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.