Monday, May 31, 2010

An American in Paris: Day 4-7




Day 4 was the start of the conference so I checked to make sure Kathy (Director of Merrimack’s Writing Center) had arrived before going to the Champs de Mars for my first actual viewing of the Tour Eiffel. It is incredible and gargantuan in real life. Then Kathy and I went to the opening of the Conference, which was held at the American Church, and a champagne and hors d’oeuvres reception. Afterwards I met Sasha and Phoebe for dinner with Sasha’s aunt. She was the cutest little woman and made sure we had traditional French eatings like an aperitif of kir (chardonnay with créme de cassis) and escargot. I’d never had escargot before, but I’d been dying to try it. It was served hot with pesto and butter and it was chewy, but delicious.
Day 5 was taken up almost entirely by the conference. But it was great! I learned so much about writing center pedagogy and writing in different countries like Germany, Turkey, Poland, England and Denmark. After the conference the entire group went for ride on a bâteaux mouche. The boat took us along the quai and we got to see unique views of the Eiffel Tower, National Assembly, Invalides, Tulieries, Louvre, Ile de la Cité and Notre Dame. Kathy and I also decided to visit the Eiffel Tower at night. I love when it sparkles! It is just plain beautiful.
Day 6 I finally got to go to the Musée d’Orsay and it was certainly worth the wait. There was a special exhibit called Crime et Châtiment (Crime and Punishment) and it was really, really cool, if rather morbid. It featured the dark side of artwork with scenes of death, torture, dissections, prisons, the French revolution, femmes fatales, judgment scenes, sensational newspaper story covers, a guillotine, and even the ballet dancers of Degas who represented a form of punishment to the body. The most impressionant was this creepy wooden prison door from Bois, France from 1900 with carvings of numbers, dates and the words “adiu, adieu, adieu” on the prisoners’ side of the door. I’m glad I saw the exhibit first because everything else after that was happy. I saw works by Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Seurat, Degas, Lautrec, Delacroix, Gaugin, Rodin, etc.

I returned to the conference and afterwards there was a bus tour of the city led by two American University of Paris students who were very well informed about the history and sights of Paris. We learned that on the 7th floor of Louis Vuitton is a free art gallery and that the Champs Elysées is now the 3rd most expensive street in the world.
Day 7 was presentation day and it went spectacularly well. Everyone was intrigued by our topic and we had a great discussion at the end. A wine and cheese reception finished off the conference and then it was time for me to catch the train back to Angers. And whadda ya know, there was an accident on my section of the metro so I had to run to the next stop which, luckily, had the transfer I needed to get to the train station. Still it was touch and go for a bit there. In the end I made it safely back to Angers and had to mentally prepare myself for taking my socio-cultural final the next morning.
Bonne chance à moi!
Heidi

Sunday, May 30, 2010

From Paris, With Love: Day 1-3


















So I was one week in Paris and oh man what a week it was. I was lucky enough to stay in a real Parisian apartment on the market street Rue Cler in the 7th arrondisement (there are 20 all total) with Sasha, my friend from high school and her friend, Phoebe. They had just finished their semester in Rome and were excited about the change of scenery. Ok so here’s a sketch of what happened.

Day 1 we went to the Luxembourg gardens and palace (saw some old men playing chess and kids playing tennis), the Montparnasse cemetery, and the extremely trendy Jewish/Gay quarter with its hidden art galleries and scenic canal.

Day 2 was brunch at the Mama Shelter, a very chic buffet restaurant that you have to reserve at least one week in advance. We walked off the piles of food by wandering the vastness that is Père Lachaise cemetery. There are tons of famous people buried in Père Lachaise (Apollinaire, Edith Piaf, Proust, Balzac, Jim Morrison, etc.) but it was so big we only found Proust and Morrison.
Then we went to the Champs-Elysées because we were told that the entire street would be blocked off for a nature display. Something like 2 million people were expected to attend and after arriving at the famous street I could believe it. There were people everywhere! It was insanity. I continued on to the Arc de Triomph (so much cooler and bigger in real life) which is located at the craziest roundabout I’ve ever seen. It’s called the Etoile (star) and has 12 streets spewing off of it.

Afterwards I met another high school friend, Laura and we grabbed some Domino’s pizza for a late night picnic in the Tulieries garden at the feet of the Louvre. The best part of this night was watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle. Every night after dark on the hour for five minutes the Eiffel Tower goes all sparkly before returning to its regular old lit up self. Funny story—the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be a temporary building for the 1889 World Expo and all the Parisian’s thought it was an eye sore, but when I asked the French girls in the Foyer what their favorite landmark in Paris was all of them said they liked ”La Tour Eiffel” best. Go figure.

Day 3 was the Louvre. People had warned me about its size and anyone who had lived long in Paris said it was overrated and too touristy. But there’s a reason it’s touristy. It houses the world’s finest art collection and it was fabulous. And even better I got in for free with my student card! The Louvre also happens to have one of my favorite pieces in its collection and I was determined to see it. I needn’t have worried about seeing it because it was the first thing I saw: Nike of Samothrace, or Winged Victory at the top of the grand staircase and she was beautiful. And it wouldn’t be a trip to the Louvre without seeing DaVinci’s Mona Lisa, but she’s so small and far away in her protective glass that she’s much harder to appreciate. Much more amusing is all the tourists jockeying for a better viewing position. Far more enjoyable was seeing all the neoclassical paintings from David and Delacroix.

The museum was truly incredible, but I have to say the highlight of the entire day was dipping my feet into the Louvre fountains. There were tons of people outside the pyramid just sitting by the fountains; one girl was walking around in the fountain and most people, like me, were soaking their aching feet.

Afterwards I walked across the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), ironically, the oldest bridge in Paris, to the Île de la Cité where the Notre Dame is located. Notre Dame was very surprisingly the only letdown of the trip. Don’t get me wrong, you should totally see it because it is still awesome. It just didn’t meet my expectations. (I blame this on my preference for all things Angevine.) From there I trekked to the Hôtel de Ville, Pompidou center (crazy modern museum that looks like it’s made of colorful pipes) and Rue Rivoli where the huge department stores are located and then back to the Louvre for more feet dipping.

Side note: I was explaining to my youngest sister Emma how cool the Louvre was when she interrupted me and said, “Wait, isn’t the Louvre a bathroom?” She honestly had no idea and I couldn’t have been more dumbfounded. Seriously? You thought the Louvre was a bathroom? I get that it sounds like the Loo, but really?? It’s only like THE most famous museum in the world. It was pretty funny.

To be continued…

Friday, May 21, 2010

Monsieur, can we take a picture of your mustache?






Things are winding down over here so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write. But here’s a quick recap of the weekend. My friends and I had not one, but TWO picnics. The first one took place under the shade of the castle and it was so successful we planned another for the next day under the gazebo in the Jardin du Mail. We had so much food that I wasn’t even hungry for dinner. There were baguettes, chocolate croissants, wine, cidre, chocolate, cookies, sausage, ginger butter (like peanut butter, but it tastes like ginger snaps), and of course a variety of cheeses: brie, coulommiers, camembert, rocquefort, etc. And since we are very resourceful, poor college students we used the round cheese container as a Frisbee (I wouldn’t recommend it for distances greater than twenty feet).

After the second picnic we had an Angers Photo Scavenger Hunt, created by your truly. We split into two randomly selected teams and set off to take pictures with all 32 objects/places. Some of the things on the list included finding someone wearing a beret, someone with a mustache, French graffiti, French car, French phone booth, a purple flower, a snail, a happy face traffic light, French people holding up a peace sign, something with the name Angers, bridge across the river, our school, a street sign with the word “ecrivain” (writer), a fountain, etc. We met up at the chateau at the very end and everyone agreed it was one of their favorite things (the only thing our team couldn’t find was the happy face stoplight).
Today I leave for Paris! I’ll be gone for an entire week because I have yet to visit the museums and actually see the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. I’ll also be representing Merrimack at the European Writing Centers Association Conference with Professor Kathy Shine Cain, the director of Merrimack’s writing center. Our topic is “Positionality and the 21st Century Writing Center: Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary, and Cultural Border Crossing.” In case that sound totally foreign to you, essentially I’m going to be talking about the different relationships in the writing center and about my experiences as a second language student.
Wish me bonne chance!
Heidi

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Madeleines!














“In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines lived 12 little girls in two straight lines…”
If you’ve never read the children’s book Madeline (1939) by Ludwig Bemelmans you will have no idea what I’m talking about, but that just gives you an excuse to find it at your local library or bookstore. But surprise, surprise this entry is about madeleines and not Madeline.

Madeleines are shell shaped cookies that taste more life a muffin or miniature cake than a cookie. They are a French classics and so last weekend I decided to make some. The first batch didn’t turn out so great, but after adjusting the oven settings they were fine. The madeleines were surprisingly easy to make, minus the difficulties with the oven. All you need are:
1 c. sugar
1 c. butter (melted)
1 c. flour
2 eggs
Mix the ingredients together. (The consistency should have a bit of hold to it, but not too soupy. Adding some water or milk will make the batter less thick.)
Bake at 425 °F for 8-12 min or until golden. And voilà, la madeleine!
(You can also add a bit of vanilla or orange zest if you’d like.)

They’re pretty hard to mess up, even my first batch tasted good, though it wasn’t entirely baked through to the bottom. The French girls nearly died of laughter when they saw my first miserable attempt, but I think I earned their respect after the second batch. I’ll bet even Marcel Proust* would approve of my “petites madeleines.”

As for this weekend, it’s the Pont de l’Ascension (Bridge of Ascension) which is celebrated 40 days after Easter. The reason it is called a bridge is because the holiday occurs on a Thursday, but the French bridge over to the weekend and take off Friday as well. Yay! Four day weekend for me! I’m not traveling this weekend so I’m looking forward to relaxing in Angers. Some friends and I are supposed to have a picnic with baguettes and cheese.

Hoping for some sunshine!

Heidi




*Marcel Proust was a 20th century French writer who was famous for writing about his memories of eating madeleines. In fact, this deliciously simple cookie is often referred to as "la petite madeleine de Proust" (Proust's little madeleine).

Sunday, May 2, 2010

The Nun and the Muguet



I was on my way to meet some friends at the castle for lunch and a bible study when I was stopped by an elderly nun. She offered me a sprig of muguet (Lily of the Valley) and told me, "It's for you." I thanked her, wished her good day and then watched as she continued down the road. It was such a simple, but beautiful gesture. I was so touched.

Giving muguet is traditional for the Fête du Travail (Labor day) which is May 1 for basically every country except the US and Canada. I never expected I would be a recipient of the muguet, but I was and it was perfect. I hadn't had anything to bring to the luncheon so I felt it was only right to pass on the good luck and leave the sprig with my friends. But that one act was so heartwarming I felt wonderful for the rest of the day. It just goes to show that small acts of kindness are bigger than they seem.

Many Blessings!

Heidi