Victory tastes so sweet.

I am going to open with how very happy I am to have finished my paper for my history class. It is officially the longest French paper I’ve ever written, with actual text topping out at 8 pages (if it were double-spaced). The topic was French colonization in South America. I am so glad that I will (hopefully) never again have to find sources for stuff like that. The French didn’t really do much in South America, and most of what they did do has fallen into obscurity, except French Guiana.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving (duh), and I am excited like you wouldn’t believe. Three friends and I are doing an a cappella version of Fly Me to the Moon, and it is going to be rockin’. My friend Meyanna is going to play piano, too, and I am happy to be able to hear her perform for an audience of more than four or five people. I also hope that the teachers from the elementary school come… it would be fun for them to have Thanksgiving with a bunch of Americans.

Additionally, I am coming home in less than four weeks (three and half). It feels especially short because really I only have one more writing assignment: the equivalent of a four-page double-spaced paper talking about my educational experiences and things. Not so hard. I think I’ll be ready to  be home, and when the time comes, I think I’ll be ready to be back in Nantes.

My host sister in Paris had her baby earlier this week, so my host mom is going to Paris for a week tomorrow to see her first grandchild. I’ve seen pictures, and Faustine (the new baby) is really adorable. I do not think all babies are adorable, but Faustine certainly is. She doesn’t have that angry-at-the-world look yet.

All that said, pretty much all I’ve done recently has been to work on my paper and study. I did go see a really hilarious play, though, called Les Fiancés de Loches. It is about three country bumpkins who go to Paris to get married, but, instead of going to the marriage agency, they go to a domestic help placement agency. Over the course of the play, three women think they’re engaged to one man, two men don’t know who they’re engaged to, there are some crazy people, and the last act takes place in a sanatorium. The play was super funny, and in the end they used two firehoses to fill two giant baths. I think the first three rows of the audience got splashed, but ah well that is what you get for not having to sit on a tiny fold-down chair on the end of a row (I am not bitter).

Tomorrow with the 5th graders, I’m doing a word-search for Thanksgiving. I did the same one with the 4th graders yesterday, and it was one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. They were relatively quiet and peaceful and I hope they learned a lot of words. With the kindergarteners, I am going to play ring-around-the-rosie because frankly I am not in the mood for their shenanigans. We might color, too, and talk about elephants.

Something I told a friend recently is that, “it’s like I am several different people, and we all like different things, and one of those things happens to be techno remixes of songs.” I think it is one of my life goals to learn how to make techno remixes of stuff because I really enjoy them. This will join my life goals of learning how to paint (oil and watercolor) and learn at least some more music theory. Even after just a few months of more piano-playing, I can tell that my ear is getting back to where it was back when I studied a lot of music.

So we’ll end on a funny story I already told a couple people: at dinner last night, it was the whole family (that is, host mom and dad, as well as both host brothers). Jean, my 17-year-old host brother was saying something weird about how he would save the world by preventing some other guy from having kids, I don’t know, I was kind of spacing out. Then all of a sudden, he pointed at me and my 23-year-old brother Louis-Marie and said “you two…” and I think I said “oh no” because I kind of knew what was coming, and then he pronounced us man and wife. My host mom protested because she didn’t know if I had a boyfriend or not, and then she told me she wouldn’t be mad if I hit him or something. I am so glad I’m staying with this host family next semester, too. I love them.

I also give you a link to an excellent video. Check it out if you can; it’s about a leopard seal with surprisingly strong maternal tendencies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxa6P73Awcg&feature=player_embedded

Fly Me to the Moon…

…And let me play among the stars.

At least if it will make this week end. It has been pretty rough. I had two midsems this week, and although they weren’t very difficult, it’s just a lot on top of the papers I’m writing as well as the preparations I have to do for the elementary students. Last week, I tried to teach the kindergarteners about Thanksgiving, but it ended up being too complicated, so they got frustrated, and I got frustrated, and the teacher was like, “why don’t you teach them the words ’short’ and ‘long’ next week?” which made feel like a failure because even though I knew the class had been a disaster I had kind of been hoping that the teacher was too busy to notice. I also had some problems with the CE2 kids (2nd grade) not paying attention yesterday. It is all very discouraging, and it makes me wonder why the school has English assistants working with such young kids. The only kids I get anything done with are the CM1 & CM2 (4th and 5th grade). After being with the little kids, I really look forward to the times when I can actually teach English. Most of the kindergarteners don’t really understand that there is such a thing as a language besides French.

One thing that was really good, though, was the concert I went to last night at the University. It was l’Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire; basically the regional orchestra. The concert was called “Voyage en Italie”; I’ll let you divine the meaning of that. Listening to the orchestra, especially during the Rachmaninov concerto they played, really made me nostalgic. The program included that concerto (on a theme by Paganini), one piece by Paganini, two Verdi pieces, and two operatic overtures by Rossini. There were tons of students there, which was really cool, and the pianist for the concerto (Roger Muraro) was very, very skilled; he played with a lot of clarity and fluidity. It made me want to be much better at piano! I can tell that I am getting a little better, though.

About three weeks into the semester, I had started asking myself if I was really getting any better at French and feeling very pessimistic about the whole language aspect of this; now, looking back on this, I realize how much I really have improved. I can’t imagine making this amount of progress back in the U.S. I mean, I have come to the point where I’m even able to write academic papers in French, with correct grammar and respectable style, in the same amount of time it would take me to write the same paper in English. I think that is marvelous. Admittedly I still mess up a lot, and I have a lot to learn, but I also have to recognize the tremendous progress that, almost without exception, everyone in our program has made in their mastery of the French language.

I just want to mention this last thing; I don’t really feel like going in-depth into the subject would be appropriate for this blog, and it certainly wouldn’t do the topic justice, but tonight for my grammar course, my classmates and I attended a showing of a documentary called “Lettre à Anna.” An influential and justice-oriented Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaïa was assassinated in 2006, most likely for her work covering the events in Tchétchénie (Tchetchenia in English? I only know the French). If you’re interested in learning what she was fighting against and signing a petition to have a tribunal for the violation of human rights currently going on in Tchétchénie, you can check out http://amnesty.org and search for terms like that. Although I didn’t find anything on their English site, I got tons of hits on the French site. One good document is: http://www.amnesty.org/fr/library/info/EUR46/013/2003/fr (you can click on either of the links that say “Anglais”–that means English).

Until next week.

Pop quiz!

It’s time for a pop quiz! How much do you know about French culture, students, and families? Answers at the end of the quiz, but really you shouldn’t need them except maybe for #6.

1. What time do French families typically eat dinner?

A. Between 5:30 and 6:30
B. Between 6:30 and 7:30
C. Between 7:30 and 8:30
D. Between midnight and 4AM

2 .What time does the typical American study-abroad student start getting hungry for dinner?

A. About 20 minutes after lunch
B. Don’t answer “A”; that would be ridiculous
C. According to my friends, just long enough before dinner to be willing to eat anything they put in front of you
D. That depends on whether they had to cook up their own bread & cheese lunch or if they ate out
E. Both C & D

3. French people are all (or almost all) really well dressed.

(True or false)

4. How many châteaux can you see before you begin sympathizing with French Revolution-era peasants?

A. We never get tired of castles!
B. Two and maybe some gardens if you can nap between
C. It depends on how many guards the King had killed there because he felt insulted (fyi, 350 at Azay-le-Rideau)
D. Both B & C

5. How many days does it take to recover from seeing five châteaux in one weekend?

A. 1
B. 2 if you get a good night’s sleep
C. 3
D. I’ll let you know when I find out

6. Which of the following cheeses not only has its own origin story, but is also banned in the U.S.?

A. Brie
B. Roquefort
C. Président
D. Coulommiers

7. What is the most awkward thing about living with a host family?

A. Making totally unrelated comments at dinner because you lost track of the conversation
B. Wondering how much time you should spend out of the house after leaving so that your family doesn’t get confused or wonder why you’re back so soon
C. Talking about grades and academics
D. Trying to come up with ways to spend less time at home so your host family doesn’t think you’re an anti-social recluse
E. All of the above
F. None of the above

8. What is the best thing about living with a host family?

A. Host mothers are amazing cooks
B. You’re not living with dirty college students (just kidding, I love living with college students!)
C. Hey, you’re getting your laundry done for you again
D. All the host families know each other, so your host parents can fill you in on your friends’ families
E. All of the above

9. According to French elementary students, which of the following is not one of the 50 states?

A. New York
B. Luxembourg
C. California
D. Canada

10. How many French students, given three weeks, will memorize a measly 10-line poem?

A. All of them!
B. Only two
C. About half
D. None, even if you promised them a prize

Answers: 1. C, 2. E., 3. True, 4. D, 5. D, 6. B, 7. E, 8. E, 9. A, 10. D

How did you do?

Some brief, straightforward life updating: two friends and I will be singing a couple of songs for Thanksgiving, accompanied by our other friend on the piano, so that’s exciting. Like you learned in the pop quiz, I’m still really exhausted after the trip to the châteaux de la Loire, but today is a holiday, so there’s no class. Joy!

Recently I had the most success ever with the kindergarteners at the elementary. We spent half the day playing Ring Around the Rosie, and they loved it. Definitely a keeper. I’ve also been practicing more music lately and have almost got up to 75% competency on the piece I’m working on. I’m staying healthy and working on tons of schoolwork since November is Hell Month for me, and I’ll be home surprisingly soon. I’m excited!

Paint (or post) by numbers

Since everyone loves numbers and statistics and things, here are some relevant figures related to my stay here so far:

• Days I’ve spent in France: 64
• Days until winter break: 45
• Castles seen: 5, I think? That is actually kind of a guess. I’ll see three more this weekend, wooo.
• Piano pieces learned: 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2  (I don’t really have much in the way of self-discipline.)
• Obnoxious historical figures researched: At least 4 incredibly irritating, and a few more who were simply vexing.
• Books finished: 7

1. During the long weekend: 3
2. Pages read last weekend: 1342 (I know I have posted that in about 4 places on the internet, but I’m pretty proud)
3. How much was for class: 1.04% (14 pages)

• Pages written in French: 20, with lots more to come.
• Types of cheese I have tried: 6 or 7 (and they are all delicious)
• Loaves of bread that have been cruelly stolen from me by a mystery thief at IES: 1, but I’m extra bitter about it (apparently)
• Times I have listened to the entirety of the soundtrack to A Very Potter Musical: 38 (unbelievable, right?)
• French pick-up lines learned: just 1, sadly.
• Times my computer has freaked out and necessitated a hard shut-down: at least twice/day recently. Stupid computer.

So that is my visit by the numbers. We had a four-day break this past weekend for Toussaints (All Saints’ Day), which I used to relax, read a ton, do some research for history, and actually that is pretty much it. Other students did a lot of traveling throughout France or even Europe, but they’re all tired now, whereas I am refreshed and rejuvenated!

Also, the city has put up some Christmas decorations, so Christmas songs are fair game! (One might say they are “in season”… if one wanted to make a really, really lame pun.) You naysayers may volunteer Thanksgiving as the real start of Christmas season, to which I would respond, “They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in France! Just like Halloween,” and then I might cry a little bit because I love all holidays. (We are still going to have a student Thanksgiving dinner, though, so there is that.)

So my plans for the rest of the week/till I update again are to visit the Loire River valley this weekend with IES (Saturday & Sunday), see a play next week, and hunt down that no-goodnik who stole my baguette. Seriously, who does that? They cost less than 1 euro. Come on, people. Other than that, I will be teaching French elementary students how to sing “Three Blind Mice” (at the special request of the teacher) and doing some boring stuff for school. Luckily I turned in my semester project for Philosophy today, which despite being my hardest class by a long shot required only a 5.5 page paper, which is A-okay, if you ask me. I have definitely noticed an improvement in my comprehension and composition in French… I think in that whole paper, I made maybe 3 or 4 grammatical errors, which is insane considering what my papers looked like before coming here. I also think I speak better, but I’m still kind of scared to talk in front of my host family.

One last thing: you may be asking yourself, “but what do French pick-up lines sound like?” I know I was! So here is the one French pick-up line I know, although it doesn’t necessarily translate well:

Sketchy guy: Was your father a baker?

Unsuspecting girl: No, why? [I was anticipating something to do with buns, to be honest.]

Sketchy guy: Because you’re “craquante”! [Craquant(e) is slang for "hot," and it also describes a pleasantly crispy baked good. Puns and pick-up lines, universals!]

Les Machines de l’île

I finally got to go see all the mechanical animals! A lot of other things have also happened, but they pale in comparison to the awesomeness that is giant wooden mechanized creatures. I contend that this is the coolest photo I have ever taken:

Built in 2007, this poor beast of burden is 14m tall and holds 35 passengers.

We went to see the animals on Friday, and it was amazing. I made the sea serpent work:

The mighty sea serpent is the newest structure is requires the help of seven to eight puny humans to function properly.

Other people got to work the squid, angler fish, tempest boat, and many others. I have lots of pictures on Facebook or my computer, so ask if you want to see them! The machines were really, really cool. I cannot emphasize it enough. They’re also planning many more larger projects like a huge display carousel for all the machines as well as a heron-topped giant tree exhibit that will fly people around. No joke. I would put in more pictures, but either wordpress is being stupid, or it’s this new dev version of Chrome that I’ve got.

Other things: I found a Halloween store, and my friend bought some cheesy Halloween straws, which we took to the mall-sponsored circus on Saturday and used in our cheap orange juice in the midst of the very image-conscious French. It’s the little rebellions that count sometimes. Everyone is going out of town this weekend, including my host family, I think?, so I am looking forward to really getting some rest and being able to have a lot of time to myself to process and stuff, whatever that even means.

There have been a lot of ups & downs for me lately: I was really stressed about money last week (super stressed), and then all of sudden God solved that problem, which was great. Then I was frustrated with what I perceived to be the shortcomings of Christian community here, and then God took care of that, too. Recently my computer has been having some hardware issues (like refusing to turn on for the better part of an hour and then suddenly realizing that hey, maybe starting up isn’t so bad after all. No kidding, it only started working after I hit it a few times in frustration.), so I am praying that God will go ahead and take care of that too. This computer is not old at all and shouldn’t be wimping out like this.

I told my host mom recently that I wish I could have a better accent and more fluidity of speech. She told me that my accent was not too bad but also that a little bit of an American accent is apparently very charming or something. Then she said that even, though I’m a huge perfectionist and would rather avoid speaking than make a mistake, I need to man up and try to say some stuff at dinner. Well, I didn’t talk today, but maybe soon!

I have been not at all busy this past week: university classes are out of session for Toussaints, and elementary schools don’t have class for the same reason, so I basically found myself with hours and hours of “free time”– that is, time to catch up or get a little bit ahead on homework. I had to write an “explication de texte” for my philosophy class, which I thought was going to be among the hardest things I’ve ever done but turned out to be not so bad once I got past the psychological barrier. So I finished that today and already got it corrected. Go me!

Soon I will be going to a play, a history museum, les châteaux de la vallée de la Loire (castles of the Loire River valley), and hopefully I’ll be able to keep working on my piano music. I am getting better! I am still terrible. Recently I have been eating a lot of cheese and have so felt very French. Cheese is WAY cheap here. Seriously cheap. It is probably the one thing that costs considerably less than in America. I got a decent quality Coulommiers cheese recently for about 1.5 euros (maybe $2.25). I couldn’t believe it. Okay, that’s all. Let me know how you’re doing, either in an email or in the comments if you, like me, enjoy letting people read all about your life on the internet!

my host brother knows how to high five

This is the view from my window. A cloudy day, which is NO SURPRISE.

Oops, nearly forgot again. I get so caught up in not-updating-the-blog that I, surprise, almost don’t update the blog. Title completely unrelated to anything else.

Good and bad news: My French is still improving, and I have been paying more attention to what people actually say. I think that “quoi” serves as a kind of “y’know” (revelation of the day). The bad news is that recently I have been getting expressions mixed up in English as a result of there being a better way to say it in French (real question: can you say that you “arrive at” doing something in English to mean that you succeeded? I was going to write that somewhere earlier but chickened out at the last minute thinking it wasn’t a real expression). And since the last update, I have taken and gotten back my first French midsem; I got a 16 out of 20, which is a solid A. There is NO grade inflation in France; people’s families celebrate getting 14s. It is wild. I guess all my hard work has been paying off or something like that.

I have almost mastered one piano song (ironically the one I started learning on Friday). These are seriously easy songs (well, I mean, compared to real piano music). If you are really nerdy like me and will recognize it, it is an arrangement of “The Great Sea” from Zelda: the Wind Waker (i.e. the song that plays while you are spending half your life sailing. This becomes a pretty familiar song after a while). Yup, I am that cool.

I have of course been listening to Christmas music since there is no Thanksgiving to wait for in France. And the hymns are the best Christmas music, in my opinion (I mean like O Holy Night, Silent Night, etc.). I am always surprised by how they capture the grandeur of the celebration… seriously, Incarnation of Christ, a pretty cool deal. Reason to celebrate. So of course Josh Groban’s version of O Holy Night is playing non-stop on my computer right now.

I took the bus here by myself for the first time the other day and didn’t miss my stop, so that was definitely a success. Now I will be able to leave even later to get to the elementary school. Speaking of the school, French students have the next week to ten days off for Toussaints, which is what they celebrate in place of Halloween (y’know, all saints day, something like that). So I don’t have any elementary or university courses next week, which is going to be a very welcome break and opportunity to work on all the end-of-term assignments, which have basically been assigned in the past two days. I thought my Internship Seminar written project would be challenging and long, but it turns out to be a three-page reflection on my career as a student and now educator. Somehow I feel both happy and gypped. Ah well.

I have recently found two (TWO) stores that have Halloween products, including one with decorations and a jack-o-lantern carving kit. The other just has Halloween-themed Belgian chocolates (I’m sure they’re delicious, but they probably cost an arm and a leg). My friend and I will probably make a field trip to the decorations one this coming weekend.

My host sister was visiting this week, and overall it’s been a good week with the host family. Just tonight my host mother made sure that she rescued my umbrella from the stairwell where I left it (it was wet) since hers was stolen last night. She also cut my host brother’s hair last night after seriously teasing him about it for the better part of a week. Last night at the dinner table, my family was explaining complements de noms, and my host mother said it was like saying “Jean’s really really long hair.” How subtle!

This Friday I am going to see the giant mechanical animals, and there will DEFINITELY be pictures up about that, let me tell you. I hope you’re all doing well and having a good ramp-up to Halloween!

I almost forgot this week

So here is an update since I didn’t forget in the end! I guess this makes six weeks. Again, I will probably never really come to realize that I’m in France.

Soooooo who wants to hear some more about homesickness? This is going to sound kind of funny, but the fact that it is so close to Halloween has really done a number on how at-home I feel here. I keep wanting to see houses with jack-o-lanterns and witches and orange & black everywhere, but people in France just don’t celebrate Halloween. It’s driving me crazy. I can only hope that they really go all-out for Christmas because otherwise I will probably actually become insane.

I get a little frustrated with my lack of mastery of language sometimes. It’s not that I can’t say what I want, necessarily, as much as I can’t say what I want as fast as I would like or with the richness of vocabulary that I feel I should be developing. I can probably count all the words I’ve added to my standard vocabulary. And I still wish I were more comfortable expressing myself on the spur of the moment, but I guess that will keep improving? I am a little discouraged though because it has already been six weeks.

Funny and awkward story time: I went to the university students group at my church this week and had a pretty good conversation with a guy named Kuma on the tram ride back to centre-ville, so when I went to church this Sunday and was walking to the Pennsylvanians’ houses for lunch and saw a guy wave at me and the friend with whom I was walking, I thought it was Kuma, so I waved back. Since I gave away that it is a funny and awkward story, you probably have already guessed that it wasn’t Kuma, but you probably didn’t guess that the guy, who was driving a completely different direction, would circle back around to try to talk to us and get our phone numbers. Plus my friend doesn’t speak French. So after an awkward attempt at disengagement (“we’re really late for lunch”), the guy insisted that we take his business card and drove away. I felt really bad because I realized afterward that if Kuma took the tram on Thursday, he definitely doesn’t have a car and doesn’t live in walking distance of the church. Duh. It’s just a cultural thing that I haven’t quite grasped that you don’t wave back to everyone who waves at you. I am so used to reflexively waving back that apparently I invite creepers like no other. Gotta work on that.

I had a really good conversation with my friend following that, though (not about the guy, obviously. We threw his business card away tout de suite). We talked about our families, our faith journeys, our ideas about Jesus and social justice, what it means to be Christian, and how it different to go to a small Christian university like theirs as opposed to a small secular school like Grinnell. It was really a good conversation, and I think God was in it. I did almost start crying like 32479 times because that is just what I do when I talk about stuff like that, but no actual tears (unexpected!).

I am still trying to learn piano, and I have chosen to start with the Fire Emblem theme from the Hyrule Temple stage from Super Smash Brothers: Melee. I think that sentence makes me one of the nerdiest people alive. But it turned out to be a good thing because I was practicing the other day when a guy heard me and came in and asked if he was hearing what he thought he was, and he listened for a while as I fumbled all the chords, so I got to meet someone new. In addition to piano, I have been learning how to salsa, and it has been pretty fun. There are a couple other girls from IES who go, so it is fun. It also breaks up my Fridays, which normally would end at 10AM. So that is a plus.

That turned out to be a pretty long and patchwork-type update, like usual. I don’t even try for coherence anymore. I have a paper to turn in tomorrow and a midsem on Friday, so I have actually been doing some work lately. But not enough to keep me from watching The Nightmare Before Christmas tonight to alleviate some Halloween-lacking. Hope you guys are all doing well!

Uncanny Valley

Midterms are coming up. How silly is that? I am a little offended by how quickly the time has gone. ‘Come on, time. Get with the program.’

I have been thinking a lot about conformism and stuff, like when people co-opt really awesome stuff into the cadre of conformism. For example, ninjas are becoming increasingly mainstream, which causes them to decrease in awesomeness (for me). It’s probably because I’m wildly elitist. But it’s irritating when things that people scorned you for liking become really popular and not individual anymore. It’s kind of like losing a “property” as defined by Aristotle (see? I am learning). I think I am going to have to start liking robots more or something.

On the other hand, cool things are happening. For example, we had French Beauty & the Beast sing-a-long last Friday. Plus, I have been practicing piano and guitar. It has been really stress-relieving because it affords me the opportunity to concentrate very intensely on non-academic and non-language bound this for extended periods of time. So I can exercise different parts of my brain and give the rest of it a break.

Additionally, I had my first real teaching experience this week. I taught the kids at the school how to say “how are you” and how to respond. I also taught the older kids the days of the week and did some number review. With the oldest kids, I also went over how to talk about your family. I left my notebook at the school, which has irked me a lot. It wasn’t a class notebook; it was my to-do list notebook and planner. So annoying!

The kids saw Edward Scissorhands last week (so I watched it myself over the weekend so we could talk about it). I think it is kind of a movie for older kids, but whatever. Additionally, in the school I have been able to see a lot of different teaching styles. There is definitely one stand-out awesome teacher, so I will be making sure to try to imitate his style and attitude. The kids are really respectful of him, and it’s not because he is really mean or strict. Actually he is very friendly and affectionate with them. That’s another thing that I have liked about the school: unlike in America, where a lot of things are prohibited (hugs, etc.), that behavior seems to be perfectly fine here. It is good, I think, because it allows a different kind of relationship between teachers and students: instead of simply transmitting information and not appearing to be involved, there is more of a mentor-mentee or caretaker kind of relationship. I have been delighted to start taking part in it. This is unrelated, but one of my kids gave me a marble. Marbles are the current elementary school fad, I guess. Every kid has like a little bag of marbles.

I’m going to end with this: I have really enjoyed my history class. I had forgotten how much I like history, but it is a super subject because not only does it have specific elements like dates, it is also like story time about peoples’ lives! It is pretty awesome. That is it for this week, but I hope you are doing well and having many diverse experiences like me!

eight days a week

Four weeks! Recently I have been listening to The Beatles a lot, especially “We Can Work it Out” and “Something.” I also don’t hate “Hey Jude” anymore, but I don’t really know why. I’ve been listening to them because my host mother had me read an article about them from a French magazine. It was pretty interesting! I wish my weeks did have eight days so I could get everything done.

A lot has changed since last week. I started working at a local elementary school (5 hours/week working with the teachers to do English lessons), and my workload decreased pretty drastically, which has been an unexpected bonus, especially since we had a day-trip to Mont St Michel this weekend. I also started feeling homesick for almost the first time. I had been pretty surprised that I wasn’t crying a lot (because as most of you know, I am a like a never-ending fountain of tears for any reason and often for no reason at all), but now I am back to my overly-emotional self. The good news is that I have also started singing again (to myself, of course, and badly since I am a little sick), and I’m going to try to learn to play piano and guitar in my spare time; i.e. Fridays since that is pretty much my only free time. IES has a guitar that they allow us to fiddle around with (ooh, stringed instrument pun). I’ve been missing music pretty badly recently & would like to do more theory and practice.

Things are good on the friend front: I recently met a girl who goes to my church and is studying to be an engineer (she recently passed what’s called a “concours,” meaning she is extremely intelligent and skilled). I’m going to the opera tomorrow night, so I won’t see her at the college-students’ group, but I’ll see her on Sunday.

Things about France that are upsetting and confusing: I’ve encountered a few instances of racism and antisemitism and a lot of homeless (SDF, sans domicile fixe) persons, even in the posh centre-ville. I haven’t been sure how to address any of these situations at the time, and I usually feel like I handle them pretty badly. But I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and prayer. The church I’ve been attending has what I think is a really good attitude toward social justice and witness, and I’ve felt challenged and encouraged by it. I think it is really hard for me to trust God, which is often why I make a big deal out of these situations, especially when people ask me for money in the street. I mean, the Bible is pretty straightforward about it, though, so I guess I just have to suck it up and pray for faith. I have also been trying to come up with ways to interact with SDFs, but since I’m not very outgoing or confident in my ability to speak to them, it’s something I haven’t managed yet. It’s easier with the kids, though, which is good.

I’ve been feeling a little bit of culture shock lately, which has actually made me really happy! I take it that it means that I’m not isolating myself completely from the culture here. So even though I am really grouchy and frustrated with general French-ness at times, I am trying to adopt a “learning posture” as people have urged me so that I can have helpful interactions with people and not just be unhappy and homesick.

That was super sporadic, so apologies. My thoughts are all over the place lately. Apparently IES elected a president and vice-president recently. I have never understood why people would willingly take on more responsibility than absolutely necessary. I guess I used to be like that in high school, but I’m over it now. Haha. Hope you’re all doing well and being just as challenged as I am (misery loves company)!

jazz & lots of work

As of today, I have been in France for three weeks, which is frankly unbelievable. It’s kind of like I just got here and kind of like I’ve been here a very long time, but hey, maybe three weeks will turn out to be some sort of mystical milestone and everything will change tomorrow. After all, after tomorrow, it will officially be my longest stay in a foreign country (I was in Taiwan for 22 days-ish).

This weekend, France celebrated Les Journées du Patrimoine, Heritage Days, which is when pretty much every culturally-significant site is open for free (or almost free) admission. Naturally we were just about to die with excitement. On Saturday, some friends and I meandered around a huge fleamarket (although frankly that was unrelated to Les Journées du Patrimoine as it is there every week. Score!), and then to begin our cultural explorations we went to the local Préfecture, which from what I gathered is kind of like a state Senate. We got a tour, and I guess it was pretty okay although honestly my mind was elsewhere, mostly because our tour guide was “really informative” i.e. he talked for SO LONG about everything.

Anyway, after we got out of the Prefecture, we went to the Natural History Museum, which was absolutely amazing. There were giant spider fossils (seriously enormous), and dinosaur things, and several very cool replicas of animals. After this foray into the past, we decided to be very French and sit at a cafe since it was too early for dinner (i.e. it was 6:30, and the French eat anywhere between 7:30 and 9). It was wildly expensive and we are never going back to that particular cafe. We went to the same place as last week for dinner (a creperie), and barely made it to the botanical garden to catch the live jazz band. We got to hear about three songs (maybe four?), and it was super and fun, and then my friends and I took the tram & the night bus home around midnight. Saturdays here are so great.

So on Sunday it was time to buckle down and get to work. After church, that is. I went back to the same church, and one of the other girls from IES came as well. Before service started, we met & chatted with a nice guy from London, and he ended up having lunch with us and the other 18 (not an exaggeration) Americans at their house. And then I did homework until I died. Class update: French is still kind of ridiculous, I love my internship and am having a meeting with the school director tomorrow, History is quite interesting, Translation was amazingly cool, and Philosophy is still probably the hardest class I have ever had to follow just because the prof goes so fast and there is Greek. Today was encouraging though because I was able to follow the lecture, and it was actually about Aristotle’s philosophy.

Last night I had to go to a conference with my French class, and the topic was “The World Order after the Financial Crisis and the Election of Barack Obama.” It was really interesting to hear about all sorts of different issues from the French perspective (the speaker was not so good at staying on topic), and I think that was the first time that I and most of my classmates realized that people care what America does, and we should care that what America does affects pretty much the entire world. I thought I knew that before, but I didn’t really understand that. It is a lot of responsibility, and I am not sure that people realize that.

Probably the only thing that has been really stressful, though, is the pressure I feel to engage with the culture here. I know that is why I am here, really, so it is something that never really leaves my consciousness for long, and I always feel like I am falling short of my goals and the vague everyone’s expectations. I hang out mostly with Americans and am too nervous to talk to French people in my classes, for the most part, and even at church, I have only spoken to a few French people. I don’t really know what to do about this, but I do want to really become a part of the community here. So I guess that is my next focus, since language is now more or less not a problem.