the day of a million posts

(You know you're procrastinating when...)

In honor of my flatmate Alyssa's birthday, on Sunday night a bunch of us went out for a fantastic dining experience. We hit up Au Refuge des Fondues, a - real shocker here, folks - fondue place in Montmartre. I'd been warned that often reservations were just a formality, which worried me, since we were travelling 15 deep. As soon as I saw the restaurant, though, I understood: the place only fit about 45. It was tiny, with two long, narrow tables pressed up against the walls and barely enough room to walk beween them. It was communal-style, and as there were more of us than available butt space we got to know our neighbors very well. The walls were painted wild colors, and previous diners had grafittied all over them with shout-outs and quotes. I'd also been warned that it was very touristy, a warning that was confirmed by the "YALE '03" and "ERASMUS" tags on the wall behind us and the fact that only the waiters spoke French.

Because the space was so tight, to get to the wall side of the table the manager had to help us girls over the table, which pretty much set the raucous mood for the evening. After kirs and appetizers, they brought us wine in baby bottles and huge, steaming pots of cheese and oil. We stayed there for a couple hours, laughing over the hunks of bread and raw beef and taking silly pictures with the baby bottles. It was an amazing experience. It's crowded and smoke-filled and hot and they really give you no choice but to have a great time. If you're ever in Paris and just want to let loose a little, go there. Plus, the whole thing was only 16€. Sweet deal.

disclaimer

My inner - okay, okay, outer! - housewife wants it known that on Monday night I made a lovely dinner for 5 people, and that at 7:30am today, as scones cooled on top of the stove, I swept the apartment and washed yesterday's dishes. She also wants me to acknowledge that I support those women who are stay-at-home moms, and that I appreciate how difficult it is to do that.

She (and I) do NOT, however, condone spending $120,000 of your parents' money just to find a sugar daddy.

So there.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Because I sweat Maria Lenis a lot, I'm stealing her brilliant idea of posting maps. Click on the images to magnify them.

This first shows where I live and where Reid Hall is. If you look really hard, you'll see the labels I made. Sorry it's so messy.

The second is a subway map and the third a map deliniating the arrondissements; both are just for reference.



Quiz:
1) My métro stops are Odéon and Cluny-La Sorbonne. Which lines are they on?
2) Reid Hall is in which arrodissement?
3) Tomorrow night I'll be going to a gallery opening in the 19th. Is this
a) far away
b) really far away
c) a total waste of my time, no matter how good the party is
d) other. (be creative)
The winner of this quiz will get a postcard from Paris with an original haiku on the back. Good luck.

getting an MRS degree

I received this email today from Jill, a writer at the Columbia Spectator's weekend magazine The Eye:

"...I was hoping that you might be interested in helping me out with a cover story that I'm writing for an upcoming issue. The story is all about women at Columbia who say that one of their goals in attending the school is to find a soon-to-be rich and successful husband, and one of the other students I interviewed mentioned that you might have some thoughts on the topic. I was hoping that you might be willing to sit down and talk to me..."

Um, okay.

First of all, who is this interviewee? COME FORTH, ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE, AND MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN. Second, just because Ma and Pa Remes met freshman year of collge does not mean that I have an agenda. Third, my inner housewife (alright, the secret's pretty much out on my housewifeyness, but still) isn't yearning for a man to bring home the bacon. Fourth... fourth, are there women out there who aim to find a "soon-to-be-rich and successful husband" while in college? If there are, that's sad.

I'm reminded of a t-shirt that my premed flatmate Alyssa has; it says, "Be the doctor your parents want you to marry."

It's 2007, girls. Wake up and smell the Guatemalan coffee you bought at the overpriced gourmet down the street from your $bajillion/month apartment on West 85th Street, put on your stockings and mascara, and go to the high-profile job you earned.

etcetera

As this weekend is turning out to be less spectacular than I had planned, I'm posting again. (I think I'm addicted to Blogger: I can't go online without updating. Thank God my apartment doesn't have internet!)

I've been trying to write my Medieval Art paper for a couple days now, but I keep hitting a horrible wall called "the French Style of Paper-Writing." Papers here are very, very strictly formatted: the paper starts with an introduction in which you preview everything you're going to say in the body of the work. It then follows with three (always three) sections of text that are rigidly styled, and ends with a conclusion that repeats, pretty much verbatim, what you said in the introduction. Yes, the format is similar to our American papers, but there's absolutely no flexibility here. American students typically have so much trouble with this kind of writing that we're given a five page outline on how to do it. That's five pages of explication for a two or three page paper. Jeez.

Complicating things is that my professor for this specific course doesn't want us using any negative terms to describe the art we're analysing. I get that we shouldn't use words like "ugly" or phrases like "the artist used a style reminiscent of kindergarden finger-painting" in our papers, but she deems comparisons negative. For instance, when we went to Cluny and were asked to analyse an 11th century statue of the Virgin and Child in respect to a later Virgin and Child we had seen, I was scolded for calling the earlier work "less fluid." Apparently, "less fluid" is pejorative. I realize that maybe the sculptor wasn't trying to achieve fluidity when chisling Mary's robe, but that doesn't mean that the robe is not not fluid. Again, jeez.

Lent I today. Totally forgot that the Lenten season begins with a never-ending litany. At AmCath, however, unlike at Washington, we kneel for the whole thing. And by "we kneel" I really do mean WE kneel: I think the mean soprano I don't like told on me, cause Ned took me aside and asked me to kneel with the rest of the choir, and I doubt he noticed on his own. I don't mind doing it, because I get that we - the choir - are leading worship, but jeez, lady, are you five years old? (Side note: John Wieking, who used to be at the cathedral in Washington, sang with us today. This is the smallest wolrd ever.) Also, I discovered that we aren't a volunteer choir; there are volunteers, and then there are staff singers who are paid. My self-confidence is somewhere around my ankles right now.

Okay, I'm done whining for the day. Promise.

I've been keeping a mental list of the rediculous things I find comforting about Paris, and decided today to jot them down. Enjoy?

- Starbucks doesn't have wireless. McDonalds does.
- Even though the metro station Châtlet is Paris' version of the New Jersey Turnpike, the klezmer band that plays there is fantastic.
- Days that start out sunny never stay that way. Days that start out cloudy never stay that way.
- Professors are consistently late to their own classes.
- "Savez-vous trouver (wherever/whatever)" is a pickup line.
- Coffee is espresso.
- Skim milk doesn't exist.
- No one pushes on the métro; if there's no room, people wait for the next train.
- Women don't really wear nailpolish. They do, however, wear these amazing double-breasted Tinman coats that button all the way up the neck.
- A day without a café visit is a day wasted.

I lied a little bit.

I am posting. But for good reason! I'm taking you all to task for not emailing me. Here I am, sitting in a café in rainy paris, thinking about writing my art history paper (and researching flights from Spain to Venice for spring break), and crying because I have no idea what's going on with you guys. WRITE ME EMAILS. Or send me snail mail... I like that too. Either way, holler at your girl.

There. Consider yourselves told off.

(The Rosenblums are exempt from this scolding, as my Nana is an emailing fiend. You go, Li.)

etcetera

Also, I won't be posting again until Monday, possibly Tuesday. Because I know you're all heartbroken about this, let me a) tell you why I won't be blogging, and b) suggest you email me with your lives during the time you would have used to read my blog.

Friday afternoon: shopping for Alyssa's birthday
Friday night: clubbing with the girls

Saturday 4-11pm: three 6 nations rugby matches at Aussie Bar

Sunday morning: AmCath
Sunday night: dinner with 15 friends at a fondue place for Alyssa's birthday

somewhere in there: 2 papers and 200 pages of reading

(yikes)

gird your loins, my friends...

for this is going to be a really long post. Mostly because it's going to be about my really long Monday. What's really long, you ask? Let me tell you. Really long is 6.5 hours of class and 2.5 hours of transporting myself to and from class. Really long is leaving my house at 8:30am and not getting back until 6:30pm. (I know the math doesn't add up; I have a couple minutes here and there in which I catch my breath/buy coffee.)

So. The day starts off with grammar, which could potentially be horrible because, well, it's grammer. However, two of my best friends, Laura and Maria, are in my grammar class, and our professor is fantastic. So that's cool.

I then trot off to my medieval CM (reminder: CMs are lectures, TDs seminars... ish), which is totally confusing. Like I said before, it's the second half of a year-long course, and the professor teaches as if we were all there last semester. (I guess that's his perogative, but it doesn't make things any easier for me.) Plus, he has a penchant for speaking while writing on the board and facing away from us. Awesome. It only lasts an hour, though, and since we don't get homework or grades for the CMs I don't think it really matters.

I then hop the subway to go to one of the Sorbonne's other campuses for the medieval TD. Last week it took me 30 minutes to find the place; I thought I was da coo'est and so tried to get there on my own, without a map and without asking for directions. The experience so humbled me that I asked for directions right after getting out of the subway. The TD was fascinating. First of all, I'm the only American in the class (I think, although there's a British girl who's been here all year). Second, I got to see my first exposé. I almost cried in fear. You're supposed to speak for 20-25 minutes. The girl who was presenting spoke for about 17, and the stuff she had prepared she knew cold Apparently, though, she hadn't prepared enough; the professor grilled her for 20 more minutes after she finished. The rest of the class we spent analyzing another text. It was very cool. Afterwards, since I had missed the first session, I spoke to the professor. He seemed very impressed that I was taking the class, and told me that if I ever had any questions I should email him or talk to him after class. He assigned me an exposé - he said it would be a good opportunity to practice my French. Woohoo. I love practicing my French.

My last class of the day is the TD for thhe Belle Epoque course. The professor is kind of scary. Not academically scary, just scary. (Nana, you'd love her... she yelled at a kid for saying "ouais," which is the French equivalent of "yeah.") We spent the first hour talking about Hector Guimard, and the last hour looking at slides of Art Nouveau works. (http://lartnouveau.com/) I fell in love with this lamp: http://lartnouveau.com/oeuvres/lampes/l3.htm (hint, hint)

Since I had had an eventful weekend, 11 Victor Cousin had a roomie night in. We got an amazing rotisserie chicken from a boucherie around the corner, made sweet potatoes and a colorful salad, and watched the newest Grey's. It was exactly what I needed.

So there's an upside and a downside to these crazy Mondays. Upside: I get all the hard stuff done and over with. Downside: I am totally unmotivated for the rest of the week. Excellent.

the rorschach entry

I learned something new in Medieval Art and Architecture today: triforiums are so named because originally they had three arches. Tri = three... who knew?

I survived my first real full Monday, but I'm going to write about it tomorrow. I'm still so glad it's over that I don't want to ruin the magic by remembering it.

The NCS Annual Fund Cochairs sent an email today thanking me for my donation to the school; in the email they included a link to a slideshow from the website. I watched it, and maybe because I'm in a Mood (capital M required) or maybe just because I loved NCS it made me really homesick. Not homesick, exactly, but me-sick. I hate blogs that wax philosophic about whatever just because their authors feel Angsty and Deep (again, capitals required), but it kind of got me thinking about all the mes - that's me, plural - out there. I mean, you're not the same you that you were ten years ago or last year or even yesterday. So what happens to all the old yous? Do they build up, like a million Flat Stanleys all glued together to finally make a 3-D Stanley? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley) Or do the old yous get completely subsumed by the new you? I guess it's kind of irrelevant. The point is, I miss some of the old mes.

(For those of you who love me and read this blog often, yes, I deleted a paragraph. Sorry. Deal with it.)

I promise I won't write an entry like this again - at least, not for a long time. I just needed to indulge the bit of me that was feeling Angsty and Deep.

I think tomorrow I should walk the long way around the Luxembourg Gardens, just to remind myself where I am now.

cinema

I'm told cinema here is a cultural experience. Other their strange fascination with David Lynch, though, the French don't seem to be any crazier about films than Americans are. (Actually, there are some differences in the experience: trailers come before commercials, and there's always a short intermission between the commercials and the movie itself. Also, sometimes people come down the aisles selling candy and drinks during the intermission like old-fashioned cigarrette girls.)

Going to the movies has, however, helped my French a bit. My second week here, Nellie and I went to see "The Illusionist," which was still in English but which had French subtitles. It was interesting to read the subtitles while listening to the lines and to notice the discrepancies between the two. A few days ago I went to see "Pan's Labyrinth," a Spanish movie. That took a lot of concentration; the movie is so visually fascinating and the language so fluid that I had a hard time focusing on the French subtitles. I understood it all, but yikes. Anyway, you should really go see it - it was described by a friend as a "fairy tale for adults," and is consequently very dark and vivid. (Yes, Dad, dark and vivid at the same time. Don't get up in my grill about my choice of adjectives. Ask Sarah what "up in my grill" means.) Last night, however, we saw a very different movie: "Hors de Prix," a romantic comedy starring Audrey Tatou. It was very French, very funny, and very cute. In the States it would have totally been a chick flick, but there was (were?) a surprising number of guys in the audience. Audrey Tatou has gotten way too skinny, but her clothes were to die for. If it comes out back home, I'd reccomend it for a night when you need something frothy.

Side note: is there any way to make the phrase "Her clothes were to die for" not end in a preposition? "Her clothes were something for which I would die?" "I would die for her clothes?" Hm. None of them sound as idiosyncratic.

adventures

Last night I ended things with Ethan because, among other things, he wasn't what I was looking for. I wouldn't write about it here, except that what should have been a relatively smooth break-up turned into an adventure.

In almost every French class at Columbia we've discussed immigration and colonialism and blah blah blah. Well. I now have first-hand experience with the blah blah blah bit of it. (You can't wait to find out how this relates to Ethan, can you?)

Well. Turns out, Ethan isn't actually named Ethan. Nor is he 25. Nor is he French. Turns out, Ethan moved to France from Tunisia three years ago on a tourist visa and then stayed. Illegally.

So that was an interesting experience.

jesus will be risen in t minus 45 days

We're not singing on Sunday because there's going to be a guest choir at AmCath, but all of a sudden Ash Wednesday is next week and so we rehearsed like whoa last night. (Side note: Ned wasn't there, so the assistant, William, led the rehearsal. He's adorable and reminds me so much like a young Erik. He even has an earring. I'm thinking there's some sort of church musician mold that everyone's poured into while at conservatory.) We're doing some amazing music, including the very first mass setting I ever sang. Here's the list:

Remember not, O Lord God (Tallis)
Mass for Five VOices (Byrd)
Psalm 51 (Stainer chant)
Deliver me from mine enemies (Parsons)
plus two random modern pieces that i'm not listing because they don't make me weak at the knees

We've also started preparing for our two March concerts, at which we're singing Langlais' "Messe en style ancien" and Duruflé's "Quatre Motets". Is it weird that I love Lent?

adventures

Okay, I'm caving. I'm posting more photos. The first is of the Palais de Luxembourg, which I pass every day on my way to Reid Hall, and i'm putting it up because it's stunning and I'd like to live there. The rest are from Valentine's Day; a bunch of us went to a bar near Odéon that has amazing open jam sessions in the basement. So... enjoy.

my beautiful flatmates nellie (on the left) and alyssa (right). ben is in the background.

da gang: laura, me, jed, luke, ashley, ben, nellie, alyssa (missing: taylor)

taylor and me, just before he ditched us

last but not least, the pile o' love

happy valentine's day!

There's a student-run program at Columbia called "Stop AIDS in its Tracks," through which kids pass out free condoms on the subways. Only in New York, right? Wrong. Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, people were handing out roses at the entrances to the Sorbonne. The roses were in a brochure that said, "Dans 5 secondes, vous allez avoir un coup de foudre." ("In five seconds, you will fall in love at first sight," basically.) So I opened the packet, and inside, tucked among the roses, was a condom. On the back of the brochure was a clever little math formula: [flower] + [condom] = [heart]. Some things never change, no matter where you go.

I've now had all of my fac classes (except for the stupid medieval history TD that I couldn't find.) I don't really believe in shopping for classes and so I had made my schedule pretty inflexible when I put it together a couple of weeks ago, but luckily everything is coming up roses (and condoms) academically. Today I went to the lecture for the Belle Epoque class; like the medieval history course, it's the second half of a year-long thing, but it seems much more accessible. We talked about the general feeling of optimism and progress that surrounded the time, and about how 1900 was the first time people really got worked up about the century change. I don't know much about this subject, so although history is my thing this feels much more like an elective. (Like I said yesterday, I love learning. Woohoo.)

Tonight: V Day drinks with friends. Ethan has made it clear that he is less than thrilled. This is tons o' fun.

first day of Sorbonne classes...

and i'm wiped. Seriously. Wiped. Like a bug on a windshield.

Monday, for those of you who haven't heard me crying about it yet, is my hell day:
09h00-10h30: grammaire
11h00-12h00: église et société XIe-XIIe CM
13h00-15h00: église et société XIe-XIIe TD
16h00-18h00: france dans la belle epoque TD

(French universities do things really differently than American ones. Besides the language thing, I mean. All of my classes have a Cours Magistral and Travaux Dirigés. The CM is an hour long lecture that meets once a week. The TD is kind of like a discussion section, except not at all. It's a smaller subgroup of the lecture students, but taught by professors (not teaching assistants), and it doesn't have to cover the same material as the lecture. Also, all of the graded work is handled by the TD professor; I don't think we do any work for the CMs at all.)

Technically, all my Paris IV classes are at the Sorbonne, right down the street from my apartment, but because there are so many students and so many courses there are two other campuses. My église TD is at one of the other campuses - not the offical other campus, but the satelite campus. The satelite satelite campus, if you will. ("Which makes me the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff!" Bonus points if you know what this is from and who said it.) Anyway, I got totally lost trying to find the place; the point on the map I needed was between two pages in my guidebook, so I was pretty much on my own. I finally found the building and staggered into the classroom... only to find the TD for a XXe century history class. Awesome. Even awesomer: the reception desk's chart showed my TD as having occured from 10h30-12h00 this morning, which is impossible because that's when the CM was held. Being a tenacious young woman who loves learning, I tried to argue with the reception guy for about 20 minutes, but had to give up cause it's difficult to argue in another language when your opponent mumbles and talks really fast. No time to mourn, though; I had to hoof it back to the real Sorbonne for my Belle Epoque TD.

(The Belle Epoque TD prof is notoriously hard; out of 20, the average grade is a 7.5. The class covers from 1895 to 1914, and deals with culture, society, and history. I'm not sure what the workload is like, but everyone has to either do an exposé (an oral presentation) or a textual commentary. Exhibiting the same love of learning and desire to excel academically as I had only two hours earlier, I volunteered to do an exposé. Yikes.)

Tonight we have some kids coming over to watch Le Pen's debate. Yay for quasi-faschist politicians!

p.s. My French vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds because of Ethan. For instance, I learned that "mon choux" means "my sweet" as well as "my cabbage." Who knew?

bienvenue printemps

It's 50°F outside and the crocuses are blooming in the Luxembourg Gardens. It's totally freaking me out.

Why travel?

Originally, I thought I'd spend every other weekend in a different European city. I thought that if I stayed in Paris I wouldn't be taking advantage of being in France for the semester. It's taken me exactly one weekend, however, to realize that I'm in France for Paris - and there's so much to do here and I already love it so much that it'll be hard to tear myself away for even one weekend a month. Good thing I'm a fast learner, eh?

Saturday was, as Eliza Doolittle says, loverly. We all slept in - a rare treat at 11 Victor Cousin - and then I planted myself at my café for a couple hours to do homework/email/etc. (My café is the Luxembourg Café, a restaurant/café a couple blocks from my house with wireless and the best croque-monsieurs ever. I kind of live there. In fact, I'm there right now.) After looking around online for a good boucherie on my métro line, I trekked over to Etienne Marcel and found Mecca: there's this street, Rue Montorgeuil, that is lined with boucheries and poissoneries and fromageries and lots of other yummy -eries. The street is cobblestoned, and there were so many people there, shopping and caféing, (I'm verbing that; it's pretty much a national sport here) that I didn't realize until later that it wasn't, in fact, a pedestrian-only street. The whole neighborood is pretty much like that, and there are tons of really good clothing shops, too. After wandering around and planning several dozen different dinner parties, I met my date from the night before at a café in the area. We hung out there and then wandered around and were disgustingly cute for a couple hours. (His name, by the way, is Ethan. He's very sweet. Also very crazy about me. I'm digging it.)

After that lazy afternoon I met up with some friends at Odéon for drinks. Ben and Luke were here last semester, so they took us to a bar they frequented. It was dim and humming and low-ceilinged and very, very chill. We managed to convince the bartenders to open the basement early, so we didn't have to shout to be heard or begin dying of second-hand smoke. Afterward they saw "Blood Diamond", but I had seen it with Eitan the night before, and so met Alyssa and Nellie (my flatmates) and some NYU kids for dinner at a Greek place nearr my apartment. The restaurant was very cosy and friendly, annd the food was pretty good, but I never again want to eat with people who are that indecisive. Yikes. They all had big plans after the movie: a theater near us is known for doing movie marathons that start at midnight and end with breakfast around 7am. Last night's festival was a David Lynch thing. I had to get up early for AmCath, so I couldn't go (although apparently both Alyssa and Nellie pooped out early).

So. My first Sunday. Today was the Annual Meeting Thing, so the sermon was a bunch of thank-yous and "we, the community of blah blah blahs." Because we - well, the rest of the choir - had been recording a Christmas CD all week, we only did a Sowerby piece (not his best, I might add), and the children's choir filled in the other anthem. I made friends... ish. The social dynamic is a LOT wider than it was at St. Michael's, so I'm not sure how much everyone actually pals around. There are some kids who look like they're still in their 20s, and I've talked to most of them and they're friendly, but then there are a bunch of singers who don't hang around after at all, and some who just don't seem that open, and some - ahem, one - who told me that kneeling during the prayers wasn't optional. Excuse me, lady, but no one can tell I'm not kneeling and I'm not being disrespectful. To paraphrase an expression of my father's, used when my sister and I would fight during long car trips, "Look out your own goddamn window." I didn't actually say that to her, but the soprano I stand next to made a face at the other woman, and that made me feel better.

Later in the afternoon, Taylor, Nellie, and I went to an Australian bar to watch the France-Ireland rugby match. (The 6 Nations tournament - France, Italy, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales - is going on now, and it's kind of a big deal.) It was AMAZING. The bar, obviously, was packed, and everyone was cheering and groaning in unison and, obviously, in French. I thought about rooting for Ireland for about 30 seconds, but then decided I liked my head attached to my neck and so "allez"ed along with everyone else. The level of play was incredible; the ball never stopped moving! When France made a try (the rugby version of a touchdown) near the end of the first half, the whole bar broke into the national anthem. It was actually really stirring. We were all on the edge of our metaphorical barstools during the second half, though, because Ireland made a try and pulled ahead of France. It looked like we'd never come back - until! seven minutes into injury time, number 14 broke away and made a try, bringing France up 20-17. It was unbelievable... the whole bar errupted. I have never seen that many men hugging each other, not even at frat parties. It was quite an experience; Taylor and I have decided to go back for every game, rather than just the ones we're interested in. (Nellie made a valiant effort to follow the game, but understandable gave up after 20 minutes.)

So. Tomorrow: first day of Sorbonne courses, class from 9 until 6, and the presidential debate. Yikes. It's going to be a long Monday. Scratch that. It's going to be the first of many long Mondays. Double yikes.

adventures

Posting photos is a total pain - don't expect too many too often. That being said, I know some of you - ahem, my family - will have a cow if I don't put any up at all, so... awesome.

First rehearsal at AmCath last night, and obviously it's the day my cold decides to shift into bronchitisness. Luckily, they were finishing up a Christmas recording for the first hour and a half, so I only had to sing - "sing" - for the last thirty minutes. I actually learned way, way more by watching the choir during the recording session that I would have by joining in. They really are pretty good; most of the problems I noticed were picky things, and they responded really well when Ned told them to change something. (Ned, by the way, reminds me so much of Mr. Neswick! They both yell at people in the exact same way, using the exact same tone, and use some of the same phrases. Plus, anyone who tries to get grown adults to do "my dog has fleas" to a psalm is okay is my book.) Of all the sections, however, the sopranos are the most worrisome. I don't know then really well, and I haven't had much of a chance to sing with them and find out how they work, but the balance of power - both vocal and otherwise - seems pretty off. The altos include a couple of countertenors (and Ryland Angel, who wasn't there. He kind of freaks me out; he did a guest solo thing at St. Michael's a couple Easters ago and has no register shifts. Weird.) and were fine, and the tenors and basses were really strong. Sunday we're doing a Sowerby piece - hooray for singing again!

Sorbonne classes start on Monday... eek! My mother gently reminded me that I haven't yet written on my Reid Hall classes, so here goes. Everybody has to take a grammar class; we spend two months reviewing advanced grammar and syntactical stuff, and then for the rest of the semester we meet with our profs once a week to go over our fac coursework. The classes are divided into levels three and four, with two sections in each level. I placed into the bottom of the fourth, and I'm mostly really happy with it. It's definitely where I'm supposed to be, and where most of my classmates should be, but there are a couple kids who must have tested beyond their abilities, because they just don't get some of the basics. That, or they just don't pay attention when we review things. Either way, it's frustrating. I have some friends in the class, though, and the professor is fantastic. His name is François Theuiller, and we're crazy about him. He is a very good teacher, very patient and creative, but also has a great sense of humor. We all pretty much want to be best friends with him. My Medieval Art and Architecture class hasn't really gotten off the ground yet, but the prof was the intstructor for my orientation group, so I know her a little. She's very into her subject, which is great, but seems kind of easy. I guess that's a good thing, considering all the coursework I'm going to have, but since I'm into her subject, too, I want to be challenged. The last Reid Hall class I'm signed up for is Paris Parcours. Professor Dequeker is a history professor, and I'm not sure what I expected from the course description (there are two parcours: one, mine, is the history option and the other is architecture and culture), but he's teaching it as a class on the history of Paris as told through its buildings and neighborhoods. It's really cool, actually; on the first day of class we read some of De Gaulle's memoires and talked about the Paris/France he saw, and discussed how he orchestrated his entrance into Paris after it was liberated. (Rather than meeting the head of the Resistance at the Hôtel de Ville, he went straight to his old office at the Ministry of War and sat down at his old desk, symbolically ignoring the Vichy government and indicating that he - and the Republic of France - were back. Sounds like an arrogant sob, but he definitely had style.) This class meets twice a week, once to hit the streets for three hours and once to discuss and have student presentations for an hour. I wasn't looking forward to this class at first, but now I totally am. The only downside is that since I've gotten really into the class, I'm totally become that girl who always raises her hand. Yikes.

On the books for this weekend: a date with a French boy (!), watching some 6 Nations rugby, and singing. Send me emails, guys! I want to know what you're doing, too.

(My address here is:

Betsy Remes
c/o Columbia University
Reid Hall
4 rue de Chevreuse
75006 Paris FRANCE

hint, hint.)

P.S. If I make typos, please let me know. I'm a punctuation snob, but I don't really do spelling.

Lyon

Finally back from Lyon. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time, but the most wonderful part about the séjour was thinking, "I want to go home," and realizing that I really did mean Paris.

So. 20 of us from Reid Hall arrived in Lyon on Thursday night. We were all farmed out to families in the area, and most people agreed that they were happy with their hosts, but I think I got the best deal of all. I had mentikoned on my info sheet that I was Jewish, and so, accomodatingly, the liason gave me a big, wonderful Jewish-Moroccan family: Isaac, Rachel, Samuel, David, and Benjamin Rimokh. Rachel was an absolute doll. She totally mothered me, helped me with my French without making me feel ignorant, and was a wonderful cook (expect recipes soon). She was so glad to have another girl in the house! Isaac I didn't reallly get to know well; he was very nice and made me feel at home right away, but I spent more time with Rachel in the kitchen - they had a pretty old-fashioned family dynamic - or with the boys. The boys... I wish they were my cousins! Samuel, 25, is a law student and lives at home, so we spent tons of time horsing around. David, 22, is getting his master's in Paris; he came home for the weekend and we hit it off, so I look forward to hanging out with him here. (David's on the left, Sam uncooperatively on the right in the photo.) Benjamin, the baby of the family at 15, was really funny and absolutely loves America. He spoke English really well, so while I spoke French almost exclusively with the rest of the family, we spoke English together to he could practice. (He's also really into rap music, which created some funny situations in which he'd repeat lyrics that he didn't completely understand.) He wants to go to college in the states... I'm obviously pushing Columbia. They had a big, beautiful apartment in the Chinatown neighborhood just to the east of the Rhône, with a WC and two bathrooms (something I've never seen before) as well as a kesher kitchen and high ceilings with pretty moulding. It really was the ideal homestay situation; I was treated as one of the family - teasing and all - and I learned so much about French/French-Jewish culture.

We - the group - spent nights and the weekend with our family. Nights were relatively calm, mostly because the boys had school and Rachel and Isaac work, but Shabbat was crazy. We did a service at home on Friday night and ate this stupendous meal that Rachel had been cooking since Thursday night. She made all her own challah... 6 loaves in all. Yikes! On Saturday morning, Isaac, Benjamin, and I went to services while Rachel prepared lunch and the older boys slept. (We'd gone out the night before and although I came home to zonk out at 1:30, they stayed out till 3:30.) We came home to a table set for 10 - they had invited two older couples, one from Israel, over for lunch. This lunch... I have never eaten like that in my life! 5 courses, mostly traditional Moroccan dishes, and wine and fresh challah and yumm. The whole thing took three hours. All I wanted to do afterwards was take a nap, but four more friends came over for tea and cake and Jewtalk. I think most of the Lyonnaise Jews are Sephardic, because everyone made a big thing about how I was Ashkenazic. Like, a big thing: it was usually one of the first things the guests commented on, and they all asked what kind of food my mom cooked and what traditions we had and stuff. Yikes again. When everyone finally left, it was time for Havdalah, and then I think we all passed out.

Saturday night, Sam and David and I went out again. We started out at a bar around the corner where they knew everyone, including the bartenders. It was tons of fun, especially since a lot of kids came in to see David, who didn't come home often. They told me we were just starting off there, but we ended up staying until they closed at 3am. (Don't worry, Nana, I don't do this often.) We then moved - with some of the kids from the bar - to an underground club called La Marquise that was aboard a boat on the Rhône. It was very crowded and very loud and very, very fun. I wanted to dance - they had a great DJ - but we couldn't even make it past the bar to the dancefloor. Sam ended up knowing a lot of people there, and I got introduced to so many people who wanted to speak English I nearly screamed - but then one of them bought us a bottle of champagne and all was well with the world.

Rachel and Benjamin and I went to see a production of Sartre's Huit Clos on Sunday afternoon in this tiny theater in the Croix-Russe, the arty quarter of Lyon. It was creatively done: although Sartre gives pretty explicit set directions (there's a bronze statue and three Restoration (I think) sofas of different colors), the walls of the set were brushed metal, the sofas metal blocks, and the bronze an upside-down triangle stuck to the wall. I liked the interpretation, and the guy did a wonderulful job, but the woman who played Ines was terrible. She wasn't a subtle actress at all; she obviously wanted the audience to hate the character, and so was lous and obnoxious, but it came off as one-dimensional. I felt very sophisticated, discussing the play in French after it ended.

During the weekdays - Friday and Monday through Wednesday morning we went on group tours.

Friday: Lyon, fyi, is very hilly.


On Friday morning we went to the Basilique de Fourviers, which is on top of the highest hill in the city. I got to the meeting place - the bottom of the hill - late, and found that my group had left without me. My host mother had told me that there was a finicula, but I didn't see signs for it. I did, however, see signs for the Basilique, and so followed them. I followed them all the way up the 800 stairs (actually 800; I got this number from the guide) that pilgrims used to use. It killed me. Thankully, the Basilique was enough to make the climb worth it, and the view was spectacular. We then went to the Musée Gallo-Romain, and it has the potental to be a really good museum, but our tour guide was so awful I don't want to relive the experience by writing about it here. Sorry.
In the afternoon we went back to the bottom of the same hill because it's kind of the center of Vieux Lyon. We had a tour of the Cathedral of St. Jean; it's the smallest cathedral in Europe and definitely one of my favorites. French churches have this weird habit of putting CDs on their sound systems (to provide a fuller experience or something, I guess), and I was totally freaked out by hearing Mendelssohn's Laudate Pueri and not finding the choir. (What is this with France and Mendelssohn pieces I know?) Anyway, the cathedral was really pretty, and has a mechanical astonomical clock that still has all it's original workings from the 15th century. We were there at 3pm and saw it chime and all the little figures on it do dances. Very cool. We then walked around the two quarters of Vieux Lyon - St. Jean and St. Georges - and got to go into the traboules. Because the city is so hilly, back in the day people built little tunnels and walkways through their buildings to make things easier, and sometimes they open up into pretty courtyards and hidden architectural gems. Lyon kind of reminded me of the Washington, DC to Paris' New York; it was definitely a city, but had a smaller-town feel.

Monday: Best. Morning. Ever.



The wine region of Beaujolais is about 45 minutes away, so we drove through picturesque fields and villages until we got to Domaine des Terres Vivantes, a small estate from which a couple run classes and a restaurant. (Side note: for some reason, I never think of villages as still in existance. I always picture them in a WWI scenario in which the hardy men are off fighting the Krauts and the women at home, knitting socks to send to their boys on the front.) The day was kind of misty, but that made the landscape even more beautiful. There were vines covering the rolling fields as ar as the eye could see, and you could just barely make out the mounting hills in the distance. The wife, Marie, is a baker; she spends Fridays baking and then sells her yummies at the market. Her husband trained as a sommelier and now grows his own vines, so after Marie taught us how to bake bread, he showed us his land and explained the process of cultivation and wine-making. He then took us inside and taught us how to properly taste wine: first, he said, you smell the wine quickly to determine whether or not you like it. You then take a more leisurely sniff to determine if the wine is more flowery, spicy, or fruity. You then swirl the wine in the glass to open it up to the air and smell again, trying to detect specific notes within the wine. When you finally taste it, you should do so while adding oxygen to the mouthful and determining whether the wine is more acidic, tanin, or alcoholic. Needless to say, none of us really knew what we were doing and we all looked rediculous, but we definitely learned a lot. We tasted three wines at they had made themselves: a 2005, a 2003, and a nouveau 2006. My favorite was the 2005, which was fruity, with hints of strawberries and raspberries, and was less acidic. His wife then served us a million course lunch: fresh-baked bread, cheese bread, a carrot salad, salad with chèvre and walnuts, a pork paté-y thing, beef bourgingon with rice, a butter cake, and finally cookies and coffee. I think everyone slept on the bus back. (In the photo from lunch, clockwise from top left: Ashley, Jessie, Luke, Hillary, Betsy, and Ben.) In the afternoon we went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, and I fell in love with a couple statues (a Rodin of Eve and a 19th century marble of Adam and Eve and the body of Abel), but no one was really in the mood for a guided tour after our morning.

On Tuesday we had a tour of the Croix-Russe, the arty quarter of town, which I skipped cause I wasn't feeling well (but they tell me the tour guide was awful), and in the afternoon a tour of the Musée des Tissus et des Arts Décoratifs, which was awesome. Lyon used to be a major center of silk production; the industry began there in the 15th century, and Charles V granted the city an official monopoly in 1532. They had tons of fabrics and embroidery and clothes and lace dating from the 16th through the 20th centuries. The dec arts section had amazing furniture, complete rooms, and - my favorite - china and silver from the past few centuries, tooo. I wish I knew more about this stuff... I still can't really tell the difference between Louis XV and Restoration styles. (I think Louis XV is curvier and more elaborate, but I could be totally wrong.)

We spent Wednesday morning at the Centre d'Histoire et de la Déporation; Lyon was a major force in the French resistance during World War II. The permanent exhibit included journals and newspaper articles and documentaries and interviews and propaganda videos from Pétain's government... I can't really describe it all, because it was too heartbreaking and moving, but you should definitely go. It took a while before anyone was really ready to talk again after we left. We had our last lunch at Brasserie Georges, a famous Art Deco restaurant that serves Lyonnaise specialties and has been around forever, with the group and some of the host family members. It was lovely, and I had a wonderful time, but - like I said - I'm glad to be home.

auditioning at AmCath

Okay, so I'm in Lyon right now, having a blast. I don't want to write about the séjour until I've done everything and can figure out how to put up photos, though, so expect a massive post Wednesday night or Thursday morning. The day we left Paris - last Thursday - was eventful, so read on anyway.

I had pretty much assumed - Ned, the choirmaster at AmCath, had pretty much made it appear - that my singing in the choir was pretty much a done deal, and that when I came early to rehearsal it would be to talk and mess around vocally a little bit. Boy, was I wrong. I had to see him before I left since I tutor right before rehearsals on Thursday nights, and I was totally unprepared to audition. I had warmed up some in the shower and hummed a bit on the street (you know how I do), but was totally scratchy because our apartment is unbelievably dry. I get there, and Ned immediately sits down at the piano and checks out my range. I was fine, which is proof that Jesus loves me, but those were some of the scariest scales I've ever sung. Then he pulls out Anthems for Choirs 1 and plonks down a Goss piece and tells me to come in at the soprano line. Luckily, it was pretty predictable; as I hadn't sightread in months, had he given me something more challenging I would have had to get creative. Anyway, I'm in, which is a relief, but I've defintely learned my lesson about being over-confident!

Apparently, they have not one but TWO countertenors - yay - and a full complement of about 20, including a bunch of former Oxbridge choral/organ scholars. We're doing a Sowerby anthem and some Philips two-choir thing for my first Sunday, and besides all the Easter services in the spring we'll also have two concerts in March. Huzzah!

Cafe du Metro

Marquis was worried that I wouldn't have timt to "breathe Paris." Au contraire, mon cher oncle. I am currently at the Café du Métro with my friend Laura; we're having wonderful petit déj (a croissant for me and goat cheese salad for her) and blogging our hearts out. The café is very comfortable... it's spacious and light, our booth is covered with faded maroon velvet, and there's a pleasant hum of French in the background. So yes, Mark, I breathe Paris every day.

Lyon: we leave for our week-long séjours this afternoon. They split us up between Besançon, Auxerres, Aix-en-Provence, and Lyon. My host family lives in Lyon proper, next to the Rhône and a few blocks away from the University of Lyon. Each host family has to have kids, but the "enfants/animaux" section of my contact sheet was blank, which probably means that they either have young children or lots of them. It's definitely going to be an adventure. We're only with the family night and the weekend - the rest of the time we will be going on tours with our group. Not sure what we're seeing yet, although as soon as I get back I'll let you know!