The Black Dog

Today was awesome!!!

Got up at about 9:00, took the train to the Bois de Boulogne, where I had lunch. Then I did about 45 minutes of Tai Chi. I was doing the Fountain exercise when I overheard a little girl ask, "Maman, est-ce qu'il fait du magique?" ("Mom, is he doing magic?")

Then I walked to the Arc de Triomphe, where I met Laureline, the French girl I met over the summer when her father was engaged to my mom's friend Paula, and her friends. I can't remember ANY of their names, but one of the guys and I had a very nice conversation about Dr. Who. We browsed the CDs at the Virgin megastore on the Champs Elysees, and then we took the metro to the Black Dog, a goth bar named after the Led Zeppelin song.

It's weird, now that I'm actually 21, I don't have nearly as many compunctions about drinking. I still view alcohol as a mind-impairing poison, but not as much as I did before.

I can't wait to go out with them again!

Some people think they're always right...

Well, I'm now 21. Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. And yes, I did drink on my 21st birthday.

Yesterday everything I went to classes like every day. The only thing different was the protest I encountered while commuting from Grammar to Phonetics. Makes me miss the protests in DC.

When I got home Jean asked me something about Tai Chi, which then prompted his mother to launch into an hour-long (maybe 20 minutes, but it felt like an hour) lecture about how she'd read that Tai Chi was tied to Taoism, which is an occult religion, and how learning about natural energies is anti-Christian, and how if someone can break stone with their bare hand they're obviously receiving power from the Devil, and there was something about a priest who converted from Christianity to Buddhism and then back to Christianity because he found that Buddhism is evil. She grouped martial arts with African sorcery, Indian mantras, and Chinese medicine, and concluded that none of these practices come from God and are thus evil. Confusing "God" with "Europe," are we, madame? Is it 1509 already?

I just stood there and when I could take no more of it I very calmly stated that in my two years of Tai Chi I've never found anything occult or in fact religious at all. But she did inadvertently bring up a good point: I've been slacking off on my Tai Chi! I'll start getting up half an hour earlier to catch the train and I'll practice in the Jardin de Luxembourg before class.

After dinner I waited for my friend Sarah to text me about going to a club later in the night. Everyone else who was going had to attend some concert for their Art & Literature class and I was planning to meet them at the club afterwards. But as I was heading towards the train station, Sarah texted me saying that everyone was too tired and was going home.

So, fuming, I walked into the center of town to find a bar. So help me, I was going to have at least one drink on my birthday! Immediately after I found a place I ran into a group of four Welshmen and their girlfriends who were in France for the rugby game. I told them it was my birthday and they offered to buy me a drink. They bought me another one after that, but then we got kicked out, on account of them singing raucous Welsh songs at the top of their lungs. So the night worked out really well.

Finally! Sunlight!

This week we started our Phonetics classes at the Maison des Etudiants in Montparnasse. For the first half hour we sit in these little booths with headphones and have to do repetition exercises and then listen to ourselves. Then we go to a different room and learn about how the French like to elide everything and study the linguistic theory of elisions. At least that's what we're doing so far. M. Bondurand was right when he remarked that it's nothing less than fascist. But then, I would agree with such a statement.

I've been shooting more, and I think I'm going to do night shots for my project, make the stories about ghosts or vampires or the like. Now I just have to narrow my locations. I want somewhere with interesting middle grounds, with open spaces for human traffic in the foreground. The class is Explorations, after all.

Just before Phonetics today, the sun actually came out! For a long time we've been having what I call blank-sky days, where the sky is one solid sheet of dull white clouds. I've been waiting for some proper sunlight for outdoor shots. I bet it'll get sunnier over the course of March.

I haven't received me RA confirmation yet. If it doesn't come tomorrow or the next day, I'll have to assume I didn't make it. Which may not be so bad. I'm thinking of joining the Pines. My scholarship mandates that I live on campus, and I'll do pretty much anything to avoid being in Bryan.

Hmm, what else? My birthday is Thursday. I'll probably hold off celebrating until the 4th when Watchmen comes out, have people get together at the theater in La Defense.

If anyone out there has Skype, please leave a comment with your screen name. I've been searching for y'all, but I might have overlooked someone.

Bon Mardi Gras!

Settling In

Nothing's really been happening here. The Chamayous are in Spain for the week, so I've had the house to myself.

On Sunday I took a walk down to the Seine, which is only about a mile from the house. It looks comfortingly like the Shenandoah, and now I'm wishing I had a kayak.

At the beginning of the semester M. Bondurand assigned each of us several projects based on our interests that we had listed in our applications. One of mine is to take five shots of the city that connect to five short stories. The story ideas I've come up with are too complicated to shoot easily, so I've been scouting locations in the hope of finding somewhere that'll inspire me to write something simpler. Yesterday I walked from the Sorbonne to Notre Dame to get more shots of the river from underneath the bridges. Then after class I hopped the Metro to Montmartre to shoot around there.

Thanks to anyone who posted comments, it's great to hear from y'all.

Happy birthday, Maia.

Happy Valentines

So another Capitalism Day has come and gone. I have to say, even though I have no girlfriend, this one actually felt more romantic that any other one previously. Probably because I haven't been bombarded by ads and decorations and other such things.

Today I got up and took the train in to Paris, carrying my N65 with an orange filter and two rolls of TMAX. Spent the morning shooting around La Pyramide and the Jardin des Tuileries, had lunch in the Jardin de Luxembourg, got lost on the Metro (Do not trust RER line C! The tracks go in a loop, not in a straight line like the others!), but got to the Tour Eiffel in time for sunset. I would've gone to Montmartre after that, but it has a reputation of being dangerous after dark, so I went straight home.

I hope those shots come out. Shooting film is really an exercise in delayed gratification, because I won't know until I get back to Guilford in late August whether everything worked, or even if all my film was irradiated in the X-rays on the way over here.

And speaking of delayed versus instant gratification, I finally acheived the latter in regards to a certain TV show. I was really craving some Lost yesterday, but the Internet in my room is way too slow to load the videos. When I got home today I figured out that the reception is much better in the living room, and I am now caught up on all the episodes. Finally!

The Chamayous were out for the night, so for dinner I went down to the Champion grocery store not a block from the house (When I was in Germany the Preglers lived roughly the same distance away from a grocery store) and fetched some tortellini and sauce. That turned out to be the best Valentines Day dinner I've had in a long time.

Now I'm very tired.

Please post comments on how the rest of you spent the day.

I can't get away!

On Sunday I met my host family, the Chamayous. From Dr. Costello's brief description of them, emphasizing how much they like soccer, I thought I would be staying with a family of jocks. Happily, this scenario was most definitely not the case.

M. Bouzoud, who is my friend Brittany's host father, dropped me off and let me in to the Chamayou's apartment. I introduced myself very formally to M. and Mme Chamayou, who introduced me to their middle son Etienne and their youngest, Jean. The latter was a bit distracted because he was playing a certain game on his computer. I struggled to keep my eyes from widening in delight.

He was playing the most influential game of my gaming life: not Half-Life. Not Age of Empires. Not even Claw.

Age. Of. Mythology.

Feel free to comment below on how much of a geek I am. But that's the thing! Talking with Etienne a bit later, he mentioned that he and his older brother Amaury would both be considered geeks by American standards, because they're so into computers. This past week I've been starved for the company of nerds, so to hear him say that was like a breath of fresh air. I was really looking forward to the rest of the semester.

Until we all sat down to Sunday lunch. This particular Sunday, I was not their only guest. They had also invited their priest; I didn't get his name, because they only referred to him as père, but he looked a lot like Liam Neeson, so I will henceforth call him Père Neeson. I only understood about half of what was said at the table, but I did catch some distinctly familiar dogma from him:

"Buddhism forbids love."
"Mohammed was a pedophile and a killer, while Jesus was a man of peace."
"The Catholic Church is the only legitimate church, which is shown by its prevalence in the world."

When I said that I was an Episcopalian, he got that patronizing little half-smile on his face. Y'all know the one. I shouldn't have been surprised that it's universal among self-righteous Christians. I thought that going to France would get me away from nutters like him. I've heard that Sweden's less religious, maybe I'll go to Sweden.

Turns out M. and Mme Chamyou are REALLY, REALLY Catholic. I'm not sure if they agreed with Neeson's rants about other religions, or were just hearing him out to be polite. It doesn't make that much of a difference, because I'll probably be able to tiptoe around the issue. I'm still happy to be here.

On a very different note, I've been talking to people in Paris about the chances of staying here over the summer, and from what I've heard, it's incredibly hard to find an apartment and equally hard to find an internship unless you know someone. Seeing as you can't have one without the other and I don't know anyone of consequence, I'd almost given up hope. Until I looked at the Beyond Tourism section of my Let's Go guidebook. It suggested volunteering for a summer at Club du Vieux Manoir, a nonprofit project which restores decrepit chateaux and fortresses in France. My only worry is the price: 14 euros a day, plus food and the cost of a tent. But how cool would that be, to be camping in a field for days on end, restoring some medieval hall? And it would look good on a resumée.

Oh Lawd

Is dat a 300 meter flagpole?

So I continued my first week here trying not to be a tourist... and I very nearly succeeded. I did figure out that you can look like LESS of a tourist if you dress comme un Français (l'escharpe est essentiel) and look supremely bored with everything you see, as if you were merely hired to take pictures of the monuments and you hate the fact that you had to stoop to this level to pay the rent. Of course this façade gets exponentially harder to maintain if you're with other people, and if they speak even one phrase of English it completely shatters.

Right now we're all sitting in the lobby of the FIAP waiting for our families to arrive. I'm nervous, but also excited. I'm ready to actually experience foreign language immersion, instead of having this little refuge of English to go back to every night.

City of Lights

Wow, these past five days have gone quickly. I've got so much to say, but the WiFi here at the FIAP only lasts half an hour at a time.

We've begun our classes with M. Michel Bondurand and Dr. Costello. Each day we've had a French class with M. Bondurand, lunch, and then an orientation session with Dr. Costello. M. Bondurand is an excellent teacher. On Tuesday he took us on a walking tour of Le Marais, where we saw Notre Dame, the ancient wall, and a lot of other palaces which I didn't get the names of. And yesterday, Dr. Costello took us on a tour of the Louvre. The works of art in the Louvre were all amazing, especially the Victory. I can't wait to see more of the city and its art.

The family to which I've been matched is the Chamayous, who live to the west of Paris. They have three sons, but only one is still at home. I'll only be a few doors away from Brittany and Anna, who are also in the program. I've already purchased a Carte Navigo, which was expensive (€65), but give me UNLIMITED access to the Metro. The train system is excellent; DC could learn a lot.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

Well, I'm here at the Fiap hotel. I'm significantly poorer than I should be, but I'm here.

The flight was uneventful, except for me spilling ginger ale on my legs. I met a girl, Ndjé, who is also a student at the Sorbonne, though she's in the Finances graduate program.

I landed, went through customs, found Dana and Rachel's arrival gate, waited there for two hours, and met them as they came out. And that's where things went very awry.

I had booked the three of us a shuttle to the hotel online from PariShuttle. Their representative was supposed to meet us at the gate.

But he never showed up. I just now figured out that PariShuttle, like many French businesses, may not operate regularly on a Sunday.

I suggested taking the Metro, but Dana really had too much luggage to make that a feasible option. We headed towards the taxis, only to be intercepted by a well-dressed black man who offered us a ride instead. For some reason, we accepted.

He got us and our luggage here.

And asked for €170 for his trouble. A normal taxi trip would be €50.

We paid, splitting it between ourselves. None of us blamed the others. Stupid. Maybe we should have contested the price, argued him down to something not quite SO exorbitant, but
I guess the jet lag and hunger had addled our thinking. Maybe we just fell into being naïve Americans. In any case, we know what happened, it could have been worse, we'll be vigilant in the future, and it will NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.

So not the best start to the semester, but at least it's started. And it'll get better from here.