Dissolving my cultural bubble

I must admit, I have deceived you, my friends. I tried to act like everything was okay, when, in truth, I have been homesick, lonely, and the slightest bit depressed for the past few weeks, ever since I arrived in Paris. I think the reason is that I had expected to find that flying to France would automatically submerge me in French culture. But being here, I find that I am not in France at all. I am, in fact, trapped in a little American bubble. I hadn't figured how absolutely American I actually am. Walking down the Rue St. Michel, which I assure you is very much in France, I am still essentially in the states, since my American perspective prohibits me from seeing or acting in any way but my native one. I'm still waiting to arrive, so to speak.

In the beginning, I avoided the tourist sites and hid in my room for a few days, waiting for the phenomenon to go away before venturing out to "profiter" (a favorite verb of the French that is roughly the equivalent of "to take advantage of", though I don't think it can be applied to a person) from the sights the city has to offer. I kept waiting for the homesickness and the loneliness and the lifelessness to go away, so I could enjoy what I was going out to see.

It was my birthday that really saved me from sinking into depression. One simply cannot spend the final day of one's teenager-hood (forgive me the made up word, it's late and I'm a bit tired; do email me if you think of a better one) hiding out in one's room the whole day. So on the eve of my 20th birthday, I forced myself out of bed and out into the streets of Paris. Though I did not set out with a particularly bright outlook, I found that food is an excellent way to improve one's attitude, and enjoyed a delicious quiche, followed by my last teenage ice cream cone. I found myself in Rue Mouffetard (cute market street) and did some window shopping--even tried a dress on. I stopped in at the 5th arrondisement Mairie (read: town hall) and discovered a free exhibit on Carlos Carra, an Italian painter, followed by a degustation of wine, coffee, and biscuits, the result of which being that I can now heartily recommend to any who love rose wines Tenuta la Tenaglia, Grignolina del Monferrato Casalese.

Encouraged by this successful day of exploration, I ventured out again on my 20th birthday. My academics gave me the best present a student can ask for, and by that I do not refer to the fact that my early class was cancelled. I managed to work out my schedule perfectly, as a girl in the full section that I needed to be in decided she needed to be in my section of the Writing class. Joy! I munched on a 5 Euro* crepe for lunch (see below to understand why the price is important), and set out to go see Voltaire's grave in the Pantheon, but never made it there. I ran into my friend Hannah, who introduced me to her new friend, Jeanne Faustine, in the park. Jeanne Faustine is very nice, and through her I had a fantastic educational experience on the subject of French slang, vulgar and non. Eventually I had to rush off to babysit, where I played a typical French game with Marie, who is a terrible cheat. I ended the evening with my dear friend and birthday twin (though she turned 21), chocolate cake, and delicious French wine.

Since then, my efforts to get out and profiter from what Paris has to offer have been rewarded by a Goya drawing exhibit; the double-deambulatoire of Notre Dame de Paris, not to mention the spectacular abside; the view from the top of the Institude du monde arab; a fantastic French movie (if you see one movie in the next year, make it "Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas." It was an absolute masterpiece of a film); delicious Greek food; and a street concert in Place St Michel that included the music of Elton John, Natalie Imbruglia, the Eagles, and George Michael. The best moment was when the entire crowd joined in for John Lennon's Imagine. It was amazing.

My point in telling you all of this is not inform you of my depressed state at the beginning of this stay, nor is it to provide a rather dull list of all the fun things I've been up to in the past few days. Though I can't remember Tolkien's words well enough to paraphrase, he mentions in The Hobbit that pleasant times do not make for very interesting stories, and to some extent I
agree with him; I will not often send you such uninteresting emails, my dear friends. But I felt I must find some way to illustrate what I have been grateful and astounded to discover: that if you put forth the effort of getting out into the city, Paris does the rest. It thrills you day after day after day with exciting new experiences. It leads you down little side streets when you
think you're getting lost, until you discover the gem of a restaurant/museum/park/whatever that Paris wanted you to find all along. It offers so many cultural events from so many different cultures, to the point of overwheming you even, until you remember, with gratitude, that you have the course of a year to enjoy as many of them as you can. I just hope a year will be enough.

And do I still feel stuck in American culture? Yea, sometimes. But I can feel that cultural bubble that separates me from Paris beginning to weaken and dissolve. And for the first time since arriving, I'm starting to enjoy my stay.

*The price of a crepe is important because crepes are truly an commodity where you get what you pay for. For example, the 2 Euro crepe I snacked on the other day consisted of crepe and strawberry jam; it was a yummy snack, but not really a meal. It was very different from my 5 Euro crepe, which was packed with cheese, ham, and mushrooms, and which I barely had room to finish, despite my light breakfast.

The naming of streets is a difficult matter. It isn't just one of your holiday games.

The streets here are schitzophrenic. They can't quite decide who they are or how they prefer to be called. As I was walking today, the street I was in took four different names within four blocks. It introduced itself to me as Rue Erasme, but apparently Erasmus was too ancient and scholarly a person to emulate, and it changed to Rue Pierre Brossolette. Sensing that I was warming up to the liberation hero, the street immediately changed name, epoch, and personality, and became Rue Jean Calvin. Jean, as you know, is the equivalent of what we call John, though Calvin was, in fact, French. Though why the French use the Latin derivation of his last name instead of his birth name, Chauvin, is beyond me. Fortunately I didn't have long to ponder this, since the street was through with personnifying itself and decided that it would much rather be an Epee de Bois (a wooden sword). Curious as I was to see what it would morph into next, I did not get the opportunity; my wooden sword street ended as it thrust itself into Rue Monge, though I cannot see why the mathematically-minded Count deserved to be run through with such a weapon. (All biographies are available on Wikipedia, by the way, and I recomend them as highly interesting, if you're into that sort of thing. Which I am. Clearly.)

The sudden existance/non-existance of streets presents another navigation problem. When streets exist for only one block, as they often do here, it's hard to place them or create a mental map of the city. One can never assume that a street extends out until it reaches another street, or that two streets that should intersect will. Most of the streets are set at awkward angles as well, making a direct route a rarity. All of these factors make a map absolutely essential when visiting Paris--far more so than in New York or any city so logically laid out. Manhattan streets continue in a straight line, perpendicular to their counterparts, and they maintain the same name block after block after block, with relatively few exceptions. When I have finished with Paris, I will make my way to New York and laugh with mocking condescension at the simplicity of their street plans, then secretly breathe a sigh of relief and gratitude for the beautiful grid of clarity before me.

The nice thing about having a one block street, however, is that it makes locating the space for which you search fairly easy. For example, it's pretty easy to find the Art History building of Paris 4 if you know what street it's in, since Rue Michelet exists for about 100 yards and has only two imposing looking University buildings (if a building in Paris looks imposing, chances are it's a government building, a museum, a historic landmark, or a university).

But I am proud to say that I am managing exceptionally well, so long as I have my maps handy in unfamiliar regions, and even without my maps in the familiar zones. Though I adventured in many an unfamiliar territory today, not once was I lost. Today.

One day at a time, eh?

The Classless Student

So now that everyone knows the basics of my setup, I suppose I should proceed to details about what I've been up to...

The most obvious thing I should be doing is going to class. It is, after all, a STUDY abroad program. But classes are a bit tricky at the moment. Paris 4 (my host university) doesn't start classes until Oct 2. So you ask, "Why then, Stephanie, did you leave at the end of August? To twiddle your thumbs for a month in France?" Admittedly, France is such that even thumb-twiddling is more pleasant here. But I came early for a two-week orientation in Tours, a lovely town in the Loire Valley, and to get myself situated in Paris a few weeks before
the stress of classes. In both locations, Sweet Briar has provided courses to review the language and the univerity methodology (which is to say, the method of teaching and learning in a French educational institution). Now that those orientation courses are over, I've begun the Sweet Briar courses that I will take throughout the semester. I have a writing course with an amazing Professor who lovingly lets us call her Madame Atelier (roughly translated as Madame Workshop, because the course is called Writing Workshop). I am also taking a course in French Theatre, which means I get to attend 5 French plays in Paris completely free of charge. It's a pretty good deal, I must say. Plus it's been cool to learn this week how ritual sacrifice in ancient Greece morphed into the theatre we know and (sometimes) love today.

The French University system is fundamentally different from our own, and one of the differences is the approach to planning the semesters that each country has. For example, in the US students look at the catalogue themselves (usually online) and fit their courses together like a puzzle according to the hours and the importance of each course. This is done about half-way through the preceding semester, and though there is definitely movement in the first few
weeks of the semester, the majority of the students have the majority of their schedules figured out in advance. (This is how it works at MHC, anyways. Please correct me if I am wrong to generalize that this is true for most colleges. I know of at least one very dramatic exception, but I think I've got it about right.)

The French, however, do not seem to value scheduling things that far in advance. The evidence I cite is the fact that the hours of the courses set to commence October 2nd were not fixed until just yesterday, September 22nd. Meaning that there is a space of 10 days between when you can actually plan your schedule and when the courses begin. It's been driving all the American students mad with the anxiety of having no solid plan. Not like anything's really written in
stone, but the illusion of a strong plan to guide the way is comforting. But NO! Deprived of our crutch, we were! I'm relieved, though, that I've finally made some solid decisions about which courses to take, and I've gotten things narrowed down to some choice options. But more on that when I know which ones are the one's I'll actually take!

Other fun things I've been doing:
-Wandering about parks and gardens
-Eating lots of yummy cheese
-Buying my first bottle of wine (at 19, and it's legal! But my wine buying experience is terribly lacking; the wine was awful.)
-Picnicing on the lawn in front of the Eiffel tower at dusk (it looks amazing when they light it up)
-Going to nifty film/art exhibits by Agnes Varda
-Buying pastels to do the American (artist) in Paris thing
-cutting my hair obscenely short
-mispronouncing every word I attempt to say and being corrected by 5-year-olds who then further complicate the matter by trying to teach me the word in Italian as well (O, by the way, I'm also babysitting).

The three lovely people with whom I live.

After all the talk about how rainy Paris is and how cold it can be, even in the summer, and how I really oughtent pack too many summer clothes because it's cooler in France, and so on and so forth, I'm actually pretty pleased that Paris hasn't lived up to my expectations. The weather, both here and in Tours, has been remarkably hot and sunny. The humidity, which was so oppressive in Tours, is non-existant in the city, and Sarah and I feel therefore compelled to go out each night and enjoy the weather while it's still good.

Sarah, by the way, is another student in the Sweet Briar program that I'm studying with, and we are living in the same appartement with a lovely couple. The Bauzins raised three sons here, and they are now in the habit of importing students to fill the empty nest. Sarah and I are lucky students numbers 35 and 36. It's actually very helpful that they've hosted so many students, and for two reasons: 1) they anticipate all the problems and questions we'll have, and 2) they're used to attempting adult conversations with basic French. I say attempting because I'm really more attempting conversation than actually having it. Between ourselves, Sarah and I understand each other very well, but with native French speakers, all the anglophone phrase and idiom constructions that I'm used to make comprehension much more difficult. But Christine and Olivier are experienced in this sort of thing, and it certainly helps that they're both teachers. Christine is an elementary schoolteacher, and Olivier is an architect currently teaching at the local university.

Sarah is a student at Hood College, and her family lives about an hour from her school in Maryland. She studies French and German, and her linguistic fascination has recently extended to Russian. Her purpose in coming here is the same as mine: both to cement her language skills and to absorb the culture. It's great that we're so like-minded, because we speak only French together and enjoy going out to see the city. Plus we compliment each other in many ways. For example, she prefers smaller bedrooms, and I was glad that she left me the more spacious room. And she hates babysitting, which means that I got the babysitting job the woman upstairs is offering. We each have our own friends here too, but it's nice to have someone I can spend time with living a room away. It brings back the friendly community of the dorm situation but without the gross public showers.

I will write more about all the adventures we've had together a bit later, once I've figured out how to post photos in this Blog.

Update

I am on my way to Paris tomorrow! I will probably get a chance to check my email before then, but if you don't hear from me for a bit, don't panic! (...and something about a towel.)

Love and miss you all--and I miss hugs a lot, so send lots of those my way!

Steph

You can take the girl out of the States, but you can't take the States out of France! (a.k.a. My experiences with Globalization)

Written 9/6/2006 1:31 PM

I’m in culture shock. Which is to say, I’m shocked to find American culture everywhere I look.

The very first day we were in France, we bussed from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Tours. It’s a three hour ride, and we stopped about an hour and a half through to get something to eat. When we walked into the rest stop, the song Sweet Home Alabama greeted us. Helena and I both stopped short and looked at each other with a “what the heck?” expression before we burst into laughter. I’ve noticed that French radio stations seem to alternate between songs with lyrics in French and English, which is why my breakfast Sunday morning was accompanied by Elvis’s “Stuck On You” and “When a Man Loves a Woman,” as well as Johny Halliday (famous French musician).

While browsing at an antiques market, I found records by Paul Anka, Louis Armstrong, and countless other American artists. I found a DVD of Saturday Night Fever. I found Mickey Mouse comic books, the Peanuts, and Snoopy. Now, don’t think me ignorant; I did realize before I came that these characters had spread internationally. But it’s one thing to be casually aware of that fact at home, and quite another to abruptly confront something familiar when you expect something foreign. Especially because you start to see the artifacts from your own culture in a completely different context—as matter out of place. Last night, as we rode home from our atelier, songs from the movie Grease just didn’t seem to make sense on French radio.

It’s really the first time I’ve experienced globalization since becoming aware of the phenomenon. Instead of being fun, the way it was when I was younger, finding cultural artifacts that I consider “American” has become eerie. Not because I’m possessive of them or feel that the French have no right to them or anything, but just because of way the two very distinct cultures seem to be converging. There are certainly differences between us, but will all things eventually converge?