Spring Break has come ... and gone ...

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So, it’s been a while. My bad! We had a two week vacation, of which I took advantage to see my family and some friends that I hadn’t seen if far too long. And quite honestly…I took about a week and a half hiatus of all things school related. I needed a break. Badly.

The first week back to school was, however, amazing. I was so glad to see my friends here in Angers and to be able to occupy my mind with school. I don’t know what it is about being a student, but I just love it. If I could get paid to be a student for the rest of my life, I honestly would. I guess I just love learning ;-) Which is a good thing, I suppose. Because I’m a long way from my goal of a PhD!

The first weekend after the break, I went on a “field trip” to Paris with my Art History class. All I can say is: FABULOUS. The art history and music history classes went together, and we visited the Musée d’Orsay and the Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house. The museum was awesome; we got to see all of the paintings that we had studied up until that point, and many more of course. There is so much to see in that museum. And it is all so beautiful. It always amazes me how different the paintings look in real life as compared to in a book or on a computer. I’ve always been a huge art museum fan, but I’ve never been overly interested in learning the history behind a piece, which I guess is a bit of a paradox. I'd say I’ve been more of an art spectator than an art history buff. But I must confess that art history is one of my favorite classes this semester. I can’t say it is my favorite of all simply because it’s tied with literature…which I absolutely adore.

Speaking of literature, I’ve been doing a LOT of reading this semester...like a lot…, so I figured I’d make a list of the books so that you can look into them if you haven’t already. The ones with little stars beside them were for my literature class, and the others were just pleasure reads. I honestly have not read a single book that I have not absolutely loved, whether it was required or not:

*Le Silence de la mer - Vercors
*L’étranger (for the 50th time...) - Camus
*Calligrammes - Apollinaire
Ensemble, c’est tout - Gavalda
Ceux qui savent comprendront - Gavalda
Je voudrais que quelqu’un m’attendre quelque part - Gavalda
La Consolante - Gavalda (as you can see, I’m quite the fan of her work !)
Hors de moi - Didier van Cauweleart
Ne le dis à personne - Harlan Cohen
Sept pierres pour la femme adultère - Khoury-Ghata
Le Misanthrope - Molière
En attendant Godot - Beckett
Voyage au bout de la nuit - Céline
*Rhinocéros - Ionesco
La cantatrice chauve - Ionesco
La leçon - Ionesco (this was one of my all-time favs...absolutely hilarious)
Thornytorinx - Camille de Peretti

I’m also in the process of reading *Sido (Colette) and L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé, which is a little less than thrilling. A good while back I bought La princess de Clèves (Mme de la Fayette) but have yet to start it. And I recently bought a book that is a rather recent release called Est-ce que ainsi que les femmes meurent? by Decoin. I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before I start/finish either of those. Perhaps that can be my airplane reading material?!

Anyways…back to the Paris trip: After the museum, my group went to the opera house, which was gorgeous!! The architecture was absolutely phenomenal, and the history behind the building was equally as interesting. I want to go back and actually see an opera, another thing about which I’m extremely passionate.

After the two visits (museum and opera house), we had the entire afternoon to do whatever we wanted. I walked around with two guys that are in my language class (and art history class), Thomas and Marcel. Thomas is from the States, and Marcel is from Colombia. As soon as we walked outside the opera house, it started raining, so we wandered around Paris down some randomly chosen road for quite some time, in the rain of course. We eventually saw a monoprix (I guess I would say it’s a smaller version of our wal*mart), so we went inside with two objectives: 1) getting out of the rain and 2) buying food! We all found a little something to hold us over, checked out and headed back outside to battle the weather. We eventually came across a café that looked rather inviting, so we went go inside and had a nice cup of hot chocolate. After finishing our drinks and talking for an hour or two, we headed back out, needing to get back to the museum to meet some other students for dinner. Well, we went into the first metro stop we passed and realized that an RER would take us straight to the museum, so we got our tickets, made our way to the quai and… the trains were all cancelled or delayed. So, we decided we’d just get on a regular metro line and just have to make a few connections to get where we were wanting to go. It seemed like a good idea. But…it was a bit more “eventful” than we had planned. We started making our way to the quai, following the little signs, and we started hearing chanting and seeing flags and security people, and then there is just a huge mob of people moving slower than you could even imagine. Being in France, we immediately thought to ourselves: “great…they’re on strike.” After about 30 minutes of inching our way to the metro, we discovered there is actually no strike at all; there was just simply a big soccer game that day! So, we all cram into a metro car and enjoy watching the crazily passionate soccer fans fervently sing, chant, jump, dance and, inevitably, drink. The metro train was literally bouncing the entire way, and the fans from both teams were chanting back and forth at each other incessantly. So yeah…it was awesome. Needless to say, we didn’t get to go with the other people to dinner, for we made it to the museum a mere 10 or 15 minutes before the bus was to arrive, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way. That was so fun!

This past week, I’ve been doing a lot of studying and a lot of writing (my mémoire is due on May 14th. Yikes!). Thursday, in the middle of my literature test, a fire alarm went off. We all assumed it was just a fire drill, so no one was pressed to get outside into the cold weather. Well, as we were slowly making our way down the stairs, we see smoke coming out of the window next to us, so we decided to perhaps move a little more quickly! (Though I must admit I was amazed, and frankly annoyed, by how many students just stopped walking and pointed at the smoke, as if that was going to make it any less real...lame...). Well, we’re all standing outside for about 15 or 20 minutes staring at this smoking window when someone from the university tells us that it was in fact just a drill and that the smoke was generated by an electric smoke machine! What?! That is so mean! But it was kind of cool at the same time. With that said, our literature professor wasn’t there that day, so we had a proctor giving our exam. Of course we weren’t able to finish it with 20 minutes of our 1-hour class period taken, so I’m not too impatient to see what she’s going to have us do now to make up for it.

So, as you can see, life is still lovely here…always full of surprises, that’s for sure. Though I must admit, I still have yet to understand the weather around here. All week it was rainy and cold, and now you suffocate if you walk around too long with a jacket on. Yesterday, Friday May 1st, was the first day that it was absolutely gorgeous outside this week. And of course, that just so happens to be the French equivalent of labor day, so you could walk around and enjoy the sun, but there was nothing to do...as in NOTHING. Today, it’s also amazingly beautiful outside, so I went to the market this morning and ran some little errands. Tonight Amber and I are going to eat sushi, which am super excited about…it’s one of my favorite foods in the entire universe!

Well, I guess I’ll get going… I need to get back to my reading of Sido by Colette (and I’m sorry Dr. Mann-Morlet, but I’m really not a fan of hers at all! I think her style of writing is beautiful, but I seriously think there was something a bit “off” in her head…no one idealizes his/her mother so … obsessively!)

Adios, amigos!

I’ll add some French words/expressions this evening!

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