Culture & Studies

If I haven’t written in a while, it’s because I’m been completely busy. Well, that’s not true, but I’ve certainly been finding ways to occupy my time.

I have 5 CUPA spectacles in a 2 ½ week period, the last one of which is tonight. CUPA spectacles are pretty awesome; at the beginning of the semester, we pick four shows we want to go to out of a list of operas, plays, concerts, and dance shows. But we can also sign up on waitlists for the other shows, which resulted in me ending up with eight different tickets (as of this writing – who knows what the next month holds!). This past Monday was Die Zauberflöte, or the Magic Flute. It was… bizarre, in a word. I expected something very spectacularly operatic, but it was a very pared-down modern version. Instead of the Queen of the Night flying in in a big dress, you didn’t even realize it was her until she started trying to seduce Tamino. In this version, the opera’s Masonic themes were glaringly obvious, never more so than when all 67 singers, clothed in black and wearing opaque veils, stood in a giant circle and chanted as Tamino and Papageno descended into a tomb. And with all of the pomp and circumstance and flying stripped away, you also realize some of the sexism and racism in the opera that you’d never noticed before.

The following night was “Un chapeau de paille d’Italie” at la Commédie Française, which is the story of a man whose horse eats a woman’s hat on his wedding day, and he spends the whole play running around visiting different people to try and find an identical copy of her hat while avoiding letting his betrothed know about it. It was definitely amusing, made more so by the artistic decision to add an electric guitarist and a violinist to the cast and have a good third of the lines in the play be sung along to very modern music. This Monday was another show at la Commédie Française, although this time a tragedy: Andromaque. I will admit to falling asleep for morsels of it, but I also really enjoyed it. The actors were all pretty powerful, especially the actresses playing Andromaque and Hermione. Hermione was without doubt my favorite – I really liked the actress’ portrayal of her. I also liked the actress playing her handmaiden, Cléone; she had a really interesting voice and look, both of which reminded me of Audrey Tautou.

Tonight is “Le Faiseur,” a play by Balzac.

School has been fairly hard, especially last week. Monday was my first major assignment, an exposé for my “Drawings of the 18^th century” class. This is a 20-25 minute presentation on the artist we were assigned, inclusive of an artistic analysis of his work and career across one particular piece of his art. I was given Pieter Boel, and so spent all weekend finalizing my presentation on his ostrich sketches and paintings. I was nervous, and so worried about messing up grammar or forgetting important technical vocabulary that I ended up pretty much reading my entire presentation straight from the document I’d typed up, except for when I was pointing something out on my powerpoint. My presentation was also too short, but overall I’m pretty happy with how it went.

A Pieter Boel sketch of ostrich legs

 

Thursday night was my France of Louis XIV TD. I was expecting a slow class, since it was only expected to be 45 minutes long – but just the opposite! The student who was supposed to give the oral commentary sent our professor an e-mail right before class saying that they weren’t going to show up. So our professor dealt with it by having us write a commentary on the assigned text in the 45 minutes of classtime instead. I was so unprepared for this. The last commentary I wrote in French was on the French A1 IB exam, almost three years ago. In fact, I think that may have been the last commentary I wrote in any language. So to say I’m rusty is a bit of an understatement. Still, it probably went okay; I’m just going to have to wait to find out. Tomorrow is another written assignment for the same class, a dissertation-type piece, but while I’m not looking forward to it at least we’re expecting this one!

My demi-pointes for dance class!

 

My dance class is a lot of fun. I’m taking classical dance at the Centre de Danse du Marais, and I go there 2-3 times each week. I had my 8^th class yesterday (my 5^th of full classical dance – the others are Barre au Sol classes that work on classical dance exercises on the floor) and I feel like I’m definitely getting a lot better. My teacher even said so after class yesterday! Up until yesterday I was the newest student, but when two newer students joined I could finally see how much I have improved.

Tuesday was made even better by going out to a lovely lunch with another CUPA student after dance class and having a wonderful conversation completely in French.

Tagliatelle carbonara and white wine

 

I also went shopping on Friday because Yves Rocher was having a 50% off sale, so now I’m fully stocked up on a variety of very French skin products, which I’m excited to try out. After all the walking I did this weekend (an update on that coming up soon!), the foot scrub is definitely my current favorite.

À bientôt!

P.S. “Le Faiseur” was fantastic! I loved the play, the ABBA music they inserted, and the actors, but the set was my absolute favorite. It was a three-piece moving set, with doors and trapdoors and parts that flipped up to become doorways. The set also changed to various levels of steepness to reflect events in the play,  leaving the actors to loom over each other or slip down the inclines in different scenes.

Course Schedule, Draft 6

Course selection in French universities has been a very strange process for me. I’m used to thumbing through the online course catalog the instant it’s released, having several courses I need to take for my major fill most of my credit allotment, choosing 1-2 extra courses, and using an app to help me craft a final schedule. This semester, I consulted 5 different course catalogs, along with professor evaluations for each (although most of my potential professors didn’t appear in the list of evaluations). Luckily all of my courses has posted hours already (yes, that’s lucky in the French university system!), so I painstakingly drew out schedules by hand and experienced a tiny pang of sadness every time two courses I really wanted to take conflicted. I turned in several different drafts of my list of courses to CUPA, attempting to winnow it each time but usually failing miserably.

I resorted to using my best friend, Microsoft Excel, to help me with my final selection. After much deliberation, my course schedule ended up looking pretty much like my schedule does every semester: overfull, with classes in a variety of subjects, and organized in such a way that I’d need a time turner to handle it. Luckily for me, while classes at the Sorbonne begin tomorrow, classes at Paris 8 – Saint Denis don’t start until February 10th and so I have the opportunity to try out a bunch of classes this week, and then if I don’t like them, try out even more at Paris 8 next week. The highlighted courses are my first choices for courses to attend.

In reality, a few of my classes have already started — I’ve attended 3 courses at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, and I’m planning on staying in one (or maybe two) of them — but courses at La Sorbonne begin tomorrow, and since that’s where the bulk of my courses will likely end up being held, this week is going to be very busy for me.

I’ll be back with more updates soon!

Orientation

At this point, I have been through too many Orientations to count (not really). You’d think it might have lost a little bit of its lustre by now, but I still think every day of Orientation is the most exciting thing. Whereas over the weekend I could barely drag myself out of bed, these past three days I have practically bounded out the door. I showed up 15 minutes early on the first day, although those of you who know me will probably find that difficult to believe.

This orientation experience, unlike the previous three, is actually a three-week long process composed mostly of classes. Yes, there are social activities and yes, there are city explorations and yes, there are lots of new friends. But this is an academic orientation above all. I have 10 hours of class on the methodology of the French University, which is both an incredibly fascinating cultural introduction to the French and probably the most useful orientation lecture I’ve ever had. I also have 16 hours of French language instruction and 4 hours of French conversation workshop. And in between all of this, I have classes on how to select courses, immigration information sessions, university tours, and course selection meetings.

As for the food…. Yesterday, I discovered a new crêpe and panini stand with some other CUPA students. I bought a soft ham, tomato, and mozzarella baguette panini and a bunch of us ate together while wandering the Jardin de Luxembourg.

Then in the afternoon I purchased my first French crêpe from a stand on Boulevard du Montparnasse and ate it while wandering the sunny street. Buttery, sugary, and crisped to perfection.

Today wasn’t quite as pleasant outdoors; it was drizzling and so me and two other girls ended up in an indoor crêpe restaurant, ordering the prix fixe (fixed price) menu. Luckily I was very hungry, because it was a lot of food! The meal started off with a savory galette (pictured below) which was so huge I could barely finish it despite my hunger, and was followed by a sweet dark chocolate crêpe.

Even more impressive, the three of us spoke completely in French for the entire hour that it took us to eat! Yes, we’re all pretty much fluent in the language, but I still consider it an accomplishment. While meeting completely new people, it is all too easy to morph back into using English outside the CUPA offices because we don’t have the rapidity of language necessary to get to know each other as quickly as we would like. When you know that you could express yourself better in a different language and be understood better, it’s very difficult to have the willpower to keep speaking French.

First Day

9 janvier 2014

Today was my first full day in Paris. After a long night’s sleep I still felt tired, but I knew that I had to wake up or else I’d never get over the time difference. So I dragged myself out of bed and headed to the CUPA center using the metro system. I brought my passport for them to scan, and now I’m very relieved that I don’t have to carry that around Paris anymore!

Today’s big excitement was getting my student cards from CUPA. There are three major ones:

1. My NaviGo pass, which gets me unlimited access to all public transportation in zones 1 + 2 on weekdays, and transportation in all 5 zones on the weekends.
2. My Student Card, which says that I am a history of art student at the École Supérieure de Beaux-Arts. It gets me into many museums free or at a discounted rate.
3. My Amis du Louvre Jeune card, which is unlimited access to the Louvre. I’m especially excited to use this one!

I bought a ham + butter baguette for lunch, which I ate while wandering through a lovely park down the street from CUPA. It wasn’t until I googled it later that I realized I had been in the Jardin de Luxembourg, the second largest public park in Paris. That means it’s a lot bigger than I anticipated – I’ll have to devote more time to exploring it in the future!

 

A plus tard,

Abigail