs.
Anyway. Mme. Berthier is my prof à la Sorbonne. During class, when she wants to be sure we're listening, she says very French, very funny things. For instance, when she looked out the window this afternoon and saw that it was raining (unusual weather for Paris in September), she said, "Ooh la la. Il pleut!" It's raining! My classmate, Steven, responded, somewhat somberly, "Oui, il pleut sur la ville." Yes, it's raining in the city. Without missing a beat, Mme. said, "Il pleut sur la ville comme il pleut dans mon coeur." It rains in the city like it rains in my heart. A few moments later, when she spilled her cup of water onto a pile of papers, she said very nonchalantly, "Ah, il pleut dans la classe aussi."
The French are charming in a way I have trouble expressing. M. Robin and Mme. Berthier are both the type I'd like to carry around in a little box. I'll do my best to come up with some "French mannerisms" video clips, even if I have to make some myself.
A few observations
Wednesday, 03 September 2008
Wednesday, 03 September 2008
I'm pressed for time these first few days in Paris, since I'm still learning the names of other students studying with my program, taking placement tests, seeing the city, grocery shopping, and scouring the stores for all the little things I neglected (or didn't have room) to pack. I'm lucky to get a few hours of down time each day, which I use to cook meals, nap, and generally recover.
I begin French classes tomorrow à la Sorbonne, and Friday I have orientation at the American University. Tomorrow evening there's a social event with French students and other international kids, where I'm sure we'll be mixing wine with dancing and a little franglais. Keeping up with folks back home (and not to mention the internet) is a little difficult so far, but I suspect after a week or two of settling into a school schedule, things will be a little less crazy around here.
The amount of information thrown in my general direction has become overwhelming. In my few days here I have accumulated piles of little booklets and brochures with maps, lists of activities, and I've made dozens of little notes to myself about which market is where, which stores carry what, and which metro lines or bus stops will take me where I need to go. Add this to finding ATMs, keeping up with money, setting up a monthly metro pass with an ID photo, and things like buying a bag of groceries become large ordeals.
It probably goes without saying that, despite having a brain full of rusty French, I am still confronting a language barrier. I know enough to read and comprehend, and am able to speak well enough to sound like a blathering idiot, or perhaps a robot that strings words and phrases together into incomplete sentences. "Excuse me, there are two things of pine nuts and cinnamon here. I have bought each. Just one. See? I would like some money." "I would like here. Do you have here? For fifteen euro? What? I don't understand. Yes. I pay with paper." Me Tarzan. You Jane. Me want hair dryer.
Because I didn't receive keys to my apartment until tonight, I've been attached at the hip with my room mate, who does not speak or read a lick of French. She's Jewish and just spent three months completing a music internship in Israel. On our shopping adventures today, we stumbled through Chinatown and bought what we could find, speaking Hebrew, Arabic, and what French I could muster.
Some observations, until I can write a better recount of the events in Paris so far:
That's all I can muster for now. I'll tell you about my apartment and my neighborhood soon enough, and I'll have plenty to report tomorrow after I attend my first class at the Sorbonne. I'm already exhausted and can't wait for the weekend.
(Pssst....could someone throw in a test comment here? I'm still concerned they're not working properly.)
Working out the glitches
Wednesday, 03 September 2008
Wednesday, 03 September 2008
I received an email from someone indicating that the commenting system is a little spotty--that in order to comment they were required to register. This shouldn't be the case! I've tested everything and assume it works properly, but if you run into any problems like this, please send me an email at my gmail address, glynnish, and let me know what you're experiencing.
Does anyone else have the same trouble with commenting?
UPDATE: I believe I've corrected the problem. Let me know if any of you still experience difficulty or receive an error indicating you must register to comment.
The beginning
Monday, 01 September 2008
Monday, 01 September 2008
It's hard to know where to begin. That has kept me from writing--from trying to write--for some time. There are the facts: September 1st, 2008, nine days in London, a flight from Heathrow, enrollment at the Sorbonne, an apartment in the 13eme. I've been collecting these facts for almost a year, anticipating the first week of September by wading through bureaucracy and paperwork: an ID photo here, a bank statement there, a visa, transfer credit forms, a new phone number, a new address.
I thought for the longest time I wouldn't feel ready--that I'd board the plane in a minor state of panic, wondering how I could think I am capable of a year in Paris when my French is rusty and I've never lived in a major city. But I'm here, waiting at gate A20 in Heathrow, and it doesn't seem so big. As school started at my home university, I didn't feel I should be there, even as all my friends were examining class schedules and buying textbooks. Though I might not say I'm ready, this does feel right. And I suppose that's the most one can hope for.
I arrive in Paris this evening and go straight to a restaurant to meet other students in my program (not even to my apartment to drop off bags!). There's a week full of orientation activities ahead, which may prove to be very busy, but until I arrive I've no real idea what's in store.
'Til then.
