I'm gonna go ahead and preface this whole blog thing with a few important points. First, my brain has decided to speak in French. It's a bit difficult to spit out complex sentences in English at the moment, so excuse the forced writing and/or interspersed French shit. Also, dunno if I can keep this up. And I don't really feel like the whole world should see this. Lastly, no, this will not be as writerly or journalistic as Yell's.
Okay, I left for Paris Wednesday night. Was on the same flight (randomly) as Matt, Darcy (both with whom I'll live in Paris for a month) and Zosia. It took us 30 minutes to figure out how to buy the train ticket from the airport to Paris. Winners. Five minutes before landing, my shoes received a nice splashing of residual puke from the teenage girl across the aisle who found it necessary to immoderately disgorge the breakfastpastrybrick she had just eaten into the aisle way. Note: this is the second time this pair of shoes have been puked on, and not by me, on mass transit. Une jolie petite histoire pour commencer.
Ah, but first. In Philly before we left, we were sitting around waiting for our flight when this woman rolls up lookin' very French--dressed in black, a leather jacket with a red scarf, dark and petite, a guitar on her back and a carton of Marlboro reds plus a bottle of Jack hanging from her right hand in a bag from the duty-free shop--sold yet? Long story short, her name is Sabrina and she was in LA for the past three months making art--a short film about the EcoPark, impermanent sculptures, photography, etc. We talked for a good bit and exchanged contact info while she shared her whiskey. The next night in Paris, I get a call at about 6:30 (in the middle of a nap) and she wants to get a beer somewhere. We meet up at around 8 and start trying to find a random bar. After I get over the suspicion that she does in fact know Paris, and is a crazywoman, and that she's going to take me down some dark alley and a present a gun to my face, we find a random ass and pleasant little bar a couple blocks from the Place d'Italie just as the sun is setting.
RECAP: It's my first night, my first day, my first 9 hours in Paris and I'm having a beer with a French woman at a bar that she doesn't know either and we're talking about art. And I want to read her book. She tells me she's written a book. And someone wants her to write another. Her first book has an obligatory long title which is something like «Est-t-il pervers de couper le papier avec des mots comme...» (Is it perverse to cut paper into words...blah something about paper flowers). In it she tries to find le mot juste, like, the truly correct word for things; and she creates new words out of verbs, no adjectives or nouns, like German words. From here we got to talking about Nietzsche's "Truth and Lies," language, as well as Mallarmé, symbolist poets, etc. Pretty awesome how much what she was trying to do artistically related to my studies this year. I still need to get her book somehow.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday were cool being in Paris without much pressure to be a tourist and see a bunch of shit. We did a lot of walking and just experiencing. Randomly met up with Rachel at the hostel I stayed at the first night. After Thursday, Matt & I couch surfed at this dude François' (of course) place. He was awesome. Super nice, with an Australian accent when he spoke English. A bit dorky, but a real dude. Rillll. Vraiment. Couldn't have asked for a better sleeping accommodation in Paris--which included getting to go out to the bars at night with un vrai français (regard, il bouge!). Ha.
It's only the thrid night here in Rennes, but I can give my first impressions of the host family. Michèle is a plump, happy looking woman who mumbles a bit (or is that an accent?) and hums to herself when she's content. Loïc is a normal dude, very nice and just genuine. He's 23, currently doing stage at some marketing firm--he wants to do biology management, something like a mix between biology and marketing. Joël, the English dude who's doing a teaching assistantship here, and staying with Michèle et Loïc seems very English. A bit frail looking, glasses, very white haha. I haven't interacted with him much because he's not been at dinner these past three nights and we both have school today during the day. Junior is a little kind of rat terrier looking thing, with short brown hair and a twisted head like my aunt's dog once had. He's probably 2/3 the size of my mom's dog Zooey and he's 15 years old.
The language school has been legit, have only had two mornings of class so far. Rennes is legit, too. I was happy to see that punks actually do exist in France.
That's about it. This'll probably be the longest one of these I do. Jesus.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
