Strasbourg, and technical difficulties.

This morning I trundled off to the Bibliothèque Nationale at 9:30 in the morning, weighted down with a bag full of books and my trusty laptop, ready to do some serious paper-writing. (Of course, I spaced out on the subway -- a guy came on and started to play a set of bagpipes that was shaped like a sheep, with a fuzzy outside and a little sheep face on the front -- and went a few stops too far, and had to get off to catch a train going back in the opposite direction. Probably, in retrospect, a sign of how well the studying was going to go.) Met a friend at the BNF, found our respective rooms, and settled in. The place was packed with French students diligently working away. I took out my computer and plugged it in, and... nothing.

Whoops! My charger has been acting funny for a few weeks now, taking five or six minutes to start working or needing a good firm shove into the outlet, but today there was just nothing. I decided I couldn't work on my paper (since I only had about two hours of battery life left, and if I couldn't get the charger to work, the whole computer would just die after two hours), so I did some reading instead, then left around 1 pm to go to a Marx seminar at the Sorbonne. Long story short, the seminar didn't quite work out, and instead I went to a café to try out my computer again and do some work.

It still didn't work. I freaked out a little. Mom helped me figure out that the FNAC (a huge, overwhelming chain store here, with electronics, DVDs, video games, cell phones, books, lectures, a café, and ticket sales) has an Apple store in it, so I packed up my things and headed over. There, a very very nice man tested my charger and determined that it was, in fact, completely dead. He also sold me a new one for an exorbitant price. But, now I can use my computer again! Paper-writing, here I come.

Well, paper-writing, here I come later; how about some pictures of Strasbourg first?


The day I arrived, the town was putting up its enormous Christmas tree in the Place Kléber. Strasbourg is famous for its Christmas market, and the whole town was in the process of decorating the weekend I was there.


I was just walking along, and a giant cathedral came out of nowhere!


A view of the cathedral from the front. It's so big my camera couldn't capture it all at once. We decided to go up to the tip-top of the spire, which turned out to involve hundreds of harrowing stairs on a tiny spiral staircase.


On our way up!


Continuing my theme of "me standing in front of a panoramic view," here's me and Strasbourg, from the top of the Cathedral.


Rachel and I took the boat tour of town in the evening. It was dark, so I didn't get many pictures, but I think this is a nice, artistically blurry bridge.


Here's Petite-France, a ridiculously quaint part of town, with lots of these very old, cute buildings.


Someone had made a tiny snowman.


A snowy French garden, part of the Orangerie park. Extreme symmetry!


We climbed up the rocky outcropping that overlooks this pond (and took a picture!).

I had a great time in Strasbourg; Rachel made an excellent hostess and showed me all around town. It even snowed a magical, wintry snow while I was there! We went to see a Molière play (Le Malade Imaginaire, which we actually read together in senior-year French class!), and I ate some choucroute, the Strasbourg specialty dish of sauerkraut, five kinds of sausage, potatoes, and bread. I will not be eating choucroute again.

However, I'll write more about Strasbourg next time, because now I really do need to work on some homework. Or maybe I should just do as the French do and go on homework strike...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Or "Joyeuse Donner-Merci," as we've decided to translate it here. I just got back from a Frenchified Thanksgiving feast -- more on that soon -- and wanted to wish everyone a lovely and happy day. Forgive me for being cheesy (oh so briefly), but today I donne merci for my family and friends, distant but far from forgotten, and the incredible opportunity to enjoy this incredible city. Also, pie.

I'm planning to make time for a proper update tomorrow: strikes, sausage, and school. Until then, eat some extra Jello for me!

A scholarly interval, and other recent events.

Paris has been damp and chilly for the past few weeks. In the afternoon, the white Haussmannian buildings blend into the low, pale clouds. Armies of blue-jumpsuited gardeners scurry around the Luxembourg Gardens, cleaning up all the leaves that fall from the rows of trees. (This might be the Frenchiest expression I've seen yet of the very French desire to remove all discernible evidence of organic plant life from their public gardens.) Half the city has perfected the art of smoking moodily while walking; the effect is hightened in a light rain, like we've had intermittently for weeks.

It's very picturesque, in an urban-melancholy kind of way. However, it's also just the kind of weather that exacerbates poor American exchange students' bronchitis. I came down sick a few days after Election Night, and I can only conclude that it is Sarah Palin's fault that I spent a week coughing like Satine at her turberculariest. My host mother took wonderful care of me. She got me an appointment with their family doctor at short notice, drove me to the appointment, helped me fill the prescriptions, made me soup and bought lots of clementines, for the vitamin C. Last Monday and Tuesday I didn't leave the apartment at all as I waited out my fever and rested up.

Friday morning, though, I was feeling better and off to scenic Charleville, France! When I applied to CUPA, I also proposed using the semester to get started researching my Bard Senior Thesis, which will be on the 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. CUPA agreed to support my research, so I planned a trip to Charleville, Rimbaud's hometown in the Ardennes, to visit the Rimbaud Museum there and scope out the research possibilities. I spent Friday and half of Saturday in Charleville, and it was ... interesting!

The Museum was pretty small, although I was suitably (and geekily) impressed by things like "Suitcase, used by Rimbaud 1873-1875" and "Tin cup, used by Rimbaud in Harrar." I was much more disappointed by the paucity of books available for purchase. There were plenty of copies of Rimbaud's works, and a few glossy coffeetable-type books about Rimbaud's influence, but essentially nothing available in the way of secondary critical literature, which is what I'm principally interested in finding while in France. (Rimbaud is widely studied everywhere but, obviously, particularly esteemed in France. It's pretty easy to obtain the major studies of him -- Blanchot, Bonnefoy, Char, etc -- whereas it can be quite difficult to get a hold of the multitudinous specialized ones.) I was able to go to the Charleville Library, a gorgeous big new building, and speak to some unbelievably nice librarians, who gave me lots of good information and with whose help I was able to start constructing a preliminary bibliography. But I did not go on the mad, literary theory and criticism book-buying spree I had envisoned.

I did get to know the tiny town of Charleville, though!

The park behind the Rimbaud Museum.


Another view, with the river. (Don't ask me which river, though.)


The Museum.


The plaque outside the Maison d'Ailleurs, Rimbaud's childhood home. It reads, predictably, "Arthur Rimbaud lived here, 1869-1875."


Inside the Maison d'Ailleurs, now an extremely avant-garde conceptual museum dedicated to Rimbaud's travels.




The church at Épernay, a smallish city in the Champagne region where I had an hour between trains.


Mr. Charleville himself!



The Place Ducale, Charleville's main square, at night.

There's also nothing like traveling by yourself for meeting people. Or, at least, having conversations with strangers. I got started bothering the French populace right off the bat on the train to Épernay, when I realized I had no idea where I was supposed to have validated my ticket. I turned to the friendly-looking woman behind her, and explained with my best American accent that I was foreign and confused: was this the train to Épernay? Also, what in the world did "compostez ce billet" mean? She sized me up -- if I had to guess what her internal thought process was, I'd say she was evaluating the likelihood that I would burst into tears against the amount of time it would take her to explain what I was supposed to do -- and then said, "If you'll look after my things for a minute, I'd be happy to go take care of validating your ticket for you." I was floored and quite pleased; I was briefly dependent on the kindness of strangers, and it was fine!

In Charleville, people were generally also very friendly, although their reactions to me tended to break down into two parts: First, they noted my accent and asked where I am from. Second, they asked, with varying degrees of incredulity, what I was doing in Charleville. It's funny how, well, provincial the provinces are -- people seemed delighted with the fact that I'm American and utterly shocked that an American would be visiting their town in the middle of November. (A shopkeeper asked me to give Obama a kiss for him. You know, the next time I run into Obama, I guess.) Several asked me why I had chosen to learn French, which I thought was interesting. I wished I had a good answer.

Since I got back, I've been busy with school and, uh, culture! I spent a very serious day studying very seriously at the library; I saw the new James Bond (recommended! Although if you like your Bond Rogery Moorey, beware); I saw a staging of Camus' Les Justes; I went to a "Café-Philo," which is this gloriously French thing where a ten or fifteen people get together and have a philosophical debate for two hours over espresso. The topic yesterday was "contradictions." I felt like Sartre should have been there.

Things are going much better at the University lately. I have a decent idea of what's going on in most of my classes, and today I presented an exposé that went well. I heard rumors this morning that there would be a general student strike tomorrow and therefore neither classes nor homework, but since I fail to understand the whole "student srike" concept, I think I'm going to show up anyway. I mean, if there are no students and teachers, I'll just head back home and nap. (Striking is a big deal here. Next time I post, I'll try and explain it a little.)

Friday morning, I'm off to Strasbourg to visit a friend from high school, and then it'll be back to the daily Parisian grind. I can't believe I'll be home in less than two months. I still haven't been to the Louvre yet!

Une nuit blanche.

Around six in the morning on November 5th, the sun was rising in Paris; there was a drizzle, and the light was soft and gray; a dozen people were crowded around the open door of a diner, craning their necks to see the little tv screen inside the crowded diner playing Barack Obama's victory speech. Except for Obama's voice and the noise of rain dripping off the gutters, it was silent. When he finished speaking, a woman shouted in a heavy French accent, "Yes we can!" She was black and she was crying and the whoops of joy echoing in the otherwise-deserted street were hers even as they seemed to speak for everyone, all of us standing there, dead-tired, mostly Americans, up all night in a foreign land to watch the direct satellite feed of our futures, to participate in this moment of our history.

It was a long night, November 4th, and an even longer November 5th (class from 9 am to 3 pm, a brief nap, dinner, and then a viewing of the Comédie Française's Le Mariage de Figaro that went wildly, tragically unappreciated by me), and now I have gunk in my lungs and a cough that just won't quit, but I can't say it wasn't worth it. My first real nuit blanche, as my host mother said. It was great.

Now: another wet weekend in Paris, the warm embrace of the library, and catching up on some sleep. To everyone who has sent me emails in the past few weeks: responses are coming, I promise. It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't been able to devote enough time to sit down and answer my email yet, but I will very soon.

Election day.

Okay, I might actually explode. Why oh why did I choose to live abroad during election time? I got up at 9 a.m. and have been unable to do anything except check the internet for news -- news I know won't be coming for hours! When I first started looking, it wasn't even November 4th in America yet.

Maybe I should just try to nap or something, because I'm not sure my blood pressure can take twelve to fourteen more hours of nerve-wracking anxiety. Then again, I think the French might have already hit upon the answer to this problem, cleverly calling it "a bottle of wine with lunch."



[It's the final countdown!]

Oh, what a world we live in.

It's the evening of November 3rd here, and I must confess that I am locked in my room, obsessively refreshing various websites to see if there's any further updates about the election. Tomorrow night, I'm planning to head off to an election night bash that begins at midnight and ends around 6 a.m. -- bagels provided -- and then hopefully drag my weary bones off to six hours of lecture at St. Denis. Even typing it out, that seems like an insane plan. But I am so, well, excited about the election, the first presidential election I've voted in, that I think one or two days of exhaustion will be very much worth it when I look back in a few years.

But, you say, what have you been up to lately? Well, quite a bit! First, on an academic note, I think everything is going to be fine regarding the exposé disaster. (Thanks to everyone for their sympathies, though; you made a tough week easier!) I'm continuing to enjoy my classes, and am feeling pretty good about the rest of the semester.

Second, Mom came to visit! She and her intrepid traveling companion Sally arrived last Wednesday and left Sunday morning. Although the weather chose to be rather uncooperative, we had a great, very busy time wandering around a cold and drizzly Paris. I wanted to show off the town, and we saw everything: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and the Tuileries, Sacré-Cœur, the Quartier Latin, the Hôtel de Ville and the Marais, the Luxembourg Gardens, and, of course, fabulous Issy-les-Moulineaux! And that's not counting the museums we visited and our day trip to Versailles. And the pauses for a crêpe here and there, of course.

I was also really pleased that Mom was able to meet my host family here. Madame invited us all to dinner, and she set out an absolutely lovely meal, with pâté and salad, a seafood gratin and Persian-cooked rice, and chocolate mousse. Madame used to teach English, so we had hardly any language difficulties, and I think everyone enjoyed the evening. I know I certainly did, especially when Madame offered to drive Mom and Sally back to their hotel, because she chose a route along the Seine that really showed off Paris at night; it was a real treat for me, too, since I usually take the subway everywhere and had never even seen some of the things we passed, and Madame gave a little commentary on what we were seeing.

Saying goodbye to Mom was very hard, and part of me wished I could have packed up my bags and headed off to the airport with them. (Of course, another part of me tried to convince her that hey, wouldn't it be nice to stay in Paris for another few weeks?) Already, I miss her a lot, but I'm glad she came to visit, and that she brought me some peanut butter.

The next few weeks look to be equally busy. Some important schoolwork's coming up, and on November 14-15 I'll be in Charleville, researching Rimbaud with my grant. The weekend after, I'll be visiting a friend in Strasbourg. Hopefully I'll be able to find a few minutes to update now and again!

(Oh, and even though I'm sure everyone reading this is on top of it, just in case: Don't forget to vote on Tuesday!!)