Monday, July 14: Bastille Day!

Today is France's national holiday, commemorating the storming of the Bastille in 1789. It is celebrated with a military parade on the Champs-Elysées, which I attended this morning, and with fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, which I am avoiding like the plague this evening.

The parade is not an American parade with floats and bands; it is a formal military parade with tanks and horses. All the same, it is exciting and draws enormous crowd. I took a lot of pictures--in fact, I think I went mostly for the photo opportunities. Click through and see if I did a good job! Don't forget that you can click the pictures to enlarge them.

Friday, July 4: En Grève

While America celebrated its birthday, France went quietly about its business (France's turn comes next Monday), though not without a frisson of excitement for the France-Germany World Cup match scheduled for Friday night. I taught my class and then worked in the office until about 3 p.m. when Dr. Guglielmi and I and our student assistant Caitlyn took a field trip to Tati for paper goods. Tati is a discount store full of clothes and housewares; we go there to get plates, cups, and napkins for our weekly pizza night and charcuterie buffet night. It is impressively cheap--we got 700 plates, cups, and napkins (enough for the whole program's worth of pizza and charcuterie nights) for 60€. There are several Tati locations but the one we went to is in Italie 2, a mall (centre commerciale) at Place d'Italie in the 13th. It was easier and faster than I thought to get there, buy mass quantities of paper goods, and haul it all back on the metro. We still have to get drinks Monday and that will be a larger undertaking.

Friday night I was supposed to go to a performance of Robbins/Ratmansky by the Paris Opera Ballet at the Opéra Garnier. Prof. Chen got me an inexpensive ticket some time ago. Then it transpired that I needed to give up my ticket so that one of her students could attend (the ballet was a field trip for her class). But then yesterday, another student wanted to sell her ticket, so Prof. Chen bought it and I was back on the roster. I had reconciled myself to not going but when the opportunity re-arose I was very excited! Once the Tati haul was stowed away I had just enough time to freshen up and eat a bowl of cereal while talking to Mr. B. on Skype, then we were off to the ballet. Extra props to Prof. Chen for figuring out a route to the Opéra Garnier that none of the rest of us had thought of: RER B from Cité U to Châtelet-Les Halles (Satan's own favorite train station), cross the platform and take RER A to Auber, whose exit is directly in front of the opera house. So much easier than doing it on the metro!

So we got there in good time and were greeted by the opera's immaculate ushers who handed us these flyers:

I'd been hearing about the grève des intermittents de spectacle on the radio without giving it too much thought, but now it was right in our faces. The performance was canceled because of the strike. It's been a big summer for strikes: air traffic controllers, the RATP (Paris transit authority), and the SNCF (French national railroads) have all been on strike in the last few weeks and we've been lucky that none of it has affected our travel. As such things go I'd rather miss a ballet than be unable to come to France at all because there's no air traffic controller to help guide the plane. But it was still a big disappointment. We were at least able to get our money back--had to wait in a fairly long queue but they did it on the spot and in cash. If I understood correctly what I was overhearing while waiting, it was a one-day national strike agreed upon among multiple unions. Hopefully the action will not affect any other performances that members of our group are supposed to attend. The strike already caused the cancellation of the Avignon film festival, which is a pretty big deal!

In lieu of the ballet we went to dinner at Le Vaudeville, which is always a treat. To be honest, I don't think the students knew what they were in for when they agreed to a "traditional French dinner." The food was comprehensible to everyone but the pace of service takes getting used to. We were already tired and maybe not in exactly the right frame of mind to enjoy it. Nevertheless, it was lovely as ever. I had duck foie gras as my starter followed by steamed cod with mashed potatoes and then a lemon crème with red fruit for dessert. I was disappointed that the beef tartare wasn't on the set menu last night. I'd have ordered it just to see the students' faces as I ate it. But the fish was good. Every time I come to France I resolve to eat more fish. 

By the time we finished, paid up, and came back on the metro it was after midnight. A short sleep and onward to the next adventure!

Thursday, July 3: at Notre Dame and Dinner on a Boat

We are continuing to go full speed every day and with my added work as a site director it's hard to find time to post. But I am going to try to at least write a post for each day if only so that I can remember what happened when!

So I have to jump back to Thursday when I went with Dr. Chiang and her class to Notre Dame. Of course it is THE tourist site (second to the Eiffel Tower, probably) and we arrived around 10:30 a.m. so it was somewhat crowded. But the line to get in moved very fast and of course it is gorgeous inside and out. The students had an assignment but I just went along as an observer, which is a nice role to have. It was an easy metro ride and Dr. Chiang kept it very organized. She had the excellent idea to make groups of 4 students in which one was responsible for keeping an eye on the other 3. It worked perfectly and kept anyone from getting lost, which happens very easily in large, crowded places. I took a few pictures and was happy to have the opportunity to do so since my camera had died last year when we went to Notre Dame.

Once Dr. Chiang's field trip was over it was time to return to Cité U. and get ready for our semi-formal dinner on the Seine, which I cannot stop referring to as "Dinner on a Boat." The students were all excited to do something dressy and fancy, and indeed they turned themselves out very nicely indeed. The girls were very smart, carrying their high heels in their bags and walking over in their flip-flops. It was a bit of a journey to get there. The croisière departed from near the Eiffel Tower and the metro line 6 that we would normally have used to get there was partially closed. So we had to change trains about 3 times and then walk all the way down the Champ de Mars from the École Militaire stop. Let's just say we were hungry for dinner by the time we got there. It was a fun experience, especially for the students who had not seen Paris before. "That's the Louvre! That's Notre Dame! That's the Musée d'Orsay!" If there was a downside it was simply that it's hard to eat dinner and take pictures at the same time, but I did get a few.

Photos from Notre Dame and Dinner on a Boat after the jump.

Leaving France to learn French?

Longtime readers (both of you) may remember that Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic was in Paris last summer at the same time I was. I recently started following Mr. Coates on Twitter (@tanehesicoates) in time to discover that he will be in Vermont this summer studying French at the Middlebury Language School. Middlebury is really serious about immersion.

I am pretty jealous.

Mr. Coates posted this write-up and video about his summer plans. Be sure to watch the video; it's a hoot. So much for my hopes of running into him on the street this summer but what a cool thing to do.

Student Orientation: mission accomplished!

Yesterday was the European Council program's student orientation meeting in Milledgeville. Second to the actual departure day for Paris, orientation day is the most exciting on the program calendar. Students get to meet each other, professors meet their classes, everyone learns way too much about packing, changing money, and beating jet lag, and overall, stuff gets real. I have a great group of students this year: a mix of experienced travelers and newbies with a wide variety of majors. Since I am teaching World Literature, we had an interesting discussion about reasons to study World Lit. in a foreign city. This group has some good ideas and I am eager to work with them in Paris.

As co-Site Director I also got to give part of the orientation presentation to the full group. Since pre-trip preparations are a topic near and dear to my heart I talked about what to pack and about what to do with/about money. It's clear that my only shortcoming (ha) is that I do not use a hair straightener. Students with their long, glossy tresses are extremely interested in whether to pack a straightener or buy one. My heartfelt response as a person with maybe 2" of hair is "Just have curly hair!" I do not use a straightener and, when abroad, I do not even use a blow-dryer. But "Why Short Hair is Better" is a topic for an entirely different blog. For the record: everything I've heard suggests that straighteners respond badly (they either don't heat up all the way or they blow out/burn out) when used with a voltage converter. Thus, one would be better off buying one on arrival.

Or you could just have curly hair.

43 days to departure. Is it too soon to start packing?

Paris 2014: The countdown is on!

After today's European Council faculty meeting I can officially say that I have my field trips planned (except for one--still weighing a couple of options) and I already have an exciting treat to look forward to in the first week:

My colleague Dr. Chen, who teaches theatre, has some great excursions planned including this one. She was kind enough to invite other faculty and students to join in. Getting to see a ballet at the Opéra Garnier is amazing enough. Getting to go two years in a row . . . I can hardly believe my luck! 

Student orientation in 28 days. Departure for Paris in 72 days. But who's counting?