A different side of Cathédrale St. Etienne.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Being shown Paris by a true Parisienne … well almost…
Le 7 décembre 2004.
Even though I already wrote about three pages today, I’ve just been wanting to write all night. Arrangements have been worked out for my weekend in Paris- and my giddiness abates not. After making arrangements to stay with Kim, I called Amelia to tell her that I would be in on Thursday night, luckily after her work hours are over, though it would be cool to see her internship! Imagine, Amelia the smart young professional speaking and handling details in French. It’s just great to be met in a train station. Unlike in an airport, you can still wait for someone on the quay and greet them as they get off the car. Whether I’m meeting someone or being met, it’s just such a great experience. I never got to meet anyone in Toulouse. It was too far for Kristen to come and the program was so intensive that there wasn’t much time to meet someone, so no one came to Toulouse. I had loads of fun during my time there, but there would be days when I would walk along the streets and think, I need to remember to take so-and-so here, we should go there, this view is just so lovely they can’t miss this, and I am getting so good at directions. The closest I’ve come to playing tour guide in Toulouse is sending Amelia a double length SMS on the Ville Rose. I relish that Amelia is getting to show me Paris; I know that she has already shown her family, but its so much fun when you get to be the tour guide for someone and impart all the little details that you know, showing of your intimate acquaintance with a place you love dearly. Hence I’m excited to be shown Paris by someone who is as good as a Parisenne as anyone else.
And the walls shook and the ground tumbled…
Le 7 décembre 2004.
Rather startlingly, I almost forgot to mention the earthquake. As was the only other earthquake I’ve ever been through, it was nothing extreme. Apparently around a five on the Richter scale, the epicenter was in Freiberg Germany, where coincidentally Melissa was visiting her boyfriend Marcus for the weekend. Around 3am, I heard a loud thud as though something rather large (more so than a raccoon) was hitting our building and the ground shifted, as did my creaky bed. It was so reminiscent of the one I felt this summer, with it’s epicenter in Chicago, I automatically thought, oh that’s an earthquake. Except this time I didn’t think a raccoon had run into the side of the building, rather that the wall had made a loud thump. But I find it odd that a girl from the Midwest, who has never been in an earthquake- thankfully! I’d choose a tornado if the choice had to be made- has now lived through two, though small, earthquakes in less than six months. And I’m not even in California!
Even though I already wrote about three pages today, I’ve just been wanting to write all night. Arrangements have been worked out for my weekend in Paris- and my giddiness abates not. After making arrangements to stay with Kim, I called Amelia to tell her that I would be in on Thursday night, luckily after her work hours are over, though it would be cool to see her internship! Imagine, Amelia the smart young professional speaking and handling details in French. It’s just great to be met in a train station. Unlike in an airport, you can still wait for someone on the quay and greet them as they get off the car. Whether I’m meeting someone or being met, it’s just such a great experience. I never got to meet anyone in Toulouse. It was too far for Kristen to come and the program was so intensive that there wasn’t much time to meet someone, so no one came to Toulouse. I had loads of fun during my time there, but there would be days when I would walk along the streets and think, I need to remember to take so-and-so here, we should go there, this view is just so lovely they can’t miss this, and I am getting so good at directions. The closest I’ve come to playing tour guide in Toulouse is sending Amelia a double length SMS on the Ville Rose. I relish that Amelia is getting to show me Paris; I know that she has already shown her family, but its so much fun when you get to be the tour guide for someone and impart all the little details that you know, showing of your intimate acquaintance with a place you love dearly. Hence I’m excited to be shown Paris by someone who is as good as a Parisenne as anyone else.
And the walls shook and the ground tumbled…
Le 7 décembre 2004.
Rather startlingly, I almost forgot to mention the earthquake. As was the only other earthquake I’ve ever been through, it was nothing extreme. Apparently around a five on the Richter scale, the epicenter was in Freiberg Germany, where coincidentally Melissa was visiting her boyfriend Marcus for the weekend. Around 3am, I heard a loud thud as though something rather large (more so than a raccoon) was hitting our building and the ground shifted, as did my creaky bed. It was so reminiscent of the one I felt this summer, with it’s epicenter in Chicago, I automatically thought, oh that’s an earthquake. Except this time I didn’t think a raccoon had run into the side of the building, rather that the wall had made a loud thump. But I find it odd that a girl from the Midwest, who has never been in an earthquake- thankfully! I’d choose a tornado if the choice had to be made- has now lived through two, though small, earthquakes in less than six months. And I’m not even in California!
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Open-face PB & J and Teachers’ Strike.
Le 7 décembre 2004.
For reasons of solidarity, today there is a teachers’ strike, though I have yet to read the pamphlet stating the reasons to strike and for what cause precisely. Louise mentioned that she’d rather that they strike on a day when she was working, but I have to say my cautious side is happy enough that I don’t regularly work on Tuesdays. I find it makes my life easier if I don’t have to worry about finding all my kids from the classes to which they’ve been dispatched. Not that I think it’d be something I’d have to worry about, as only one of the professors I work with would probably strike. In explanation, teachers striking in France do not seem to include picket lines and the works, just merely that the teachers decide as a sign of solidarity to just not come to work that day. And it all appears to be rather organized; there are lists of the teachers who will not be in and where the kids from those classes will be placed. It’s more that you strike in solidarity with some cause and show your support through not working also- striking does not always seems to be to create mass chaos, though sometimes it is and does anyway.
Yesterday, due to unsliced bread and no good cutting knifes, I experimented with the finer arts of creating opened faced peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As many people know, I have never been a fan of peanut butter. It serves a purpose and I enjoy the occasional taste of it, but am not the die-hard fans many of my friends purport to be. But wisely, I invested in a small jar and brought it with me from home. All of this leading me to enjoy two opened faced sandwiches for lunch the other day. It struck me also as being inadvertently the possible French twist to PB & J.
In addition to French-ness, I’ve come to noticed that in the evenings as I prepare my mouth rinse, I’ve taken to twisting the bottle as I finish pouring the rinse into the cap so as to avoid the usual little drip of liquid which always rests on the edge of the opening. Again, it seems to have come from pouring wine from the bottle, in a French manner, and trying not to spill it.
Between reading Adam Gopnik’s book and my own proper experiences, French bureaucracy seems to me to be something that could fill an encyclopedia. In fact, if you counted all the books available on experiences with French bureaucracy, you would probably have three times as many volumes as it takes for one Grand Larousse. Melissa received a large envelope from the CAF the other day, and we hopefully opened it thinking she’d received her allocation only to find that she was being sent a new, blank copy of the form she’d already filled out. It turns out that in French bureaucracy, you can’t just merely tell the CAF that you’ve moved to a new room in the same establishment, but that you have to actually start the process over again. We ended up finding this all out after we had put together all of our material and walking down to the monstrous CAF building at Pontiffroy – here I should comment that the CAF building gives me chills as it makes me think of the Central Central Building in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time- and waiting in line to speak with someone. While waiting, we also had to endure a sweet older lady asking us a question only to hear our accents and say “oh, you’re not French, you don’t speak French” even though I had already spoken about two sentences of explanation to her. In addition to all the other little details of the change in our housing, none of the assistants have yet to receive our October pay stubs, though Louise Plaid and I received our November pay stubs. As our attestation of payment is not acceptable to the CAF, I asked if I could give them my November slip instead of my unavailable October slip. After about ten minutes of argument and miscommunication, the man decided it would be alright to take the November pay slip- as long as I wrote out in my own blood a honor statement swearing that the bit on the November slip stating how much I received in October was truthful and the amount on my attestation was correct for my monthly salary and that my October slip was completely unavailable until January. Alright, I didn’t really have to write it in my blood, though it felt like it, and actually the guy wrote out the bulk of it for me because I only had the understanding of what he wanted me to write, and I wasn’t really sure of the proper wording. You’ll understand my dilemma on proper wording if you’ve ever read a polite French letter- the last two sentences/lines of a letter are simply the closing salutation. I’ll try to find a translation of one someday. It was after we had finally work everything out, asked all the questions we needed- including many “je ne comprende pas” to get the man to clarify what he had said, and had some sheets printed out for us, that we finally left. In reality, it all took about thirty minutes. We went back to Carrefour, so I could leave the papers I needed to have to them fill out for me, where we had Nicolas tell us that the whole process was bête, or stupid, and I tactfully kept myself from agreeing with him verbally, as all I really wanted was to agree and denounce French bureaucracy to him. For it was also his associate who had told me when I went to send in my attestation that I didn’t need to inform the CAF that I was now in a studio- studios get more money back from CAF than rooms do. Thank heavens though for Martine who is one of the most efficient French persons I have ever met- she’s the one who had to tell us to go to the CAF, but at least she was willing to admit that they didn’t have the solution at Carrefour, instead of just telling us some made-up reason and then letting our forms sit in the office for a month. After all that fun at the CAF, tomorrow I get to go to the Social Security office and try to tackle them with my November pay slip, because they too need my October pay slip. Hopefully my blood honor statement will also appease them. If someone wants to come along with me, that would be useful, because I’ve found that the more foreigners they have to do with at once, the more likely they are to become exasperated and desperate for us to leave, thus the more likely to give me what I want. The overwhelming technique has become my favorite one to use with French bureaucracy- especially when you have a German, an American, and a Scot all trying to get the same result. Vicious, but effective.
Tonight, we are having our Christmas as a group. It’s more disorganized than Thanksgiving, but this time easier to work out. We don’t have a set time to meet yet, but the idea consists of first hitting the St. Louis marché de Noël so Victoria and I can eat huitres, or oysters, as they are meant to be eaten and for everyone to then eat the wondrous tartefouilette and drink vin chaud. Then we will retire to our salon, probably Jen’s room, for more merriment and an old-fashioned American Yankee Swap, or a Midwestern Chinese Gift Exchange, however you prefer to call it. The main problem for me being, what to buy before the swap tonight, and something that is effectively useful and neutral so as not to overwhelm Greg with the massive female element he deals with each day. Regardless, I’m just hoping for some massive chaos, as I didn’t get to experience the strike today.
French kids are great. Yesterday in class we were working on my favorite smell, my favorite food- and they asked me how to say cuisse de grenouille (froglegs), huitres (oysters -mainly on the half shell), and fruit de mer (seafood). I have to wonder if it was to try and gross me out, but if it was, it backfired on them and they ended up having to convince me that they actually did like things like this. I told them that they were great and more often than not, kids in the States do not like food like this.
On Thursday or Friday, I will be heading to Paris for the weekend, to see Amelia and Liz before they leave, and to meet up with Thanh Ly and her sister Kim and Kristen. As I will be arriving before the weekend, and Kim will be working some, I am excited to spend time wandering around again in a Paris all dressed up in festive Noël decorations. My plan includes returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg, as Kim D and I went when I first arrived in September but was too jetlagged to remember to take photos. As it’s quite possibly my favorite place in Paris, and inspired by reading Paris to the Moon. I doubt to see the petonque players, though I have hope- I desperately miss stumbling across random old men playing in the parks in Toulouse, as hardly anyone plays in the north, or Metz at least. My excitement for the weekend also includes my first opportunity to use my carte professionelle at the Louvre, where rumour has it that I can use the carte to get in for free. As I do not have Patience with me this time to get help me get in free, I was worried that I might have to actually start paying to get into the museum. Once, Kristen and Thanh Ly arrive, we’ll be checking out the American Library and seeing more of the Christmas sights of Paris. Honestly, I’m as giddy as a child for the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade, just to get to see Paris for Christmas!
Exciting final news for the day: Louise gets to move into a studio! Huitres for supper!
For reasons of solidarity, today there is a teachers’ strike, though I have yet to read the pamphlet stating the reasons to strike and for what cause precisely. Louise mentioned that she’d rather that they strike on a day when she was working, but I have to say my cautious side is happy enough that I don’t regularly work on Tuesdays. I find it makes my life easier if I don’t have to worry about finding all my kids from the classes to which they’ve been dispatched. Not that I think it’d be something I’d have to worry about, as only one of the professors I work with would probably strike. In explanation, teachers striking in France do not seem to include picket lines and the works, just merely that the teachers decide as a sign of solidarity to just not come to work that day. And it all appears to be rather organized; there are lists of the teachers who will not be in and where the kids from those classes will be placed. It’s more that you strike in solidarity with some cause and show your support through not working also- striking does not always seems to be to create mass chaos, though sometimes it is and does anyway.
Yesterday, due to unsliced bread and no good cutting knifes, I experimented with the finer arts of creating opened faced peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As many people know, I have never been a fan of peanut butter. It serves a purpose and I enjoy the occasional taste of it, but am not the die-hard fans many of my friends purport to be. But wisely, I invested in a small jar and brought it with me from home. All of this leading me to enjoy two opened faced sandwiches for lunch the other day. It struck me also as being inadvertently the possible French twist to PB & J.
In addition to French-ness, I’ve come to noticed that in the evenings as I prepare my mouth rinse, I’ve taken to twisting the bottle as I finish pouring the rinse into the cap so as to avoid the usual little drip of liquid which always rests on the edge of the opening. Again, it seems to have come from pouring wine from the bottle, in a French manner, and trying not to spill it.
Between reading Adam Gopnik’s book and my own proper experiences, French bureaucracy seems to me to be something that could fill an encyclopedia. In fact, if you counted all the books available on experiences with French bureaucracy, you would probably have three times as many volumes as it takes for one Grand Larousse. Melissa received a large envelope from the CAF the other day, and we hopefully opened it thinking she’d received her allocation only to find that she was being sent a new, blank copy of the form she’d already filled out. It turns out that in French bureaucracy, you can’t just merely tell the CAF that you’ve moved to a new room in the same establishment, but that you have to actually start the process over again. We ended up finding this all out after we had put together all of our material and walking down to the monstrous CAF building at Pontiffroy – here I should comment that the CAF building gives me chills as it makes me think of the Central Central Building in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time- and waiting in line to speak with someone. While waiting, we also had to endure a sweet older lady asking us a question only to hear our accents and say “oh, you’re not French, you don’t speak French” even though I had already spoken about two sentences of explanation to her. In addition to all the other little details of the change in our housing, none of the assistants have yet to receive our October pay stubs, though Louise Plaid and I received our November pay stubs. As our attestation of payment is not acceptable to the CAF, I asked if I could give them my November slip instead of my unavailable October slip. After about ten minutes of argument and miscommunication, the man decided it would be alright to take the November pay slip- as long as I wrote out in my own blood a honor statement swearing that the bit on the November slip stating how much I received in October was truthful and the amount on my attestation was correct for my monthly salary and that my October slip was completely unavailable until January. Alright, I didn’t really have to write it in my blood, though it felt like it, and actually the guy wrote out the bulk of it for me because I only had the understanding of what he wanted me to write, and I wasn’t really sure of the proper wording. You’ll understand my dilemma on proper wording if you’ve ever read a polite French letter- the last two sentences/lines of a letter are simply the closing salutation. I’ll try to find a translation of one someday. It was after we had finally work everything out, asked all the questions we needed- including many “je ne comprende pas” to get the man to clarify what he had said, and had some sheets printed out for us, that we finally left. In reality, it all took about thirty minutes. We went back to Carrefour, so I could leave the papers I needed to have to them fill out for me, where we had Nicolas tell us that the whole process was bête, or stupid, and I tactfully kept myself from agreeing with him verbally, as all I really wanted was to agree and denounce French bureaucracy to him. For it was also his associate who had told me when I went to send in my attestation that I didn’t need to inform the CAF that I was now in a studio- studios get more money back from CAF than rooms do. Thank heavens though for Martine who is one of the most efficient French persons I have ever met- she’s the one who had to tell us to go to the CAF, but at least she was willing to admit that they didn’t have the solution at Carrefour, instead of just telling us some made-up reason and then letting our forms sit in the office for a month. After all that fun at the CAF, tomorrow I get to go to the Social Security office and try to tackle them with my November pay slip, because they too need my October pay slip. Hopefully my blood honor statement will also appease them. If someone wants to come along with me, that would be useful, because I’ve found that the more foreigners they have to do with at once, the more likely they are to become exasperated and desperate for us to leave, thus the more likely to give me what I want. The overwhelming technique has become my favorite one to use with French bureaucracy- especially when you have a German, an American, and a Scot all trying to get the same result. Vicious, but effective.
Tonight, we are having our Christmas as a group. It’s more disorganized than Thanksgiving, but this time easier to work out. We don’t have a set time to meet yet, but the idea consists of first hitting the St. Louis marché de Noël so Victoria and I can eat huitres, or oysters, as they are meant to be eaten and for everyone to then eat the wondrous tartefouilette and drink vin chaud. Then we will retire to our salon, probably Jen’s room, for more merriment and an old-fashioned American Yankee Swap, or a Midwestern Chinese Gift Exchange, however you prefer to call it. The main problem for me being, what to buy before the swap tonight, and something that is effectively useful and neutral so as not to overwhelm Greg with the massive female element he deals with each day. Regardless, I’m just hoping for some massive chaos, as I didn’t get to experience the strike today.
French kids are great. Yesterday in class we were working on my favorite smell, my favorite food- and they asked me how to say cuisse de grenouille (froglegs), huitres (oysters -mainly on the half shell), and fruit de mer (seafood). I have to wonder if it was to try and gross me out, but if it was, it backfired on them and they ended up having to convince me that they actually did like things like this. I told them that they were great and more often than not, kids in the States do not like food like this.
On Thursday or Friday, I will be heading to Paris for the weekend, to see Amelia and Liz before they leave, and to meet up with Thanh Ly and her sister Kim and Kristen. As I will be arriving before the weekend, and Kim will be working some, I am excited to spend time wandering around again in a Paris all dressed up in festive Noël decorations. My plan includes returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg, as Kim D and I went when I first arrived in September but was too jetlagged to remember to take photos. As it’s quite possibly my favorite place in Paris, and inspired by reading Paris to the Moon. I doubt to see the petonque players, though I have hope- I desperately miss stumbling across random old men playing in the parks in Toulouse, as hardly anyone plays in the north, or Metz at least. My excitement for the weekend also includes my first opportunity to use my carte professionelle at the Louvre, where rumour has it that I can use the carte to get in for free. As I do not have Patience with me this time to get help me get in free, I was worried that I might have to actually start paying to get into the museum. Once, Kristen and Thanh Ly arrive, we’ll be checking out the American Library and seeing more of the Christmas sights of Paris. Honestly, I’m as giddy as a child for the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade, just to get to see Paris for Christmas!
Exciting final news for the day: Louise gets to move into a studio! Huitres for supper!
Friday, December 03, 2004
Paris to the… Moselle.
Le 2 décembre 2004.
Rereading Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon for the third time, but reading it this time in France, has been quite the relief. The majority of his experiences are ones that I have lived through, either in Toulouse or this year in Metz. Earlier in the book, he commented on what really makes culture shock such a disruption in your life is that it is the focus of the differences between the little things. Gopnik says that it’s the things like how lunch as a concept differs between the two countries or how soup in France is blended instead of in bits and pieces like in the States. You don’t really mind the difference, but the fact that the difference exists does unsettle you momentarily. For a second example, door knobs in France totally through me off for about the first month and a half before I re-trained myself to always look at the knob before reaching for it to avoid awkward and frustrating situation. In addition, he comments on how “[w]e breathe in our first language, and swim in our second” and this is completely true for the majority of the world’s population. The ease with which we speak our mother tongue can make the second language seem like such a travail- each sentence and pronunciation a task of such magnitude to make us want to cower under our covers for the entire day. But I remember finding the courage last year from someplace, getting out of bed, and going out to face the day. Each day then became for me a success story, rather a badge of honor for me to display for the simple fact of overcoming my own fears. It gave to each day such a feeling of sink or swim, but each day I swam, it increased my joy of life to such extent that returning to an all-english environment was like coming down from an incredible high. In the end, all I'm trying to say is that reverse culture shock and loss of such extreme meaning in my life made it so difficult for me to return to a setting that just couldn't offer me the same fulfillment at the end of the day. If and how that has changed me is something I'm still finding out. Yet, I feel it can't be that any of the changes would be undesirable, and that I hope in the end some differences have been made.
Rereading Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon for the third time, but reading it this time in France, has been quite the relief. The majority of his experiences are ones that I have lived through, either in Toulouse or this year in Metz. Earlier in the book, he commented on what really makes culture shock such a disruption in your life is that it is the focus of the differences between the little things. Gopnik says that it’s the things like how lunch as a concept differs between the two countries or how soup in France is blended instead of in bits and pieces like in the States. You don’t really mind the difference, but the fact that the difference exists does unsettle you momentarily. For a second example, door knobs in France totally through me off for about the first month and a half before I re-trained myself to always look at the knob before reaching for it to avoid awkward and frustrating situation. In addition, he comments on how “[w]e breathe in our first language, and swim in our second” and this is completely true for the majority of the world’s population. The ease with which we speak our mother tongue can make the second language seem like such a travail- each sentence and pronunciation a task of such magnitude to make us want to cower under our covers for the entire day. But I remember finding the courage last year from someplace, getting out of bed, and going out to face the day. Each day then became for me a success story, rather a badge of honor for me to display for the simple fact of overcoming my own fears. It gave to each day such a feeling of sink or swim, but each day I swam, it increased my joy of life to such extent that returning to an all-english environment was like coming down from an incredible high. In the end, all I'm trying to say is that reverse culture shock and loss of such extreme meaning in my life made it so difficult for me to return to a setting that just couldn't offer me the same fulfillment at the end of the day. If and how that has changed me is something I'm still finding out. Yet, I feel it can't be that any of the changes would be undesirable, and that I hope in the end some differences have been made.
Chickens and Cabbages.
Le 1 décembre 2004.
Victoria commented last night during tea that France is really a big country, and in comparison to the rest of the European countries, it really is rather larger than the others. But it made me consider distances and relativity of- such that, to drive from home to school in the States, it would take me about three and a half hours. In three hours, I can get from Metz to Paris. If I drove from Metz to Toulouse, I assume it would take about eight hours; in that same amount of time, I could get from my home to Chicago. In the time it would take me to get from Los Angeles to New York, I supposedly get from Paris to St. Petersburg. The map of Europe on my map makes me realize how much distance does exist within the subcontinent, but still my own, proper country still outmasses the almost 40 countries that make up Europe. That is still something that actually does frappe me.
Speaking of subcontinent, one thing that the French educative system teaches is that there are five continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, the American continent, and Australia. But with my Midwestern United States educative system upbringing, I find it difficult and ridiculous to give Europe status as a proper continent while denying that the American continent is actually two separate continents and the right to Antarctica its own proper status. It’s all rather pretentious in my book. But it’s also just another aspect of another country and culture that I must just learn to accept and not criticize—just that that little detail is so easy to criticize.
French bureaucracy is like a spoiled child. Just as you think you’ve managed to placate the brat, it comes running straight into the back of your legs, tackles you to the ground and demands that you acknowledge its presence fully. The securité sociale sent me a letter, after I was assured that my dossier was complete enough to receive a provisionary number, stating that they needed my pay stub from October, even though we had explained that we wouldn’t receive one until January. So I went back in today, with a photocopy of my attestation of pay (attestations are the most useful things and as such are the most annoying things to receive) hoping that it would placate this demon of a child. All I received for my effort was a papercut, a curt “merci” and was told that the girl behind the desk didn’t really know if the attestation would work or if I would receive my provisionary number, have a good day.
Wandering into Centre St. Jacques on my way to ATAC to get juice for our French breakfast at dinner, I was walking passed boulangerie row when I overheard a forty-something man on the phone, presumably to his wife, as he was saying something along the lines of “oui, j’arrive bientôt, mon poule.” In that moment, I found myself hard pressed not to burst out laughing, and the other endearment I know French people to use, mon chou, came into my head. For Anglophones, it does seem funny that French people refer to their dearly loved ones as my chicken or my cabbage, but it can’t truly seem that much more bizarre to here Anglos use honey or sweetie in the same context. But I still can’t help but to laugh when I hear someone being called my cabbage or my chicken, especially at forty years old.
It’s easy to take for granted sometimes that I’m in France, and that I live in a nice sized city that’s only three hours from Paris. Yet, it only takes a trip to Paris to remind me that I can just up and go to Paris. It’s still quite magical I find to just say, oh I’m going to Paris for the weekend then. Truly, loads of people can say that, but really a whole load more cannot just say that! So, yes, now you know. I am going to Paris next weekend to meet up with Kristen and some new French friends, and hopefully to see Amelia and Liz before they leave, as sadly, they will soon be doing. So once again, I will see Paris lit up for the Christmas season, and I’m really rather excited! “Imagine, Paris at Christmas!”
Victoria commented last night during tea that France is really a big country, and in comparison to the rest of the European countries, it really is rather larger than the others. But it made me consider distances and relativity of- such that, to drive from home to school in the States, it would take me about three and a half hours. In three hours, I can get from Metz to Paris. If I drove from Metz to Toulouse, I assume it would take about eight hours; in that same amount of time, I could get from my home to Chicago. In the time it would take me to get from Los Angeles to New York, I supposedly get from Paris to St. Petersburg. The map of Europe on my map makes me realize how much distance does exist within the subcontinent, but still my own, proper country still outmasses the almost 40 countries that make up Europe. That is still something that actually does frappe me.
Speaking of subcontinent, one thing that the French educative system teaches is that there are five continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, the American continent, and Australia. But with my Midwestern United States educative system upbringing, I find it difficult and ridiculous to give Europe status as a proper continent while denying that the American continent is actually two separate continents and the right to Antarctica its own proper status. It’s all rather pretentious in my book. But it’s also just another aspect of another country and culture that I must just learn to accept and not criticize—just that that little detail is so easy to criticize.
French bureaucracy is like a spoiled child. Just as you think you’ve managed to placate the brat, it comes running straight into the back of your legs, tackles you to the ground and demands that you acknowledge its presence fully. The securité sociale sent me a letter, after I was assured that my dossier was complete enough to receive a provisionary number, stating that they needed my pay stub from October, even though we had explained that we wouldn’t receive one until January. So I went back in today, with a photocopy of my attestation of pay (attestations are the most useful things and as such are the most annoying things to receive) hoping that it would placate this demon of a child. All I received for my effort was a papercut, a curt “merci” and was told that the girl behind the desk didn’t really know if the attestation would work or if I would receive my provisionary number, have a good day.
Wandering into Centre St. Jacques on my way to ATAC to get juice for our French breakfast at dinner, I was walking passed boulangerie row when I overheard a forty-something man on the phone, presumably to his wife, as he was saying something along the lines of “oui, j’arrive bientôt, mon poule.” In that moment, I found myself hard pressed not to burst out laughing, and the other endearment I know French people to use, mon chou, came into my head. For Anglophones, it does seem funny that French people refer to their dearly loved ones as my chicken or my cabbage, but it can’t truly seem that much more bizarre to here Anglos use honey or sweetie in the same context. But I still can’t help but to laugh when I hear someone being called my cabbage or my chicken, especially at forty years old.
It’s easy to take for granted sometimes that I’m in France, and that I live in a nice sized city that’s only three hours from Paris. Yet, it only takes a trip to Paris to remind me that I can just up and go to Paris. It’s still quite magical I find to just say, oh I’m going to Paris for the weekend then. Truly, loads of people can say that, but really a whole load more cannot just say that! So, yes, now you know. I am going to Paris next weekend to meet up with Kristen and some new French friends, and hopefully to see Amelia and Liz before they leave, as sadly, they will soon be doing. So once again, I will see Paris lit up for the Christmas season, and I’m really rather excited! “Imagine, Paris at Christmas!”
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Sniffles, Tissues, and Tea.
Le 1 décembre 2004.
Sniffle, sniffle. Tissues and trouble and tea. Well not trouble, but when you’re recovering from a cold you always feel so much more miserable than you ever want to feel. So when you invite people up for tea at ten pm doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, but then when tea takes two hours it’s altogether a different story. It’s delightful to have everyone up, but when all you want is a bit of quiet, five extra people can really overwhelm. And it’s always been difficult for me to deal with people talking over one another; I suppose it just seems like such a sign of disrespect for what someone is saying, but in truth it’s more often than not just anxiety to share and create a line of commonality between people.
Lines of commonality- are they more important when people have less or more in common? I haven’t truly decided yet, but I do know that when you understand someone on a deeper level, words become less necessary- vocalization isn’t needed in the same sense. Are lines of commonality only created by a vocalized conveyance or by emotional understanding? But in all cases, they’re important regardless of if it’s with people you know well or not, I suppose.
The circumstances of a situation play such an interesting role in the development of friendships. My understanding of them is far from complete, so it’s hard to say what type of criteria creates the possibilities for different types of development. But it’s so interesting to contemplate. Last year, in Toulouse, we were all there to learn French and about the French culture and society; so we were all students coming from relatively similar experiences and platforms. This year, as assistants, it seems so much more varied, while many of us are students or recent graduates, we are all coming from these widely varied backgrounds of studies and the elements of different cultural backgrounds is even effecting our relationships. So while I still can’t really express it in any coherent form, it’s interesting to consider the differences involved in development of relationships between this year and last year.
Certainty is one of those issues that I keep running into lately- usually in forms of media, so that makes me question the validity of this issue in my life, but still it manages to raise questions. In a film version of Mansfield Park, the character Fanny Price mentions that she has no capacity for certainty, or along those lines, and in a book of Madeleine L’Engle, Bishop Colubra states to Polly that he is seldom sure of anything, and that life at best is a precarious business. So is it that I question the certainty of things in my life or that I question the certainty of the future- in truth, I am not sure of which direction my questions are going. But I am certain that living in France for this time will be an experience that will make a difference in my life, whether it ends up being good or bad. The things I will learn from living in a different country and culture, and of working in that culture as an adult, and working within the education system with the youth of the country will definitely teaches things I never expected to learn.
I feel rather clever, in that I’m considering these issues tonight, but truly I have a feeling that in the morning this writing is going to look atrocious. But hopefully you’ll be able to understand a bit of it. But on that note, I’m signing off because I confuse myself, let alone you in the process of dissecting my thoughts tonight. Time for one last cup of tea and honey for my throat.
In addition…
Le 1 décembre 2004.
In addition, I’ve always been a bit of a night owl. As the years pass, I’ve found that I am often giving to some of my best contemplation of ideas and moments of inspiration during the wee hours of the night. Yet as I and probably many of my professors can attest, I’ve yet to conquer the skills needed to turn this ability into something tangible enough to be able to write coherently in either English or French. While the point of this little tangent is nothing more than to comment on how much of a night owl I am, especially when I don’t have a set hour to wake up in the morning. In my opinion, and as much as I adore sleeping, it’s really too bad that humans have to sleep at all. But sleep I must, and so good night, finally!
Sniffle, sniffle. Tissues and trouble and tea. Well not trouble, but when you’re recovering from a cold you always feel so much more miserable than you ever want to feel. So when you invite people up for tea at ten pm doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, but then when tea takes two hours it’s altogether a different story. It’s delightful to have everyone up, but when all you want is a bit of quiet, five extra people can really overwhelm. And it’s always been difficult for me to deal with people talking over one another; I suppose it just seems like such a sign of disrespect for what someone is saying, but in truth it’s more often than not just anxiety to share and create a line of commonality between people.
Lines of commonality- are they more important when people have less or more in common? I haven’t truly decided yet, but I do know that when you understand someone on a deeper level, words become less necessary- vocalization isn’t needed in the same sense. Are lines of commonality only created by a vocalized conveyance or by emotional understanding? But in all cases, they’re important regardless of if it’s with people you know well or not, I suppose.
The circumstances of a situation play such an interesting role in the development of friendships. My understanding of them is far from complete, so it’s hard to say what type of criteria creates the possibilities for different types of development. But it’s so interesting to contemplate. Last year, in Toulouse, we were all there to learn French and about the French culture and society; so we were all students coming from relatively similar experiences and platforms. This year, as assistants, it seems so much more varied, while many of us are students or recent graduates, we are all coming from these widely varied backgrounds of studies and the elements of different cultural backgrounds is even effecting our relationships. So while I still can’t really express it in any coherent form, it’s interesting to consider the differences involved in development of relationships between this year and last year.
Certainty is one of those issues that I keep running into lately- usually in forms of media, so that makes me question the validity of this issue in my life, but still it manages to raise questions. In a film version of Mansfield Park, the character Fanny Price mentions that she has no capacity for certainty, or along those lines, and in a book of Madeleine L’Engle, Bishop Colubra states to Polly that he is seldom sure of anything, and that life at best is a precarious business. So is it that I question the certainty of things in my life or that I question the certainty of the future- in truth, I am not sure of which direction my questions are going. But I am certain that living in France for this time will be an experience that will make a difference in my life, whether it ends up being good or bad. The things I will learn from living in a different country and culture, and of working in that culture as an adult, and working within the education system with the youth of the country will definitely teaches things I never expected to learn.
I feel rather clever, in that I’m considering these issues tonight, but truly I have a feeling that in the morning this writing is going to look atrocious. But hopefully you’ll be able to understand a bit of it. But on that note, I’m signing off because I confuse myself, let alone you in the process of dissecting my thoughts tonight. Time for one last cup of tea and honey for my throat.
In addition…
Le 1 décembre 2004.
In addition, I’ve always been a bit of a night owl. As the years pass, I’ve found that I am often giving to some of my best contemplation of ideas and moments of inspiration during the wee hours of the night. Yet as I and probably many of my professors can attest, I’ve yet to conquer the skills needed to turn this ability into something tangible enough to be able to write coherently in either English or French. While the point of this little tangent is nothing more than to comment on how much of a night owl I am, especially when I don’t have a set hour to wake up in the morning. In my opinion, and as much as I adore sleeping, it’s really too bad that humans have to sleep at all. But sleep I must, and so good night, finally!
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