Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming

Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming

missamo

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Update 2	[Sep. 26th, 2006\|11:21 pm]
Update for 18 sept -26 sept Warning: very, very long email Well, here I am again one week later. Thanks so very much to all those who emailed me. I really do love getting emails, as they are the only news I have from home. Plus, it’s great to keep in touch with everyone back home. As it is, it’s now been almost a month since I left home and I’m doing okay. Even though this past week wasn’t quite as good as the previous week, it still wasn’t too bad, especially since on Tuesday, I arrived at my art and lit class early in order to talk to the professor (aka the director of the program) about changing my grammar class. See, I was placed in Intermediare 5—the lowest intermediate level (the French are weird and do several things backwards). This placement derived from a placement test which everyone in the program took. It was multiple choice, finishing sentences, short essay, and a very short conversation. Anyways, this test—which apparently I only did okay on—placed me just above elementary. So, I showed up to my class and proceeded to be bored out of my mind. I understood every single word that came out of Mme Hassan’s mouth. I also was able to answer almost every single question she asked. =bored out of my mind. However, I sat on my hands and decided to wait it out. Unfortunately, it didn’t get any better. In fact, it almost got worse. There were two redeeming factors about this class: 1) the teacher and 2) the other Guilford student and her friends. Okay, this teacher deserves her own paragraph. Mme Jaqueline Hassan is a tiny woman. I mean, she’s small—about 5’ tall and small. She has short red hair—short as in 65 yr old woman short hair, not my short hair short—and she wears black glasses. On top of that, she wears the same black, fitted overalls everyday. I know this because I still have friends in the class who keep me informed. As first, she was funny and, as Sarah Levinson described her, rather grandmotherly. Then, about 1/2way through the first week, she became a bit scary. Coincidentally, this change happened roughly on the same day I asked her if I could be moved to a higher class. That’s when she told me that if I had received an exceptional grade, I would’ve been in a higher class. Okay, that might be true, but as any of my past French teachers can attest, I don’t test well in French. Either way, I was crawling up the walls and all over that ceiling. Thankfully, I spoke to Dr. Costello who spoke to someone else and that very same day, I was transferred to Intermediare 1. My new teacher, Mme Abela, is younger and nicer. That’s not to say that she’s all warm and fuzzy. No. I walked into class last Tuesday, presented her with my new card (stating my change of class), she told me to sit down, and proceeded to give the class a dictee. For those of you uninitiated to the wonderful practice of dictees, that would be when the teacher reads a passage and you get to write it down…perfectly. Afterwards (for practice dictees), my teacher chooses some unlucky soul in the class to go up and write it down without any notes—as if that student were actually doing the dictee right then and there. I’ll give you one guess as to who the lucky student was my first day…yeah, that’s right…it was me. Want to know why? Because I was the new kid. That’s exactly what she said when she pointed at me: “Amanda, la nouvelle.” It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it was going to be, though I definitely had a few mistakes. Oh well. Besides that, class isn’t too bad. Mme Abela speaks very fast, which is good because I can already tell that my French has improved since changing classes. I can also understand her now. Since I’m the only one from the NC Consortium in my class, I was feeling a bit lonely, but thankfully a girl named Ruth helped me out a bit on that first day and since then, I consider her my savior. Then today, I met Hannah—a girl from Sweden who speaks fluent English, and Suzy —a girl from all over the States who complimented me on my silver belt with blue ribbons in it (the one that my sister ever so kindly knitted for me). So, that class is definitely going well for me. Also, yesterday, we received our grades for the first phonetics test. Yeah, I changed classes just in time for the phonetics test. I know, I have amazing timing. By the way, grammar and phonetics are not the same class, nor with the same teacher. I have no idea what my phonetics teacher’s name is, but she seems cool. Anyways, we had a small test of 10 phrases to repeat after her which were recorded on a cassette tape. She gave us our grades with some comments and I did decently well: an 8 out of 10. Before you start thinking that’s an 80%, don’t. In France, their equivalent of a C is a 5 out of 10. That’s the middle; it also means you’re only doing okay. A 6 of 10 is slightly better and a 7 of 10 is pretty decent. So, getting an 8 of 10 is actually pretty good. Besides that, nobody gets a 10 of 10…it just isn’t given. Besides my CCF classes (CCF=Cours de Civilisation Francais), life is going alright. Last Monday, I came home to a very noisy house. Thomas, my 23 yr old host brother, brought one of his old buddies home with him along with his (Thomas’s) girlfriend. Along with that, Madeleine and Agathe were home as well. (For those of you who were just added to this list, Mad—pronounced Maud—is my 16 yr old host sister and Agathe is the 14 yr old). Mad was working on her math homework while Cautin, Thomas’s friend, was trying to help her and they were debating the problems loudly, as Mad is wont to do. Thomas occasionally interjected his opinion, and Thomas’s girlfriend (no idea what her name is) played the piano. To top it off, this all happened in a rather small space with little fabric (the kitchen). It was good fun though and we actually had some champagne (homemade by some family friends, thus cheap or maybe even free). Since it was dinner time, Cautin made galettes for himself, Mad, and me (galettes are really just dinner crepes—I think). Mine was pretty good and I was sure to thank him. On Tuesday, during dinner, I was actually brought into the discussion because the family started talking about Harry Potter and they needed an American perspective. Thankfully, I’ve read them all and was able to give them the English translation for what they wanted (ie, the four houses, names, events, quidditch, etc). It was a lot of fun and I almost felt like a member of the family. Wednesday, I did laundry. In France, washers are much smaller. Much smaller. However, it all worked out and then I put ½ my clothes in the dryer and the other ½ on a rack on my balcony. By the time I came home after swimming, all my clothes were dry (yay!). Wednesday was also a pretty decent day because my swimming buddy was at the pool. Jerome is a rather cool guy. I learned that day that he’s 29, married, and has a 2 yr old son whose name I promptly forgot. So, despite my hope that I was being hit on, it was good to make a friend (more on part of that sentence later). Now, a week after he and I met, we’ve switched to tu/toi and don’t use vous/voi anymore. This change signifies that we’re more informal with each other—the rules are to use vous/voi with strangers, those older than you, more powerful people, and in formal settings ( for those curious, I still vous/voi Olivier and Virginie even though I’m sure they would let me use tu/toi). It’s a bit peculiar because I find myself actually speaking more French with Jerome than I do with my host family. However, whenever he and I talk, it’s a bit odd for two reasons: 1) it’s a mix of French and English and 2) he’s in a speedo (not that that’s odd for France or eye-scarring, it’s just hard to have a normal conversation with anyone wearing a speedo). Then, after swimming, I went with my group to the newly opened Salle Pleyel to hear the Orchestra of Paris. They played Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune, Henri Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain, concerto pour violoncello et orchestre, Debussy’s Six Epigraphes antiques, and Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole. It was amazing. Absolutely beautiful. The only downside was that the original conductor had died that morning. That’s right. I don’t know how it happened, but the man suddenly died. However, the conductor who came did a very good job, not including the circumstances, as did the orchestra. Afterwards, I went with Katelyn, Kristin, Krystal, and Meredith (four girls from my group) to Le Do Re Mi Café where we sat outside, drank wine and coffee and ate chocolate cake and tiramisu (some got wine, some got coffee, one got chocolate cake, one got tiramisu, and everyone tried everything). It was fabulous. The next morning, the same 5 of us went to the Gare d’Austerlitz (a train station in Paris) to try and get tickets for Bordeaux and Marseille during a promotion by the TGV celebrating their 25the yr in business. The promotion: tickets to anywhere in france for 5 euros. The catch: the promo started at noon and ended after 150,000 tickets available everywhere in France had been given out. The good news: the 5 of us were among the lucky ones to get tickets. The bad news: the girl who booked our tickets didn’t see the return trains we wanted so we wound up with 1-way tickets and then all the tickets had been sold so we had to buy our return at regular price. However, I get to go to Bordeaux and Marseille for much cheaper than it would have been. Yay! Thursday, nothing special happened. Friday was equally boring, except I went for a walk around Levallois (my municipality) at night and saw some of the town which I had not previously seen. Saturday, I called up Katelyn and she and I went to the Champs-Elysees to look at stores and maybe buy something. It was there where I encountered my first snotty parisiennes (they would be the female paris-inhabitants) in the form of sales-clerks. Thankfully, there weren’t very many of them. Also, I finally found a pair of dancing shoes in the shape of…well, shoes. Actually, they are regular heels from Zara that weren’t too expensive and have the right kind of sole for dancing, along with keeping my foot firmly in place. After the Champs, Katelyn and I went back to Montmartre to check out a red dress we had seen in a store window the week before. Sadly, even though the dress was beautiful, it wasn’t what I’m looking for. So, the hunt for a little red (or maroon) dress continues—I already have a little black dress; now I want a red one so I’ll stand out from the crowd a bit. After eating pizza at the nice little Pizzeria Bella Italia, Katelyn and I split ways for a time before joining back up around 10 pm with another friend, also named Kaitlin, to go dancing at the Barrio Latino—a pretend salsa club. I say pretend because the people there don’t actually salsa. It’s really just another club. However, I enjoyed myself. I also learned that the Bastille is a good place for me to go party because the Noctillen for Levallois has a stop there. The Noctillen is the night bus, which is the only public transportation for Paris after 12:30 am (metro close) until 5:30 am (metro open), and you can use your carte orange on it. Plus, it’s decently safe. Sunday, I stayed home and wrote a 5 pg paper in French for my art and lit class on historical French masculinity based on a conference I attend Friday. Oh right…that’s what I did on Friday morning: I sat in a room with bad acoustics in a corner and listened to four people give summarizations on either huge research papers or their theses…all in French, while I didn’t really comprehend anything. Let me tell you, it was lots of fun. Actually, going out for coffee with Eric Mortensen’s friend in Paris was quite enjoyable. Eric Mortensen would be an awesomely cool Guilford religion prof and the ASL Club advisor and his friend would be Anna Terweil, a US student working towards her master’s while living in Paris for the past three years and about to go home in January. She and I met up, had coffee, spoke in French, and plan to hang out some more together. She’s really cool. However, on Sunday, I did get to talk to my mom on the phone as well as get to wish my grandmother happy birthday (I was the only family member to not attend my grandmother’s 75th birthday party this past weekend). I also got to see my new cousin born this past July, Hannah Rose, via skype—she’s pretty cute. Yesterday, Monday, was just another day for me. Woke up, worked some more on my paper, went to class, swam, came home, finished my paper, ate dinner, and went to bed. Today, Tuesday, woke up, went to art and lit, walked through the Montparnasse cemetery (the French really know how to build a tombstone, or should I say, a sepulcher), went to phonetics and grammar, swam, came home, and have been working on this while waiting for the sushi which my family ordered for dinner to arrive. That’s right: I get sushi tonight :-D. This upcoming week, I plan to continue writing in my journal in French (to help my language skills), go to Versailles on Saturday, and oh yeah, tomorrow (Wed), my group is going to see a ballet at the Opera Garnier…the same opera house that inspired the Phantom of the Opera. How cool is that? And afterwards, a group of us are going to celebrate yet another birthday… Katelyn’s. I’m looking forward to it. Other randomness, I found a really cute little shop close to the cemetery today which has some nice dishware/cups and some rather pretty little candles and other similar items. Also, the metro really does smell very odd. There is always at least one person who hasn’t showered and it’s obvious. The only thing not obvious about it is from whom the smell is coming. And lastly, I promised more on the sentiments about being hit on. So here goes. Before coming to Paris, thanks to common conceptions, past experiences (through other people), and just vague notions that somehow created themselves in my head, I expected to be hit on quite often…especially if I made contact with anyone. Let me tell you, that is so not the case. I have yet to be hit on. No man has even come up to me and been like, “hey baby…” Nope. And it’s not that I’m just dying to reject a guy (if he was cute enough, I’d maybe grab a coffee with him, maybe leading to dinner…who knows). I wouldn’t mind having a French fling for the semester, something to enjoy for three months (now a little over 2 months) before coming back to the states. However, that’s not even an option for me. Okay, so one guy did give me a serious up-down look, but that’s all. I now give up, partially with the hopes that now having given up, that which I seek will find me. However, I’m also partially giving up because my ego’s not quite strong enough for the non-rejections I get everyday. So that’s my past week in Paris in a nutshell for all those back at home. I know this was an extremely long email, but believe me, I could have easily doubled the length (for example, mentioning how the weather has gotten colder and it rains every night, or that my family let me print a paper on their printer instead of having to find an internet café with a printer, or the random people I’ve observed on the subway, or hearing that my cousin Megan had a brand new baby boy on sept 20th named Michael William Oehlert II). Consider yourselves spared :-P. Until next week…
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paris update	[Sep. 19th, 2006\|12:21 am]
Hello! It’s me again, once more. I have survived a full week with my family and life is good. I am so happy with where I am and my family is incredibly nice. I lucked out so much! Not only do I have a very friendly family who doesn’t make fun of my accent, but I also have wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee), a dryer (this is uncommon because electricity is apparently rather expensive), and a balcony! Okay, so the balcony is small and looks out over a small courtyard across to other apartment buildings, but it’s still really cool to say I have a balcony. There are also 3 very large cats who all love to come into my room at 7 am and make a lot of noise. This happens because the door handles are levers, which the cats can turn by jumping up and pushing down the lever…thus giving them access to the rooms. However, they are rather impolite cats as they do not close the doors behind them, instead leaving my door open for all the family to see into my room. Besides that, they are incredibly loud when they open doors. It’s just not nice. And yet, they make up for it when they curl up beside me at night as I fall asleep, listening to their purring. Then, once I have fallen into a wonderful sleep, they decide to leave and wake me up with the noise of their opening the door. It's fabulous. Anyways, enough of the cats. I have fallen in love with Paris. Excluding metro line 4 north of Reaumur-Sebastapol, the rest of it as far as I know is rather wonderful (for those curious, the northern end of line 4 is something like Paris’ version of Brooklyn—it’s all people of African descent and arabs—read: scary for short white girls). I love the Latin Quarter with the Luxembourg Gardens and small streets that are good for shopping, eating, and enjoying a night out. The Bastille area is also pretty cool—that’s where you go for a happening night out. As for Montmartre, I went to Sacre Coeur with a friend on Saturday afternoon after visiting the Cluny museum in the Latin Quarter. We actually found it coming up the back way after wandering through a beautiful little park (where I had my friend take a picture of me which I really like—available in an attachment). Up in Montmartre, we had several amazing little finds…and one not so good one. The not so good one was the dinner we ate. After wandering around Montmartre for a few hours, we got hungry and found a small, cheap restaurant. Our first clue that it wasn’t good should have been the price…it was cheap...very cheap. Second, we should’ve noticed the red velvet walls. Well, we did, it's just that we at first thought they were quaint. Yes, this place actually had red velvet patterned wall paper. Thankfully, the dessert (chocolate ice cream) was good. I mean it was good. I just wouldn’t recommend going back to the restaurant simply for the ice cream—it wasn’t that good. As for the good finds, my friend (Katelyn Fischetti from Elon) and I decided to check out the little church in the shadows of Sacre Coeur--Eglise Saint Pierre. It is a beautiful little church with an adorable father and some great artwork. Katelyn and I wandered in just after Mass had finished and the father was standing by the doors. When she and I came in, we said hello to him (in French) and he took our hands and asked us what country we came from. After we told him we came from the US, he said in broken English, “I no speak-a English.” We quickly assured him that it was okay because we spoke some French. He then blurted out, “etudiantes?!” (students?). After that, he became distracted by someone else and Katelyn and I slipped away. However, we both want to go back to a service there sometime and maybe meet the father (Father Zabiega as we later found out) again. Small bit of trivia: I learned from one of my host sisters that the eldest daughter of my host family was married at that church a couple of years ago. Pretty cool, huh? Wandering around Montmartre, we also walked over to the Moulin Rouge just to see it. A bit disappointing, but the surrounding area is very…lively, shall we say. At the very least, if you have any problems with the porno industry, stay away from this area. In other news, I spent a lovely Friday evening with Kat Lynn (a friend from high school who was in Paris for a few days on her way to school in Ireland). She and I also hung out Thursday, eating dinner together and generally talking. On Friday, we met up and wandered through the Louvre together because it is free on Fridays after 6 for those under 26. We had a fabulous time and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, besides taking many pictures and being unable to get away from the Winged Victory of Samothrace (la Victoire de Samothrace). Working my way backwards through the week, nothing of much note happened the rest of the time. On Tuesday, I went out to dinner with some friends to celebrate a birthday. We found a decently priced sushi restaurant and ate good sushi while having a blast together. Now that we’ve moved into our families, most of the other program participants have mellowed out and I’m beginning to enjoy spending time with them, especially Katelyn because she’s cool. Besides that, I did homework, ate a few dinners with my family, and attended class. Oh! I also found a pool! I went swimming on Saturday and then today after classes. I plan to go almost every day except Sundays. Thankfully, they had a 3 month pass for about 100euros so now I can go whenever the pool is open for the next 3 months! It felt so good to finally get back in the pool after 2 weeks…I love swimming. My only qualm with it is that most French can't swim. I mean, yeah...they can get from one end of the pool to another, but people! please pay attention to the slow lane/fast lane signs! It you're getting lapped all the time, it might be a good idea to switch to a slow lane. Sorry, it's just that I'm afraid I'm really going to hurt someone at the pool because most of them really can't swim...and sadly, most of them are women. On a good note, I actually started pacing myself off another swimmer who paused and told me that I swim very well. He was very nice and I'm hoping he'll be there tomorrow so he and I can swim together (read: he and I were the two fastest people in the two designated fast lanes--we lapped everyone else, including those wearing fins and paddles). As for a few other important areas of my life, I might have found a salsa place. At the very least, it looks good online. I would go this Friday, except my host brother Thomas' apartment was just finished being renovated, so he's having a party on Friday night, to which I am invited--of course I'm going. I also found out where the Parisien Quakers meet—Sundays at 11 pm. I plan to go check that out next Sunday. I know I had trouble my first week abroad (I was actually kind of miserable), but I am now so happy where I am that I only miss a few things that are especially close to my heart, but as those are people, I can’t do much about it. Thankfully, those whom I most want to see will be coming to see me at the end of the semester, which makes me incredibly happy. Despite the odd smells on the metro (and at the end of the day, believe me, there are some very odd smells—none of them good), I could easily see myself coming back here again later in life. The Paris I have found is beautiful and full of hidden charms, most of which are the random gardens everywhere. Even though people don’t sporadically smile here, I smile enough for them. I am so incredibly blessed…I have a wonderful host family where the love is ever-present, a beautiful city to explore, books to read, friends with whom to talk, the ability to talk to my family and friends back home via email, good food, a garden to walk through every day on my way to the metro, a pool nearby, a great graduate assistant, and so much more. The only real downside is that I actually have to do homework. Okay, I'm going to bed now so I can wake up to go swimming...followed by class. I'll catch back up next week and if you know anybody who might like to be put on this email, just let me know. Also, a big thanks to those of you who responded to my last email--it was so good to have even a little bit of news from home...please keep it up! I miss all of you, but I'm pretty happy here. So, I'll see most of you in the spring. Amanda
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i promise i'm not dead	[Aug. 5th, 2006\|02:08 pm]
Hey, I'm back from not updating. I'm currently sitting in a Panera using the wireless internet. I just had lunch with my mom and sister and now they are gone. This summer has been busy--first China, then an internship at a Fortune 500 energy corporation. Don't get me wrong--it's a great place to work if you don't mind mind-numbing work while sitting in a basement with no sunlight all by your lonesome while you can see across the hall some of the other interns visitng the other intern near you while they ignore you. okay, so i kind of hate my job but whatever. they have paid me well and i have learned something valuable: I never want to work in corporate america ever again. don't get me wrong--i'm willing to be a copy person for a business, i just dont want to be stuck doing grunt work which nobody cares about. really, i feel as if my job consists of doing stuff that wouldn't get done if they didn't have an extra person. let's just say that i definitely want to be a professor now. i don't know where i want to go, but i want to be a professor. as for china, it was absolutely amazing. well, it was pretty cool and i came home with so many memories...and a guy. yeah, not quite sure how that last one happened, but one of the guys in my group fell for me and won't really leave me alone...i mean, he really fell for me. nice guy, division 1 swimmer at duquesne, bio major, wants to do everything, know almost everything...and in short, be a perfect person. i think that his goal will lead him to be an asshole. anyways, we have a few disagreements...for example, he's a conservative, i'm a liberal; he's really tall, i'm a foot shorter than he is; when he thinks of what constitutes a "perfect" person, he thinks being able to DO anything, when i think of what constitutes an "excellent" person, i think of character traits (he says that's easy); he stays up late, i go to bed early; he can get by without a lot of sleep, i tell him to fuck off at night; he is incredibly intense, i think he needs to chill out; whenever he does something, he doesn't just do his best, he does THE best...which is rather annoying since i'd like to have something of my own. and yeah, he's good at everything i'm good at and then some. the things which he's not so great at doing that i can do, he's going to learn. for example, i love to salsa dance...he has no clue how. he's going to learn. i want to go into the peace corps when i graduate. he thought that was a dandy idea and he's gonnna try it too, and not only that, but he found out that they prefer people who can speak either french or spanish...he's going to learn both. apparently, he even writes great papers for class. at least he's pretty cute. anyways, i hope everyone is having a great summer and i'll see everyone (hopefully) in january when i get back from france!
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home again

[May. 24th, 2006|11:36 pm]

[	Tags	\|	china, french visa	]
[	mood	\|	chill	]
[	music	\|	Leaving on a Jet Place	]

i am relatively fresh off the plane from China where I spent 10 days with the International Scholar Laureate Program Delegation on Diplomacy with 69 other college students from around the US. We visited Beijing, Xi'an (pronounced Shi-an), and Shanghai. I have now climbed on the Great Wall of China, taken a boat ride on the lake at the Imperial Summer Palace, toured the Forbidden City, been to Tianenmen Square, eaten Peking Duck at the same restuarant as Nixon ate at, seen the Terra-Cotta Army, been to the Wild Goose Pagoda and ancient temple, met with students at the China Foreign Affairs University, visited the oldest mosque in Xi'an, walked along the most complete city wall in China, seen the Shanghai Acrobatic show, been to the Jade Buddha Temple and had a tea ceremony with herbs made by the monks, taken a boat cruise on the Huangpu River, conversed in American Sign Language with a deaf chinese man in Shanghai, been to the top of the Pearl TV Tower (tallest TV tower in the world and one of the tallest structures in the world, and played on the highest piano in the world), met with the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs (person right under the Chinese Secretary of State), visited a village, and made many new friends in china and across the United States. besides that, i now have a 4 month student visa for France, starting September 2.

all in all, i'd say it was a good trip. plus, i came back with souvenirs and about 800 pictures, most of which are going up on facebook soon. call me because i'll be in town all summer (through September 1, when I fly to Europe for the semester)

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