Qui est-ce que vous? Thursday, Nov 4 2010

Bon matin,
Anyone want to fess up to being “msnet”? I received a comment recently on my “Les Vacances de Toussaint” entry from someone identifying themselves as that name. It was a bit creepy, as the message was “Thanks for the information.” but the email/website left led to what I think’s an IT outsourcing company in Bangkok. It’s homepage is written in a swirly script I can’t understand. Looking up the IP address left, the IP also appears to be from Thailand, so at least that’s consistent. I’m not sure I know anyone studying abroad in Thailand except for this one other K student who isn’t, I didn’t think, staying in Bangkok. If it is an IT outsourcing company in Bangkok I have no idea what they’d want with my blog.

It’s most likely just spam, as I get about 8 spam comments a month, and I’m marking it as spam so the system won’t let it through anymore, but it was creepy spam.

Adieu,

Alana

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Ennui et l’internet Thursday, Nov 4 2010

Jái beaucoup d’ennui ; alors, c’est un problème !

Sorry this isn’t the Caen vacation recap, I’m still writing that—I’ve noticed an average entry takes me about two hours or more to write; I take this stuff seriously! Anyway, the Caen write-up is sitting on my desktop in a Word file, I’ve been picking away at it. I just had something I felt the need to express.

I spend way too much time on the internet. Okay, not “way” too much time—honestly, the TIME one spends on the internet is not nearly as much of a problem as how and when it’s used. For example, playing flash games at work—bad usage. Reading my blog—good usage, obviously! I’ve done tracks on the amount of time I spend on the internet before and, for example, when I’m at K the numbers are only something like an hour during the day—obviously, I’m in class. During the evenings, though, or on weekends or during vacations, it gets higher, probably as much as 4 hours at a time.

On one hand, that doesn’t really surprise me; I think if a lot of people nowadays would track their computer time they’d see somewhat similar numbers, lower or higher depending on what their job looked like (because with jobs or college you constantly get email, need to visit the school’s homepage, Lord Google demands your patronage for help with your most recent essay, etc.) because there’s always a fair amount of internet use involved. Dad’s moved his office to the basement, partially so he can use the big screen TV as a 2^nd screen for his office work (and after-work Guild Wars sprees, which I sometimes join), and Mom has to work with FaceBook a lot to promote different events she works on (as well as FB stalk me and make sure I’m not dead in a gutter somewhere) and she even manages her own website, as well as doing some work on other websites for storytelling groups to which she belongs. In this day and age, the internet and computers (and CrackBerries and iPhones and other internet-compatible devices) are incredibly practical work tools that offer us dictionaries, encyclopedias, television, radio, news, the ability to stay in touch with people we love, and so many more things in one simple machine, in one place.

I, for one, don’t really buy into the whole “media menace” mindset for exactly that reason— it’s not out to get you, it takes all of those things you would normally spend your time on and simply puts them in one easily-accessed place. That’s helpful.

On the other hand, the danger is, computers and the internet place everything else you would normally spend your time on in one easily-accessed place, which is why  proportionally one—in this case, me—spends so much time on it. Because it’s my dictionary, my library, my television, my phone, my mailbox, my book club, my Game Night, my journal, my only, only method for keeping in touch with a family a whole ocean away and three best friends who can’t afford to call me (one who wouldn’t anyway, considering she’s telephobic). Hell, I’m even using it to read French newspapers, play French grammar games, watch French TV shows, plan my travel in French, and chat with francophones about said French news/games/television/travel.

This shouldn’t be a bad thing. It is frankly, in my opinion, helping my French improve more than the actual classes. Between writing in French online, reading French books, and going to the French cinema I feel like I’m learning more and having more fun doing so. Especially since my classes are so boring. Especially since I haven’t connected with the students. Especially since right now I feel like this whole thing is more than a bit ridiculous.

But my job is not to go to the D-Day beaches, learn about a seriously important event in human history and fall in love with the ability to be bilingual. My job isn’t to read French literature (or English literature translated into French) and French comic books, which is amazingly and awesomely considered a genuine form of art and literature here and helps me add lots of French vernacular to my vocabulary whilst indulging in my love of narrative and also letting me study comics as an art form to go with my art class ICRP, or to go to the French cinema and be delighted that I can follow the plot of the story while at the same time being fascinated by the shot techniques and, again, indulging in my love of narrative. It’s to sit in class and take notes so I can pass the one test at the end of the semester and get credit to transfer back to K, so I don’t have to spend any extra semesters there to get a degree and graduate.

I just haven’t really swallowed that yet, I think. I don’t WANT to. It’s childish, but my classes are boring and this one teacher especially sucks royally and I’ve never been very good at dealing with keeping my head down and just doing what the system wants of me, that’s why I had to be put in the magnet program in primary school, because I love to learn, which makes being bored by school about the most painful thing imaginable and makes it incredibly hard for me to focus on what they want me to do and not on what I frankly consider a more productive use of my time. It shouldn’t BE work. It should be enthralling!

It’s driving me mad. I thought I was all set to go back to school after the break, that I’d had time to relax and throw myself into interesting things and I could go back to being force-fed what should be genuinely useful things about the French language in horribly mangled and uninteresting ways, but no, we’re still studying the same things we have been, and circling the unpronounced e’s, which is basically every “e” in French, it’s FRENCH, and then I find myself on the internet at almost 2 am writing historical fiction short-stories about the Franco-Prussian war and overly long essays analyzing the fact that in the first episode of BBC’s Sherlock the scene in the car the continuity editors couldn’t decide whether the scene was taking place in the daytime or at night, and telling my friends and family how much I miss them, and blogging about how I’m staying up too late on the internet because, frankly, it’s a bit more interesting than my life at the moment, and there are more people with which to share it.

And now I have to try to force myself to sleep so I can get up at 8 tomorrow, heat some water since the cold water still hasn’t come on and Hélène isn’t back until Friday, and try to resume a normal sleeping schedule that will at least help me stay awake for the classes that want to put me to sleep, anyway. Sorry for such a depressing blog, I’m just frustrated, at the moment, of being so bored that at almost all hours of the day, I would rather be sleeping, or on the internet. It’s not helpful, and it’s annoying, and I’m really, really, really bored. (And maybe that’s the reason I’m interested enough in a show like BBC’s Sherlock at the moment, though no I don’t plan to be shooting any holes in any walls, but I feel at about that level of frustration.)

Anyone have suggestions on how to fill the time/regain motivation for my classes?

À tout à l’heure,

Alana

PS: Downloaded one of those programs that blocks your internet access for certain times you set it. Have 2 week free trial; am going to try setting it so I can’t get on the internet between midnight and 8 am Sun through Thurs and see if that helps at all. Won’t make classes more interesting, but will make sure I get enough sleep, hopefully. Alternatively, will prob. go on giant cleaning spree, or take up doing sit-ups etc. at crazy morning hours, which is also fine, if still not a solution to the problem.

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Alors! Raconte! Sunday, Oct 31 2010

Bientôt, je vais écrire de cette semaine passé, mais, maintenant, j’ai vous promit une histoire des activités dans le moins j’étais absent…

I’m on the train from Caen at the moment, so I’m taking this opportunity to fill in some of the gaps I’ve left in my travelogue. I did disappear for a month, after all; again, thank you for all of you following for being so patient and understanding about my need to concentrate elsewhere, I hope I didn’t make you too worried. (I know a good few of you are following me on Facebook too, so I’d hope with all that cyberstalking of which I’m the center, word would have gotten back to those that aren’t that I’m not dead!)

The month of October basically consisted of three things: class, more class, and failing to achieve a solid social niche amongst my peers. At the time, it frustrated me greatly, though as you can probably tell, I’ve come to actually enjoy the process of being mainly self-sufficient socially: “a woman of mystery,” is how my mother likes to paint that image. Personally, I don’t find anything especially “mysterious” or “fantastic” about myself, but I certainly have found it empowering to be seeing myself as capable, and maybe I’m gaining a few street-smarts along the way, which, really, can only help me out in the long run. I definitely feel like I’m on an adventure, and it’s fanning the flames of that desire I’ve always had to pull a Travels with Charley. Steinbeck’s books are not always my favorite, but, perhaps because I grew up with some immigrant blood in my veins and a mother who introduced me to the concept of the Hero’s Journey at a young age, that book’s always been a particular favorite.

In any case; once October started in, the weather began to become grayer and my classes were beginning to bore me quite a bit. Appropriate, as I am in the country that coined the word ennui and was the inspiration for the phrase “French malaise.” Still, imagine this: me, stuck in a room discussing past participles for two hours, only to switch rooms to the same class with the same teacher discussing the same subject, after which we stay in that room for another hour, before switching rooms and teachers and yet still discussing grammar, where the window offers more often than not a view of concrete university buildings covered in green and black graffiti tags—from about ten in the morning to seven at night.

Alright, I’m exaggerating. I normally get an hour or two for a lunch break, depending on the day. Occasionally, it’s even enough time to see a film at the cinema. But I’m serious about that 10h-19h deal; on Thursdays, too, I have art classes (which I’m using to fulfill an hours-of-French-integration project), so it’s really more like 9h30-22h, or 9:30 am to 10 pm!

After the shiny newness and the sun had passed with the end of September, I became exhausted. I couldn’t figure it out, either; part of it was stress (I didn’t confirm my class schedule permanently till my 5^th week, yikes), part of it was that my classes weren’t very interesting, part of it was guilt for occasionally giving into the desire to stay in bed an extra hour, part of it was the weather— in any case, if I didn’t get ten or more hours of decent sleep a night, maybe only two hours after waking up, I would be dying for a nap and barely keeping my eyes open in class. Even then, I might feel utterly exhausted and make my way to the coffee machine every few hours.

By the time I had my first real panic attack—don’t worry, I’m just susceptible to them, it’s no big thing—I was realizing that I was in a rut and would have to start taking my prescriptions. Last year Spring quarter, after trying me on some anti-anxiety medicines (which really, REALLY didn’t work), my doctor and counselor suggested I try Adderall to help me stay out of the rut, even though I don’t have ADD. I have to admit, they help. They give me an extra dose of energy and help me stay focused, determined, and help me avoid feeling overwhelmed—which is the kicker for me, because once I start thinking defeatist thoughts I spiral down pretty fast. The thing is, I have always been hesitant about taking them, firstly because there’s a stereotype that people who take Adderall are either suffering from ADD or are using it as a sort of scholastic-steroid. Neither of those apply to me, of course, because I neither have ADD nor does my problem lie in a lack of ability (please, like I need help getting good grades on assignments)—rather, my issue is getting caught up in my own head games until I somehow manage to think myself into mental and emotional paralysis. When freed of this paralysis, I have no problem succeeding in my goals.

The other reason I don’t like to take them is because there’s a part of me that feels like taking them is admitting I’m not strong enough to deal with my demons on my own. It’s stupid; after all, I give my friends enough lectures on Not Having to Carry Burdens Alone and Bad Situations Aren’t Ever Truly Unsolvable, etc. that I should know to listen to my own words and realize that there’s no failure in having a problem in which help from an outside source is a perfectly workable solution. It’s just, sometimes there’s a part of myself that thinks I need to cry a goddamned river and then get the fuck over it, everyone else manages to not think themselves into a depression every time the going gets tough. (Even THAT’S not true, though, since I have one friend who’s currently in a semi-depressive state for loss of a friend who I KEEP TELLING needs to slow down and not push her issues aside or I’m afraid she’ll do herself some damage—she expects so much of herself, it seems, sometimes—and another who took a year off from college because she needed to regroup before facing the stress again.)

Anyway, I started taking my prescription the week before we went to Paris, and things have felt much better. I’ve spent two days, probably, lounging in my PJs since, but that’s because it was a vacation, or I didn’t have class, and I could afford it. Part of me still feels guilty, as there’s still a part of me that treats days without an itinerary as wasted time, but I know they’re really not. It’s just my habit of constantly thinking “what could I have done better?”

Art class has also really helped me, because by drawing more and getting back into singing (even if it’s only in my room with some karaoke tracks) have given me projects to work on and new short(er)-term goals for which to aim, which keeps me motivated. I’ve noticed that if I don’t have anything on which I can see decent progress in a more immediate time frame, it makes it harder to keep up with my more long-term goals (like classes; for that the goal is “I will pass the class, flying colors nice but not necessary, and get credit to transfer back to K”—not incredibly ambitious, but I choose to place things like “improve my French”, “explore a different culture” in the personal life category, since it seems more like that’s where the action’s at). The feedback I’m getting from Elise, Megan, other Megan, and my other art student friends, also really helps me feel confident in my ability to pick up new skills, and to improve steadily and reach my goals when I set them.

It’s also helped me get out and meet people. I’ve made friends in my art classes, in the same way that many of the students at IIEF or my fellow K students are fun and interesting people with whom I love to talk and go to events, and I would call them friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, but I don’t have Friends (and now you’re thinking about the show), people who are mine as I am theirs. People with whom I undoubtedly belong, in whom I can confide, on whom I can depend on with an insane and feverous certainty that borders on something from a children’s Saturday morning cartoon show—those, I haven’t found. I’m realizing those friends are rare and valued treasures in any case, and, frankly, though none are here, I am incredibly blessed to have found as many of them as I have; family, both in blood and in brotherhood.

It was very hard, trying to find someone to travel with me—obviously it was hard, as I wasn’t successful. Even though I’d come to France and almost right away been telling people “I’d like to travel to Normandy and see the D-Day Beaches,” and gotten a few “Yeah, that sounds fun!” responses in return, when I started to bring the subject up to certain people with whom I felt I’d made at least some sort of a connection, everyone already had made plans together, or was in the middle of making plans with others, or had decided they would make plans with others as soon as possible. This is, of course, entirely understandable, normal, and in no way have I ever taken it personally, or thought they were purposefully or vindictively excluding me. I’ve never thought that—so I want to make that clear right now. My experience was not one of vicious, paranoid exile, simply of feeling that I wasn’t truly part of any specific group, or any group at all, really.

There was one girl who hadn’t made plans with whom I discussed possibly travelling together, but in the end, she didn’t really have any interest in going to the places I wanted to visit. Not super surprising; my Caen vacation was basically half-pilgrimage, half-nerdy history excursion. Clearly my family’s penchant for going places like Jamestown for Christmas or to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival for a family summer excursion has given me a slightly out of the normal idea about what 20-somethings are supposed to do when they travel Europe. Not that I don’t also like dance clubs and the like, just that—standing on the same ground were twenty, fifty, three-hundred years ago, something that changed the course of history happened… it’s something special. (To be fair, I’m not knocking the clubbing; even if you went to a city in Europe to party, you’d still end up getting some culture; you can’t throw a dime in Europe without it hitting something of historical importance. Like I said in the last post, EUROPE IS OLD. REALLY, REALLY OLD. It just naturally has a lot of history, because it’s had more time to make it.)

I did get to go on a short excursion with others, though, which I really appreciated. Liz King’s host mother, Claire, and Hélène are fast friends, considering they both teach German in lycée (High School)—or at least, they did, I think Claire is retired now. Liz and Claire invited me to go on a daytrip with them to visit The Black Forest in Germany. I was excited, because it was the first time I’d gotten to leave France since we arrived! Mackenzie came as well, and we visited a museum that showed the traditional farmhouse structure of Black Forest homes, as well as some really interesting traditional costumes of the region. There was this hat, for example, that had lots of large, red pompoms piled on its crown. There was also a matching one, but that had black pompoms. People in this village had, when these hats were in style, worn black pompoms if they were married… and red to show that they were available and looking for a husband! I have to say, it’s definitely a lot more obvious than changing your Facebook status to single, but, well, I think the Facebook method is easier, ha ha.

After the museum (which also had a lot of adorable goats, as it was an “open air museum”), we went to a different town which was famous for its clocks. Granted, Black Forest clocks are very famous anyway, so the whole region is pretty darn clock-crazy, and pulls a lot of tourism for them. We went shopping there, where I had a chance to buy marzipan, and shared it with the girls. I don’t think either had had it before, which was, obviously, something I had a moral obligation to remedy, since it was in my power. It was a very nice day, and I enjoyed it a lot. If I have a chance, I would like to go and spend a few more days in Germany, as well. I’ve enjoyed learning about France’s culture, so I think Germany would be fascinating, too—it is, after all, a country that has very large historical importance in Europe, especially for Alsace, the part of France Strasbourg is in.

I can laugh about it now, because I feel like, especially after this vacation, I’m pretty much over it, and have become comfortable with finding ways to entertain my own self. But earlier, when I wouldn’t see others outside of class for a week and a half, part of me felt really neglected. I felt that even when I would try and arrange time with others, they were responding that they’d rather stay at home, or that they had something else they wanted to do, or that they’d already made plans with others—that no, sorry, I wasn’t really that high a priority. Ironically, once I did actually get “I have to wash my hair” as a response, because the person had just come back from either a bike ride or a hike (I forget which), as well as “I need to wait for my nail polish to dry”. At least those were responses I could laugh at, even for slightly self-depreciable reasons.

Again, I don’t hold anything against those people, because I think they’re all very nice, and I don’t at all think they meant to make me feel awkward, especially as, with people I don’t know well, “awkward” and “overly chatty” are two phrases that fit me to a T. No one said they were obligated to want to spend their free time with me, and I still don’t think they are. It just happened to unfortunately end up with me feeling a little socially starved.

I feel a lot better, though, about spending time by myself. I think I’ve discovered several methods for taking care of my own needs and not depending so much on others, and as a result I feel that’s made me more confident in my own skills, ability, and unusual personality—like I told a friend recently, “We’re not socially awkward, we’re socially awesome, and the rest of the world just hasn’t caught up yet.”

Il y a un autre part, qui sera mit dans le site bientôt ! Attendez l’aventure de ma semaine à Caen !

Alana

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Les Vacances de Toussaint Tuesday, Oct 26 2010

Il y a un moins…

Thanks for being so supportive of me taking time off of the blog to get used to being in France, guys—and sorry for that “time off” being a month long!

A lot has happened in a month, but I feel like I’m in the upswing of the W: when we were being briefed for leaving on study abroad at K, they showed us this diagram of expected mood when dealing with a new culture. You start off high-energy, very excited, and very happy with the host culture, the “honeymoon period”, as it were, and then as more and more differences, problems, and culture shock moments show up, you get grumpier, more upset, frustrated and confused… that’s the first dip at the bottom of the W; then after a while, you start to comprehend the host culture more, start to understand WHY those things that gave you trouble work the way they do… you can manage in the host culture well and, while there are of course still problems, you are able to find your way around them. You find yourself becoming genuinely capable of living in this new environment as more than just an outsider. That’s the upstroke to the midpoint of the W… and then you return home and the whole process starts over again!

I have to admit, I love it here; not because it’s exciting and shiny anymore (although, since this week I am travelling in France on vacation, I am seeing many places that are new and exciting to me) but more because I feel accomplished; I have mastered the art of living abroad in a big French city, and that’s gratifying. I’ve proven to myself that I am capable—that’s given me a lot of confidence. It feels comfortable now. I can get around without trouble, communicate with others without trouble (I actually find myself getting frustrated when people try to speak to me in English now! “Thanks, but I can speak French just fine, you don’t have to do that.”), watch movies in French and not feel overwhelmed, and when a problem does arise… well, I still have a moment or two of throwing inner-tantrum just because I’m the sort of person who doesn’t like it when plans change, but I can take calming breaths and know that in the end I will work the problem out.

For example, I ran into a few complications recently. This past week, the whole Kalamazoo and Lewis & Clark group went to Paris for the beginning of Toussaint (a two-week long break at the end of October/beginning of November. Remember, they don’t have Thanksgiving, so instead they have a break for All Saints Day, or Nov. 1^st) but were allowed to make their own travel plans after the three days were up. I decided I wanted to go to Caen, a city in Normandy in the west of France which is very close to the D-Day beaches, has a beautiful memorial of the Second World War, and is also a short bus ride from Bayeux and the famous Bayeux Tapestry. (The Tapestry is basically a giant woven comic strip depicting the Norman Invasion of Britain in 1066, where William the Conqueror won the dispute for the English crown and his rival for the throne got an arrow in his eye. Because William became King of England, the upper class began to speak French since they had a French-speaking king, and several French words such as “mouton –> mutton” and “guerre –> war” made their permanent way into the English language—god, English/French historical relations make me so nerdily happy.)

I bought my tickets from Paris to Caen a week and a half ago, and then waited to see if anyone else was actually interested in coming with me (they weren’t; I’ll talk about in more detail later) before confirming my hotel reservations and purchasing my ticket back to Strasbourg. Of course, problems arose with the trains because this week is 100% Les Grèves (strikes), all day every day.

For those who haven’t heard much about the political situation in France, Nicolas Sarkozy, their President, recently had his administration push through some legislation which raises the legal age for obtaining Social Security in France to 67 instead of 65 (or 62 instead of 60 for certain types of work). While a lot of Americans are going “big deal, two more years of work, we don’t even WANT government-run social programs over here,” the difference is that, to us, the idea of the right to health care and other social program benefits is incredibly new and shiny/dangerous (depending on what side of the political spectrum you’re on), but France has literally had some form of social security and health benefits for at least certain types of jobs SINCE THE FOURTEEN HUNDREDS. That’s before we even existed as colonies, let alone as a sovereign state. (Moral of the story, Europe is OLD.) France also has a culture of leisure time—they have five weeks of vacation time a year, an hour or two off for lunch every day, only work 35 hours a week on average, and most businesses are closed on Sunday (although the last is really more because France was traditionally very Catholic). (And no, it’s not that they’re lazy, it’s that ambition and hard work are American cultural values, while thorough appreciation of family, friends, hobbies, etc. is a French one.) To a lot of people, it’s the government taking one of their fundamental rights away.

So that’s why, literally the entire time I’ve been in France, the citizens of the 5^th French Republic have been happily participating in another of France’s cultural traditions—protesting the fuck out of their government by preventing the use of public services through strikes and taking to the streets like it’s 1789.

At first, this was a curious and fascinating display of practical French politics. Then, it was annoying, because the Strasbourg trams ran at weird intervals and I was late all the time. Then it was awesome, because some of our teachers cancelled class because they were joining the strike, so we got a few free days. Now, it’s just something I work around and don’t express an opinion on with anyone else than Hélène, on the account of I’m not French and it’s none of my business, and I promised Mom I wouldn’t get into politics over here (yeah, good call). Thus, when I found out that my train back to Strasbourg had to be delayed by a day, I grumbled and then went about finding a way to extend my stay in Caen for another night. I was one of the luckier ones—some group members who were planning to go to Brussles found out that all trains to Belgium had been cancelled for the next few days.

Today, however, it came in handy; I arrived at La Gare St. Lazare (the St. Lazarus train station in Paris, and in case you’re wondering yes that does rhyme) an hour in advance by tram (helped by a very friendly Parisian dance teacher when my suitcase handle broke, and she happened to be riding the same tram so we had a nice conversation on the way there; no, I haven’t found French people, even Parisians, any more stuck up than Americans are towards tourists) and went to one of the machines to pick up my ticket. It then proceeded to tell me that no, I couldn’t use the machines to get my ticket because I wasn’t using the right kind of Visa card. You see, French bank and credit cards have this little chip in the front of them, not just the magnetic stripe, and that’s really what they use to read anything—at least, I think that’s how it works. Anyway, I had to go stand in line to ask the SNCF (national train company) people to please print off my ticket.

IT TOOK AN HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES. Remember what I said about task-mastering being an American trait and the French one being more about taking their time? Unlike at the cinema or during Friday where I have no classes, here’s an example of a place where I DON’T appreciate that leisure value IN THE LEAST (but like I said, now I at least understand it, so it’s easier to work around). I had to stand in line, staring at the clock as the minutes ticked by one by one, watching with dread as the line once again didn’t move forward, and the little train agenda next to the clock became one more minute closer to telling me that, sorry, my train had left without me, and I couldn’t even have the hope that maybe it was late, because the little LED “à l’heure” light was mocking me. MOCKING ME, I SAY.

When my train finally disappeared from the schedule board, I allowed myself a moment of inner pity and rage before deciding that the best response was still to remember that I was thinking like an American, but was living in France. Honestly, if I looked at it from the other side, so what? I was still going to get to Caen, and since I’d set today aside for one task and one task alone—checking into my hotel—as long as I got there eventually, it was no harm no foul. It was a good lesson to keep in mind, especially since I know I have a habit of treating one unexpected step like it’s the end of the world. It didn’t matter if I didn’t get there in the manner I had expected; I was going to get there, and that was what mattered.

The damage wasn’t even that bad; better, even, than my original plan. I didn’t have to buy a new ticket, because they’d accounted for the grève giving everyone a bit of hassle, and simply told me my ticket was basically good for any train that had a stop at Caen in the next two weeks, wrote down the time and platform number for the next arriving train (only an hour later), printed my return ticket for me, and because I now didn’t have to rush to the station, I could eat a sandwich and drink a cup of coffee at one of the cafés next to the gare without needing to feel rushed. Like that, I passed a pleasant last hour in Paris, and now, my train is pulling into the station at Caen.

Trés bientôt,

Alana

In the next installment: A recap of the last month, complete with my trip to the Black Forest, and my struggles with finding a travel partner.

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Trés desolée Sunday, Sep 26 2010

Zut alors.

Augh, I don’t even know what’s been going on with me recently. It’s just been kind of hard to concentrate and get into things that I have to get done. Tidying my room tends to work out and I’m still making my classes, but I keep forgetting about the blog and with a lot of things, if it’s not actually necessary for me to do at the moment, I end up choosing to write or doodle or read or otherwise zone out (sleeping is also a common option). I think part of it is that it’s been very grey and rainy here and I haven’t really found a project to work on, so I feel a bit aimless. I have vague plans to go visit the Loire and go castle-seeing, as well as maybe to go visit London and scope out some places from books there, I just feel like I don’t have specific things I want to do, and that just has me going to class and then coming back and being “on hold”, so to speak.

Anyway, Thursday the 23, I had class as normal and then met with Mme. Zehr to confirm that I could do the art classes as my ICRP. It’s official; I’m going to stop by the Université Populaire on Monday morning though, to pay my class fees and find out for sure when it all starts (ugh, the administrative stuff here is so confusing, it drives me up a wall). I realized I forgot to buy my class books during the ONE SINGLE HOUR they were being sold, so now I’m missing them, and have to figure out how to get a hold of them for class. I’m trying to find out if they have them on French Amazon or something, but it’s kind of annoying because now I’m probably going to have some late readings and everything which sucks a lot.

Friday, the 24th was very cool, though! We had a group trip, first to the Alsace-Moyen World War II Memorial Museum, which was dark and oppressive and full of gravitas and so amazingly, amazingly put together. I loved it, the lighting, the staging of the rooms, the use of multimedia… it was all fantastic. It makes me wonder how anyone can really throw around insults in politics comparing any average politcian– I don’t care what side you’re on– to Nazis and Hitler when the level of propaganda, mindfuck, and hatred displayed by that regime was so horrible.

After that, we visited the castle of Haut-Koengsberg which was originally built in the 1400s, then fell apart, then rebuilt in the 1700s and abandoned, and then went through a large reconstruction from 1900 to 1908 so that Wilhelm II of Germany/Prussia (look it up, I’m not explaining it) could have a museum and basically super-impressive watchtower in the area, because he never even stayed in it. Or at least, I’m pretty sure that’s what the tour guide said. Neither this nor the Memorial tour were given in English, so by this point my brain was begging for an aspirin and a long, long nap.

We finished up the day with a delicious meal in a delicious restaurant– I bought macaroons! Which were also delicious!– and good company, then returned at like 10 pm to Strasbourg, where I pretty quickly went to sleep, exhausted.

On Saturday, the 25, I woke up nice and late, and then went for a short walk. I tried to find out where I could maybe find my class books, but didn’t have much luck, so that’s when I decided I would probably just need to get them off Amazon France. Honestly, the fact that there is no actual bookstore is incredibly annoying. In the evening, Liz and Mackenzie came over and we had a nice girls’ night, where I saw “Little Miss Sunshine” for the first time— if I could write stories or make films, that is the sort of story I would tell, where it’s centered on the family and it’s about humanity and how life isn’t always perfect or even kind, but how in all of that there are those little moments of absolute joy, where you do the right thing and sometimes it still turns out wrong but you’re happy for it. I also found out Hélène has “Bon Cop, Bad Cop” which is this hilarious Canadian cop film that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE and I’m so going to watch that when I next have the chance. Mackenzie had brought some Glee with her (OH GOD KURT’S GETTING HIMSELF A BOYFRIEND YESSS!) so we watched that too, and then went to sleep. It was a really great night.

Today, Sunday the 26th, Mackenzie had actually headed home before I woke up, which threw me for a few minutes but she was really nice and left me a little sticky-note to let me know she’d left. I cleaned up and did a bit of laundry, and then Mirae came over at about 2 pm, since she hadn’t been able to come over the night before, and we watched “Serenity”. (“Serenity” is the name of the feature film in Joss Whedon’s excellent but unfortunately short-lived sci-fi series “Firefly”.) We hung out for a few hours, and then after she left I made myself dinner and got online, determined to actually post on my blog, since I hadn’t gotten around to it for days.

It’s been really nice to have friends over, and I’ve gotten out for a bit every single day, but I’m still feeling aimless, which really bugs me. Also, this “must find a way to get my books” thing is incredibly annoying, and I’m feeling guilty for forgetting to buy them. Admittedly, to me, it’s sort of ridiculous that you would only have the books on sale for one hour, but now I’m having to deal with the fallout.

That’s mostly it for now, so see everyone later,

Á bientôt (j’éspere),

Alana

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Beaucoup d’écrire Wednesday, Sep 22 2010

Il y a trois jours que j’écrivais…

Augh– I’m quite late on updating!! My most heartfelt apologies to anyone who may have been worried. Unfortunately, I got sick. Luckily, I was able to shake it off fast and I’m now all better, but things were kind of painful for a while there. To make things easier, since I have a lot of recaps to do, I’ll start each section off with a date:

Monday, 22nd of September

After I wrote before class, I headed to school just like I said I would. It was a basic day of mostly language classes. I have a decent-sized gap in classes after 11 o’clock though, so I headed to the Université Populaire (it’s like the Community College, where anyone can sign up for one or more classes just by themselves) and registered for two courses: “Le Visage“, a Level 1 class that works mostly with light/color/space techniques in several different mediums with the human face as the subject, and a Level 2 course called “Le corps human” which does the same thing but works with the whole human body. My original intention was to sign up for two courses (to get the full 4 hours/week I need to make it my ICRP), one human-subject course and then another one that would concentrate mostly on starter techniques (because, really, all of my art knowledge is less technical/theoretic knowledge and more “Uh, I saw Elise/Hayley/Megan/Elizabeth/Christina/Leslie/Michelle do that once, and then I kind of played around with it”). Unfortunately, due to my class schedule, this is probably the best I’m going to get– if I end up not being qualified for “Le corps human“, I’ll have to take a lower-level class Friday mornings which, while I wouldn’t mind so much, might end up conflicting occasionally with EuroCulture field trips and seriously, I am so sick of my classes conflicting, I still haven’t nailed down my 3rd option class. It’s really alright, though, as I’m mostly interested in drawing humans anyway; I hate landscapes and still-lifes, though I realize their importance, and should eventually learn how to draw a decent tree, for my own good.

After that, I returned to class and was very excited, because my last class on Mondays (at least, until “Le corps human” begins– 8 to 10 at night!!) is my Realizer un Film class, where we actually get to make our own short film! We were put into our groups, and I ended up with two American girls I didn’t know, and a Canadian boy named Justin who is in my other DEFsa classes (that’s my “language level”, DEF, section a). I am actually very happy with this group, because the first thing I said to them was “Okay, look– I don’t care about the type of story right now, what I really want to do with this class is make a DECENT MOVIE that has a very clean and simple aesthetic and good visual continuity. In other words, what I want out of this project is to make a movie that CORRECTLY USES THE MEDIA.” and they all went “OH THANK GOD.” After all, we’d just spent the last five minutes of class watching a student movie that made absolutely no sense visually and (well, the story made no sense, either) very often costumes, hair styles, setting, and character placement would change in a single scene. The blocking was horrible, they kept breaking the 180 rule so you couldn’t understand where people were, the shots did not display the action or scene’s purpose very well, and it made me so incredibly happy that the rest of my group had seen that and, instead of saying “Yeah, let’s attempt to do a spy film with special effects and lots of action!” had agreed that, to make a good film, we didn’t need fake guns, car chases, romance, and special effects, but to HAVE ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THAT. Keep it simple, sweetheart.

We ended up deciding that for greatest simplicity, something similar to the early Charlie Chaplin films would be what we should aim towards. There’s little dialogue, the storyline is simplistic and easily conveyed through camera work and the actors’ body language, and the comedy style easily translates to any audience. Justin and I discussed possible plots after class, and we think we’ve come up with one that will let us utilize the strengths of our small group to their fullest. Now we just have to wait til next Monday to pitch it to the others!

I was still feeling crappy after popping ibuprofen all day and downing it with glass after glass of water/7up/apple juice so I ate dinner, did some homework, and called it a night. I fell asleep about 12 am.

Tuesday, the 21st of September

My alarm went off at 7:45 (almost 8 hours later) and I tried to get out of bed but was so dizzy I literally walked into a wall. Realizing I probably had a fever, I took two Advil, decided class was not an option at the moment, and crawled back in bed.

Then I woke up at 6 pm. (That’s about 10 hours later, or about 18 hours total of sleep.) Finally feeling well enough to properly get up, I walked into the kitchen, throat still hurting but no longer feeling in danger of stumbling into things. Hélène was super kind and made me some citron chaud, or hot lemon juice sweetened with honey, which is the traditional French cure for a sore throat, and then we ate dinner and I had absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation as I had slept all day, and was also for some reason still exhausted. Determined to not have literally spent an entire day sleeping, and wanting to do something at least semi-productive, I watched the movie “8 Femmes” in French with French subtitles for reading/listening comprehension practice. HILARIOUS FILM, a parody of the sort of Agatha Christie-style mysteries that I really love (if you didn’t figure it out by the fact that a lot of my favorite TV series are all crime/mystery dramas and that I kept referencing “The Big Sleep” in an earlier journal, I love the mystery genre) with musical interviews, and I think it’s the only movie I’ve ever seen without a single male (well okay we see his back like 3 times). Incredible dialogue and great shots/costuming/sets, I really, really liked it.

I was ready to go to bed, but remembered I told Erin I’d watch the series finale of “Rizzoli & Isles” (yes, a crime drama) with her, so I popped online and did that, and by that point it was 11:30 pm so I just went to sleep so I could wake up in plenty of time for class. (Another 10 hours of sleep later, bringing my total to 28 hours.)

Wednesday, the 23rd of September

Which brings us to today. I felt much, MUCH better this morning, but toted along my Advil and some of Hélène’s lozenges for my throat, just in case. We went over the retirement and electoral systems here in France in Société Française, which I think is quickly becoming my 2nd/3rd favorite class (like I said, it’s really more like 2 classes one after the other because we switch rooms, teachers, and sort-of subjects, and in the end have 2 separate exams) and then I had more French Language class, and that was it– the only option class I was interested in maybe taking today was canceled and I really don’t want to take it anyway (the guy who teaches Philosophy is SERIOUSLY SO BORIIIINGGG).

I honestly feel all better, too, so I hope this means the intense sleeping session kicked the bug! That’s about all that’s happened today, so I think that brings this post to a close. And now you know everything you’ve missed!

Je suis en bon santé,

Alana

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Trés vite Monday, Sep 20 2010

Bon matin, Strasbourg. Il fait trés beau ajourd’hui.

Yesterday was fun; I woke up at quarter til’ noon and quickly got washed and dressed (because apparently the No Sleeping In rule is still habitually applying to me IN FRANCE, thank you Mom). Hélène and Wolfgang had someone over for brunch who I didn’t know, but turned out to either be the host dad/bro/uncle/? (seriously he wasn’t too much older than us) of Addy, or HIS brother. His French was very fast and all I really caught was that he is moving and the bank is giving him a hard time.

(Speaking of, still waiting on that bank card, BNP.)

I was mostly too nervous to speak, so I didn’t say much, but tried to listen instead– I still think I managed to sprain a muscle thinking so hard! But I tried some Caramel de Sel spread from Brittany, which is I guess Caramel that they make with salt there, which was sweet and tangy too, so that was kind of nice.

After that, I finished cleaning my room and then went downtown to visit some of the open museums with Mirae, Mackenzie, and Liz. I… got a little confused at where we were all supposed to meet, so arrived late. However, I did figure out how to use my student card as a tram pass (since I accidentally paid 23€ to have it capable of being used as one)! We went to the paleontology museum here, which is not normally open to the public– this whole weekend there were lots of university and governmental buildings, museums, and libraries open for their cultural fair. Mirae is a Biology major, so it was really fun to tag around with her and have her point out what she knew about the fossilized animals and their more current relatives. She could even tell what type of leaf was pressed into the stone! It was really impressive!

Mackenzie and Liz were tired after that, since the other three had been exploring since about ten in the morning, so Mirae and I continued on to explore the Botanical Gardens, and try to find the Observatory. We had a really nice talk, and the plants were very cool; we took pictures in a grove of bamboo. Unfortunately, the Observatory needed tour tickets to be seen, so we didn’t get to go in… it’s a bit of a missed opportunity, but I’m hoping I’ll get another chance. Instead, we went to a Café near by and got some drinks, and continued to talk. Mirae is very sweet and a very smart girl, so I was happy to spend lots of time with her– I was afraid at times I was over-talking, but she actually finds my babbling interesting, so I’m, heh, happy to entertain. The café itself was absolutely gorgeous, very large and spacial with walls of deep burgundy and windows and mirrors everywhere that made the room look even more open than it already was.

Today, I am writing before class, as I totally overestimated the amount of time I would need this morning. Unfortunately, I appear to be a bit sick (woozy, sneezing more than normal, painfully sore throat) but am drinking plenty of liquids and have ibuprofen on hand. I didn’t sleep very well last night, mostly because I kept waking up from night terrors of sleeping through or otherwise missing my class again. I checked my alarm clock three times to make sure it was correctly set! I’m glad I don’t want to miss class, and all, but at the same time there was still nothing I could have done to change things when they’d happened before, and if it’s interrupting my sleep, it’s clearly something I’m stressing about. I really can’t afford undue stress at the moment. Things haven’t been bad so far in the slightest, but they certainly haven’t been running smoothly, and I know how high-strung I get when I start to stress– I’d rather like to avoid that.

I’m looking more into my art course during the day today, but I think other than that one outing, today after school I’ll just come home and chill, maybe meditate or take a bath.

Bon journée,

Alana

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Les deux jours pasée Sunday, Sep 19 2010

J’ai passé un bon weekend…

Well tomorrow is Sunday, but my weekend so far has been a great one. I spent all day outside, Friday, meeting a new friend Colleen for lunch and then ADVENTUUURE!! We both recently began to follow this really cool blog called MISSion Amy K.R. which is basically a site for suggesting benevolent pranks. In the spirit of her “ATM = Always Trust Magic” mission, we bought heart-shaped post-it notes and colored gel pens and left encouraging notes on phone booths, parking meters, tram ticket validation centers and, of course, ATMs all over Strasbourg. It was a lot of fun, and we lay in the grass on the lawn in front of the Strasbourg Train station for almost an hour just brainstorming post-it ideas and cloudwatching. (Well, I was cloudwatching at least– and taking surprise photos of the people around us, for I am sneaky like ninja.)

Later that night, Hélène went to pick up Wolfgang from the airport, and I went out with the group for a joint birthday celebration. Zena had had her 20th birthday on Thursday (whoo, I almost wrote Jeudi there!) and mine was of course on Monday, so everyone went out to celebrate. We left the first place after about an hour, which was good, because a few of the boys were being completely loud and obnoxious and got us scolded by the owners (which was SUPER EMBARASSING but at least we were leaving then so they didn’t have to throw us out), and went to find somewhere with dancing. We found a little place called the Underground Club (like the London Underground, or subway system– in France it’s called the “metro” but I’m pretty sure this was an English club) with dancing and American music to which we could sing along. It struck us as a bit shady at first because it was this tiny door in the wall and you went down a spiral metal stair case into what was effectively a basement, and that was the club, and also, we were the only ones there, but apparently the club scene starts much later at night than we knew, so we danced for a few hours– I had a great time– and as we were all heading out to go to another club called Seven, other people started to come in. In any case, the Underground Club was a lot of fun, and I hope we go there again.

Everyone met outside the club so that we could go to Seven, as a small group of people had sort of gotten ditched when we went into the Underground Club (such is the problem with having such a large group) and we stood around on the street corner trying to figure out how to get to the club. Of course, the boys started being obnoxious again, so I was getting kind of annoyed. I stopped a nice couple on the street– a lesbian couple, actually– to ask directions, and then one of the boys came over while I was asking directions and started being really rude. They were really nice, but when I thanked them and said goobye, he started yelling “Je suis un homosexuel!” after them. All that really means is “I’m gay!” but the thing is, he’s not, and they were, and the way he was doing it was really abrasive and it was clearly supposed to be sort of macho and funny, which maybe it was to him, but to me and decent few of the others there, it wasn’t. It was just really embarrassing to have him acting like that, because it was not only offensive, but it was also a bad reflection on the rest of us who had gone out with him.

The group sort of split in half after that, where those who didn’t want to be around the loud and obnoxious people sort of taking off along a different path. It was fairly late by that point though, so a bit after that, Mackenzie and I decided that the night wasn’t going to get much better, said our goodbyes, and headed home. It might sound like the night was kind of a bust but, even though some people were being really obnoxious, it was actually a lot of fun! I loved the dancing, and I was able to talk a bit to people like Chris and Daniel with whom I hadn’t really hung out before, so all in all it was a pretty good birthday, and now we know who we don’t want with us the next time we go dancing, so it’s not too much of a hassle. It sounds like next weekend, instead of going out on Friday, since Hélène’s alright with me having friends over when she’s gone, Zena, Mirae, Liz, Mackenzie, and I might just have a Girl’s Night In instead, which would be perfectly fine with me.

Today, I didn’t do much– folded laundry and tidied up my room, although my desk is still a mess. Apparently you vacuum pretty often here as well because when I told Hélène I was going to clean my room, she told me where the vacuum was, and seemed confused when I was confused that she brought it up. (Or maybe the rooms just don’t get vacuumed too often at my house; normally about every three or four weeks I’d think.) So I guess I’ll be cleaning my room some more tomorrow!

I also wrote a bit, and read some more of the French version of Alice in Wonderland. The writing wasn’t much, just some “description porn” as I jokingly call it, where you describe the things you see around you in great detail. I watched people on the street from my balcony for about a half-hour and tried to come up with stories for them as they passed by. It was really entertaining, but not very productive and I think Hélène was sort of confused by the fact that I took a lazy day when it was so nice outside. (In my defense I have been outside for the past week, and some days, you just need a dreamy day to dayream and do some pointless art.)

Tomorrow, I am not sure what I’ll do– it would be nice to go to the museums with a friend as they’re free for the weekend, but I’m not sure what people will be doing, so I might just end up wandering around like I did Friday, and then cleaning my room more like I did today. Honestly, it’s not very exciting– not like next weekend when we’re going to an Alsacian castle on a field trip– but I think it’s a good weekend nonetheless.

Bon journée,

Alana

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Trés court Friday, Sep 17 2010

Desolée…

I’m not dead, just tired; the last few days have been absolutely exhausting. Wednesday was my longest day because I didn’t have a decent break in the middle of it (and my alarm clock didn’t go off so I was late and that put me in a really bad mood– although the same thing happened to Hélène so it made me feel better that teachers have the same problem!) and today, though it was much shorter, I was feeling rather nauseous. I also had my schedule complicated even further by Mme. Zehr’s announcement that my ICRP meeting time and our other European Culture class will both probably be during the time frame in which I already have another class, so I’ll have to effectively leave early. Which is ridiculous. But, there was cake, so I was mollified.

More tomorrow, since I don’t actually have school on Fridays!

Tout mes bons sentiments,

Alana

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J’ai beaucoup de sommeil Wednesday, Sep 15 2010

Eugh, je suis fatiguée…

I’m really tired right now, so I think I’m just going to give you a short rundown and then go to sleep. Today, I actually had the correct schedule, so I made it to all of my correct classes on time. We had a class on Phonetics, and then one of our two French language courses.

Our course schedule is a bit weird because, in reality, I only have 6 classes (French language, French social culture, Phonetics, and then three option classes) but with my program I also have a European Culture class, and my ICRP project, which counts as another credit. On top of that, both the French Language course, the French Social Culture course, and apparently also the European Culture class are EACH TAUGHT BY TWO DIFFERENT PROFESSORS– so I effectively have more like ten different courses in the week! I think some of the professors even give separate exams!

Luckily, there is not much homework, but I did have to spend quite a bit of my money today buying class notebooks and an accordion folder to keep everything in. I tried to be economic and split the notebooks into two halves so I could get half the notebooks– there’s plenty of pages for 12 weeks, anyway.

I also went clothes shopping with Mackenzie, Mirae, Zena, and Liz, and, though I didn’t buy any clothes, it was a lot of fun, and we stopped at a bookstore afterward, where I bought two comic books with beautiful art styles and one copy of the first Harry Potter book, completely in French. I happen to have most of the first book practically memorized, (first line is “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number 4 Privet Drive, were happy to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Check it.) so between that and the fact that the language is not very advanced French, I’m moving through it at a decent pace. Mackenzie bought the 3rd book, so we’ll switch off when we’re both done.

We also had our European Culture/PolySci class, which is our only course in English, and was actually a bit uncomfortable because of it.

Hélène and I had a nice dinner of salmon and some stewed vegetable which either was spinach or bok choy or maybe leek, or was some other vegetable similar to them. I couldn’t figure it out and she didn’t know the English name, but it was delicious anyway.

Bon nuit,

Alana

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