May update

This is taken from a letter written to the scholarship committee back at Winsor.

Salut de printemps à Paris!  I can't believe I only have a month left.
Each day for the past five days, I've run into someone whom I know on the street
or on the metro around Paris: it's a sign that I really feel at home here.  I
keep repeating to myself that I'll always have Paris, but at the same time, I
know that the people that I've met here will not be here when I come back, and I
won't be the same person either.  I'm trying to savor the city and the people in
it while I still can.

I just had another picnic to assemble my friends and to make sure that I
got to say goodbye to everyone before they start to leave.  This time we went to
the Bois de Boulogne, on the other side of Paris.  The crowd ended up being very
international. Besides the Americans from AYA, I invited my French friends
(Benjamin, Michael and Marylou from my dance class), two friends from my
painting class (a Swedish girl and a South Korean girl), a German art history
student I met in line for an exhibit at the Louvre, a Basque girl from Spain, an
English friend and her Syrian boyfriend, and an Austrian girl from my
Impressionism art history class.  We all spoke in French as a common language
and shared home-cooked food under the trees near a French Girl Scout troop until
a rainstorm made us run for cover, and then dried off at a café at the Place
St-Michel.  I'm definitely coming back with a healthy appreciation for French
cooking, coffee, pastry and cheese, and even a bit of knowledge in wine tasting;
I've learned how to make some desserts from my host mom, and I hope to put them
to good use in the future.

I got very involved in the political scene here during the Presidential
elections, which was one of the reasons why it took me so long to write.  I've
been reading the newspapers almost every day and watch the news as much as
possible (I've come to really like Libération for its accessible layout, and Le
Monde for its editorials).  In April, I followed the Bayrou centrist phenomenon,
as he came up from behind against the two-party domination of the system.  I
grew to admire Ségolène Royal's determination and be frustrated with her
blunder-filled campaign.  And I watched the rise of Nicolas Sarkozy, the
Minister of the Interior posing squarely against his mentor Chirac and using his
orating skills to advance right-wing (including some extreme right-wing) ideas
to eventual success.  During the first round of voting, when my host family went
to vote, I went into the voting station and asked whether I could volunteer to
count votes; to my surprise, they let me do it!  It was a great experience: I
got to meet politically involved people, make a personal difference in the
election, and see who people voted for in my arrondissement.  The seventh
arrondissement is fairly rich and entitled, so I wasn't surprised to see a lot
of support for Sarkozy, and even for Bayrou, to Royal's detriment.  I was
surprised, though, to see a few votes for Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme
right-wing racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic candidate, in the educated center of
Paris.  After the first round of voting, I went to the Socialist Party rally
just 10 minutes away from my house, to join in on the Young Socialists' party
and hear Ségolène's partner, Francois Hollande, speak.  Then it was time for the
frienzied two weeks between the rounds, when Ségo and Sarko had a chance to
really fight it out before the final vote.  I went to go watch the televised
debate between them before the second round with some other students at the
American college center at Reid Hall, and watched Ségolène go on the offensive
and Sarkozy display some unusual calm, which I originally thought was to her
advantage, but it turned out that she had gotten her facts wrong.  Some friends
invited me over to watch the results of the second round.  Once it had become
obvious that Sarkozy had won, I left to go with Benjamin to the UMP headquarters
(Sarkozy's party) to watch Sarkozy's victory speech, and then see the concert
and celebration at the Place de la Concorde.  The crowd was more diverse than I
expected, but more homogenous and older than the Socialist crowd.  In fact,
after the speech by the UMP headquarters, I was interviewed by the New York
Times and the BBC as an English speaker!  (Neither interview was published.)
Because France is so centralized, I could get very close to the action in Paris;
I felt like I was in the absolute center of what was going on.  It was very
exciting.  This election in Paris was also a great time and place to get a taste
of what politics is like.  With all the energy of a new generation coming to
power, the larger-than-life personalities, and the last-minute maneuvering, I
think I've gotten a good taste of the excitement and tension in politics.

Most young people I've met aren't big fans of Sarkozy, but Benjamin is an
exception.  When people ask me about who I would have voted for, I usually say
Ségolène Royal.  I appreciate Sarkozy's guarded pro-American policy ("France and
America should be friends, but we should also remember that good friends should
be free to disagree on some issues"), and I think that he'll bring some good
reform to the French economy, but I'm turned off by his policies on immigration,
his catering to the extreme right, and some of his stranger ideas, notably some
statements on eugenics.  Things have seemed more promising now that he's been
elected, though.  Sarkozy has been opening up his government by including
centrist and left-wing ministers, and I think that may temper the more extreme
parts of his program.  I'm very curious to see what happens to France over the
next five years.

Besides politics, I've been keeping up with my other activities around
town.  I've enjoyed several more museums and concerts, including the stunningly
original collection of the newly opened Musée du Quai Branly, which shows
examples of human creativity from around the world.  I was pleased to see that
the Comédie Francaise performance of "Cyrano de Bergerac" that I enjoyed so much
in January won a Molière award (the Tony equivalent, with a much more
educational feel) for best publicly-funded play.  I've still been going to the
Israeli Dance class, and I just handed in my portfolio for the studio painting
class.  While I've been at the atelier (studio), my painting has definitely
progressed, and I've also made some unlikely friends and gained a new
appreciation for the work that artists put into the paintings I look at in
museums.  I've taken on full responsibility for my class of sixth and
seventh-graders at the American synagogue, and I've learned to write lesson
plans, get the kids to pay attention, tell engaging stories, and comfort a
crying student.  I've also been working hard in my classes; I've given three
oral presentations, written a 22-page paper about the separation of church and
state in France, and have written a paper about post-9/11 US policy from a
French point of view (which definitely forced me see things from another
perspective).  I've been in many situations that have challenged my competence,
but I feel like I'm more prepared to take on the world as a result.

I'm so grateful for the chance to have had this year.  I've definitely
forced myself to leave my room and its balcony and explore the greater world of
politics, education, relationships, and art, and I think I've gained valuable
perspective and experience.  When I start college next year, I'll be happy to
bring my knowledge to another group of people, and to start learning from them.
It will be a little strange, though, to go back into the educational bubble
after I've already left it for a year to live life in a city.  I will miss the
independence, the unpredictability, and the feeling of discovering something new
every day that I've had here.  Perhaps I'll move back to Paris someday.

March madness: excursions

More on the past two months!

Over my February break, I went to visit Lynn Edmonds, a fellow Winsor '06 graduate, in Thessaloniki, Greece, for a week. I spent 5 days in Thessaloniki with Lynn and her grandparents, and took the train down to Athens by myself for two days, where I stayed with her aunt. I was exposed to so much beauty: in the sweep of the mountains, the ocean, the Mediterranean forests; the incredible classical architecture and sculptures; and interesting Byzantine art. A tour guide said that a humanistic civilization developed in Greece because the landscape is human-sized, which I thought was an interesting hypothesis. Thessaloniki is the second-largest city in Greece, and was the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires' second city; it's a manageable size, but still full of surprises. There were ancient city walls, ancient Greek and Roman ruins, elaborately decorated Greek Orthodox churches, maze-like outdoor markets, and bouzoukia, or restaurants with musicians playing traditional Greek music on the mandolin (bouzouki). It was my first time in a country where I didn't speak the language, which was tough sometimes, especially given the fact that Lynn's grandparents don't speak any English. I kept reading signs in Greek to myself slowly like a preschooler, guessing words from their roots, and feeling like an outsider. (It was strange, though; people thought I was Greek, to the extent where people would ask me for directions, and would ask me whether my parents were Greek when I said I was American. I apparently look very Mediterranean.) It was great to hang out with Lynn, and to connect over the things we have in common: our Winsor experiences, doing a gap year, and living pretty independently in Europe.

I've also had some great experiences closer to home. I made a trip last weekend to my (French) friend Anais's country house for a weekend to get a taste of a different side of France along with 12 other French young adults, and met a farming family with dense, almost incomprehensible accents. They gave us some freshly laid goose eggs, which we took back and cooked. I also went to the Salon de l'Agriculture, a farming exhibit that is a major political event. The huge convention center at Porte de Versailles was filled with farmers in suits and boots leading prize cows, donkeys, dogs, horses, goats and sheep around, and pig competitions were placed in classic French style next to stalls selling pork and sausages. The presidential candidates, including Francois Bayrou the centrist who actually used to be a farmer, came to publicize their dedication to France's agriculture.

My friendships have also been coming along. For my birthday in February, I organized a picnic in the Parc de Vincennes' Parc Floral (Botanical Garden). 11 of us (including four French people) dined on wine, bread, cheese from the famous fromagerie Barthelemy, homemade quiche, lasagna, grapes and of course cake. The conversation was in both French and English, and the Americans taught the French people how to play Duck-Duck-Goose in exchange for the rules of French games. It was a beautiful day, and a great way to celebrate a birthday. (The second picture is of my friends from the Israeli dance class after we demonstrated a dance for the assembled company: Benjamin is in back, and Michael and his girlfriend Marylou are in front.)

I'm continuing to enjoy the AYA cultural excursions, and I've been adding on to them on my own. We’ve seen two concerts, one by the Sorbonne orchestra last night, and several plays, including a fantastic performance of “Le malade imaginaire” by Molière and the famous “Cyrano de Bergerac”, both at the Comédie Francaise. I recently started going to the free medieval music concerts at the Musée Cluny, which feature period instruments like the rebec (a string instrument), a sort of saxophone made of horn, a zither, and shells rubbed together. Two nights ago, I attended a comedy festival called “Rire contre le racisme”, which featured black, Arab and Jewish comedians and singers banding together against racism and the divisions often found in French society. It was a great window into French popular culture, and an event that showed the willingness for change, as well as being enjoyable. I was able to exercise my newfound knowledge of “verlan”, the French slang that inverses syllables of words, which some of my French friends have taught me. The comedians used words like “guedin” for “dingue” or crazy, “chelou” for “louche” (ugly), “moeuf” for “femme”, and “roeum” for “mère”. C’est un truc tout guedin, quoi? (It’s a really cool thing, right?)

Another recent event was St. Patrick's Day. Hoping to check out an organic food market (which wasn't open on Saturdays), I went to Montmartre on St. Patrick's Day morning, only to find a full-blown Scottish festival in time for a Scotland-France rugby game. I saw some bagpipers and drummers in kilts drinking beer in front of le Cafe Saint Jean, which they called "a good pub", and talked to them for a bit. Turns out we hardly speak the same language, but it was fun anyway. I translated an article about the festival in a local paper to them, and took a picture. Later on, I hung out with Christine (from AYA) and company, including her Romanian romantic interest and her Basque friend, at her apartment, and listened to lots of Irish music. Her father plays in an Irish music band. Then we went out for Guinness in true St. Patty's fashion- just a sip, although it's legal for me to drink here. All day long, I also saw lots of (mostly fashionably reserved) wearing of green and heard many Irish and Scottish accents on the metro.

Altogether, I'm trying to squeeze as much as possible from my remaining 10 weeks. There are always new things to discover in this wonderful city and old haunts to return to. Now that I have filled out my cast of characters everything is more meaningful because I can share it with others.

March madness: the basics

This is a preliminary post, because I just wrote a complete one and my computer rebooted unexpectedly. So here's a bit of an update on my last two months.

After a relatively empty fall semester, I decided to schedule a much tighter one for the spring. I'm taking four academic courses, auditing one, and taking an art class; I'm also babysitting and working as a Hebrew School teacher. All the same, I've been trying to fully experience what the city has to offer.

After a full semester in Sorbonne classes, I decided I wanted to challenge myself more this semester. I'm taking five classes: two at the Sorbonne, one at the Institut Catholique, and two with the AYA program at Reid Hall. The Institut Catholique is a private university which offers classes on religion, for the reason that France is strictly secular and will not use public money for religious purposes. (It's interesting to see how this contrasts with the US; one result of this "laicite" is the ban on head scarves in public schools.) Besides religion, it also has very good philosophy and political science departments, and has a more American-style feel with smaller classes and more teacher-student interaction. I'm taking a class there called "History of International Relations since 1945", with an excellent teacher who also teaches at Sciences Po, France's grande ecole for politics. It's been a very compelling class, and has introduced me to a subject I really don't know much about from a non-American perspective. Actually, I'm preparing a presentation on the results of 9/11 from a French perspective; it's a good exercise in changing my point of view. At the Sorbonne, I'm taking a class on Impressionist art history; this is absolutely the best place to study it, and I'm enjoying my free admission into the Musee d'Orsay. I'm also taking a translation class with French students in the English department; we translate from French to English and English to French. It's harder than I thought; think translating a passage from "Lolita" into French and trying to keep the poetry and connotations, or a hymn, preserving the rhyme scheme and level of language. Still, it's nice to have the other kids in the class, and even the teacher asking me what sounds natural to me as a native English speaker. Finally, at Reid Hall, I'm taking the continuation of the French Cinema class (I'm auditing it) and a class on the Fifth Republic and French political history, which is coming in handy as the presidential election gets closer and closer.

I'm also painting for six hours a week at a private atelier (studio) near the Pere Lachaise cemetery, for the full French art experience I've been hearing about in my art history class. There are about 30 regulars, mostly French, but also some Japanese and Americans who are passing through or live in Paris, including four other American college students. Everyone comes in when they want to, and can choose to paint the model who poses nude for four hours a day (the model changes each week) or the two still lives, while a teacher comes around and gives suggestions. Although I'd had some life drawing experience before, I just started oil painting. That too is harder than I expected, but definitely rewarding. Like an essay, you're never really finished with an oil painting; you can always add more detail, or paint over indefinitely. I'll post some pictures later of some of my work.

I'm also working, which has been liberating. I'm still babysitting for Chiara, the daughter of the American jazz singer. In February, I joined an American synagogue here, and it turned out that one of their Hebrew School teachers had just moved away from France and they needed a new one. I went to Hebrew High School through 11th grade and attended a teacher training program senior year, so I was qualified, and they hired me to teach sixth graders and take care of 3-6 year-olds. Luckily, the classes are in English, not French. For the time being, I'm working with another teacher, but in a week or two I'll be handling the classes entirely on my own. It's a challenge, but I love the kids.

More specifics coming soon!

Vacation travels part 2

To resume the story of my past month: After my all-too-brief sojourn at home, I headed off to Washington DC to attend the reunion for Legacy Keshet (properly known as Legacy Heritage Internship for Young Scientists, a mouthful of a name), the science-focused trip to Israel I took last summer. I had really missed the people from the trip and the wonderful energy we had, and I justified the trip back to the US partially by the fact that I could make the reunion. And true to my expectations, the reunion helped solidify my friendships from the trip and got me reenergized to do my advocacy project. The picture shows some of us in front of the White House. The weather was very abnormal, with 70 degree days in early January; we need to start actually paying attention to global warming, because it's only going to get worse as time goes on. Anyway, I also reconnected to the personal empowerment I felt I gained over the summer, although once again I could tell how I had matured over the past few months. I was very sad when the three day reunion ended.

I flew back to Paris with a paper to write on the overnight flight, which I finished five minutes before the plane touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport and handed in that same day. (Good college training? I hope not.) When I returned, though very jetlagged, I found Emma and her mother waiting for me. Emma Johnson was here for three and a half weeks during Oberlin's JanTerm, taking French classes in the morning, and we spent the better part of that time together. I had one last week of class, and then we were able to go out on the town. Emma's mom took us out to several places; I got to sit in the Lost Generation haunt (only a few minutes away from me) of the Cafe de Flore, visited the dark, hip BuddhaBar near the Louvre, and ate in the ornately gilded restaurant at the Musee d'Orsay. This was a different side of Paris, and it was so nice to get to share it with a very good friend. Her mom left after a week, leaving us the run of their rented apartment in the Marais. We went out to several plays and movies, including a production of "La Cantatrice Chauve" by Ionesco that has been running uninterrupted in the same theater (La Huchette) for the last 51 years, and the great classic of "Cyrano de Bergerac" at the Comedie Francaise from last-minute seats which required considerable gymnastics to be able to see the wonders happening on stage. We visited the Louvre on a night when it was open late, used Bisquick from the American store "Thanksgiving" to prepare a pancake dinner, shopped (Paris now has "les soldes", where everything is marked way down at the same time; it's one of only two times a year that stores are allowed to have sales), saw the Tintin exhibit at the Centre Pompidou, and watched "Paper Moon", "12:08 a l'est de Bucharest", "A Night at the Opera", and "Paris je t'aime", a collection of short shorts by different directors about different neighborhoods of Paris. It was pretty American-in-Paris centric, but gave a fairly authentic sense of the flavors of the neighborhoods, and I loved it.

Most importantly, we traveled to Barcelona together for three days. Barcelona is an absolutely beautiful city, with stunning and original architecture that rivals the more uniform elegance of Paris. I tried to put my two years of high school Spanish into effect, only to find that everyone there speaks Catalan as a first language and that their accent threw me off. In any case, we were able to get by. We ate delicious food (especially vegetarian paella) on a Spanish schedule: breakfast at 10, lunch at 2 or 3, dinner after 9 PM and as late as 11 PM or midnight. There were lots of people on the streets even at 1 or 2 AM, which fit my current sleep schedule much better than the Parisian schedule does. We explored the city a lot every day, walking up to 10 hours a day, through the city, on the great touristy avenue La Rambla, Mediterranean seashore, and through the charming narrow streets of el Barro Gotic, where our hostel was located. We discovered the history of Catalonia along the through the museum of Catalonian History, saw the Picasso Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and explored the beautiful chaparral climate plants in the botanical gardens at Montjuic. We also got to see Gaudi's genius at the Sagrada Familia (an amazing Modernist and naturalist cathedral still under construction after 120 years) and La Pedrera, an innovative apartment building. It was a wonderful trip, and as always great to be with Emma.

Another recent development has been with Sofia Coppola. Although I announced in my last post that I was going to babysit for little Romy, I only just babysat for the first time for her last Tuesday. Romy is a quiet and goodnatured eight-week-old baby, especially when I walked around with her and sang to her. And Sofia and Thomas Mars are both very nice people, and very natural. I also ran some errands for her yesterday, stopping at a baby furniture store (?) among other things. Along the way, I saw a teacher strike- I wish we had had those sometimes- and a group of Hare Krishna by a metro stop chanting to the sound of an accordion... so French. I'm getting psyched for the new semester; my Reid Hall classes are starting this week, but my Sorbonne classes are not starting until two weeks from now. I'm still finalizing them. I'm looking forward to getting to know the new AYA people, who just arrived two days ago. Au revoir!

Vacation travels part 1

Many things have happened over the past month. I visited three countries (France, the U.S., and Spain), entertained and was entertained by three visitors (my mom, my brother Eli, and Emma Johnson from Winsor), got a new job, went to a reunion for my Israel trip last summer, and realized how much has and hasn't changed when I went home for a week. As the new semester is starting tomorrow, I thought I should update before things change again.

I'll start roughly chronologically. I had a spate of work near the end of December, with about 30 pages of essays in French due during one week, and then another 15-20 pages due after vacation. Luckily, everything turned out very well. I hope that Harvard takes my credit next year. Around and after this work, my mom and I went to see Les Invalides, the Musee Rodin, the Musee de l'Armee, Deyrolle, and the Catacombes. Mom and I explored Paris intensely for a week, and then Eli arrived. He's 15 and this was his first time spending a length of time in Europe. He takes Spanish in school, but picked up a little French over the stay. My uncle Tom, who works in international finance, helping small enterprises grow in developing countries, stopped by from his post in Nigeria. All of us visited such classics as the Tour Eiffel, and occasionally the four of us split up so Eli could see some things that he specifically was interested in. Together, we did a lot of exploring, and made a significant dent in Paris's more than 200 museums. A partial list of things we saw includes: the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, Les Halles, rue Mouffetard, Arenes de Lutece, Musee Jacquemart-Andre, the Sacre-Coeur, Shakespeare and Company, Ste-Chapelle, and the Catacombes of Paris. The catacombes were especially creepy. They house the bones of over a million people who were excavated from various cemeteries when they became overcrowded and centers of disease, including many victims of the Guillotine during the French Revolution. After passing a door with the inscription, "C'est ici l'empire de la mort" (This is the empire of death), we walked along seemingly endless corridors of piled up femurs and neat rows of skulls, punctuated by plaques of morbid poetry and pictures of churches and skulls drawn with skulls among the other bones. I wasn't sure how to react, but I definitely did not want to smile. (See the picture- those are real people's skulls behind me. As my mom pointed out, it looks like a Rembrant painting with the light.) It was so nice to have my mom and brother here; it was a little strange to be taking care of the family, but I was glad to know that the role worked out.

My host family welcomed me in for their reveillon, or Christmas Eve dinner. I was a little confused about whether I was supposed to be there for dinner or not, so I hung out with Mom and Eli until 11 PM, when I thought they'd be finished, and then came back. Instead, they invited me to have some of the chocolate buche de Noel that they got from Laduree, the famous dessert maker. Then we exchanged presents under the tree; they gave me some chocolates, a necklace, and a Tintin comic book, "Tintin aux Ameriques". The book presents the US as a wild, untamed place populated mainly by Chicago gangsters and les peaux-rouges who live in Redskincity. Given the classic popularity of the series, it's interesting to see how that stereotype is played out. Camille, the Guichards' oldest daughter who lives in Berlin, and her father (Sophie's first husband) and his boyfriend were also there. Some time after Sophie and her first husband had Camille, he came out of the closet and the two got divorced, but he and his boyfriend still are close to Sophie and Jean-Marie, Sophie's second husband. In the picture, from left to right: the first husband's boyfriend, Paul my host brother, the first husband, Camille, Adele, Sophie, and me. Jean-Marie was taking the picture. Paul, who's taking a break from university this year, has decided to try his luck working in London for the rest of the school year. He's moving there in two weeks with a friend, and plans to look for a job and an apartment once he gets there. I'll miss him.

Then I went home for a week. I'm so glad that I was able to go back; being away from everyone for nine months would have been very lonely, and might have weakened the friendships that are so important to me. Given the length of time, I ran around a fair bit, having doctor's appointments, visiting Winsor, and seeing friends and family. It was interesting to see how things had subtly changed. It was nice to be back, but I missed the independence and the right to determine my life for myself. I also realized how much I depend on my friends and family to back me up, and that's why I've been feeling lonely here (which is dissipating as I spend more time with friends here). I had been worrying that people would have moved on a lot in my absence, but to my relief, although some things had changed, I'm still friends with my old friends and it's going to be ok. We had a Winsor reunion at Fire and Ice in Harvard Square, where I got up to date on people from my class's college experiences. It was a little strange having so little in common to talk about, so I mainly gathered information and told a couple of stock stories about Paris. I went to two parties, got back in touch with my hometowns of Brookline and Boston (especially for First Night), and visited Megan and Weslie at Harvard, which got me excited again for next year. The pictures are: my cousin Rachel and her daughter Ellie at her second daughter Jessica's naming ceremony; friends at Emma's house after the Winsor '06 reunion; and the W'06 reunion.

Paris! Now with pictures

Wow- I realize that it's been a long time since I last updated. Once it's been a while the time just snowballs and then it's intimidating to catch up. So I will do it in small bits.

For the past week or so, my mom has been visiting me in Paris. It's been great to have her here. Our relationship has changed a bit, because I have to be on top of what's going on and be her translator (although her French is definitely usable) and show her around, so we're on a more equal plane than before. I also realize how much I missed having her around. For the past few weeks, I've been scurrying to finish my work for my classes, and my finals finished on Wednesday, so I couldn't do as much as I wanted with her until Thursday. All the same, I've been showing her the corners of the city that I've discovered, eating delicious food, going to museums, and sharing Paris with her.

Some highlights:

The Opera last night. We saw "Idomeneo" by Mozart at the Opera Garnier. It was absolutely incredible. It was my first real opera, but the opulent, magnificent building would have been worth the trip all by itself. Of course, the singing, the music, and the acting (viewed via binoculars from all the way up on the fifth balcony) made it a much better experience. We got last minute tickets for 10 euros each, and although we could only see two thirds of the stage and had to lean over to see the subtitles in French for the Italian opera, the price means I can go and get myself an opera education in the setting of "The Phantom of the Opera". (The photo shows me on the grand staircase.) Its color scheme matches that of Paris- I always think of the city in terms of black and light gold. It's a city of darkness and light, of black fashion, restrained intellectualism, and opulence.

The Khannoucca dinner with Anais's family. Anais, my friend from Yom Kippur, invited me and my mother over to dinner to celebrate Hanukkah in a family atmosphere. They are absolutely lovely people. We ventured out into the banlieue (sometimes sketchy suburbs), but of course they live in a perfectly nice neighborhood, and were warmly welcomed into a gathering of 22 people. The meal was delicious, we all took a little "Hanukkah quiz", and everyone got presents, even the two of us. We got to share in lively discussions of art, politics, and marine biology (Anais's major) and meet her actor grandfather whose parents were deported from Paris in the Holocaust. It was a nice sense of getting to know the Jewish community here in more complexity. We stayed the night, and talked politics with her parents in the morning.

Wandering around Paris. We hit up: rue Mouffetard (a great student hangout street with everything you could ever want), Montmartre around Abbesses with its bohemian past and artsy and charming present, St-Germain-des-Pres with its big name stores, tourists, tinges of the Quartier Latin, and marches de noel, Shakespeare and Company the paradise for book-lovers, Boulevard St-Michel, and the Marais for its falafel and Hanukkah spirit.

Other things I've done in the past few weeks:

Strasbourg. I went out to the city in the East of France for a long day with Chesna from AYA to see the Marches de Noel, huge cities of booths selling Christmas-specific and other nice, wintery, shiny, good-smelling things like gingerbread, hot spiced wine, ornaments, clothing, jewelry, puzzles, and pastry. The city calls itself the "Christmas capital" and was beautifully decorated. I especially loved the cathedral with its miraculous clock with moving wood and metal figures of the saints who come out every 15 minutes; Death rings the hour bell. We got some presents, explored the city, and warmed ourselves quite pleasantly against the cold.


Brussels. I went to an Israel rally with the Union des Etudiants Juifs de France in Brussels for a day, and met some really great people on the 10-hour bus ride. We exchanged cultural references and became good friends. The rally was interesting, and I also got to see the inside of the European Parliament building.

One last note:

I wrapped presents for Francis Ford Coppola today. And we were chatting. At his house. I'm going to see if I can babysit for Sofia's baby Romy (a very cute girl). They seem to want us to treat them like normal people, so I will. Very nice.

International savoir-faire

This is at least partly catch-up from the previous post.

Thanksgiving- in Paris! It was a pretty surreal experience- no vacation, no family gathering, no decorations, no cranberries, which are almost impossible to find in France. But there was a turkey. The AYA directrice, Madame Schneersohn, invited all of us, plus some of her family and friends, over for Thanksgiving dinner. The director of AYA in the US had sent over Thanksgiving-themed paper plates, cups and napkins, and the non-vegetarians enjoyed homemade turkey and stuffing, while the vegetarians ate mashed potatoes, cucumber slices, and baby carrots. (This was one of the few occasions where I've felt like breaking vegetarianism- but I held out.) It was very nice to see all the AYA people, and to catch up on the adventures of some people I hadn't seen in weeks.

Another big development- through the UEJF (French Hillel) website, I discovered Israeli dancing classes, and I've now gone to two of them. As I thought, it's been a good way to get to know French Jewish students, and have a peek at how the Jewish community here works. The classes meet in the Marais on the second floor of a building with a shop on the ground floor, and are taught by a 22-year-old student and her 19-year-old brother. After the first class, I went out to dinner with a group of six to try what claims to be (and I can believe it) the best falafel in Paris at "L'As de Fallafel", or the Ace of Falafels. I worked out a conversation arrangement with a guy named Michael, who's 19 and in his second year of "prepa" or preparation to get into a grande ecole. So on Saturday, I went over to his house (he lives a few blocks away from me), and we helped each other with our French/English, first speaking in English for an hour- I wrote down expressions he didn't know- and then for the rest of the time in French. Somehow the conversation turned to philosophy, fractals, and politics; he's a very neat guy. His father, Daniel Sibony, has written 31 books on the politics of the Middle East, similarities and differerences between the three big monotheistic religions, psychology, and mathematics; they've been translated into many languages, just not English, because he hasn't found a translator he likes yet. I looked at some of them, and I'd love to read some of his work. On the religion issue, the dad grew up in Morocco, and so can read the Koran in Arabic and has an interesting point of view. Anyway, Michael and I went to a movie on Saturday night; I think he's going out with another girl from the dance class, but I'm not absolutely sure. On Sunday night I invited two AYA people with me to the dance class, which was interesting but made me a little less willing to put myself out and meet people speaking French. I'm going to keep doing the conversation things- it's really helpful to have someone correcting me, and Michael's very nice.

I also met more European people studying at the Sorbonne last Friday at a gathering for French Sorbonne students and ERASMUS Sorbonne students. ERASMUS is a European Union program which makes it easy for European students to study abroad in other countries and get their credits transferred, and also provides advisors. There are a fair number of ERASMUS students at the Sorbonne, and this was an event to get to know other ERASMUS and French people. For some reason Mme Schneersohn heard about it, so I went with Chesna, but when we got there we were the only two Americans there. I got to meet people from Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Ireland, and it was interesting to compare their experiences to mine. I've been getting a lot of international exposure.

As always, behind the punctuation of museums and meetings, there is the daily grind of school and homework, as I realize that I actually do have lots of essays to write and tests to study for. I also went babysitting again, and had a very nice time with Chiara.

I'm going to go to Brussels tomorrow for a rally for Israel, or specifically for the Israeli prisoners still in Lebanon and Gaza. I thought it would be a good opportunity to get to meet other UEJF people, but also get to see a new city and meet Belgian and German Jewish students. I'll see how it goes- I'll be spending a long time on the road tomorrow. I guess I'd better finish up, then.

Many meetings

Over the past week, I've spoken a lot of French, and met lots of French and non-American people. The language is getting more comfortable, and I can actually say I've had the experience (twice in the last two days) of running into someone I know on the streets of Paris. I also had an interesting expat Thanksgiving dinner. And my social life is getting more interesting as I find things to do besides class, homework, wandering around and going to museums. Although that kind of life is really not too bad, unless you factor in the solitude.

Alors. First the vestiges of the solitary life. I stumbled upon a place I'd been looking for ever since I read Adam Gopnick's collection of essays, Paris to the Moon, about being an American in Paris: Deyrolle. It turns out that it was three blocks away from me the entire time. Deyrolle is a strange place- it's a taxidermy store. The window displays include preserved deer in hunter's outfits, stuffed cats, and birds. When you climb the stairs to the larger second floor, you see an odd menagerie- water buffalo, a giraffe, and an elephant greet you, and a bird is perched on a polar bear. In one room there is a gigantic preserved insect collection, with drawers and drawers of beetles and butterflies and scorpions and anything you can think of, that would make Kinsey proud. And the strangest thing is that everything has a price on it- apparently there's still a sizable market for dead animal trophies.

This week, I also visited the Musee Picasso, by myself, which is a very cool museum. I can't believe the genius and breath of artistic creativity of Picasso- it's as if he had 10 different master artists inside of him. I also learned that the Louvre opens free for students on Friday nights, and has special art classes and talks until 10 PM, so for the past two Friday nights I've gone there. Unfortunately I missed the art classes both times, but I'll keep trying- instead I sketched some pieces on my own. My museum class also visited the Musee Rodin, who apparently hardly ever did the actual sculpting in marble himself, but only made the clay models and passed them on to his girlfriend, Camille Claudel; you wouldn't know from all the photos and videos he convinced his friends to take of him chipping away at a block of marble. She should get more credit. I've also been to the Louvre twice, and even done a little sketching. They have events that are free for students on Friday nights.

Today, in another solitary endeavour, I decided to take advantage of a free lecture series and go to Sciences Po (the political Grande Ecole) to learn about "The Silent Revolution: Changes in French politics from 1980-2005", so I could be more up to date on the political situation.

More to come.