Longest. Post. Ever.

As some of you (i.e. Rafaella and Dad, probably like half of my audience right there) have noticed, I haven’t blogged in a while. So, to make up for it, I am writing a super-extra long blog—you get 3 posts for the price of 1! However, I don’t expect you to be entertained by my life for multiple pages worth of events, so I will try to intersperse some philosophical musings/ fun facts for your pleasure. Enjoy!

P.S. I would also like to apologize if I begin to use extremely long sentences or if I have become less succinct. It’s just a part of my integration process.

Exposé 1:

Last Friday I had my first oral presentation (exposé) for my French seminar course, Introduction à la pensée liberale. This wasn’t actually even an exposé, which are kind of like oral essays, but was a review of the press from the “liberal perspective”. I struggled a little with my French but in general I thought I did a pretty good job of preparing my work; I did a fair amount of research, included a lot of quotes, picked an interesting topic, and did kind of a broad overview of the liberal point of view of my topic—presenting alternative view points and showing that the liberal perspective on the subject was nuanced. Apparently, though, my professor disagreed. He appreciated my work, but had a lot of specific clarifications/corrections to make about things I had said. So, I got to hear him tell the rest of the class all of the things I said that were “not exactly right”. For around fifteen to twenty minutes. As I stood in front of them. As they all watched me. And as I felt myself turning bright red. At first, I was embarrassed, frustrated, and feeling argumentative. But then, after about another ten minutes, I realized that I am here to learn. And although the degree of work that I did may have been acceptable for a course taught in America in English, French is not my native language and I lack some of the reference points that many of the French students have. So, I decided that I would take this humiliation as a lesson learned, and have now realized that in my French classes, I need to have my exposés totally written out (not just with notes) and I need to do MORE research and ask for help when I need it. By the end of this two hour class, I was surprisingly quite chipper.

I think this change in attitude reflects the fact that in general, I’ve had much more of a sunny disposition here, because:

1) I’m only in France for 5 months, and I want to take advantage of every opportunity;

2) I’ve realized that a lot of situations here are beyond my control, and I can either choose to get upset/frustrated/complain when things don’t go as expected or I can say: hmmm… that’s interesting, how can I tailor this new situation to my advantage? And I’ve been choosing the latter because, well, … see #1;

3) I’ve tried to take a lot of my experiences here as reflecting cultural differences, which I think has allowed me to feel more neutral about things I might normally get pissed off about, and

4) ummm… I’m in Paris. Life is good.

Yes, maybe this list is a little corny, naïve, and idealistic, but.... See #4, in reference as to why I don’t care.

Funk Festival and Francophone Friends:

That night, Song-My’s Moroccan friend from her foyer Sarah (who had invited us to the jazz club a few times) invited our group to a funk festival put on by one of her friends. I was expecting a small gathering of locals in a club, but was pleasantly surprised when we rolled up to a large university and found ourselves in the midst of a full-force concert, complete with a bar and an art exposition. Instead of the 50 people gathered round tables that I had imagined, there were hundreds, on the floor (with us) and generally packed into a large lecture hall. Three bands played, and we danced the night away. I think the highlight was listening to the French-accented audience belting “Now you do what they told ya…” to a (quite good) funk rendition of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killin’ in the Name Of”. Two of Sarah’s Moroccan friends, who are also studying in Paris, came and they proved to be both excellent dance partners and, as I found out later in the night, great French tutors (though all three of them speak fluent English). It was such a fun time, and this felt like a more authentically French experience than the California Party Posse’s normal bar scene (which, don’t get me wrong, is definitely fun too). It was just a nice change.

Père-Lachaise:

The next Sunday, a group of us decided to head over to the cemetery Père-Lachaise, which is home to the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Balzac, to name a few. You may remember the cemetery from such films as Paris Je t’aime. It is an absolutely beautiful cemetery, and we had the good fortune of choosing an absolutely beautiful March day on which to visit it. The weather in general is warming up here, which this Southern Californian native is SO SO happy about. At the cemetery, we walked around for a long time and Tami, Ara, Matthew and I kissed Oscar Wilde’s grave for good luck (as is the tradition in these parts). The graves are above ground, like they are in New Orleans, and each one is unique—with varying levels of grandeur, from humble stones with sober inscriptions bearing the bodies of centuries-old Parisians, to the glass-encased sculpture that houses two Hungarian princesses. Our trip ended with a pause on a grassy-patch over by Jimmy and all in all, it was a beautiful (I hate to continuously use that word, but it is just so fitting) experience which caused for some serious reflection on life and death. As one of the few free activities in Paris, too, this one is going on the top-ten-things-to-do-in-Paris list that I just created while writing this sentence.

Beth’s Wine Tasting Guide:

A Factual Interlude to this Blog Post, Brought to You by My World of Wine Notes

Did you know that there are 5 steps to tasting wine? Here they are, in order, for your reading pleasure:

1) Smell the cork. Does your wine smell vinegary? If so, don’t drink it.

2) Pour a small quantity into your own glass to:

a. Make sure your wine is good

b. Make sure there’s no cork in it.

3) Look at the glass and look at the color. The color indicates age (darker for a white wine, brickish for a red wine) and grape variety. To clearly see the color, hold a white sheet of paper to the side of your glass. Also, look at the tiers (legs). Very visible tiers indicate well-made, alcoholic wine.

4) Smell your wine. Does it smell like: floral? Citrus? Fruits? If your wine is from California (or the rest of the “new world”), it may smell like these things because of the addition of flavored yeast. However, if you have a French wine, these aromas likely reflect the “terroir”—condititions in which the grapes were grown. By the way, you should be holding your wine by the stem and swirling it slowly to preserve the temperature and aromas throughout your drinking experience.

5) Taste it! Suck in air between your teeth as you taste your wine to aerate it. Taste it on its own, and then with something savory and sweet for different effects. After you drink it, notice how long the taste lasts in your mouth (ladies…). Bad wine fades fast.

I plan on putting these steps in action during my next class on Monday, and I hope you use them soon too!

Fun Rock History:

A Factual Interlude to this Blog Post, Brought to You by My History of Rock Music Notes

Did you know that Techno Music can be considered the great great great grandson of African American Slave Songs? That’s right! Some of your favorites like “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” were brought to you by “Old Man River”. In the “Defining Age” of the 1960’s, Folk Revivalists like Woodie Guthrie sought to capture the dying spirit of the American South, and were particularly focused on preserving Black Folk Songs, which they considered to be truly American. Some of these guys then turned into hippies, like our friend Bob Dylan, who yielded the San Francisco and L.A. psychedelic scenes, like our friends Jefferson Airplane, after going electric during the “Technical Age”, around the time when Dylan traded his newsboy caps for his WayFarers. In the “Fragmented Age” that followed, psychadellic electric folk turned into electronic with dudes like Brian Eno, who then influenced your Airs and Aphex Twins of aujourd’hui. Isn’t that a doozy?

And now, back to our regular programming….

Manifestation:

Usually, I don’t have classes on Tuesdays and therefore have no reason to go to Sciences Po. However, this past Friday, I had a partnered oral presentation (actual exposé) to do in the conference for my French lecture course on “Large Questions of the Construction of Europe” and so my partner Dalhia, a French girl, and I decided to meet at the University on Tuesday at 6:30PM in preparation. When I got to the Metro Station, she called and asked where I was, and said something about not being able to go into Sciences PO owing to some men being in there, all of which I did not fully understand due to the combination of our shoddy cell phones and her speedy French. She and another kid caught up with me on my way from the Metro, and (jokingly) informed me that the 20 police officers I was about to see on the block outside of Sciences Po (which is in one building in one block in the 7^th—not quite as large as Berkeley!) were out to get me. As we made our way past them and into a crowd of hundreds of students, I discovered their true reason for being there: a MANIFÉSTATION! Note: I use the French word here, because the English word, “protest”, does not really do this event, or the French culture of strikes and protests, justice. Dalhia and I were among the crowd members who witnessed a handful of young people (likely Sorbonne students) take over our University in an anti-establishment tirade. They had got into Sciences Po (and thus justified the fact that we’ve had security guards checking our ID’s upon entrance into the building for the past few weeks), and chanted from some windows of the second floor of the building, where they had also hung a large sign, which (although it is way more elegant in French) read:

GOVERN, EXPLOIT, PRIVATIZE.

IT’S HERE WHERE THAT IS LEARNED,

HERE WHERE THE KNOWLEDGE IS THE SERVICE OF POWER!

As a bit of background, Sciences Po is one of the “grandes écoles” (“large schools”) in France, and is also the place where basically every major French name in politics or business did their first five years of University. So, while the staff and students are mostly considered to be to the Left, Sciences Po is also seen as “part of the institution”, especially amongst other students. Considering this dynamic and reputation, it was interesting then, to see some of the Sciences Po students chanting right along with the self-proclaimed anarchists, while others (of the polo shirt and khaki disposition) rebelled against the anarchists. One khaki kid fell, trying to rip down the maniefestants’ sign, and others made their own “Vive Le Roy” (Le Roy = Sciences Po founder) signs, and mooned the crowd from the classroom next to the one occupied by the anarchists. All of the public universities in France, with the exception of the grandes écoles, have been on strike since we’ve been here, and our friends like Sarah over at the Sorbonne have no idea when they’re going to begin classes. Perhaps that partially explains why a few of these students decided to come into our neighborhood.

Throughout the episode, Dalhia and I discussed our exposé and concluded that there was no better place to discuss French politics than in the midst of a manifestation—a truly French institution! After we were done, I talked to a handful of her friends about the cultural differences with regards to protests, strikes, etc. in France and the States and about the differences between French and American politics in general (my tattooed, Berkeley hippie, peace-loving, socially-concerned, Obama-obsessed Leftist self would probably be considered somewhere around the middle here), until the police came—accompanied by “Justice Nowhere Police Everywhere” chants—about an hour later and decided to remove the protestors. I’m totally glad that Dalhia and I happened to be meeting as all of this was going on because I got a lot done on my exposé, practiced my French (with Dalhia’s friends and in listening to the protestors), got students’ take on French politics, and did all of this amidst the excitement of a totally French cultural experience.

Hands down my favorite and most memorable experience in Paris so far.

Exposé 2:

When Dalhia and I met to discuss our exposé, she first asked me what I thought of the group that had gone the week before. Wanting to be polite, and also legitimately impressed by their effort, I told her that I thought they did a really thorough job and that it was pretty good. She agreed, but then added, as if reading my mind, that their presentation was also really long and pretty boring. She then informed me that she had a crazy idea to do our exposé in the form of a play, centering around the theme “Je t’aime, moi non plus” (roughly: “I love you, I love you not”), a French song and common theme in French literature. Exposés are normally very straight-forward presentations, meant to simulate political briefings, with a very strict methodology. However, considering that a) our subject: “Can France still be pro-European?” would fit appropriately with such a scene, b) Dalhia seemed pretty smart, and c) I had nothing to loose after my exposé number 1 debacle, I got on board. Furthermore, we weren’t abandoning the exposé methodology; just presenting it in a way which we hoped would compel our classmates to actually listen.

For the next few days, we prepared our exposé, with Dalhia doing a lot of research and revising, and by Friday it was ready to go. We stood up in front of our class, totally confident, and I took on the role of the non-French European community—critical of the French attitude and efforts towards integrating into Europe, and Dalhia took on the reverse. We had a very lively pre-written debate in front of our class, concluding that although both France and Europe have had difficulties in truly integrating the former into the latter, a pro-European France would be possible if each party changed their attitudes and took on some specific positive actions.

Prior to our presentation, Dalhia and I knew that it would be hit or miss, so we were both reassured to see our classmates’ and professor’s faces light up with every impassioned intonation or implanted interjection. During the “questions” segment at the end, our classmates mostly commended us for retaining their attention, and our professor, too, expressed his extreme approval for our dynamism. He only critiqued one small part of one of Dalhia’s subpoints, probably just for the sake of critiquing something.

Not only was it comforting/glorifying to do so well on this exposé (due in large part to Dalhia), but it was really fun to work with a Parisian! While breaking from our work, Dalhia gave me a lot of insider tips about slang, fun places to go at night, good food, and the real scoop on Sciences Po. I learned that, yes there are super intense kids who do nothing but study here and are disinterested/ unimpressed by Americans and international students, but there are also a fair amount of laid-back students who are sympathetic and fun to boot!

GivernyàRouen:

Today, a group of us were planning on taking the train to Giverny, site of Monet’s house and the famous water lilies (which I have a strong connection to and will probably discuss later). However, upon our arrival in Vernon, the train station about 7KM away, we learned that apparently Monet’s house isn’t open until April 1^st and that the bus from Vernon to Giverny won’t be running until then anyway. So, being the spontaneous and adventurous study abroad students that we are, we decided to keep going on our line (after some cocktails, of course), all the way to Rouen, the capital of High-Normandy, and site of the cathedral of the same name which Monet studied at different hours in the day. We walked around the town, in and out of the cathedral, and had many delicious treats along the way. All in all, it was nice to get out of Paris (as magical as it is) and to see a charming and older town. In hind site, I’m also quite glad that we’re saving our Giverny visit for another day because today marked the first sign of clouds in a while.

In general, I have a lot more I could/want to say. My life here is pretty great. Paris’ beauty never ceases to amaze me. However, owing to the fact that I have homework and a bed to attend to, and the fact that you’ve probably stopped reading by now, I will call this the end for now. If you are still reading: congratulations on making it through. Raf and Dad: was that what you were looking for?