Faire du shopping...but at least I'm in Paris!

This is La Place de la Concorde (a major setting in a short story I wrote last year)

Today, Alexandra and I went shopping since the sale that's going on now (one of the only two a year in Paris) is going to end on Tuesday. I actually bought stuff too - a dress that was originally 180 euros and a shirt that was originally 120 (those prices are approximate - I'm too lazy to check the receipt). But, I got both of them for about 68 euros, I think, which really doesn't seem too bad. I figured this was the only time I'll ever be able to afford European clothes - next, I should buy converse sneakers because that's what college students here wear. All someone here needs to do is look at my sketchers to see that I'm not French. We also walked around by the Champs Élysées just to "faire du lèche-vitrines" (window shopping, or more literally, to lick the windows! I think it's a great expression!). Anyway, I hate shopping, but being in Paris, I figure I have to go shopping at least once. Plus, I rewarded myself with some French onion soup (which they just call onion soup here - go figure! Maybe it's like Buffalo and wings). 

This is French onion soup - really good!

Then, we saw a French movie: Les Complices. It was horrible. It was like CSI Paris, only with a ton more nudity. Alexandra fell asleep, and she's the one who has to write about what happened in this movie for her film class. It was disturbing, but there's a bright side to this too - I understood pretty much all of it! There were some parts that were a little difficult because of all the slang (the prostitution parts...yeah, it was a great movie...), but overall, I think I did a good job!

This is the most expensive street in the whole world

I suppose that's pretty much it for today. Oh, and I want to say that I think La place de l'Étoile is the worst traffic design EVER! No lanes, twelve streets, a big obstruction blocking the view, lousy crosswalks, and tons of cars. It's an accident waiting to happen - that's the last time I'm going back there! 

And that's me, in front of l'Arc de Triomphe.

Le Centre de Georges Pompidou

I have officially changed my mind about Le Centre de Georges Pompidou - it doesn't belong here. It's cool, but with the way all the architecture in Paris looks, I really don't think it should be in the middle of all of those beautiful old buildings. They should pick it up and move it to this arrondissement - it would look okay next to the National Library, I suppose. But at least the National Library is a beautiful modern building that ties in with Paris architecture - it's a rectangle, there are four towers that are supposed to look like open books, and there's a garden in the middle (a lot of buildings here have courtyards inside). So, even though it's really tall and reflective, it at least kind of fits in. The Pompidou Center looks like a mess.

Today was a nice day without anything to do. I practiced my flute, had lunch with Alexandra (pad thai, very French), had some more Berthillon ice cream, called some horseback riding places in French for Alexandra, saw the Pompidou Center, then taught Olivier some English. The Berthillon ice cream was even better today - and the lady who served it gave me the funniest look when Alexandra ordered the salted caramel. She recognizes me now, and thinks it's really funny how I come in so often. The last time I was there, this American wanted coffee ice cream, and she said they didn't have any, so he asked if they had something like coffee, and she didn't quite understand. So, I told him no, but that the caramel was delicious, so he ordered that. I had been speaking French when he walked in, so when I switched to English, he was amazed how good my English was - it was pretty funny! Anyway, teaching English is such easy money! 20 euros for speaking English for an hour and a half? I speak English every single day of my life - no one's ever paid me for it before. He might as well pay me for breathing or eating. But it's fun and interesting to help someone learn English, and also to see what parts of English are problems for the French. Apparently I speak pretty fast and my accent is different from what he's used to, because he's spent a lot of time in London. So, it was a learning experience for me too - but in the same way that everything here is a sort of inadvertent learning experience. I can't wait to teach some more!

Enfantillage

I can't remember if I've mentioned French showers yet or not, but I don't like them. You can't even call them showers really - it's a bathtub with a shower head that you have to hold. Now, they might not all be like the one I have here with my host family (though, this one seems to fit the description the housing director gave us), but there isn't even a shower curtain. Since I'm living in someone else's house, I don't want to take really long showers, but lately, I've had no choice - I can barely figure it out. And I certainly can't ask "Excusez-moi, mais comment peut-on prendre une douche en ce pays?" (Excuse me, but how does one take a shower in this country?) Tonight, I found out that the thing is temperamental and sometimes, the shower head doesn't work. Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Anyway, I thought that deserved a mention.

Course selection is finally over, and I'm very happy. I'm going to take three courses at Paris VIII-St. Denis (a writing workshop where they teach you to write with constraints like l'OuLiPo, a literature class about Paris and how it's impacted French literature where we'll visit different parts of Paris that are mentioned in novels, and a history class about the reign of Louis XIV), one at Paris IV-La Sorbonne (a basic philosophy course), and finally, a French literature course at l'ENS (that will be impossible, but I can't wait!)!

Then, today, we talked about the differences between French and American universities. First, in American universities, since they cost so much more, they told us students are treated like clients, and as such, we get individualized attention, they make sure we have the guidance we need to graduate, there's one-on-one time with professors, etc. But, in French schools, since they're all public and the entire country pays for students to go to school, the students aren't at the center of the picture. A certain degree of anonymity is always nice, though, so I don't think I'll mind going a semester without being important. They also said that, in American universities, the professors give more homework and are more explicit about what is expected of the students - usually presenting a syllabus and a reading list. However, at French universities, students have more liberties, in a sense. The professor starts by handing out a bibliography for the course, but the students choose which books to use. Maybe the professor will choose one or two as textbooks, but it's up to the student how many extra books he/she reads and why. Then, there are only two or three real graded assignments in French classes (oral presentations, disserations, or a test). I've already talked about the methodology behind the dissertation, but the oral presentations and tests are a little different too. They told us not to be afraid of speaking, even if our French isn't perfect, because the students and the professor will already be impressed at our courage for taking these courses in French, so they'll focus less on how we say things and more on what we say. Then, with the tests, the professor won't say what kind of test it will be. And they told us not to be too afraid about getting bad grades - apparently, all French professors give bad grades. Grades here are out of 20, and the saying goes: "20 is for God, 19 is for the professor, and after that, we'll see." So, I suppose we'll see. CUPA has deemed a 9/20 a passing grade, and since, when you study abroad, it's all pass/fail, all I need is a 9. Woohoo! The final difference is that, in America, college is seen as a transition period between adolescence and adulthood, whereas here, college students are viewed right away as adults. Even though many still live with their parents while they go to college, they are supposedly incredibly independent and, since these schools don't have real campuses, treat Paris as their own personal campus. It was an interesting discussion.

Today, I also went back to l'ENS to see where my course is going to be on Monday. It's right next to La Salle Beckett (because, of course, Samuel Beckett taught there!). I also took another good look at the Ernests, and found an adorable kitty, which I proceeded to pet for a while. He must have been a smart cat to pass the concours to get in. Hopefully, he's there for the education, and not for the Ernests! Then, I got some more Berthillon ice cream (salted caramel, my new favorite flavor!), and on the way back, I had one of those moments. I was walking along the Seine, ice cream cone in hand, passing by Notre-Dame, and suddenly, it hit me all over again that I'm actually in Paris! It's just so incredible - this city is so old, and has inspired millions, and I'm here right now. All of the customs and traditions (academic and otherwise) that I've been observing, are older than anything in the United States, and everyone here is really proud of their culture and language. The opportunity to learn just by living day by day is incredible! My courses haven't even started yet, and I feel as though I've learned more than I could have learned studying French at Hopkins my whole life.

That's it for tonight. I really need to stop staying up so late. I'm putting a picture of the ENS cat here, and I'll put the CUPA party pictures on yesterday's blog.

La Soirée de CUPA

This is going to be a short entry because it's really late. Today was unnecessarily busy. First, we had to be at CUPA at 10:30 to talk about courses, but everything they said they had already told us in our individual meetings. Then, we had a lunch to celebrate the end of orientation. Basically, it was quiche and cake. The top director knew me by name and spent a lot of time talking to me about my flute lessons - I actually have no idea how she knew me by name, since we had never really seen her before. Then, there was a session on methodology specific to taking a history course, which now I'm going to have to do, but the methodology wasn't really all that different. The different parts were how to cite sources, quotations, and just how to think about the questions. Then, I had my last language course (which is good, since that was not my favorite course), in which he basically told us to make an outline for an hour in class after Zach was done with his speech about the newspaper articles. In-class work seemed like a waste of time, especially since it had nothing to do with "la langue" and we had already covered making outlines in methodology.

Then, tonight was the party! They invited tons of French people - the friends and relatives of the two students who teach us, our host brothers and sisters, and more! I spent hours speaking French! It was fantastic - I talked to this one girl named Charline for a long time. She even gave a bunch of us her phone number and told us we should all hang out sometime! Anyway, I'm going to bed so I can wake up early tomorrow morning and pick my last two backup courses. I'll post pictures of the party tomorrow.

La justesse des cours

This morning, I had a minor crisis. The ENS professor whose course I really wanted to take emailed me back and said that he would have been happy to let me take his course, but that he's sick this year and isn't teaching. So, I had to find another ENS course (which the professor said I could take), but this new one conflicts with the CUPA art history course. C'est dommage, but what can I do? At least all the museums here are free, so I can still go see all the paintings by myself, even if I can't really appreciate them like I should. The new ENS course actually seems more interesting anyway.

I went into my first French Starbucks today as well - I was on my way to my first flute lesson and I was really early and had to go to the bathroom. Marie had told us that, since Paris has gradually been getting rid of the public restrooms on the street (because they're not appropriate in such a historical city), we should go in a Starbucks. But, I felt bad about going in without buying something, so I bought a mocha. In two words: NEVER AGAIN. It's so much more expensive here than in the US (4.10, but Euros, not dollars - so more than $5) for a tall mocha. What a waste! On the bright side, I found the cheapest crepes in Paris - a crepe with nutella is only 2 euros, whereas most other places it's 2.50 or even 3 sometimes. A nice Greek guy down the street from CUPA makes them and it tasted the same. Anyway, at least the bathroom in the Starbucks was nice, but the energy conservation was annoying. The lights were motion activated, but they didn't stay on for very long. And, you need to push the button on the hand dryer the whole time you use it, which is dumb and makes the drying process take twice as long.

My flute lesson was great. Bastien Pelat is a really good teacher, and the French wasn't too much of a problem. By that, I mean that I don't have a musical vocabulary, so simple words such as tuning, chord, scale, trick fingering, air support, etc. were beyond my vocabulary. So, every time he said the French words, it took me an extra second or two to understand what he was saying. For example, I played a note a little flat, and he said "gardez la justesse." The French word for being in tune is apparently "justesse." At one point, he called some notes "les noirs" (the blacks) and others "les blancs" (the whites) because half notes are open circles and quarter notes are just black dots. It was an interesting lesson for that reason, but he also had really constructive things to say about my playing. And he said I spoke French really well!

Earlier today at CUPA, we had "galette des rois" which is a cake made to celebrate the epiphany (I'm not sure if it's called that in English, but it's some kind of Catholic holiday, I think). Each cake has a little clay toy inside, and whoever gets that piece after it's cut is crowned the king or queen. I suppose it's interesting that French people bake toys into their food - I thought it was just rings. If you don't understand this, it's a reference to a French fairy tale called Peau d'âne or Donkey Skin. In it, the beautiful princess' father falls in love with her after her mother dies and tells him he has to marry the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, who happens to be his daughter. So, after talking to her fairy godmother, the girl tells her father that she'll marry him if he makes her a dress that's the color of the sky, which he does, then the moon, and then the sun. Then, her fairy godmother realizes that that was a bad suggestion, and tells the girl to tell her father to kill and skin his donkey that poops gold - yeah, French stories can get kind of strange. Of course, he does that too, so the girl has to cover herself with the donkey skin and run away, where she works as a housekeeper, but everyone thinks she's really ugly because of the donkey skin. Then, she meets the prince and he sees her trying on her pretty dresses one day, but no one believes him that she's really beautiful, so she bakes him a cake and drops a ring into the batter so he knows it was her. Then, he demands that she make him another cake, and when she delivers it to him, she takes off the donkey skin and everyone lives happily ever after. And that, my friends, is a French fairy tale! Incest, gold pooping donkeys, insulting ugly people, lousy fairy godmothers, and baking rings into cakes.

What was I talking about? Oh, right. Galette des rois. I didn't get the toy, so I wasn't queen. It's okay, though - the toys were just clay farm animals. We also had "cidre" which is like apple juice wine. I didn't really appreciate that either. But, maybe after four months, I'll like it. The picture on this entry is of Catherine Deneuve, a famous French actress, portraying the princess in "Donkey Skin."

Traverser en traboulant

This weekend, we had our CUPA orientation trip to Lyon. It was awesome! We had some fantastic food, some weird food, and some that I feel scared that I ate since I didn't know what I was eating. But, all in all, it was an amusing and tiring two days.

Geography Lesson: Lyon is in the south of France and it's only two hours away using the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, which is French for super fast train!). It is the third city of France, the second being Marseille (you know, where the Count of Monte-Cristo was from!), and apparently the gastronomic capital of France. The food is very traditional, and by traditional, I mean I don't know what I ate for dinner last night, except for the chicken - I ordered chicken in a vinegar sauce. But, I'll get to that later.

We had to meet at the Gare de Lyon (train station) at 8:15 in the morning yesterday, which was hard since I hadn't gotten much sleep all week because of the university visits. The whole CUPA team went (except Cecile), including Nathalie (the housing director), MaryAnn (the one who visited Hopkins after I found out I got in), and Marie and Chantal (the two French students who plan conversation workshops and practical things to do with us). The whole trip ran very smoothly, so I hope they feel bad about treating us like babies for a lot of it. For example, they made us all give them a "caution" of 30 euros before we left, just so we wouldn't forget to come. Then, they told us to meet at the train station a good 30 minutes before the train even got there, so we all just stood around. Basically, we were a big herd of American students the whole time, but at least we were all responsible.

Our hotel, Mercure, was huge and beautiful! The room was big with a flat screen TV, the beds were comfortable (or maybe it was just because I was really tired), and they had a delicious breakfast included in the stay. After dropping off our bags, we walked around for a little bit and they gave us a little over an hour to get lunch. Then, we had a guided tour of "Old Lyon." The city is really cute - it's a really interesting mixture of the old and the new. There are also lots of little shops and restaurants, and passages through buildings from street to street that are called "traboules." These passages just look like plain doors from the outside, so only the real Lyonnais know they're there. That's why, during the Nazi occupation, they used the traboules to plan and hide. To go from street to street using the traboules is called: "trabouler." It's a verb that they only use in Lyon. We had a guided tour, where we saw a church and its mechanical clock, trabouler-ed a bit, and then we had free time, during which we got hot chocolate and saw the second church that's up on the hill. By the way, Lyon has a mini Eiffel Tower. I think it must be a law - all French cities need one to make American tourists happy!

That night, we had the most bizarre meal ever. I'd describe it, but I don't exactly know what I ate. My main course was chicken and I had sorbet for dessert, but that's all I know. I think I also had egg in vinegar, some sort of liver, I tried sheep stomach (tripe), and other stuff that I couldn't recognize. The dinner started with some kind of special drink. I forgot what it was called, but it was some sort of sweet red thing, and then you poured white wine into it. It was sweeter than wine, and I liked it better, but I still didn't really like it. I also didn't like the thing we were supposed to eat with it, which I was told was fried bacon? Then, we had every appetizer in the restaurant, main courses, and then dessert. We were really loud too - the whole meal was about a four hour event, and by the end, I was practically falling asleep. But, a lot of kids wanted to go out. I went back to the hotel with the sensible ones and got a decent night's sleep so I could be wide awake to hear the stories...

Basically, they were at a bar or a club and they saw Marie who was with three random strangers, apparently. Then, when they decided to go home, Marie's shoe broke so they were walking for about an hour in the snow because they got lost and Marie went barefoot. She looked so perky in the morning though, but I did hear her say "mal aux pieds." I'm glad I slept, but that would have been an interesting night. Today, we went to the Lumiere museum. They invented movies and color photography. But, while we got to watch excerpts from famous old French movies, most people just slept. There were some that were pretty strange (bizarre - the greatest French word ever!), including one about a woman and her husband who killed 112 people and made snow men out of them? Then, after that, we went to a great restaurant where we had a meal prepared by Chef Paul Bocuse, who is apparently famous. It was kind of depressing, because it was probably the best meal I will ever have.

Now, I'm back in beautiful Paris, the first city of France! And, I think this blog entry is getting a little too long. But it was for two days instead of one.

France vs. America

I figured that, since today wasn't super interesting, I would just do a general comparison blog. This is probably better since I won't be able to write tomorrow - the CUPA staff is taking us all to Lyon to eat traditional French food (pork cheek soup, cow's heads, roasted rabbit, tripe...yum!). Just one thing about what I did today - I went inside l'ENS and it was awesome! The courtyard on the inside is so pretty, but it will be prettier after winter is over. I didn't take a picture because I didn't want to look like a tourist at a school, but here's wikipedia's picture of the courtyard when it's nice. The fish in the pond are called Ernests!

In the subway every day, I get to see a lot of French people, and they look different than Americans, but I can't figure out why. There's just something about their faces that's different. They have different expressions and different mannerisms. Plus, their language is beautiful! So far, I think my French has really progressed as far as comprehension goes. I can pretty much understand everything they're saying, whereas at first, it seemed like they were talking really quickly. Every now and then, there's a word I don't know, but I can always figure it out or look it up later. But, I think I'm still lacking a fluidity when I talk. My accent's pretty good, and no one seems to have a problem with that, but sometimes, when I don't know what to say, I really lose my train of thought. I need to start saying "fin" instead of "uh" because that's what French people seem to do.

Yesterday, I found it really interesting to meet a French person who was so in love with the United States. He wanted to get rid of his accent completely and make sure he had all his prepositions correct before he went back again. He's going to go to NYC, then Las Vegas. He probably shouldn't lose his accent, though, because don't American girls love French accents? France is just so different from America. They really have a culture here, whereas the American culture is just a mix of other ones. Sure, there is a lot of American stuff here - movies (everyone's seen Avatar except me...), food (my host brother, Pierre, loves ketchup), and a lot of them speak English. But it just seems like they have such pride in being French and doing things the "French way" and I don't really think we have that in America. Everyone does things differently and people try their best to be different. There's such a huge difference between every school and how people learn in the United States, whereas in France, it seems more standard. Plus, they don't think upper-level education is for everyone so pretty much everything is determined by that one huge test. Now, that seems like it would be too nerve-wracking, but I suppose it makes sense in a way.

Okay, I won't write tomorrow, but on Sunday, I'll have pictures of Lyon and "traditional" French food.