Monday
6/18
Monday, I worked in the morning and then went to the
Louvre in the afternoon, where I spent four hours! I arrived at noon, because I
read that the lines were bad in the morning. This did not mean, however, they
were good in the afternoon.
The first thing I noticed was that a labor union was
holding a massive protest in the space to the right of the area under the
pyramid. They were making so much noise that originally I thought that some
precious item had been stolen from the Louvre and all the alarms were going
off…either that or they were attempting to launch the Sixth Republic.
I used Rick Steve’s “Louvre Tour” in his Paris
guidebook, which gives you all the highlights. I knew that given how big the
Louvre is, you need some kind of guidance or you will feel completely
overwhelmed by all the choices. What stood out to me most was the Winged
Victory (Steves said that the way her clothing was plastered to her made her
look like she was in a wet wet swimsuit contest) and Venus de Milo (Steves said
that when he tries to imagine what she was doing with her missing arm, he
supposes she was picking her navel). What’s so amazing about the sculpture is
how lifelike the artists make the muscles, the texture of hair and the folds in
the statues clothing. The Renaissance section was my favorite. I love the
bright reds and blues that are used. I also realized how much we take
perspective, like drawing far away objects as smaller and nearer objects as
bigger, for granted. Steves points out that this style of painting did not
really exist in medieval art. Giotto’s Saint Francis of Assissi painting stands
out in that it starts to show some geometrical perspective in the buildings and
Francis’ face does not look flat and expressionless like the faces in medieval
paintings. Steve’s made another funny comment on Paolo Verona’s painting The Wedding at Cana: the atmosphere is
getting pretty raucous, so “Jesus is wondering if he should have ordered wine
coolers.”
I also loved the seeing the crown jewels on display,
which belonged to Duchess Anne of Brittany. Also on display were in the same
room were jeweled dishes with amazing detail. I tried to get some good
pictures, but unfortunately they were behind glass.
Walking through the Louvre, seeing the sheer size of
it and the opulence of the French royalty’s accommodations is shocking. No wonder
there was a Revolution! Good thing the labor union protesting under the pyramid
was trying to keep that tradition alive.
After about three hours of looking at paintings and
sculptures, I stopped in a café and ordered a vanilla milkshake with honey in it—and
interesting combination that I had never thought of—very good!
After I finished that, I went to a special exhibit
on Leonardo Davinci’s The Virgin and
Child with Saint Anne. The Louvre has just finished restoring this
painting, and the exhibition also showed many of Davinci’s preliminary sketches
before actually doing the painting. For example, originally, he had Christ
playing with St. John the Baptist but later took out St. John the Baptist and
put in a lamb to symbolize Christ’s passion. Mary leans forward, sort of trying
to restrain Jesus from playing with the lamb (or try to prevent his future
crucifixion) while Saint Anne has a look of serene acceptance on her face.
There were different random sketches he had done of
the tree for the background, of the baby Jesus’ leg, or of Mary’s veil. At one
point, had the three of them turn towards the left, and then he reversed them
and turned them towards the right. The work was actually unfinished at his
death.
The exhibit also had paintings on the same theme by
Delacroix and Edgar Degas to show the influence of Davinci’s work.
I returned home from the Louvre, sat down for a few
minutes, and then decided to go jogging in the Parc Monceau. Tiphaine thinks I
am crazy for running several days per week and said in mock amazement “C’est
pas vrai! Tu as la force de faire ca maintenant?” (“It’s not true! You have the
strength to do that right now?”)
“Rappelle-toi,” she replied, “que c’etaient les
europeens qui ont decouvert l’Amerique.” (“Just remember,” she said, “it was Europeans
who discovered America.”)
“Tiphaine, t’as raison, c’etait les
espagnols, ce que tu aimes beaucoup.” (“You’re right Tiphaine, it was the
Spanish…your favorite.”)
She reached up and patted her hand against her mouth
in a mock Indian/Native American/Amerindian (pick your preferred nomenclature)
war-call. I started laughing and warned her never to do that in the United
States, especially in academic, politically correct circles (but that with me,
it was totally okay, given when I was a little kid in Montana, my cousins and I
had a teepee to play in and headdresses with neon feathers, and used to play
settlers and Indians).
Then I started telling her about how many white
American families have either a story, or sometimes a legend of Indian ancestry
in their past. “C’est parce que les europeens pauvres ont quitte l’Europe a
cause du American Dream,” she said, saying the last two words in English.
(“That’s because poor Europeans left Europe for the American Dream.”)
Tuesday 6/19
Tuesday evening, we attended a gala for
one of Tiphaine’s friends who had just graduated from dental school. Dental
school is six years, because, like most professional schools in Europe it’s an
integrated part of their undergraduate degree. There was champagne and
appetizers, followed by Indian food for dinner. It was a masked party, so
everyone had a mardi-gras type mask. During dinner, we watched home videos that
their graduating class had made. Unfortunately, the videos were only funny to
the people in their graduating class who were in on all the jokes. They did
some kind of mock ad for the brand of “bain de bouche” that the pharmacist had
prescribed to me a few days earlier.
I met one of Tif’s friends named Theo,
and his girlfriend. He immediately asked if I was Scandinavian because of my
accent and of course my name. It turns out that his mother was Danish and his
father French. He wanted to practice speaking English with me. He spoke it well
because he said that until he was twelve, he didn’t know any Danish, so when he
got together with his mother’s family, he would talk with them in English. Theo
worked for the Socialist party in Francois Hollande’s campaign. His claim to
fame was that he appeared for 30 seconds in a TV ad for Holland during the
campaign. An interesting fact I learned from him was that Holland had hired
some advisors from Obama’s 2008 campaign. Holland’s motto, for example, was “Le
change, c’est maintenant” (“Change is now.”). I knew this was Holland’s slogan
from a joke that Tiphaine and Marine were making a few weeks ago—Tiphaine
wanted Marine to fix the montagne/Mireille Mathieu haircut that she didn’t
like, but Marine had to go soon, so she said “Il faut que je le fasse
maintenant… ‘Le change, c’est maintenant.’ (“I have to do it now. ‘Change is
now.’”) They started laughing and explained to me that it was Holland’s slogan.
I remember thinking that it sounded a lot like Obama’s “Hope for change,” so it
was interesting finally learn why that was the case! Politics is his life, so he immediately wanted to
know my political orientation. I told him and jokingly asked him if I could
still sit next to him at the dinner table. “It’s okay,” he said, “my girlfriend
voted for Sarkozy but now she’s changed.”
Wednesday 6/20
On this day, Tiphaine’s little niece Agathe
(five years old) had appendicitis, so Diane (three years old) was with us for
the day. When I met Diane, she asked Marine if I was a boy or a girl, and
Marine assured her that I was a girl. Whenever you learn a second language,
it’s always fascinating to hear a small child speak it so naturally. They
called her affectionate names like “ma petite Didi,” “Dianouche,” “Ma Petite
Cherie” et “ma Dianouchia.”
That afternoon, she slept for most of
the afternoon and ended up wetting herself while sleeping. She had slept in
Yseult’s (her grandmother’s) bed, and when Yseult got home from work that night
and asked what she had done that day, Diane responded “J’ai fait un tout petit
peu de pipi dans ton lit…mais c’etait pas grave” (“I peed a just a little bit
in your bed…but it’s no big deal”). Since Diane didn’t have other clothes
there, Tiphaine’s solution was to hang the underwear out to dry in the bathroom
and then put them back on her inside out as a “clean” pair.
The doctors didn’t end up operating on
Agathe until late that night. Apparently they had to run a bunch of tests to
make sure that it was appendicitis. The poor thing had been tired for the past
few days, had excruciating pain and that morning was unable to walk, which was
when they knew it was something serious. But given that her parents had taken
her to the hospital early in the morning, it surprised me that it took twelve
hours for the doctors to run the tests, confirm that it was appendicitis and
begin the operation. I don’t know anything about appendicitis, but I was under
the impression that you need to operate quickly before the appendix ruptures.
Thursday 6/21
That evening, we went out to Montmartes
with Tiphaine’s friend Priscilla and her friends for the annual “Fete de la
Musique.” As the name indicates, the Montmartres area (directly below the
basilica of Sacre Coeur) is filled with a new band on every block. The streets
are packed with people and cars can barely drive through. All the restaurants
stay open; some people barbeque in the streets. One grill was creating so much
smoke that I thought it was another Revolution. Priscilla, Tiphaine and I went
into a little wine bar. There was a distinct smell to it and Priscilla
apologized for the odor and assured me that the wine and food were great. We
each got a glass of wine and the proprietor said we could take our wine glasses
into the street and even gave us a little plate of cheese to take with us.
We
rejoined Priscilla’s friends, leaned against a random parked car in the midst
of the throng, set our plate of cheese on the hood and enjoyed the wine and
music. Later we wandered around to hear a few other bands. At one point, when
the crowd got really dense, Priscilla grabbed my hand so as not to get
separated and said “Ca va? Tu vis Paris!” (“How are you doing? [she was
referencing the face that I might not be used to the swarms of people] You’re
living Paris!” Tiphaine and I caught the last Metro stop back home—just in time
(I had made us stop for an ice cream shortly before heading home).
Friday 6/22
Friday was a packed day. One could
definitely say that I “overbooked” myself. I had a translation project due at
noon, so I finished that in the morning. Then, I ate lunch with Gina Forno, an
old Italian friend of my Aunt Berit’s father-in-law. As I’ve mentioned before,
her father-in-law, Andre, grew up in Italy and fought in the Italian Resistance
before living in Paris for a few years and then moving to the United States. Andre
knew Gina and her husband from his time in Paris.
Like Andre, Gina grew up in Italy but as
been in Paris for 68 years (she’s 89 now). Her husband has been deceased for at
least two decades. She has no children. She’s a very sweet woman. I had some trouble
finding her apartment and made a frustrating attempt to call her for
clarification on the directions, but I had trouble understanding her Italian
accent in French and she’s quite deaf, so that was an interesting call. I
finally managed to find the apartment, not far from the Gare de l’Est, where
she greeted warmly, clasping both my hands in hers and pouring me a glass of
port!
She took me to a restaurant with food
from Strasbourg not far from her apartment. I naturally was just going to get
something “simple” but she wanted me to get an entrée (appetizer), main dish
and dessert. She also ordered a carafe of white wine and a carafe of water.
Supposedly, she just got half a carafe of white wine, but it was enough for
each of us to drink about four glasses of it over the course of lunch.
For the appetizer, I ordered foie gras.
I mentioned in a previous entry that this is considered a delicacy in France,
yet it’s a very bizarre concept. For example, it’s meat (ground liver), but it
has a sweet taste. It’s even served with bread and jelly to complement it! The
reason it is sweet, as I learned that night, is because the goose is force-fed
through a funnel until its liver enlarges to several times its normal size
(sometimes it bursts). Since the liver stores carbohydrates (sugar), that is
why it tastes so sweet. Meanwhile, Gina had escargot.
Then came the main course. Gina got
sausage and “choucroute” (sauerkraut), since that is a popular dish in
Strasbourg. I got salmon and raviolis with goat cheese inside.
You wouldn’t think that we had any room
left in our stomachs, but finally, at the end came the best part: dessert. Gina
had two “boules” (scoops) of sorbet, and I had “gateaux moelleux au chocolat.”
“Moelleux” means soft, and it is related to the word “moelle” (“marrow”—I
learned this word from writing to my host mother from Rennes about my own
mother’s bone marrow transplant a few years ago—of course I didn’t know the
term and had to look it up). So, if you have a “gateaux moelleux au chocolat,”
you have chocolate cake with marrow, or soft stuff inside—warm, gooey chocolate
sauce. There was also a scoop of vanilla ice cream and raspberry and mango
sauce drizzled over it.
I got to update Gina on Andre’s family
(aunt, uncle and two cousins). I told her that “Jean” (my cousin Gian, the
Italian spelling of John) is his third year of university and studies physics
and that “Mikael” (mee-ka-ale, my cousin Michael) just graduated from high
school will be starting university this fall, my uncle “Pierre” (Peter) is a heart
surgeon in South Dakota and my aunt Berit (sorry, no French version of this
Norwegian name) volunteers with their “grande caniche noir” (large black
poodle). Gina always referred to Andre, my aunt’s father-in-law, as “Andreone.”
After lunch I had to help her up from
her seat and she hung onto my arm as we walked home. As she explained it “after
I’ve been sitting for a while I feel sort of off balance,” but I think it was
probably the several glasses of wine we had that did it! J She’s a remarkable woman. She was hanging onto me with one arm,
and used her cane with the other. She was also telling me that she can only see
out of one eye now, and was very upfront up about the fact that she has trouble
hearing. But she’s incredible mentally sharp!
We returned to her apartment for an
espresso after lunch (French people often have an espresso after lunch). After
a quick scare during which she couldn’t find her keys and thought she lost them
(fortunately she hadn’t), we entered the building. It was so sweet—in the
elevator on the way up to her apartment, she took a lock of my hair in her
hands, looked at me, nodded her head and said “Oui, vous etes belle.” (“Yes,
you’re beautiful.”) I certainly was not expecting this out of my 89-year-old
friend’s mouth. The last time I had heard anything like this was when I was
sitting on a bench outside of the Porte d’Auteuil metro stop near Roland Garros
and a guy walked up to me with a flower he had picked, handed it to me and said
“Pour ta beaute” (For your beauty.”) He didn’t ask for my number or anything
like that—just wanted to give me a flower I guess! Anyway, moving on…
Gina’s apartment has several beautiful
paintings, a glass case with a collection of china owls and a balcony with a
view of Sacre Coeur in one direction and the Eiffel tower in the other. We had
an espresso and then I left.
I didn’t stop at home for very long,
because I had a dinner date with my cousin Elisabeth and her boyfriend Jonathan
at Elisabeth’s place in Antony. We had salad and pasta with sautéed chicken and
tomatoes. Elisabeth and I each have a small notebook where we keep a word list
of new words we learn. For her, these are new words that she learns when she
reads in English, and for me, they are new words that I hear in French. Usually,
they are “argot” (slang). You see, French isn’t one language; it’s actually
three. First of all, there’s the academic French you learn in college courses
when you read literature and listen to your professor lecture about it. This is
pretty much useless for anything outside of sitting in a classroom.
Then there’s the everyday type of
vocabulary that you need to know for around the house and functioning in
everyday life, such as going to the bank, store, etc.
Finally, there’s “argot” or “langage
familier,” which is yet another language until itself. If you don’t know some
of these words, you miss out on a lot of what your peer group is saying.
Elisabeth and Jonathan helped me update my argot list. Jonathan knows the
origins of a lot of words, and he told me that one slang word, “kiffer” (= to
like) actually comes from Arabic and the culture of the “banlieu” (or Parisian
suburbs, where a lot of Arab and North African immigrants live). Another
interesting conversation was the expression “tu me gaves.” It means “You’re
wearing me out” or “I’m sick of it.” I learned that the verb “gaver” means to
force-feed. It is what you do to a goose to make the liver enlarge and get foie
gras.
Then, in addition to the French words in
argot, there are English words that French people slip into conversation. As
Tiphaine says “Ca fait tres style,” or “It’s very fashionable” to throw English
words into your conversation. For example, the other day, we were talking about
Amy Winehouse’s overdose, and in the middle of a French sentence, Tiphaine said
the word “overdose” in English. I asked how you say that in French, and she
said “Well, I’m sure that’s a French word (‘dose’ actually is the same in
French and in English)” I had to break the word apart into its components and show
her that “over” is an English word. Since there’s no single French word
describing what it means to take too many drugs, they simply say “overdose.” Of
course, ever since even junior high French class, I’ve known that there are
certain words that French people borrow in English because the concept itself
is American (“hotdog,” “hamburger,” “babysitting”). During this stay, I’ve
notice other English words that are creeping into the French language:
“planning,” “meeting,” “non-event,” “date” (in the sense of a man and a woman
going out), “business” “lobbying,” “consulting,” “cash advance,” “networking,” “strip
club,” etc.
Actually, when I go running, there’s a song on
the radio that illustrates the influence that English and Arabic have on
current spoken language in France: one of the lines is “J’espere etre the
future king, inshallah.” We have “j’espere etre” in French (“I hope to be”),
“the future king” in English and then in “inshallah” in Arabic, which I think
means something like “if God wills it.”
There’s a special sort of argot called “verlan.”
It’s “envers” (“reverse” or “opposite” spelled backwards), and there are
certain words you say backwards. For example, we have “meuf” or “woman” (the
transliteration of “femme,” or woman). Then there’s the curious example of “keuf,”
the ghetto word for “police.” The funny thing is that it’s not even the
backwards version of a French word, it’s the backwards version of what the
f-word in English sounds like to a French person: feuk=keuf=police. I know, not
a whole lot of logic here…it’s like a secret code!
I
got home at about 12:30 from Antony, and then I had a social engagement in the
United States. How did I make it to the United States so quickly, you might
ask? Through the miracle of Skype, I got to catch up with friends Anna and Tami
in the United States and hear all the news from the “Villes Jumelles” (“Twin
Cities”). By the time we finished, it was 2:00 am, and I still had to pack…I
was leaving for Zurich the next morning for the weekend!
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