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!
