Got another box from my mom and dad, including various wonderful things like gummy bears, face wash, Halloween-themed toothpaste, Halloween-themed socks, and a stockpile of cold medicine large enough to get me through my already harsh French winter. Monday I got back my first Cinema paper (which, while good, was admittedly badly-researched) and got a B+ which rocks for only utilizing Google search for articles. Ooops.
After that, stress levels increased a bit for everyone when we realized that the assignments we had been given the first week here by Bondurand for Conversation class were in fact due in our interviews on Tuesday/Wednesday. 6 weeks really flew by! Luckily, I was signed up for Wednesday basically by virtue of fate bringing me to the Foyer a bit early last Friday, when the sign-up sheet was already posted. So on Tuesday night, like a good college student, I crammed. Watched an episode of Mad Men, Food, Inc., and had dinner with my family, but generally translated poems by Leopold Senghor and looked up French food vocabulary and listened to some seriously bad French rap shared with me by my ever-amusing host brothers. However, what most people I think failed to realize was that this assignment was meant to allow us to use more French than we might have used if we didn't have asisgnments, and that our "marks" are based solely upon our improvement in French. And, since I came into my first interview knowing basically "bonjour," "au revoir," and "merci," it would have been pretty damn difficult for me to do badly.
In fact, when I had finished awkwardly reading a poem aloud to B, listening to African music that ended up NOT being in French (oops), and explaining that I was too poor to actually do the cooking assignment, I was met with the response of: "Well, I don't really have much else to say other than that your French has improved enormously. Very, very good job. Keep up the excellent work. Have a nice day."
Needless to say, I was fucking joyful. My deep-seated bad relationship with French has been a thorn in my academic side since freshman year, when I got my first C in French and proceeded to never do any better. My plan to nap for the rest of the day until French class (which I thought would be necessary after I failed yet another French assignment) was rendered useless, since my happiness was far too large to be quelled into naptime. So I walked to Shakespeare & Company, read some old old old Dostoevsky upstairs underneath Notre Dame and wrote postcards to Michael McFee (my spring 2009 poetry teacher and on the selection committee for ADV, though the postcard had nothing to do with that - he collects tacky postcards) and my aunt, among others, and drank Coke Light. Then went to buy some rolling tobacco (in French), talked to a Swedish boy who told me he liked my bag (somewhat in French), met a girl in my French class (kind of in French), and was told by a Russian girl that she's jealous of my French accent (in French). Holy. Shit! Good day.
Shakespeare & Co has been largely neglected by me so far, but it is a godsend. Monday nights they do poetry readings upstairs for free (in English! - a well-earned respite) and you can chill there for as long as you want any time at all. I believe I am going to make an effort to do a bit of volunteering there before I peace out of France on December 7th. Good way to meet some cool bilingual friends.
So after class I insisted that some celebrating of my newly acquired not-pathetic language skills be done. So, Sally, Abby, and I grabbed wine and bread and went to Jardin du Lux for a bit of sipping, and as badass as that sounds, it was much moreso. Sally had family dinner, so she couldn't stay long but Abby and I elected to metro up to the Louvre (open late on Wednesdays and Fridays) for a bit of semi-drunken arting about. However, upon entering the Richelieu wing (which can usually be done by simply presenting a carte d'etudiant and an ID that has your birthday on it), we were rejected by the lady who told us that we'd have to wait in line to get tickets. Free tickets. Stupid. So, we wandered through the Louvre shopping center (where there is already Starbucks, an Apple store in construction, and other large capitalistic enterprises, rendering the horror I felt upon hearing about the planned McDonald's now just unsurprised) and out into the Louvre (i.e. rich) area of Paris in the 1er arrondisement. We proceeded to walk around for a while, smoking and ending up by the Opera where we went for the ballet on Monday WHICH I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO EVEN TALK ABOUT what am I doing? But it was wonderful to just spend a bit of time exploring a neighborhood which I was not familiar with, literally just walking in circles with my wonderful new friend.
The ballet: on Monday night, we got mad dressed up and went to the ballet "Giselle," which is like the French ballet equivalent of "Hamlet" or something, according to dear Dr. Costello. We had our own boxes at the Opera Garnier in the 9eme arrondisement, and before the show, the girls and I went to a little bar across the street from the Opera for a bit of vin and ran into Costello and his wifey (whose existence, I must admit, I was beginning to doubt since she's never made an appearance before). It was nice to put on my gorgeous dress from Ross: Dress 4 Less for the first time since my going away party (which was, I'm sure, very nice, though I can't pretend that I remember much of it) and wear heels and stuff. The ballet itself was wonderful, and apparently Kylie Minogue was there as well! We met some American ladies behind us who were very loud and horrible but then pretended to be interested in our lives so we couldn't tell them to shut up after that. I'll post a few photos right after this post.
Thursday: had lasagna for dinner with my family (completely homemade) and my mom asked if I wanted to go to a party with her. I agreed and she proceeded to explain what it was about, but I was so engrossed in my lasagna that I didn't listen and don't speak enough French to ask her politely to repeat it. So we biked (me on my 11-year-old brother's bike - ridiculous) a few blocks to this house that was huge and made of dark wood and had glass ceilings owned by a guy named Alexandre who lives with his 12 and 13-year-old daughters but uses the house as space for art shows/installations/generally hip parties pretty often. My mom introduced me to Marc, an American Indian from Canada who was bartending and spoke Canadian French that I could not for the life of me understand. So we spoke in English. There were lots of gorgeous girls milling around in period costumes with metal accessories and accents on their clothing. I didn't bring my camera because I was under the impression that this was a little party for my brother's middle school. I was wrong. Oops. Lost in translation, as usual. But the music was tragically hip and there were tons of old people that were obviously artists (i.e. in vintage clothes, smoking joints and cigarettes, drinking wine heavily, taking photographs in which no one was smiling, etc.) and I was kind of under the impression that the party was just an excuse for this guy to show off his gorgeous house and for his smarmy "actor-from-L.A." cousin named, appropriately, Rock, to schmooze and speak his slimy American French and pretentiously ask me questions like "can you understand what we're saying?" Yes, you asked this guy how he was and then asked for a glass of wine. I'm not fucking braindead. Mainly though, he was hilarious and had huge injections in his face to give him cheekbones. My host mom and I made faces at each other when he wasn't looking.
SIDENOTE: the main reason I like French people is because they are the only people I have ever met that readily and without regret talk as much shit as I do.
But then Alexandre killed the Cat Stevens and cranked some electronic music for the hot model girls to strut their feathered headdresses down the opulent staircase and out into the huge open space in the center of the room. I guess it was a combination fashion show/pomo art installation with LIVE HUMANS. I'm making fun of it for the sake of blogging, but it was truly very very cool and Marc was wonderful and lit my cigarette for me, was generally wonderful, and when we left, he insisted that I come back to their huge 2-day party in November and said to my mom, "elle est charmante!" which means (obv) "she is charming." A large compliment from the French, especially when you don't even speak their language. My mom and I biked to a modern furniture store for another little party stop and then raced home on our bikes with Day-Glo vests on to prevent cars from hitting us. I was so happy to bike, since I am too scared to do it at all in Paris.
Friday: Abby and I went out after class for a bit of wine, which turned into bar-hopping and finding GOOD BEER ON TAP: a rarity in Paris. 2 liters of Delerium Tremens (Cafe des Artistes - 5eme), a large carafe of sangria (le Dix - 5eme), a pitcher of wine (Le Luxembourg - 6eme), and a margarita (Anahuacalli - 5eme) later, we went and had dinner at the same Mexican restaurant where I went with Boyce when he was still in town (above). Drunk. Now, we knew that we had to awaken around 6am the next morning in order to go to the Loire Valley with the group. So we got home a bit after midnight and the next morning at 6am we just looked at each other like "wtf were we thinking." It was OK though. A definite adventure. And we slept on the bus while the sun rose.
Week-end: All in all, the weekend with the group was stupid, tedious, and like a class trip in middle school. I like chateaus, but going to 4 in two days is a little excessive. However, Tours was marvelous. Dinner was good (despite the bitching of people who have just obviously never eaten duck before) and Dr. Costello told our table tales of living in Nigeria (and moving there because they really liked elephants) over wine. I lost my hearing for a while and then we went out to the only place to go out in Tours, where I met up with Boyce and some kids from his program, including my new best buddy Alex. Boyce had mentioned him to me with the tagline: "you've got to meet him, you guys would get along great!" and he subsequently never introduced us. But sure enough, we hit it off and even have birthdays within 24 hours of each other (July 23rd & July 24th!) and he used to live in Madagascar. Nice to make a new friend.
By the end of our chateau tours today, everyone was basically going insane since Dr. Costello has no sense of brevity whatsoever and was telling us the tales of each room for about 45 minutes. We made it back home by about 6:30 though which was earlier than planned and we were all grateful to scamper back off to the suburbs for host family dinner and sitcoms in STC. And I listened to Joni Mitchell and ALMOST FINISHED Love in the Time of Cholera, so I am happy.
We have a student from Thailand living in our house now. For a little while. I haven't met him, but my mom said he speaks not a word of French but good English. Sweet, a kindred spirit.
Life is wonderful, going to Prague next weekend.
A bientot!
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