Travels - Nice and Eze

It was rainy and cold all day today, which didn't make for the best day walking around Nice. I don't want to make this journal a "today, I did xyz...", but for the purpose of describing trips, that's probably what it will be. We had a two-hour bus ride to Nice. Once we got there (around 10:30) we were dropped off and told to be back at the bus at 2:00 to go to the Matisse Museum or 4:00 if you didn't go to the museum. I wandered around with several other girls from the program - walked briefly on the beach, climbed a huge staircase to a castle park with a waterfall overlooking the city, and walked through the open-air market. We had lunch in the old town where they make Socca - a pancake-like dish made with chickpea flour. It was good at first, but the taste changed (and improved) considerably as it cooled off, which I wasn't expecting.

After lunch we wandered a bit more. I was planning to spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city since I'm not a big fan of Matisse, but I was so cold that I decided to go just to get inside and warm up. As it turned out, we weren't there for that long and there was a ruined Roman amphitheater next door to the museum which was pretty interesting.

I'm not sure what it is, but my experience has told me that if you put a limited number of young Americans together in a fairly closed group, the social structure will imitate that of junior high or high school. People complain about that all the time with the co-ops and I'm seeing it here too. But maybe here it's because we're treated like we're in high school - after we finished at the museum, we had a five minute tour of a perfume factory and half an hour to wander around a medieval town called Eze. Then they took us to the language school that had dorms where we were staying for the night. And then they locked us in at 6:30 pm. I couldn't believe it - we could've walked to Monaco for the evening or at least had the choice to go do something, but instead we were given dinner, and then the tables were pushed aside, they turned on music and called it a disco. I'm still dumbfounded. I understand that there are some people on this trip who are enjoying their new-found legal drinking status a little too much, but this is ridiculous... we all signed a form saying that we are adults and will take responsibility for our actions here, but I guess they didn't want to give us that choice. Fortunately, all the rest of the school-trips are day trips, so I'll probably still go, but otherwise... grr.

Around Aix - On the Street

Walking around outside is a very different experience here than at home. You don't make eye contact with people - especially if you're a woman making eye contact with a man - it could be taken the wrong way. (Sidenote: Seriously though, what if you're just looking around and you happen to make eye contact - how on earth can they take a first glance as "ooh... you're interested in them".) Anyway, another thing is you have to constantly watch where you step. There aren't really grassy areas in Aix - none at all in the old part of town that is the city centre. And the French love their dogs. This means that dogs pee and poop all over the street (though signs instruct owners to please curb their dogs to the gutters in the center of every street it doesn't always happen) and you really have to watch where you're walking except early in every morning right after the streets have been washed. (When you still have to watch to make sure you don't step in the huge puddles of water.) Anyway, I must have perfected the appropriate French combination of looking down and looking ahead today because I'm still dressing like an American, and yet, I was stopped four times by people asking for a cigarette or a light. It was exciting to be taken for a French person, if only briefly, cause it was definitely a letdown to see their reaction every time I said anything in reply...

On the Right - Art class observations...

Art class might just be an equally foreign experience for me to actually being in a foreign country. My perfectionist tendencies are showing through quite clearly and I can't stand it. I tend to get hung up on details, focusing on the area of main attention such as a face, instead of getting the basics of the whole picture down first. We're working on drawing copies of masters half the time and drawing other people in the class the rest of the time. When doing copies, I tend to focus on copying the lines, drawing things as I think they should be based on the fact that it's a portrait, instead of seeing it as a collection of values - areas of light and dark.

We're given a quote to think about and comment on each week in class. This week's was the following from a student of Rembrandt:

---
Copying the drawings of the masters was an habitual exercise in his studio. The sketch of the whole emphasizing the essential elements was at the base of this exercise. The sketch should already express the character of the represented objects.

Contours should be drawn, not in a continuing manner, but rather fragment by fragment, with a lightness of hand, that the object be not closed but open to the light, that it may breathe in the enveloping atmosphere.

The placement of the shadows is very important; even from the beginning they should be accurately placed. It is the placement of the shadows and their harmonious rapport upon which depends the luminous effect of the whole. One must leave the paper the power to act by itself in orer to give birth to the light.
---

As we were discussing this in class today, our teacher put a drawing of Rembrandt's up on the wall. I couldn't take my eyes off of it - it seemed to perfectly capture the character of this charming old man but with surprisingly few defined details. There was only a suggestion of feet at the bottom of his pants. His head was merely a lightly sketched outline and his eyes just dots. And yet, what was there was perfect. You could get a sense of the whole as if the man jumped off the page into life, and the shadows were placed such that you knew where the light was coming from. Sometimes I feel like if I just took everything a little out of focus, as if I was looking at one of those magic 3D posters, I might stop seeing the people I'm trying to draw and see them instead as light and shadow.

I also wondered for the first time, how much the idea of art imitating life and vice versa applies here. I do believe in that sort of yin yang theory that without the bad you can't appreciate the good. It takes a balance of both to know the difference and to really experience life. Light and shadow. Taking it further though, how much of a person's character is made up not of defined traits, but mere relationships of light and dark? Fragments that come together harmoniously - where the mere suggestion of only the essential elements expresses the person as a whole. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here, but it seems to be something to contemplate more in those 'philosophical' moments of art class. ;o )

At the table - French TV

Again with the TV always on here. Jean-Michel tried to turn it off the other night, and Mme asked him to put the radio on instead for background noise. Anyway, it was just the 3 of us at dinner tonight watching various programs. The first was a very popular comedy news program done entirely with marionettes mocking the big political figures. The only real references I've heard to America on TV before tonight were about two French people who were arrested after flying to the States. One for making a joke about having a bomb on a plane and the other for being suspected of working with Al-Qaeda. Tonight was more disheartening... on Les Guignols (the marionette news show) they did a skit that started out showing George Bush putting gas in his SUV. It kept adding to the story until it got a circular reference back to America being polluted by SUV's which use the gas provided by terrorists with weapons made in the USA. I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was depressing nonetheless. Mme tried to laugh it off - I didn't really respond - I'm not sure how much Erin picked up.

The next show we were watching was some sort of comedy/interview program that we've seen before, but I'm still not clear if they only interview people in the entertainment industry or everybody. Tonight's guest was a well-known French porn star who's promoting his current (non-porn) film. Apparently he's reputed to be the largest, well, man in the world and they even started talking numbers on the show. Keep in mind, we don't get cable - this is national network TV... and then they started talking about how he's made over 1,000 porn films with over 4,000 partners - and he's married with two kids. They asked what that does to his relationship with his wife and he says that after he gets back from a shoot, he can't touch her for two days while he switches gears, if you will. This guy was still pretty young though. Let's say he's been doing this for 25 years. That's 40 films a year - and it probably takes a few days to shoot? He must never be with his wife. Who marries a porn star and what does he tell his kids about his job?

Argh

I was very disappointed with today's much anticipated presentation on activities to get involved in and how to meet French people. The only people who came to talk to us were an English-language church/youth group, an association for foreign students in Aix and two student travel agencies. I didn't come here to speak English. I didn't come here to meet other foreign students. I didn't come here to travel everywhere else. I came here to speak French, get to know French people and live in Aix. I've talked to professors, the student affairs director, full-year students and my host mom about this. No one seems to know how I can meet French students. I'm in France - how hard can this be? I guess I just haven't asked the right people yet.

Little Differences - Laundry

I finally did laundry on Sunday for the first time and today it was finally dry. The washer here is super small - it holds about half an American load and, yet, takes over an hour for one cycle! The cylinder is vertical and has doors that latch to take clothes in and out. The detergent comes in plastic pouches - you put the whole thing in with the wash and the plastic somehow dissolves away. I don't know - it all sounds a little sketchy to me. They don't have dryers here. If you look at the apartment buildings around there's laundry hanging from windows and balconies on every floor all the time. So it takes awhile to actually get laundry back - thank goodness you can't wash it all at once anyway. The school says our housing contract only allows one load of laundry a week. Given the small size of the washer, I don't see how this is possibly enough to do clothes and linens. Fortunately, Mme said we could do two loads so we can separate whites and colors, but it takes so long... I had to laugh when she showed me the button to push if you only had half a load. That would be like just sticking your jeans in there for an hour+ cycle. Why bother?

At the table - The Peanut-Butter Guy

Tonight we had dinner with Mme. and her boyfriend, Jean-Michel. Mme asked us at one point if we eat a lot of sandwiches at home and Erin said that yes, she eats a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. Much to my surprise, Mme and Jean-Michel both started making faces I normally associate with disgusting things like Vegemite. Both proclaimed that they had tried peanut butter once and would never eat it again! I laughed and commented that it's not something you really find in France. "But didn't you see it at Monoprix (the bigger grocery store)?" Well, yes, I said, but there was only one type (un type) and it looked iffy. They were both thoroughly confused... as it turns out - though my sentence may have technically been correct, 'un type' is now slang for a hot guy. (As I've learned in the past, once there's a slang meaning to a phrase in French, you can't really use it in the appropriate way anymore.) So they thought I was saying there was only one hot guy selling peanut butter on the street outside the grocery store, but he looked iffy so I didn't buy any from him. I really need to brush up on my slang...

At the table - Separation of Church and State

Since Nadege and Aurore weren't here tonight, it was just the three of us at dinner tonight. Let the political discussions begin. The French love to discuss politics, culture, religion - just about any hot intellectual issue you could think of - over dinner. There's always background noise from the TV or radio here, even while we eat, and as I discovered, it's a way for Mme. to come up with topics to ask us about as they flash headlines across the screen. Tonight the topic of Muslims wearing veils in school came up. It's been a hot topic in the news lately because, as I've discovered, the French see the separation of Church and State as very black and white - and they take it very seriously. The problem was that some public schools have allowed Muslim girls to wear their veils to school while others have not. So the public called for a national ruling to determine once and for all, because all the public schools have to be the same. The ruling came down that they could not wear their veils because that would bring religion into the schools. I was surprised to hear Mme say that she though this was the appropriate ruling. Her reasoning was that religion is private and just because you follow one religion doesn't mean you have to demonstrate that to the world. Furthermore, if some children were to demonstrate their religion at school, it could cause conflicts so it was better not to be able to tell. Since there are private Catholic and Jewish schools, she didn't see why they couldn't open private Muslim schools for those who are extremely religious and wanted their children to go to a school where veils could be worn.

I can see her point, but I can't imagine how difficult it must be for the girls who are now told that they are not allowed to practice their religion at school. Do their parents keep them home because they can't go out properly dressed? Though public school may not be the appropriate place for French children to discuss their religion, they are, in effect, telling the students that they are not allowed to follow their religion for eight hours a day. If these girls truly believe they must wear their veils, what do they think will happen to them if their government tells them they cannot be educated with them? How do they reconcile the conflict in their minds between their God and their government?

Unfortunately, my French isn't good enough to debate these points with Mme, but it is nice to know that once it improves, I'm sure she'll have no problem debating with me - after all, it's apparently the national sport at dinnertime.

My First Week...

Wow, it's so hard to believe I've only been here for a week - it feels like a much longer time since the nice Lufthansa guy at O'Hare was running with me to the gate. But it must have only been a week because there are a couple classes I've only had once - I can't even remember all of my professors' names.

So far things are going a lot better than I was expecting. I was really worried about living with a French host and being homesick. On my past trips, the hardest times have been when I was staying with a foreign family. Fortunately, it's so much easier this time - Mme. Charron isn't at all like the French mom we were told to expect. I feel totally comfortable in the apartment doing whatever I want. I think it's also been made easier by the fact that she's single - it's a lot easier to learn how Mme. works by herself than trying to figure out an entire family and all the complexities that come with it. Nadege and Aurore have been around a lot this week, but I don't worry about that as much since they aren't here all the time.

The homesickness hasn't been as bad either since I'm able to communicate regularly with family and friends by e-mail and I have the cell phone now. That has made such a difference. (And I am SO glad I got this computer... if I had to rely on Internet cafes this would be so much harder...)

One of the many orientation packets I got talked about the four stages of study abroad. I don't remember what they all were, but it started with the honeymoon period where you're just enchanted by the new country and think everything is amazing. It moves through two more stages of discomfort and grief or something until you move to the stage of getting settled into reality. You could definiely spot the students in the honeymoon period on our first day walking around. "It's so beautiful here - even the graffiti is beautiful!" I heard that out of so many people - beautiful graffiti. Sorry, but it's just like the graffiti back home - you're probably just admiring the fact that it's on the side of a 12th century building.

For some reason, I don't feel like I've been going through that at all - maybe because of how much I've already traveled and the fact that I've been away from home for so long already. I came here knowing that there would be little surprises every day and constant adjustments. I came knowing that I couldn't have expectations - that I would just have to take things as they come. This isn't like life in the States and I wouldn't want it to be. I'm just here for the time being, living in the present moment because I really have no idea what I'll be doing in a couple weeks.