Kings and Queens - where they are now

Exams are over but for one, so I have much more time than usual! On Monday, I visited St. Denis, where most of the kings and queens of France are buried. It was a very interesting place; the basilica gave off a feeling of intense calmness, like the sleep of these kings and queens will never be interrupted. It is a beautiful Gothic structure with intricate scenes depicted in the windows, and the windows that let light into the crypt below depict a kind of flower that seems like it knows something we don't about death and light. The likenesses of the kings and queens are carved in stone and placed above their tombs. Their horizontal posture, feet pointing up to the air, makes it clear that they are in the afterlife. Sometimes their is nothing covering the bottom of their feet. But often there is a lion curled up beneath the feet of the kings, and little dogs at the feet of the queen. This rapport with animals I find strange and interesting. Finally, all these rulers of France together, makes it seem they might be finally discussing with each other, feeling not so alone because they are not the only ruler of France. Those who have never met in life, but are bound together in death by their common occupation.

Outside the Louvre at Night

difficulties and wonderful-ness-es of being abroad

(this is meant to be a sketch---not super-edited! I hope it gives a sense anyway of the two extremes one can feel in another place)

This is weird. I never know how I'm going to feel about France. What I've learned from my experience abroad is about decision making. How you have to follow your gut feeling, but then you have to accept what it brings you, and be willing to let it change. To make your decision and let it unravel if was supposed to.

There are times in France when I feel almost physically unwell at the thought of having to stay here. I feel so far away from what has meaning for me. My room becomes a prison, in the streets the old walls of Paris feel binding, they block the sun, the rituals of cafés and meals and classes where the students speak not becomes unbearable. The shifting of people is unfulfilling, in the city they move together for conversation and inevitably parting to their separate homes or classes or places. Endless wandering through Parisian streets alone, looking in store windows filled with antiques too expensive to every own to pass the time. Then the airplane ticket, the date marked so incredibly far into the summer. It seems it will have half ripened when you arrive, that everything will be moving on without you, and you will be struggling to slip in the current, unsure of who you are, betrayed by your own self who slipped away when you didn't realize it would leave you just a shadow.

But then moments of bright clarity slip in. Though the future seems fuzzy, there is definitely a smell of pleasantness in the air. It is the present presenting itself as 1. moments of approaching new ways of thinking, of living, letting foreign things into your life. Taking down your guard, and tasting different ways that don't at least at first measure up to what you know already, but are all the same tantalizing, and bidding you walk a new path. 2. moments where you feel so connected to your essential self but you let it grow in new ways, it's path no longer limited by old cultural norms and psychological rules. This whole thing lets in new birds, new possibilities of soaring, new material to work with. When you were just running out, it brings you new places. But you start to find who you are, who you bring with you, and after a while you start to let it shine.

Then the streets of Paris become warm, and gritty, and you can wind in and out of the shops and they are like your innocent place, where you have to weave your own colorful thread. Paris doesn't give you this thread, but when you have it to start to let it unravel behind you wherever you go. And all you can do is trust you can form a web that will support you and surprise you with its colors when it is dense enough to form a kind of floor. This floor has potential for great beauty, but you have to trust that it is being created as you walk forward.

Random drawings!

There were a bunch of charcoal life-drawings on the ground by the Beaubourg. My friends decided to join in the crowd...

Flower world

MONET'S GARDEN: the flowers look like paint, the light is moist like paint, the colors are unexpected and beautiful

La Sorbonne

I found in a book a recommendation to visit the Observatory of the Sorbonne (the University). It's not well known, but for a few euros you can reserve a tour for a group of 5 max. A few friends and I decided to go. It is a very small tower, amateur astronomers go there and make glass lenses by hand. You make these lenses for telescopes by pushing a piece of glass back and forth over a rounded surface for about 12 hours. They are so exact (more exact than a machine because of the random movement) that if you place a concave one directly over a convex one, you risk them fusing together on a molecular level because of moisture on the surface. Here is a picture of the telescope and open dome and the moon...

School

Hello! These three days have been wild, studying. Yesterday I finally gave my 30 min. presentation on the U.S. intervention in Bosnia to "implement a peace" in 1995, so that's over! Later I will write about a visit to the Sorbonne Observatory that hardly anyone knows is there, so check back!

This is just how it is...

Libraries

Well--I've promised to write something every day--
Today: LIBRARIES (bibliothèques)

In the Beaubourg, in the Georges Pompidou center just next to the modern art museum, there is a voice that comes on the overhead, and tells you in French to keep an eye on your stuff. But the English translation the comes on next makes it sound like the library is hiring pickpockets. The voice says pleasantly and with certainty. "Pickpockets are operating in the library. Please be aware...(etc)"

I have been to the St. Geneviève also. This is a beautiful library where you have to request a book and the staff goes and gets it for you and you pick it up twenty minutes later...

The municipal libraries are very, very small, and can be found in the "mairie" of each arrondissement. You can check out books, but you're not guaranteed to find the one you want and may have to travel to another arrondissement....

hello!!

Hi everyone. I'm back to blog-land. Even though I am in the midst of some of the weirdest studying I've ever done. It's not the hardest persay. Well maybe. But only because in France the classes have 0-2 assignments during the semester and then suddenly exams and oral presentations arrive seemingly out of the blue. It catches you off guard if you've let your attention wander elsewhere during the semester (ahem).

But here's what I'm going to do: try to write something here every day, even if it's just a sentence. So it will be interesting for you to look at it when you visit!

In a nutshell, in the past couple months, I have traveled to England, been to some great places in Paris, developed a complex relationship with the city where I both love and hate being here, enjoyed spending more time with my friends here as I get to know them better, applied for a grant to do something deliciously dynamic this summer when I come home, and am now dreaming up ways to make my last month here wonderful and fulfilling.

Thank you for your comments on my blog posts. I have posted many pictures, but not all (yet). So check them out at the link at the lower right hand corner of the page.

All the best!

Radio and sound

I am listening to some kind of bird cooing outside as the rain falls on my slanted window. I think I am quite sensitive to sound now, because of my electric piano that I bought. I doubt it actually. That was made up. But what a difference this instrument makes to me! My room is now a place of warmth and potential...

Speaking of sound, I really like listening to Living on Earth, a weekly radio show on NPR. It's very calming to listen to the radio, though it is often forgotten when we have the image-rich tv and internet available. I listen to the program online at http://www.loe.org The host, Steve Curwood, spoke at Middlebury, and the information and enthusiasm he brought to his discourse on two major environmental problems of our time, global warming and the spread of chemicals, made it fascinating. That's one of those Midd lectures that I couldn't help following up on. Try to give it a listen!

and...Dessert

There is a delicious thing called a sobre that the Zarrouatis made for my birthday (I am 21!) It's called a "sobre" because that means sober, serious, or modest. The name "sobre" in the end though does little to disguise its true identity...it's like chocolate mousse but made with butter...

Speaking of butter, the other day a café waiter made the comment that Americans love butter and put it on everything. I was shocked---the sobre a case in point, I can hardly imagine anywhere that uses more butter than in France. Not that I'm complaining...

Yay I'm writing again

Wow! I did not post anything for a long time. Much has been happening. It is hard in many respects to be abroad, and last month was the hard part. But suddenly, I am finding I finally have most things I need, including friends, routines, and a vocabulary...

Today I am going to get a piano numérique, which is a digital piano, so I'll be able to practice in my spare moments and early in the morning even though I am in an apartment building. That will make a big difference.

I am continuing to discover Paris. One thing about being in a city is I find that you can really be incredibly interested/happy and keep your face quite unnoticeable. It's funny to me to notice I'm thinking something is really cool and I normally would be smiling but instead I have an unreadable city-face. It's weird. Not to say I don't smile in Paris. haha. I smile a lot, yes, even in public. (-:

As to all the places I've been, any tourist-y stuff, please "regarde" my photo album I'm going to post later today.

tips
lovely lunch food: quiche
will post more later.

Waste

I'm finding it easier to produce less trash here. Why? Living in a small space, there's no room for extra things. And when taking down the trash and recycling is a matter of descending and climbing 100 stairs, that kind of makes it a little more inconvenient. I don't want disposable items. Disposable pens, disposable dishes, disposable cutlery, disposable napkins. I give back plastic bags at stores because I don't want to have to put them somewhere. I don't even use paper towels. I don't want extra papers, maps, receipts. Take them away!

I'm also reusing a whole lot. My little glass yogurt jars are very useful for holding hairties and paperclips and makeup brushes and food. It's easier to keep rice in a jar that used to hold tomato sauce than to keep it in a bag I have to find a rubber band for.

And as I have only a little window, it's feels better to use environmentally-friendly/less harsh cleaning products because I'd rather not breathe in a whole lot of chemicals in my tiny space.

And when I hand wash some of my clothes, it's easier to dry them on a rack by the radiator because I don't have a dryer.

I use less water because my shower is so tiny that it feels like a few minutes of maneuvering about creatively (reach the shampoo, try to lean over to shave, reach the soap, bump into the wall, accidentally turn off the faucet by leaning on it, etc.) has actually been a good amount of time.

All in all, conservation in this situation becomes easier...the benefits of reduce-reuse-recycle are immediately perceptible. Less stress, less mess, less ickyness. So if disposable items try to convince you they're convenient and disappearing and elegant, you have no obligation to believe them. They are so definitely not!

Jardin des Plantes

After spending the morning inside...looking bleakly out my window at the cold sky which gave me no incentive to go out there...looking at the computer gave way to playing piano...I decided to go to the "Jardin des Plantes," a large garden/ménagerie, where there is a Museum of Natural History. That was where I went and it was AMAZING. That parade of animals (see picture) just opened my eyes to how much diversity the world is made of, and how fascinating things are, and how humans are just one piece of the picture. The museum was organized so well: you begin at the level of the sea--walking through a dark cave of mollusks and passing by fish swimming in dark blue glass and massive sharks and very strange creatures, looking up at the baleen of a whale skeleton suspended in the air...Because the ceiling is not closed you can peer up to birds sitting above and mammals walking, or crouched over the first floor as though fishing. You ascend the stairs and see this whole world of land animals as though in real movement, like the whole world is contained within this one room. There are glass walls filled with jewel-like butterflies, beetles, and different crickets with big colorful wings. There are birds perched in various places up to the tall ceiling, cases of mushrooms and plants, and a case on taxidermy, which I always thought was some gross and horrible process where they preserve the insides of an animal with chemicals, but in fact is recreating the animal in motion as accurately as possible out of plaster and wood and other things, and then wrapping a real skin around that. The higher floors are about man's impact on the environment and what changes it has undergone. There are rooms of endangered or extinct animals. Visually even the explanations were clever and effective (an example: to show how many species have gone extinct in the last 300 years, they printed words and picture on a glass sheet that stood before a propped-up slice of a tree trunk that was 300 years old. First you look at the tree trunk, and then you read: "In the course of this tree's lifetime, this many species have gone extinct," and then you look at the little drawings and explanations.) The whole experience is awesome and frightening and beautiful...it makes so much sense at the same time. Why shouldn't the world have this much variety, this much detail, this much we are not familiar with? It is easy to forget the world is not just what we make, but has already been existing on a complex level we can hardly imagine for many many years.

GMOs, Music, & La Sorbonne

ORGANISME GENETIQUEMENT MODIFIE: Here's a cute logo (J'en veux pas=I don't want them). Did you know that France now grows no genetically modified food? I find this a good idea for many reasons.

THINKING, PARKS, AND MARKETS:

The parks in Paris are my favorite places. I realized you can go in a park and just think and do whatever you want, and it's up to you. You can look at map discreetly when lost, eat a sandwich when hungry, look at birds and plants and other wildlife when missing the country.

Markets are also magical and unreal, but real. It's like a farmer's market, but less novel to the people participating. Rather this is part of normal life...


MUSIC:

One of the greatest cultural points of contact with the U.S. here is music. Practically every store, restaurant in Paris that I walk into is playing music with English words. I heard a remake of "If I had a Hammer" with a French accent and rock music in the grocery store. This is one domain of American culture that has a lot of influence.

My music school in France is really nice. I am taking solfège and piano. It is my favorite class of the week. But try converting ABCDEFG into Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti ("see")-do and you will see it is a little unnerving at first. I play the piano in my host parent's house downstairs. Sometimes when I am walking to my room, I hear another piano in the apartment building. I think there is a professional pianist living here...

LA SORBONNE:
And...Took my first classes at the Sorbonne today. I successfully entered on the second week of classes (this was not my fault), found a seat in the giant lecture hall, later for my discussion section ran all around the building trying to find "E" when everything seemed to jump from F to G, consulted the man behind the desk in the Philosophy department who was a little like one of those fantastic characters from magic bookshops with white scraggly hair and glasses (he made several telephone calls and then handed me a map with clear directions), after which I found the place but took a while to realize that the room "S" was actually an "F", entered the room fifteen minutes late with appropriate bashfulness, listened to an interesting two hour lecture all about Navajo culture from a French woman who is an expert on the subject and is part Navajo, only to find out after class that though the same teacher from the lecture that morning was there, I had just participated in a lecture for a master class. All said and done, I finally left with the right documents for the class I am taking, and with plans to take the discussion section on a different day so I won't have missed two. Whew!

Anyway I love hearing from you all. My posts are a bit far apart so far. Try subscribing to my blog and then you will get an email when there's a new one. Much love!

Stores, big and small

Many stores in Paris are tiny and sell about one thing, which means I have a completely different and complete experience buying each thing I need. I have seen stores selling only:

-socks and gloves,
-a store solely for kitchen knives,
-boulangeries (pastry/bread shops),
-a seafood store,
-men's clothing,
-stores only selling pens,
-only posters....the list is endless I presume.

It's a little like magic. It's easy to walk from one place to the other because the stores are close to eachother.

That being said, the most terrible place I've been to yet is Châtelet les Halles, a giant underground mall where the floors are listed as negative (-1, -2, -3, -4), the flow of people is uncontrolled and not even the people who work there know how to find their way. I was lost there, swimming in circles through the crowds of people, up and down escalators and stairs, for an hour, getting hotter and hotter in my jacket, consulting clueless people and maps. So France is hardly exempt from the massive store culture I see in places in the U.S., and can be worse. I think I'll stick to the little shops when I can---it is far more adventurous and precious.

Bonjour,
I just saw the film Persepolis, an animated film based on the "bande dessinée" (that is, comic book--a popular and loved genre in France) by Marjane Satrapi. It was creative and effective and an incredible story--I hope you all can see it.

-by the way, the movie theaters in Paris are often tiny and fairly plain, without stadium seating. Though apparently there is one near me that is supposed to be cool because it is in a Pagoda-like building... American theaters are descendants of the palaces created at the turn of the 19th century, designed to treat everyone like royalty. France I guess has a different story...

La Premiere Semaine

To everyone who is reading this, I am very glad I can share bits of my life in Paris with you. I will probably use this blog to share pictures and little facts and impressions of singular places in Paris, but by way of introduction I have a lengthy post:

Already I can see that everything is different here. Last year I was mistaken when I imagined Paris to be similar to American cities. The major difference? It's old. There are buildings that are hundreds of years old and cobblestone streets...Regarding my American Studies-environmental concentration interest, I can already see with that it would be impossible for people all over the world to have the same cultural view of the environment and our natural resources. More to be said on this subject later.

I am speaking French all the time. After one week I am already much better at understanding people and speaking. At first everything (saying something, shopping for groceries, etc.) took at least twice as long as usual. Additionally, all our classes are in French. Orientation has been 1. French language, 2. art and architecture history classes, and 3. How-to-write-a-paper-in-a-French-way (rule #1: no personal opinions!)

My room is cool. It is tiny, like a room at Middlebury, but with a kitchen and a bathroom. The shower is the size of a person, but remarkably lovely nonetheless.

I love to buy yogurt in glass containers! There is also Tropicana orange juice in glass bottles! There are many of the same brands here (e.g. "Dannone") but I think the ingredients and the presentation is quite different. Peanut butter is not my favorite thing, but it might interest you (it does my classmates) that it's uncommon and also very expensive here.

Missing the U.S. a little bit. But being here is really something.