Great Work!!

[5 février 2009]

not the best way to start the semester :

Even though my classes don't start until monday, I returned to my internship at Ni Putes Ni Soumises this week. After spending all last semester planning trips around my fridays at NPNS, I decided early on that I would avoid that at all costs this spring. So I shifted my class schedule around, letting me place my full day at the office on tuesdays, with my half day on wednesdays. Perfect. So I went into the NPNS office early tuesday morning, eager to ring in the new semester with a day full of translating and fact-finding. After making the customary trip to greet everyone with a Bonjour, I sat down with Mar to get my assignment for the day.

She told me she had an important project for me to work on dealing with a governmental program called Espoir Banlieues, which could be translated as "Hope for the Suburbs". It is a set of programs spearheaded by Fadela Amara (the Secretary of State for Urban Policies / founder and former president of NPNS) intended to de-ghettoize Paris' suburbs, using some pretty lofty and sometimes controversial tactics. My job was to read several articles, research the program's website, find comparisons to similar programs in the US and abroad, critique it from the NPNS viewpoint, and create a report to sum it all up. This report was to then be distributed to the rest of the team in the office. That's a lot on my plate, non?

So I got to work on the summary, wondering how long it would take me to do all that. After a quick lunch, I joined Mar in the conference room. A group of university students from Delaware had asked to stop by during the last week of their month in Paris. They had been studying women's rights and other social issues in France, so a visit to NPNS was definitely in order. I helped Mar out during her presentation, since she isn't used to speaking in front of large crowds in English. I had a pretty good time, and took the opportunity to schmooze a bit with some fellow Americans. After this, I sat back down to work on my project some more before I went home for the day.

A few minutes before 6, I started packing up my things and congratulating myself in my head for a successful first day back. But I spoke (to myself) too soon, because Mar then asked me, "Are you leaving." I said yes. "Well, are you finished with the summary?" I said no. "You know that was supposed to be done today, right?" I had no idea. Apparently Mar had explained all this earlier that morning, but I hadn't understood, either because my ears aren't quite fluent or because I was a little taken aback by the sheer amount of time and work it would take to finish it. Well, there wasn't much I could do, so I apologized and told her I'd work on it a bit that night and finish it the next day. Then I left the office, feeling pretty crappy about all of it.

The night wasn't totally ruined, though, because I met up with my host mom and her friend right after I left work to go to a special presentation at the Music Conservatory. It was a kind of master class on ethnomusicology, but open to the public. The guest speaker came to talk about Mongolian and Tibetan monks and their specific style of chanting. Sounds boring? It wasn't, because these monks use a technique where they can produce two notes at the same time -- using only their voice. It's called diaphonic singing, and it's pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I still have not mastered the art. But I'm not giving up any time soon.

Anyway, back to the NPNS saga... I got up wednesday morning, got dressed, did some reading on Espoir Banlieues, and went to grab lunch. Since I had been coming into the office at 3pm for my half days all last semester, I assumed it would be the same this spring. But yet again, I was wrong. Around 2:30, I got a call from Mar asking where I was. She said I was supposed to be there at 2. I told her I was on my way. Once I got to the office, I explained my confusion, which she wasn't too angry about, but she still seemed put off about something. She explained that due to my deadline-mixup the day before, pretty much the whole office was hounding her all day for the report. See, she wanted it tuesday night so she could look it over and send it to everyone wednesday morning. Now it was wednesday afternoon and there was still no report. 

Understanding the gravity of the situation, I split up the remaining work with Mar and got cranking. We finished it in about an hour, then she sent it off to the coworkers. What a relief. And it was actually a pretty interesting little project. While doing research, I found out that one of the more controversial aspects of Espoir Banlieues is the fact that they want to use busing to help increase diversity and success among suburban schools. I don't know if you recall, but we tried using busing in the US to do accomplish a similar goal. And it FAILED miserably. So heaven knows why Fadela and Sarkozy want to try it out over here...

With that out of the way, I finished my half day at work writing up my weekly press review, in which I find news articles from around the world dealing with women's rights and send summaries to all my coworkers. Piece of cake. I got that done, said goodnight to everyone and headed home, feeling much better about my second day than my first. Buuuut, that feeling didn't last long. As soon as I got home, I received an email from Karim, the web guy at NPNS. I had attached the wrong file to the email I sent to the entire office, so no one actually got my press review. Instead they got a useless .dat file. So not only does everyone know it was my fault that the project summary was way late, now they all think I don't know how to operate Microsoft Word.

Great work, Cody.

Well, that's the conclusion of the tale of my terrible beginning to spring semester. In other news, I saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (aka Forrest Gump 2) today with Genna. Man was it long, but I actually liked it quite a bit. Also, I'm going to a conference with NPNS tomorrow that's all about Espoir Banlieues. This conference is the entire reason I had to write up the report in the first place. We want to have ammunition for the question and answer session with Fadela. Things should get interesting. And it's being held in Dreux, one of the suburbs. I say any chance to visit the ghettos is a chance I'm willing to take.

Happy Travels

-- Cody

presidential snowball

[31 janvier 2009] <--(i'm doing this because blogger keeps screwing up the dates of my posts...)

don't have much to say right now. lately, i've just been hanging with the IES newbies, showing them around the city, eating food, watching dexter. you know the drill. but my friend elizabeth is in town (she went to depaul with me for a year or two, now goes to school back home in ohio, but is currently studying in bordeaux. and she has a blog), so i'm hoping to spend some time with her while she's around. oh, and you know how i thought classes were starting next week? i was wrong. they don't start until feb 9th. so i have another week to just "be" in paris. which is pretty awesome. it's the neverending winter break. and speaking of breaks: ellen and i are currently planning what could possibly be the single most catholic spring break of all time. i'll keep you posted.

until next time, here's president obama having fun in the snow. enjoy:

superpoop.com

flying under the radar

What's that you say? Cody has disappeared for over a month? Why, that's absurd! Why would he do such a thing? Yeah, sorry about that. I suppose I've gotten lazy. Or maybe my initiative has totally run dry. Either way, I guess I've treated this long break from school as an equally long vacation from the ol' blog. But fret not, I'm here. And we've got some catching up to do.

In the interest of saving time and space (and unnecessary work, I suppose), I'm going to do something here that I normally wouldn't dare: I'm going to cheat. You see, I was about to bore you with a bunch of long-winded posts about my amazing trip with Will to Italy and Ireland, but then I remembered that he already did the work for me, on his own blog. Ah hah! So now I present to you, in his own words, Travels with Liam:

Day 1 -- Roma

Day 2 -- Roma

Day 3 -- From Roma to Galway

Day 4 -- Galway and Dublin

Day 5 -- Dublin

Ok, now that that's out of the way, on to the rest of my winter break thus far:

As you may have guessed from my last post, I spent a good part of Christmas day alone and bored. My host family took off early Christmas Eve for Bretagne, leaving me high and dry in Paris. I did have a nice holiday dinner with friends, though. The parents of three of my friends here all flew into town to celebrate Noël, and they invited me to share an excellent meal with them. It wasn't the same spending Christmas without my family, but my friends made me feel welcome and kept my mind and stomach occupied. We even had home-made mulled wine, which was delicious.

My dad arrived the next day after a long flight from Kansas City, including layovers in Atlanta and Dublin. After waiting over an hour at the baggage claim of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, Dad was informed by the Air France staff that his luggage couldn't be accounted for. They had records of his belongings up until Dublin airport, where they apparently disappeared somewhere in the ether. Rightfully annoyed, Dad joined me in the airport lobby, where we proceeded to procure a taxi and make our way into the city.

The rest of Dad's visit was excellent. We managed to finagle our way into a cheap hotel near the Bastille for the entire length of his trip. This required several room changes, but at least we were able to stay in the same building. With Dad (the Paris newbie) at my side, I made like a tour guide, trying to give him a taste of what life is really like in the City of Lights.

Highlights from the visit include : A) Getting an incredible view of the city from the dome of Sacre-Coeur Basilica. B) Waiting over an hour in line for the catacombs, having awkward conversations with American tourists, getting the door of said catacombs shut in our faces because we were late, returning to said catacombs the next day, making new friends in line, and finally seeing the bones. C) Searching high and low for used bikes at the Marché aux Puces (Flea Market). D) Narrowly escaping angry mobs, and as a result, finally getting a chance to taste tear gas in the Métro. E) Eating. F) Eating. G) Spending quality time bonding with my dear father. H) Eating.

Since the trip, I've basically been flying under the radar. I switched back from "American Tourist! Yeah! OMG it's Paris!!!1!" mode to "Incognito, Laid-Back Resident of Paris" mode. Despite earlier plans to meet friends in Berlin or Bordeaux, I haven't left the city. Which is nice, because I've gotten a wonderful opportunity to explore the world of subtitled cinema. I think I've been to the movies at least 5 or 6 (or 7 or 8) times this month -- a few of those screenings were part of a 3-euro "Best Films of 2008" deal the UGC chain had going on. I've also fallen prey to the dangerous world of Dexter (a Showtime series about a Miami Police blood spatter specialist who moonlights as a serial killer -- let me know if you want to chat about it). It's actually based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay. Luckily, Caroline gave me copies of the first two books (in French) before she left for Rhode Island last month. So even if I run out of new episodes to watch, I can still continue dreaming darkly with the books.

I should also note that a few BIG things have happened recently :

Hope, etc. -- "Change has come to America." Barack Obama. You may have heard of him?

Coupe -- After nearly five months and several inches of beautiful flowing locks, I finally decided to get a haircut. I also figured out that my beard trimmer is not, in fact, broken. So I now come in "Well-groomed" mode as well.

Bienvenue -- The new arrivals got in yesterday, so IES has been restored to the hub of activity it was during fall semester. Among the huge group of spring students is a gaggle of DePaul girls. With this kind of representation, we are poised to take over the city with Vincentian Values and Socially Responsible Leadership. (Also, Laura brought me an awesome beanie embroidered with the word "Detroit". Gotta represent the Ghetto D.)

Aaaaand I think that's it for now. I'm sure there's a lot more I could be writing about (the pros and cons of French cinema snack bars, for example), but I've got plenty of time for that in the coming months. Speaking of which, I've got less than 4 months left before I make the trip back home. So it seems as though I'm on the downward slope. Kind of scary. But class and work are about to kick back into gear, so I'm just going to focus on that for now...

Happy Travels

-- Cody

Joyeux Noël!

I'll post about the trip soon. I promise.

Until then, enjoy this extremely serious little ditty.

Merry Christmas!!

free at last

I'm sitting in Dublin Airport at the internet kiosk between O'Brien's Gourmet Coffee and Handcut Sandwiches and McDonald's. To my left, I can see a bay of check-in desks, ticket counters and giant paper snowflakes through a huge window. In the bottom corner of this browser window there is a little timer telling me exactly how long I can stay online before I will be asked to put in some more change. As I'm cheap, there isn't much time left. So this won't be a huge post.

If you've been checking here recently, you've no doubt noticed how the ol' blog has been frustratingly barren the past fewweeks. That doesn't necessarily indicate that my life has been the same. Noooo. In fact, it's been quite the contrary. You see, I've just finally finished fall semester. I didn't write on here for a couple weeks because of several papers that were due and a final exam that I needed to study for. The end of the semester was basically hell. But it's all over now, and I'm free free free at last. That translates into two things: one bad & one good.

First, the bad: Because the vast majority of my friends were only enrolled at IES for fall semester, I had to say lots of goodbyes. That's always sad. I took part in some final weekend festivities, but when it came time to say aurevoir to some of my favorite people, I had a hard time. They know who they are. For a few of my really good friends, I just didn't want a definitive goodbye, so I opted to stay in with my host family wednesday night, the final night. I feel kind of bad that I didn't spend the evening with the friends, but I know I'll see them again.

Second, the good: As you may have guessed from the first line of this post, I've been doing some traveling. I flew out of Paris early thursday morning, heading to Rome to meet Will. His semester in Dublin had already finished, so he had already spent a couple days in Barcelona. I decided to join him for the final leg of his journey. We had a couple awesome days in the eternal city, then we flew up to Ireland. We took a bus from the Dublin airport straight to Galway, a big little city on the west coast of the island. We took the bus back to Dublin sunday afternoon. I've had a really great time with him.

But now I'm here, sitting in the airport with several hours to kill before my flight back to Paris. Will has already left for his return to the states. Like I mentioned before, I'm cheap so I don't want to spend too much on this internet. So I'll give you a little bit more detail on the trip to Italy and Ireland when I get back to the apartment.

Happy Travels
-- Cody

culture

WELL: I finished my Kerouac novel last night. I really enjoyed it in that kind of "whoa this crazy beat novel makes me want to go hitchhike somewhere imaginary and try hallucinatory drugs and be misogynistic" way. Yeah, it was a fun ride.

THE ONLY THING IS: I quit reading the only real "classic" French novel I've ever attempted (Le Capitaine Fracasse) to start on my Kerouac journey. So I guess that's not too good. I should probably be reading in French to keep my immersion level to a maximum, you know?

THUS: I started my decent into 17th century French comedy today. I grabbed an anthology of plays by Molière from the family bookshelf this morning. I decided to begin with L'École des Femmes, as I briefly studied it in my aesthetics class earlier in the semester, so I have a vague understanding of the plot. I like it so far.

MAN, AM I CULTURED OR WHAT?

hello winter

Well winter's here, and it doesn't matter if I like it or not -- it's made up its mind and is planning on staying a while. It's been pretty cold recently (So cold, in fact, that I've even started wearing my scarf. Now I'm not usually one for scarf-wearing, but it keeps me warm, and people tell me it makes me look infinitely more French. So I don't mind much). I have to be honest, though: French winter is not too terrible compared to the arctic months I've endured in Chicago. Here, it hardly ever snows. The clouds are content just spitting out half-frozen rain drops onto the Parisian rooftops. So until the spring awakening comes, I'll just have to tighten my coat, slip on my gloves, and brave the frigid spit spat drizzle.

While I was in Brussels last weekend, I had a bit of an epiphany. Well, I can't really say that it was my doing at all. It came in the form of an email from a dear friend of mine, Mark Tumbleweed Pedri. You see, I've been feeling kind of like I'm not making the most of my time here in Paris. The end of the semester looms on the horizon, so I'm starting to see how quickly the time passes. So I wrote to Mark, confident that he could show me the light. He wrote me a simple little morsel of advice he learned down under this semester:

"Write in a journal every night and do something everyday worth writing about that night. That's what I did and I don't have a single regret about anything."

Pretty simple, huh? And yet I couldn't seem to figure it out on my own. Well, I value the Tumbleweed's input, so I took the advice to heart. Over dinner with Caroline last week, we discussed this whole issue and decided that we'd better do something about it. So we wrote a list of things we still haven't done (or that we want to do again) in Paris, intending to cross every item off the list before the end of the semester comes and steals Caroline away back to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Since then, I've been trying to do something every day that is worth writing about. It doesn't have to be anything earth-shattering -- just something that I might want to remember ten years down the road. I'm feeling pretty good.

Here's an abridged list of some of the highlights from the week:

-- Pondering the hidden meanings behind the Galleries Lafayette Christmas windows

-- Amassing a large collection of French hip-hop and spoken-word/slam poetry albums, borrowed from the IES library

-- Heading off to explore the Cimitière du Montparnasse (Montparnasse Cemetery) only to spend the afternoon chatting with a completely random frenchman who claims to be a famous singer/actor/brother of Jacques Villeret

-- Exploring the Mantegna exhibit during yet another visit to the Louvre -- you can't see it all in one semester, I swear

-- French "Thanksgiving dinner" with all the other IES students. It wasn't terrible... I'll just leave it at that

-- Bad ass ukulele & banjo jam session along the banks of the Canal St. Michel with Joel after said Thanksgiving dinner

-- Getting to keep my sweet chest x-ray from the medical visit required for my residence permit (Let me know if you want to see what I'd look like with no skin on)

-- Bar hopping in the ever so softly falling snow

-- Sitting in on a random Chopin concert at the Eglise Ste. Merry

So there you have it. As the sky becomes a wintery shade of gray and the temperature outside starts to drop, I'm feverishly stoking the fire in my life. Just like the notes flying from a piano or the words escaping out of your mouth, I know time is fleeting. It's already the last day of November. With finals, winter break, and lots of traveling coming up, I know it will be spring semester before I know it. Let's just hope I can live it up while it lasts.

Happy Travels

-- Cody