Claire

Remember when I said my host sister was in a singing group? Well, they're apparently pretty famous, and she's something of a celebrity. So she and her friends randomly do goooogle searches for their names, to make sure nothing inappropriate is out there, and they hit on my journal. To protect her privacy, she's asked that I take down the entries about her family -- it would weird me out, too, to find that anyone could find out anything about my family on the net -- so I've deleted them.

So this is a formal apology to my wonderful host sister, who shall for her own protection hereafter go nameless.

Round-trip ticket from Strasbourg to Paris: 55 euro.

Paris metro tickets: 3 euro.

Round-trip ticket from Paris to Marseille (forced to take a first-class seat one leg due to lack of places): 217 euro.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: 20 euro.

Boat ride to the islands of If and Frioul: 10 euro.

Seeing the little sign on the boat that reads "Due to rough seas, this boat will not be stopping at the Chateau d'If today, sorry for the inconvenience": Priceless. Just f***ing priceless.

Oh, I just LOVE being compared to George W Bush.

YUCK.

Okay, backstory. Nancy and I went to see Spiderman III yesterday. I won't spoil anything, except to say that I shed more than one tear and nearly jumped out of my seat with excitement more than once and that you should all go see it IMMEDIATELY. RIGHT NOW.
We then went to get a coffee (read: a hot chocolate for Nancy and a decaf tea for me) at a little cafe near the theatre. The waiter thought we were German when we didn't quite understand his lightening-fast French, and began listing prices in German. When we looked even more confused, he questioned, "Mais vous n’êtes pas allemandes?" "Non, américaines," I answered. "Ah bon?" he replied, shaking his head and walking away. "Nulle." It took me a few seconds to realise that he was referring to his own ability to identify accents rather than to our French comprehension skills... I nearly got mad.

And then later, we went out for tarte flambée with some *gasp* non-music students! There are very few of us left -- most have transported back home by now. There were two choices for ordering: either a combo menu in combination with three other people, meaning all-you-can-eat tartes of four varieties and a pitcher of beer, color of your choice, or a single tart all by your lonesome of one of fifteen different flavors. The single tartes were E6.30, and a share in the tart-and-beer option was E13.00. Since I don't like beer, I decided to go it alone, but there was a problem -- I wanted to get one of the four "classic" options, the forestière (ham, mushrooms, no onions -- what could be better?) but the waiter wouldn't let me. His reasoning was that he wouldn't be able to tell whether or not I was actually sharing food (read: beer) with the other students.
I argued that I wasn't going to share anything -- I don't like beer, I can't eat onions -- and his comment was, "Oh yes, suuuure, you won't share anything. Because you're soooo honest. Just like George Bush."
Oh, THANKS. I wanted to slug the guy. First of all: I dislike Bush. (read: with a passion that burns with the fire of a thousand suns) Second of all: do I compare you to Chirac? I'm sure he's a wonderful human being, but you are not he. Third of all: one American does not represent all of us. He may pretend to, but we are not a homogenous people -- by definition. He is a Connecticut rich boy who pretends he's from Texas. I'm a New York cat lover who pretty much lives in Maine. Other than the fact that we're both caucasian, I see no connection at all.
Noooooo, I'm not pissed. Not much. {>_<}

So I've officially lost ten kilos since I came here. Go me! That's twenty-two pounds or so. I should write a book on it: How to Make Yourself Thin and Happy Eating Nothing But Baguette and Milk for Three Months. I'll make millions. {^_^}

I don't feel any different, and if the doctor's charts are to be believed I still need to lose another thirty pounds (not gonna happen, with my bone structure -- fifteen might be possible, but let's be realistic) but I am now, as we speak, wearing a pair of capris that I bought KNOWING they were too small, and now they fit perfectly -- maybe even a bit big. And today Nancy turned to me and said, out of the blue, "Wow, Claire, you really have lost weight this semester!"

And it was nice. {^_^}

Two exams down, two to go...

I just got back from Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Prague, but you're going to have to wait until after I take my finals to get a recap.

In other news, I got hit on in the tram again last night... and the guy tried to follow me home. Yay, fun.
And tonight we celebrated Nancy's 20th birthday with tarte flambee and Hagen Daas sundaes! Tarte flambee is a specialty of the region, and they're REALLY good -- how have I not had one before? Must have more! ... with fewer onions, next time. *acid burp*

Okay, enough procrastinating. Back to studying!

The cutest thing EVER happened to me today!

It’s been ridiculously warm here lately, and as I hadn’t been hungry before my exam, I stopped at the little outdoor marked in Place Broglie to get an “American hamburger” that was neither American nor a real hamburger – lettuce, tomato, and two beef patties with ketchup and mayo in half a short baguette. As I was sitting there, eating and people-watching, a little girl – maybe six or seven -- and her mother came up to the stand. The girl decided that the only seat that she wanted to sit in was the one across from me, despite her mother’s objections that she should not bother me. She then proceeded to try to convince me that I should let her drink the dregs of beer in the glass that had been left on the table. The dialogue went something like this:

Girl: *picks up glass*
Me: Wait a minute, that’s beer!
Girl: But I love beer.
Me: *taken aback* Oh really? *girl goes to take a sip; I grab the glass* But this one belongs to someone else. Look, your mom is buying you a drink.
Girl: Oh?

Then, just before her mom called her away, she offered me a jelly bean. Hee! {^_^} I would have accepted, too, except I had way too many jelly beans this morning while studying, and her mom was kind of giving me a “don’t you touch my daughter” look, for some reason… maybe it’s the sweatshirt…

I went shopping yesterday and deliberately bought a tank-top for the first time in my life. Actually, I bought three. They were all really cheap, and they look surprisingly good on me – although I’ll have to work on my arm tone a little to be completely comfortable in them. (Note to self : start doing push-ups before bed.) I also bought my lifeguarding sunglasses for this year, since my old ones are all scratched up. They’re HUGE, which means they cover absolutely every angle of my vision (and about half my face) and they have a little skull-and-crossed-swords insignia on each arm, which is what made me give in and buy them. {^_^} Hello, my name is Captain Claire, and I’m addicted to pirates…

… Okay, Mom, I’ll stop procrastinating now and go finish my essay… (I know my parents took great care in raising me because every time I do something I shouldn’t – or don’t do something I should – I hear their voices nagging me in my own head. Your work here is done, ‘rents. Go bother Meg for a while!) I am SO not in the mood to work right now. We leave tomorrow for Berlin, where we get to see SEIJI OSAWA HIMSELF conduct the greatest orchestra currently in existance, the Farewell Dinner is tonight, the weather outside is GORGEOUS... none of which is conducive to studying. {^_^}

Smell is the most evocative sense in the human body; if you want to give someone a déjà vu, send him a smell from his childhood. I often get it in the springtime, mostly walking by beds of daffodils; the Cathedral close was full of them in the spring. (God bless Ben – oh good grief, what was his last name? The old groundskeeper at the Cathedral. Unless I’m crossing him with the guy from The Secret Garden, and I’ve completely forgotten his name. They were both old, leathery, friendly, and walked with a limp. We made cards for our version the year he retired. I drew daffodils on mine. But I digress.)

I stuck my head out of my window this morning, and was hit in the face with a huge case of déjà vu. It smelled like summer in my old neighborhood in New York City – warm concrete, city trees, happy window boxes, sunshine, and something else… not sure what. Not unpleasant at all, just so familiar it was like my heart wanted to jump out of my chest and give the smell a gigantic hug. I had a sudden impulse to call Emily or Julia or Caroline and go to the park; I suddenly had a strong desire to clamber around on a wooden structure and stand in line for a swing. I haven’t had that feeling since… well, since we lived in the City, since I was eleven. I’ve never had a déjà voulu before. It was a nice feeling.

I think I’ll leave my window open.

I saw a movie on Saturday that I simply MUST relate: L’Isle aux Trésors – I bet even those of you who don’t speak French can figure out which R.L.Stevenson book that’s based on. LOOSELY, let me tell you. VERY loosely.

But it was a hilarious movie anyway, if I could force myself to simply ignore all the inaccuracies – which it was surprisingly easy to do, given that they changed the plot so much the story was all but unrecognizable. Jim Hawkins is a redcoat who has prison-guard duty. One night, a monk with a wooden leg asks to see a condemned prisoner, a certain Billy Bones, who later tells Jim where to find Capt. Flint’s treasure, and is then hanged. Jim, being the bright lad that he is, immediately tries to sell the map to a certain Long John Silver (who despite his name is really short.) Silver plays it friendly, and then has him followed home from the tavern by two thugs who hit poor oblivious Jim over the head so they can search him. They don’t find the map, since Jim hasn’t recopied it yet, but they manage to knock the memory of it right out of his head. Meanwhile, Silver has hired a ship from a slinky seductress in velvet robes, with whom he has – get this! – fallen in love. No, really.
They set sail. One big happy family. Dr. Livesey turns out to be an alcoholic ex-pirate doctor, incidentally the one who was forced to remove Silver’s leg and on whom Silver has sworn revenge, but Silver promises to delay the inevitable if he helps Jim get his memory back; Capt. Smollett is totally oblivious to anything not relating to wind, tide, and sail; the Baroness (Silver’s lust interest) brings aboard a weird friend of hers, a strange courtier who turns out to be gay and forms a surprisingly cute relationship with one of the sailors; and the Baroness herself turns out to have split personalities, one of which is the standard rich playgirl and one of which kills her lovers with a giant hairpin and throws them overboard in the middle of the night.
They get to the island, Jim FINALLY (after several mildly humorous scenes of attempted hypnotism by the doctor) remembers where the freaking treasure is, and they find that the island is inhabited – yes, by Ben Gunn, of course, but also by a colony of Spanish soldiers and their slaves. After much pirate-flavored derring-do, EVERYONE ends up dead except for Jim, the Baroness, and Ben Gunn and his prisoners – the doctor and Capt Smollet. Only when Silver and the Baroness get back to the cave (Jim is off freeing the slaves) they discover that the Captain has escaped and that poor Ben, having had to cauterize the doctor’s wound and being reminded by the smell that he has had no meat for six years (despite the random Spanish colony) has turned cannibal and EATEN the doctor. Yes, EATEN him, poor sap. So Silver shoots Gunn, since he’s been deprived of his revenge.
Cut to the ship – which the Captain, finally showing some spirit, has decided to blow up rather than let her fall into the hands of pirates. He is about to put flame to powder when Jim shows up, with all the freed slaves. The captain promptly offers Jim a congratulatory cigar, which Jim promptly drops on the gunpowder, and the ship blows up. (And when I say blows up, I mean BLOWS UP – the thing must have been stocked with nothing but gunpowder and nitroglycerine to make such a display. Yeesh.) Jim apparently then sails off with the little bit of the slave crew that he managed to save, and becomes the notorious pirate we all know as Blackbeard, while Silver and his dangerous girlfriend remain stranded on the now-otherwise-uninhabited island till a ripe old age, and leave no children behind them.

I will now pause to allow your brain to finish exploding. And when I say exploding, I mean EXPLODING. Good grief!

That said, there were some very good moments, and the whole thing was very well acted, start to finish. Some of my favorite moments:

“Yo, ‘o, ‘o, et une bouteille de rhum”
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum, French-style: aka, translated word-for-word with no attention to rhythm, rhyme, or tune. FUNNIEST thing I have ever heard!!!! The people sitting behind Nancy and me must have thought we were having conniptions.

“Euh – pardonnez-moi, Monsieur Silver, mais votre pipe – elle est à l’envers.”
Just after Jim and Silver meet the Baroness for the first time, Silver saves her life – more to make her attackers shut up so he can concentrate on his card game than for any other reason. When she unveils herself to salute him as she leaves, he is instantly stricken – you can tell by his face that he’s got it BAD. By his face – and by the fact that he sticks his pipe in his mouth upside down, the tobacco hanging out of the bottom of the bowl and a goofy, only slightly lecherous smile on his face. Jim turns to him and makes the above comment: “Uh – pardon me, Mr. Silver, but your pipe – it’s upside-down.” And it takes Silver a good couple of beats more to snap out of it. Very cute hilarious moment – if slightly untrue to Silver’s original character. {^_^}

“Mais tu vois, ça arrive – même aux pirates les plus féroces.”
The Baroness has killed two sailors at this point – or three ? – and Jim knows what she’s up to. One day, Silver manages to catch her eye. Jim follows him to her cabin, realizes what’s about to happen, and runs to rouse the doctor, crying, “Silver’s in danger!” The doctor, who is in bed, fully clothed and hugging a bottle, replies drunkenly, “Good news!” and falls asleep again. The next cut is of Silver sitting up in bed, shirtless, looking sort of peeved. Then the Baroness moves into view, likewise shirtless, and says tenderly, “You know, sometimes these things happen – even to the most ferocious of pirates.” And Silver looks EXTREMELY uncomfortable, not to mention disappointed, although his – uh – little problem just saved his life. Again, the people sitting behind us must have thought we were insane. It wasn’t all that funny – and yet it was!

“Un serpent! C’est un serpent qui m’a mordu!”
They’ve discovered that the treasure is not where it should be, and Silver decides to bury the doctor in the hole they’ve dug – hey, why waste effort, right ? The Baroness, who rather likes the doctor, withdraws a few feet, gives a rather fake cry of pain, and falls down. Silver, totally devoted to her at this point, flies to her side and demands what’s the matter. “A snake bit me!” she cries, “I need a doctor!” A couple of seconds pass. “I need a doctor,” she repeats, a little slower. Silver pouts. “Haul him out,” he finally orders. It was at this point – three-quarters of the way through the movie – that I actually started to like her.

My other favorite part has to do with me being a music geek. I find it hilarious that by far the most intense musical moment was not when the pirates were fighting, not even when the ship blows up, but when Jim gets chased by a girl. (They make a lot out of woman being a sailor’s worst enemy in this film.) The Baroness starts hitting on Jim at one point, and Jim, remembering her preying-mantis tendencies, flips out and runs away. She gives chase, and the music is INTENSE. Nancy and I, both music nerds, found that secretly entertaining.

So I label this movie a very bad adaptation, but a good flick nonetheless. Or, at least, a rather entertaining one. {^_^}

I rock my own socks off!!!

I made the best stew ever for dinner last night, if I do say so myself. {^_^}

Backstory: there's an event coming up next month, Family Night, where each of the students makes a dish to bring to a potluck dinner. A discussion I had with my host mother earlier made me think of making stew -- serves lots, is interesting, isn't all that hard, is delicious -- and I asked if I could try making it this Thursday (yesterday) as a trial run.

WOW did it turn out well! Despite the difference in ingredients, it's almost identical to the stuff we make at home. That made me happy. {^_^} The only thing wrong with it was that I put in a little too much rice -- it somehow slipped my mind that 450g of uncooked rice does not turn into 450g of cooked rice. Heh heh heh. So there was an extra cup of rice or so in there. Oh well!

I had the darnedest time finding the ingredients, though! Ah, the stuff we take for granted . . . .

The first grocery store I went to had no cheddar cheese, no onions, no sauce, and no Worcestershire (sp?) sauce, although I was expecting that to be a difficult one to find. So with ten minutes until closing time, I booked it to Monoprix, and spent most of the remaining ten minutes hunting down a tiny bottle of W. sauce and trying, unsuccessfully, to find cheddar cheese. I ended up having to use little slices of cheddar/emmenthal mix designed to go on burgers. {^_^}

And it turned out fantastically! My host mother was very pleased, and I thought at first she was just humoring me -- you know, when you cook something, you can't really taste it properly? I thought, at dinner, that it hadn't turned out too well, but I had some for lunch and it's pretty close to perfect. {^_^}

If you can’t tell, I’m in a very good mood today. It was a perfect day, except I dressed too warmly – one would think it’s June already here! The crocuses are in full bloom, the sun is hot, the clouds are high, and it smells like flowers everywhere – although that could just be because there’s a florist every other shop near my house. Okay, I exaggerate – but not by much. It was too nice a day to stay indoors for long, so as soon as school was out, I went wandering in the centre ville and Petite France for a couple of hours. The light was gorgeous, and the air was wonderful. According to Mme Hardenberg, it was hotter today in Strasbourg than it was in Barcelona.

I went to the open-air market in Place Broglie this afternoon, looking for a backpack large enough for my schoolbooks but smaller than my computer-backpack, and came away with a really pretty soft woolen shawl, very dressy, very classy, in a dark rusty color – and for only 20 euro. Oh yes – and a backpack. {^_^} Which cost twice as much as the shawl, I kid you not! Or, well, it would have, had it not been 50% off. *phew* Who knew a simple backpack could cost 40 euro?! I saw a couple marked at 70. That’s ridiculous.
Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am that I know how to sew? The only thing that makes my new backpack not-quite-perfect is the ugly logo stitched on the front, but I know how to take care of that! {^_^}
I also replaced the headphones for my iPod, which broke the other day when I dropped them in the tram, with these awesome little squishy earbuds that cancel almost as much outside noise as Dad’s fancy noise-canceling headset – and without the pressure headache those things give me. They actually fit inside the ear, like earplugs, which took some getting used to, but at least they’re the right size; the ones that came with the iPod were just a little too big, which was REALLY uncomfortable if I wanted to wear them for more than two minutes at a time.

We played a game in one of my English classes today (at my internship, which I promise to relate in more detail later) – any of my high school friends who come across this journal will recognize it, and maybe Meg too – you had Mme Bree for a while. She had this game where we’d have to try to think of as many words in a certain category (verbs, animals, jobs, etc) starting with a certain letter, and any word you had that another group didn’t won your group a point. That’s a little complicated. And I can’t think of any better way to say it. Oh well. I introduced it in the English class this afternoon, and they loved it – prof and all! I made a bit of a faux pas though – the teacher had asked me not to let on that I speak French, to make the students speak English to me. At one point, I got the impression that neither the kids nor the teacher really understood the point of the game, and as they were all speaking French, I put in a comment in French, automatically. Wow. Sudden silence descended, and all the students looked at each other with their mouths open, and a few of them said, in unison, “Mais elle parle français!” in the same tone of awe you would use if a statue started reciting Molière. {^_^} It was a fun reaction, but the teacher was kind of annoyed. Oops. I didn’t mean to. Mais tant pis – I enjoyed it!

So, all in all, a very good day indeed. Tonight, I think Nancy and I are going to try to go see a movie after dinner; unfortunately, I seem to have missed L’Isle aux Tresors – it’s not playing anywhere. No pirates for Claire today.

Bisous!

Okay, I am officially weirded out – I’m beginning to think it’s a conspiracy. Why do random French men keep hitting on me?! There have been four now. (Yeah – all the attractive people reading this post right now are laughing at how I counted. But this is something new to me – it may be old hat to you, but I’ve never been attractive. At least not in the conventional sense.) One – Le G at the conservatoire bus stop. Two – a random man on the street near my apartment who told me that I had a pretty smile (I wasn’t smiling at the time) and that he’d like to get to know me and asked me for my number. Three – a rather creepy guy on the late-night tram who said that never in his home country of Algeria did he see such beautiful girls (I had my earphones on and was able to pretend I hadn’t heard him, thank goodness. How does one respond to something like that?) Four – and creepiest yet, I think – a very friendly old man outside the Monoprix in Paris (I couldn’t go in, I hadn’t finished my crêpe yet) who started the conversation by talking about the pleasures of eating well, segued through love of food to love in general, and finished up by asking me back to his place, assuring me that although he might be old, he was single and “en plein form.” He went to shake my hand at one point and then wouldn’t let go of it for the rest of the conversation. It was very awkward indeed.
AAAAAAAAAHH. Laissez-moi SEULE! I don’t want a French boyfriend – I’ve already got the French-Canadian version at home and he suits me just fine, thank you very much! I’m flattered, and all that, but I mean REALLY. Ça suffit.
I just don’t get it. I never get hit on at home (present boyfriend aside, of course.) Not one single guy in the states has even looked at me twice on the street, much less asked me for my phone number. It never happened in La Rochelle or Dijon, either. Maybe I, la pauvre américaine unversed in the ways of French fashion, have somehow taken to tying my scarf in a way that suggests I’m easy? Maybe it’s the new haircut? Or maybe I’m suddenly, magically irresistible to (French)men. Yeah, right.
Whatever it is, I’d like it to stop now. As a kid, as soon as I realized I was going to be too tall to be “cute” all my life, I dreamed of being one of those tall elegant beauties everyone notices the moment she walks into the room – I can dream, right? – but it’s rather frightening to have strange men suddenly attracted to me. Especially when they accost me on the tram at midnight. Plus, I’m not a drop-dead beauty, and how can I be elegant when I wear nerdy sneakers all the time and my pants are always too short? (Ah, the drawbacks of being tall.)

Okay, enough griping. I am, as I type, sitting on the train back from Paris with my Art History course. I’ll do the trips I’ve taken since we last talked in reverse order, so I can remember everything.
The weather this weekend was wonderful! It was sunny every day, which turned the city all sorts of fantastic colors, and warm enough that we all walked with our coats over our arms half the time. I always laugh at my mother when, the first day of spring, she turns into a cat – seeking every sunbeam with single-minded purpose – but I had my own moments of sun-worshiping this weekend, I must admit. Although I am still intensely jealous of all the SNOW I hear Maine and New York have gotten recently. {>_<}
We left Strasbourg on Friday morning (I had to leave the house at 7:15 in the morning, ew) and got to Paris at noon-ish, and I think I have been on my feet since then. We checked into the same hostel, the FIAP, that we used before, and the we were supposed to go to the Musée d’Orsay, but it was closed because of the strikes (they’re always striking here in Paris) so we went to the Monet museum instead. On Saturday, we did Orsay in the morning and the Picasso museum in the afternoon, and then I met Abby (co-counselor from camp) and four of her friends at the Opéra Bastille and we saw Don Giovanni. WOW. It was the last performance of the run, and the lighting team was on strike, but they managed to put the lighting back together and it was wonderful, even if it’s not my favorite opera ever. Donna Elvira in particular was fantastic. It was a modern interpretation, with Giovanni as a CEO, Leporello and the others as his co-workers, and the peasantry as the janitorial force. We actually got to sit, even though we had standing-room-only seats, because we were in the next-to-last row and there was no one behind us, so we just climbed up on the padded rails and perched there for the opera. Thank god. I don’t think I could have lived on my feet for another minute. It was actually surprisingly comfortable, although the couple in front of us was being very distracting: the guy kept, as Abby put it, “Don-Giovanni-ing” his girlfriend – kissing her, nuzzling her neck, pawing at her – generally trying to get busy right there in the theatre; meanwhile, if she were a cat, she would have had her ears folded back – the set of her head and shoulders said, very clearly, “Honey, you know I adore you, but I’M TRYING TO WATCH THIS WONDERFUL OPERA CAN YOU PLEASE WAIT TWO HOURS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.” And there’s me and Abby and Paul and Haley looking at each other in the dark, thinking, “Does he just not care that we’re watching them neck? I know we’re in Paris and all, but still,” and missing almost everything that happened on stage for five minutes. Luckily they found seats for the second half and went away to distract another part of the audience.
So on Sunday we did the Musée Gustave Moreau, which was the most interesting of the four (barring Orsay, of course, which I’ve done before and therefore doesn’t count.) Apparently Moreau knew for years before his death that he was in bad shape, so he made his house into a museum and bequeathed it to the state as an illustration of the life and process of an artist’s studio. The state was annoyed, but I thought it was a cool idea – if, you know, slightly egotistical. Juuuust a little bit. {^_^}
For lunch, I met with Emily Goldsmith (friend from high school) and we went to this really good, really cheap Japanese restaurant near the other opera house, and I had this amazing beef with black mushrooms dish. {^_^} Then we met a couple of Emily’s friends and had the strangest tea I’ve ever met. They called it Bubble-Tea: any kind of tea you like, hot or cold, with or without milk, served with a super-wide straw which you use to suck up the little balls of tapioca in the bottom of the cup. It was one of the weirder drinks I’ve ever had, and I loved it! The tapioca balls were black and had kind of the texture of a gummy bear, and they made the tea very sweet. {^_^}
We’re moving out of the city now, in the train, and the fog is setting in, which makes the country in the sunset look absolutely gorgeous, and rather like a mixture of three or four Monets we saw this weekend. The colors are all pastels, save for the strong green in the fields and the bright red-orange setting-sunlight over the mountains. I love mist. {^_^}

Last weekend, the opera class went to Karlsruhe, a little German city about half an hour over the border from Strasbourg. We went to a museum whose name I’ve already forgotten, and then had a very good dinner in a little restaurant with a funny waiter. He didn’t speak any English, and two of us had had a semester’s worth of German, so with hand gestures, simple vocab, and a lot of laughing we managed to order dinner and – for some of us – lots of good German beer. I had bread dumplings in cream sauce with wild mushrooms. YUMMM. {^_^} And a glass of milk of which I was very proud – after we ordered, the waiter came back and asked me in German, “Your glass of milk – do you want it warm or cold?” And I answered in German, “Cold, please.” Yay me! {^_^} (For my newest masterpiece, “Happy Claire with Milk,” see my new facebook picture. By the way, the gray shirt I’m wearing in the picture is that spur-of-the-moment shirt I bought, in case anyone cares.)
Then we saw The Magic Flute, which may be my favorite opera ever. It’s Mozart plus nostalgia plus a good plot plus one of my favorite characters – what can go wrong? It was awesome. Very VERY good, if a little rough around the edges, staging-wise. I have no complaints about the music or the acting, but as an actor I was bothered by some of the staging/lighting decisions – the characters’ faces were in shadow two-thirds of the time, and the set seemed to have been designed like a work of modern art, to play with contrasts – dark and light – but the director wasn’t precise enough, and people tended to blend into the background. And the little christmas-type lights on the Queen of the Night's dress kept flickering in and out when she moved her arms. Sometimes there seemed to be some question about blocking, particularly in the curtain calls – the three genies had no idea what they were doing, and then they did the whole curtain call twice. I think we might have seen the first performance.
Poor Queen of the Night – she missed the last high F, and the whole audience made that noise that you hear when a juggler drops a ball, or a figure-skater falls down, that little breath of one-third-pity, one-third-satisfaction that yes, they are in fact human and can err, one-third-relief, because you know you were waiting for them to fall, and it finally happened, and now we can relax – until the next high note.
I got majorly homesick in the middle of the opera – I grew up on the Magic Flute, and all the music was so familiar I wanted to turn and see Dad sitting next to me, twitching his fingers or singing along with Sarrastro . . . . (who did not hit that super-low note in his lullaby to Pamina, Dad, by the way. I was a little disappointed – I was waiting for it!)
The conductor was really young – twenty-four, maybe? Twenty-five? Maybe there’s hope for me after all . . . . Did I say that out loud? Ssssh, that’s a secret ambition! {^_^}

Okay, I know I’ve been a little lax about writing lately – school has started again, and I’m not used to keeping a diary of any sort. But I promise faithfully to write again next week – before mid-terms start – to tell you all about my classes and life in general. And then you'll realize why I haven't had time to write. {^_^}
A bientôt!

Okay, it's official -- this internet connection SUCKS. It's free, but it sucks. So you'll all just have to wait till I get to Strasbourg to see any photos, sorry. {>_<}

Me voilà enfin en France !

I’m in Paris now – got here on the morning of the third. I’d forgotten how great this city is. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before I launch into the day-by-day, a little structural overview: I’m one of seven music students in a larger group of about forty five. Only half of the larger group is from Syracuse, the host university, but only one other music student is also a stranger – Nancy, a percussionist très sympathique, is from Wellesley. We all have only three days in Paris, after which the music students go on to Strasbourg to start lessons and classes, while the rest of the group goes to various other countries, since they are doing a seminar on building the European cultural identity (or something like that.)

LES NOUVELLES:

Jan. 2-3
I got in to the program too late to take the Air France group flight directly to Paris, so I was on a Lufthansa flight that stopped over in Frankfurt. I was a little peeved about that, but that was before I found out who was on the flight. Someone called my name in the waiting room, I turned around and there was – of all people! – Grace Hunkins, my underbunker from camp! I hadn’t seen her in about four years, but she’s changed very little. Thank goodness. {^_^} A random very nice young gentleman agreed to change seats with me so I could sit next to her, so the longer flight wasn’t anywhere near as horribly tedious or awkward as I had imagined. And the second flight, the 45-minute hop from Frankfurt to Paris – oh my goodness, the clouds. The most beautiful formations, landscapes, colors, I think I’ve ever seen. (Cue my father’s rendition of the comment from my first plane flight: “Daddy, I want to take my clothes off and go sit on a cloud.”) No pictures, unfortunately – none of them came out. It wasn’t light enough yet.
There was supposed to be one more Syracuse student on the flight with me (and I’m sure all the other college-age girls were sketched out by the way I kept studying all of them, trying to figure out which one she might be) but I finally found her in the Paris airport and we met Prof. Marxer -- il est très Français, lui – and our chauffeur Pierre and all the other Syracuse students in a big lavender bus covered in butterflies. Yes, butterflies.
The rest of the day is kind of a blur, I was so tired. I think I fell asleep every single time I sat down, except perhaps at meals. {^_^} I actually have to consult my itinerary just to remember what we did. First we dropped off our luggage at the hotel/hostel, the Jean Monnet FIAP (don’t ask me what a Fiap is, I have no more idea than you do) and had lunch in the little café. (For future reference, because my mother insisted, see the bottom of each entry for a running total of all the meals I have eaten. And prepare to be insanely jealous.)
After a quick shower, we went to the Hotel des Invalides, where the tomb of Napoleon resides. After we had sufficiently admired the Emperor, we went on a boat tour of the Seine, and saw most of the major landmarks of Paris. I now have, I think, two identical sets of pictures from this boat tour – we took the same one with the Croton kids on the La Rochelle exchange. The only difference this time is that I still don’t know the names of most of the kids whose pictures I took. {^_^}
After the tour, we had a rather nice dinner in the hotel’s fancier restaurant and a rather long talk about the coursework involved in this Paris tour – with which I needn’t concern myself, since I and the six other music students are exempt. Hourrah!
And then we fell into bed and, finally, slept.

Jan. 4
I got up early this morning, hoping to get to the local Monoprix for a new alarm clock (turns out the one I brought adds about twenty minutes or so in each hour – probably something to do with the difference in current, or something wrong with my converter. Either way, that’s not good for someone as prone to lateness as I am!) but they were still closed.
At breakfast, I sat down with a group of American students, but, surprise! they weren’t from Syracuse, they were from the University of Delaware. They were very nice, but I still felt kind of funny. Not that I can really blame myself – I almost had a panic attack in the Invalides because there were people from my tour all over the building, but I didn’t recognize them. I know a few more people now, mostly the seven of us who are in the music track, but there are a lot of us (45 total) and I don’t know everyone yet. So that was my minor faux pas for the day. {^_^}
After breakfast, we walked through the Luxembourg gardens to the Pantheon, the final resting place of many of France’s greats. The upper floor is a mural tribute to the greats of the far past – St. Denis, St. Geneviève, Clovis, Jeanne d’Arc, etc – and in the Crypte below are the more modern ones: Rousseau, Zolà, the Curies, and – most importantly for moi – Alexandre Dumas. Wow. I thought of leaving him something on his grave, the way people had left little notes and cards for Marie Curie, but his tomb was barred off.
In the main hall of the Pantheon there was this bizarre work of art – if you can call it that. Not really to my taste; it looked rather like a giant spider had left egg cases all over the inside of the building. *shudder*
We stopped briefly in the little church next to the Pantheon, St Etienne du Mont, where (what remains of) the remains of Ste Geneviève are interred. It was a cute little church, but one of the staff shoved us out before we got to see the whole thing, saying the church was closing. He spoke neither English nor French, oddly, except for the words for “closed, please exit here.”
We then trekked to the Mosqué de Paris. We didn’t go inside, but they allowed us to peek in. It looked beautiful – all blue tile and white stone. Then we walked around the corner to the little attached restaurant, where they gave us a VERY good meal in a very non-Parisian fashion. The tables were gigantic plates of beaten copper, the walls were tiled in the same pattern as the mosque, and there were sparrows flitting from light fixture to light fixture. We couldn’t figure out whether they were interlopers or a deliberate part of the décor, but they were very cute.
After lunch we split off from the main group, who went to see a museum which is still under construction: a sort of Parisian Ellis Island, the future Museum of Immigration. Apparently it was pretty neat, but nowhere as cool as the one we visited! We went to the Cité de Musique, where we saw all the instruments ever made. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. We saw all the instruments I’ve ever heard of, certainly, plus a few I didn’t know existed. I have pictures of a violinlet about the length of my shoe, and a picture of a super-double-ultra-bass twice as tall as I am! I hope I can figure out how to label my pictures, so I can leave commentary on them. We got complementary headset tours with our tickets, and I could have wandered in there forever, listening to all the info and, especially, the sample pieces showing off the different instruments and styles. We also found a live duet playing in the museum: a woman on a clavier and a man on mandolin. They were both superb, and I managed to catch a bit on film, which I will try to put on YouTube if I can.
After the museum, we were all footsore and rather hungry, so Dr. Nick (the music professor) took us all out to a café near the hotel called La Coupole, where I ignored all dietary restrictions and had crèpes and a hot chocolate because, hey, I’m in Paris! Live a little. {^_^}
I had dinner in the hotel with Kate, another music student, and then a large group of us – twenty or so – decided we needed to see the Eiffel Tower, so off we trekked. We all took too many photos, most of them horribly blurry; then most of the group went up the tower while the rest of us wandered through the little park behind it, looking first for the reflecting pool – which seems to no longer exist – and then the peace memorial, which does. The group was getting ready to wander around some more and perhaps find a bar, but half of us decided we’d had enough Paris for one day and caught the metro to come back to the hotel.
Tomorrow, we visit the Père Lachaise cemetery and Sacré Coeur with the group, and then we get a backstage tour of the Bastille Opera house, followed by an optional visit to the Louvre. (As if anyone would opt not to go to the Louvre!) After that, I’m going to try to get in touch with Alex Haber and see if we can’t have dinner or something. Does anyone on that side of the Atlantic know his Paris phone number, perchance?
So, long story short: I’m here, I’m safe, I’m happy, and I’m going to bed. Bonne nuit, mes amis!


LES REPAS:

Jan. 3
Breakfast:
Airplane food. Not worth mentioning.

Lunch:
Buffet style (ravioli, rice, pâté, cheese which might have been camembert and might have been brie, un petit pain (aka a roll), Sprite, and tapioca pudding – not really worth mentioning either, except that it was served by Sodexho. Yes, they’ve followed me all the way from the States!

Dinner:
Salade Mesclun et chèvre rôti au lard (Mixed salad with goat cheese cooked in bacon) – Oh my goodness, so wonderful. It was what my family calls “funny lettuce,” basically anything that isn’t romaine or iceberg, frequently in colors other than green, in a nice light sweet vinaigrette, with warm rounds of goat cheese rolled and cooked in rashers of bacon. (This is not, by the way, American goat cheese. This is a much more subtle and mushy cheese. It comes in little rounds, about twice the size of a quarter, and may be my favorite cheese ever.) Yum.
Suprêmes de volailles aux feves (Chicken with lima beans) – not my favorite part of the meal. A chicken breast served in a puddle of what looked like green slime – lima bean sauce – which was surprisingly sweet. Since I, however, am not the biggest fan of lima beans, I avoided the sauce as much as possible. There was also a lot of very nicely sculpted rubbery mashed potatoes, which were great if you could ignore the texture. All in all, not the greatest success.
Tartelette aux noix (Hazlenut (we think) tart) – a very cute dessert, but a little confounding – we were given only spoons, so it was well-nigh impossible to cut the tart itself. However, the hazelnut ice-cream topping with the little chocolate bits? Superbe. {^_^}

Jan. 4
Breakfast:
Petit pain with butter, croissant with honey, milk. Nothing fancy, but still good.

Lunch:
Couscous topped with zucchini, carrots, artichokes, and celery in a tomato broth, chick peas and white raisins optional, and curried chicken. WOW. Very good.
Mint tea with honey, various desserts. The tea was very sweet, and very hot, and served in little glasses, which made it rather hard to drink at first, since the glasses burnt one’s fingers. The waiter had us all convinced it was a Moroccan wine, and we were all set to refuse it, since we got a long speech about Syracuse not buying us alcohol, when Prof. Bach rescued us. {^_^} We also got an assortment of five or six little desserts to try, only one of which (baklava) we recognized, and all of which were VERY sweet – loaded with honey, for the most part, like the tea. Yum. {^_^}

Tea:
Crèpes au sucre, chocolat chaud – technically not tea, but you get the idea. Very good. {^_^}

Dinner:
A little grilled beef patty with herb sauce, green beans, rice, bread with the same kind of cheese, and half a cup of “flan” that was rather gross, so I didn’t finish it.

Midnight snack while writing journal entries:
Trail mix from the airport. {^_^}

Salut, tout le monde!
I hereby announce the debut of mon journal de voyage electronique!
I will be leaving for France on January the second, 2007 -- expect weekly updates.
I think that's really all I have to say.
A plus!