also: happy election day! go vote, damn it!
anyway, the ni putes ni soumises conference: it was pretty good. i don't really have too much to say about it, but i lived through a couple harrowing experiences. overall, the conference was decent, if not thoroughly disorganized. for most of the weekend, i just hung out with a very nice, young, british woman named olivia. she's another volunteer for npns, who started just a week or so ago. neither of us really had any clue as to what we were supposed to be doing at the conference. and we both speak english, so we immediately took to each other.
what were the so-called 'harrowing experiences', you ask? well, the first has to do with a small algerian man in his 60s named bébel. after picking me up from the dourdan train station on friday to take me to the hotel where the conference was to be held, bébel told me that i would be spending quite a bit of time with him that day. i was to accompany him later that night to charles de gaulle airport to pick up two important pakistani women. within moments of starting to converse with bébel, i made two observations: 1 - this man likes to talk. a lot. and 2 - this man just might be crazy. but a good crazy, so no worries.
later that evening, after taking a short nap in my room (which i luckily didn't have to share with anyone, like i thought i would have to), i went down to the lobby to meet bébel to head to the airport. he was running a little late, as traffic was pretty ugly. we finally took off down the highway in his silver van, listening to a french radio station broadcasting almost exclusively american disco music (i have to admit, i was pretty pumped to hear my favorite song about rasputin). so, remember how i said bébel might be crazy? fittingly, he's a crazy driver. when traffic didn't hold us back, we were definitely going at least 150 km/hr. i thought for sure i was going to die a couple times. despite this fact, it took us about 2 hours to get to the airport. when we finally arrived and found the pakistani women, they were slightly pissed -- and rightly so. they had waited in the terminal for over an hour. so, as i was the official interpreter of this little trip, i had to try to appease the women and explain why we were so late. they said we should have been more organized. i couldn't agree more.
we took the women to the one of the ministry offices in paris, where they were to have dinner with the other representatives from the conference. i wasn't allowed to enter the building, so i ate dinner with bébel and two of his friends. he continued his possibly-not-right-in-the-head antics. it was nice, though, because i learned a lot about free love in europe during the 60s and 70s. awkward...
after a quick tour of the city (for which i played both interpreter and tour guide), we took the pakistani women, along with 7 other ladies, back to the hotel in dourdan. once there, i went to my room, thinking about reading. alas, i decided to turn on the tv. oh, it was great. you see, my host family doesn't have a television, so up to this point, i had never experienced the french tube. i flipped between an interesting documentary about travel in the middle east, and an interview with some random american guy talking about the election.
the second snafu was less harrowing, but more 'man, i'm way in over my head with this'. let's just say i'm not quite as bilingual as my boss thought. it was during a highly important debate about women's rights and violence against women, both in europe and around the mediterranean. part way through the first discourse, my boss (who was moderating the debate) motioned for me to come up and talk to her at the table. so i did, ducking down and trying to be as discreet as possible so the audience wouldn't get distracted much. she told me that there weren't enough interpreters, so the pakistani women had no way to understand what the french speakers on stage were saying. so she asked me to interpret for them.
now, i pretty much know where i stand on the road to fluency. i know quite a bit of french, and conversation is pretty easy for me now. but i am, by no means, capable of simultaneous interpretation. the real interpreters at the conference must have been both bilingual and highly trained. so i gave my boss an "okay" that really meant "uhh... yeah, i probably can't do that, but i guess i'll try", and headed to the pakistani women. needless to say, it was utterly hopeless. i got way too lost trying to remember what was being said, and the poor pakistanis had no clue what was going on. i mouthed to my boss, "sorry. i can't do it." i felt terrible. i could tell she was exasperated and just wanted the conference to go well. but she shot me some serious daggers from her eyes. she was able to get one of the other interpreters to do the job. so i returned to my seat, slightly angry that she put me in that position to feel so stupid, but mostly just embarrassed.
there was a silver lining to this slightly-gray cloud of a weekend. it came in the form of a gift. on sunday morning, boss-lady told olivia and i that we could head back to paris whenever we wanted after breakfast. the day was dedicated to debates about the organization itself and the election of a new president, so we weren't exactly needed. before leaving, we were told that anna, one of the pakistanis, wanted us to come to her room. so we went. we knew right where it was, as we had been pretty much acting as servants to the pakistani women all weekend. anna told us how much she appreciated all our help. she gave us her contact information, saying that she wanted us to come visit her some time in islamabad. she said she would house & feed us, so all we would need is a plane ticket. then anna gave us each traditional pakistani shirts -- mine was green, olivia's was pink. it felt really nice to know that we were appreciated. we thanked her, left the room, then left the hotel to walk back to the train station. back in paris, olivia and i grabbed an excellent lunch near the place de la bastille. then i went home to do some studying for class.
and that's about it for the weekend. i've just had classes yesterday and today, including my translation midterm (not too terribly difficult). i decided today that i'm going to drop my arabic course. it's just too tough trying to learn arabic through french, in a totally different classroom setting, while having to balance my other courses and my internship. c'est trop. i feel slightly liberated. anyway, i'm heading out to join my friends for the election coverage tonight. how exciting!
reason to love it : france still has saturday morning kid shows on basically all its main tv channels. i definitely got up early to watch power rangers dubbed into french in my hotel room this weekend.
reason to leave it : feeling less intelligent because of the french language -- i'm forced to use simpler language in conversations, and texts that are too complicated still sometimes float over my head. i've wrapped myself into a kerouac novel recently, in an attempt to reassert my intellectual prowess.
happy travels
-- cody
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