later!

4 other girls in the program and I are leaving tomorrow night for Barcelona. We have high hopes for good weather, and I'm really excited to see some great Gaudi architecture, like the Sagrada Familia Cathedral:


Be back on Tuesday! And soon after, we're off to Nice, by train.

update!

I'm sorry I haven't been able to update this very often. Not having a charger a.k.a. not being able to use my computer makes homework, travel planning, facebook-surfing, and blog-updating quite difficult. And expensive.

Things I have done in the past week that I haven't blogged about:

1) Toured Notre Dame, went up to the top of Notre Dame and admired Paris from above. Took pictures of creepy and strange gargoyles (one was eating enormous grapes!)

2) Held a dinner party at my host family's apartment because my entire host family was gone for the weekend. I won't see my host parents again until 2 weeks from now, but my host-sister just got back last night. I made ratatouille and pasta, and people brought cheeses, baguettes, wine, salad, and a berry tart. It was delicious.

3) Visited several artsy libraries, one at the Centre Pompidou, to do research for a project on Kader Attia, a French modern artist who focuses mostly on society's replacement of religion with consumerism and commercialism. Cool, very strange installations. Look him up.

4) Picasso Museum. Unfortunately half of the museum's collection is in Madrid, but it was great nonetheless.

5) Went to the Montreuil flea market. It was less of a legitimate flea market, more just a giant clothes and electronics street market, but it was fun. I bought a pair of pointy beige/gold heels for 15 euro, some great red nike hightops for 20. What a deal! I love markets.

6) Today, went to Montmartre, wandered through the sex shop/strip show/Moulin Rouge streets, visited Sacre Coeur and the artists' district, and had some delicious goat cheese and mint (I know, strange) pastries. This weather is really getting everyone down. Even in this beautiful area, the cold, cloudy, windy weather makes people grumpy. It's hard to avoid.

Things are fine in general. We only have 4 days of classes and then...Barcelona! And then, a day after we get back, we're off to Nice on a train. And when we get back, Alex (Sciuto) will be in Paris for a couple days, so I get to show him 'round these parts, and then I only really have 3 weeks left in Paris. Time flies, it's true.

Some good news! I finally have a place to live in Geneva! I'll be staying at Centre Protestant 2, in the center of the city. This student housing is in a suite, so I will be in one of 3-5 singles with a shared kitchen, living room, and bathroom. Can't wait! Also, I'll be overlapping for almost a week and a half with Sarah, my friend from high school who has been living in Geneva all year. I'm so excited to see her.

So that's that. Now I have to go pay 5 euros for using the internet. GOSH.

blech

My computer charger broke! The cord connecting my battery to the wall outlet started sparking last night and practically caught on fire. One of the wires snapped, I suppose, so I'm "sans" (without) laptop access for a little while, until I get a new cord.

In other news, clothing stores in Paris make me feel like a mammoth. The largest size for pants in almost any store is a 42 or a 44 (sizes 6/8, 8/10 in the states), which is just OUTRAGEOUS. I guess every French women is a size 0-4. Unreal.

the ballet

Last night our group went to a performance by the School of Dance (L'Ecole de Danse) of Paris, which was held at the Palais Garnier, or the National Opera House. It looks like this:


Incredible, right?

Anyways, we saw three performances. The first was "Soir de fête", which had extracts from "La Source" by Léo Delibes and was choreographed by Léo Staats. It was very classical ballet,with a leading male and female dancer, and pairs and 3 and 4-somes of ballerinas in matching tutus upholding the soloist's frequent feats of twirling, leaping, etc (I don't know the real ballet terms).

The second was "Les Forains", music written by Henri Sauguet and choreography by Roland Petit. This told the story of a traveling troupe of performers, including a clown, a little girl, a women who danced with flowing transparent robes connected to sticks she held in the air, so she resembled a butterfly, Siamese twins, and a magician with a puppet ballerina. I loved how the dancing was incorporated into the story, and how the dancers lit up as they performed for the passersby, while before and after, while coming to set up the tent and then slowly packing up, they looked like a bedraggled group of nomads.

The third piece was "Symphonie en trois mouvements" by Stravinsky, with choreography by Nils Christe. This was REALLY modern and reminded me of my class on Music in Paris at the Turn of the 20th Century (remember, Hannah?!?!) We watched a reenactment of the original Rite of Spring choreography for the Ballets Russes. The choreography used a lot of turned-in feet, angular movements, and stomping. It was meant to reflect the savagery of the music and of the story. I thought I recognized some of that in the choreography of the Stravinsky that we saw last night. It was very modern, using lots of non-classic, flat movements, turned in feet, and some tumbling and stomping, too. I loved it. All the men and women wore mesh black shirts or dresses over shiny purple and blue leotards. It made them all look the same and it was such a cool effect, seeing everyone do the same flat angular movements at the same time. It was my favorite.

Here are some pictures of the Opera House. It's incredible. The ceiling was painted by Chagall in 1964, though the building itself was built much earlier, officially opening as the National Opera Theatre in 1875. It was this Opera House that inspired Gaston Leroux to write "The Phantom of the Opera"! Anyway, it's beautiful.

Centre Pompidou, briefly

Today I went to the Centre Pompidou. Initially, we had planned to look at some work by Hannah's artist, Christian Boltanski, and then use the Library of Public Information, a library which is free and open to the public, to do some research. Unfortunately, the line for the library was incredibly long so instead, we spent some time in the museum itself.

When it comes to some modern art, I like it simply because I know I would enjoy having it on my wall. Nice colors, cool swirls and designs, or multi-colored geometric shapes, etc. But I can't quite see it as ART. I can't see an artist putting much thought into simply designing something pleasing to the eye - for instance, Gerhard Richter's "1024 Farben", below, which I saw today.



There were some other paintings and sculptures and odd things, however, that were so very deliberate. One piece was called "Arabian Stars", by Jordi Colomer, and it was a video of a bunch of Arab chidren in Yemen walking through the streets holding various painted cardboard signs which said, in Arabic, "Picasso", "Pikachu", "Minnie Mouse", and later, several names of popular Arab poets and musicians. Watching it, I couldn't quite understand; was it political commentary? Western imposition of culture? A contrast between a new generation of Muslims and the "Arabian Stars" (note: not Arabic) and Western stars of the past and present? I wasn't sure. The cool thing about modern art that I kept thinking about today is that it isn't simply a representation of what the artist sees, but is frequently a deliberate attempt to persuade the viewer/spectator to really think hard about what the artist has put together and imagine what it could mean. After reading about the piece, I learned that Colomer was commenting, really, on Yemen specifically, and on its modern society, its use of Chinese plastics, Japanese cars, Russian Kalashnikovs. And she was also commenting on how Picasso is a name virtually unfamiliar to most Yemenis, while, she mentioned in an interview, she was corrected several times on the Arabic spelling of "Pikachu". And then, I wonder, is this really modern art? Or is it just a video that then needs so much additional explanation and background information that its really just social commentary in the end. Where is the art?

Anyways, here's Hannah and me in one of those odd outside-the-building escalators in giant tubes at the Centre Pompidou.

I liked this painting.


And this one.


On my way back home, I stopped in the Chatelet metro station to watch this group of musicians perform. They played mostly Ukrainian folk music, but I caught some Shalom Aleichem, too. It's hard to describe, but their voices and the music just filled up the station. Really beautiful harmonies. It was pretty mesmerizing - I could only get myself to leave after they started packing up.

doors

I just noticed - at almost every entrance here, you have to PUSH the door to get in. It takes quite a lot of getting used to.

le misanthrope

This afternoon we went to see Molière's "Le Misanthrope" at the Comédie Française. The main action of the play focuses on Alceste, who entirely rejects all the social niceties and proper courtly politeness in favor of a far more honest and sincere approach to his interaction with others. This makes him incredibly unpopular with the other members of the court. While holding on to and fiercely demonstrating these values, Alceste is also in love with Célimène, a woman of the court who cares enormously about her social reputation. I found the play, when reading it over the past two weeks, to be rather comedic; even the ending (spoiler!) was funny, in my opinion. After everything that has happened and Célimène is exposed as a gossipy social climber who actually despises most everyone, she still refuses Alceste, telling him that she is unwilling to go off into the wilderness with him to live away from silly court life.

I liked the play when I read it, but I couldn't stand the way that the play was performed today. It was SO OVERDRAMATIC and such a true TRAGEDY. I couldn't believe it. I think they were trying a new, modern approach. They added quite a lot of sex to the play, which is completely nonexistent in the text, and they really overdid, in my opinion, the onstage laughter. It was used so often that it seemed almost maniacal, and in the end, the actors had laughed much more than the audience had. That definitely didn't seem right to me, especially since I found the play pretty clever and funny when reading it, and not at all while viewing it. Also, in writing the play is rather flat in terms of onstage movement. There are very few stage directions, and most of the situations are simply two characters having a conversation. In this production, though, the characters were blustering around as if there were a time limit on standing in one place. They were constantly flipping their coattails and running to and from different corners of the stage. It was pretty distracting.

It was rather hard to follow the French. If we hadn't read it in class last week, I wouldn't have been able to follow the play at all. Mostly I think it's because the actors' tones changed so drastically in the performance; from yelling to sobbing to laughing to whispering. It made the already very rapid French speech even more difficult to comprehend.

Anyways, good play, not my fave production, beautiful building for the Comédie Française. We weren't allowed to take any photos, but it was very beautiful, I promise.

cneai

On Wednesday, I went with several others to a museum outside Paris, in Chatou, France. The museum is called CNEAI, or the "Centre national de l'estampe et de l'art imprimé", which as you can probably guess, means the National Center for 'Embossed' and Printed Art. They had a really cool exhibition on display called "Black Noise, A Tribute to Steven Parrino". This exhibit consisted of 32 small printed books, following the "american comic book style", as they said, which were put together by artists and friends of Steven Parrino. This was done as a way to commemorate his life after he died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 46 in 2005. Parrino's work was very punk/rock and he himself was involved in the music scene for a while. His work is heavily comic-y and seemed mostly inspired by destruction, sex, and satanic themes. The 32 comic books, though, were all over the place in terms of artistic themes, focus, etc.

My favorite, which I didn't take a picture of, was a collage of letters, postcards, and photos that Parrino had sent to several of the artists over the years. These artists had put all of these correspondences together, with a couple wikipedia articles on clinical lycanthropy, all to prove that Steven Parrino was, in fact, a werewolf. One of the first pages had a small piece of notepaper on which the artist who had put together the collages had written,
To Do:
Find proof
Draw conclusions.
It was very funny and oddly affectionate. Also, reading penpal letters and postcards from this artist whose life the exhibit was commemorating made Steven Parrino a lot more real. Some proof, if you're interested, was that he died on a full moon, he had written in one of his postcards that he was "growing his hair out" and "waiting for full moons", and a picture of him in sunglasses matches very closely to a picture they found of a big husky wearing sunglasses. Aha! Proof!

Another work was a strange collaged piece that really was entirely over my head. I had no clue what he was getting at. Very heavy on the hermaphrodite, adam and eve, mythology themes. I really liked the artist's frequent plays on words, though. Check this out:



I like the "be sea ch", implying the "search" while writing "beseech". Cool. But I didn't get the ultimate point of his book.

Also, another fave of mine was one artist whose work consisted almost completely of extremely light pencil drawings. This was the cover of her book, and I thought it was so cool. It's hard to see, but it's half of a woman's very scrunched-up face.



And here's one of Parrino's own pages. It's probably the least crazy/sexual/satanic one there. I liked the "live" and "die" in the Trix rabbit's eyes and the extremely mesmerizing look on the man's face on the right. Also, the girl's crazy face as she eats her cereal. So weird.

proper french eating

Since I haven't done anything enormously exciting these past 2 days, I'd like to comment a bit on the eating habits of my host family.

1) There is only one way to arrange the silverware and plates properly. Fork on the left, facing up. Spoon above the plate, facing up, and with the tail on the right-hand side. Knife, facing inwards, on the right. Napkin on the right. Little plastic cube-y thing you set the knife on when you're done using it so not to get the table dirty - above the knife. My host fam is SO PARTICULAR about this.

2) Order of the meal: soup/salad, main course, cheese sampler, yogurt, dessert.

3) Everything requires the use of a new plate and silverware. They even use a plate for yogurt, placing it under the yogurt carton so that when you take the lid off and set it down it doesn't dirty the tablecloth.

4) Like I mentioned before - only one slice of baguette during the meal.

5) Only one more slice of baguette during the cheese course. They consistently take huge chunks of cheese and eat them all with just one slice of baguette! I, of course, always run out of bread before I've finished my fromage. I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY DO IT!

(this is what the cheese plate kind of looks like, to give you an idea)

And to continue...

6) Everyone has their own napkin and corresponding napkin ring. It took me forever to figure out the system of whose is whose.

7) I am positive that this family would never bring something still in its wrapper or container to the dinner table. Even the tablespoon of syrup for our cake tonight was poured into a pretty glass bowl. Cheese is served on the cutting board. The cake was not served in the container it was baked in, GOD NO, it was served on a pretty glass plate. It's so not worth it! They have to do so much more dishwashing than is necessary!

8) One must discuss how good the food is throughout dinner. (Although this may be because currently my host mom has to rest her back for a while, so the host dad has been doing all the cooking and perhaps needs encouragement.)

9) During breakfast they drink tea out of bowls, so it cools off faster. Smart!

10) The milk is literally half-and-half. I tried using it with my muesli in the morning but I just can't bring myself to do it anymore.

It's such a different approach to eating than I'm used to. We rarely eat at the same time at home, and at Carleton, I'm mostly on my own when it comes to making food. So this constant ceremony at dinner is incredibly new and different to me. The food is spectacular, and the cheese...well you know how I feel about cheese. Mmm. Also, the preparation is such a family affair. It was the three of us in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables and stirring sauces. Food prep takes probably 2 hours. Such a different way of life! If it took me 2 hours to make food at Carleton I would never be able to get anything done.

In other news, I'm possibly going to Barcelona over our break (April 26th-30th), after which we are going to Nice and Cote d'Azur as a group, from May 1st-5th. Then, later in May, probably the 23rd-26th, I'm planning on going to Rome (and perhaps one of those 3 whole days we'll spend in Florence!) Also, I'd like to go to Amsterdam during one of these weekends, but we'll see if that'll be possible. Can't wait to start traveling, finally! I'm also looking forward to this weekend; we're seeing "Le Misanthrope", by Moliere, at the Comedie Francaise. We've been reading the play in class, so it'll be cool to see it on stage, and, having read it already, actually know what's going on.

ladyshock

Last week I signed up for 5 dance classes, of my choice, at a dance school in the Marais district. This comes out of my 200-euro cultural budget, for which Carleton will reimburse me. Last night, I went with a couple of the other girls who signed up for the classes to one called "Hip Hop/Ladyshock". God, what an experience. The teacher was American, and the entire class already knew all the dance steps. Thankfully, she reviewed them, but even then it was incredibly difficult. I'm pretty sore today. We did a lot of sit-ups, weirdly stiff hip movements, and lots of posing and hair flipping. What does "ladyshock" even mean? I think our teacher made it up. Maybe it was supposed to be empowering. Not for me, though, it was hard enough just figuring out the basics of the dance moves. It was SO HARD, you guys, I have never been so unable to follow directions. I am definitely willing to take another Hip Hop class, though (peut-être the Krumping class, eh?). What a workout!

protests

The Olympic torch, or "la flamme olympique", passed through Paris today. We just missed it! We were several minutes late, it seems. We did see, however, the enormous "manifestations", or protests, against China and for the liberation of Tibet. It was truly a huge chaotic mess all over Paris. The Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay was actually cut short due to the protests.

According to the BBC:
"Police were forced at least three times to put out the torch and carried it onto a bus, as police cleared protesters from the route....Later, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe cancelled a ceremony to welcome the torch relay after Green party activists hung a Tibetan flag and a black banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs from the Hotel de Ville (city hall)."

I was at the Hotel de Ville when I took these photos, but unfortunately missed the hanging of the black banner.

some pictures:




"scorned human rights, oppressed tibetans: welcome to china"


in the foreground: "freedom"

in the background: "paris defends human rights all over the world - the mayor of paris"

versailles, minus the gardens

i keep forgetting to mention my quick foray into american apparel here in paris. i know, for shame! apparently, american fashion is all the rage here, and i wanted to check out the french approach to these new fads. every time i see "abercrombie" or "gap" on someone's sweatshirt i immediately assume "oh my god, another american tourist" but that's really not the case! every other parisian has this sweatshirt:


sorry, erinrose. and when i was in AA, there was a gang of 10 and 11-yr old boys all dying to buy the green version of the above sweatshirt. bizarre!

we went to versailles yesterday. the weather was absolutely miserable - cold, rainy, and extremely windy. we brought a fromage, baguette, and pear picnic, and had to eat it under an ugly overhang where construction is being done on the front facade of versaille's central chateau. i'd like to return to versailles when we'll actually be able to see the gardens and enjoy the weather. thanks to our institute ID cards, which claim that we are art history students, we get in free to the chateau! we took a tour using an audio guide, which had some great trivia. for instance, 19 royal children were birthed in the queen's chambers at versailles. also, the queen was always forced to give birth in PUBLIC, in order to make absolutely certain that the child was indeed the proper heir to the throne. can you imagine? how embarassing!


hall of mirrors.

not only was the weather gross, but we got on the wrong train to versailles. it was headed in the correct direction, but forked a different way. so, we spent an extra hour trying to figure out the extremely complicated "RER" train system. each train has a different name; sara, elba, etc. our train was named vick. the only image that came to my mind was that of a new jersey mobster. however, our vick turned out to be clean and spacious, and got us to versailles just fine in the end.



last night we sat outside at a cafe for quite a while. fortunately, on these cold days, cafes have overhangs and intense heat lamps which warm their outdoor customers. it was very pleasant, but these cafes are so expensive, whether they're in a touristy area or not. euro:american dollar = 1:1.5. Outrageous!

After the cafe we found a little bon-bon shop in the street. look at this array:



i just had to get a bag, and the candy was delicious. because the three of us had all decided to buy a bag, the guy selling the bon bons even gave us an extra scoop of chocolates. so nice.

soiree!

tonight i attended my first parisian soiree.

it was just a couple blocks off the champs-elysees, at my host-sister's fiancee's cousin's apartment. everyone there already knew each other because they were all either friends or cousins, so my host-sister, angelique, and i were both in the same awkward place, not knowing anyone. the music was exactly a playlist i could have chosen myself (nelly furtado, shakira, etc.). they served good french wine, some '99 merlots, and served chips and cheese&tomato on toothpicks. the people there were very nice, especially when they found out i was "russo-american", as they called me, and complimented me on my french. yeah right. it was hard to follow most of their conversations, both because it was noisy and because they spoke so rapidly, but it was a good experience altogether. lots of french cheek-kissing.

so PDA is well-known in paris, as it is in all big cities, really. (PDA = public displays of affection). what amazed me tonight was how freely my host-sister and her fiancee hugged and kissed and lovingly spoke to each other in front of me as we were heading to the soiree. i mean, it's sweet and all, but every 5 seconds it was "mon coeur" this and "mon amour" that. i guess they barely see each other, seeing as how they work so much. so anyways.

tomorrow, versailles!

WIFI

I HAVE WIFI. i am so relieved. now i can skype, i just need a microphone. woohoo!!!!

le soleil!

i'm running out of time at this internet cafe!

today we had grammar class in the morning. i love grammar, actually, and really need to work on it so i'm very grateful for this class, despite the fact that it's going to be a lot of busy work.

it was beautifully sunny today, finally, and i had 2 (yes, 2!) nutella crepes. i just couldn't resist.

tonight i'm having dinner with my host family and then going with my host sister to meet a couple of her friends and go out for a drink. i'm so terrified! real french people! i'm not going to be able to follow the conversation AT ALL. oh well. it'll be a good experience, meeting frenchies other than my family and speaking with them.

hope the snow is melting back home! miss you all.

fromage

parisians really need to start picking up after their dogs. there's no law regulating poop-pick-up. these dogs poop EVERYWHERE. i wish i had a euro for every time i've had to avoid a petit pile.



today i met a couple of the girls for breakfast. the 'french breakfast' on the menu came with freshly-squeezed juice (i chose grapefruit, or pamplemousse, juice), coffee, a croissant with a tiny jar of jam, bread, and a fruit cup. it was beautiful.

afterwards, we went to the musee d'orsay and learned about the neo-classicism of david and the romanticism of manet and courbet. we spent 2 hours in 4 small galleries. our art history teacher is a great guide, very engaging.



after the museum, andrea and i looked for a fromagerie (cheese shop) we had seen earlier and bought two kinds of cheeses. then, after an hour of searching for a boulangerie we finally bought two baguettes and went down the steps near one of the bridges to eat cheese and bread next to the seine. it was a semi-sunny day, so sitting outside wasn't so bad, and the cheese was delicious. i swear, if the french didn't love cheese, i probably wouldn't still be studying this language.

andrea, avec du fromage.

notre dame, not south bend

getting around paris on foot is truly baffling. once you begin walking down a street, there’s no telling when it will begin to be called something entirely different. rue de medicis becomes rue st. michel just because it curves slightly. I hate feeling like the typical tourist and pulling out my handy-dandy tourist map, but it’s practically impossible to get around otherwise.



speaking of touristy, I accidentally stumbled upon tourist central today – notre dame. I know, how do you accidentally stumble upon notre dame? see, what's rather amazing about this city is that despite its incredible denseness, in various places the sky opens up and the buildings clear and you see giant structures like the notre dame simply looming above you. so that’s what happened. and I finally crossed the seine for the first time. I really just need to go exploring more.

april fool’s in france is called “le poisson d’avril”, or the fish of april. of course, the only person to play a trick on me this year was my mother, all the way from the states. well done, mom.

had my first patisserie panini and pain au chocolat today. delicious. so buttery. how are all the women so thin here, despite eating this stuff all the time?

I can’t wait to actually go on an organized tour. we’re heading to the Musée d’Orsay on Thursday (the old train station converted into an art museum). we’ve done very little actual guided city-viewing, so I guess we’ll have to set up our own, for the most part. this weekend our homework is to go to Versailles! and next weekend we are seeing ‘Le Misanthrope’, by Molière, performed by the Comédie Française.

almost every café has a million small tables and chairs set up immediately outside it, and what’s surprising is that all the chairs face outward. the obvious and express purpose of these chairs is to PEOPLE-WATCH. I cannot wait to have some coffee and a brioche and watch people as they’re passing by. French people who do this are rarely alone! they are usually sitting with someone, having some coffee, and watching people TOGETHER. what a beautiful life they live, seriously.

it has become a tiny bit colder here – it’s in the low 50s – but at least it’s not snowing. ha-ha Minnesota! that’s what you get for not coming to Paris with me!

partout, partout, partout

these are the views from my bedroom window. pictures of my room to come soon.





and below is something i found written on a bench on one of the seine bridges. it says "make love everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, etc." HOW TYPICAL.