Hello from Les Andelys!

So, after a crazy time moving into my apartment in Rouen and the 4-hour round-trip commute to school every day, I decided to move out to Les Andelys where my school is. Daniel, a new teacher at the school from Martinique (he teaches "carrosserie", or auto body repair, with the vocational school students) was offered an apartment on campus, and as it had three bedrooms, he decided to share the apartment with me and David, the school's Spanish teaching assistant from Spain. I couldn't be having a better time! I am platonically in love with both of them, and they have both expressed that they would do absolutely anything for me. David left last night (we've got a two week vacation, so he's back in Sevilla until we start school up again), but right up until he left, he'd been making us dinner every single night. He said that he used to be a chef in Spain but didn't like cooking for work, but now he loves making meals for the people he cares about. And oh my gosh, it is so wonderful. He made his own pate the other day, and I'm still dreaming about the zucchini and roquefort potage that he made (his grandmother's recipe). It has been an interesting adjustment from basically eating vegetarian to now living with some serious meat-eaters. As we were driving David to the airport last night and passed lots of cows in fields, I would coo over them and David would say, "Non 'awww', 'mmmmmm! yum yum!'" They are goofy guys, and I love them.

I really don't know what I would've done without them- after I informed my landlord that I decided to move out to Les Andelys, he let me know the next day that he had found someone to live in my apartment and that I'd have to vacate ASAP! I had about 45 minutes' warning before I literally packed up all of my things, handed over my keys, and headed out. Luckily for me, David, Daniel, and our friend Rafa were all in Rouen with Daniel's car, so they all helped me move everything into my car, drop off Rafa at his house in Rouen, and headed back to Les Andelys (and only momentarily stalled out a couple of times! I can't believe all of the things I have now, thanks to all of the things that Sylvie's graciously given me). It is a lot of stuff, but I'm happy for all of it, especially all of the kitchen stuff, which both David and I are so enjoying! It's hard getting used to only having a hot plate and a microwave to work with, but we're getting used to it. I'm excited to make Ceilidh's avocado and orange salad and some stir fry with peanut sauce tonight!

It's just me and Daniel for today, though Daniel is heading out tonight, so I'll probably invite Chloe over. She lives "in town", which is about a half hour walk from our high school, and she works at the middle school out there. I'm definitely spoiled with the nicest company, and I just don't know how I got so lucky as to be surrounded by such lovely people.

School is also going very well. I only just started working in the classroom yesterday, and it's taking some getting used to. I think I just need to strike a good balance between friend and teacher, since I'm not officially a teacher and I'm really just there to get them comfortable speaking in English. Just need to hearken back to my days in Anouk's classroom and authentic communicative experiences going!

For the vacation, I'm excited to do lots of laundry, probably head into Rouen tomorrow to pick up my bank card from the bank out there, going to Disneyland on Tuesday, and headed to Paris for a couple days to see my friends out there at some point. Am I really living this? Is this really happening? I am just so happy!

7

I've gotten over the fact that I don't have a job. I'm going to apply to some, but I might just really like to stay home this summer. I know that it's the summer before senior year and everything. I don't know. It would actually be good for me to get out of the house, so I could get another job as a waitress to make back some money.

I guess I'm glad that I've got all this crap going on while I'm in Paris. If I were at Smith right now, I'd be driving down to Georgia with the frisbee team. As much AMAZING as spring break in Savannah is, I don't think I'd genuinely be able to appreciate it.

In other news, Abby and I went to see Le Roi Lion, and it was awesome. It was such an engrossing theatrical experience. However, there were even some parts where I remembered that it was Disney and kind of felt guilty for liking it so much. The parts I appreciated most were the puppets. Julie Taymor is my idol. There were huge elephants, real-looking giraffes, masks on every lion while not distracting from the actors' faces, Chinese shadow puppetry.. it was SO cool!

School is easing up. I'm not concerned about grades in the slightest, which is helpful.

Anyway! I'm off to work in the library, have some breakfast, get dressed, and get some Thai food for dinner! Whoooooo!

Directive?

My interview went alright. I found out that they usually do group interviews, and I felt awkward having a one-on-one interview with just one of the directors. We still did the awkward group question and answer session, but since there were only two of us, we both felt kind of silly introducing ourselves.

When I get nervous, I just say EVERYTHING that I want to say in one big blast. I wound up saying everything that I wanted to say, I think, but I can't reflect on what went down to be able to critique my performance. Hopefully, my smile, eye contact, and general charm have kept me in the running. The interviewer seems like a sweet girl, but I don't know if it's just out of necessity or if she really thinks I've got a shot at the program.

In any case! I'll know by Tuesday! And then, it's off to apply to the Bronx Zoo or something. I really hope I get into this program though. It just sucks that the other groups in the program who offered me interviews NEVER got back to me once I e-mailed them to set it up.

Other news: I'm still feeling productive, even without having gotten much done. I've got things organized, I'm seeing friends, and I even picked up "Fried Green Tomatoes" from the Smith library to read once I'm done with my required readings for class. I've been going to sleep earlier than usual, which has been wonderful.

Now I'm off to find if I can find more than 10 synonyms for the verb "to say". Bonne soirée à tous!

It has been SO LONG.

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!

New video!

This is it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkPov8kobJo

It's an adventure around Paris, with some profanity. Also, I sent it to Julia Nunes, since I'm going to see her in concert in London this weekend! I'll also get to see Rosalie, Yael, and Thanh. So excited! Going to bring my uke. So many jam sessions to be had.

And with that, I'm off to class! Can't wait till this semester's overrrrr.