Musics

I like some various musics.
Here is a list of my musics according to my moods.

There is no reason for this post other than it's my blog and I can do what I want.

For waking up:
Priscilla Ahn, "Dream"

Favorite lyric: Long walks in the dark
Through woods grown behind the park
I asked God who I'm supposed to be
The stars smiled down at me
God answered in silent reverie
I said a prayer and fell asleep


For relaxed happy mood:

I'm From Barcelona, "Treehouse"

Favorite lyric: I have built a treehouse
Nobody can see us
it's a you and me house

Camille, "Paris" (About moving from Paris to the south of France)

Favorite Lyric: Fini le ciel gris
Les matins moroses
On dit qu'à Toulouse les briques sont roses
Oh là bas, Paris, les briques sont roses

For a calm mood:
Alexi Murdoch, "Orange Sky"

Favorite Lyric: I stood beneath an orange sky
With my brother and my sister standing by
With my brother and my sister standing by
With my brother and my sister standing by

For a dancing party mood:

Cold War Kids, "Mine is Yours"

Favorite Lyric: I try to talk big but my mouth don’t move
Cuz I don’t own the sun I don’t own the moon
They only come out when they want to
They don’t care whether I promised you

For sleep:

Melody Gardot, "Les Etoiles"

Favorite Lyric: Les étoiles les étoiles
Si seulement je savais
Dites moi étoile de qui obtenez-vous la lumière

Pictures from Saturday Skiing

Skiing hasn't been too great this winter, according to everyone who lives here. Apparently there is usually MUCH more snow. As I am writing this, it is raining (instead of snowing as the forecast predicted). One of my classes it watching An Inconvenient Truth at the moment - how ironic. But I still think the skiing is pretty great. Here are some pictures from this past weekend at Contamines.
And now for parts of the mountains that get the most sun...

Tartiflette and Culture Talk

My weekdays have become pretty routine - I teach in the school or tutor everyday but Friday, a day during which I tend to sleep for long periods of time. Also during the week, I keep one leg firmly planted in each culture by watching the latest episodes of Glee, 30Rock, and (a little embarrassingly) The Bachelor the day after they air in the US. Weekends are finally beginning to feel like real weekends - pauses from the routine.

A couple weeks ago, a woman named Florence who works for the Office of Student Life (La Vie Scolaire), invited me and a couple others over for dinner this past Friday. She made tartiflette, a traditional dish in Savoie. It's delicious! The whole night was really great - Florence has two very nice children about 6 and 12 years old I'd guess, and a man friend. Also, another student life employee, Xavier, came to dinner. We talked about culture, politics, and of course food.

So many French people I have met readily admit that the French are not particularly open-minded, particularly about language. Part of that is the education system - it's just not parituclarly good at teaching English, it seems.
Example: One example of this would be that textbooks first teach middle school students the verb "to have" with the word "got" so that students learn that the appropriate way to say something is "I have got the keys" or "She's got blue eyes." I think they are taught that this is the Present tense, but it is actually the Present Perfect of "To Get", and "have" in this structure is really just a helper verb to the main verb "Get." I explained to my middle school tutoring student who just learned this that "got" is actually optional and that the main verb "have" does not need "got" with it to make it correct - in fact, she will learn in the future that that verb "to have" is a helper verb to all sentences formed in the Present Perfect, in which the principal verb could be anything.

Anyway, I understand the French perfectly well on this topic. I used to hate it when I heard people speaking Spanish in the States. But I've changed a lot since then ;)

Another point that came up was America's obsession with murder and crime, evidenced by popular shows such as CSI and Dexter, which are very popular in France. I proposed that in the debate of whether Art Reflects Life or Life Reflects Art, this would be a case of the former. Violent crime IS much more prevalent in the US. We get accustomed to reading about it (I don't remember a week when I opened the RedEye in Chicago and didn't see news about gun deaths) but the truth is about 30,000 people die each year in the US by guns, about 40% of which is homicide. So, it makes sense to me that we would have more cultural commentary -in this case, in the form of TV shows- on this particular state of our culture.

Then we talked about 9/11. Oh Lord. I was asked very seriously if I really believed it was terrorists or if I thought there was "something else" behind the acts. I remember being jolted by the movie 9/11 by Michael Moore and some of the disturbing facts it presented, but I also understand Moore to be a bit manipulative with facts, and someone who thrives on making bold and controversial commentary, so I took the movie with a grain of salt. Had I ever given serious thought to whether our own government could have a hand in the attacks? Simply, no. I responded that if I really believed our own government could be responsible for that, I couldn't live in the US. But since I also can't NOT live in the US (since all my family and friends are there), there is perhaps an element of forced belief - as in, I am forced to believe our government couldn't possibly do that. At the end of the day, I think it's conceivable that certain individual members of the government could have profited from the attacks, but I don't believe that it was a widespread conspiracy planned on a systematic level.

I am not one to shy away from heavy conversations, but even I was starting to feel the heat. Finally, the topic of conversation changed to food. I love that the French can talk about food literally for hours. It's fantastic. Crepes, honey, cheese, wine, stews, ahhh! I love it.

Anyway, then we played some games. One of them was called the "Lapin Cretin," or the Crazy Rabbit, which was a visual accuity and reflex game. I won. Then we played "War of the Lambs" the point of which was to "fence in" as many lambs of your color (black, red, blue, or yellow). I lost that won.

More chatting by the fire and we called it a night at 1am. Florence said she's going to have another dinner, when she'll make fondue. YES! Can't wait!

My favorite unedited photos of France (edited versions to come later)

This isn't my favorite photo, but I feel like it captures well the feeling of isolation I get sometimes. So when I say "I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss Chicago, etc." - this is partly why. There is also beauty in what I think is a sobering image. There is a certain freedom in those open spaces.

A very small taste of the ridiculous-awesome light show in Lyon

I am not sure if this cow and I were falling in love or about to get in a fight, but either way, we were having a pretty serious staring competition

Lunch break halfway through a legit hike in Grenoble

After a bike ride to a waterfall in Sallanches (next town over from me), we stopped to say what up to the sheep

A very emo shot outside the Louvre in the rain

An old bookshop in Paris

Skiing at Combloux-Megeve

Lake Passy, the small lake in the town where I live. That's Mont Blanc.

Annecy

I went to Annecy today for a medical visit with the Office of Immigration. So much went wrong the first part of the day...After turning off my alarm at 9am, I slept for another unplanned 2 hours. Long story short, I missed the last train that would have made it to Annecy in time, which meant I had to take my car. Gas is really expensive and so are tolls, so it's quite a bit more to take a car alone than to take the train, especially since I am under 25 and I have a youth reduction card for the train system. Anyway, I ended up taking the non-toll road through some windy roads and ended up in Annecy with plenty of time to spare. I didn't know where to park and was about to pay for hourly parking when I asked a man about parking (it pays to ask questions!) and found a free lot not too far away. So, I managed to find my way to the Immigration Office, depsite the POS map they sent, which was mislabeled. But since apparently I'm too cool to read official documents from the Immigration Office, I failed to note that I had to get chest X-Rays before I showed up at the Immigration Office. Luckily, I was 30 minutes early, the x-ray place was only a ten minute walk, and they fit me right in. The whole thing ended up taking about 2 hours. I felt a little weird about the whole thing - I had to get undressed a couple times, which is always weird, but even more strange when you're not really sure what people are saying to you. I also felt a little bit like a dog getting a collar put on. I know all this procedure is neccesary for me to get a social security card so France can give me free medical care and whatnot :) but I did feel a little owned by the state. Oh well.

After receiving my special visa, I walked around Annecy, which boasts a nice lake with a beautiful view of the mountains, and lots of cute rowboats (Can you tell I miss the water?). There are tons of tea, coffee, chocolate, and pastry shops, all of which are overwhelmingly alluring. I stopped more than once just to stare at baked goods and other treats. I ended up buying a few caramel and salted butter-filled chocolates. They were heavenly. I also saw a beer specialty shop which I didn't stop in because I was still trying to figure out the medical stuff, but I plan to head back there some time. There are also lots of clothing shops, all of which are having their final days of "soldes" or sales. I was very tempted to buy an extremely French looking white silk shirt, but in better judgment decided against it.

It was funny how a few hours in the "city" wore me out - I use quotes b/c Annecy isn't really a city like Chicago is a city, but it's 100x different from where I live normally. I had a thought today that I must have been a farmer in another life. Being in the country really doesn't bother me, and I was happy to return to it at the end of the day. Tomorrow I have a day of relaxing (so different from my usual schedule) before a couple tutoring sessions in the evening, plus a couple more on Saturday morning.

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So this post will not have a theme really; it's a general life update. I am becoming more and more French everyday. I can go to the grocery store and not have a panic attack about what to buy. I could even tell you about a lot of the different foods (see bottom of blog for some of that). I have started to think that 12 ounces is a lot for any beverage. I think it's rude when people don't say hello and goodbye, even when you don't know them. And the guilt complex I had about not working very much is pretty much completely worn off - oh, class at 9am is canceled? Okay, I'm going back to bed. I'm really curious as to what my reaction will be coming back to the US after five months here!

This past weekend I saw the World Ski Championship in a town called Les Houches, which is about 20 minutes away. I went with another professor (a young history prof) and her boyfriend, both of whom are really nice and both speak English really well. They spoke in English most of the time and I spoke in French. It was good practice for both us. It was much like any other sporting even - fans, flags, cheering, a giant TV, announcers, but a little less organized since there wasn't much planned seating. So we stood for an hour and a half to watch the Slolam. It was cold, but fun to watch. Some guy from Croatia won.

This week is a short week for me - I have Thursday and Friday off. I am going to Annecy tomorrow for my medical visit at the immigration office. On Saturday, I am thinking about going to Lyon to see a soccer match, but it's a long hike over there, so we'll see.

Traveling is a bit more difficult now that I have a handful of tutoring students. I tutor a highschool freshman on Wednesdays, and he is very quiet. They have a lovely cat who was weary of me at first, but now is very friendly. I was tutoring a boy in middle school, but his mom fired me because the kid wasn't motivated - I guess I was going too slow? Middle school is a weird time - I don't know how to interact with humans that age. Anyway, my favorite student is a woman who sells office furniture, and she wants to work in Switzerland. Then there are the three brothers waaaay up in the mountains with multiple cats - they're an interesting lot. One of them wants to move to Australia, hence the lessons. He's a tatoo artist.

There are no big adventures lately, but I am enjoying the slow pace of life most of the time. And I am definitely not missing the Thundersnow or whatever we're calling it!