[19 mars 2009]
1. Sun-soaked parisian boulevards may rival Kansas prairies in beauty.
2. Un pez no es una persona. Un pez es un animal.
3. Nothing ruins a deliciously plump clementine faster than biting into it and finding out it has seeds.
4. Nothing ruins a sweet, rose-colored Fuji apple faster than slicing it open and finding out it is completely rotten. [Insert philosophical meanderings about the shallowness of beauty here.]
5. Un sombrero no es un alimento. No es un tipo de comida.
6. The French absolutely despise jello. Their hatred for the jiggly stuff will not be swayed.
7. The boulangerie down the street from my apartment makes the best pain au chocolat in the history of France.
8. It doesn't matter how long I stay in Paris -- I will always love winding my way through the museums and strolling through the city's parks.
[Side note: The vast majority of that list is in some way related to food. I may have to loosen my belt if the spring continues in this way...]
Anyway... it's been a while, my darling internet. How have you been? I've missed you dearly. I hope you're not too sore about my apparent neglect for your interest in my life. Not that my life is all that interesting. Honestly, this semester has been nothing but class, work, and long stretches of free time. I have gone on one trip with IES to see a castle, but that's about it.
Ok, now I'm making it sound like my life is boring here. Which it isn't. My internship has continued to be fun and varied, and I'm starting to become good friends with the fellow interns at the office. It's funny: I don't really remember a single day last semester when I was truly excited to go to work. It was all pretty monotonous. But this spring has been so much better. The projects I've worked on seem like they'll actually be useful for me in the future, such as writing grant proposals (in English and French), working on press releases, (successfully) interpreting for victims of violence who don't speak any French, and talking talking talking to random strangers to invite them to NPNS events. It actually seems like I'm making a difference for the association, and not just taking up space. This is the kind of work I was hoping to do when I started in the fall. The kind of work that just might translate into a real job when I graduate and decide what I want to do with my life. I'm starting to feel really lucky to have this opportunity.
Speaking of things I've been starting to feel lately: It's totally dawned on me that my time is tick tick ticking away. As I'm writing this, I only have two months left in Paris, give or take a couple days. TWO MONTHS... that's nothing. I feel like I've been here for so long, and I'm ready to go home in so many ways, but I know I'm going to miss it like crazy. I'm going to miss the bakeries and crêpe stands. I'm going to miss being so close to so many world-famous landmarks. I'm going to miss the seemingly thousands of museums spread throughout the city. But knowing that this is all temporary -- and having known that from the start -- has helped me to keep my head on straight and appreciate this adventure. So I'm going to take these last two months and live them for all they're worth...
Before I go, here are some quick highlights from the past month or so:
Chantilly : A few weeks back I went on an IES excursion to the Château in Chantilly, a little town just a couple hours from Paris. Despite what most people said about the trip, I had a great time. The château is quite impressive on the outside, but the inside is really more like an art gallery than what you'd typically expect from a castle of this kind. Seriously, it's right up there with the Louvre. Because of that, though, the tour we got was verrry long, and I think our guide could tell the everyone was spacing out. After the tour, we sat down for lunch in the château's restaurant (delicious), then headed over to a museum that houses all the equipment to pump water to the castle's fountains. This is where it got worse: Half the tour was centered around what used to serve as the laundromat for nobles living in Chantilly. Seriously. An 18th century laundromat. But the tour ended well with a giant water wheel and an awesomely bad laser-light and techno music show. Well done, Chantilly.
Au Musée : I've been making near-weekly visits to art galleries this semester with my History of Modern Art class. It's been awesome. We study different movements of modern art, along with their important artists, then go to museums to look at the works first hand. I definitely couldn't do something like this in Kansas. It's a real treat. My favorite museum so far has been the Musée Gustave Moreau. Moreau was a key figure of the Symbolism movement, and before he died he decided to turn his home and workshop into his very own museum. The museum is jam packed with his paintings, along with cabinets full of sketches and figure studies, and has also preserved his living spaces. So you can see both sides of Moreau -- the man and the artist. Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the area.
An International Fiesta : Last weekend I took Ellen to a house-warming party at the apartment of one of my coworkers, Pauline. It was truly an international experience. Pauline is French, but she has a Canadian boyfriend, whom she met while studying abroad in Norway. Canadian boyfriend now lives and studies in Belgium, where he became friends with a guy from Chicago (who happened to do his undergrad studies at DePaul), and who he brought to the party as well. One of Pauline's roommates is also Canadian, but he lives in the apartment with his Chilean girlfriend. There were also two friends from Mexico and one from Colombia (I think...?) at the party, but I don't remember how they're involved. And a slew Pauline's French friends were there as well. It was exhausting keeping this all straight and remembering when I could and could not speak French, but I had a great time.
Georgia Preach : This week is the "Semaine du Marais Chrétien" (the week of Christianity in the Marais district), so there have been lots of free concerts, expositions, and conferences going on. I decided to check out a concert at a nearby church this past Sunday. I saw a choir who sang traditional polyphonic chants and folk songs from Georgia (the eastern European country, not the state). This sacred Georgian music is well-known for its very tight harmonies and generally melancholic tone. It's beautiful, but haunting and sad at the same time -- even if the content of the song is happy. There was one song that is traditionally sung after the birth of a child, but you might mistake it for a funeral ballad if you're not careful. I walked away from the concert with a very cool melody in my head that I wanted to use in a song I've been working on, but it slipped out my ear while I wasn't paying attention...
St. Pat's at the Park : After work on Tuesday my fellow interns, Pauline and Ginevra (an Italian), and I decided to celebrate St. Patrick's day in a nearby park. So we stopped into Monoprix to grab some Guinness, apple-stuffed beignets, and dark chocolate Petit Ecolier cookies. The park we went to, the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, is absolutely beautiful. It's a huge mass of rolling hills, winding paths, and waterfalls -- all man-made, by the way -- on the north side of Paris. I've been wanting to go there for a while, so I was pumped when Pauline suggested it. Once there, we picked a spot on a hillside facing the mountain-top temple and the setting sun. Just before dusk, I looked up at what I though were oddly-shaped birds, but I soon realized they were bats. So with the flock of chauve-souris circling above our heads, we drank to St. Pat and shared stories about home. What an evening.
Happy Travels
-- Cody
{Also: Look up there on the left! It's my new feature, "Quoi de Neuf? the micro-blog". Check it out to follow me on Twitter and get a more regular peek into my life in Paris.}
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