I apologize for abandoning my blogging career for what feels like forever, but while I haven't been blogging, I've been making sweet vids! Here is my latest one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf5fIlOvSHc
School has been pretty darn awesome. I'm glad I made the oft-mocked choice of not taking any classes at the Sorbonne this semester, because Paris higher education IS ON GREVE. In other words, there's a whole lot of shit going down in Guadeloupe, President Sarko is trying new reforms to get (socialist) France to be more like capitalist America, and people are going CRAZY! For Smith peeps in Paris, that means that the girls at Paris 7 (Denis Diderot university) haven't had any second semester classes, and that the rest of the people at Paris 4 (the Sorbonne) are having classes on and off depending on whether the teachers and/or students happen to be striking on that day. I had some crazy videos and pictures that I took from when the protesters were going down Boulevard du Montparnasse right next to Reid Hall (where Smith classes are). I'll post them soonish. Hopefully.
I've been having trouble feeling a solidarity with my protesting peers. Although I think that Sarkozy is making a hella dick move by trying to capitalize France's system of higher education by putting all of the good teachers in certain schools and not continuing the democratic system of a similar education for all by thereby making students pay more to go to "better" schools, I really don't know how I'd feel marching with these students and teachers who are more or less directly related by the outcome of these reforms. Also, since I'm not feeling the repercussions of the striking and the protesting in any real way, I don't feel very strongly for participating. I'm going to try to educate myself on the whole situation further to see what's going on. For living in a city with so many pertinent issues that affect so many, I feel rather dumb on not knowing what's going on with the current French events.
In any case, although my classes are all within the confines of American universities' take on French education, they are all wonderful so far. I'm taking a theatre class, where I've already seen Hamlet IN GERMAN, IN FRANCE, DUBBED IN FRENCH. It was INCREDIBLE. The players were all wonderful, and the modern adaptation did not glaringly take away from the story in any way.
I have a creative writing class, which is a good outlet for working around the structure of the French language in a more playful way. Liking it a lot, although we have so many vocabulary words to learn.
The volunteer experience class is ever interesting, though it always makes me feel bad for not volunteering at the soup kitchen more often than I do.
My art and architecture class with the Middlebury consortium is GREAT. We go on tons of field trips around Paris to discuss the intricacies of the city's art and architecture. Although the teacher is sort of presumptuous about our knowledge of the French language and tends to undermine us by showing off her grasp of the English language, I love being able to discover/rediscover places in Paris in a new way.
In other news, frisbee is going great. I love the team, and although I still feel kind of uncomfortable speaking up in the group setting, I like that I'm being included as one of the gang now. It sort of happened without my realizing it, and I'm glad that it came without forcing it. I feel like some students, particularly the American ones, think that because they know how to do the double-cheek kiss, they should automatically be integrated into the circle of friends, and it just doesn't work that way. All the same, I'm glad that I have people outside of school.
Like Abby said in her last post, I really want to see the things that I've missed from Paris. I'm going to start by reading up on exactly what's been going on with Sarko's reforms and what's happening in Guadeloupe, with the continued promise that I'm going to read up on French news once a day.
Other things I need to do:
- picnic along the Seine
- go to the top of the Eiffel Tower
- see Sacré-Coeur
- memorize exactly which arrondissements are where
- take the Montmartre train
- actually stop at Bonne Nouvelle on the 8/9 and see what's there
I'll add more and cross things out as I do them. A la prochaine!
