To begin in the area of classes, I had to write my first dissertation for a French class in France this week. I have taken several French literature classes at IU and have spent the past 2 or 3 years improving my abilities at writing in French compared to the ease of writing in my native language. We had to write a dissertation this week for our methodology class. This class is structured to help is work on our writing skills and adjusting to the French academic system compared to the American academic system. Boy is there a difference! So a French dissertation consists of an introductory paragraph that lays the foundation for your paper and proposes your question you will answer by the end of the paper. Then you have your these (not exactly a thesis like in English), this is where you tell your arguments for or against the subject of the paper. For this paper the subject was questioning whether friendship is a force that isolates someone from humanity. Next comes the antithese, which is where you present new arguments not necessarily against your ideas but just a new way of looking at the subject matter. Finally you have the synthese which combines one or two of your main ideas from the these with one idea from your antithese, and then you conclude. I have yet to figure out the difference between the synthese and the conclusion, and I may never know... I am going into great detail over this paper to demonstrate to you that yes I am learning something while living in southern France. I don't just travel and shop all the time, I am indeed getting an education. Now whether I know what I'm talking about as far as this French dissertation style goes, I have no clue but once I get my grade back I'll let you know how this education thing is working out.
I had my first trip to the elementary school on the north side of town for volunteer this week. That was a trip, literally! Luckily I am assigned to this position with another girl(friend) on the program. We were given a print out map on which the bus stop where we should get off was circled and the phone number and address of the school, that was all. So we get on the right bus going in the right direction (I've learned from my previous mistakes about taking a bus in the wrong direction) and got off at the bus stop that was circled. Nope the school wasn't there, so we walk up the street and then up a hill and down side streets and finally stumble upon a national forestry office and ask a very polite French woman for directions or some inclinations as to whether we are still in Aix or have wandered into the next city over. She gave us rather vague directions to walk through a white gate and pick one of two doors to go into at some random building. Great... So we followed what she said and ended up at a grade school, but no one was around. We found some electrcian outside smoking and asked him for directions, which did not help either. So we broke down and called the director of the school. We finally found the school, 20 minutes late but at least we found it. We helped this 14 year old girl with her english homework for about a half hour, and then left. Pretty easy, I can do that each week! Later that night I had another dinner with my exchange family. Before dinner I spent about 30-45 minutes with each child working on English homework and finally at 8 pm it was dinner time. I was starving and I was in luck because we had a huge meal!!! Couscous with veggie soup, steak, sausage links, and chicken legs. For dessert the mom had made a chocolate cake that reminded me of texas brownies but without the frosting and we had this amazing vanilla custard to go with the cake. After dinner we all sat around and talked (in French) and watched the France vs. Brazil soccer game. It was so pleasant to sit in an authentic French home sipping mint tea, chatting with my French exchange family watching the national soccer team play the national sport of France. Pretty cool!
I took a trip to Carrefour this past Friday. Carrefour is like the walmart of France. Mega selection, cheap prices and it's HUGE!!! We spent about 3 hours in there buying food and school supplies and didn't even see the whole store. They have clothing stores and shoe stores and an eye glass place and banks and all kinds of different stores at the front end and then they have isles and isles of food and home supplies and school supplies and more clothing. They have this neat contraption that you scan each item with this hand held scanner and it keeps a log of everything in your cart. When you get to the check out lines you hook your scanner up to the register and it pulls up your full list of items, you pay and you're on your way. Ingenious!! Of course we didn't figure this out until we were at the check out lines and had to wait in the long lines with other people that didn't use the cool hand held scanner thing. I bought some pretty cool pens that all the students use and I even bought an erasable pen. There's one pen you write with, then an eraser, and then another pen you use to write over it. Pretty cool!
I am sad to inform you that the sales are indeed in their final days. This is sad news to me but great news for my bank account. That is till I start planning trips.
Speaking of trips! This past weekend I went to Glanum (a small area north of Aix that has a lot of ancient Roman/Greek ruins), Arles (I've actually visited Arles before when I was in France the summer of 2007), and the Pont du Gard (I've already visited this site as well, but still breath taking). So the trip started at 9 am, way too early for a Saturday, but this was a weekend excursion that I had already paid for with my program fees so I went. Glanum was really neat to see. We were able to walk amongst the ruins of a city that existed I believe around if not a little after the time of Jesus Christ. So this stuff was old! Our tour guide did a job of comparing and demonstrating the structure of their cities to how our towns and cities are structured today to show that some things have changed but a lot has actually stayed the same. See my photos below to get a perspective of Glanum.
Next we went to Arles, and as I said I have already visited Arles but it was kind of a weird out of body experience to revisit a European city that I have already been to. It's hard to explain because it doesn't compare to making several trips to Chicago or another city I don't get to see often but I have seen on several occasions. I was neat but weird to be in a European city I have already visited and recognize places and begin to know my way around the town (granted it is pretty small). We first and for most ate lunch. I tried to buy a sandwich from one man at the market but he sold his last baguette to the lady before me in line. So I went to the next sandwich stand to be told the same thing. So I went to a pizza stand, but found out I had to buy an entire pizza not just a slice... well gosh! So the group I was with ended up sharing 2 rotisserie chickens and 3 baguettes and we feasted like the Romans and the Greeks of Glanum: with our hands sitting on the ground in small city in Southern France. As part of the trip we were given a pass to get into several museums as exhibits within the city, so we ended up visiting 2 arenas, a church, the rhone river (where Van Gogh painted A Starry Starry Night in Arles), the cafe where Van Gogh painted his famous cafe scene, and a garden where Van Gogh painted another of his famous scenes.
After Arles we took an hour bus ride to le Pont du Gard. My favorite stop of the day. As I said before I have already visited the Pont du Gard (constructed by the Romans, by hand). This is also the site of the oldest olive tree on earth. I'm not sure if it was originally planted here, or originally planted in Spain and a part of the tree was planted in France, but regardless it's still pretty cool!
Observations of the week:
1. Baking cookies in France is hard! If you know me at all you know I LOVE to cook and bake, and if you are an avid follower you'll see I don't have a problem cooking. It's the baking part. I am currently in the process of baking chocolate chip cookies as I type this entry. Luckily I brought chocolate chips with me because you will not find those here. They do have all the other ingredients required. Now the hard part is baking 4 cookies at a time in my microwave/oven. Yes, we have a microwave that can get up to about 400degrees Celsius (I may be making that figure up, but it gets hot). So for the past 4 hours I have been baking one batch of chocolate chip cookies, 4 at a time, without Pam... it's hard!
2. If you think you see a seashell in the dirt, double check yourself before you just pick it up. When we were in Arles at one of the arenas I was with a friend of mine on the program who is collecting dirt and rocks from each place she visits (kinda cool!) so I was helping her look for good dirt and rocks and at first sight I thought I saw this pretty shiny seashell buried in the dirt. It even had a pretty white swirl coming for the middle and was just small enough to add to her collection. It was pigeon poop. I didn't realize this until after I had tried to pinch and pick up the "sea shell". Yes, that is right I picked up pigeon poop. As soon as I realized what I was picking up and it was too late to recoil I found the closest wall and tried to wipe my hands of the poo. Luckily I had hand sanitizer and used about half the bottle to sanitize myself. Lesson learned! Although you would think I would have learned from an experience earlier in the day in which I managed to pick up some random homeless person's headband thinking one of the girls in my group had dropped it. I didn't realize that said headband did not come from my friend due to the fact that is was covered in dirt and hair and dust, and probably rabbis. Learn from me and when exploring in new cities, keep your hands to yourself!!!
3. There is no good way to predict the weather when you live in a coastal-ish city by the Mediterranean ocean. So I have come up with a system that if the current day is sunny and warm weather and perfect, the next day it will rain and be cold and dreary. There is no good way to predict good weather (just whenever it happens, it's like a little gift from the heavens), but you can predict bad weather when you're having a sun shiny day.
4. I think I used the phrase "pretty cool"one too many times in this blog...
I miss you all dearly, but I hear warm weather is coming your way soon (at least I hope).
