Seventh Grade Nostalgia

Dude.

I just watched the first part of the Digimon Movie on Youtube. And the funny thing is, I can still see why I was into it in middle school.

I'm finished my Cinema paper, which is good. Now I can devote my full attention to my entretien presentation. I still have to read the last half of Fouché by Stefan Zweig and write three of the stories. I've decided to write about meeting people from alternate timelines where the Romans never conquered Gaul, the Romans never left Gaul, the English won the Hundred Years' War, Napoleon succeeded in forging his empire, and Segoléne Royal became President instead of Sarkozy. I tried to write about the Muslims winning at Tours, but according to the historians, everything about France would end up the same, except all the churches would be mosques and the French would all speak Arabic.

Just have to get to Friday. Just have to get to Rome.

Normandy, Brittany, work

This past weekend all of us in the NC program traveled to the west coast. Some parts were very nice, but it was such a whirlwind trip that it kind of lost its purpose.

We drove three hours out of Paris to Caen, where we saw the Caen Memorial Museum devoted to World War Two. The exhibits were incredibly well set up. The most moving part was reading this letter written by an American soldier "Jack," dated June 5, 1944, to be given to his parents if he didn't survive the Normandy landing.

Then we got back on the bus and drove another hour to Omaha Beach. The American Cemetery was incredible. All those perfectly white tombstones perfectly arranged. The beach itself was pretty. I tried to think of the battle with all its smoke and blood and explosions, but I just kept marvelling at how recognizable the beach was from Impressionist paintings of other Norman beaches.

From the Cemetery it was another three hours to St-Malo in Brittany, where we spent the night. I got a hotel room all to myself, and in the morning I walked out on the beach to the old fort constructed by Louis XIV.

Three hours to Mont St-Michel. It was very interesting to learn about the lives of the monks there, but outside the monastery everything was just too touristy. I almost bought a sword at one of the souvenir shops, but then I reminded myself that if I'm going to have a sword it'll be one hand-forged and individually crafted, not some mass-produced piece of filigree.

From Mont St-Michel it was five hours back to Paris.

For the past week I've been working on papers. Our final exam paper for Cinema and our entretien individual projects for Explorations are both due on the 2nd.

My Spanish friend Ana finally e-mailed me back, and I've decided to spend the second week of Spring Break in Spain with her.

I really wanna watch Lost, but even if I hadn't given it up for Lent, I'd still have too much work.

...

This week was pretty boring. I've been staying in to do homework because I have a lot of stuff due next week all at once. And then the next week is midterms. But after that I'm going to ROME! I bought my tickets online on Wednesday. I'll be flying out on Friday the 3rd and leaving Monday morning, hopefully getting back in time for class. I'll really be traveling light with only my backpack and cameras, but I think the experience will be refreshing. My five years of Latin in high school demand that seeing the ancient city be my first priority, but I'll definitely go to the Vatican too. It's nice having a mom who's an italophile, because I'll never be short of suggestions.

Yesterday there was supposed to be a general strike in Paris organized by the major unions to protest governmental handling of the economic crisis, even though both M. Bondurand and the Chamayous thought that the government has already done everything they can. Trains and buses were supposed to be shut down, offices were to be closed, the Sorbonne was going to cancel classes, and protestors were going to flood the streets, with me in the thick of them capturing every moment.

Nothing happened.

Anticipating the inconvenience, most Parisians merely drove to work, leaving the demand for public transportation almost nil. The metro lines were rerouted to use Gare du Nord instead of Châtelet-les-Halles as their central hub, and that step appeared to solve everything. Trains ran normally, people still went to work.

And there were no protests. At least none that I could find.

But walking through the noticeably empty metro yesterday I took these pictures with a two second exposure. I think I may have discovered something. I'll definitely take more of these.

The NC program is going to Normandy and Mont St-Michel this weekend. We'll be leaving at 8 tomorrow to go to Caen for the day, and then spend the night in St-Malo. I'm looking forward to it.

One last thing. Found this on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2GG0dHzeck

Sharpe's Museum

'Nother weekend without much of anything going on. The plans to go to the Salon du Livre with Laureline didn't work out on Saturday, so I continued down my list of sites I have to see before I leave. The day started out pretty, so I headed for the Musée Rodin, but by the time I got there it had begun to drizzle, so I simply crossed the street to Les Invalides.

And whoa. I'd expected to find a monument to France's military might, but nothing like what I found. 'Course I knew that Napoleon's tomb was in the central cathedral, but I determined to save that for last. I started out in the Musée de l'Armée, which chronicles armed onflict in Europe from antiquity to the the First World War, displaying every kind of weapon from flint knives to one of the first French-made tanks, the Renault FT-17. What I found most interesting were the polearms; we usually think of spears and pikes as very basic weapons that saw very minimal evolution up until gunpowder was invented, but actually, looking at the dozens of different spearblades, axes, partizans, hooks, and combinations thereof, you can tell that the science that went into making them was just as meticulous and fluid as the experimentation that goes into rifles and planes today.

The second part of Les Invalides was just as interesting, probably because I'm a cartographer's son. The Musée des Plans-Reliefs holds 28 precisely designed and detailed scale models of French fortresses and towns. They were first commissioned in 1668 by Louis XIV's war minister so that the court could play "Just How Badly Would We Murder the Dutch If They Attacked X?" in between banquets and operas.

The cathedral was beautiful, but crowded with tourists. I actually told a woman as politely as I could to stop perpetuating the stereotype of loud Americans. You may think me intolerant, but she was almost yelling in an annoying Midwestern accent about the bees on Napoleon's robe. Are there no British or Americans who respect the dead anymore?

The rain had stopped, so I went back to the Jardin Rodin. The daffodils and forsythia were in bloom, and provided an intriguing contrast to the brooding, twisting statues. The sinuous details in the statues' skin reminded of Edward Weston's pepper and shell photographs; pity Rodin and Weston never worked together.

Oh, and I bought a new hat today.

I'm gonna regret this...

I'm staying. I have Internet in my room now, making interaction with the Chamayous much less necessary, and things have really settled down. To go through with the moving process now would just reopen the whole nest of vipers.

I've been working more on my night shots project. I'm still scouting places, because I figure I can go back for reshoots. I've finally decided on a more definite theme: shooting negative space. The idea is that when tourists come to Paris they take pictures of objects: the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa, etc. I'm providing the antithesis to that materialistic philosophy by capturing the absence of objects in key areas of Paris. Hope to get a shot of a street, a park, a public square, the river, and the catacombs. 'Course the catacombs ain't open at night, but it still fits with the theme.

Went out with Laureline again last night. Her university's on strike until Monday, so apparently her obligations have just melted away. She came out with her boyfriend Romain and her friend Alexandra. We went window-shopping for goth clothes at Chatelet, then ate at a Chinese place in the 18th, then over to the Latin Quarter for some gelatto. The evening flew. One of the best nights I've had in Paris.

Paranoid, am I?

The ongoing drama between me and Mme Chamayou hasn't really changed. I've been staying in my room as much as I can purposely to gain the moral high ground. I'm in talks with Dr. Costello to change families. For more info on what precipitated the conflict, see my answer to Marion's comment in the previous post.

I've tried to think about this issue from Mme's point of view. The most charitable explanation for her behavior is that her mother and step-sister both died recently, so she and the family are obviously under strain and obviously "need to be a family," now more than ever. But that's also a reason why I should remove myself, and thus make their grief process that much easier. If nothing else, her demanding that I stay in my room nullifies the spirit of being in a host family, where the student is supposed to interact with his or her hosts.

And don't get me wrong, staying here has definitely had its positive points. The Chamayous are generous with food, and their only condition for my going out is that I call if I'll be spending the entire night elsewhere.

But I won't stay where I'm subjected to irrational and unreasonable demands. The only thing that would prevent me from switching families now is if the other family turns out to be worse than the Chamayous.

Which unfortunately, I found out today, is much more of a possibility than I initially thought it would be. In Conversation class, it came out that all our families except Kristen's are conservative and Catholic, an arrangement that M. Bondurand remarked was very much outside the norm as French families go. We've been living in a bubble, and not a good one like we have at Guilford! All but one of us! With conservative Catholic families! I feel like the protagonist in a Orwell novel. Even if this wasn't a conspiracy, couldn't the people in charge of the program have made it into less of a cruel coincidence?

Funerals, weddings, and exile

On Wednesday I went to the catacombs. They were interesting, but kind of monotonous after a while. One gigantic stack of bones looks just like another. I'm going back next Wednesday for pictures. Tripods are forbidden in the tunnels, but that's just so that dumb tourists won't hold up traffic and knock over the bones. I'll take my tiny tripod that I can conceal in my pocket.

On Friday morning I took advantage of the sunny day and went to Cemitière Père LaChaise. I was quite blown away by how a cemetery could be so... romantic. I spent about two hours there. When I finally found Wilde's grave I was dismayed to discover that the otherwise poetically beautiful white stone and lipstick marks were marred by graffiti saying OSCAR LIVES and MORGAN ♥ OSCAR. So that just made me mad at whatever idiots thought they were oh so clever scrawling on his GRAVE in what looked like red crayon.

Saturday I finally got down to business revising this cursed Gainsbourg assignment. Since I had time, I went all the wat back to the Cité de la Musique where the exhibition was to try to look at the information again. Afterwards I took the train over to the next arondissement to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, which in my opinion is the most beautiful park in Paris. I found a secluded spot at the top of the hill and did the most intense session of Qi Gong Tai Chi standing that I've ever done. My legs were shaking and my vision was bleeding yellow! It was really cool.

After I stopped I walked around the rest of the park and suddenly heard the sound of drums. Figured it had to be another protest, so I followed the sound out of the park. I walked through this children's carnival and came upon this crowd of elaborately dressed African women. But behind them was ANOTHER crowd of Arabs, and it was the Arab musicians who had the drums. Turns out that the 7th was a huge day for weddings. The Arabs were fine with me snapping photos, but the Africans glared at me, so I left.

And then last night happened. Simply put, Mme Chamayou delivered a lecture saying that she wanted me in m room or out of the house, because, as she claimed, I was "disrupting their being a family." I was going to write a whole long rant about how she's psychotic, but since I talked to Dr. Costello an hour ago, the issue's pretty much resolved. I might well have to switch families.

Summer Plans

This is the first time I've published two posts in less than a day, but I've found something that I just had to share with y'all.

I e-mailed Club du Vieux Manoir asking whether it was typical for college students to work in their programs and how I could possibly get an extension beyond the 15 recommended days for beginners. They replied this morning saying that yes, it was very common for college students to work with them, and to stay longer than 15 days you have to show good performance and be approved by the director of whatever project you're on. They recommended the sites of Arzeliers, Briançon, and Réallon for me. Arzeliers doesn't start till July, Réallon till August, and they both finish within two weeks, but the work at Briançon starts June 15 and goes all the way till September!

And then I looked at this:

http://cvmclubduvieuxmanoir.free.fr/actu/2009/chantier2009briancon.htm

And there are FOUR different castle sites in the area! That's why the work goes on so long continuously. And based on the dates for all the other castle projects, it's either this one or Guise up north near Soissons. And if you had the choice of being on the northern lowlands or up in the Alps, a mere 12 km from the Italian border, wouldn't you pick the latter? I still gotta find a place to stay for 15 days after the semester's up, and I have to see about renewing my visa, but those are the least of my worries at this point!

Rorschach kills Dumbledore!!

Wow.

Saw Watchmen last night.

As far as a post-birthday celebration, once again, it certainly could have been worse. Not many people can say they watched a movie with the Ninth Doctor. More on that later.

So I made sure to text everyone whose numbers I had the exact time and directions of the movie. Lots of people had made dinner plans with their families already; Leah actually had the backbone to tell me she doesn’t like “boy movies.” Jack and the two Sarahs were actually enthusiastic, while Anna, Kelly, Garrett, and Lisa expressed mild interest.

I took the metro right after Grammar to La Defense, where I bought, according to the video screens they had up in the waiting area, the 26th-to-last ticket. Birthday coincidence? I quickly texted everyone that I could buy their tickets now, but no one answered me in time. The show sold out in the next fifteen minutes.

I had two hours to kill, so I walked a big circle around La Defense. I was awed by the architecture and how well all the whole district seemed to be put together, as if according to a colossal urban feng-shui. I think that if the French had had to build Paris from scratch with modern equipment they would’ve come up with something along these lines.

For dinner I had my first French fast food experience at Quick, the leading French burger chain. My Super Giant burger was weird; exactly like an American burger but... French. Dunno how to describe it. But one thing I noticed was that it wasn’t nearly as filling as any burger I’ve previously eaten. If anything, it only served to make me hungrier. Does the Quick corporation possess some kind of hunger-inducing magic à la C. S. Lewis’ White Witch? Well, that’s established: Quick hamburgers = Turkish delight = EVIL

At 7:30 I went back to the cinema to get my place in line. That’s where I met Chumps (who totally looks like Christopher Eccleston and speaks English with a British accent, hence the above remark), his girlfriend Christina, and their friend Greg. Greg and Christina are American, but Chumps is French. Greg and Chumps work at the same school, where Greg teaches English and Chumps teaches computer science. Christina is an artist. We talked about the comic and other stuff. Then the film started.

One would be hard-pressed to say that it’s as much of a work of art as the book is; that said, it’s still amazing. It starts off incredibly strong, the opening sequence alone is worth the price of admission, but towards the middle it slows waaaaaay down. Fortunately it picks up again and finishes just as strong as it started. I did have some issues with it, mainly the sexing-up of Silhouette’s character, and no one explaining the origin of the cat Bubastis (Veidt genetically engineered her because he wanted a particularly pharaonic pet). It’s so violent that one is tempted to call it “300 with superheroes,” although the violence here is choreographed so as to make you cringe rather than cheer.

Rorschach is amazing. He IS the movie. There are so many ways that they could screw up a character like that, but they actually get it exactly right. The Comedian is brilliant, too.

As for the changed ending, those of you who haven’t read the book will go “Huh.” But those who HAVE will be FREAKING OUT because you’ll wonder why the original writers didn’t think of it, because THIS ending makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE than the SQUID MONSTER one. Yeah, yeah, spoilers, the book has a squid monster.

I’m gonna see it again. Maybe tonight.