As this is published, I will have completed eleven months abroad: June and July in Rabat; September, October, November, and December in Nantes; and January, February, March, April, and May in Paris.
Anyone who spoke to me at all last fall will probably recall that I was obsessed with study abroad, and to some degree, I still am. But around October, I was planning for another summer program. I dreamed of another two months abroad--Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, St. Petersburg! I wanted to go to all of them and the hardest decision was choosing a destination. As my amazing program in Nantes continued and I accepted my offer of admission to Sciences Po, I started thinking about Fall 2015 programs. Where could I go? Italy? Maybe Morocco again? A whole semester in Russia!
I never wanted to go home.
Nantes was unique in that it was the very first program that I've ever participated in that I did not complain about. This is not to say that these programs were terrible, because I've also been lucky to never have been in an absolute hell-hole of a program.
But I have done my fair share of complaining and then some.
I moaned about assignments and teachers and late drama nights at Forest Ridge. I cried during my first time in Nantes because I was cold and I wanted my mom. I complained about Stanford and its dining hall hours and disruptive RAs. I did nothing but bitch during my first year at George Washington--both econ 101 and my roommates got equal treatment in emails home. I complained about the heat and the chaos of Rabat.
Nantes Fall 2014 was so different. I was fortunate to have the loveliest host mother, the friendliest center staff, the best classes, the most understanding professors, the most invigorating ballet class, and the nicest and smartest friends who wanted nothing more than to speak French and go to brunch and discuss novels and classes and museums. I was in a beautiful, bustling city. It was small enough to easily navigate with a single monthly paper pass but big enough to give me new things to do every weekend. I learned how to bake and how to take a train by myself and how to speak French so well that I fooled governmental survey-takers. I wrote a novel. I received a 3.88 GPA.
I understand now that Nantes will always be there for me--I've returned there four separate times in my life and I've never arrived to see it disappointingly different. In fact, the construction is basically completed, so it looks much fresher than it did in Spring 2011.
Paris was not Nantes.
It also wasn't Rabat and it wasn't Stanford and it wasn't George Washington and it wasn't Forest Ridge. In fact, I'm going to say that it was my least favorite academic program that I've ever experienced, including George Washington online classes and that weird mail correspondence course in calculus I took senior year of high school.
This is exemplified by the fact that after going to every single lecture and discussion and reading all of the readings, the only fact I have retained from the entire semester is that Vladimir Putin has an honorary doctorate in judo.
It's no one's fault. It's not my fault nor is it the fault of my professors or TAs. Sciences Po Paris just wasn't a good fit for me, although I can't pinpoint exactly why. It might be the odd line that I've been straddling the entire semester between speaking French and being Parisian and speaking English and being American. It might be the impersonal nature of the university coupled with the lack of central student area mixed with the (quite frankly) irrationally strict format of essay writing. I'm sure there are a billion other factors that caused Sciences Po and me to never click.
This is where Paris has taught me a lesson. Paris gave me the opportunity to continue my study abroad experience to the point of over-saturation. I am not in D.C. right now speculating about what another adventure abroad could have been like. Instead, I am in Paris, reflecting on how being abroad is after you come down from the euphoria.
Paris was not a bust. I cannot say that. Paris taught me how to live in a big city. I learned how to cook, how to navigate a city's transportation, how to take care of myself without a host family or a program center easily accessible. I also took a lot of ballet classes.
I spoke to my mother in late March, regarding my application for a summer in Berlin. I was very enthusiastic because I had been planning it for several months, but after another week, I called her.
"I'm just not feeling enthusiastic about Berlin. Can I cancel the application? Is that okay?"
"That's fine," she replied. "I sent you an email about an internship in D.C. Did you take a look at that?"
"I did, and I'm working on the letter of interest now."
I have a feeling that she'd been waiting for me to say something along those lines, something like I'm done abroad and I want to come home. I think she was just waiting for me to be the one to decide.
Showing posts with label classes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classes. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Lac des Cygnes
Last Thursday, I had a final exam in Comparative International Law and a midterm in International Security. This, of course, almost killed me. Comparative International Law is not fun and if someone expresses recreational interest in the subject, you should treat this individual with great suspicion.
However, I pulled through because that evening, I had a ticket to see the Paris Opera Ballet in their closing night of Swan Lake.
I leaped on the metro at 6:45 only to encounter delays all the way to Bastille. After dashing out of the metro at 7:15, I lined up with everyone else to get through bag check and then got my ticket scanned and started up the stairs.
Here is where the Paris Opera fails: helping you find where the hell your seat is. There are no employees anywhere except at the doors, but when your entry door is #11, second tier balcony, and there doesn't seem to be a first balcony and the doors go from #9 to #12, all hope seems to be lost. I eventually found my seat by swallowing my pride and just walking into random doors until the usher didn't give me an eye roll.
I had the cheapest seats to the ballet, but they were the best seats for seeing Nureyev's Swan Lake. It's an awe-inspiring ballet, full of formations that are best seen from a bird's-eye-view, or as close as you can get to bird's eye. At the orchestra level you won't be able to see the circles that fold in on each other or the line changes that are made with military precision.
I'd settled into my seat that also had a great view of the orchestra, and it was then that I realized there was no curtain. The stage was open and empty, and when the house lights went down, the first person to appear was a man in a suit, who stepped into a spotlight on downstage right.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Paris Opera. Due to a nationwide strike, tonight's production of Swan Lake will be performed with minimal sets and the soloists and corps will be wearing modified costumes."
This announcement was met with whistles and cheers of encouragement from the entire opera house.
The next three hours were full of the most beautiful ballet I've ever seen, accompanied by dancers awkwardly moving set pieces and wearing heavy leather character boots with fairy princess dresses. I may have said that the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre was wonderfully in synch, but the Paris Opera Corps de Ballet might have been sharing their brainwaves. Everything from head position to arabesque height was in tune with each other. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the corps, that I'm not sure I paid enough attention to Odette/Odile or the prince. The lead soloist did have some incredible balances and the soloist in the role of the prince may have actually been flying? Unconfirmed. I appreciated the Swan Lake as done by the Paris Opera because it also explains some things in the story better. In other productions I've seen, the prince just sort of finds Odette and decides he's going to marry her. Paris Opera has the decency to include a scene where they actually speak to each other (in mime, of course) and Odette explains that she needs someone to marry her in order to break the spell. I like that just because it rationalizes Siegfried's insane decision to marry a swan lady he met in the woods at midnight. Additionally, Rothbart also takes on two personalities in this production--both as the evil sorcerer and the Prince's tutor. There's a lot of pas-de-deux in Nureyev's Swan Lake, from Odette and the Prince to the Spanish dance to the Prince and Rothbart doing some very impressive lifts with each other.
Paris Opera Ballet is an environment where everyone knows what you do when you go to the ballet. Unlike every other spectacle I've been to here, I didn't see a single person leave the production early. They gave the dancers five curtain calls, the applause was thunderous, and I left the Opera Bastille in a cloud of elation. That production of Swan Lake was so beautiful that I almost never want to see another production of Swan Lake ever again.
However, I pulled through because that evening, I had a ticket to see the Paris Opera Ballet in their closing night of Swan Lake.
I leaped on the metro at 6:45 only to encounter delays all the way to Bastille. After dashing out of the metro at 7:15, I lined up with everyone else to get through bag check and then got my ticket scanned and started up the stairs.
Here is where the Paris Opera fails: helping you find where the hell your seat is. There are no employees anywhere except at the doors, but when your entry door is #11, second tier balcony, and there doesn't seem to be a first balcony and the doors go from #9 to #12, all hope seems to be lost. I eventually found my seat by swallowing my pride and just walking into random doors until the usher didn't give me an eye roll.
I had the cheapest seats to the ballet, but they were the best seats for seeing Nureyev's Swan Lake. It's an awe-inspiring ballet, full of formations that are best seen from a bird's-eye-view, or as close as you can get to bird's eye. At the orchestra level you won't be able to see the circles that fold in on each other or the line changes that are made with military precision.
I'd settled into my seat that also had a great view of the orchestra, and it was then that I realized there was no curtain. The stage was open and empty, and when the house lights went down, the first person to appear was a man in a suit, who stepped into a spotlight on downstage right.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Paris Opera. Due to a nationwide strike, tonight's production of Swan Lake will be performed with minimal sets and the soloists and corps will be wearing modified costumes."
This announcement was met with whistles and cheers of encouragement from the entire opera house.
The next three hours were full of the most beautiful ballet I've ever seen, accompanied by dancers awkwardly moving set pieces and wearing heavy leather character boots with fairy princess dresses. I may have said that the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre was wonderfully in synch, but the Paris Opera Corps de Ballet might have been sharing their brainwaves. Everything from head position to arabesque height was in tune with each other. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the corps, that I'm not sure I paid enough attention to Odette/Odile or the prince. The lead soloist did have some incredible balances and the soloist in the role of the prince may have actually been flying? Unconfirmed. I appreciated the Swan Lake as done by the Paris Opera because it also explains some things in the story better. In other productions I've seen, the prince just sort of finds Odette and decides he's going to marry her. Paris Opera has the decency to include a scene where they actually speak to each other (in mime, of course) and Odette explains that she needs someone to marry her in order to break the spell. I like that just because it rationalizes Siegfried's insane decision to marry a swan lady he met in the woods at midnight. Additionally, Rothbart also takes on two personalities in this production--both as the evil sorcerer and the Prince's tutor. There's a lot of pas-de-deux in Nureyev's Swan Lake, from Odette and the Prince to the Spanish dance to the Prince and Rothbart doing some very impressive lifts with each other.
Paris Opera Ballet is an environment where everyone knows what you do when you go to the ballet. Unlike every other spectacle I've been to here, I didn't see a single person leave the production early. They gave the dancers five curtain calls, the applause was thunderous, and I left the Opera Bastille in a cloud of elation. That production of Swan Lake was so beautiful that I almost never want to see another production of Swan Lake ever again.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
La Danse, les Spectacles, et les Tartes
Since the last blog post, my life has been a blur of boring academics, cooking and baking adventures, and a lot of ballet--both watched from a red velvet chair and done on a mylar dance floor.
During my spring break (which may have actually been winter break), I opted to stay in Paris, since
I hadn't done anything in Paris yet. I actually didn't do much anyway, even without classes, and instead I got a lot of rest and caught up on the readings for all of my classes. One afternoon, I did head over to the Louvre and walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, spending some time on a lawn chair by one of the little ponds, reading Arabic poetry. I got flack from some for not going into the Louvre, but I don't even care--it felt good to get outside and even better to crack open a book that I brought here and hadn't yet started reading.
On the Saturday before classes started again, I found myself at l'Église de la Madeleine, which is immense and impressive. I was there to listen to Mozart's requiem, which was performed there for the first time at the funeral of Chopin at his own request, even though women were not allowed to sing in church at the time (they just hid the soprano and alto sections behind black velvet curtains). I have heard the requiem before, but it was the "rock-iem", a reimagined version with a keyboardist and a drummer and an electric guitarist. It was truly moving to hear it performed classically with an orchestra in a building like that.
I have also now been to the Paris Opera. Along with several people from my program, I attended a production of Faust, which was good because I'd never seen it, but I did study it with Sr. O'Dea in high school and I still remember most of that entire class. Opera is a little too much for me, what with the staging and then the little screens above your seats with the libretto--I was just flickering in between watching and reading and also listening, because you can also just listen to opera with your eyes closed.
And yes, I've been cooking and baking a lot. I moved away from Russia with the medovik and pierogi and pirozhi, sustained myself off of one pot pastas for a while, and then transitioned to Shakshuka. It's a Tunisian/Israeli/etc in the region dish, with bell peppers and tomatoes and onions and eggs and it's delicious and now I'm living off of that. Pi day was also an adventure for me, because I decided to progress from the apple pies directly to lemon meringue. My first try was a little bitter and weepy, but today I found that I had two more lemons, so what could I do but make another pie? This one was excellent, in my own humble opinion, and I am going to need to restrain myself from eating the whole thing in one night.
This past week, my evenings have been monopolized by three trips to see the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre's Paris tour, featuring their prima ballerina, Irina Kolesnikova. Tuesday, I saw Swan lake--the second performance I've seen of it in Paris. It was incredible--the company is enthusiastic and talented and the costumes and scenery were just what I wanted from Swan Lake--vaguely medieval and extravagant. Irina was excellent, and while her extensions are clearly capable of grazing her ears, she does something that I've rarely seen ballerinas do--she limits their height in order to preserve the alignment of her hips and therefore the line she presents is very clean. That sounds a little nerdy/snobbish but I found it very lovely. Also, the corps was so in sync for the whole performance that it was a little unnerving. Thursday night, I saw La Bayadere and got all excited when the corps performed the sequences that we learned at Sun King Dance in Richmond during the summer! I've never seen La Bayadere before, and it's quite a different type of ballet than I've usually seen because there are multiple scenes where three characters are on stage but none of them really dance--if you want to see a ballet that really showcases why your dancer friends sometimes talk about mime classes, you should see La Bayadere. Also if you want to feel bad about yourself and your workout routine, go see La Bayadere, because the corps dancers will likely be wearing costumes that show off their midriffs, and all of them will probably have six pack abs that are clearly well defined while they are delicately twirling about the stage. Friday night was Romeo and Juliet, another mime-heavy ballet with tons of fencing and incredibly satisfying amounts of folk dancing. The scene changes were a little disorganized and I was seated next to someone who was upset that people were applauding the dancers, but it was still excellent.
I will be seeing the Paris Opera Ballet in Swan Lake next, and Victoria is coming to town in two weeks, which means I may finally explore Paris as a tourist, after having lived here for two months!
During my spring break (which may have actually been winter break), I opted to stay in Paris, since
I hadn't done anything in Paris yet. I actually didn't do much anyway, even without classes, and instead I got a lot of rest and caught up on the readings for all of my classes. One afternoon, I did head over to the Louvre and walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, spending some time on a lawn chair by one of the little ponds, reading Arabic poetry. I got flack from some for not going into the Louvre, but I don't even care--it felt good to get outside and even better to crack open a book that I brought here and hadn't yet started reading.
On the Saturday before classes started again, I found myself at l'Église de la Madeleine, which is immense and impressive. I was there to listen to Mozart's requiem, which was performed there for the first time at the funeral of Chopin at his own request, even though women were not allowed to sing in church at the time (they just hid the soprano and alto sections behind black velvet curtains). I have heard the requiem before, but it was the "rock-iem", a reimagined version with a keyboardist and a drummer and an electric guitarist. It was truly moving to hear it performed classically with an orchestra in a building like that.
I have also now been to the Paris Opera. Along with several people from my program, I attended a production of Faust, which was good because I'd never seen it, but I did study it with Sr. O'Dea in high school and I still remember most of that entire class. Opera is a little too much for me, what with the staging and then the little screens above your seats with the libretto--I was just flickering in between watching and reading and also listening, because you can also just listen to opera with your eyes closed.
And yes, I've been cooking and baking a lot. I moved away from Russia with the medovik and pierogi and pirozhi, sustained myself off of one pot pastas for a while, and then transitioned to Shakshuka. It's a Tunisian/Israeli/etc in the region dish, with bell peppers and tomatoes and onions and eggs and it's delicious and now I'm living off of that. Pi day was also an adventure for me, because I decided to progress from the apple pies directly to lemon meringue. My first try was a little bitter and weepy, but today I found that I had two more lemons, so what could I do but make another pie? This one was excellent, in my own humble opinion, and I am going to need to restrain myself from eating the whole thing in one night.
This past week, my evenings have been monopolized by three trips to see the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre's Paris tour, featuring their prima ballerina, Irina Kolesnikova. Tuesday, I saw Swan lake--the second performance I've seen of it in Paris. It was incredible--the company is enthusiastic and talented and the costumes and scenery were just what I wanted from Swan Lake--vaguely medieval and extravagant. Irina was excellent, and while her extensions are clearly capable of grazing her ears, she does something that I've rarely seen ballerinas do--she limits their height in order to preserve the alignment of her hips and therefore the line she presents is very clean. That sounds a little nerdy/snobbish but I found it very lovely. Also, the corps was so in sync for the whole performance that it was a little unnerving. Thursday night, I saw La Bayadere and got all excited when the corps performed the sequences that we learned at Sun King Dance in Richmond during the summer! I've never seen La Bayadere before, and it's quite a different type of ballet than I've usually seen because there are multiple scenes where three characters are on stage but none of them really dance--if you want to see a ballet that really showcases why your dancer friends sometimes talk about mime classes, you should see La Bayadere. Also if you want to feel bad about yourself and your workout routine, go see La Bayadere, because the corps dancers will likely be wearing costumes that show off their midriffs, and all of them will probably have six pack abs that are clearly well defined while they are delicately twirling about the stage. Friday night was Romeo and Juliet, another mime-heavy ballet with tons of fencing and incredibly satisfying amounts of folk dancing. The scene changes were a little disorganized and I was seated next to someone who was upset that people were applauding the dancers, but it was still excellent.
I will be seeing the Paris Opera Ballet in Swan Lake next, and Victoria is coming to town in two weeks, which means I may finally explore Paris as a tourist, after having lived here for two months!
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Un mois à Paris
I have been Parisienne for a month now and I still can't say how I feel about it. It's been a rush of classes and metro rides and ballet and baking, mostly.
One of the best things so far is that I found the site Ticketac, which lets me search through all theatre events, comedy shows, ballets, concerts, etc. in Paris. Obviously I went totally wild with the discounted tickets. After all, this is my first time living in a cultural capital of the world, and with all of the theatres and available sights, I bought myself tickets to twelve shows this semester.
The first show I went to see was La Scala Theatre's production of Giselle. It was at Palais de Congres on the edge of Paris, and when I arrived, the section I had paid for was roped off and I was led to a much nicer area, due to underselling. The ballet was incredible, and after two viewings, I am about ready to declare Giselle to be my favorite ballet. It has a village scene, which means you get energetic dancing, and intense emotion, and then the most visually striking image of the corps in white veils. How could I not love that?
The second production was the Imperial Ice Stars in Swan Lake on Ice, which was just about as visually striking, technically stunning, and unbearably cheesy as you probably imagine. There was wirework, circles of flames, and swordfighting, but it was dizzying even to just watch the performers spin, sometimes with three people spinning on one blade. How do they even do that?
My third venture to a theatre was with St. Petersburg's Eifman Ballet. I didn't know much about the company aside from its location and the fact that it has just recently built a new academy building, but their performance of the night was a modern piece based on the Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night and I decided to go for it. It was a striking performance--the first modern ballet piece I've seen that incorporated a storyline, and it did it so well.
In terms of baking, I have ventured tentatively away from apple pies and chocolate cakes and quiches with a sudden, vibrant burst of enthusiasm for Russian cuisine. After sitting for two hours in an 8am Russian history bonus class, I felt the need to attempt to make pierogis, which eventually resulted in me boiling and mashing potatoes with ricotta, mixing it with beef, and then making so many pierogis that they didn't all fit in the available tupperware in this apartment. I froze two containers and am already making plans for the next batch.
The Russian honey cake, my first four layer cake, came the day after the pierogi experiment. It promised to be light and not too sweet, which I found intriguing, since I have recently discovered that chocolate cake is too rich for me now. I mixed up the dough and separated it into four bowls, since the recipe was for a four layer cake. I arranged my layers and while they baked, I made the buttercream--thickened with flour. I don't have any sort of electronic mixers, so my buttercream was made with whisks and wooden spoons and an increased risk for carpal tunnel. After assembly, I stuck the cake in the fridge, only to cut into it the next morning for breakfast, where I found that my very first layer cake ever was a total success and didn't taste too bad either. This weekend I plan on trying it again and making it a little bit more traditional (read: upwards of 8 layers).
A couple days after that, I tried my hand at fried cheese pancakes, Syrniki. Despite adding more flour than was called for when the dough turned out to be too sticky and burning myself on the melted butter I was using for frying, they ended up a tasty, puffed success. After setting them on a clean plate, I made a batch of (unfortunately flattened but still delicious) Russian tea cakes with chopped nuts. Now I have all of this Russian food and I don't think Kathy is going to help me eat any of it.
I've also made chicken pot pie from scratch but it was ugly.
When I don't go to see the ballet, I go to ballet classes, which have basically turned what I thought was going to be a boring semester full of largely theoretical coursework into something fully enjoyable. I've found my second home at Elephant Paname, an arts center with five studios, just a block from the Opera Palais Garnier. There are classes Sundays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and if I am not at a production, I go. The studios are beautiful--the main one has a full windowed ceiling and they are all mylar-floored. The teachers are supportive and the students are welcoming. For Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I will have to check out other studios, but so far I am very happy with Elephant Paname.
One of the best things so far is that I found the site Ticketac, which lets me search through all theatre events, comedy shows, ballets, concerts, etc. in Paris. Obviously I went totally wild with the discounted tickets. After all, this is my first time living in a cultural capital of the world, and with all of the theatres and available sights, I bought myself tickets to twelve shows this semester.
The first show I went to see was La Scala Theatre's production of Giselle. It was at Palais de Congres on the edge of Paris, and when I arrived, the section I had paid for was roped off and I was led to a much nicer area, due to underselling. The ballet was incredible, and after two viewings, I am about ready to declare Giselle to be my favorite ballet. It has a village scene, which means you get energetic dancing, and intense emotion, and then the most visually striking image of the corps in white veils. How could I not love that?
The second production was the Imperial Ice Stars in Swan Lake on Ice, which was just about as visually striking, technically stunning, and unbearably cheesy as you probably imagine. There was wirework, circles of flames, and swordfighting, but it was dizzying even to just watch the performers spin, sometimes with three people spinning on one blade. How do they even do that?
My third venture to a theatre was with St. Petersburg's Eifman Ballet. I didn't know much about the company aside from its location and the fact that it has just recently built a new academy building, but their performance of the night was a modern piece based on the Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night and I decided to go for it. It was a striking performance--the first modern ballet piece I've seen that incorporated a storyline, and it did it so well.
In terms of baking, I have ventured tentatively away from apple pies and chocolate cakes and quiches with a sudden, vibrant burst of enthusiasm for Russian cuisine. After sitting for two hours in an 8am Russian history bonus class, I felt the need to attempt to make pierogis, which eventually resulted in me boiling and mashing potatoes with ricotta, mixing it with beef, and then making so many pierogis that they didn't all fit in the available tupperware in this apartment. I froze two containers and am already making plans for the next batch.
The Russian honey cake, my first four layer cake, came the day after the pierogi experiment. It promised to be light and not too sweet, which I found intriguing, since I have recently discovered that chocolate cake is too rich for me now. I mixed up the dough and separated it into four bowls, since the recipe was for a four layer cake. I arranged my layers and while they baked, I made the buttercream--thickened with flour. I don't have any sort of electronic mixers, so my buttercream was made with whisks and wooden spoons and an increased risk for carpal tunnel. After assembly, I stuck the cake in the fridge, only to cut into it the next morning for breakfast, where I found that my very first layer cake ever was a total success and didn't taste too bad either. This weekend I plan on trying it again and making it a little bit more traditional (read: upwards of 8 layers).
A couple days after that, I tried my hand at fried cheese pancakes, Syrniki. Despite adding more flour than was called for when the dough turned out to be too sticky and burning myself on the melted butter I was using for frying, they ended up a tasty, puffed success. After setting them on a clean plate, I made a batch of (unfortunately flattened but still delicious) Russian tea cakes with chopped nuts. Now I have all of this Russian food and I don't think Kathy is going to help me eat any of it.
I've also made chicken pot pie from scratch but it was ugly.
When I don't go to see the ballet, I go to ballet classes, which have basically turned what I thought was going to be a boring semester full of largely theoretical coursework into something fully enjoyable. I've found my second home at Elephant Paname, an arts center with five studios, just a block from the Opera Palais Garnier. There are classes Sundays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and if I am not at a production, I go. The studios are beautiful--the main one has a full windowed ceiling and they are all mylar-floored. The teachers are supportive and the students are welcoming. For Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I will have to check out other studios, but so far I am very happy with Elephant Paname.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
La deuxieme semaine
I made it through the first week of classes and came out just barely unscathed--as I sit here typing this post, I am battling a cold with the help of green tea and self-pity. I've mostly solved the mystery of my weekly schedule, which means now the work really begins. Classes in France meet only once a week, for the most part, which is bizarre to me. Even small-group literature classes that meet for an hour and a half only meet once a week, while stateside that would probably be a three-times-a-week deal. My host mother seems to think it's a downside of the French university system, and I might agree, but it's also great for abroad students.
Monday, I have literature, studying Les Miserables. It was a terribly difficult ordeal to find a copy of the book--especially for such a classic book and such a common print version, but I eventually found one. The class is a TD--a sort of smaller, discussion session based class and I'm already terrified, but I would really like to follow a literature class. After literature I go to ballet; an actual weekly university class, which is excellent, although my Balanchine arms are apparently too stiff here, and the teacher tells me to loosen up and enjoy myself almost every other minute. In the evening, I have Arab Civilizations, which I have not yet been to, but I will find tomorrow.
Last Tuesday, I searched for an Arabic translation class, which apparently doesn't exist, and so the only class I have is theater class through IES. That's a totally awesome course, involving improv, which I find more difficult in French (although it's difficult in English too), and yet a lot more freeing. Somehow, it's easier to be dramatic and make things up for me when I have to use French, from "red light, green light" to that improv exercise where you can't say "no." I'm happy there, so far.
Wednesday is the day I have the 8:30am European Union law class with the IES director that lasts for two and a half hours. This past session was mostly a review of my International Organizations class last semester at GW, but I think it will get more specific as it goes on. Bonus, there's no class on the Wednesday before my vacation weekend, so instead of a Thursday-Sunday vacation, I get a Wednesday-Sunday vacation so I'll have more time to go to Paris/go to Rennes/bother Jess and Leah in London. Last week, I also headed back over to La Perverie, the high school where I was studying when I stayed with Meije and took a ballet class before going to Danielle's daughter's house, where I met Danielle's granddaughters and their friends. This is another instance where I feel ballet benefits me immensely in a different country, because even though the girls I spent time with are French and ten to four years younger than me, we spent almost half an hour discussing and demonstrating the differences between the Paris Opera Ballet School's technique and my own Balanchine technique. Ballet is universal but not too universal--you can still find a lot to discuss between schools and countries.
Thursday I went to campus in search of my African history course only to find that history classes start next week, so I hopped back on the tram and did some shopping at H&M because some of my clothes are literally falling off of my body and that kind of stuff doesn't fly in France. The afternoon saw me in a course on "Palestine since 1945" that consisted of biblical history and an in-depth discussion of American presidents and their inauguration years and immense disappointment on the part of the teacher that no one knew when Lyndon B. Johnson was elected. I have since dropped that course and will instead be looking into the Latin American history class.
Still hemming and hawing on whether or not I want to do the internship for teaching. It would require me to not take my African and Latin American history courses, but it would also be a good experience, but I also don't like teaching, so we're sort of at an impasse. If I don't like the history classes, I'll do the internship, I suppose.
Fridays are free. Long weekends, here I come! This past Friday, IES organized a scavenger hunt around Nantes that really deserves to be part of the "weekend post" that I'm planning, just so you don't have to read immensely long posts.
Monday, I have literature, studying Les Miserables. It was a terribly difficult ordeal to find a copy of the book--especially for such a classic book and such a common print version, but I eventually found one. The class is a TD--a sort of smaller, discussion session based class and I'm already terrified, but I would really like to follow a literature class. After literature I go to ballet; an actual weekly university class, which is excellent, although my Balanchine arms are apparently too stiff here, and the teacher tells me to loosen up and enjoy myself almost every other minute. In the evening, I have Arab Civilizations, which I have not yet been to, but I will find tomorrow.
Last Tuesday, I searched for an Arabic translation class, which apparently doesn't exist, and so the only class I have is theater class through IES. That's a totally awesome course, involving improv, which I find more difficult in French (although it's difficult in English too), and yet a lot more freeing. Somehow, it's easier to be dramatic and make things up for me when I have to use French, from "red light, green light" to that improv exercise where you can't say "no." I'm happy there, so far.
Wednesday is the day I have the 8:30am European Union law class with the IES director that lasts for two and a half hours. This past session was mostly a review of my International Organizations class last semester at GW, but I think it will get more specific as it goes on. Bonus, there's no class on the Wednesday before my vacation weekend, so instead of a Thursday-Sunday vacation, I get a Wednesday-Sunday vacation so I'll have more time to go to Paris/go to Rennes/bother Jess and Leah in London. Last week, I also headed back over to La Perverie, the high school where I was studying when I stayed with Meije and took a ballet class before going to Danielle's daughter's house, where I met Danielle's granddaughters and their friends. This is another instance where I feel ballet benefits me immensely in a different country, because even though the girls I spent time with are French and ten to four years younger than me, we spent almost half an hour discussing and demonstrating the differences between the Paris Opera Ballet School's technique and my own Balanchine technique. Ballet is universal but not too universal--you can still find a lot to discuss between schools and countries.
Thursday I went to campus in search of my African history course only to find that history classes start next week, so I hopped back on the tram and did some shopping at H&M because some of my clothes are literally falling off of my body and that kind of stuff doesn't fly in France. The afternoon saw me in a course on "Palestine since 1945" that consisted of biblical history and an in-depth discussion of American presidents and their inauguration years and immense disappointment on the part of the teacher that no one knew when Lyndon B. Johnson was elected. I have since dropped that course and will instead be looking into the Latin American history class.
Still hemming and hawing on whether or not I want to do the internship for teaching. It would require me to not take my African and Latin American history courses, but it would also be a good experience, but I also don't like teaching, so we're sort of at an impasse. If I don't like the history classes, I'll do the internship, I suppose.
Fridays are free. Long weekends, here I come! This past Friday, IES organized a scavenger hunt around Nantes that really deserves to be part of the "weekend post" that I'm planning, just so you don't have to read immensely long posts.
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