SWATSNAPSHOT

Swatties at Restaurant Week

2012-01-30T23:04:00.000+01:00

Philadelphia's Restaurant Week is a much-anticipated event that occurs twice a year in the city. With hundreds of participating restaurants to choose from, lots of Swarthmore students make reservations weeks in advance and go out with friends on the weekend or even on a *gasp* school night to get a great three-course meal for $35 at some of the best places in town -- restaurants with normal menus that would easily add up to twice that price. It's perfect for people on a "college budget" like my friends and me.

So Max, Sara, Emily, Danny, Katherine, Alex and I went out last weekend to a place called Valanni that specializes in Mediterranean cuisine and tapas. It's a small and chic place right in Center City, not far from the Kimmel Center and Broad Street.

While we totally jumped on the occasion of a night out in the city to dress up -- button-ups, blazers, heels, dresses -- we never fully doffed what I guess you could call our Swarthmore thinking caps... Sorry, that was lame. But what I meant was that the skills of close reading and critical problem solving, which we are supposedly honing to perfection at this school, definitely came in handy at Valanni. As it so happened, our waiter was either really confused or just incompetent and gave us complete misinformation regarding the Restaurant Week menu and what was available to order. But rather than being distracted by the excitement of being out at a fancy restaurant, we quickly noticed that there was a discrepancy in prices and figured out both the problem (with the two-course offering the waiter suggested, ordering a la carte would actually be cheaper than the Restaurant Week "deal") and a possible solution (it should have been a three-course meal), and voilà! We got our meal and our deal and had a fantastic time. (I wish I had taken photos!)

This was the second- and probably last for a while- time I got to experience Restaurant Week in Philly, and both times it's been excellent. I highly recommend taking advantage of it while you're still a student here (or if you're ever in Philly, really).

10:57am, McCabe Library

2012-01-25T17:06:00.001+01:00

There is a stack of papers about one foot high sitting on top of one of the two new printers in McCabe, and it's getting taller. Every few seconds, Miriam grabs a few sheets that the gray monster noisily spits out and adds them with a smirk to the top of the pile.

As she and some other students gather around the printer to laugh, I ask, "What's going on?"

"Oh," says Kristen, "the printer's just doing what it does best."

"What?"

"Freaking out."

Miriam walks over to the new printer's fancy-looking control menu and jabs at "STOP" repeatedly.

"Oh no, is it really?" I ask. "I have to print out my reading! What, did someone accidentally print out a hundred copies of their paper?"

"Well, no, all these pages are blank," Miriam says.

"The printer is printing blank pages?"

"Yeah," she laughs, adding, "I like to do my thousand pages of reading in invisible ink."

Nicholas Kristof and the Morality of Banking

2012-01-23T22:48:00.001+01:00

Last fall, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof visited campus to give a talk about social justice and activism, and everyone attended. Well, not everyone. I didn't go, for one. I think I had class. But our largest lecture hall was packed, and lots of people were talking about his words in the days and weeks to follow. There was also lots of campus news coverage of the event.

Although I didn't attend, from what I heard and read, it seemed as if the general reaction to Kristof's "call to action" was, "Oh... 'Get Up', 'Do Your Part', 'Save The World', okay yeah we've heard all of this before." Not that we're jaded or indifferent to the very real need to go out and Make A Difference. Of course not. But perhaps we were hoping for something a little less sweeping and more practical. So, we (and by we I mean the students who were in attendance at the lecture) asked questions that addressed the very practicalities that were on our minds.

One of these questions in particular has apparently provoked Kristof himself to think more about a certain professional field that undoubtedly changes the world every day, or at least every financial quarter: banking. The opening line to a recent column reads: "When I spoke at Swarthmore College recently, I was startled by one question: Is it immoral for students to seek banking jobs?"

And the student body's twofold response to this tiny shoutout is a little self-congratulatory pat on the back with one hand and a tongue-in-cheek facepalm with the other: "Oh, how Swattie."

But I, for one, am glad that specific questions such as that one, as stereotypically radical as it is, are being asked. It shows that the mindset of an active, justice-minded Swarthmore student is not actually wholly preoccupied with ideals, hypotheticals, and theory. Someone took the call to promote financial justice seriously, measured it against his own (maybe pre-professional) interest in economics and then came face-to-face with a bit of a moral quandary. And a question like his deserves a straight answer.

Kristof's reply, then, was that it isn't immoral to go into banking or even to make millions in private enterprises... as long as you don't get sucked into the corporate greed that has given capitalism a bad name today. "Liberals should also be wary of self-selecting out of certain occupations," he argues with an analogy referencing military and governmental abuses during the seventies. "We would have been better off if more Swarthmore idealists had become generals and C.I.A. officers - and we may be better off if some idealists become bankers as well."

Sounds reasonable to me. It's my hope that Swatties everywhere are bringing a refined and fired-up sense of justice and service wherever they go, regardless of their chosen field.

Kristof's article can be found here.

How to save money on books: Don't buy them!

2012-01-19T22:26:00.001+01:00

I could have spent over $200 on the books and required texts for two of my reading-heavy courses this semester, but I'm choosing instead to spend nothing!

A lot of students buy and sell books on the cheap in exchanges with other students. Many others go to Amazon, where books can almost always be found for less than what they're priced at the college bookstore.

I, fortunately, don't feel that I need to own a book in order to use it successfully for a course. Generally, I prefer to take notes on separate paper or on my computer instead of annotating them directly. So I find books in an online format and check them out from libraries or just read them on reserve (books on reserve are not allowed to be checked out, but I can read them in the library, which I don't mind because I spend so much time in there already). Google books has been useful in the past, but Tripod, the website for the libraries of the Tri-College Consortium (Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr), has recently proved to be an excellent resource.

Sometimes, I request a rare article via the Inter-Library Loan and it takes a few days or even weeks to arrive. But for more common books, such as the eight or so required for my Religion seminar on Holy War, Martyrdom, and Suicide, I have located them all in the Tri-Co libraries. Yesterday morning, I made library loan requests for six books from Haverford and Bryn Mawr, and to my pleasant surprise, all six of them had arrived in McCabe by 4:30 that afternoon. And I can keep them all for the entire semester!

Haha, am I weird to think that this is really cool? I'm definitely nerdy enough to be made so happy by the arrival of books for me to read. But maybe the speed and efficiency of ILL isn't supposed to be that surprising. Still, I tip my hat to librarians and library staff for their helpfulness.

Taking advantage of library resources is a great way to save money on books. As was the case last semester, any books that I read for a class that I particularly enjoyed or decided would be useful to own I simply bought for myself later, but everything else went back to the library shelves when I was done.

(The college bookstore has implemented a system that is similar to this: they now allow students to rent textbooks for a semester. This costs money, albeit much less than the purchase price, and the renter is allowed to write in the books, but in the end the book is returned and another student can use it in the future.)

P.S. Woohoo! I just got an email from McCabe: The Hunger Games, which I requested earlier this week, is now available. Shucks, library, you've done it again!

[edit] LOOK AT THIS WEBSITE: ABEBOOKS!

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-19T02:15:00.000+01:00

Dear [Your congressperson's name here!],

As your constituent, I am writing to state my opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). While online piracy and copyright infringement are a real issue, SOPA and PIPA are not the best solution, as they are essentially vehicles for the suppression of free speech and free press via the Internet. There are other ways to treat the problem of online piracy without succumbing to the demands of powerful corporations and big money.

Respectfully,
[Your name here!]

Contact your congresspersons in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

- - -

I'm impressed by the extent to which activists have rallied up support for- or, rather, opposition to- the two bills in Congress right now. I meant to say "support" for the cause of attacking the bills for their slippery-slope potential to lead to widespread and dangerous Internet censorship. Today, several major websites such as Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia (oh no!) underwent a "blackout" that restricted use of their services in a way that reflected the hypothetical future of a government-policed Internet. If Facebook had pulled the blackout card as well, as was rumored, I'm sure the world would have thrown a collective e-fit.

Although I quickly found out how to bypass Wikipedia's blackout (press 'Esc' while a page is loading), I was sufficiently galvanized to write the above letter to three of my congresspersons. I strongly encourage you to do so, too! Any user of the Internet today, especially we students, should be well aware of the importance of a free and open Internet. With regard to piracy, the editor of Wired put it well: The method proposed by the bill "obfuscates the fact that piracy is, in the long run, an unavoidable cost of doing business, one that should be bearable provided the fundamentals of the business (say, customer satisfaction) are sound."

Most importantly, the protests have been effective, even to the point that one of the co-sponsors of the bill has reconsidered his support for it. This is great! Three cheers for the Internet, for activism, and maybe even for hacktivism (although I'm surprised that Anonymous or Lulzsec didn't do anything dramatic for the cause).

P.S. The Phoenix, Swarthmore's print newspaper, published an editorial on SOPA and PIPA today.

Last Semester, here we go...

2012-01-15T01:26:00.000+01:00

After a relatively inert four weeks of break, I'm ready to go back to Swarthmore. No, I'm not necessarily ready to begin a new slew of classes and officially kick off the uphill battle that is Honors, but at least it'll be nice to be in my dorm again and to see familiar faces.

As usual, this semester is probably going to be busier than the last, as I keep adding on too many more activities than I'd like to drop. Namely, in my final few months at Swarthmore, I'd like to audition for a musical and volunteer at the Student-Run Emergency Housing Unit Project, a homeless shelter run by a consortium of students from Swarthmore, Villanova, and UPenn. I'll try to find time for those, in addition to a cappella rehearsals, taiko rehearsals, meetings and activities with SCF, and working in the Endangered Languages Lab. Fortunately, I've already decided to turn the knob down on academic intensity by taking most of my classes CR/NC (Credit Received versus No Credit), more commonly known as Pass/Fail.

It's widely known that all first-semester freshmen at Swarthmore are automatically signed up for all of their classes Pass/Fail, which allows them to explore classes they might be wary about due to fears of faring poorly. But after the fall semester of freshman year, we get four additional Pass/Fail "passes" to use throughout the remaining seven semesters.

I've used one so far, for Advanced Chinese (my GPA needed it). A lot of my friends haven't used any of theirs yet. So why shouldn't we splurge, on our last chance to do so, and sign up for less stress this time around? If I know myself, knowing that I'll only get a "shadow grade" for two or three classes this semester won't result in me actually slacking off, but if I worry less about my work, I'll have more time for other things. And in any case, writing three Honors papers in preparation for Honors Exams in the spring is going to eat up all my spare time, so I'll need as much slack from other departments as possible.

Well, here's to a good semester. I'll probably fill the next couple of months with lots of photos and nostalgic posts, as the sand in the hourglass runs down. Or, I might write a series of panicked posts about my future, which is still a completely blank slate. It all begins... to end... tomorrow!

The year is over and the thesis is done!

2012-01-01T02:46:00.000+01:00

Finally!

I emailed the final final draft of my thesis to my professor just now. At last, on the last day of the year. Fitting, I guess? Well, it took me long enough. The thing's only forty-ish pages, nothing too impressive, but I'm not ashamed of it and am quite glad that I'm done. I confess that it hasn't been the most interesting or amusing experience, doing all that research, running all those tests, and drinking all that coffee. (Most of my thesis was written between the hours of midnight and five in the morning before several big deadlines... I usually never drink coffee. Man.)

Not gonna lie, the bad habit of procrastination even followed me home for the holidays. After my thesis defense, during which I was to present my project to two of my professors and come up with excuses when they asked why I forgot X or didn't explain Y, I had until the end of the year to make their suggested revisions, re-run some tests, and fix some typos. And the process of revising had me spend (the past) three days sitting at home in my bathrobe, alternating between editing my thesis, watching lots of WongFu videos, reading articles on TIME.com, wasting my life on Facebook, and semi-consciously snacking my way through half our pantry. I hardly left my house. It was slow going.

But, but! I have now submitted the final, polished work, the one that will be published on the department website. Cue big sigh of relief. I asked my dad to read my final draft but then realized that forty-two pages of linguistic terminology might not be very interesting or even intelligible to him. I then asked my parents how long their theses were when they wrote them. Without skipping a beat, my mom went into the computer room and pulled out a book: the published hardcover copy of her Ph.D. thesis at UNC Chapel Hill.

A Modified Score Test for Highly Stratified Survival Data in Randomized Clinical Trials. I was amazed that it even existed, and all the more so that it was just sitting on a shelf a few yards behind me. The thing is an astounding 180 pages. Also, one of the acknowledgments reads: "I deeply appreciate the unending love, support and encouragement from my parents, especially my mother. Without her support and sacrifice, this thesis would not have been completed. It is needless to mention how much I appreciate my husband and two sons for their support and love which makes all the efforts in this work worthwhile." I am my mother's third son. Her thesis was published only a few months before I was born!

My father's Ph.D. thesis was then also unearthed. It was published two years before my mother's, at UPenn: Detection of N-ras Protein and a Crossreactive Intermediate Filament-Associated Protein with Monoclonal Antibodies Made Against a Synthetic Peptide. Uh, yeah, I have no idea, either. My parents must be smart people.

From bottom to top: my mother's Ph.D. thesis, my father's Ph.D. thesis, and my undergraduate thesis. Look at how thin and measly mine is compared to theirs... I have a long way to go in the world of academia! (Unrelated: we're having hot pot (火鍋) for New Year's Eve dinner- hooray!)

So... year is over and thesis is done. Awesome. Now I can spend the last two weeks of break planning a ski trip, teaching myself Russian, playing Settlers of Catan, and re-reading the Adventures of Tintin series that I was hooked on as a kid (the recent Spielberg and Jackson film version is great, by the way), while semi-consciously snacking my way through the other half of our pantry.

And next semester, I get to sit back and gloat while all my peers who have spring semester theses or year-long theses freak out once every few weeks before their deadlines! That is, if I'm not buried too deep in my Honors preparations (and/or too busy crying in the shower because I can't find a job) to pay them any attention.

Happy New Year, everyone! I might make resolutions. We shall see.

On Marriage

2011-12-20T08:41:00.000+01:00

This past summer, one of my two older brothers got married! I was a groomsman in the ceremony, and I remember watching Dan and Sarah on their special day and feeling very conscious of how young I am. Dan is four years older than me, but seeing him exchange vows and rings and walk down the aisle with his new wife suddenly launched him, in my mind, completely out of the ambiguous waters of "twenty-something" and into permanent "adulthood". Of course, Dan is largely the same person now that he ever was, but his being married had a profound effect on the way I view myself: still in school, no future plans, nowhere near the point of settling down with someone for life... essentially, it seemed, still a child.

Dan & Sarah on their wedding day

And then, several weeks ago, my other older brother Tim proposed to his longtime girlfriend. When I heard the big announcement, I was overjoyed for them, but I also felt my stomach drop: Dude, my brothers are growing up way too fast. Well- maybe not "growing up" per se, but just... moving along in life. I view marriage as a huge milestone in one's life, and at that point, I felt so very far away from it myself. I just couldn't begin to fathom being, five years from now, at the same latitude and longitude as them, so to speak.

Tim & Stephanie

But my worldview was substantially changed this past weekend, when I attended the wedding of Elizabeth Keck and Anthony Jackson Lambert. Liz is a good friend of mine from Swarthmore; we worked together as student leaders of the Swarthmore Christian Fellowship. I first heard back in September that she was engaged to a boy she met back in her native San Diego, and I was absolutely shocked. Even more incredible was that the wedding was to be held in December- only a few months away. It was so hard to believe that this was real and that this was happening!

Fast-forward to December 17th, 2011. Liz's Swattie friends who were able to make it to the wedding, which took place literally on the last day of this semester's finals period, all agreed that it was surreal to see our friend in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle of a cute little church in El Cajon, California. But none of us could deny that Liz was far happier and enthused about life on that day than any of us have ever seen her before. Contrary to the fickle weather reports that predicted rain, the day was beautiful, and Liz was practically glowing in the light of the early afternoon sun.

Liz and AJ on their wedding day

Watching Liz get married was different from watching my own brother get married. Maybe it's because she is a year younger than me, a peer and a member of my college generation rather than one or two earlier. Or maybe it's because I was purely a spectator at this wedding rather than an official participant and thus, despite our close friendship, I could observe her in a more detached manner. What I saw was that Liz looked and sounded gorgeous and completely grown up. Not that she was in any way juvenile when she was at school, but the way she composed herself all day was remarkably mature in every way, save for occasional bouts of sheer giddiness; after all, she'd just gotten married! The crowning moment of this was during the ceremony, when she took some time on stage to shine the spotlight not on herself but on God and shared about how finally leaving her adolescent relationship woes to God was in fact what led her straight to her husband, and about how she and her husband and God are all in a beautiful spiritual relationship with each other. As Kyle and Maisie, fellow Swatties, and I reflected on this later in the evening, we came to the conclusion that whereas prior to the wedding, we had always imagined a wedding as a fun and joyous occasion for someone older (and, inherent in that supposition, for someone else), upon watching one of our own get married, it became suddenly and strikingly clear that folks our age can and do get happily hitched! Witnessing the milestone our friend had crossed had made us all not acutely aware of our youth, but rather a little bit older and maturer ourselves.

Swatties in Socal (photo courtesy Shirley Ramirez)

I don't know if this was unique to us, as Swatties who are for years so carefully ensconced in the Bubble, or if growing up in increments of epiphanies happens regularly to everyone, but I suspect the latter. Hey, you guys? It's okay that we're growing up. Seriously. Being young is great, but so is being old. Truth is, LIFE itself is great, and we should cherish every part of it, as long as we maintain a balance between focusing on the steps we take and celebrating those that others take.

In any case, I'm very happy for Liz and AJ, and I wish them both the very best in their new life together. I don't know how often I'll see either of them in the future, as Liz is not planning to come back to finish her degree at Swarthmore. But once a Swattie, always a Swattie, yes? There was no doubt to us, at least, that Mrs. Liz Lambert was still the same crazy, smart, loving, inspirational, big-haired Liz Keck that we had known, and nothing, not even married life, is likely to change that.

Congratulations are also in order for both of my brothers and their spouse/fiancée. All the old family friends are, of course, expecting that I'll be next and wondering when I'll start to show even the slightest interest in girls, but let's be honest: marriage is a long way off for me. Nevertheless, I'm not at all bothered about it, and I don't mind that my life is turning out quite different from either of my brothers'. What I've learned is that everyone grows at their own pace, and whom I'm with can alter how I perceive yourself (and my age), but I'll still always be me, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

P.S. San Diego's landscape is beautiful: green mountains, huge valleys, beaches in December, and gorgeous sunsets over an ocean horizon every evening! I like California even more now.
P.P.S. Bowties are cool. Thanks, H&M- you haven't failed me yet!

Hangukmal?

2011-12-14T00:40:00.001+01:00

Kind of random but you said that you took some Korean classes at school but I thought Swarthmore didn't offer Korean classes! (just curious because I was thinking about learning too!)

Hi! Sorry, I haven't checked this thing (that is, my formspring- see below!) in four weeks, apparently. Anyway, yes, I took Korean language classes, but they weren't at Swarthmore. I took them at UPenn, which is a 20-minute train ride away from campus. Thanks to the Tri-Co Consortium and the Quaker Consortium, any Swat student can take classes (for free!) at Haverford, Bryn Mawr, or the University of Pennsylvania. I took advantage of this my sophomore year because 1) I wanted to learn a bit of Korean and 2) I knew I'd probably not have enough time to make the trek off campus several times a week as an upperclassman. True enough, my schedule was so packed that even going off campus twice a week was too much, so after one semester, when UPenn's Korean department decided to change the course times to four times a week instead of two times, I decided not to continue. A lot of students have the time (or make the time) to take classes at other schools, though! It's a great option for some people who maybe can't find the classes that fit their academic program at Swat (UPenn offers 1039510935 classes, of course) or want to get out of the bubble a few times a week.

Ask me anything (about Swarthmore or not)!

Taiko! & the Swat Bucket List

2011-12-12T04:13:00.001+01:00

Swarthmore's taiko drumming class is one of those random opportunities that Swat offers that everyone should try at least once, just because it's such a unique experience and it's tons of fun. Other can't-miss-'em opportunities include killing orcs and goblins with foam swords at the Pterodactyl hunt, showing some semblance of school spirit by painting yourself red at a men's soccer home game against Haverford, screaming for five minutes with half of the school at midnight before finals begin at the Midnight Breakfast, and pretending to be in Craig Williamson's lecture course on Tolkien, Pullman, & Their Literary Roots in order to feel validated about your nerdiness.

I have performed 50% of the above-mentioned tasks, and as a Senior about to face his last semester at Swarthmore, I think it's about time I started looking at that "bucket list" on the Swarthmore website: "75 Ways to be a Swattie Before You Graduate". Okay, this list was published in 2005, but surprisingly, there's still a lot of cool and relevant stuff to do on it. The classics: Primal Scream (#40), Crum Regatta (#21), Jamboree (#64), hugging Phineas the Phoenix (#29)... and lots of nerdy things like reading Foucault (#20) and using the word "heteronormative" (#7) in a casual conversation.

On my personal bucket list for this year was taking Taiko for a semester. I watched a taiko performance for the first time when I was a freshman, and I've been totally enamored ever since. We met once a week for rehearsals, and although at times it was frustrating (yeah, Kim admitted to us that sometimes he just made up choreography on the spot.... awesome), for the most part, I was very excited every Thursday before, during, and after those magical three hours of hitting giant drums as hard as I could. And in the end, after the sweat and tears (no blood, thankfully, but some splinters from the old wooden bachi), the piece we presented to the whole community at the annual Fall Student Dance Concert was amazing! You can watch the video below.

Video courtesy of the Lang Performing Arts Center and the Swarthmore College Dance Department.

I just wanted to share this fantastic experience with you. I hope that you enjoy it, and that if you are a student or prospective student, that you try taiko for yourself sometime! Anyone can take any of the performance dance classes at Swarthmore- no experience necessary!

This semester's so close to being over! No time in the next week to play ice hockey with Motherpuckers (#36), visit the Crum Creek at night (#72), and get locked inside a library after closing time (#8). Oh, wait- actually...

Sharplifting

2011-12-08T20:03:00.001+01:00

I'm sitting in Sharples (pronounced ['ʃɑɹ.pl̩z]) with my laptop, pretending to work on important things (as I'm sure the four other people within a 30-foot radius of me who also have their computers out are, too). Finals begin tomorrow, and stress levels are peaking. But our dining hall in the mid-afternoon is actually a very peaceful place to study or just chat. After 1:00pm, the dining rooms are mostly empty, and on a sunny day, it's bright and airy and much better, in my opinion and experience, than McCabe. Plus, McCabe may bring out the coffee and Rice Krispies Treats at 10:00pm, but Sharples' kitchen is open continuously from noon until 7pm, so I can work and be fed as much as I please. Ah, the perks of being in college.

But of course, there are other places to work besides the dining hall, and very few of them have unlimited cereal and ice cream and coffee. What's a hungry student to do? Well, it's simple: Sharplifting.

I first heard this newly-coined Swattie vocabulary word yesterday, and wow- it's perfect. Sharplifting is the practice of taking food out of the dining hall, in varying degrees of discreetness, so that you can snack on it later. Technically, Sharplifting is not allowed; remember, ONLY TWO PIECES OF FRUIT, and, STUDENTS ARE REMINDED TO RETURN ALL "BORROWED" SILVERWARE, etc. But I take an orange or a banana every so often for the next day's breakfast, and some people are more bold: I've seen Nalgene bottles filled with milk, toasted sandwiches wrapped in napkins, and increasingly large Tupperware containers filled to the top with Lucky Charms. I mean, seriously, when your favorite breakfast marshmallows only appear in the rotation once ever two weeks, how can you not stock up? Yes, Tupperware is a college student's best friend.

In the winter when it snows (dude, when is it going to snow? I'm getting impatient!), the most egregious - and arguably the most creative - forms of Sharplifting occur, and this is with the famous gray dining hall trays. Already famed for their double role as food- and drink-transporter and blank canvas for clever Swatties with Sharpies, the Sharples trays temporarily take on a third identity as Makeshift Sleds for the hills by Clothier and McCabe. And trays, which cannot easily be hidden in a backpack, find their ways out of the ski lodge in surprising ways which I don't feel I should make public... at least not for the time being.

I sincerely hope that it snows at least once before the semester ends. For me, the countdown is: 2 days until the Statistics final exam, six days until the Hebrew project is due, one week until the Religion Senior Colloquium final paper is due, and then... time to pack and fly home! So, weather gods, work your magic and send us some snowballable, sleddable snow!

Have you ever Sharplifted?

Photo update!

2011-11-27T17:40:00.001+01:00

A lot has been happening- photos to prove it!

My favorite band in the universe, Tim Be Told, came to perform at Swarthmore as part of The Stand, an event to raise funds and awareness to combat poverty through micro-finance. It was awesome. Let me say it again: it was awesome.

My a cappella group, Essence of Soul, gave a fall concert! This is me singing. I look like I have stomach pains. Videos of some of our songs here! (Photo by Kat Clark '12)

Friends of Taiwan brought Dr. Helen Siu from Yale to speak about protest movements in Hong Kong (on a not-unrelated note, Swarthmore held a "General Assembly" modeled after OWS practices at our dining hall the other day.

A little light painting with my hallmates! Good ~~way to procrastinate~~ study break.

Swarthmore Christian Fellowship went on its annual fall retreat! We had tons of fun, we learned a lot about service and self-sacrifice, and we didn't sleep very much. :) (Photo by Erin)

Another a cappella concert! This time it's Grapevine, who are very talented and purple.

Last last Saturday, the Swarthmore jazz ensemble held a concert in Upper Tarble, doubling as an open dance with for the Swing Club! I must say, this was a spectacular idea, as it gave the jazz ensemble a huge, lively audience (you can see white-haired heads in the audience as well as younger dancers) and the Swing Club a rare chance to have amazing live music at a dance!

Another photo from the Jazz dance, which I am posting mainly because of Allison (far left in purple).

Serendipity

2011-11-12T05:39:00.001+01:00

At 2:45pm today, I came out of my thesis advising meeting with Professor Sanders, shaken but determined to crank out those fifteen pages required by Tuesday (somehow). At 3pm, I would have an extra rehearsal with my a cappella group, Essence of Soul, because our fall concert is tomorrow and we needed to make sure we're absolutely prepared.

In those fifteen minutes, however, there were two other things I had to do: the first was to pick up a "prize" from the Study Abroad Office, because apparently a photo I submitted to their semesterly photo contest won. I don't even know which photo it was, and I can't remember all the ones I submitted. But I got an email earlier this week that requested my presence at the office to pick up a prize, and didn't have time until now. But I also had to run to the bookstore to pick up a copy of Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice (Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, but thank goodness it's in translation), which I have to read and write a seminar paper on by Monday afternoon. Fifteen minutes, and both the office and the bookstore would have closed by the time I got out of rehearsal.

Priority-wise, the bookstore was much more important a destination. But it'd been a rough morning- thesis, thesis, somewhat-unintentionally fall asleep at my desk, thesis- so I opted to quickly drop by the Study Abroad Office. My reasoning ran along the lines of, "I'm sad and stressed out, so perhaps a prize will make me less sad and stressed out."

To my surprise, the "prize" turned out to be a $10 gift card for the college bookstore.

I promptly skipped over to the bookstore and spent it on one-third of the book I had to get for class. (Yes, it was $30. Unbelievable. Come on, bookstore.) And then I ran to rehearsal. And I wasn't late! Serendipity. I like how things sometimes just click perfectly into place.

This weekend, I have rehearsal, a leadership workshop, another rehearsal, a show to perform at and another show to attend, an important meeting, a job shift, and another important meeting, and in between all of that I am going to read this book, write a paper, finish the second draft of my thesis, study for my statistics midterm, and also set aside some time on Sunday to take a proper Sabbath. It's going to be great. Let's hope for some serendipity? Or maybe just grace.

加油!

Snow Surprise

2011-10-31T04:21:00.000+01:00

Can you believe that we went from this...

To this...

... in a matter of weeks? Granted, this "Snowtober" business was a freak event, Nature's way of telling us that our plans to wear next to nothing on the night of the Halloween dance (the day it snowed) are silly and that we should all be wearing rainbow scarves and hats with animal ears on them instead. So the brief and thunderous admonishing lasted only a short while, at least in the Philly area, and by now our mere inch and a half of snow has thoroughly melted. Snow's over, everyone: now back to work!

Happy Halloween!

21 on the 21st!

2011-10-21T18:08:00.002+02:00

That's all I wanted to say, really.Fun stuff has been in the works over the past few weeks- posts and photos coming soon!

10:57am, outside Trotter 103

2011-10-05T07:31:00.003+02:00

I'm waiting just outside the door, somewhat anxious. The laughter coming from inside the room is a bit muted, but still convivial. It doesn't sound like the guy before me is anywhere close to wrapping up his interview, and I've been waiting for some time now. As I loosen my tie, I wonder if I've perhaps dressed too formally for the occasion. It's just the Fulbright, I think. Everyone gets an interview, everyone passes, it's no big deal. I continue to stare at the door.

Suddenly, I hear the door to the stairwell on my right open, and an EVS technician slowly enters the hallway. I focus on the door directly in front of me and don't really notice him until he comes up beside me and also looks at the door, behind which people are still laughing. A piece of paper neatly taped to it says: Room Reserved For Fulbright Interviews.

"What're they doing in there?" he asks.

"They're just holding interviews. For the Fulbright Scholarship."

"Is that for like when you're done here, what you're gonna do after?"

"Yeah..."

Without another word, the technician in his blue uniform turns and plods down to the other end of the hall. I watch his short receding figure, half-expecting him to come back and say more, but he turns a corner and leaves.

8:31pm, Pearson Seminar Room

2011-09-21T07:39:00.001+02:00

"All right, time for break!"

"Yay, break!"

"Who brought the food?"

"..."

"Did anyone bring food?"

"..."

Ah, that unforgettable awkward moment when, after ninety minutes of a discussion of William James' dichotomy between the healthy mind and the sick soul, your senior seminar takes a half-time break, only to discover that whoever signed up to bring the snacks this week has blithely forgotten to do so. That pause when you all look at each other for a bit too long, and then release in a collective sigh. A quick peek into the seminar room fridge reveals several jars of salsa, a cupcake from last week, and a bottle of beer. Oh well...

- - -

Please forgive the lack of posts recently. I have been busier than ever since school started, hitting the road running (almost literally, since I began a routine morning jog in addition to classes, seminars, rehearsals, and meetings). It was the unexpected things that really swamped me: a sooner-than-I-thought deadline for research and travel fellowships (such as the Watson and the Fulbright: start early, kids!), a missing credit that I had to rearrange my schedule in order to make up, the spazzing out of my laptop, and lots more responsibility than I had envisioned with SCF in the first few weeks. So, now I'm halfway through my fourth week of Senior year and I'm just realizing that wow, I haven't even had any fun yet. I've stayed in to work or catch up every single weekend so far. That's depressing. No time to post, either, or even to take photos. But I'm hoping that will change soon! There are lots of exciting things to write about regarding Senior year. You'll see.

- - -

So my peers and I decided to get our calorie fix at the Kohlberg Coffee Bar (open late!), in lieu of the the seminar break snacks that Godot signed up to bring. Unfortunately, we left behind one of the nine, who had run to print out her response paper when the rest of us left, and then came back to a completely empty room- even our professor and the guest professor were gone. And I'm sorry to admit that I'm laughing as I type this, but her first thought was that we had all been raptured (Left Behind-style), and, having no idea what to do, she decided to just sit down outside the seminar room and wait until there was substantial evidence that we had not all disappeared into thin air/heaven without her. And we were just chilling at the coffee bar a few buildings down the path for almost twenty minutes before we noticed she wasn't with us and wondered if maybe she had gone off alone in order to meditate or perhaps attempt to be possessed by a l'wah. It was, all in all, a rather humorous situation.

I'm trying to enjoy these brief moments of levity because they've become rather few and far between. My greater concern at the moment is not that I won't get all my work done (because a Swattie always gets their work done, in some way, shape, or form), but that in all my over-scheduled busyness, I will lapse into autopilot and miss everything outside of my myopic scope of things To Do.

Thesis

2011-09-03T07:33:00.004+02:00

A telltale sign of any college Senior is a carrel, or desk, in one of the libraries where they will spend many a late night tearing their hair out to finish the ninety-ninth page before the totally-snuck-up-on-you deadline.

I don't have a carrel yet, but today marked a Senior milestone in that I have officially started working on my thesis: all of the majors in the graduating class met with each other and with our thesis advisers for the first time this afternoon. Linguistics at Swarthmore is unique in that its department spans the Tri-College Consortium. So, of about two dozen Seniors in the room, roughly a third were from Swarthmore, a third from Bryn Mawr, and a third from Haverford. I recognized some familiar faces from some classes I've taken with Tri-Co students.

Although it was daunting to look down the long stretch of road that will somehow lead to what is supposed to be my magnum opus, the culmination of my college education (and also to a diploma), I was at least reassured by the fact that all of us Seniors will be trudging down it together. And for the handful of Seniors who stuck around to go over the special instructions for Honors exams next spring (which scared me, I'll admit), well, it will be a particularly dark and dangerous road, but by no means a lonely one.

As for the magnitude of this particular opus, one student asked the inevitable question: "How many pages is a Linguistics thesis?"

Professor Dinkin, with his characteristic dry and quirky humor, replied with what one of his old professors once told him: "Anything from two hundred pages for the dangerously insane, to the back of a napkin for the dangerously insane. So... somewhere in between those!"

預備...去!

Hello Hurricane

2011-08-28T03:52:00.004+02:00

Has anyone seen Irene?

The power in our dorm just went out!

It's raining hard.

That's all- more updates soon!

[9:53pm] Power was restored. As soon as I finished typing, almost. That was quick!

[9:55pm] Power's out again! Haha!

[9:55pm] Power's back. If this is going to turn into a pattern tonight, I'm just going to go to sleep.

School is (officially) in session (?)

2011-08-26T07:15:00.004+02:00

It's Thursday evening/Friday morning. The hurricane will head our way Saturday night. (Pray for everyone's safety!) Orientation ends on Sunday. Classes begin Monday. My first class is actually Tuesday. And guess what's on Wednesday?

The due date for my first homework assignment!

Yes, the semester has not even begun yet, and the majority of the school hasn't even arrived on campus, but I already have a reading assignment due in a week! Sent with love from my Classical Hebrew professor by email this afternoon.

A part of me loves this aspect of Swarthmore. (Specifically, I am in an upper-level directed reading class, for which these kinds of early beginnings are perfectly reasonable; of course, this isn't the case for the majority of Swarthmore classes.)

But another part of me is just crushed that, at last, summer... is... over.

Transformation

2011-08-24T06:42:00.003+02:00

Ah, Orientation. All the new freshmen and other new students moved in yesterday, and although I wasn't around to actually witness the fact (being stuck in the office to tie up the last remaining loose ends of my summer research), it was a strange feeling.

Strange because I realized that these are the last freshmen I will ever know while I'm here as a student. Three years ago, I was one of these freshmen, moving into a dorm (only one hall above where I'll be living this year) with its set of cool, intelligent, and awe-inspiring seniors, and now I'm on the other side of that experience divide. Minus the cool, intelligent, and awe-inspiring, perhaps. Essentially, it struck me that I really am a Senior. And this realization, like lightning, actually can and does strike the same place twice. It has struck me like a dead weight, like a calm but dreadful sinking feeling, and like the shock of pouring yourself a bowl of granola and then opening the fridge, only to find that there's no milk left. I further predict that it will strike me again and again all the way up until I graduate next spring, but in the meantime, I was thinking more about the former side of this supposed divide- freshman year.

What was I like back then? How have I changed? Not-so-coincidentally, I was asked a new question on my formspring, and I gave it my best shot:

As a mother of an incoming freshman for 2011, I would like to know how Swarthmore "transformed" you. Were you shy and you became outgoing? Generally happy but became morose? Did your parents notice the changes? Did they like what they saw? :-)

It's nice to hear from a parent! I'm glad you're so invested in your child's college experience that you'd ask a blogger for his personal experiences... but that's what I write for, right?

This is also a fun question, one upon which I sadly don't think I've reflected enough, but here goes, anyway. I came to college pretty naive, and have been stretched in a lot of ways ever since. I like to say that I grew up in a bubble and then flew across the country to attend college in another bubble. Fortunately, however, this latter environment was so much more diverse and challenging than the first, even as isolated as it was.

I've been skimming through old journal entries written during my freshman Orientation and the first month of school... So many times, I wrote things like, "I need to go out and be more sociable" and "Wow, I really am just as reserved and shy as I thought I was." I know I'm more of an introvert, but it kind of surprises me now. Three years later, no, I'm not a party animal or a social butterfly, but I've gained a lot more confidence when it comes to striking up a conversation with a stranger. There are levels of awkwardness around people that every Swattie will recognize and adjust to, and I think it's safe to say that I no longer find this awkwardness crippling, as I did when I first came here.

Another changed aspect of me comes somewhat twofold. I used to be hyper-competitive. I used to be uptight and easily offended. And then, I mellowed out. Swarthmore's academics are rigorous, that's for sure, but the atmosphere surrounding grades and performance is not at all like my high school, where class rank was everything and the numbers often counted more than the person themselves. Here, I haven't experienced so much pressure from my peers to excel; all of that comes from myself, now. There's still a heavy load, but in terms of how I interact with my fellow students, well, I haven't seen so much as a shadow of that old cut-throat competition in three years. In addition, I also mellowed out over how I reacted to things I wasn't used to or didn't really appreciate. Believe me, in high school, I was known to have super-high moral standards and with it, a long nose to look down on others who didn't meet them in my eyes. Of course, I was a terrible hypocrite. And when I got away to college, it finally dawned on me how awful that is as a way to treat those around you, and I did my best to shed it all. I met fascinating people who would have broken all my old rules, and instead of staying away from their influence, I embraced it and made friends. I have definitely mellowed out.

When I tell my friends what a jerk I was way back when, they usually nod their heads and say, "Yeah, though I don't see it now, I definitely can imagine the ways you've changed."

There are a few other things, not all of them having to do with my personality, but I don't have room for them all now. Thinking about this, though, I don't know if it's anything about Swarthmore specifically that has changed me, or if it has more to do with being far away from home, or if it has to do with the general environment of the East Coast, or if, tout simplement, I've just matured over the past three years...

Oh and lastly, no, I don't know if my parents have noticed the same changes that I've noticed in myself. They have probably seen that I am more sure of myself now when I tell them what I want to do with my life (a step up from being sure of having no idea what I want to do with my life), or just more confident in anything that I do. And I don't know, I haven't asked them, really, what they've seen in me and if they like it or not. Maybe I will, and get back to you on that.

Well, I'll end this here. Congratulations on your son or daughter getting to Swarthmore! I hope that they will enjoy their time here as much I have.

Ask me anything (about Swarthmore or not)!

The Green Moor (+ old, black&white photos!)

2011-08-18T04:48:00.011+02:00

Have you ever wondered why this school is called 'Swarthmore'? Unlike some famous names like Harvard, Yale, and Brown, our college's moniker does not come from somebody surnamed Swarthmore. Furthermore, unlike our neighbors Haverford and Bryn Mawr, we weren't simply named after the town whose land we occupy. The borough of Swarthmore actually used to be called Westdale, back when it was just a couple of streets and a train station. (Boy, hasn't changed at all, has it?) Then in 1864, when the college was established, the good people of Westdale changed the name of their town to match the grand new Quaker institution sitting proudly at the top of the hill.

Parrish Hall in 1869. Lovely, isn't it...^[1]

So then, whence comest the name 'Swarthmore'? From Cumbria, England, surprisingly, and way back when... In 1652, George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (aka Quakers) used the home of Thomas and Margaret Fell, a mansion named Swarthmoor Hall, for the first Quaker meetings. Swarthmore College, having been founded by Quakers, was named after Swarthmoor Hall, and somewhere along the way the spelling was tweaked a little bit.

Swarthmoor Hall, circa 1890.^[2]

Learning that led me then to wonder, "But what does the word actually mean?" My first guess was as random as it is silly: I looked at the compound word 'Swarthmore' and saw two smaller words, 'swarthy' and 'Moor'. Swarthy means dark-skinned, and a Moor is someone of Berber and Arab descent, usually from one of the predominantly Muslim North African countries. In a flash, my mind went straight to the swarthy Moor any student of Shakespeare knows well: Othello! So I assumed the founders of my school secretly wanted to honor a man whose love and jealously drove him insane.

I was wrong, though. A more recent etymological search brought me to a more reasonable conclusion: 'swarth', or 'sward', is another word for a green grassland, and 'moor' can refer to a wide, wild area of land overgrown with heath (like the wasteland from The Hound of the Baskervilles). It would seem that Swarthmoor Hall was given a name that reflected the green grassy grassland overgrown with grass which surrounded it. It's thus somewhat fitting that Swarthmore College is coextensive with an arboretum.

This is all very interesting for a pop history and amateur etymology buff like me, but of course, none of it has to do with what I originally wanted to write, which was the Green initiatives of Swarthmore. I got sidetracked by the connection between the green of the environmental movement and the green of our namesake.

So. "The Greening of Swarthmore^[3]" is the catchphrase for our school's sustainability initiative, a program that will help us adopt more eco-friendly practices, reduce our carbon footprint, and prioritize the health of the environment in all new ventures (such as digging up a perfectly nice swarth in order to build a school-affiliated hotel, right?). I'd heard about it from news articles but didn't follow much of the hullabaloo over recently renewed campaigns to cut our electricity use or compose all food waste, so on and so forth.

However, I did pay attention when I began to look for local car share options. I had counted on having a car on campus this school year (a valuable resource astonishingly few students have, for various reasons). But the limiting factor of price, even for a crappy used car, had me looking at PhillyCarShare and ZipCar instead. I was told that the Daily Gazette), the school is, as of 2011, not affiliated with any car sharing programs. This bit of discouraging information came from Swarthmore's "Green Report Card^[4]", specifically question #72. So, there used to be easy car share access from our school, but for whatever reason, it no longer exists.

While disappointed, at least I had my interest piqued by the rest of the report card. Check it out (in the previous link) if you're interested in reading about the ways Swarthmore does the Earth some good. Or at least claims that it does. Thanks to our trees and grass, we'll always be physically green, but for the sake of the environment and my bank account, can we bring back the car share, please?

- - - - -
[1] From the Friends Historical Library.
[2] From the Swarthmoor Hall Blog.
[3] I believe that this is a pun on the title of a certain book that every recent Swarthmore student has seen displayed prominently in every dean's office.
[4] The College Sustainability Report Card is exactly what it sounds like, and our community was more than a bit ashamed that we received a "B+" in sustainability for the 2010-2011 school year.

Citation needed

2011-08-13T01:00:00.006+02:00

The other day at work, I was reading a Wikipedia article when I came across one of those blue superscript notes, like the ones that indicate a footnote^[1]. These notes usually mark the reference for a certain claim, but they're also often used to mark points of discrepancy or a need for a citation. This particular one read: ^{[this claim is disputed]}. However, because I was reading quickly, I read it instead as, "This claim is stupid."

When I realized my mistake, I laughed out loud right at my desk.^[2]

But really, given some of the things you find on Wikipedia^[3], there ought to be more "This is stupid" annotations.

- - -
[1] Such as this.
[2] Yes, I will admit: I am using Wikipedia, in combination with JSTOR and Google Scholar, to do part of my linguistics research. I've learned that although you must always take the "facts" published in Wikipedia with a grain of salt, one aspect of it you can trust are references that are sourced in good articles, and since references are all I've been assigned to look for, the Free Encyclopedia works perfectly!

[3] The English Wikipedia, that is, which, at 3.7 million, has three times as many articles as the German and French Wikipediae, and likely three times as much nonsense (even if it's well-sourced nonsense! There are tons unnecessary lists and stubs popping up on the site like pimples on a teenager's face).

Flashback à France

2011-08-11T03:51:00.006+02:00

I've been away from France for about two months now, but the other day I got a cute Facebook message from the son of my host parents that brought me straight back. His name is Théo, and while I was living with his family he was twelve years old and beginning to study English. So I suggested in my last message to him that we could be pen pals. As you'll soon see, Théo's English ... has room for improvement. But that's why the message was so cute! Especially the last sentence, which I frankly don't even understand.

i 'm very happy to have you're news.and to be your pen pals i have so you have nice holidays . I'm so sory because I can't reat quickly,I'm not very good in English. But, now I can [...] Goog Bye and expert you paste good holydays!!!!! :)

D'accord, Théo, comme tu dis, je vais coller de bons jours sacrés!

This past week at Swarthmore has been quiet, especially because most of the other students who did research on campus over the summer have gone home (it's normally a ten-week deal, but I'm staying longer in order to make up the time I missed in July). But at least the weather has been nice- sunny, warm, but not too humid following a major rainstorm. So I went on a bike ride this afternoon, simply criss-crossing campus and enjoying the different angles at which the sunlight hit the trees, appreciating not being sweaty and wishing I had not forgotten to bring my camera battery charger back to school... and all of a sudden I had felt a pang of nostalgia for France.

The mountains...

The French cuisine classes...

This ridiculous carnival and "Extrem Jump"...

And all those hikes up La Bastille! Cettes petites randonnées me manque beaucoup!

And, of course, the food. Those are ice cream profiteroles. Definitely something I need more of this summer. Which is ending soon. Wow, school starts again in ... two weeks! Before long, a swarm of new students is going to hit the ground running before you can say, "Orientation!" You guys excited?

Grades and Grad School (cue "Jaws" theme...)

2011-08-04T05:42:00.003+02:00

I've heard that a B at Swarthmore is an A at other schools. For this reason, is going to Swarthmore possibly a disadvantage for someone who needs the best GPA possible for grad school (ex. premeds)?

Yes and no. They say that nobody has any idea what or where Swarthmore is besides the ones who really matter (grad school admissions officers, for example, or leaders of very large non-profits, or Quaker economists, but not any of your friends from home or the average person you meet on the street or the girl you are trying to impress). So basically, grad schools are very much acquainted with Swarthmore and its reputation for rigorous academics; they're the ones who understand that Swatties sometimes have lower GPAs than grade-inflated graduates of other schools but that they are just as diligent and intelligent, if not more so. Plus, the pre-med track at Swarthmore does a very good job of 1) weeding out students who aren't really that set on it and 2) ushering those who survive into top med schools (83% matriculation rate among pre-med Swatties in '09; for more pre-med-specific information, click here.

On the other hand, yes to the pressure-cooker disadvantage of going to Swarthmore. You can go crazy from the stress of difficult classes and the implicit competition (with your peers and with yourself, though the latter is more severe here, I think) that comes with them. Sometimes Swatties will use the "Anywhere else it would've been an 'A'" mentality to ease their troubled minds about their marks on a paper, but we shouldn't use it as an excuse to put in less effort. While the tension there can make it difficult, I don't fundamentally think that Swarthmore students themselves are in a worse situation than other undergrads. We may even be in better shape because we've already been subjected to an intense academic atmosphere that is hardly any different in graduate school.

Haha, boy, I can't wait. I won't be applying to grad school this fall, but rather will take a gap year before deciding where I want to go and what specifically I want to study. It's also good, I've been told many times, to take some time off to unwind and get a breath of fresh air in the real world before diving back in to several more years of school. But that's neither here nor there, so my last word is: Don't let your potential GPA dominate your life at Swat or, if you are not here yet, affect your decision to come to Swat. There are so many more important things than that. But work hard, and your efforts at Swarthmore will be rewarding. Okay, who else wants a fortune cookie?

Ask me anything (about Swarthmore or not)!

P.S. Sorry that I haven't been very active in my formspring and that I haven't answered some questions, like the one above, in over a year. But I promise I'll answer more if you ask more!

Recipe for a fantastic week

2011-08-01T21:14:00.003+02:00

I was lucky enough to be able to spend one amazing week back home with my family and friends. What did that entail?

Several games of Catan? Check. Night-time hike up Mission Peak? Check. Bright NorCal sun shining while biking around the lake or gardening outside? Check. Legit Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese food, and real California-grown fruits (not like that bland crunchy stuff they pretend is fruit at Sharples)? Check. Grandfather's ninetieth birthday party, plus family reunion? Check. Older brother's wedding, plus bigger family reunion, plus old friends I haven't seen in ages reunion, plus nerdy dancing, plus ice cream cakes, plus one new sister-in-law? Check!

Catastrophic mix-up with your plane ticket discovered ten minutes before departure for the airport? Check... But patience is a virtue and God likes to surprise us, so long story short, that's all been figured out, and I am still going to be back in Swarthmore by tonight (eh... tomorrow morning, technically).

All things considered, this past week was probably the best of my summer, and I'm so thankful that I was able to grab another week off for vacation, and I'm so happy that God has blessed my family so much recently. I'm also torn because, as I sit here at the airport lobby, relieved that I managed to get a ticket, I also don't want to leave, knowing that I didn't see everyone that I wanted to and now won't be able to do so until December...

But, back to Swat I go, and this time for the longest stretch yet! I'll stick photos into this post as soon as I get the chance, and then that's probably the last you'll see from California for quite some time. Time to get back into the working, Swattie mindset. Time to start thinking about Senior year, graduation, life after graduation (what?), and the rest of my life. Because- of course Swatties aren't perpetually preoccupied with nothing but the next due date. Of course we don't think only in abstractions and know exactly where our liberal arts education is going to lead us as soon as we step out of the bubble and into the... whatever is out there. Let's see how long I can stave off the existential crisis.

Autoglottonym

2011-07-22T05:50:00.000+02:00

Do you know what an autoglottonym is?

I'll give you some examples: français, Deutsch, 中文 (zhōngwén), עִבְרִית (ivrit), and 한국어 (hanguk eo).

An autoglottonym is the word a language uses to refer to itself (self-language-name, if you break it down). The English autoglottonym is, of course, English, but when we say "Hebrew," we are using the English exoglottonym for what Hebrew speakers themselves call ivrit, the language of those who crossed over.

This past week, I've been back at the Endangered Languages Lab, continuing work on the talking dictionary for the Ho language, but yesterday I got to do something a bit different. Professor Harrison put my previous lab partner and me on a little side project of his. Microsoft Corporation apparently asked him to find the autoglottonyms for something like five hundred languages, ostensibly one more step in their push forward to take over the world before Google does. So Professor Harrison enlisted Jacob and me to help him with his research.

It was fun and interesting research, as we spent the day searching through the stacks at UPenn's gigantic Van Pelt library (it seemed as if the third floor of Van Pelt had more books than Cornell and Underhill libraries combined!) for dictionaries and grammars of each language, searching primarily for the dictionary entry for each language. But research is research, and it can get tedious, especially if you keep running into the same problems. For example, you'd be surprised at how many X language-to-English dictionaries don't have an entry for their own language. I'm sure the lexicographer thought it'd more than obvious what the language was and so didn't consider putting in a redundant entry: Twi in Twi is twi, and Esperanto in Esperanto is esperanto. But it's not always that obvious. In the case of Swahili, the autoglottonym is not Swahili but kiswahili, and Luo is dholuo.

But spending the day looking through dictionaries, some of them ancient-looking, falling to pieces, and filled with beautiful writing systems, was a nice change from sitting in front of a computer all day. Jacob and I went through maybe sixty or seventy books, big and small, and did a lot of photocopying, and I feel sorry for the librarian who had to reshelve all of them...

We have here: Twi, Aymara, Shona, Gbaya, Burmese, Santali, Javanese, Khmer, Mauritian Creole, Boro, Toba-Batak, Runyankore, Oruhaya, Kongo, Ewe, Uzbek, Cantonese, Zarma, Wolaytta, Tulu, Oromo, Esperanto, and Occitan, and this was only about a third of all the languages we looked up!

I'll be doing this again today, but this evening I'm heading out of town again. My paternal grandfather's 90th birthday party is on Sunday, and the week after that, my brother is getting married! So I'll be gone for a week, and will be back in August with lots of photos and stories to tell.

This was fun...

2011-07-17T03:20:00.006+02:00

And to be quite honest, I don't want to leave!

Let's see, Taiwan checklist: impossibly large bugs, good food at the night market, tropical jungles, more good food, and awesome new friends with whom to spend quality time. Fun and personal growth at the summer camp: check. As few mosquito bites as possible: um... no check. I was eaten alive one afternoon and got six bites in an hour. I also got a V-neck sunburn and was rained on literally every day during the second week. Yup, there's no place like the homeland.

That's an earthworm.

Shilin night market (士林夜市)

QingShan Waterfall (青山瀑布)

Homemade pidan tofu! (皮蛋豆腐)

THE CASTLE.

Will I miss this? Yes. I'm not really looking forward to catching up on two weeks' worth of missed lab time in one week while trying to recover from what's sure to be some monstrous jetlag.

But I'll be back... soon! I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do after I graduate, but I'll likely take a gap year before applying to grad school, and that gap year just might find me back in Taiwan. We shall see.

On the other side of the world!

2011-07-03T02:34:00.009+02:00

Greetings from Taiwan! Last Thursday evening, my family and I boarded our flight going from San Francisco to Taipei, and touched down at TaoYuan Airport early Saturday morning. (The flight was fifteen hours and skipped fifteen time zones while crossing the International Date Line; so where did Friday go?)

We spent all of Saturday with my mom's family - her parents and two of her siblings' families live in Taipei, and the rest flew in like we did - to celebrate my grandfather's eightieth birthday. In true Taiwanese fashion, this meant that we spent all day eating: sweet red bean rice buns (紅豆粽子), tea eggs (茶蛋), guava (芭樂), lychee (荔枝), papaya (木瓜), beef noodle soup (牛肉湯麵), Taiwan's version of Western-style pizza (which means that there was stuff like octopus and shiitake mushrooms on it), passionfruit and sour plum popsicles, and something yummy called Q心冰粽.

In the evening, we went to a secluded restaurant way up in the mountains that doubled as a Buddhist place of meditation, where we were served simple but elegant dishes of stuff I'd never seen before, such as peanut tofu, inarizushi with guacamole, and raw oysters with something else, but I can only remember the raw oyster, of course. Before dessert, we gave our grandfather his gift: an iPad 2, and he had scarcely opened it when his younger grandchildren (my younger cousins, who are all between six and twelve years old) pounced on it and began playing videos and such. Happy birthday, A-kong!

Anyway, great food aside, I'm not here in Taiwan for the next two weeks just to chill and eat. My number one priority is to do well the work given to me. I will be TA-ing at a week-long Christian summer camp for medical students at Mackay Medical College, where I'll be giving a few lectures on various topics related to American culture, among other things. My number two priority is not to get any more mosquito bites. Taiwanese mosquitoes love sweet American blood (and in years past I've accumulated over twenty in the course of a week), but I'm hoping that being a vegetarian will make my blood less smelly... And last, but not least, I want to enjoy my time off from work, away from school, and to ground myself before going back to Swarthmore.

Imagine a peanut jelly and butter sandwich...

2011-06-22T04:45:00.006+02:00

I just wanted to take the time to wish happy birthdays to two of my apartment-mates, Michael and Will (neither of whom read this, I think), who turned 21 two days ago and will turn 21 tomorrow, respectively. Happy Birthdays! Last night, we quasi-celebrated with homemade pizza (we got the ingredients from Renato's, Swat's "premier" pizza place) and an amazing chocolate cake, and also went on cycling around the ville at night, like some sort of throwback neighborhood bike gang. And tomorrow a good friend of Will's, Ana, is going to throw him a party at her place.

(I have got to start taking photos of things I do around the apartment/with the guys here; they're a lot of fun and plenty photogenic, but I just haven't had the occasion yet.)

I'm really liking the simplicity and low-key pace my life has been taking for the past couple of weeks. It's a plus having no homework, for one. I especially enjoy having no deadlines for anything over the weekend and being able to just read all afternoon, or toss a frisbee around, or have a picnic!

Yup, some friends from SCF and I had a picnic after church on Sunday. We walked all the way to Genuardi's to get stuff for sandwiches, and then spent all afternoon eating, talking, playing Contact and Apples to Apples, and generally making the most of a beautiful, not-too-hot day.

Some of my summer goals (read more of the Bible, spend less time on the Internet, update my flickr photo feed, work out, etc.) have yet to be met, but because the days go by so leisurely (read: slowly), I'm almost tricked into thinking that I have a good amount of time left to get going on them. In reality, I have about six weeks left of actual employment, and next week I'm skipping town to go to Taiwan for a fortnight, to do a missions program that I've been preparing for since May.

So I have to make sure I don't get to comfortable. But at the moment, I'm having fun!

P.S. I eat a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich almost every day for lunch, and I'm not sick of it... yet! I missed peanut butter a lot while I was in France, so I have no complaints! Even things as simple as making my own lunch, cleaning the apartment in my spare time, and having team meetings in the lab with my co-workers, are making me feel a lot more grown-up than I'm used to. Haha, so it is possible to get a taste of "real life" while at Swarthmore, though my job, obviously a lot less stressful than a normal Swattie workload during the academic year, is also several cuts below the level of rigor I'd expect in any real lab work. Again, though, no complaints here! I'm going to miss this free time and leisure a lot when fall comes around...

10 Things I learned from T2T

2011-06-14T00:53:00.015+02:00

The 5th Annual "Trash 2 Treasure" sale took place this past weekend on Swarthmore's campus, and if you missed out on it, you should be feeling massive waves of regret right now, or at least after you read this post. Why? Because it was capital-'a' Awesome, and you should have been there! Okay, here goes my PSA:

Lesson 1: College students have crap tons of junk.

This is the "trash" part of the sale. At the end of every school year, in late May, T2T begins collecting everything that the residents of the college can't/won't/forget to pack up and store or take home with them over the summer. Lots of items come from the graduating class, who've accumulated many things over four years that unfortunately have no place in "the real world." Swarthmore has only around 1500 students, but if you thought that that amounted to a trivial amount of items left over or donated, think again. They collected over 100 mini fridges, 100 lamps, lots of mattresses, couches and futons, fans, and mountains of clothes. I say "mountains" because during the week of sorting, we dedicated one entire squash court to the sorting of clothes and created little mountains for every category of clothes, and one enormous mountain of bedding and mattress pads. There was also a squash court full of books, and a squash court for TVs and electronics; basically, the amount of "trash" we received blew my mind and I had no idea how it'd be possible to sort through all of it and take it to the fieldhouse in two weeks to get ready for the sale.

I can't begin to wrap my mind around how much stuff the college used to have to throw away before the annual T2T sale began five years ago... On one hand, the horrifying thought immediately comes to mind that everything we're bagging up for sale used to just go straight into the dumpsters (or into the already very crowded storage rooms, or shipped somewhere). On the other, it's also apparent that students are now able to leave whatever they're too lazy to take care of in their rooms, completely guilt-free, because of the assurance that T2T will come collect it. T2T gets more and more donations every year.

Lesson 2: Teamwork helps alleviate the drudgery of physical labor.

Teamwork is a wonderful feeling. Even though I jumped into the T2T volunteer team relatively late in the game, having returned from Europe only ten days before the sale, it was still incredible fun and only mildly stressful. All I needed was a good attitude and the willingness to get my hands a little dirty, and I fit right in along with everyone else. We cleaned moldy fridges, separated good clothes from suspiciously-stained clothes, and schlepped bags and bags and bags and bags and bags (etc.) of things to fill up the football field-sized fieldhouse until it looked like a secondhand Wal-Mart. All of this could have amounted to an appalling miserable time alone, but together with everyone else, it was actually enjoyable.

(For the record, the T2T sale is entirely student-run, and volunteers get no compensation for their long hours besides temporary housing and the food they collect from donations.)

Lesson 3: Physical labor is exhausting.

Well, this one's kind of a no-brainer, but if you are like Nancy, one of our student coordinators, who is both petite and fiercely dedicated to the cause of carrying sorted items from the squash courts to the fieldhouse continuously into the wee hours of the morning, you may find yourself taking a "20-minute nap" on a donated futon in the fieldhouse only to wake up the next morning when the other volunteers come in to start another day of sorting and hauling. Yes, she accidentally spent the night in the fieldhouse, and no, no one else even noticed her asleep in a corner!

Lesson 4: People take patience.

I've never been a particularly patient person, but several times during our three-day sale, I've had to summon as much of the virtue as I possibly could, just to be civil with some particularly nasty customers. Some people are jerks, and some people will complain about anything and everything they lay their eyes on. Some people are utter cheapskates, and even the prospect of charitable giving won't make a dent in their stubbornness to hook a deal. They'll be sneaky, manipulative, and downright mean, just to get their way.

I was going to give an excellent example of this in the form of a blisteringly rude T2T customer I encountered on Sunday, but in writing it turned into more of a rant than a cohesive argument, so I'm just going to move on.

Lesson 5: On the other hand, generous people can totally make your day.

Many customers took the time to find out about the charity to which 100% of our net profit would go, the United Way of Chester. Those who then, knowing that though they were spending so little, all of it was going to a good cause, donated a little bit more or asked us to keep their change, put a big smile on my face. I handled check-out for a good number of hours over the weekend, and I was so appreciative of every customer who gave a little extra. I was also appreciative of all the people who thanked the volunteers for what we were doing. Most comments were along the lines of, "It is so hot in here. You guys are incredible for doing all of this. We'll be back tomorrow!" One lady even went and bought us all popsicles to help us deal with the oven-like temperatures of the fieldhouse on the first day. We were grateful for every customer and every purchase, but to the people who really understood what we were all about and went the extra mile: thank you, thank you, thank you!

On another note, I also learned that I don't mind rainstorms if they come at the end of a summer heatwave. I don't mind them one bit.

Lesson 6: I need to learn how to speak Spanish.

Because we had many customers come through who obviously had no idea what I was saying as I explained how the Sunday grab-bag sale worked, beyond "Hi, welcome to..." and "five dollars," maybe. T2T is obviously not so complicated that we need to make sure all customers understand everything before they shop, but when my greeting and explanations were met with utterly blank faces, it was really unnerving and kind of embarrassing...

Lesson 7: A little money goes a long way... for kids.

I miss the time in my life when 25 cents was a lot of money and when giving a quarter to an adult to pa for a random toy or broken watch or something shiny was a big deal. All of our volunteers absolutely loved watching little kids run around the fieldhouse, finding treasures and begging their parents for a couple of coins to get it. I also found it highly amusing when three young boys who were probably around 10 years old bought one of our old TVs for a whopping $3, and then carried it out of the fieldhouse and down the street together, taking tiny steps to handle their new awesome purchase with care. I really hope that that TV was functional, for their sake...

Lesson 8: It is impossible to recycle everything.

By the end of the sale, maybe about two-thirds of all the items that we put up for sale had gone, but the one-third that was left was still an impressive amount of stuff. We donate as much of it as we can to the local Goodwill, but they don't accept much more than the clothes, shoes, and some small furniture. The dozen boxes of leftover books will go to the book donation drop in Parrish. But everything else, unfortunately, had to be thrown out: broken items, extra bedding, random scraps of whatever we found on the floor... trash that didn't get to be treasure ended up trash for good. We tried our best, but we couldn't get rid of everything.

Lesson 9: Throwing pillows into mountains of bedding is fun.

Jumping into piles of mattress pads is a little less fun, mostly because it feels like you're jumping into a pile of a dozen peoples' sweat and germs and that's disgusting.

Leson 10: A little money goes a long way... for charity.

Well, this last one isn't much of a lesson, but I just wanted to announce how much money Trash 2 Treasure raised this year for the United Way of Chester: $19,000! I don't know if that sounds like a lot or a little to you, but when Melissa made the announcement after all the money was counted, everyone in the fieldhouse gave a huge cheer. It felt like a huge accomplishment, especially since we had broken last year's record by $1,000.

So that's that. Can't wait for next year's T2T sale! here's to hoping that we can get more people involved, and that together we can all do more and more to help out our community every year.

Life in the Language Lab

2011-06-07T23:36:00.008+02:00

Today, my professor said that my project partner and I were "working too fast" and that it was kind of difficult to give us enough work to do. I'd say that we're off to a pretty good start, then, wouldn't you?

So, what do I do from nine to five every day in the Endangered Languages Lab? My professor and my project adviser will email my partner and me with a list of things we need to work on and/or complete for our online Talking Dictionary for Remo, a language spoken by a few thousand tribal people in rural parts of Orissa, India. This link will take you to the incomplete pilot dictionary, which is supposed to be completed by early next week. So my tasks in the lab include taking the long sound files of elicitations done on-site and breaking them down into individual tokens, and then transcribing all the words I hear into the International Phonetic Alphabet. It can be extremely tedious work at times, and I have no way of being sure that I'm transcribing correctly, but it's also quite interesting. Plus, it's fun being able to pick up snatches of Remo syntax and vocabulary just by listening to these native speakers saying random words and phrases over and over again.

For example, one word I like is kirime, which means 'fingernail', but if you were looking for some of those classic Dravidian retroflex consonants (I should note that Remo is an Austro-Asiastic language, though, not Dravidian), the word for 'water' is ɖa, and the word for 'backside' is guɽaŋ, which I'll never forget because the elicitor repeated it about a dozen times, frustrated that the English-speaking researchers couldn't easily figure out the difference between ɽ and r. I can't figure it out either, but hey.

It makes me feel very grown-up to have a set work schedule, complete with a one-hour lunch break, colleagues to chat with, and a "commute" (a mere seven-minute bike ride from my apartment to campus). I wonder if by the end of the summer I'll be willing to work in a lab like this as a career, or if j'en aurai eu marre de tout cela... We shall see!

I'll leave you with another cute word in Remo: ɲom, which is pronounced nyohm and means 'eggplant' (yum!), and deŋɡa abebailoʔ, which means 'thank you'. (And yes, that is a glottal stop at the end. No idea how to say it properly.)

Welcome back to the Bubble!

2011-06-03T23:16:00.005+02:00

Which means... wait, it's already in English! Cue fanfare: Andrew is back at Swarthmore! Hurrah!

Okay, no, it's not a Big Deal. However, it is, on some level, exciting to be back on campus after spending over five months abroad. I was home in California for about a day and a half before flying out east, and I moved in on Wednesday.

It's too bad I came back after almost everyone else had left! The semester ended a few weeks ago, and commencement was on Sunday. I've already seen the photos on Facebook; I'm sad to have missed out on what seemed like an amazing and special time.

However, I don't mind coming back to a very quiet campus. It's a way of easing slowly back into the swing of things around here, as well as enjoying the beauty of Swarthmore (despite the heat and humidity) without any of the academic stresses that usually hang low like a personal raincloud over us Swatties all the time. I've seen a lot of familiar faces, though, because quite a few people are working for Alumni Weekend over the next few days. So I like seeing a few old faces at a time, not everyone all at once.

People keep asking me how Grenoble was and how France was, and what it feels like to be back. I'll be honest: I'm not pining away over France, and neither am I giddy with excitement about being here. My semester abroad had high points and low points; it was overall an excellent experience, and I will continue throwing in posts here and there (because I obviously did not finish writing or posting all the photos that I want to have up here). But that chapter has closed, and this summer a new experience awaits me.

I'm spending ten weeks this summer doing "research" and helping out at the Endangered Languages Lab at Swarthmore. Professor Harrison in the Linguistics department has an interesting and exciting job: he and his team go around the world to document languages that are in danger of disappearing (a language will "go extinct" when its last living speaker dies), and then study them and write about them in order to help preserve them and the cultural knowledge they carry.

I've already been at the lab for three days, and parts of my work are tedious, but other parts are genuinely fascinating. For at least the first month, my lab partner and I will work on a language called Remo, whose Wikipedia entry is all of two sentences. I'm excited at what I'll learn from this job (it's my first-ever legit research position, and I never considered myself a scientist), as well as where it'll take me next (through the fluffy pink clouds of thesis-land this fall...).

So most of what I'll be writing about this summer will concern my linguistics research. I'll also throw in some bits about whatever other endeavors I will be undertaking, such as reading Infinite Jest, exploring the Crum Woods, writing lame poetry, and, of course, taking lots and lots of photos. I'll also keep updating belatedly about other adventures in France and Europe, as I mentioned previously.

A summer at Swarthmore... the thought of it used to make me shudder. But a lot of people stay on campus for various reasons, and nobody has gone crazy yet. So here's to a great summer, my last as an undergrad student, my first with a job, my twenty-first without a clue as to what lies ahead... Tchin-tchin!

France {63} - Un petit bateau (Spain pt. 7)

2011-05-31T00:25:00.006+02:00

Which means, "A little boat."

Last post from Spain! Photos now, captions later. Enjoy!

In other news, I am back from France/Europe and have one glorious Memorial Day to chill out and do nothing in California!

Oh, how I've missed this weather. It's unbelievably wonderful.

France {62} - Je ne suis jamais en France, apparemment.

2011-05-18T00:51:00.003+02:00

Which means, "I'm never in France, apparently."

I've been posting about my travels outside of France since forever, it seems, and you might have forgotten that my study abroad semester was actually in this country, and not in Spain, or something like that. However, I have loads to tell about other things that have happened in France! (things like my French Sign Language class, the Christian college student group I joined, every new tantrum my host family's kids throw, picnics, McMacaroons, ear piercings, French philosophers, and a whole lot more) ... It's just that I like to finish one thing before a start another, so a lot of posts have been shelved until I finish these super-posts about vacation. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish before another vacation starts... tomorrow!

That's right, the semester's over, and it's summer break! I'll do the long reflection thing later, but right now I can't really process the idea that I'm basically done, and that within two weeks I'll be back in the United States... I had my last final today, and I'm done with my last final paper (just a bit of proofreading, and then I'll send it in!). Tomorrow morning, I'm leaving for Edinburgh, Scotland, and that will start a week of traveling in Scotland and Ireland. At the end of that week, I'll fly back to France, stay one night, and then make the long, three-leg journey back home to California. Wow.

So, this is just a note: no posts or photos or anything for about another week, and the next time you hear from me, I'll likely be back in America! Thanks for following and reading my blog this semester, and keep coming back because at this rate I'll still be writing about my semester all the way through July.

Ciao!

France {61} - Yaourt glacé (Spain pt. 6)

2011-05-16T09:36:00.004+02:00

Which means, "Frozen yogurt," or froyo! Well, kind of. Truth is, froyo doesn't exist in France, like cheesecake or bagels or pearl milk tea. Thus, no easy translation.

Photos from Madrid! El Mercado de San Miguel, a super-swank indoor market, and some shots from the Reina Sofia Museum of contemporary art. Captions to come.

France {60} - Jésus argenté (Spain pt. 5)

2011-05-14T16:14:00.017+02:00

Which means, "Silver Jesus."

Eleanor, Jeewon and I took a night bus from Barcelona to Madrid, an eight-hour trip. We were definitely traveling cheap. Fortunately, I slept a lot better on this bus than the previous one. We arrived at Madrid at 6:30am, and then took the metro to our hostel. Early in the morning, my first impression was that Madrid was completely empty: there weren't many people around. But as the day passed, the city came to life.

The first place we visited was the Royal Palace (Il Palazzo Reale di Madrid), where Spain's king and queen are supposed to live. I was surprised to learn that Spain still had a monarchy, actually. However, the parts of the palace open to tours seemed more like rooms of a museum than rooms of an actual inhabited home. There were no photos allowed inside (too bad; I saw two awesome sculptures of Mercury, as well as a Stradivarius cello!), but apart from being extremely ornate and beautiful, it wasn't incredibly interesting.

What was interesting, however, were the pet peacocks that strutted around outdoors. Peacocks! (Paon, in French) Who would have expected them? They're pretty, but really do seem kind of prudish. Also, their call is the most annoying shriek I've ever heard from a bird.

After the Royal Palace, the Royal Armory, and the Royal Pharmacy, we walked to the center of the city to see the Temple of Debod. It's an Egyptian temple that was literally shipped, stone block by stone block, all the way to Spain, and reassembled on the top of this hill. (Eleanor is mimicking Egyptian hieroglyph people.)

The temple-turned-museum wasn't that interesting inside, but it was neat just to have this little taste of ancient Egyptian culture in the middle of a modern Spanish city.

This is the Edificio España, one of the tallest buildings in the city. Even after being wowed by all of Gaudí's amazing works in Barcelona, I found myself drawn to this enormous skyscraper simply by virtue of its size and presence in the Plaza de España (where the monument to Cervantes and Don Quixote is located, also). Funnily enough, this building has nothing in it right now and is under renovation to become luxury apartments or something chic like that.

And here's silver Jesus! The street performers in Spain really outdo themselves. This guy was one of those people who stay completely immobile for hours under a hot sun, just so that bemused passers-by will toss a few coins their way. But while I saw plenty of "rock" people and "robots," this was the first Jesus I saw, and he was painted silver! At first I didn't know if I should be concerned about his chosen character portrayal, but then I saw him smile while a tourist took a photo with him, and I thought, "Well, whatever works!" Pretty amusing.

Speaking of street performers, there were also lots of musicians, including this kind-of quartet. They played a movement form a pretty violin concerto, and I stayed to listen, and then they launched into Pachelbel's Canon in D, and I promptly left.

In Madrid's city center, all of the street signs are these beautiful tiled placques that have an illustration to represent every street name. They're one of the many small things that make Madrid interesting (because goodness knows this city is actually rather boring, in comparison to Barcelona: parks and museums, and more parks and more museums, can only go so far...).

This is the pretty Calle Cuchilleros, a curved street with beautiful buildings and tons of great restaurants. We had a late lunch here that turned into a very interesting culinary-linguistic experience, because the restaurant had no menus, only a sign with dishes on it on a placard outside, and the waiter didn't speak English. So, ordering our food was a guessing game at best, and while Eleanor and Jeewon were successful in their fare, I somehow ordered a plate with three enormous, fatty chunks of meat on it. It was not what I was expecting, and it was difficult to finish, but... well, it was funny! We also had a good laugh when I tried to ask the waiter if one of the desserts had nuts in it, and instead asked him if I had any nuts. Tengo nueces? The desserts were delicious, in any case, and I guess my Spanish improved un poquito!

Also on the Calle Cuchilleros is the Restaurante Botín, which holds the Guinness World Record for being the oldest operating restaurant in the world! We would not have been able to afford eating there, though.

Yup. "The oldest restaurant in the world is Restaurante Botín, in Calle Cuchilleros, Madrid, Spain, which opened in 1725 and has been operating ever since; it even retains the original 18th century firewood oven." Wow: feeding people who can't cook for themselves for nearly three hundred years! That's something.

France {59} - La Plage (Spain pt. 4)

2011-05-11T17:21:00.001+02:00

Which means, "The Beach."

We went to the beach in Barcelona! There are lots of touristy beaches that have a bad rep for being crowded and dirty, but they were pas mal! The sand was glittery, the sun was warm, and the water was cold. Not a lot of trash, either, so that's good enough for me! As in the previous post, I'm just going to leave you to look at the photos, and will add captions when I have more time. (Only two finals left! And one oral presentation! And one ten-page paper...)

Glittery sand!

I may have gone a bit overboard with the fake Photoshop color filters on this one... Creating awful collages is my way of procrastinating.

France {58} - Les photos ne leur rendent pas justice (Spain pt. 3)

2011-05-09T21:27:00.027+02:00

Which means, "The photos don't do them justice."

Alternate title for this post: Arc-en-ciel!, which means, "Rainbow!"

Or: La raison pour laquelle vous devriez aller à Barcelone pendant vos prochaines vacances, which means, "The reason why you should go to Barcelona for your next vacation."

Welcome to the Parc Güell and La Sagrada Família, two of Gaudí's most famous works! The Parc Güell is a free park for the public, and it's so much fun to walk through. There are Gaudí buildings, of course, but most of the park is an amazing look at how Gaudí incorporated his architecture into nature, while using natural patterns and themes. We went in the morning, and there were already thousands of tourists crowding the paths and plazas, but it was a wonderful experience all the same (and the great weather helped).

Phineas came out to play that day. Here he is chilling in a bush in front of a terrace that was the main open space of the park. Lots of vendors were hawking cheap souvenirs there.

Phineas and me at the top of one of the highest points in the park (it's built into a hillside). We had a great view of Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea.

These columns made of stone with aloe plants in them reminded me of Jurassic Park for some reason...

In fact, stone was the main attraction at the park. All the walls, columns, and hallways constructed out of jagged reddish brown stone were amazing, especially because they looked like they wouldn't hold up any weight. It looked primitive and futuristic at the same time...

Eleanor, Jeewon, and me in one of the passageways constructed out of stone.

In other parts, the park was incredibly colorful, especially around the main entrance. There were lots of mosaics and colorful tiled creations. The park entrance was also where the tourists were most heavily concentrated, to the extent that I felt claustrophobic and wanted to get out of there...

There were lots of street performers scattered throughout the park. Most of them were playing classical Spanish guitar, which is cool, but this guy was playing a hang! That's awesome!

Jeewon and Eleanor next to Gaudí's famous magical mosaic dragon lizard thing. It's one of the most interesting and beautiful sculptures in the park, and has become a symbol for Gaudí's art in general. That explains why it took forever just to get close to it; there were so many people crowding around it that we could only shove our way forward, snap the photo, and then get pushed out by others.

Up on the terrace, there were artists retouching and/or completing the mosaics on the tiled benches! It was fun to watch them at work.

We then took the metro to the Sagrada Família, but this was where my least favorite thing to happen to me in Spain took place: two people tried to pickpocket me on the metro! It was about noon, so the train was incredibly crowded, with people smushed up against the doors and the like. I tried squeezing in and was the last person to make it onto the train, when suddenly- bam! An old man ran into me from behind, trying also to squeeze in. Then, the short lady who was in front of me shuffled up close to me, making as if to reach for a handhold behind me. At first, I thought nothing of it, bearing the discomfort of a crowded train with a grimace. But then, I realized that the woman was rubbing up against me in a way that... would've been inappropriate even in Paces, let's say. She smiled at and asked me if I was going to the Sagrada Família, and apologized for continuing to try to reach behind me for the handhold, while her other hand was who knows where. I looked over to Eleanor and Jeewon, who were stuck in the middle of the train, and mouthed, "This is not good."

Luckily, I had listened to good advice. My wallet wasn't in my jeans pocket, nor was anything at all stored in any of my outer jacket pockets. I had placed everything in the inside pockets, and had my jacket zipped up to the top, even though it was hot. I also held my bag in front of me as if it were a baby, tightly shut. Both of the crooks who had tried to steal from me got off at the very next stop (I was pretty sure they were working together), and I felt relieved, but also violated. Oh well, that's Barcelona for you, right? Hmph. Advice for travelers in Spain: stay away from crowded metro trains in the middle of the day, and don't put anything of value in an outer pocket. Vigilance!

And this is the first view I had of the famous Sagrada Família! (Entrance is about twelve Euros.) Seeing it after coming out of the metro station blew away all my negativity after the pickpocketing incident. But before going in to visit, we had lunch.

Bread with tomatoes... such a simple dish, but it's delicious. Also, a lamb and bacon brochette. Okay, back to this amazing church!

La Sagrada Família is an "expiatory church" that was designed by Gaudí; however, he died before completing it, and even now, construction is still ongoing. Projects place the church's completion at around the middle of the century. So... I'll come back when I'm sixty, I guess.

Here you can see typical Gaudí architecture: the weird fruit baskets topping each spire, the lotus seed pod-inspired circular windows (ick), the long, naturally curving lines, and, in the bottom left, one of the many sculpted scenes of the Jesus' last day on earth, done in a style completely different from anything I've ever seen.

One of the other scenes, this one depicting the betrayal of Judas (Juda-ah-ah). There is also a magic square, one that was also represented on the door of the side entrance to the church (transept). I wonder what it means?

Okay, now here's the inside, and here's where everyone's jaw comes crashing down to the smooth marble floor. The interior of this church is unbelievably beautiful, and it's not even finished yet! The altar section was bathed in a rainbow of colors, as well as the golden light that came in from the skylight way up at the top. It was grandiose, one of those things that gets you to gaze upward and could keep you staring for hours.

These windows didn't have colored glass in them yet, and I can only imagine how breathtaking they will look when they're finished. They look just fine with regular glass, but with stained glass... wow!

Eleanor standing in the church. She, along with the other people in the background, can kind of give you a standard of comparison for the size of the church. Eleanor is tall, but this church is also tall. The ceiling seems like it's as far away from us on the ground as heaven is from earth.

And looking up at the ceiling... it's so mesmerizing. Gaudí designed it so that the columns would look like huge trees branching out into a forested ceiling. And although the columns are white and there are jewels instead of leaves, well, it really did feel like being in a huge forest. I'd imagine Rivendell to be similar to this, albeit perhaps with fewer tourists.

This is a photo of the skylight of the church. There is a triangle inscribed with a golden circle that points up toward heaven, and all the lines you see coming down from the light are actually the word "Holy" in Catalan written vertically over and over again.

And again, beautiful stained glass windows. They were all abstract, by the way; none of them represented a biblical scene or a saint, or anything traditional like that.

As in the Gaudí house, there was an exhibit in one of the side rooms of the building that showed some of the natural phenomena that inspired Gaudí's architecture. Fruit baskets, honeycombs, falling leaves, etc.

And lastly, this is the eastern facade of the church. Eleanor described it as "melting candles," because it looked like the stone was melting off the face of the towers. This was also the Christmas tree side, because all the sculptures depicted scenes from the birth and early life of Jesus, complete with a green tree with red ribbons on it up at top. (The tree was actually suppose to be the Tree of Life, but who'd know better?) I personally found this side of the church quite hideous, but not enough to mar my overall impression of La Sagrada Família, which is: AMAZING. And definitely very high on my list of the best things I've seen in Europe. Like I said before, I will come back once it's finished!

France {57} - C'est une cheminée, ça?! (Spain pt. 2)

2011-05-08T15:01:00.012+02:00

Which means, "That's a chimney?!"

Tuesday afternoon in Barcelona, the forecast called for rain, so we decided to check out some indoor attractions instead of parks and gardens. Then again, Barcelona is famous for the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, so whatever the weather, we would have to be outside to look at it.

Gaudí's architecture is famous for its unique take on Catalan modernism. During his naturalist period, during which most of the awesome things in Barcelona were designed, He drew his inspiration from his love for nature and natural patterns, as well as from his religious background. It was amazing seeing how his style was manifested in any kind of building material: iron, stone, mosaic, glass, wood, anything natural, really. And his work cannot not mesmerize the viewer, because it's totally unlike anything you've ever seen before.

We started with the Palau de la Música Catalana, a concert hall Gaudí did not design, but which got us prepared for what we would eventually see at the Casa Milà. I love this sculpture!

This is Jeewon and Eleanor waiting outside the Casa Milà, finished in 1912. Already you can see the distinct waves in the facade of the building and those beautiful iron... I don't even know what they are. Window ledges? Strict, straight lines are almost nowhere to be found in Gaudí's work. Everything flows organically, even when built of stone and iron.

This apartment building is very unique, but it's the roof that all the tourists come to see. It's extraordinary, and I was in awe. You can walk all around it on gentle slopes and stairs, between alien-looking towers that pop up in random places. I felt like I was on Mars. There are also two gaping holes that allow the two atria to have some sunlight, about eight stories below. And everything was made of sand-colored stone and colored tiles. It was incredible!

The clouds were definitely threatening to rain, which would have made the roof a dangerous place due to slipperiness. Fortunately, we were spared the brunt of the storm and only got a drizzle.

A view down into the atrium below. The funny square windows are the windows of the attic, just beneath the roof. And all those weird, extraterrestrial columns? They're chimneys! In Catalan, they're called espanta bruixes (witch scarers), which adds to their unique character.

Eleanor, Jeewon and me in front of the most unique witch-scarer chimney, which was decorated with shards of green glass bottles.

We then descended into the attic and one of the apartments for the rest of the exhibit. In the attic, we learned about all the things that inspired Gaudí's architecture, including naturally occurring patterns like those in tortoise shells, honeycombs, lotus seed pods (ew), and nautilus shells. The attic itself was supported by brick vaults that were inspired by a snake skeleton; it was like walking through the insides of Pinnochio's whale. I learned about how ergonomics was really important to Gaudí, too, and how in the apartment, every window frame and door handle was uniquely crafted to feel good to the touch.

After we left the Casa Milà in a state of awe, we walked to another famous Gaudí house, the Casa Batlló. If the Casa Milà was the alien soldier house, this one was the fish scales house, because its roof was tiled with scales like a fish, and the rest of the facade evoked shells and sea creatures in a crazy way.

It then got dark, and we started to think about dinner. However, the locals at Barcelona have the habit of taking siestas in the middle of the day, and pushing dinner time back to nine, ten or even eleven p.m.! It's ridiculous; I didn't think anybody could eat later than the French, with their customary 8pm dinners. So, we went to a famous tapas place, called Tapas 24, at 8pm, and it was nowhere near full. (But by the time we left, near 10pm, there was a line going out the door!)

In any case, this was my first time having Spanish tapas! Tapas is basically a meal comprised of lots of small appetizer-size dishes, very similar to Cantonese dim sum. We had bread with tomatoes, patatas bravas (glorified French fries), some delicious lamb brochettes, small sandwiches with truffles and jamón (delicious Spanish ham), and some other stuff that I forget. The food was good, the atmosphere was lively, and I left a satisfied customer. Day one in Barcelona, an undisputed success!

Next time: Gaudí overload with the Parc Güell and La Sagrada Família!

France {56} - Salut, Barcelone! (Spain pt. 1)

2011-05-06T10:29:00.016+02:00

Which means, "¡Hola, Barcelona!" Which means, "Hi, Barcelona!"

The next six or seven posts will feature stories and photos from my spring break trip to Spain last week. On Monday, Eleanor and I took the train from Grenoble to Lyon. The train had compartments, like the Hogwarts Express! It was my first time riding a train like that. Once in Lyon, we wandered around for a few hours with absolutely nothing to do. It being the Monday after Easter, which is a national no-work day, almost everything was closed, and there was no one around. We just park-hopped and taught ourselves useful Spanish phrases to get ready for the next few days.

Above is the statue of Louis XIV in the Cours Mirabeau in Lyon, around sunset. On the left you can also see the huge basilica of Fourvière, and the metallic tower, which I've mentioned previously. Well, that's it for Lyon! We took an overnight bus to Barcelona, arriving at 5:30 in the morning. The ride was bumpy, and the bus was loud, so I didn't sleep well. Also, at one point, it must have been around two in the morning, and I had the weird feeling that the bus was going at least a hundred miles an hour. It was kind of scary to imagine barreling through the Pyrenees in pitch darkness... Anyway, we arrived in Barcelona at 5:30am. When we exited the metro station, there was a huge crowd of young people just... chilling and hanging out as if it were only ten in the evening. Well, that's what Barcelona's like. We walked to our hostel and took a nap in the lounge (check-in wasn't until the afternoon).

We then bought breakfast and ate it at the top of a hill in a pretty park, from where we could get a glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea! It looked very gray. Then, we met up with Jeewon and began our first day's adventures!

This is the view of the city from the top of the hill on which the Museum of Catalonian Art stands. The museum was pretty interesting; I saw several fascinating pieces, but most of it was religious art. There was also some Picasso, and I got my first taste of Miro's abstract work here. The museum is dedicated to artists from Catalunya, which in a nutshell is a region of Spain that is autonomous and has its own incredibly rich culture and language. Thus, everything in Barcelona (all signs, announcements, and official things) are written in both Català and Castellano (standard Spanish), but most locals operate solely in Catalan. State-supported bilingualism is cool! But I'm relieved that our Spanish phrasebook still came in handy.

There is a beautiful theater inside the museum that reminded us of an ice-skating rink. Look at that huge organ!

The museum itself. It's near Barcelona's "Magic Fountain"; unfortunately, the fountain's water show only happens like once a week, and we missed it.

The next stop was La Rambla, a long boulevard overflowing with tourists (and pickpocketers), and La Boqueria, a market located next to it. There were a lot of amazing things to eat and take pictures of at La Boqueria, like the stall above with dozens of different types of peppers.

There were also lots of fruit juice and smoothie stands! The further you go into the maze of stalls in La Boqueria, the cheaper stuff gets. I had the pitahaya (dragonfruit) and coconut smoothie- it was delicious- for €1,50, whereas at other places it was twice as much.

I also got this interesting pastry that was billed as a Barcelona specialty: it's a dry cake with dried pork skin, almonds, and sugar. It was sweet, and not bad at all!

And this is a photo of La Rambla. It's lively, but honestly not that interesting. And I was paranoid about staying in the crowds too long because we had been warned half a dozen times that La Rambla was swarming with thieves.

Next up: my first taste of Gaudi architecture, and my first tapas!

France {55} - Il neige?

2011-05-04T12:38:00.002+02:00

Which means, "It's snowing?"

The black poplar (peuplier noir, Latin name Populus nigra) is a type of cottonwood tree native to Europe and Asia. There are plenty of cottonwoods growing around the campus of the University of Grenoble, so, now that it's springtime, their seeds can be seen floating lazily through the air all afternoon like "summer snow." It's a crazy phenomenon, in my opinion; even though there's apparently a species of cottonwood called Populus fremontii that grows in my neck of the woods (I hail from Fremont, California), I've never seen anything quite like this. Given that it's the last week of classes and that I'm beginning to get restless in anticipation for summer, I've been catching myself just staring outside during class, watching the glowing white balls of fluff drift gently by the window.

I haven't tried taking photos of the cottonwood snow, because it seems like it'd be hard to capture, but I did find a corny YouTube video of a different cottonwood seeding:

Well, that's kind of extreme. The snow from Grenoble's cottonwoods doesn't seem like too much of a problem, compared to the blizzard in that video.

In any case, did I mention that it's spring now, and that Grenoble has suddenly became beautiful? It's always been nice to be surrounded by those grandiose snow-capped mountains, but now the snow has melted a lot, and a few weeks ago it seemed as if all the trees decided to leaf at the same time. Suddenly, all the plazas and squares in the city center came to life: people started hanging out outdoors all day, fountains were turned on, street performers popped up everywhere, and the Foire des Rameaux also came to town! Spring in Grenoble is lovely, really. I'm glad I was able to witness this "Spring Awakening" transition of seasons during this semester, as opposed to watching late summer fade into winter during the fall semester. But I have such little time left to enjoy it; only three more weeks before I leave! Here's to going outside more to profiter du soleil, and to enjoying the rest of my stay in France as much as I possibly can.

France {54} - Où est le gelato?

2011-05-03T16:50:00.002+02:00

Which means, "Where is the gelato?" (in Italian, "Dov'è il gelato?") All Italy is good for, of course. What is thousands of years of art, science, and culture in stuffy museums, compared to a double scoop of the best like-ice-cream-but-loads-better dessert in the world? Ha, I kid! But yeah, gelato was probably the highlight of the one short day I spent in the Italian capital of the Alps, Turin.

So... I'm back from spring break! And I took over three hundred photos, which is actually not that many compared to my usual. Over the next week or two, I'll be posting about Turin, Barcelona, and Madrid, but because I'm busy with finals and final papers, the posts won't come too often.

The day trip to Turin, which is about four hours away from Grenoble, was sponsored by the CUEF. Over a hundred students went on the trip, cramming into three buses that wound through the Alps on a cloudy day. The weather wasn't promising, but at least it made the mountain scenes quite gorgeous... (you can click on any photo to enlarge it!)

After passing through a super long tunnel that marked the border between France and Italy, we descended the Alps on the Italian side and arrived in Turin (Torino)! Immediately, I was bombarded with Italian words and people everywhere; it was strange, to say the least. Eleanor and I stayed together throughout the day, but between the two of us we knew about four phrases in Italian, so communication was going to be a slight hitch.

We started walking around the city, and passed through a large, lively market twice. We also saw some beautiful churches and a large city square in front of a palace. I don't remember any of the names of anything we saw, actually. For lunch, the least-intimidating place we could find was a Turkish pizza joint, where after I struggled to order something in the Italian I had only begun to pick up that day, Eleanor tried her luck and found out that the server actually spoke French. We'd been told that many residents of Turin speak French well enough to converse with the many French tourists who come by, but it was still unexpected.

There were lots of street performers, just like anywhere else in Europe, but this was the first time I'd seen one of them completely out of character and taking a smoke break.

It just so happens that a huge national celebration, Liberation Day, was to take place in just two days. Thus, all over the city, Italian flags were waving, and the red, white, and green were everywhere, even on the roof of the Mole Antonelliana in the form of hideous square marquee lights.

It's too bad we couldn't be there in the middle of all the festivities, but perhaps it was better that, without tourists and on a rainy day, the city was actually quite dead. Seriously, sometimes certain roads felt completely deserted. Perhaps everyone was taking a siesta. In any case, the Mole Antonellina is a pretty building which now houses the famous Museum of Cinema.

It is a weird, weird museum. I'd compare it to a Tech museum, where children are encouraged to run around and put their grubby little hands on all the interesting science experiments on display. The lower level was dedicated to the history of moving pictures and had lots of interesting exhibits, like fun mirrors, taumatropes, shadow puppets, and primitive moving pictures and videos! The upper level was, on the other hand... hard to describe. There was a giant lobby (pictured above) with rows of recliners for people to watch one of two movies playing on giant screens. (Eleanor said it reminded her of the passengers of the Axiom in WALL-E.) And circling all around it for two floors were dozens of small rooms that were like chapels in a cathedral, each one with a random theme, like horror films, adventure films, psychadelic whatever, portraits of movie stars, and random costumes from Hollywood. It was interesting, but kind of a sensory overload, and I don't think I actually learned very much.

Anyway, it's not really worth posting the photos I took of the strange, random exhibits, but here's a photo of someone who took a photo of me! On-ride camera-style. I have no idea what the point was, but it was an interesting photo... so I took a photo of it.

Eleanor and I then went to get our gelato! I ordered a double scoop of Nutella (with Nutella chunks in it! Score!) and Stracciatella (classic flavor), completely in Italian! It was also very cheap. I love gelato so much.

After that... we walked around the city again, saw the Po River, had dinner at a pasta restaurant where they did not speak French, but one of the servers tried his best at English, and it was cute. By evening, we saw how pretty Turin is, all lit up at night. We walked all the way back to the river again (so much walking...), and I took photos of the Gran Madre and the Monte Dei Cappuccini (the blue thing on the right).

The second most random thing I saw in Turin (#1 being everything in the Museum of Cinema) was a party tram... I guess you could compare it to a party limousine filled with hyper high schoolers going to prom, but this was actually one of the city's public trams, only decorated with stars, decals, and balloons, and inside of it where a bunch of very drunk revelers having a grand old time while cruising slowly around the city. Absolutely bizarre!

And then we took the bus home, one hour later than schedule, so I arrived back in Grenoble at nearly two in the morning, and caught a taxi home by three. Whew! One day and a half of rest (plus a happy Easter), then off to Spain!

I'll end by trying to recall any of the Italian I picked up that day... grazie is merci, and prego is de rien or something along those lines. Um... scusi is excuse me! And I learned how to count to like, three: uno, due, tre, cuattro... okay, four. Acqua. Per favore. Oh, and "Il Padrino": The Godfather! As a Romance language, Italian isn't hard to figure out in written form, because it is so similar to French and especially Spanish. But it really was interesting being completely incapable of basic verbal communication in a place so close to where I've been living.

France {53} - La Lavande Luxuriante (Provence pt. 4)

2011-04-25T09:43:00.008+02:00

Which means, "Lush Lavender."

As I've noted before, Provence is the region of France best known for its artisanat, or handcrafted industries, as well as its abundance of natural products. The most famous (or most advertised, at least) is lavender, followed closely by olives and olive oil, honey, citrus fruits, and many different kinds of herbs. Provence's Mediterranean climate and incessant sunshine completes the feeling of being cocooned completely within the comforts of the cozy countryside. Just look at the cute little pots of dried lavender (below)! So quaint! And I love lavender; supposedly its scent can help you sleep better or just calm you down in general.

It was a beautiful day, and we went to visit one of the most beautiful towns in France: Gordes! Now, I've already taken and posted pretty photos of Gordes. However, they weren't taken with Chris' sweet wide-angle lens! And these were. So I'm posting more.

Everything was pretty much the same as when I last visited the town, about four weeks prior. The only difference, unfortunately, was that now that it was springtime, there was pollen everywhere (it was literally coating everything on the table while I ate lunch outdoors- bad idea!). Thus, I was sneezing (éternuer) and sniffling (renifler) and striving hard not to be sulky and insufferable...

Luckily, there really isn't much to see or do in the city itself, besides cute architecture and lots of nice little art galleries. So we didn't stay long, and as soon as I got back on the bus and out of the range of pollen, I felt a lot better. And since then, I've made sure to take my allergy medicine every morning before I go outside.

Wide-angle wonder! Haha. The next stop was l'abbaye (abbey) de Sénanque. It's a Cistercian abbey that was built in the middle of the 12th century (wow...). We took a tour that, surprisingly, turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I guess we had a good tour guide, who explained the simple yet symbolic architecture of the building, as well as the history of monks and Christian orders in France and their daily lives today.

The abbey is situated among plenty of lavender fields, which at this time of the year, unfortunately, are not in bloom. Otherwise this photo would be a lot purpler and a lot prettier. Despite its plainness, however, the place still had a very peaceful feel to it, partly because everyone was supposed to be quiet and respectful throughout the tour.

The cloister, like every other cloister I've walked around in France, was very pretty and filled with light. It's strange how a simple square, spacious and sparsely decorated, can have such a commanding presence and calming atmosphere.

I learned that cloisters are built with twelve arches (three on each side of the square) to represent the twelve tribes of Israel that are supposed to rule again at the coming of the new kingdom; thus, a cloister is like a little glimpse of heaven.

As a treat, I bought a nougat with lavender honey! It was delicious, but despite that, I didn't dare buy more than one... otherwise I'd have to diet! I've begun cutting back on the amount of sweet, sugary things I eat here in France, but I've gained a noticeable amount of weight- honestly! This summer I'm going to have to exercise a lot in order to undo the effects of eating excessively like an epicurean...

Do you know what else I should cut back on? All this absurd, arbitrary alliteration that I've been abusing!

Okay! You probably won't see another post for about a week. I'm leaving for Barcelona today, will be in Madrid by Thursday, and won't be back in Grenoble until Sunday. ¡Adiós!

[edit] I was going to make a "part 5" for the Provence trip about our last day in the region. But we didn't do much. In a nutshell, we walked to the outskirts of Réauville where there is a well-known sand pit. Why is it well known? Because there are fossils in it. And we met this very kind fossil hunter who willingly shared the many fossilized shark teeth and ray teeth that he'd found just that morning! I have 25 million year old shark teeth from France! No big deal. Then, we walked to the top of a hill, where the Mistral wind nearly knocked us over. And that's all! (Photos of the fossils and stuff are on Facebook.) Now I can work on the Italy/Spain posts...

France {52} - Joyeuse Pâques!

2011-04-24T19:52:00.008+02:00

Which means, "Happy Easter!"

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Easter! Or, happy zombie Jesus day! I almost prefer that tongue-in-cheek nickname for the holy day because it at least makes reference to the reason Christians celebrate it. "Easter," on the other hand, is as pagan as the American cult of egg hunts and marshmallow Peeps.

Here in France, Easter is observed with compulsory attendance at church or at Mass, followed by family gatherings or getting together with friends for long lunches. There is also lots of chocolate involved, and lots of bell-ringing. I learned today that instead of an Easter bunny, French children eagerly await the coming of les cloches de Pâques that fly through the air and drop chocolate eggs into their midst like so many sugary cluster bombs. They will also have agneau, or lamb, as the main meat of the evening meal. All in all, it's not that different from what we have in the United States, but, of course, everything is much less commercialized here. And chocolate is much more expensive.

At church this morning, I thoroughly enjoyed the songs we sang and the message of freedom that the pastor gave (I think that was what he was talking about, at least). Afterward, Eleanor and I went to the apartment of a new friend I've made at the church named Thomas (pronounced "toe-MAH" in French), where we made our own chocolate cake and talked about lots of different things for a good few hours, such as the impoverished education system, American tall tales, and French theme parks. Later, during dinner with my host family, I found myself discussing funerals and cemeteries, festivals that celebrate the dead, and the logical difficulties of various religious beliefs with my host mother. I will admit that dinner tonight was much more unnerving than afternoon tea. Yet, despite the morbid fil conducteur of the conversation, I'm still happy and grateful because of Easter and because of the life, hope, and happiness it brings!

This is amazing: I just Googled this fantastic drawing of flying anthropomorphic Easter bells. Too bad they're not laying chocolate eggs while they're at it, but it's still pretty sweet. No pun intended. I actually hardly ate any chocolate at all today, but I will be sure to get my hands on some Spanish chocolate this week! I'll be spending spring break in Barcelona and Madrid!

France {51} - Eau de source (Provence pt. 3)

2011-04-24T17:25:00.015+02:00

Which means, "Spring water."

Fontaine-de-Vaucluse (The Fountain of the Closed Valley) is a tiny village of fewer than 700 inhabitants, built around the eponymous natural spring. It's very pretty, and I have pictures to prove it. Besides the spring, which is a short hike away from the village center, there is also a very old, but still functioning, paper mill powered by a giant water wheel, and the ruins of an old castle. I didn't visit any of the museums or attractions because I was too busy taking photos of the uncannily gorgeous aquamarine water (and buying postcards).

The river than ran through the village center was breathtaking and enchanting. The water was perfectly clear, so its color came from both a reflection of the very blue sky above and the brilliant green hue of the vegetation growing beneath.

Also, there were water wheels everywhere, most of which probably had some sort of useful function, but were also aesthetically pleasing.

Seriously, look at that water! I've never seen anything quite like it. I looked up some color names in French just to describe it: émeraude, sarcelle, prasin, smaragdin, and smalt.

We took the short, pleasant hike up to la source, or the spring that was the source of the river. Because it was spring, the pool was overflowing and at "high tide." In the summer, the water is much, much lower and reveals a gave beneath the wall of rock you see in the above photo.

It was a beautiful spot, only marginally disturbed by tourists taking glamor shots or *cough* slipping into the pool itself (nbd, Jeewon!).

And, as usual, I clashed horribly with nature in my sunflower-yellow jacket. Doesn't it make the blue look even bluer, though?

The Italian poet Petrarch used to come sit by the fountain of Vaucluse to meditate on life and beauty. I can't read this plaque that commemorates him, because it's written in Esperanto (woah, cool, Esperanto!). But I understood what must have attracted him to this peaceful, transcendental place.

And lastly, some bleeding hearts. I've never seen flowers like this before! Aren't they pretty?

France {50} - Dégustation de vin! (Provence pt. 2)

2011-04-22T10:32:00.013+02:00

Which means, "Wine tasting!"

The first stop on our Provence trip was a visit to the Chateaux de la Croix Charbrières winery for a tour and a wine tasting. The tour itself was more interesting than I thought it would be. I learned a lot about wine making, and now I feel more cultured. Hurrah!

Enormous wine bottles all in a row... the one on the very left is normal-sized. They all have names, too: some of the bigger bottles have names like Balthazar, Methuselah, and Nebuchadnezzar.

We got to see every step of the wine-making process, from the drink itself in giant barrels, to the creation of the bottles, and corking and labeling.

Followed by a wine tasting, where we were instructed on the proper techniques for tasting wine.

Step 1: Look at your wine in the light and observe the color. Red wines, with more tannin, will be darker and richer, and therefore better for your health.

Step 2: Swirl the wine around in the glass slowly and look for la robe and les larmes (the "dress" and the "tears") coming down the sides of the glass- if you see a nice robe, then you've got a good quality alcohol in the wine.

Step 3: Smell the wine, and don't be afraid to really stick your nose in the glass. Quickly swirl the wine around in the glass, to "wake up" the wine. Then smell again- it should be quite different, and usually stronger.

Step 4: Finally, you get to taste it. Sip slowly, and let in a lot of air while you're drinking, so that the flavor fills your mouth.

Only after all of this can you make a properly-informed decision on the quality of the wine, and whether you like it or not. The vigneron (vintner) assured us that if we followed all these steps properly, any restaurant would think we were reviewers from Michelin, and that if we were really good, we might be able to fool them into giving us a free dinner. Somehow, I don't think I'll ever be able to accomplish this. I'd probably burst out laughing while sticking my nose in the wine glass and ruin the whole show.

In any case, the wines were pretty, and I enjoyed most of them. This wine tasting was, I'll admit, the first time I'd drunk wine in any considerable quantity, and it was a lot. Like, maybe three or four glasses' worth of different types of blanc, rosé, and rouge. Fortunately, I didn't get any Asian glow!

Look at Micheline and Elizabeth (our program director and a CUEF professor who joined us for the weekend) comparing wines! C'est mignon!

Well, although I still wouldn't consider myself a connoisseur of wine (I actually can't remember the names of anything I tasted), at least I learned enough to be able to play along when I go to a fancy, fancy restaurant (such as Le Gourmet de Sève in Lyon, where I went just last night to have dinner with some good family friends who were in the area. Super-fancy upscale French restaurant, with tiny portions and like five different desserts, no kidding).

This is a photo of the one of the vineyards of Chateaux de la Croix Charbrières. None of the grapevines were in bloom yet, of course, it being just barely spring, but they were still pretty.

And to end on a completely different note, I love wind turbines. And in Provence, there are lots and lots of wind turbines. There is also a nuclear power plant: the one in the above photo is Tricastin, I believe. French people are getting more and more anxious and restless against nuclear power in the country. Although wind turbines may be less efficient, they're a lot more awesome, and since the mistral (northwestern wind) is so strong in Provence, I feel like there should be more of them around!

France {49} - Une beauté sans égal (Provence pt. 1)

2011-04-18T21:44:00.005+02:00

Which means, "an unparalleled beauty."

How else could you describe Provence? It's the epitome of French "countryside" (paysage), complete with vineyards, artisanal honey, endless blue skies, incredibly tiny villages (hameaux), and locals whose traditional dress is made of white linen. The last time I was in Provence, my parents and I were making a tour of all the small, walled cities of the region, and the impression that I got was that if this was all Provence had to offer, well, I could find poop-covered streets like these anywhere else in France. Fortunately, this program sponsored weekend trip focused more on the simpler treasures: we went wine tasting, saw a famous natural spring, and mainly just spent a lot of time lounging around the "farmhouse," chillaxing.

Farmhouse? That's the dictionary translation of mas. The place where we stayed wasn't exactly a hotel, but more like several quaint, small cottages owned by an old French couple, collectively called the Mas de Pantaï, or the Farmhouse of Dreams. Pantaï isn't a French word, in fact; it comes from the regional language of provençal, a dialect of Occitan.

It was beautiful, more than picture-perfect. There were colorful trees and plants, lawns to lie down on, even a pool! The sun was bright, the air was clean, and I didn't have any allergies...

And all of it overlooked an endless plain with lavender fields and olive trees, not a single highway in sight.

This is a bastide, one of the little cottages we stayed in. Comme elle est mignon!

The couple had a dog, too! A Labrador who was named Sako. He was very friendly.

In the evenings, we'd start dinner just before the sun began to set, outdoors on the patio. We all had aperitifs and delicious hors d'oeuvres and chatted with our host, Sergio, and each other (almost all in French!).

The aperitif was actually a cocktail that Sergio called myrosé, which is a portmanteau of myrtille (blueberry) and rosé (rosé wine). It was delicious! Yes, I drank wine. In the next post you'll see that I actually drank lots and lots of wine, relatively speaking. Et alors? Je suis en France, je devrais profiter! Haha! :)

As evening fell, we moved onto the main courses, and although I didn't take any photos, I'm just going to say that they were delicious.

And, of course, before dessert, the obligatory cheese platter! (Just for my own future reference, cheese I've tried in France and like: Emmental, St. Marcellin, Chèvre, Camembert, and Comté.)

The nights were cool, and great for just chilling outside and star-gazing. Later I'll post some of the "A for Effort" photos I took of the night sky... And in my next couple of posts, I'll write about what we actually did! To end, here are just some photos that I like for you to enjoy, no captions necessary.

P.S. Some of the cooler photos you'll see, including several here (can you tell which ones?), were taken with my friend Chris' super-awesome wide-angle lens (Canon 24-70mm f/2.8), which I got to experiment with over the weekend, to my great delight. I'm really considering getting one for myself in the near future!

France {48} - Ma chambre, 01h07

2011-04-17T15:34:00.005+02:00

It is one a.m. I have just gone to bed. (My work efficiency has diminished slightly since the beginning of the semester.)

I hear, from across the hall, a pair of light footsteps leaving the boys' room and running towards the parents' room, and the sound of Hadrien (the five-year-old) crying.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" asks his mother, barely awake.

I think to myself, "Aw, he probably had a bad dream..."

Hadrien says, "Je n'ai pas eu mon titi*!" and begins to wail. Very loudly.

His mother says, "Oh, putain."

*a familiar term for the bottle of warm milk the boys need in order to fall asleep properly.

- - -

In other news, joyeux fête des rameaux! It's Palm Sunday today, only a week until Easter! Only one week until spring vacation and a trip to Spain!

France {47} - Un sandwich au beurre de cacahuète et à la confiture

2011-04-16T15:09:00.001+02:00

Which means, "A peanut butter and jelly sandwich." What a mouthful!

... See what I did there?

Saturday morning in Chambéry! Katie, Jeewon, and I met up with Jenna at the train station, and walked through a market where we saw live chickens, rabbits, and ducks (as well as their respective, über-cute baby forms) for sale! Who wants a poussin, a lapereau, or a canardeau for just two Euros? Yes, please!

We then caught the bus that would take us to the bottom of the trail of La Croix du Nivolet. The hike up took a little less than two hours; we were heading to the top of the mountain pictured below:

The croix (cross) of Nivolet! The trail was lots of fun, and it included spectacular views of the valley and of a nearby lake:

We also walked through Narnia-esque patches of woods:

Okay, I'm cheating, it was an incorrect white balance that made the light magically purple in this photo. Below, Jeewon and Jenna take a short break before heading up, and eventually reaching the "rock climbing" portion!

This portion of the trail was too steep to just walk up, so we did a little bit of escalade with the help of the steel wires that were put in place to hold on to while climbing. Later on, steel bars and footholds were bolted into the rock itself. It was like climbing a rocky, zig-zag ladder, and it was tons of fun!

When we finally reached the top, thanks to the endorphins and a rush of nostalgia I got for hikes up Mission Peak back home, I was feeling very happy and accomplished. At the top of the peak, we finally got to see how enormous the cross was: It's 21.5 meters (70 ft) high and weights 70 tons, standing proudly on the top of the peak at 1500 meters (4900 ft).

In the shadow of the cross, we had our little American picnic: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas and peanut butter, and M&Ms (with peanut butter!). We also had a bag of roasted peanuts. It was a peanut fest. I've missed peanut butter so much! We had a great time with these American throwbacks.

We took a different trail down, one that turned out to be a crazy and chaotic undertaking. Although it was nearly April, not all the snow on the snow-shoe trail had melted yet, so we had to trek through shallow, slushy snow and lots and lots of mud for nearly two hours. We first headed along the top of the ridge, and then slipped and slid down the slopes of a ski resort that no longer had enough snow to stay open. It was unpredictable when we'd mis-step and fall down a muddy slope, only to stick our hands in slush to stop ourselves. All of us had numb hands and mudstains on our pants by the time we arrived at the bus station at La Féclaz. From start to finish, including photo breaks, the lunch break, and several breaks to try to clean off the mud caked on our shoes and pants, the whole excursion took four and a half hours. Well, at least we beat the time Katie and her roommates made the first time they hiked up last fall!

That evening, we went to a traditional Savoyard restaurant, which meant, of course, tartiflette and raclette. I don't have photos, but you can look them up. Or, just picture... lots of melted cheese, and meat and potatoes, and more melted cheese. Tartiflette is best described, in Katie's words, as "potatoes in a cheese bath." And raclette is similar, but all the ingredients to be bathed are left on the plate, and one uses a special heating lamp or heating plate to melt the cheese onto everything else. It's delicious and amazing, and I would cry if I ever became lactose intolerant while sojourning in France.

Okay, I found some photos on the web, courtesy a Hungarian blog about Switzerland (the historical kingdom called Savoy used to encompass parts of Switzerland). As you can see, raclette is kind of like... reverse fondue. So much cheese!

Lastly, on Sunday morning, I had some delicious vanilla tea (from Carrefour!), and Skyped with Alan Chiu and Wes! So many SCFers! I was so thrilled, and Sunday morning just topped off my third amazing weekend in a row in France. Of course, as soon as I got back to Grenoble that afternoon, it had begun to rain... Oh, and I guess I'll just mention it here: I spent all that Sunday afternoon, kind of randomly, at the apartment of a few friends I made who are from Taiwan! We had a great Taiwanese meal and drank some delicious tea... quite possibly better than Carrefour vanilla tea. Hopefully I'll see them again this summer, back on the island!

France {46} - J'ai besoin de me couper les cheveux.

2011-04-15T14:46:00.002+02:00

Which means, "I need a haircut."

Bienvenue à Chambéry! I spent the weekend of March 25-27 visitng Katie, a good friend from Swarthmore, who participated in the Grenoble program herself a few years back and is currently finishing up a year teaching English in this little city. Chambéry is in the Savoie department of France, which is just north of the Isère department and is also where Les Trois Vallées are located. I was excited to see her again, and what made it even better was that Jeewon was coming, too, and that Jenna was taking a train down from Paris. It was a mini-Swattie/SCF reunion in France! Ouais!

This is Katie! You may remember her from when she came to visit Grenoble way back in Janaury. She met me at the bus station on Friday afternoon, and proceeded to give me a quick tour of the city - it took about fifteen minutes to walk around the entire centre-ville - and then I went to get a haircut!

Now, I've gotten my hair cut at a barbershop only twice in my life. The first time was when I was about twelve, and the result was that I got annoyed at my mother for taking me there, because the cut was no different from the way she always cut my hair, yet cost $10 instead of being free. The second time was a few summers ago in Taiwan; this time, it was my grandfather who dragged me to the barbershop he usually went to, where I sat among many old Taiwanese a-kongs as my Justin Bieber locks were chopped off so that I could survive the Taiwan heat. But, as you may have guessed, my mother has been the de factor barber for my brothers and me for our entire lives. I was thus more than a bit hesitant to get my hair cut at a coiffeur in France; I don't even know hair cutting vocabulary in English, let alone in French. I was nervous about not being able to tell the barber anything more precise than, "shorter, please." But Katie was very helpful, and she accompanied me to the cheapest barbershop she could find in the city.

So here's what happened: the cheapest place she knew of was a men's barbershop that she happened to pass often on her way to work: €11. I know that comes out as nearly $16, but trust me, this was a very good price. (Because hair care is very important in France, the average haircut in Grenoble runs from €16 for a men's simple trim, up to €30 for women.) I was all for it, but lingered outside the door because of my aforementioned nervousness. Katie was also not very intent on going in, but for a different reason, one she didn't tell me about until later.

What she was anxious about was that this barbershop was situated just on the edge of what one could consider the poorer, less safe quartier (neighborhood) of Chambéry. I had noticed that it was also largely an immigrant neighborhood, with a distinctly North African cultural touch. I'll be frank and say that racism and ethnic prejudices do exist in France just as much as they do in any other country, and that culture clashes have often occurred between the poorer immigrant communities and the upper-class white European communities. You know the kind: broken storefront windows, torched cars, flummoxed city government, etc. So, while I was embarrassed about trying to ask for a haircut in a French barbershop, Katie was a bit worried that she wouldn't actually be very welcome inside the premises, or at least that her presence in a men's barbershop in the ethic quarter would be more than a bit awkward.

Fortunately, we had nothing to worry about! The barbers were two very talkative Algerian men, one of whom had spent some time in Paris. He seemed really excited to meet two foreigners, one obviously American, and the other obviously Japanese (actually, I think my accent gave me away as American, but like I've said, Asians in France are regarded as either Japanese, Chinese, or an anomaly). And we chatted about everything from the war in Libya, to the radioactive cloud that was passing overhead, to the peculiar regional accents of southeastern France. We even talked with another man who wandered in randomly just to hang out with his buddies the barbers. This man recounted the story of how back in Algeria when he was younger, the 1980 El Asnam earthquake and its aftermath traumatized him to the point that even today, he can't tolerate being in high buildings and skyscrapers for fear that they might fall.

So, our time in the barbershop was actually quite fun. And I was happy with my haircut, too. The guy trained in Paris, so his style was impeccable. I wish I had some before/after photos to show you, but I didn't take any.

For dinner, Katie and I cooked us some good, home-made spaghetti back in her adorable apartment built in the 18th century, and I discovered the joy of beurre demi-sel (salted butter). Jeewon joined us that evening, and we prepared for a full day of hiking le lendemain (the next day). And that will be a story, accompanied by many photos, for the next post!

Travel note: The TransIsère bus that runs from Grenoble to Chambéry costs €3,30 one-way, which makes it three times cheaper than the train ticket (if you don't have a 12-25 pass). However, because the bus goes local (that is, through tiny roads that wind through the Chartreuse mountains, rather than the highway), it takes twice as long as the train.

France {45} - Je devrais m'accorder un répit.

2011-04-14T12:10:00.012+02:00

Which means, "I should give myself some space to breathe."
J'ai lu la bande-dessinée "Persepolis," de Marjane Satrapi, en trois jours, la plupart du temps dans le bus. En fait, j'étais si absorbé par l'histoire hier que je n'ai pas rendu compte que je montais dans le mauvais bus. Presque quinze minutes ont passé avant que je me suis levé la tête d'entre les pages. Mais, où suis-je? Aprés avoir trouvé mes repères (et changé à la ligne correcte), j'ai tout de suite recommencé à lire. J'ai pris environ trois ou quatre heurs à finir les quatre tomes; étant donné que c'est une bande-dessinée (donc pas trop difficile à lire), ça ne m'étonne pas. Quand même, je m'intéressais beaucoup plus à l'histoire de la vie d'une petite iranienne que j'attendais. Ça fait longtemps que je n'ai pas dévoré un livre comme celui-ci. A part d'avoir appris plusieurs choses sur la révolution iranienne, l'histoire - son histoire - était captivante; il me faut réfléchir, voire méditer, aux messages et aux significations plus profondément. J'ai l'impression qu'il me manque quelque chose, une idée essentielle, peut-être, qui va me bouleversé plus qu'en peuvent faire des sentiments crus ou des images émouvantes.

Ou alors, à la réflexion, peut-être non. Peut-être ce n'est que du divertissement, sans grande chose à découvrir. J'aimerais bien regarder encore une fois le film adapté de la bande-dessinée (la première fois étais en anglais, il y a deux ans), mais en trouverais-je quelque chose importante ou d'intérêt? De l'art pur au divertissement commercial il n'y a qu'un pas.

Mais, enfin, je suis content d'avoir fini un œuvre de la littérature française plutôt classique (au moins, assez connu). J'ai décidé de faire mon dossier final pour un tutorat sur "Persepolis"; d'où ma quête pour un sens plus profonde... Malheureusement, j'ai un tas de travail à faire pour tous mes autres cours (lire deux pièces de Sartre ce weekend, par exemple), alors soit je trouve une idée lumineuse dans l'analyse de la bande-dessinée, soit je la laisse tomber dans le grenier de mes grandes idées de courte durée...

France {44} - Une petite musique de nuit (Paris pt. 5)

2011-04-13T13:57:00.015+02:00

Which means, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik." Well, if you don't recognize the German title, that'd be Mozart's "A Little Night Music."

Saturday afternoon, Chris and Zeewon (the new nickname for Zina and Jeewon) and I wanted to go to Les Catacombes, the underground ossuary with millions of skulls and bones arranged in morbidly fascinating structures. However, it was too late in the afternoon, and the line was too long, so Chris and Zina went to the Museum of Chocolate, and I, in order to satisfy my cravings for dead people, decided to visit the Cimetière Montparnasse, Paris' second-most famous cemetery after the Père-Lachaise (which I had visited during my first trip to Paris three years ago). Montparnasse was nice; it was smaller and better-organized than I expected, although some of the famous people buried there were difficult to find. I saw the graves of Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Eugène Ionesco (Rhinoceros), Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal), Jean-Paul Sartre (Huis clos and Existentialism) and Simone de Beauvoir (Le deuxième sexe and Feminism). Camille Saint-Saëns (Carnival of the Animals!) is also buried somewhere in Montparnasse, but unfortunately, I couldn't find him.

Left to right: Sartre and Beauvoir, Beckett, Baudelaire, and Ionesco. (You can click on the photo to enlarge it for more detail.) After Montparnasse, I met up with Jeewon, and we swung by the Palais Garnier, also known as the Paris Opera, of Phantom of the Opera fame.
It was cool seeing it, because I just watched the aforementioned musical in London a few weeks earlier. Outside on the steps, a random street brass band was playing music for the crowds of tourists! They were fun to watch (look, the guy on the right has a sousaphone!), but to be honest, they weren't very good. Or maybe I just didn't like their genre, which I couldn't even place... Anyway, we went inside the opera house.

To our dismay, however, the opera was not open for tours that day. Our plans foiled, we decided to do what French people always do in such situations: go to a café and boire un coup, or just drink and chat to pass the time. This we did at Le Danton, a café just around the corner from our metro stop. It's a cute and quaint café with window seats perfect for people watching. I had a cup of steamed milk with honey (that now holds the title of my favorite drink). However, I believe that everything on the menu was twice as expensive as it should have been. Anyway, Jeewon and I just faisions la causette (chatted) for about an hour, and then we went to dinner with Jenna, Zina, Eleanor, and Maia at a bar called Au Bouquet Saint Paul in the 4th arrondissement.

This was the first time I'd eaten a meal in a bar, and, in fact, all of us were pleasantly surprised that the food was actually great, especially the desserts. I recommend this place if you're itching for a coffee and an inexplicably delicious crème brûlée, or mi-cuit chocolate cake, or home-made macaroons. (I had a toasted goat cheese salad, a herring appetizer, and a delicious and enormous raspberry macaroon!) A great meal was followed by some great conversation, including funny stories from our study abroad semesters so far, horror stories from Paris, and our most embarrassing moments (which all seemed to have something to do with musicians and orchestra performances, strangely enough). It was a great night, which ended perfectly with a nice walk along the Seine by the Notre Dame, all lit up and pretty/mysterious/breathtaking at midnight.

The beacon of light in the background is coming from the Eiffel Tower! Last time I was in Paris, the tower was lit up like a sparkler, and it was kind of an eyesore. I don't know if I prefer this "lighthouse" version or not; it reminded me of the Eye of Sauron, only a bit less sinister.

From left to right: Zina, Jenna, Eleanor, and Jeewon.

Lastly, a really quick recap of the last day, Sunday. Finally, some blue sky and the sun! Ironically, we only had a half day to enjoy Paris in real spring weather. While the others in the group had a picnic near the Champs-Elysées, Jeewon and I went to the Protestant church that Jenna is attending, called "Le 72" in the 7th arrondissement. I could tell immediately from the service and the bulletin that it's a nice church (or at least, they make a good first impression!), and I enjoyed the songs of worship. Unfortunately, I'll have to admit that the sermon, which was entirely in French, went completely over my head. My mind was preoccupied with other things all morning.

After church, we ate a light lunch at a pizzeria. When we saw that it was already a quarter to one, however, we realized that we were going to miss our train if we didn't scram. The next forty-five minutes were entirely a mad rush to take the metro back to our hotel, grab our luggage, then take the metro to the Gare de Lyon (including an infuriatingly long transfer at Le Châtelet) and locate our train... but thankfully, we made it with only a few minutes to spare!

And then we left Paris. So that's that! Hope you enjoyed the stories and the photos. Let me know what you liked the most! And I'll continue to post about my other travels (Chambéry to visit Katie, and a weekend in Provence), although the end of the semester is drawing near, and work is piling up. Wish me luck with finals and projects and such!

Ciao!

France {43} - Miam! (Paris pt. 4)

2011-04-12T19:16:00.002+02:00

Which means, "Yum!"

I'm currently writing about a weekend trip to Paris that I took a few weeks ago. Thursday and Friday were stellar. Unfortunately, Saturday morning was pretty much a wasted morning for me. I didn't wake up late, but I was working in my room after breakfast, and because the Wifi was being uncooperative, I finished my work late and left the hotel late. I then proceeded to take a couple of wrong turns and ended up quite far from where the tour group was supposed to meet up for a bateaux-mouche, or riverboat ride along the Seine. It was unfortunate that I missed the boat (and I saw it pass from where I was standing... on the wrong bridge); looking on the bright side, however, at least now I'll never forget which one of the many bridges around the l'Île de la Cité is the Pont Neuf. It's the big one with the statue of Henry IV in the middle, at the very tip of the island on the opposite end of Notre Dame.

Above it the Pont Neuf. And don't you ever forget it! Haha. Instead of taking the boat tour, I just walked around for a good hour, browsing the outdoor bouqineries (bookshops) that had not only just old books, but also souvenirs, posters, and trinkets for tourists.

Right before lunch, I met up with my friend Jenna, a Swattie who is spending this semester studying at the Université Sciences-Politiques in Paris. The whole group then walked over to Le Marais in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. Le Marais is known as the fashion district, the Jewish quarter, and the gayborhood of Paris. I suspect that it is also the location of the Parisian hipster commune, due to the kinds of people I noticed on the street: chic Parisians, chic tourists, and hipsters. And a few orthodox Jews.

The first thing we did was visit a vintage market (clothing, accessories, furniture, and a "vintage" hair salon...). It was a fun, lively place to be in, but I didn't buy anything. I don't know if vintage is my style. Actually, my style is basically defined as "cheap," and vintage does not necessarily equal cheap. So there you go.

We then got falafels and shawarmas for lunch at a very busy little take-out restaurant called Chez Hanna. It was the best Israeli street food I've ever had! I will never be able to eat falafel bar at Sharples again. As you can tell in the photo below, we were very content. (Left to right: Jenna, Eleanor, me)

Lunch was followed by world-famous Berthillon ice cream at the suspiciously tiny ice cream joint on the l'Île-St.-Louis. I guess all the best food places are hold-in-the-wall-type places? This is true in Taipei and New York, that's for sure. Anyway, I had a double scoop of honey nougat and hazelnut ice cream, which can be described in just one word: miam.

The last photo is from back at Notre Dame, before the afternoon's adventures began. We saw this lady (I suspect that she was a tourist, not French) attracting pigeons from all over the place, and actually letting them flock onto her, sitting on her hands and shoulders and everything. I don't mind pigeons too much, but I know enough about them that I'd never let myself be their nest... Chacun ses goûts (to each his own), I guess.

Next time: Cemeteries, and more good food!

France {42} - Pour les jours pluvieux (Paris pt. 3)

2011-04-10T19:35:00.023+02:00

Which means, "for a rainy day," in the figurative sense.

Continuing my weekend adventures in Paris (three weeks ago)... on Friday after lunch, Jeewon and I visited the Jardin des Tuileries, where despite the portent of rain, the man who rents out large toy boats to float in a beautiful pond was running business as usual. We then crossed over the Seine on a bridge whose slender iron rails were decorated - in a sense - with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of locks of all different colors and sizes. Many bridges in Paris are like this, in fact; the idea is, I think, that lovers will symbolize their loyal passion, or passionate loyalty, to one another by writing or carving their initials on a lock, and then securing it to a bridge. Then, I suppose they throw the key into the river. That's a possibility. In support of this, I saw one or two street vendors on the bridge with pretty locks for sale, but not a key in sight.

On the other side of the Seine from the Tuileries is the Musée d’Orsay, a world-famous museum of classical and contemporary art, notable for its collection of Impressionist and 19th- and 20th-century paintings. Given the length of our lunch (see previous post), we had less than two hours to explore the entire museum before it closed at around 5pm. So, we decided to be parsimonious and to go straight for the Impressionist exhibit, which was housed in a very small and crowded temporary gallery due to renovations. We also sped past Gaugin and Van Gogh on our way out.

There was no photography allowed in the museum, but I sneaked this one of the beautiful horloge (clock) that hangs above the main gallery. The Musée d’Orsay used to be a train station, hence its giant vaulted ceiling with glass panels, and the huge clock. In this sculpture gallery, I marveled less at the pieces than at the amazing architecture of the building itself. As for the actual exhibits, I saw lots of beautiful Monet and Manet, as well as "Whistler's Mother," which I remember seeing once before, in all its monochrome grandeur, back at the De Young in San Francisco last summer. I also saw some of Cézanne's work, which was a treat after having visited Aix-en-Provence, his hometown, only three weeks prior, but his most famous paintings are at the Orangerie, not the Orsay.

When Jeewon and I exited the museum, as close to closing time as we possibly could, it had begun to rain, but only lightly. So, we crossed back to the other side of the Seine to take photos in front of the famous glass pyramid entrance to the even-more-world-famous Musée du Louvre (pronounced LOOV-rh, if you can manage the slightly guttural "r"). We didn't plan on actually going inside, but once we got there, we discovered that the Louvre is one of the museums that offers free admission to university students, and, furthermore, it is open until 9:30pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. Score! I didn't need much convincing after that to go in. There was also the added bonus of getting out of the rain.

I didn't stay long, however. We went looking for the upside-down pyramid and found a Starbucks instead (come on, what is this weed of American globalization doing inside a bastion of French culture? I guess the Louvre is supposed to hold the history of the world, and Starbucks is a living representative of that history, in a way...). Anyway, we made a quick tour of the Denon gallery (one of three giant wings of the museum): Cupid and Psyche, Winged Victory, La Jaconde (the Mona Lisa), and many insanely large and unbelievably beautiful 18th-century neo-Classical tableaux that impressed the heck out of me. Here are some photos:

A sculpture of Hermes/Mercury. He's my favorite in the Greek/Roman pantheon, and every time I go to a museum with an antiquities exhibit, I look for sculptures of him. I wish I had winged sandals; how awesome would that be?

La Liberté guidant le peuple, or "Liberty Leading the People," a famous work by Delacroix. It commemorates the French Revolution, or, rather, one of many French revolutions (in this case, July 1830). The only thing I could tell you of interest about this painting is this: See the dead guy in the premier plan (foreground) with no pants on and one blue sock on his right foot? Well, I don't know why he's not wearing pants, but I do know why Delacroix randomly put a sock on his foot: it's known that Delacroix did not particularly enjoy painting feet. It's pretty hard to paint feet. So, in order to avoid risking a misshapen foot smack in the middle of this gorgeous tableau, he chose to cover it with a sock instead. Isn't that clever?

The Louvre, being an old palace, has some extraordinarily beautiful rooms, with extraordinarily beautiful paintings simply stacked up one above the other up to the ceiling. But if you don't keep looking up, you might miss the fact that the ceilings themselves are... extraordinarily beautiful (I need a thesaurus, please). This one in particularly held my attention for long enough that my neck started to hurt from trying to take it all in.

Oh, what's this big foule (crowd) milling about for? What's that tiny, dark rectangular canvas shielded behind a ridiculously thick pane of glass that everyone's trying to get a photo of?

The Mona Lisa, of course! And... cue letdown. Well, Da Vinci did a great job painting her, and there's definitely a strange attractiveness and mystery in the strokes and colors themselves... but La Jaconde, as she's known in French, is really just another portrait. In my opinion, she is the lucky victim of hype and good press that has accumulated over centuries, but physically speaking, pales in comparison to the dozens of other exquisite paintings hanging all around her. Plus, the loud and pushy crowds that scramble to get a closer look (she's so small!) are an immediate turn-off to any inspiration one might draw from her smile.

Phineas and me next to the (in)famous inverted pyramid, designed by I.M. Pei and co. Mary Magdalene is buried beneath the smaller pyramid... just kidding. It's been a while since I read The Da Vinci Code. But I don't believe any of its conspiracy theories. I just think Phineas looks cute sitting on top of the stone pyramid.

After leaving the Louvre late at night, I went to a Chinese restaurant with Eleanor! I had been thinking about getting some Chinese food for weeks before the Paris trip, because I had more confidence that it would be worth it in Paris than in Grenoble. And what's more, Eleanor had entertained the idea of going to eat at a Chinese restaurant that she had been to once with her family six or seven years ago. So, we went looking for the restaurant again, and we found it! Not because Eleanor remembered what it was called or what its address was exactly (Mirama, or 美麗華酒家, in the 5th arrondissement, as it turns out), but because she remembered that there was Peking Duck hanging in the restaurant window: a trustworthy sign of quality as well as a good memory-jogger.

And I must say, the restaurant was a great choice. The food was not as cheap as Asian cuisine in the Bay Area, but it was delicious. We had duck fried noodles (鴉片炒麵), broccoli and tofu (時菜豆腐), and rice. Oh, man, how I've missed rice. La nourriture chinoise me manque! Although neither of us was very hungry, I, having been starved of some good home cooking all semester, finished my plate clean, even without the signature French bread to mop up the leftovers! Also, I took advantage of being at a Chinese restaurant to practice my rapidly declining - and now almost defunct - Chinese conversation skills. This endeavor was decidedly a failure; although I did manage, in the end, to communicate our order to the waiter, it was overall a messy and embarrassing exchange. C'est dommage! In any case, I was happy and quite satisfied by the end of the meal. 好吃!

Lastly, a photo of a rainy Paris street at night, overlooked by one of the Art Nouveau Paris metro signs. Although it was wet and cold, in retrospect, it looks like it was still swooningly romantic. That's what Paris does to you...

Coming up next: a miserable morning, an awesome afternoon, and delicious, delicious food.

France {41} - Des dieux parmi les hommes (Paris pt. 2)

2011-04-08T17:10:00.000+02:00

Which means, "Gods among men."

Friday morning in Paris, we awoke bright and early for a full day of sight-seeing. We first walked around the Jardins de Luxembourg, a pretty garden created by Marie de Médicis, only a block away from our hotel.

Then we went to the Panthéon, a monument and crypt that used to be a church. I wonder why it's called the Panthéon, if pantheon means "all the gods" ... and it used to be a Catholic church? Was it renamed when it was turned into a monument?

This building, and everything in it, is amazing; from the outside, it's beautiful, but on the inside, it's simply extraordinary. The main floor boasts intricate frescoes and huge sculptures dedicated to Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, and other historical characters. Also, in the center of the building, right beneath the cupola (or, rather, hanging from it), is Foucault's Pendulum. The pendulum is supposed to demonstrate that the earth turns on its axis. I thought I understood the physics behind it at first, but then, the more I thought about it, the more confused I got. Can anyone explain in layman's terms why the pendulum doesn't just swing back and forth? In any case, it was a really cool thing to see.

Then, I descended the stairs to enter the crypt of the Panthéon, where "Les Grandes Hommes de France" (et une femme) are entombed. I saw the tombs of Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Pierre and Marie Curie, and Braille, among others. There was also a plaque commemorating Antoine St.-Exupéry, who disappeared in a plane somewhere over the Sahara, and thus didn't have an actual tomb.

The tomb of Voltaire, who wrote Candide! His tomb was directly facing the one of Rousseau; they were apparently rivals in life, now forever opposed in death...

The triple tombeau of literary legends: from left to right, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Emile Zola. Crazy! (Unfortunately, I've never read any of their works in their original French... I'll have to get to that this summer.)

And lastly, Pierre and Marie Curie! Marie Curie is the only woman who rests in the Panthéon.

The crypt was architecturally beautiful; parts of it were labyrinthine, and I really enjoyed walking around. However, I was really bothered by the fact that a bunch of high school students, presumably on a field trip, were treating the crypt like any old museum, running around and shouting to each other. It was disrespectful, and I was very annoyed, but... what can you do?

So, that was the Panthéon. I'm especially pleased that I visited it, because the last time I was in Paris, three years ago, I was "denied entrance" to the Panthéon due to my poor proficiency in French and my failure to understand exactly how ticket prices worked. Also, the woman at the guichet (ticket booth) was impatient and rude, which is not at all uncommon for French public service workers, and I got embarrassed and just left. This time, however, I got my revenge: not only was I now more fluent in French and knew that i was eligible for a tarif étudiant (a reduced rate specifically for university students with valid ID), but because I had my passport with me, I actually got in for free! This sweet deal also applies to the Louvre and Orsay museums, which I visited later that day.

How it works in Grenoble is: a valid student ID gives you a discount for transportation and attractions. But in Paris, if you're under 26 and have a valid ID, you're eligible for the same discount, and furthermore, university students in the European Union, or international students with ID and passport, get into museums and other "educational" attractions completely gratuit (free). It was an awesome discovery.

After the Panthéon, we explored the neighboring Église de Saint-Étienne (Saint Stephen), picture above. It was a nice church, but it was inside this church where I encountered my first Parisian scam artists, in the form of young women and children pretending to be deaf in order to get unsuspecting tourists to sign a petition, conning them out of a couple of Euros for charity's sake. I was pretty scandalized by this, but I didn't have much time or willingness to react, so... we just went to lunch.

A shrine dedicated to St. Geneviève of Paris. It was exquisite, but somehow not really over-the-top.

We ate lunch at the fanciest, most ornately gilded brasserie that I've ever seen, called Le Vagenende, in the 5th arrondissement. Vagenende comes from a word that I suppose is German for "wagon end," or the caboose, which usually serves as the restaurant car of a train. The brasserie was great and had amazing food, and sat right at the end of what I'd consider my upper price limit for lunch. However, service was unusually slow, and the entire group ended up staying in the restaurant, with all its dim lighting and dozens of mirrors, for nearly three hours. That's the French way, I guess!

In my next post: The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, and... Chinese food! If I can fit all of the photos I took into one post, that is... Ciao!

France {40} - Une fourmi

2011-04-05T19:30:00.008+02:00

Which means, "an ant." But in a metaphorical sense, this is used to describe what we'd call in English "a busy bee."

Can I just take a moment, despite not having the time, to say that due to having the following things to do in the next few days or week:

1. Figure out housing for my on-campus summer research (soon)

~~2. Figure out housing for fall semester (before the 17th)~~

~~3. Look at the course catalog and begin choosing classes for fall semester (before the 18th)~~

~~4. Help plan out spring break in Spain, make hostel reservations and buy tickets (now)~~

5. Keep up my ScriptFrenzy daily quota

~~6. Design a tee shirt for the Swing Club (by Saturday)~~

~~7. Finish arranging some a cappella arrangements for Essence of Soul (by Saturday)~~

~~8. Choose photos to submit for a photo contest (by Saturday)~~

~~9. Design a poster for another contest... okay no, I really don't have time to do this.~~

~~10. Homework, which fortunately is almost nonexistent for the classes I'm taking~~

~~11. Go to the immigration office to stop being an illegal resident of France (Thursday)~~

~~12. (and most importantly?) Pull together an oral report with my partner for linguistics class tomorrow afternoon!~~

... all before I leave for Provence this weekend on another program-sponsored trip,

I feel very much like a Swattie! For the first time in months. I think I like this overwhelming feeling of frenetic busyness. It's nice to have a lot on my plate for a change, although of course I wouldn't have it this way all the time.

France {39} - Vitrail (Paris pt. 1)

2011-04-03T21:46:00.002+02:00

Which means, "Stained-glass window."

And now, I proudly present: Paris! In three parts. Or maybe four. I took a lot of photos, and I'm trying to make shorter posts, so maybe even five or six parts. Seeing as the program-sponsored weekend excursion to the capital of France was already two weeks ago, I'm glad that I quickly wrote up a summary on the train ride back, because it would have been difficult to recall everything that we did as I type now.

Paris! Pronounced "pah-REE" for those of you who want to sound sophisticated. Rainy weather was the theme for the entire trip, which began on Thursday afternoon. It was raining in Grenoble when we left from the gare (train station), and it was raining while we rode the TGV, France's high-speed rail (which does not really go that fast, but it's nice). And upon arrival in Paris, it was raining, and the weather proceeded to alternate between cloudy and drizzling for the next three days. Fortunately, much of what I wanted to see were indoor attractions, such as museums, so le mauvais temps (bad weather) didn't get to me so much.

Our group stayed at the Hotel Michele Odéon in the 6th arrondissement. It's a well-placed hotel with easy access to the Métro and other public transportation, and is a short walk away from the Rive Gauche (Left Bank) of the Seine and l’Île de la Cité. The rooms were nice and the breakfast was good, but it's pricey, and you're paying mostly for the location. On the plus side, the hotel now offers free WiFi, a service that just happened to begin just after our arrival. Nice coincidence!

So on the first afternoon, some friends and I put on our tourist caps and went to visit l'Eglise Notre Dame de Paris (which means "The Church of Our Lady of Paris," but I don't think anyone really needs the translation to know what I'm talking about). The Notre Dame sits grandly on the larger of the two small islands in the Seine. This is the church of hunchback fame, a magnificent, imposing, and mysterious building with an amazing history. Its carvings and statues are so intricate and beautiful that we spent ten minutes just staring at the doors and the arches above them, trying to figure out which Biblical or historical scenes were represented and the identities of various statues.

We then went inside and took a look around. There was a Mass taking place at the moment, so we listened in a bit to the songs and prayers, too. It was very peaceful. However, I wondered if the priests and congregants ever got annoyed at the hordes of tourists walking around their church the middle of a service, taking photos and usually not being very respectful? I guess that's just something to expect and/or get used to if you regularly attend a world-famous church.

This was my second time visiting the Notre Dame. Alas, neither last time nor this time did I get a chance to take the architectural tour that would have let me climb up to the tops of the belfry and see all the gargoyles and balconies up close. But it was worth being inside to hear the Mass and to see the stained-glass windows, wondering how amazing (and also intimidating) the impact of Christianity was and is in the world.

That evening, we ate dinner at a very traditional and rather famous French restaurant called Le Polidor, also in the 6th arrondissement, which, as proudly noted on a sign in the restaurant, has not accepted checks since 1845. I noted that they have great food and a lively atmosphere, with a well-priced menu (relative to my expectations that everything in Paris would be much more expensive than in Grenoble).

After dinner, some people went to a bar to "celebrate" St. Patrick's Day (not a French thing, but there was apparently a street full of Irish pubs not too far away), while Eleanor and I went to the ciné to watch "Les Femmes du Sixième Étage," a French romantic comedy about a married and harried business man who falls in love with his Spanish immigrant housekeeper. I felt that the message concerning race and class tension in France was good, but the love story itself was plutôt banal… mediocre. It was still good, though!

And that's all I have for Thursday. I leave you with a heavily-Photoshopped photo of me in front of Notre Dame, and some teasers for the next post: The Panthéon, the Louvre, and Chinese food!

France {38} - J'ai fait une gaffe!

2011-04-02T23:08:00.004+02:00

Which means, "I made a stupid mistake!"

"Gaffe" and "faux pas" happen to be two words used in both English and French to describe... what I did tonight.

I came home to find my host father watching the French version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" The only differences I could see were that the contestants were playing in pairs instead of solo, and that everyone talked a lot. I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again: if you ever watch a French game show, be prepared to hear everyone from the host to the contestants to random people in the audience make long-winded comments and have full-on conversations every five minutes or so. Everyone takes forever to get to the point! And every round has to start by asking how was their day, every question prefaced by some banal commentary. It's infuriating because instead of adding to the suspense of the game, it just sucks my interest down the drain.

Anyway. We were watching French "Millionaire" and the €12,000 question was (in my translation): "The thirteen stripes on the American flag represent the thirteen..."

A. First états (states)

B. First lois (laws)

C. First présidents (presidents)

D. First colons (colonists)

As soon as I read it, I grinned at my host father and said, well, here's something I'd know! Obviously, the answer was "D": the first thirteen colonies! Stripes for the colonies, stars for the states, right? Well, my host father had no idea, so we waited as the two contestants debated amongst themselves, talked a lot, called a friend (who ran out of time before she could give an answer), and then chatted with the host for another few minutes... before deciding to walk away and not answer the question. Too bad!

And then the host very un-suspensefully revelead that the thirteen stripes on the American flag represent the first thirteen... states!

Wait, what? I was absolutely sure that it was the first thirteen colonies... But after a quick Wikipédia search, I was definitively proven wrong. Thanks, Wikipédia, for revealing my failure of a history education to my host father. What a patriotic American I am!

However, after going back to re-read the article (in English), I realized that... as confusing as it was, the thirteen stripes did in fact represent the thirteen colonies. The ones that rebelled against Britain, that is. Perhaps they were just not the "first"? (If it were up to you, readers, to decide between "first colonies" and "first states," which would you choose? For twelve thousand Euro?) I was quite perdu, or lost and confused.

But then, I went to my favorite online French-English dictionary and discovered, to my utter embarrassment, that colons does not mean "colony," as I had so quickly assumed, but "colonist." So, I had actually been "absolutely sure" that the thirteen stripes represent the first thirteen colonists of America.

How perfectly stupid!

And that is what I would definitely call "a gaffe."

France {37} - Un boys band, qui s'y croit...

2011-03-29T19:46:00.030+02:00

Which means, "A wannabe boy band." Roughly.

"Wannabe" is pretty hard to translate from English, because it needs a more negative connotation than aspirante and a less fortunate outlook than en herbe. "Qui s'y croire" more accurately describes someone who shows off a lack of talent, but in the end, that's pretty fitting... Oh, and how funny is it that the French somehow tacked on an "s" to "boy band" in their translation? Anyway...

The CUEF-sponsored trip to Lyon was about two weeks ago, and I'm only posting about it now due to having been backed up with road trip posts for so long. But in a nutshell, my friends and I spent a day touring Lyon on our own, spending most of our time in the vielle ville, or the historic district. Judging from the very limited experience I had, I can (likely prematurely) conclude that Lyon is a beautiful city with magnificent buildings and delectable food; it is known for its rich history and its world-class cuisine, which apparently includes cotton candy.

Some quick highlights include: a statue of Antoine St.-Exupéry with the Little Prince, a very, very long market, the Notre Dame de Fourvière, the most ornate and extravagant church I have ever seen, deer, and the aforementioned "boys band." Here are ~~some~~ a heck of a lot of photos!

Above: The statue of Antoine St.-Exupéry and the Little Prince. It made me smile. Below: Photos from a market and more, representing Lyon: the gastronomic capital of France!

Pesto cheese!

Super radishes!

Strawberries!

Maia and Zina are going gaga over their barbe à papa (literally: daddy's beard), known better as cotton candy. Bought off a street vendor in the historic district.

A bouchon of Lyon, one of their traditional restaurants that serves tons of fancy meat dishes. We went to one, where I ordered some sort of fish stew whose name I've forgotten.

It was delicious, though! Below: The vielle ville of Lyon!

View from the Presqu'île, looking across the Saône River to Fourvière, "the hill that prays." See the giant basilica at the top on the left? And see the dinky little Eiffel Tower knockoff, called the Tour métallique? Well, okay, it's actually taller, but when it comes down to it, the tower pales in comparison to the basilica. Religion definitely beat out secularism in Lyon's historic Battle of the Architects.

Maia and Jeewon in front of the Cathédrale Saint-Jean, inside of which is...

...This incredibly gorgeous clock.

I like French buildings crowded up next to riverbanks. They're cute.

Masques in a shop: remnants of Carnaval, which must have happened somewhere in France around Mardi Gras, but I guess I missed the party, because I didn't see a single parade anywhere...

This is inside the basilica of the Notre Dame de Fourvière. It is almost indescribable in beauty, as every inch of the walls and ceiling is carefully crafted, painted, tiled, or gilded. There are huge mosaics on every wall and no shortage of stained glass windows. The ceiling was so far away from where I stood on the ground, but I couldn't help inclining my head to gaze at it for so long that my neck began to hurt. It's an amazing building... but a small part of me wonders if it it's only that- a building, a work of art. Is it anything more? A sanctuary (or a tourist attraction)? An act of worship (or a labor of love)?

On the way up to the church at the top of the hill, we noticed an opportunity to take a silly touristy photo and went for it. Below: Ancient Lyon!

Ruins of a Roman theater in Lyon. This one was much nicer than the ones I had seen in Provence, and there were no chantiers (construction areas) all over the place. Thus, perfect for doing ironic epic boy band poses!

Or girl band poses. Whatever. They're still angsty enough. From left to right: Maia, Jeewon, Eleanor, and Zina. They could be called (awful pun alert!) "Pride of Lyonnaises," or maybe (cheap reference alert!) "Queens of Lyon" ...

Phineas came out to play (despite the cloudy day) in the Roman ruins!

This is... the story of my life. Also, my favorite photo from the day [taken by Zina]. Below: Le Parc de la Tête d'Or (The Golden Head Park)!

After lunch, we were bused to a beautiful park that had a small zoo! In the zoo, we saw cerfs (deer) and some exotic birds, but it was cold and about to rain, so all the other animals had been taken indoors. So besides a pleasant walk through not-quite-blooming-yet gardens, there wasn't much. However, I would love to come back in the springtime. And last, but not least, a pink pélican (below), so colored due to its diet rich in beta carotene (as is the case for flamingos, which are born gray).

On whether I'm just a happy hoax spouting rainbows and butterflies about Swarthmore

2011-03-29T19:42:00.002+02:00

Just wondering, are you working for the Office of Admissions?

Nope! I keep my Swarthmore "admissions blog" just for fun, and I'm not obligated to write from any particular standpoint, or even to post at regular intervals. Never fear, you read no biased account of my life here, although my generally happy disposition obviously affects what I have to say.

I also thus cannot really say anything concrete about the admissions process, unfortunately. That said, there are students who work for the admissions office as "interns" of a sort, who have a hand in the admissions process by conducting interviews with prospective students. Not to mention, of course, the other students who schlep in the admissions office by sorting and filing applications, among other rather monotonous secretarial work.

Ask me anything (about Swarthmore or not)!

France {36} - Shampooing

2011-03-27T18:45:00.009+02:00

Which means, "Shampoo." Oddly enough.

We all know that English borrowed many words from French hundreds of years ago, partly resulting in the mixed Romance-Germanic heritage of my native tongue. However, in more recent centuries, it has been the United Kingdom and the United States, both English-speaking global superpowers, that have lent words in their vocabulary to other languages around the world. That is to say, French has quite a number of words borrowed from English, with a variety of results. The Académie française, a group of forty old people whose job it is to prevent the decline of proper French into some Anglified, slang-ridden atrocity of today's youth, tries valiantly to prevent strange borrowings from English. However, sometimes they are too slow to come up with a true French word for a new phenomenon. Exemple: courriel was introduced only after "email" had already taken root and taken off, and today, if you refer to your email as your courriel, you are basically either a vieillard or a snob.

What is hard for me to understand is how words like shampooing came to exist in French. It's just an anomaly. Words like parking, marketing, timing, jogging, and footing employ the "-ing" ending ([iŋ]) that does not come naturally to native French speakers, and when they are pronounced, their English origin is immediately recognizable because it sounds so awkward. However, unlike all those other borrowed words, shampooing benefits from its "root" ending in a vowel to allow French speakers to say it as if it rhymed with a true French word, poing (a fist). Thus, [ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃] ("shom-pwah").

Just... why? Why, and how, did they take an English noun (that came from Hindi, by the way: chāmpo means "to massage"), transform it into a verb in participle form - long before making nouns into verbs became common practice in English, I'm assuming - and then re-introduce it as a weirdly-spelled noun? Académie française, you confuse me so.

Then again, the Académie hasn't ever seemed to have much control over the language. Linguists know that prescriptivism never holds out for very long, because it's really the people who determine what happens to words and languages. One thing that the French people have determined to do, then, is to borrow English words and then use them in contexts inappropriate for actual English. Exemple: footing does not mean the grip your foot has on a surface; it's an archaic term for going jogging, which has since been replaced by the more obvious (albeit just as weird) faire du jogging. Also, timing does not mean timing, but rather "schedule." And parking appears to be short for "parking lot." This makes the most sense of any of them, but it still sounds quite peculiar to me if anyone asks, "C'est où le parking?"

Anyway... that was a terribly tangential introduction to the story I wanted to tell. But it's a short story, anyway, so here goes:

When I returned from Lyon, over the course of the following few days, I noticed that my green bottle of really cheap shampoo that I bought at Monoprix (think mini-Wal-Mart) had gone missing. I couldn't find it in the bathroom, in my room, or anywhere in the house. Thinking this very curious, I hesitantly brought it up with my host mother. The following conversation took place in French:

Me: "Um... Katia, this might sounds like a weird question-"

Katia: "Go ahead."

Me: "Have you seen my shampoo?"

Katia: [laughs] "Oh! No, that's not a weird question at all. I kept forgetting to tell you! But Hadrien (her 5-year-old son, the older of the two boys in the house) tried to use it for his bath."

Me: "What? You mean... for bubbles?"

Katia: "Yes. And he used the entire bottle."

Me: "Oh! Haha... well, that's really funny."

Katia: "Not for the person who had to clean it up, it wasn't. But listen, we're going to go shopping tomorrow, so we can get you some more. I just wasn't sure if you needed a specific kind of shampoo or not..."

So there you go! It was a good laugh. I still haven't bought a new bottle of shampoo, actually, because I have this habit of saving the little bottles of hotel shampoo, and I've been using that. On a somewhat related note, I also got a haircut last weekend! First time getting my hair cut at a barber's in several years (usually my mom cuts my hair). But that's a story for another post, as soon as I make quick updates with lots of photos about Lyon, Paris, and the special cooking class at a French restaurant! I'm pretty behind in posting, but I guess I'm just having way too much fun to keep up with it all! Stay tuned.

PS: pseudo-French English phrases, kind of illustrate the vice versa of the that's-not-what-it-actually-means-in-English problem, but for us instead of them.

France {35} - Au sommet du monde

2011-03-25T05:30:00.004+01:00

Which means, "On the top of the world."

At the end of my vacation with my parents in the south of France, we left the region of Provence and drove back to Grenoble in the Rhône-Alps region, where, unsurprisingly, the French Alps are, in all their glory. Read: big mountains. Lots of skiing. Having expressly listed skiing in the Alps as one of my resolutions for France, (Autrans didn't count), I was very excited to get to ski at Les Trois Vallées, the largest ski resort in the world. It's the largest because it is actually eight different ski resorts located in three (-and-a-half) valleys, all connected via hundreds of ski lifts and all accessible with one single pass. It's any skier's dream to be able to traverse several mountains in a day, conquering some of the highest peaks in the Alps, so I was definitely at least survolté (hyper-excited!). (Note: I'm not exactly qualified to make the above claim, as I am not very representative of "any skier," but it's just an expression.)

My family and I spent two nights at Brides-Les-Bains, the smallest and most cost-friendly of the eight resorts. We soon realized that the reason Brides is relatively cheap is that it's actually very, very far away from all the slopes. The other seven resorts are located right at the foot of the mountains, such that you can literally walk out of your hotel on skis onto the snow and head to the nearest lift. Not for us. After arriving at our hotel and renting boots and skis, we made straight for the gondola that would transport us a few kilometers to the base of the mountains. The strangest thing was that, given the extremely warm winter France had just seen, there was absolutely no indication that we were heading toward anyplace that had even a patch of snow. Below, a photo I took from inside the gondola. See any sparkling white?

Soon enough, however... well, more like after ten minutes of this incredibly long gondola ride, we finally caught sight of snow and the mountains, beautiful like a huge cake with vanilla frosting. And when we finally arrived at the foot of the Meribel resort (the heart of the Three Valleys), I was already just gaping open-mouthed at the range and immensity of the view.

I'm just going to let the photos do the talking for now. Every time I reached a new peak, I just had to take another photo, even though I knew they'd all end up looking similar afterward. But here are some of the shots I took from the first day. I really felt like I was on top of the world...

What amazed me the most about the resort, I think, was the size and openness of the pistes, or slopes. Once you passed the tree line, which seemed very low, there was nothing but rock and a whole lot of snow. I didn't feel like I was skiing down specially-created trails walled in by trees; instead, I actually felt like I was skiing down a mountain. It was incredible. Not to mention that there was some of the best poudreuse powder I've ever seen; it felt so good, and I even realized that moguls are not actually that difficult if the conditions are right (that is, soft!).

So, I tried numerous times to take a photo of myself with a bunch of snow, or maybe the view, behind me, but it's really hard with a dSLR camera; they're too bulky. Yes, I went to the resort with my parents, but because I wanted to try all the red slopes, and my dad preferred to stay on the green (of which there are unfortunately very few, so this resort is not one for beginners), we split and I explored all three valleys on my own. We actually still had cell phone reception in the mountains, which was really helpful. Below is a photo I took of my parents on a peak between Meribel and Courchevel. I tried to teach them how to use a tire-fesse (platter lift, or téléski), but... suffice it to say that it didn't work out!

I also learned a ton of new vocabulary regarding ski lifts. At Tahoe, pretty much everything is a ski lift or chair lift; I never knew there was even a distinction between those two. But you can see in the above photo a veritable dictionary of lifts: téléski, télésiège, télécabine, télébenne (I don't even know what this one is), and téléphérique, not to mention the funitel, aerial trams, rope tows, and magic carpets- a whole slew of ski transport machines I'd never seen before.

Two other things I've never seen, pictured above: the absolute longest platter lift I've ever seen; riding it took nearly ten minutes, and it went all the way to the top of the one of the lower peaks. Below that, hundreds of people sunbathing in the snow. The bright side of sunny weather for skiers is that despite the lack of snow, it's great for bronzage, or tanning. Or maybe just chillaxing. But I had to keep my eyes closed- with all that snow around, it was actually blinding. This "beach" was located at over 2000 meters above sea level!

What a view, right? Yet... perhaps the only thing that I regretted about going solo on all these slopes was that I had nobody to enjoy it with. Skiing alone is liberating, and also a great perk because the "single" lines are much faster without the hordes that crowd every ski lift, especially right after lunch. But on the other hand, I found that it can also be very lonely. As at Autrans, I tried striking up conversation with anyone I happened to sit next to on a chair lift, but unlike Autrans, not everyone even speaks French. There was a fascinating mix of all nationalities at the Three Valleys; on top of French and English in all sorts of accents, I heard Italian, German, Chinese, a language I think might have been Polish, or maybe Russian, and plenty more that I couldn't identify at all. As cool as that was, it also meant that I had a lot fewer random conversations. I noticed a lot of solo skiers and boarders just doing their own thing, with headphones on to accompany their runs with a soundtrack. I don't recommend that because it's as dangerous as driving with headphones on, but I did wonder if, compared to that, I really preferred the vast (though still spectacular) silence of the mountains.

Above is the only photo of me taken by a stranger. (I asked him in French!) On a side note, as you can see, I was skiing without a hat and gloves... not the wisest decision, but I had to lend my gloves to my dad, and it was too hot for a hat. I was careful, though! I only went on one black trail, and that was kind of on accident (it ended up being the only trail that made me fall, and it was a total whiteout, at that).

Click on the above photo of the enormous ski resort map to see it full-size! I highlighted all the trails and lifts I took in and out of the three valleys. And lastly, below are two of my favorite photos from the two days: one looking directly down at the Meribel valley area, and the other of a replica of Rodin's "The Thinker," which was at the top of the peak between Meribel and Courchevel.

All in all, I loved the two days I spent skiing in the Alps; it was worth so much more than checking off an item in a list! I also feel foolish for worrying about missing a day of class in order to ski more, and also to spend more time with my parents before they flew back to the US. But in any case, it was an experience I'll never forget. I'd love to go back again; Les Trois Vallées is only an hour and a half away from Grenoble...

For those of you avid skiers who want to know more about Les Trois Vallées, or skiing around Grenoble in general, just leave a comment or send me an email, and I'll help you out with what I know!

France {34} - Une ville au sommet d'une colline n'échappe pas aux regards.

2011-03-20T19:36:00.015+01:00

Which means, "A city on a hill cannot be hidden."

This is the penultimate road trip blog post! On our way out of Provence, we decided against Marseilles (a big city, but nothing in terms of tourism) and Nice (too far) in favor of two small towns to simply swing by before driving back to Grenoble. So, we hit up Saint-Rémy-de-Provence for about an hour, and then Gordes for another hour. Both are quaint little towns with not much in them to do, but they're still worth simply seeing, because they're very pretty in unique ways.

I'll start with the drive to St.-Rémy: It was gorgeous due to the kilometers of road on D-9 that were lined with giant platanes (plane trees, similar to the sycamore) on both sides. The photo doesn't quite do it justice; what's thrilling is driving through these long stretches under the would-be shade of such beautiful trees. In the summertime I'm sure it's even lovelier.

When we got to St.-Rémy, we walked around the town for a bit and then went to the Roman ruins just outside town, called the Glanum. Actually, we only saw the small Arc de Triomphe and a large mausoleum, which were free access and just by the side of the road. These two structures were the most impressive and likely the best preserved, anyway, so I don't regret not actually going in.

As you can see above, spring is on its way! Yay! Right after the ruins, we walked a short way to the Saint-Paul de Mausole psychiatric hospital, where Vincent Van Gogh stayed for a short while and painted some beautiful tableaux of irises, olive trees, and the asylum itself. The place was very peaceful and quiet, and I took lots of photos...

Above, a statue of Vincent Van Gogh (the French pronounce his name "ven gugg," or [vœn gəg]), wears my dad's "Swarthmore Dad" hat. Below, pretty plants in the garden that were- woah- labeled with names and genus/species! Reminded me of Swarthmore. And below that, the cloisters of the church next to the asylum.

We then drove to Gordes. It's the city on a hill to which this post's title refers, and it really cannot be hidden. The moment we rounded a corner and caught sight of the entire city was a breathtaking surprise. What a view! Gordes is supposedly on the list of France's most beautiful cities. However, I think that all it has going for it is the view of this hill from the outskirts. Within the city itself, there isn't much at all to see.

And then we said au revoir to Provence! After leaving Gordes, we drove straight back to Grenoble, got stuck in traffic in the evening, and then began to run dangerously low on gas. This is where our trusty GPS, which had worked so perfectly to find every city and parking lot over the past week, epically failed us. You see, I tried to use it to find a station d'essence (gas station), but every single station that it found within five kilometers either was shut down or simply not even there. You cannot even imagine how frustrating and scary it was to have less than twenty kilometers in the tank and arrive at a "destination" only to see nothing there, not even a pump. What had happened, I later figured out, was that in the past three years (our GPS was last updated in 2008), big corporations (such as BP) and hypermarkets (such as Carrefour or Intermarché) snuffed out all the competition from smaller gas companies, forcing them to shut down and severely cutting the number and diversity of gas stations all across France, not to mention making the remaining ones much fewer and farther between.

So, my parents and I were forced to stop in the parking lot of an Intermarché (that, of course, was probably the only one in the city not to have an auxiliary gas station). We called the rental car company for help, who then called a breakdown service and sent a very cheerful and helpful man in a tow truck to tow our little sedan to the nearest gas station (which was about five kilometers away from where we had stopped... wonder if we would have been able to make it?). Anyway, it was a stressful- but thankfully not dangerous- adventure, and we learned our lesson: do not drive the entire distance your tank is supposedly good for in one go; fill up if you dip below a quarter-tank. And, if in France, fill up at the many gas stations at rest stops on the highway and don't waste time trying to find one in the city; if it's not a huge oil company or part of a hypermarket, chances are it's not even there!

For those of you traveling in Provence, like I said, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and Gordes are nice to visit in an afternoon, but don't merit much longer, really. I can't say anything about hotels or restaurants in the area, however (that night, after our car was towed and all was well, we ate at a pizzeria in the Italian quarter of Grenoble). Next up: skiing in the French Alps! And then Lyon! And then Paris, from where I just returned today!

France {33} - C'était le temps fort de mon voyage.

2011-03-18T21:26:00.001+01:00

Which means, "It was the highlight of my trip."

Referring to the day and a half my parents and I spent in Aix-en-Provence, by far the prettiest, liveliest, and most interesting city in Provence, out of the six that we visited! It was good timing, too, being right in the middle of the week. Any sooner and everything after it would have been a letdown; any later and I would have been too exhausted to enjoy it as much. The beautiful weather we enjoyed over the weekend was also a helpful factor!

My first impression upon driving into the city center on the road pictured above, called the Cours Mirabeau, was that it was quite busy; lots of cars on small roads as is the norm for French cities, but also lots of piétons (pedestrians) walking around. Our hotel happened to be right on this street, in a popular shopping and eating neighborhood, so it was interesting having to navigate through crowds just to get to the hotel parking. Besides that, the street is also quite beautiful, even in winter. I can only imagine how gorgeous the view must be in the summer, when all the trees are full of leaves and flowers. It's the mini Champs-Elysées of Aix-en-Provence, a hundred times nicer than the Champs-Elysées of Arles.

My parents and I just walked around the city center the first afternoon. We founds the streets to be charming, but still dirty, as was the case in every city before (by dirty I mean that dog and pigeon poop is rarely cleaned up). Around every corner, we would watch out for brown bits of cottin (dung) on the ground, and pretty and/or whimsical statues and fountains a bit higher up than the ground, such as in the first photo above. The second photo was taken a little ways outside the city, at a small cenotaph created by Joseph Sec. The sculptures in the garden were superb, and I was impressed, especially because we found it completely on accident.

Besides window-shopping and people-watching (there are a lot of younger folk in Aix-en-Provence because it is an old university town, so lots of students, including international students; there are also lots of Asians! Which was weird!), we also ate! Although street side crêperies are not uncommon in any French city, this one in particular had honey crêpes! And honey is another one of Provence's specialties. So we got a honey crêpe and an apricot jam crêpe. As you can see from the photo, they also had Nutella crêpes, slathered richly with the magical chocolate-hazelnut spread that is so wonderfully ubiquitous in France.

I wish that I had taken more photos around the city itself, but I think that my lack of photos is evidence that I was too busying having fun and doing things that did not require my camera. Maybe. In any case, above is a photo of my mom and me in front of a giant, beautiful fountain at the end of the Cours Mirabeau.

The full day we had in Aix-en-Provence was wonderful. We started off the day with the city's cute "In Cézanne's Footsteps" walking tour, which led us to various important places in the life of Paul Cézanne, the famous impressionist painter. Aside from things like the building where he was born and the school that he attended, there were also dozens of decidedly irrelevant locations, like his sister's apartment...

Anyway, we didn't take the entire tour, but allowed it to lead us to the Granet Museum, where some of Cézanne's works are housed. Actually, only the artist's least-famous works remain in his own home town; the rest are too famous and have been carted off to the Orsay and the Orangerie in Paris (where, incidentally, I saw them just today!), or various other, bigger museums around the world. Also featured at the Granet was a great collection of 18th and 19th century neo-classical painting, some random contemporary abstract art, and a very futuristic exhibit of installment art making use of motion sensors, light, and water, called "Electronic Shadow: FutuRéalismes." It was very weird. But also interesting.

After the museum and lunch, we walked to the outskirts of the city, to Cézanne's atelier, or studio! This was where the artist worked for many years after returning from Paris a matured painter. He had the actual painting room custom built to best serve his style, which meant an enormous bay window (below) that let in lots of light. At the same time, however, he repainted his walls floor-to-ceiling in a somber gray, because white walls were too bright and distracting. Above, my parents sitting outside Cézanne's studio; below, the view of that window from the outside, in his garden.

Photos were not allowed inside the room itself, which had been left almost exactly as it was the day Cézanne died. All of his bowls, pitchers, and soup tureens were still on the shelves, and his skulls were lined up on a table. His hat and coat were still on the hangers. It was really strange to be in that giant room, that really seemed like his house and not a museum. However, there were also some historical photos and documents in the room. My dad loves Cézanne, so this entire tour, culminating in a visit to the actual studio, was perfect for him. We even bought souvenirs! Including the postcard of the room, that I photographed (artistically) so that you can see for yourselves what it looked like. I eventually sent this postcard, along with all the others behind it, to various friends back home.

And that's it for Aix-en-Provence! For those of you who may visit the city, we stayed in the Grand Hotel Nègre Coste, which is in a prime location right on the Cours Mirabeau, and has a very helpful and friendly staff. We ate at two restaurants: Le Bistro Latin is a cute little restaurant with an excellent, not-too-pricey menu, within walking distance from the hotel and in what I imagine is the center of the city's nightlife. Le Petit Verdot is a more expensive restaurant that doesn't have menus; instead, the server comes to your table and gives "suggestions of the day," all very fancy dishes with interesting taste combinations. The restaurant is also supposedly very well known for its wine, so it makes sense to try a bottle. Aix-en-Provence is also a great city for the younger crowd, as there's always something going on, such as its famous music festivals in the summer.

Next up: St. Rémy de Provence, and Gordes! Then, skiing in the Alps!