Cabbage soup

Hello, mes chèrs amis!
Things have been going peachily. Today was an extra good day. This morning I went out to the bakery, bought myself a baguette, made myself a super-duper sandwich, and then left for Reid Hall where Sarah Lawrence classes are.
Today we had a class on art and architecture in Paris, which was really interesting, and then we had lunch, French class, and finally a visit to the Atelier de Gravure, in other words a print-making studio!!!
This studio, unlike most, is located pretty close to the Cité Universitaire, on a cute little street full of busy boulangeries, boucheries, fruit stands, and other shops. The studio itself is small, but packed with print-making machines and materials. The two leaders of the studio were really kind and unpretentious, and spent most of the time joking with the head of my Program, Monique. It seemed like a really fun environment. The artwork they showed us was amazing. I felt like signing up right then and there! I still have to work it out with my other classes, though. I'll sign up next week.
Classes start on Monday. Yay! I'm excited to have a more normal life; orientation has been a little exhausting.
I want to take Print-making, painting, French, and a seminar called "Multicultural France." It doesn't sound like much, but I think I'll basically be living in the art studios. I have to be there 8 hours a week for printmaking, and 6 hours for painting. It should be fun though.
This evening I made myself soup for the first time here. It was very satisfying, since lately I've just been too tired in the evening to do anything more than make tea. The tale of this soup started a few days ago, however:
Last Saturday, on my way back from tutoring I found a huge and very cheap supermarket, so I went inside. I've been trying to buy healthy foods, to combat my diet of white bread (baguettes) and chocolate croissants, and so I went straight to the veggie area. The amount of money I've been spending recently is scary, so I was looking for CHEAP veggies. I finally came upon these extra green, enourmous cabbages, and something in my head said "Why not? THIS looks healthy!"
So anyway, this giant green vegetable has been sitting all week, taking up the entire bottom shelf of the communal fridge in the basement, waiting for me to be inspired by its healthy leafy-ness. Tonight I finally had the courage to take it out, take off a few of the outer leaves, and turn them into a stew, along with a few other more tastey items. It was good, and there was enough left over to save for tomorrow night. The rest of the uncooked cabbage, however, is still lurking in the depths of the downstairs fridge...
If anyone has good cabbage recipes, please let me know!
Sending love from France!

Travels around Paris

1. cruise on a tourist boat

2. Eiffel Tower and Sarah Lawrence students

3. Eiffel Tower wearing sunglasses

4. Center Les Halles, from a walk around Paris

5. Lauren and I, looking shady

Les jours du Patrimoine

It's with great relief that I greet this weekend. The Sarah Lawrence Program is great, but I need a few days of me time to do my grocery shopping, some touristy traveling around Paris, read/reply to emails, send postcards, and write in this blog! Thank you for all the lovely comments by the way; I miss you all.
Well, this week seemed to go by pretty fast. We've started our French classes, which are pretty fun. My class has a very good professor, who has us do silly things like try to read out loud in French with a pencil in our mouths, in order to work the mouth muscles that us English-speakers don't usually use. It sounds ridiculous, but actually works!
On Tuesday I went with our group to sign up for a French bank account. It cost 1 euro for a student account. We barely fit into their little office, but after we each signed and dated about 15 papers that all looked the same, they smiled and told us that we'd receive our debit cards in a week.
On Thursday afternoon I got to visit my first atelier de peinture (painting studio). It was a long and complicated metro ride, and when we got there it sadly wasnt' what I had hoped. It was a smallish room opening onto a courtyard, with what looked like children's paintings covering the walls. We later learned that the Atelier had recently put on a show, displaying everyone's latest work. The two leaders of the Atelier, an artistic couple, talked to us about their theory of discovering the creative spirit in people, and finding different ways of letting the imagination go and just having fun. This was all fine and dandy, but as a technical artistic education it won't do. This wasn't the strict, serious studio art training that I had expected to find in France. Here, their classes are not set up the same way as in US colleges. There is no "class" that you go to twice a week where a professor walks around telling you what to do. Instead, Sarah Lawrence art students are required to spend a total of 6 hours at a studio a week in order to make it the equivilant of one US art class. Somehow, I can't see myself taking a 45 minute metro ride several times a week just to do art in an Atelier. Not unless it's something that requires special equipment, like a printmaking or sculpture class. Oh well, we'll be visiting more Ateliers this coming week, so maybe I'll find one that suits me.
Also on Thursday, I did my first tutoring job! Remember that woman who I asked for directions, and who came back a couple minutes later to ask if I would tutor her kids in English? Well, I finally did. On Thursday I tutored her eldest son who is in his first year of University, and yesterday (Sat.) I got to tutor them both. It was fun. The older kid is hard to tutor because he is so advanced, but he is very nice. The younger kid, who is 14, was kind of awkward but easier to tutor.
This weekend is what Parisians call "Les jours du Patrimoine," an annual event where buildings that are normally closed off to the public are opened, and free for people to visit. Even the Palais de l'Elysée, the French equivilant to the White House, was open. The only catch is that everyone and their uncle comes out for this event. The Parisians are very proud of their town, and very appreciative of nice architecture and a chance to visit it. The lines for more important buildings could be several kilometers long, and even after a five hour wait there was a chance that you would never make it inside before it closed. I went Saturday morning with another student from the Cité Universitaire, Cyril, to try our chances at visiting one of these buildings. After seeing the line at the Elysée, we walked around and found one that was much shorter outside of a building called the Hôtel de Beauvau. We had no idea what was inside, but after about an hour and a half wait we entered, to find that it was the seat of the Ministère de l'Intérieur. It turned out to be great. The building, which is used daily for business matters, was absolutely beautiful and richly decorated. A little further into our visit we were taken to a room up on the 3rd or 4th story, which happened to be the place where French resistants of the German occupation during the 2nd World War were held captive and questioned by the Gestapo! It was a tiny room, covered with writings and drawings carved into the walls by the prisoners. One of the quotes said, "It's between these grimy walls that fought the real heart of France." I felt very lucky to have been able to visit such an important place.
Today we are going to go on a touristy boat ride on the Seine. I'm very excited.
A plus tard!
Bisous!

A few photos

1. Market at Aix en Provence
2. View of the Mediterranean from the port of Cassis
3. Streets of Cassis
4. View of Marseille from a hilltop
5. Olive orchard near the place where Van Gogh spent most of his life
6. Roman Coliseum in Nîce
7. View of the countryside from les Beaux de Provence, a Medieval town on top of a scraggly rock
8. View of le Beaux de Provence

First week

Bonjour tout le monde,

It's been so long that I don't even know where to start. After a busy week of orientation, I spent Friday through Monday in the South of France with Sarah Lawrence. It was an amazing trip; we saw many beautiful sights, visited many beautiful cities, and ate some pretty darn amazing food. The trip was exhausting though. Our leader was Madame Mole, an art history professor for the Sarah Lawrence program in Paris. She was from the south of France herself, and was energetic to the extreme. I don't think I saw her sleep a wink the entire trip. She tended to dress all in black, her white hair contrasting with her stark costume. She would walk fast, pointing out interesting architecture to those few who kept up with her, and although what she said was often interesting, I think people started tuning her out after the first two days.
Madam Mole planned the trip schedule, which often included visiting 3 cities in one day, and an art museum in each one. We visited Montpellier, Nimes, Aix-en-Provence, Cassis, Marseille, Villeneuve les Avignon, and Avignon. The schedule was often so packed that we had little or no free time to explore the cities ourselves, although there are quite a few that I would like to go back to. The only other thing that bothered me about the trip was how much it felt like we were a middle school group going on a field trip. We were constantly being told to stay out of the road and watch out for cars, not to touch the paintings in the musuems, to guard our purses, and other things of that sort. It felt as though they didn't trust us to act as the adults that we are, and I was not the only one who was frustrated and slightly insulted by this.
That having been said, it was a fantastic trip. I've uploaded a few photos of my room here and of several cities in the South. Enjoy!

Et ça commence...

Hello everyone,
During the past couple of days I've been doing a lot of what the French call flâner: to take a walk with no precise destination. I get myself lost very easily this way, but people are very helpful in giving directions, and I also get to see a lot of Parisian street life. I've run into an open air market, discovered some useful shops, and had the chance to try out several bakeries.
I'm starting to get used to life here. Today I learned where the laundry room is, and how to do it. In order to use the machines one has to buy a special tab/coin at the cashier's office, and then take that to the laundry room and insert it into the machine. Also, for my dear friends at Mills who have complained about the prices for doing laundry in the dorms, I ask you not to feel so put out. Here it costs 2.50 euros for a load of wash, and 1.50 to dry. I think I may be hand washing and drying a lot of my stuff.
Today was also the beginning of the Sarah Lawrence program. I took the metro for the first time this morning since I arrived, which was fast but stressful because of the amount of people all rushing rushing rushing to get to wherever they were going. Despite my best efforts, I still managed to be late to the 9:00 meeting at Reid Hall. I haven't yet bought a map, and the street that Reid Hall is located on is very small. No one seems to know where it is. After leaving the metro I had to ask half a dozen people for help before I encountered a kind lady with a map. It turned out to be just a couple of streets away. One of the first people I asked for directions was a woman in her 40's. She didn't know the street even though she lived in the area, but after hurrying on her way she returned a couple of minutes later to where I was still standing bewildered, and proceeded to ask me if I would be willing to tutor her kids in English. Apparently, my accent isn't as good as I thought it was. She said she had a Canadian girl the year before, but she recently returned home, and now Madame needed to find a new tutor. By this time I really was late, and to be honest I have no idea what my schedule will be like this year or how much time classes will take. I don't even know if it's legal for me to take a job like that here. She gave me her contact information however, and I told her I'd call her by Wednesday.
Once I did get to Reid Hall, I was not the only student who showed up late. Thank goodness. The leaders of the program welcomed us, bombarded us with lots and lots of information, and finally let us go at around 5:00 so that we could eat and sleep before tomorrow's French placement exam. Before I do go to bed though, I'll give a few details of the program. I will be taking 4 classes each semester, all of which will be in French. 2 of those classes will be studio art classes for me, since it's my major, and I will take them at a French art institute(I still don't know where yet; classes don't start until the 1st of October). The other 2 classes will be Sarah Lawrence seminars, on some topic of my choosing, that will take place at Reid Hall, and that will count towards my French major. We choose our classes tomorrow. I'm very excited.
Well, it is once again past my bed time. I promise that I will upload some pictures soon for all of you to see.
Good night!

First day

Saturday, September 6, 2008

I did it! I’m in Paris! After about 15 hours of flight, 4 different airports, and a trip on the Paris RER train system I arrived at 10am this morning, exhausted and a little bit dazed, in front of the American house (Fondation des Etats-Unis) on the campus of the Cité Internationale Universitaire of Paris. Here is my new address and phone number:

Rebecca Waterhouse
Fondation des Etats-Unis
15, boulevard Jourdan
75014 Paris FRANCE

Phone: 01-53-08-7330

My dear friend Chelsea drove me to the airport at 3AM (Thank you Chelse!!!) so that I could be there the recommended 3 hours before my flight. When we got there the airport was pretty much empty, and I waited with a couple of other travelers until 4:30 when the staff arrived to check us in. My first flight was from Oakland to Denver, then Denver to Washington, and from there to Paris.
The flights went pretty well, although I think I will avoid flying with United again. They’re cheap, but there’s a reason. Their service has gotten pretty terrible. They’ve cut back on things like food and drink and blankets. If you find one on your seat, lucky you. Otherwise you have to fend for youself. I spent 2 of my flights freezing to death. I felt a little sorry for the staff, too; on my last flight there were 4 flight attendants to 300 people. The French lady sitting next to me got very upset when she was forced to eat her airplane meal without any wine because they took so long to bring the drink wagon to us. She said “what kind of a place serves you food without wine?!” How very French!
My first flight was from Oakland to Denver, then
The Fondation building is very pretty on the outside; ivy-covered brick, with red curtains in all of the windows. Inside, the halls of the dormitory are pretty stark, but the rooms themselves aren’t bad. Upon entering the Fondation I was given keys to my room and mailbox, and a pamphlet of information about the building. I am on the 4th story, looking out onto a tree-covered campus and the Fondation of Mexico. Wireless internet is free here (although I have not yet managed to log into the system yet) and each room has a phone from which we can receive calls for free. To make calls, minutes can be bought at a relatively low price. Since it is the weekend I will have to wait, though, as their office is closed. There is a kitchen on every floor, and a common room in the basement that I have not yet visited.
I think that will be taking advantage of the kitchens; after getting settled I went to get something to eat at the Cafeteria in the main building on campus, and was a little disappointed. The main cafeteria seems to be closed until October and the café where I ate had little to choose from besides fried food and baguette sandwiches. It was cheap, but would get old very fast.
There are 40 different dormitory buildings on the campus of the Cité, admitting students of over 130 different nationalities. I don’t think I will have trouble staying active here. Already today I have seen a lot of students out biking, walking and running on the campus, and I think I saw two gyms marked on the map. After eating, I went for a walk around the campus and surrounding areas. I found a grocery store very close by, and got myself some shampoo and laundry soap. I walked a little farther and to my delight I discovered a boulangerie, where I promptly bought a chocolate croissant, which was perfectly crispy and wonderfully buttery. With that, I accomplished goal number 1 of this trip. I have sorely missed European pastry shops.
I have so much more to say, but for now this will have to do. I love you all and send hope to hear from you soon!
Later I'll post some pictures.

A blog of my own

Well, I created the blog, but now I'm too tired to write. Until tomorrow then...