Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2009-10-05 11:27 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2009-10-05 11:27 pm
Oh right, I have one of those... whatchamacallem? Livejournals?
....lol way to neglect LJ. What has happened since my last post?
- Châteaux de la Loire field trip was fun but the French Renaissance isn't really my period of historical interest, so I didn't get as much out of it as I could've. In fact, the highlights of the trip were pretty much Chenonceaux (which is BEAUTIFUL no matter whether you're interested or not) and being dragged around Amboise by the program director's adorable, hyperactive ten-year-old son.
- Classes have started. I'm attending them but still not registered--tomorrow, maybe. One of my computer science courses at Paris VII is really easy, the other is a little bit over my head but I'm going to do my best. Taking a translation course and a literature course through Smith; the former is mildly interesting but we haven't done much yet, the latter is on Chateaubriand. I have read exactly two pages of his memoirs and am not sure whether I like him or want to smack him.
- Got an opera pass! Student rush tickets for €20. Elyse and I got last-minute front-row seats to Gounod's Mireille at the Opera Garnier. It was... trippy. The timing of the libretto needs work. It goes straight from "I am a charming and apparently conflict-free pastoral love story" to "OH NOES my father will disown me if I marry you" to "duels, sorcery, and villains getting sucked into hell" to "Our Heroine is lost in the desert hallucinating on a very flimsy plot-pretext" to a finale of six billion plot holes, the entire cast standing around watching Mireille die of heat exposure instead of offering her water or anything, and an oh-so-typically-Gounod ascent to heaven. Just... what. It's not even that the plot changed gears so many times, it's that there were no transitions to speak of.
- This weekend was Nuit Blanche. Contemporary art exhibitions worked into famous parts of the city and just randomly scattered around, all open from 7pm to 7am. It was heavily advertised and billed as an Event and there were huge crowds, but oh god the organization was horrible. The night buses that do a circuit around the center city and the night buses that go to the suburbs were running double time, but ALL the other center-city night bus lines were closed. As a result it was impossible to get on a circuit bus because they were all full to bursting and you'd get thirty people waiting at a bus stop. Fortunately that was the worst thing that happened to us. A few other Smith students were trying to walk through an area they'd been told was safe and got sexually harassed every few feet, then HIT IN THE FACE by some assholes who were pissed that they weren't putting out. The buses weren't running, they weren't near a late-running Metro stop, and all the cops were off at Bastille keeping the techno-parade crowd from breaking shopkeepers' windows. Fortunately they got away after a small fistfight, but seriously yo. I am actually really surprised that Nuit Blanche was such utter shit because usually the city of Paris is not so FUCKING BONEHEADED about transport and security.
- My host mother is starting to get on my nerves. After an initial cautious period of sizing each other up she has decided I am a little girl who needs to clean her room, eat more fruits and vegetables, not go to bed too late, not shrug or whistle or close doors too loudly, and not wear so much black. I, in turn, have decided she is a nagging bloody harpy and would tell her to knock it the fuck off if she ever let me get a word in edgewise. And if I thought it would produce any effect besides being told it's not ladylike to swear.
- Châteaux de la Loire field trip was fun but the French Renaissance isn't really my period of historical interest, so I didn't get as much out of it as I could've. In fact, the highlights of the trip were pretty much Chenonceaux (which is BEAUTIFUL no matter whether you're interested or not) and being dragged around Amboise by the program director's adorable, hyperactive ten-year-old son.
- Classes have started. I'm attending them but still not registered--tomorrow, maybe. One of my computer science courses at Paris VII is really easy, the other is a little bit over my head but I'm going to do my best. Taking a translation course and a literature course through Smith; the former is mildly interesting but we haven't done much yet, the latter is on Chateaubriand. I have read exactly two pages of his memoirs and am not sure whether I like him or want to smack him.
- Got an opera pass! Student rush tickets for €20. Elyse and I got last-minute front-row seats to Gounod's Mireille at the Opera Garnier. It was... trippy. The timing of the libretto needs work. It goes straight from "I am a charming and apparently conflict-free pastoral love story" to "OH NOES my father will disown me if I marry you" to "duels, sorcery, and villains getting sucked into hell" to "Our Heroine is lost in the desert hallucinating on a very flimsy plot-pretext" to a finale of six billion plot holes, the entire cast standing around watching Mireille die of heat exposure instead of offering her water or anything, and an oh-so-typically-Gounod ascent to heaven. Just... what. It's not even that the plot changed gears so many times, it's that there were no transitions to speak of.
- This weekend was Nuit Blanche. Contemporary art exhibitions worked into famous parts of the city and just randomly scattered around, all open from 7pm to 7am. It was heavily advertised and billed as an Event and there were huge crowds, but oh god the organization was horrible. The night buses that do a circuit around the center city and the night buses that go to the suburbs were running double time, but ALL the other center-city night bus lines were closed. As a result it was impossible to get on a circuit bus because they were all full to bursting and you'd get thirty people waiting at a bus stop. Fortunately that was the worst thing that happened to us. A few other Smith students were trying to walk through an area they'd been told was safe and got sexually harassed every few feet, then HIT IN THE FACE by some assholes who were pissed that they weren't putting out. The buses weren't running, they weren't near a late-running Metro stop, and all the cops were off at Bastille keeping the techno-parade crowd from breaking shopkeepers' windows. Fortunately they got away after a small fistfight, but seriously yo. I am actually really surprised that Nuit Blanche was such utter shit because usually the city of Paris is not so FUCKING BONEHEADED about transport and security.
- My host mother is starting to get on my nerves. After an initial cautious period of sizing each other up she has decided I am a little girl who needs to clean her room, eat more fruits and vegetables, not go to bed too late, not shrug or whistle or close doors too loudly, and not wear so much black. I, in turn, have decided she is a nagging bloody harpy and would tell her to knock it the fuck off if she ever let me get a word in edgewise. And if I thought it would produce any effect besides being told it's not ladylike to swear.
no subject
You really want to name your incest novel after yourself? Really? With that shitty-ass framing device? *smack*no subject
...yeah, the super-poetic first chapter of La Confession d'un enfant du siècle about our Frenchboys' generation? Much more interesting than the actual story, which mostly consists of a thinly-veiled avatar of Musset being a complete dickwad to a thinly-veiled idealized avatar of George Sand, realizing he's being a complete dickwad, and continuing to mistreat her compulsively for no reason he can figure out. But omg don't judge him too harshly because the mal du siècle made him do it.
no subject
Let me know if it doesn't wholly suck, as I do need some French Romantic Precursor (or would he be early Romantic? I haven't done lit classes in so long) just for fic purposes.
no subject
I also got my hands on a few short novels by the Duchesse de Duras from the 1820s that are apparently quite Romantic. Including Olivier ou le secret, which is mentioned in Strangers because it's probably about Astolphe de Custine who was queer like a three-dollar bill. Unfortunately it was kept under lock and key until the 1970s, but word got out and writing counterfeit Oliviers became a Romantic fad in the mid-1820s.
no subject
no subject
Fortunately we spent most of the wee hours of morning in the Marais and the worst we had to deal with was a drunk guy whose Noctilien had been cancelled and who thought we looked sober enough to tell him how to get home. But there were other groups who got stuck on the Champs-Elysées after the metro stopped running or got lost in Les Halles trying to find the Centre Pompidou, and they were full of horror stories.
no subject
Châteaux de la Loire field trip was fun but the French Renaissance isn't really my period of historical interest, so I didn't get as much out of it as I could've. In fact, the highlights of the trip were pretty much Chenonceaux (which is BEAUTIFUL no matter whether you're interested or not)
Ah, jealous! mmm, castles.
re: your host mother. She's about 60, right? To her, you ARE a little girl, unfortunately. Older people tend to be annoying that way.
no subject
no subject