Art du jour (2)

Vierge en oraison

Virgin in prayer

Jean Bourdichon

Tours, 1480?

When I was studying in Tours for 2 months in 2010 I went to the Musée des Beaux Arts and bought a postcard of this painting. Instead of sending it out I kept it my room wherever I happened to be. 

In 2011 I was back home in Chicagoland doing an internship required for graduation. The Art Institute of Chicago was having an exhibition entitled "Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France" which I went to on one the free visiting days they have with a friend. 

I turned a corner and voilà! saw this painting all the way from France. What a wonderful surprise it was! I think I took it as a sign of sorts, but as to what kind of sign, I have no idea exactly.

I'm all about Marian iconography. I'm sure that my name being what it is (Maria) has something to do with it. :) I like the crucial role art played in the Catholic Church for centuries and I like thinking about the personal choices artists had to make in creating an image of the Vierge.

Fleur d'oranger

Orange Blossom! Every now and then I'll get a flashback of sorts to my time in France. I'll see something or read something that I recognize as particularly French and realize even more just how many little cultural differences exist between the U.S. and France.

I was in a bookstore in Chicago recently when I stumbled upon a book of wedding fashions throughout the decades. While I was flipping through the pages, I found out that orange blossoms were a traditional staple of weddings especially during the Victorian era with brides wearing them as wreaths or making them a part of their bouquet. This was interesting to me because until I went to France this past year, I don't even think I had ever heard of orange blossoms being used in any context or mentioned in any way at all.

When I visited Provence I noticed a lot of perfumes, soaps, and shampoos (which are big selling items for tourists in region) are fleur d'oranger scented. Since I've never seen anything orange blossom scented in the United States, I made sure to buy fleur d'oranger scented soaps and perfumes knowing that it wouldn't be that easy to buy such things back home. I really love the fleur d'oranger scent and every time I smell it, I'm reminded of living in France.

Francophile 4 life

Now that I've left France I really need to try hard to keep up with my French language skills or at least with French news... The farthest I've gotten is watching one French movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (English title) on TV and keeping up with a Yale lecture entitled "France since 1871".

Yale, and a lot of other universities for that matter are offering free learning materials, recorded lectures, and transcripts from their classes. Some even as go far as to have online classes where you can earn a certificate after successful completion of the course. The Yale course I'm keeping up with is pretty interesting especially since I don't know too much about the history in question. The audio is less than stellar at times so I try to read the transcripts which can also be frustrating to read because when a person lectures there's a lot of "uhhs" "errs" and scattered thoughts in general. Not exactly ideal for smooth and easy reading.

I tried to access journal articles on this period that were listed in the course syllabus but most of them I won't have access to unless I pay, which in unfortunate. The Economist actually had an interesting article on academic publishing in which it explains how the companies that publishes articles in academic journals rip off those that fund the public research (taxpayers or charities) and those that provide its content (academics and universities). Here's the link to the article, I highly suggest reading it, it's not very long: Academic publishing: Open sesame, The Economist, April 12th 2012

Anyway, from the little that I've read/listened to so far in the Yale lecture, I've gotten a clear idea of why La Belle Époque was coined, which was a definite "ah-ha!" moment for me. La Belle Époque was named The Beautiful Era in large part because of the relative prosperity and peace of France from the 1890s to 1914. The Belle Époque was straddled between two devastating wars in French history: The Franco-Prussian War and WWI. So it makes sense that when the French looked back on the era in between these two wars, it was appreciated and exalted all the more. I didn't know anything about the Franco-Prussian war until I started reading/listening to the lecture by Professor John Merriman and only recently learned how WWI was such a blow to France. 

I had to take IAH201: US and the World online last spring to fulfill a GenEd requirement for graduation from MSU. In that class we read an article on the beginnings of study abroad programs in the United States and France was featured heavily. In one of the articles were testimonials from American students who studied abroad in France after WWI. Many of them commented upon the devastation that France faced after the war both in terms of lives lost and infrastructure. It really shook the nation at its core, in a way that it hadn't for the United States.

When I went to France this year I noticed that in every city and village you go to there's always a statue commemorating deaths from the wars France participated in, particularly WWI. These monuments can be anywhere - in the town center, in churches, in train stations. Today I randomly watched on YouTube an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" (where famous people get their genealogies traced) featuring JK Rowling. She traced one branch of her family back to Alsace in Eastern France.It was revealed that her family had to choose whether to stay French citizens or become German citizens after Otto von Bismarck regained control of the area after the Franco-Prussian war. 

So in sum, I'm glad I'm learning about and connecting all these different facets of French history and society!

This is one example of the type of WWI memorial one can see all over France.  This particular memorial was inside a church in Nantes and the names were no doubt former parishioners. Photo Credit goes to my friend Hannah W.!

Fun Fact: At one point during the Siege of Paris the people began to use balloons to get letters in and out of the city. There were sixty-five balloon flights carrying two and a half million letters, weighing roughly about 20,000 pounds! 

A Brief Repose in Paris

I had a nice night in Paris before I headed back to the States for Christmas via CDG. I stayed at St. Christopher’s Hostel in the 19^th arrondissement located on the Bassin de la Villette. The hostel is recently renovated and therefore it was very easy to have a pleasant experience at 29 euros for an 8-person dorm.
 

After I checked in, I ended up walking along the Rue de Crimée in search of some dinner. There’s a lot of non-French cuisine along that street heading East: kebab shops, Asian restaurants and even what appeared to be Mediterranean pizza and sandwich place which is trendy in Chicago. I bought my favorite sweet, crème caramel, at a small grocery store then backtracked to a boulangerie to buy a 2 euro slice of pizza and a tiny bûche de noël (translation: Christmas log, a traditional Christmas cake in the shape of a log decorated with plastic holiday figurines squished into the icing). Who says Paris can’t be affordable? 

I had a nice chat with the owners of the boulangerie. They joked around with me and asked me where I was from. I always really like having this type of nice small talk with strangers when I travel. We are social creatures, us human beings. 

I took the pizza and bûchette back to the hostel and after I finished eating, pondered what to do next. I could spend my time at the hostel internet café or at the hostel’s bar, Belushi’s, and mingle with fellow Anglophones. The hostel was packed to my surprise. I didn’t think many young people would choose to go to Paris in December. It’s not dreadfully cold in the city in December, but daylight is limited which can be unfortunate.  

It was really weird being around so many Anglophones who by far didn’t speak a lick of French. I kind of got snobby and pretended not to be a native English speaker. In the 8 person dorm I was staying in I said, “Bon soir!’ to one girl who just looked at me and looked down. A look I know all to well as I do it myself often when I don’t understand what a French person has just said to me. At one point I had to go back to the room and retrieve my card-key and when one of the girls opened the door for me I explained in French that I had forgotten my room key. Snarky, yes. Do I regret it, non. It was nice to remember and revel in the fact that, hey I do know French, even if I’m still learning and trying to become fluent.

I decided to meander the streets and possibly go to a café rather than mingle with Anglophones at the hostel. I was in Paris! I wanted to soak it in even if it was dark, even if I was alone, even if I was in lesser known quartier. There really is not much in the 19^th… it’s calm and by far residential. I started out by walking the arched bridge over the canal which gave a spectacular view of the surrounding neighborhood a few times and then wandering towards an old church to admire the architecture and Latin words etched on the façade. 

Next, I walked the whole of the Quai de la Seine, a walkway along one side of the Bassin de la Villette and it was just great. The sky was filled with stars, a few puffy clouds floated by in the wind and the water reflected all the different lights of the city. I felt at peace.

Not wanting to go back to the hostel after I had walked along one full side of the Bassin de la Villette, I went on the other side, the Quai de la Loire, and walked on that side, wanting to breathe in Paris as much as I could.

The French Gastronomical Tradition from an American Perspective

I had an amazing 6 course French dinner last month that made me so happy. It lasted quite a long time as you can imagine, which I felt was a nice way to spend a Friday evening. I adored the attention to detail put into every course. The French are very proud of their gastronomic tradition, so proud in fact that it sort of gets unnerving when they often diss American food outright and believe McDonald's to be the epitome of American cuisine. BUT even though they have prejudices against American cooking, they reserve a special distaste and mocking commentary specifically for British food. You gotta admit, the fact that Fish and Chips are arguably the most well-known dish in British cuisine, is pretty sad.

Anyway, I digress. A typical French meal starts out with an apértif. An apértif is an alcoholic beverage that is served with something small like nuts before dinner in order to stimulate the appetite. Often it is a cocktail like kir (blackcurrant liqueur + white wine). For this dinner, sangria and some little crusty pastry things that looked like nuts were served as the apértif. The first course was beet sorbet. Yes, beet sorbet. It was so cool. Imagine beets like a sorbet. Yes, it's real! It was served with a flavorful toast that made scooping it easier. 

The next course was charcuterie. Charcuterie is one of the most important things in the French culinary repetoire. It consists of various porc (whoops, see spelled it the French way, I'm forgetting English!!!) PORK products. This charcuterie spread consisted of jambon cru (raw ham), lettuce, and French pickles arranged on a plate side by side. Raw ham is interesting... I actually saw the students prepare it earlier in the day. They literally took a huge pig thigh and just scraped the top of the meat off. It's preserved in salt to keep it from spoiling, but the idea of scraping meat off a pig leg then eating it, was very shocking for me, a little American used to her meat being cooked/processed/sterilized the hell out of. Charucterie is often served with French pickles which are about the size of one's pinkie finger.

The next course was the main course or plat. It consisted of an artfully arranged half dome of rice stuffed full of seafood like mussels (and other seafood that to this day I'm not sure what it was ) and vegetables, with sides of jumbo shrimp and pork bone. I've been eating so much meat in France that I never eat in the United States - mussels, duck, goose, liver, and lamb. In the cafeteria the other day they were serving lapin (rabbit) something which I feel is usually something that only hunters eat in America. I have no idea why Americans don't eat game except like deer. There are a few animals  I will NOT try - frog legs and snails (les escargots) for example. I would consider trying horse meat though. My host mom last year in France told me she grew up eating horse meat in Lyon (a city in the Southeast of France) in the 1940s because her family was poor and the meat was cheap. Then she said it became sort of a delicacy and therefore the price shot up. The meat is not commonly eaten anymore because a lot of families horseback ride and consider horses like pets now. 

Next came a cheese course which consisted of two long rectangle pieces of cheese (don't remember which kind...), dark berry jam and lettuce. Cheese and jam is such an awesome combo. Now that I think about it, in America we eat cream cheese and jelly bagels so I guess we have the same concept just more fattening. I'm sure there's an art to pairing the right cheese with the right jam but I have no clue how. I'm getting used to French cheese more in general. Frankly I like good ol' American cheese better. French cheese tends to have too strong of a taste and it's often overwhelming when consumed in more than tiny quantities.
My favorite French cheese is Camembert. Camembert is from Normandy in the north of France and it comes in a circular box. You cut it into wedges usually and eat it with bread. The head English teacher here told me that Camembert+baguette+saucissons (salami basically) is probably the favorite meal of French men. Camembert consists of flexible rind or la croûte and a gooey delicious center. I don't really like the rind, I think it makes the cheese taste bad. Another famous French cheese is Roquefort. To be certified as a Roquefort cheese it has to come from a specific place in France, so Roquefort is produced in a comparatively tiny  area given the context of the country. Roquefort is too gross to eat on its own in my opinion, but obviously a lot of people disagree with me. It's whitish with blue-green spots throughout. The blue-green spots are mold. I think Roquefort is good when it's on a sandwich. I had a sandwich in Nantes which consisted of jambon cru, little Roquefort chunks, and other creamy cheeses. It was good because no taste overpowered the other. 

On to the dessert! The dessert for this meal was a cylindrical puff pastry about a half a foot tall drizzled with a colorful glaze and filled with a similar colorful amazing cream. The flavors you could choose from were raspberry, piña-colada, and peach. I chose peach. It was paired with a sweet white dessert wine that complimented the pastry so perfectly that the taste was lingering on my palate for weeks. Why don't we do the dessert+wine thing in the States?! It's amazing! Well I guess French desserts are amazing in general. All throughout France in every city and town there are pâtisseries that sell French desserts. It's always a treat to walk by a pâtisserie and see all the pretty desserts on display. A couple weeks ago I bought a millefeuille from the local pâtisserie/boulangerie. A millefeuille is a rectangular layered pastry that is awesome. Here's a picture of it -> MILLEFEUILLE PIC! 

After dessert, the server usually asks you if you would like a coffee to round off the meal. Coffee in France is served in really little cups which you can't get it iced. It is also pretty expensive if you compare it to the price of a medium iced coffee in the States. That's one thing I miss about America is the variety of coffee+tea. I usually get a tiny coffee like a noisette when I go to a café since I don't like coffee very much anyway.

I forget to mention that this meal was served with three different types of wine each corresponding to the different flavors present in each dish. It was very cool to see the wine glasses add up in front of your plate, like I said it's the attention to detail!  I don't remember what wines they were but when dining out the sommelier does an impressive job of presenting them. Often when a bottle of wine is opened the sommelier or server if it's a not-so-fancy place will open the bottle for you and ask you to try out the wine to see if it's acceptable. Like I said, the French are very proud of their gastronomy. In Bordeaux I had great regional wine - St. Émilion and Médoc for example. Red wines are mostly produced in Bordeaux and it's really cool too in France that you can go to the supermarket and buy wine for like 2 euros.

It's wedding season

My grandparents on their wedding day in 1957. I'd like to think America's cultural obsession with weddings lies in the celebratory. With all the dashed hopes of happily ever after, weddings still celebrate one of the essentials for human survival - love, however fleeting it may be.

Found in Translation

It's that time of year again - prepping for finals! In one of my classes I'm writing a 15 page paper on the politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. I started reading Didier Fassin's book "When Bodies Remember" today and was struck by a sentence in the English version:

"The book's construction should thus be understood as a progression from macropolicies to micropolitics -or better an exploration into the heart of darkness of everyday politics of life and death" (XVII, Fassin).

The phrase "heart of darkness is what struck me about this sentence. This semester in class we read Kevin Dunn's book "Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity" and discussed the various representations of Africa created by the West.  The "heart of darkness" representation pulled from the Joseph Conrad novel has had strong ties at least in the English speaking world with interpreting African politics, society, and culture in a certain way. The "heart of darkness" representation is problematic because it applies certain images and stereotypes about Africa as chaotic, corrupt, and ungovernable that are used used in media, politics, and disseminated to the public. So I was taken aback to see that it was invoked in Fassin's great book. I had a hunch though, that the translation might not be true to the original so I checked out the French version to see what was up...

The French Translation:

Sa construction doit ainsi être comprise comme une progression des macropolitiques vers les micropolitiques. Mieux comme une exploration au coeur des politiques de la vie et de la mort. (Fassin, 16)

Lo and behold (well for those of you who can speak French and English anyway) the original French version does not mention "heart of darkness," it was merely a literary flourish added by the English translator. For years I've been drilled on discourse, representations, and post-colonial theory, and finding this problematic phrase in an English version of a novel whose goal is to eradicate the cultural and political anesthesia that is all too common in the West was... shocking. I also felt as if I were like a real academic like the ones I read in class all the time, identifying representations and busting stereotypes. Oy Academia!

Let the world change you and you can change the world

This is not a story of incredible heroism, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives that ran parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.

Oh man, I love this quote. I know a lot of people give Che flack for being the poster boy for American middle-class radical wannabes, but I really admire what he tried to accomplish, the egalitarian principles he fought for. His trip across South America is also something I can relate to. When you travel you're changed by the people you meet and the experiences you gather. Though to be sure Che saw a lot more poverty and suffering than I did on my trip. Seeing "The Motorcycle Diaries" not only made me want to learn Spanish, but also to explore a continent that I still don't know much about.

Grandma came into town!

Babcia (means grandma in Polish) came to Chicagoland Saturday to spend time with us for a week. Since we've moved out to the midwest we don't get to see her that often because she lives on the East Coast. Whereas it was a 3.5-4 hour drive from Babcia's house when we lived in Virginia it has now turned into a 16 hour drive.

My grandfather (left), my grandmother (center with baby), my great-aunt, and don't know the other guy... maybe my great- great-uncle? circa 1959

She told me stories that I had never heard before, about her childhood in Poland during World War 2. How her family had to live underground for two years, how food was so scarce that her mother thought she would starve to death, how no one dared tell anyone that her father was born in the United States and that he was living in the United States during the war as to not incur the Nazi wrath. (My great-grandfather after leaving the U.S. as a child, returned in May 1939 and in September, Poland was invaded by Germany).


It's amazing to think of the progress that Poland has made since then. After the Western Powers handed Poland over to Soviet Russia, a dark time in Polish history ensued. With the fall of communism and the oppression that came to characterize it in 1989, new possibilities opened up for the country. In 2004 Poland joined the European Union and though this transition has not been an easy one (a lot of xenophobia going on with the movement of Polish workers to the richer European countries), it was the only European economy to achieve positive growth in 2009.


It was an amazing experience to visit Poland for the first time this summer. I wanted to write a blog post about it, haven't yet, but I definitely will soon.

...particularly relevant in modern America

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

What examples can you think of? Post your thoughts in the comments section or even just post a picture!

Män som hatar kvinnor

was the original Swedish title of Stieg Larsson's best-selling first novel in the Millennium trilogy. Translate it into English and you get "Men Who Hate Women."

However us in the English speaking world know the novel and subsequent movie as "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" due to marketing purposes and I'm sure also because mainstream media doesn't have a backbone.

I saw the movie a few days ago at my beloved dollar theatre because there wasn't much of selection this week and it had a good score on rotten tomatoes. I really love the dollar theatre because I see a lot of movies that I wouldn't normally risk to see at movie theatres for $8 or rent on DVD and
"Män som hatar kvinnor" was no exception.

I don't like watching movies about murders or crime drama or psychopaths because I don't derive entertainment from watching such an ugly side of humanity.

However I was really impressed by this movie. It explores pretty heavy stuff like violence against women and Nazism. Stieg Larsson was a journalist for a Communist newspaper in Sweden just like his character Mikael Blomkvist and wrote what he thought were prevalent stains in the fabric of Swedish society... or so wikipedia informed me.

Goodness knows I don't often see a Hollywood movie with a solid narrative. Not sure if I can explain what it is that felt better than most movies I see... Everything came together in it.... character motivations etc. and I wasn't left feeling the obvious holes in the plot. It's really hard to get a good sense of a character in 2ish hours but this movie really pulled it off. HOLLYWOOD TAKE NOTES!

Oh, and did I mention Hollywood is already gearing up to do the English language version?
Is it that strenuous to read subtitles? No!! get a grip English-speaking world!

NPR: 'Dragon Tattoo' Has Designs On U.S. Audiences

Looking Back

I have been looking back on all my posts tagged FRANCE.  Some of them were about experiences I wanted to have or opinions I thought in the first few weeks of being here. Today is the last day for our journal entries before we hand them in to our professors and I thought a reflection post would be most appropriate.

I still have one more week in France left and I want to make the most of it. Over the past few months I've felt much frustration as equally as euphoria. I've learned that French people don't spice their food very much at all and though they can be pretty stoic and intimidating at first, the French are great!

I wanted to write a reflection for this last post, but I realize now that I won't feel the full effect of this experience until later whether later be stuck in EL hating the midwestern winter and thinking back to this wonderful summer or in middle age when my own children will be of the age when they start exploring the world and meeting all different kinds of people just as I am now.

Like I've said in a previous post I'd like to come back to France because I have yet to feel satisfied with both my competency in French and the number of my experiences here. I know of some people doing a program in France in which they will recieve a small stipend to work with adolescents here in French schools for nine months. I would like to try to get into that program and so maybe next year I will be writing new blogs posts again from France. til then salut! à bientot!!!

La Musique

One of the most interesting things I've noticed here in France is how much American music is played. It boggled my mind at first why people would care to listen to music they understood only in varying degrees and the answer I got from the French people I asked responded "we listen for the beat."

That's all well and good but you miss something I feel but by not fully comprehending the lyrics you're missing something great... that soaring feeling you get when you connect with a song on that lyrical level.

However, it makes sense economically for bands to sing in English. The United States is I believe the third largest country in the world with 300 million people combined with the anglophones living in Canada, Australia and of course Great Britain make the English speaking audiences the ones you want to target for the most bang for the buck.

I've been listening to Phoenix a lot this past week because their songs are good summer songs, light qnd qiry anot not too serious... plus they're French so I feel an added sense of approval for listening to them. Anyway I found an interview where the band discusses its motivations for singing in English, you can watch it down below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=y3QGd1EW2Lw&feature=fvw

I'm really impressed by Phoenix songs. Their lyrics show a pretty intimate knowledge of the English language in terms of slang and the way the construct sentences even. When I first heard of them I'm pretty sure I didn't realize they were French. My friends and I met some really cool French kids our age and we were talking about French bands and one of the boys asked if they sung with an accent andf I told him no because the only way I could tell they're French is by their accent when they talk not sing. Very interesting

On the Front Page of Le Monde

Image, Le Monde

This morning at breakfast I was skimming the July 15 Le Monde and the front page above the fold article was the following:

Le Sénat américain ouvre la voie à la réforme de Wall Street

It made me think about two things 1. how incredible the coverage of the United States is in Le Monde and how it is not reciprocal in the United States and 2. what life would be like as an expat

A lot of the stereotypes pertaining to Americains not knowing anything about other countries while other countries know about us has some legitimacy. While I was skimming the article I kept thinking that it is so weird to be learning about this important political news from my country first from a French newspaper. It made me think about how I would feel and be different if I were to live in France for more than two months...

It was very interesting to go to Poland this summer with my dad. I expected him to rave about Poland the whole time and talked about how he missed it but instead he compared everything to the United States and how it was better there. I think the only thing connecting him to Poland is the family he still has there in essence. Sure he loves Polish food and music a lot, but 30 years in the US has definitely made its mark on him... it is an interesting thing to ponder - notions of identity and nationality.

Turn the summer into dust

I only have two and a half more weeks left in France! I don't want to leave!

I feel like I haven't accomplished something, like I feel like there is some goal or feat inside me and I haven't mastered it.

And in two and a half weeks the summer will be one giant step closer to turning into dust and I'll evaluate all my experiences and lessons and frustrations of the past two months.

Then I'll go back to East Lansing, finish up school, and figure out my next step and I hope that will involve traveling.

Traveling is such an immense experience especially if you venture to a foreign country for more than a week and I hope I'll get the opportunity soon to meet new people and hear their stories and ideas.

The French, Chicago, and Al Capone

Everytime I tell people here in France that my family lives in the Chicago they frequently mention Al Capone.... and sometimes Michael Jordan.

......Seriously? Those people out of everything and everybody else? No mention of Barack Obama?!! lol It is good to know that Chicago has such a nice reputation abroad! haha C'est drôle.

Well Marion Cotillard did star in Public Enemies with Jonny Depp and both of them live in France so maybe this just compounded Chi Town's reputation in France.

Paris, Je T'aime

Following excerpt written from a Parisien café from my molskein cahier

There have already been several times when I have been flustered while speaking French. You know how they say you can smell fear? well you can also smell a flustered foreigner butchering the French language. Right now I'm sitting in a café/brasserie in Montparnasse in the 14e arrondissement. I'm staring up at the lone gratte-ciel skyscraper in Montparnasse waiting for my friend's train to arrive from Bruxelles. My impressions of Paris have so far been positive. My train got in from Tours à 15h30 and I've been walking around for the past 5 hours. While crossing a street I glanced over my shoulder and saw the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was incredible incroyable.  I just kept staring at it and thought - wow I'm really in Paris, aren't I? I began walking towards it hoping it was maybe close enough that I could get a good view without getting lost. On the way I stopped by a confisserie and bought French candies and the proprietor even gave me a free framboise bon-bon because I waited  longtemps while the guy in before me stocked up on sweets. I was as giddy as a child in the shop looking at all the different candies that I have never seen in the U.S. and the fancy paper that wrapped them. I also stopped at a 19th century cathedral as my pursuit of the Eiffel Tower became a lost cause and lit a candle for my parents as is becoming customary for me to do as I visit many old churches in France. I love going to old cathedrals and seeing the different types of architecture and art. This particular church had one of the most beautiful artistic works I have ever seen. It was a white statue of the Mary under who billowing carved stone clouds eneveloped her and her traditional globe and snake motif. From her paintings of gold sunrays spread out. This work of art stood in an enclave where several pews stood so that people could gaze at her and prayer to her for guidance and assistance.

*more to come!

New Month's Resolutions

So I have four more weeks in France left and i want to try to make the most of it.

I need to get over being shy when I speak French. The perfectionist in me wants to speak perfectuly at all times with as little an accent as possible. Thus with this sensibility, I have struck out many times in conversation because of my timidity to make mistakes.

I hit a rough patch emotionally about a week and a half ago. It was a day that I had to go to a lot of different stores to buy things for my upcoming week vacation from classes.I went to about 5 places and looked like an idiot/ didn't understand what was being said to me. I felt so incredibly frustrated like the French were personally out to make me feel miserable.

I then proceeded to rage and complain to Kaitie and Mary as well as to the internetosphere on facebook and twitter. From that frustration and overall miserableness I learned two things: A/ If anyone complains of people not speaking English in America I'm going to give them a piece of my mind because chances are they have no fucking clue what it's like to be learning a new language in a foreign country and B/ I'm going to have to get over my timidity if I'm ever going to truly progress further.

On the day I left for vacation to Poland, I got my first chance at this kind of redemption.

I was sitting in the train station waiting for a train to take me to Charles de Gaulle when a man passes by me and sits down on my bench. I thought this was weird because there were plenty of open benches in the station and my bench wasn't situated in front of the schedules or anything of importance like that. Then after a little bit he says something, but I figure to just ignore it since I couldn't understand what he saying in the first place and wasn't sure if his words were even directed at me. However, he says something different in a louder tone closer to my face, and I turn and the conversation begins.

And I had an interesting conversation with him. At first I couldn't understand what he was talking about, if he wanted to ask me for directions or what but after I asked him to speak "plus lentement" (more slowly) I understood. I explained to him that I was American and studying at the Institute and I guess he understood what I was saying even though he had somewhat of a blank look upon his face because he asked me in which part of the city I lived. I responded "avant le jardin" and he asked me which one. I told him I didn't know, which was the truth, but nevertheless I don't know if I would have felt comfortable telling him which garden.

You know it's weird. I read in my French culture book that when meeting new people the French rarely exchange first names, yet this guy asks me where I live? French people don't you think that where a person lives is more private than their first name? The whole public/private thing boggle my mind sometimes in France, and I'll speak about it more when I write my massive treastie on Muslims in France soon.

Anyway he asked me where I was going and I told him Charles de Gaulle. Then he asked if I was going back to America and I said no I was going to visit my father in Poland for vacation. Then he said "oh your father lives in Poland and your mother in the U.S." and I told him that my father's family lives in Poland and that both of my parents live in America. Then he said "Those Poles sure do love Americans" and I responded that I guess it's true (Poland's foreign policy is very Pro-American).

From there we got to the subject of politics and I asked him if he liked Nicolas Sarkozy and he laughed and said no. He then said he judged the United States for electing Bush, but conceded that the same could be said for France's election of Sarkozy, which I thought was very interesting.

So all in all I had a pretty nice conversation with this guy. I wasn't really nervous because he wasn't cute and was about a decade older than me. Since he initiated the conversation I felt more comfortable asking him to speak slower and also in talking myself because I didn't care how competent or cool I came off as.

Here's to hoping more of these situations arise in the next four weeks!

Plus Petite

Everything is smaller in France. The sidewalks, the drinking glasses, the ceilings in the mall, shampoo bottles, cars, all that jazz.

They have less space in France so it would make sense to have smaller things and be more prone to conservation but I also think it’s representative of the culture of excess in the United States. We have to have things bigger better, more impressive.

I think that this “culture of excess” can be linked to American eating/exercise habits as well. People in France and Poland put butter on their sandwiches, that’s like unheard of in the United States. (Although I’m starting to realize now that I’m here in Krakow that just as many Polish people are chubbin it out as Americans, and I shouldn’t go by my super tall/skinny cousins as a guide to the Polish norm! lol) Americans are carb weary forgoing pasta and bread for lettuce wraps while in France they chow down on baguettes everyday. Milk in France is like half and half! I drink skim milk at home and I’m going to have to take some time to get used to it again because the milk I drink every morning in France for breakfast is creamy and delicious.

I feel like Americans are super health conscious on one end and then really chubby and lazy on the other - there’s like no middle ground. Exercising and going to the gym is much bigger in the U.S. than it is France. I honestly don’t think the concept of moderation exists in the U.S. Thus we are both one of the heaviest populations in the world as well as the ones obsessed with dieting, exercise, and body image. I think I eat healthier in the U.S. but eat more and obviously walk less even on campus than I do here.

Europeans I’ve noticed both in Poland and in France utilize space better in their homes. They make the most of what they have.

My host mom in France considers Tours a small city but to me it’s pretty grand especially compared to a place like Grand Blanc, Michigan.

I went to a bar/café in town called The Guinguette on the banks of the Loire River and it had such a nice ambience with strung lights, completely outdoor tables and chairs, an area for games, a stage for music that I thought I would have loved to have had this place around when I was a teenager.

There are so many cafes, parks, and shops in Tours! In Grand Blanc the main hang out was the Starbucks where I went to too many times. Teenagers hang out along the banks of the Loire at night in circles talking and smoking (tobacco and weed) and it seems like such a nice slow paced sort of lifestyle here that I wonder how my life might have been different had I grown up here.

All this being said, I still feel like the United States is my home and always will be. 

Les Femmes! Fumez!?

My French professor here in Tours, Olivier, was telling us about how the division between the sexes in France is manifested through differing standards on public smoking. He said it was acceptable for men to smoke in public but less acceptable for a woman to do so.

Now surely a lot has changed especially in the past 50 years, but I think he said they were still vestiges of this double standard left in society.

Maybe I could equate it to something like double standard on sleeping around in American society – even though women sleep around as much as guys nowadays it’s still looked down more upon a woman if she sleeps around than it is for a man.

Anyway he gave an interesting explanation as to why it was more unacceptable for a woman to smoke in public. When a woman smokes in public it shows that she is doing something for herself in a very open way and in a patriarchal society women aren’t allowed to do things pleasurable for themselves. However it’s okay for a man to smoke in public because he can partake in pleasurable things while women had to cater to others not themselves.

Disclaimer: this was all explained in French so there’s a possibility I could have missed something. I don’t think I was paying attention but started to when he began explaining this so I could have missed some stuff.

What do you guys think?

(Image from weheartit.com)