Third week in France

Salut!
C’est Katie pour cette partie.

(This update is a day late, because I couldn't access the internet last night)

Highlights for the last week (approximately) in the life of your humble writers.

On Monday, Opera Garnier presented “La Dame aux Camelias.” This was the first event out of a list that Hollins students could sign up for. Because of the pricey nature of these tickets, we could only choose two, and originally Rachael and I wanted to go to a comedic ballet called “Le Parc” but this took place during another school trip to Belgium, Brussels and Lille. So between the two we chose the trip instead of the happy dance, and signed up for the sad ballet as our alternative. 

It was perfectly beautiful and very tragic. I was also very glad that I paid for the (ridiculously overpriced—bleh!) program that gave a synopsis for all the acts—12€ later…But like I said, it was worth it, because it’s a mixture of French and English, with profiles on the performers and other good stuff. Without it, a lot of the subtle undertones of the ballet would have been lost on me, especially since the way the ballet was designed, it was almost two stories in one.

Two negative points to touch on around the night in general: It was a night of agony for the feet. Mostly I’m sure for the dancers, but they’re also used to it and train around the inconvenience of broken toes and such. I was just incredibly stupid and so brought pain upon myself for no gain.

I wore heels… >.>

There is a simple explanation for it though—I was in a hurry (as usual), running around trying to find something to eat and something appropriate to wear. By the time I’d accomplished those goals, I needed to dash to the metro to meet Rachael. Shoes first. What do I wear to the opera normally, I thought to myself. Heels. I have heels. Wore the heels, and long story short by the end of the night, I’d managed to completely take the skin off two of my twos. They are very sad, but healing alright now that I’ve given up on Band-Aids and socks. I just kept telling myself, if ballerinas can do it, so could I. It helped me persevere long enough to get back to my apartment and become a puddle of a human being. Rachael has decided that I’m not a girl, not that she needed more proof of this in the two+ years of knowing me. 

            

So in addition to that lovely aspect of the evening, Rachael and I got box seats in the opera on the third floor near the stage. And in France, they don’t count the ground floor as the first floor. That’s the 0 floor. So really it was four flights of stairs, one of which was grandiose and expansively scaled. We sat in the chairs in front of the balcony which gave us an okay view of the stage, but an even better view of the probably fifty foot drop into the crowd below. Especially if we leaned over to see the side of the stage closest to us which was partially blocked from standard view because of a column. Walking to our seats was an interesting affair mostly because once I caught sight of the balcony, my stomach started to turn. I pretty much suction cupped to the wall and crouched to my seat when the wall ran out. It was a pathetic site I’m sure, but Rachael seemed amused, so I suppose all was not lost. It was better once the ballet started and the lights went down, because then I was distracted from the horrific scenario of tumbling over the balcony to a horrific death.

           

The ballet was well done, as far as I can tell—I’ve only been to see one other. I maintain my opinion that the lack of voices perturbs me on some deep level. I just think with the amount of drama and emotion displayed, there needs to be some kind of vocal harmonization. The orchestra was synchronized and in tune, and the whole ballet was choreographed to the work of Chopin, who I adore as a classical musician. When I listen to his work in a normal context, it feels whole and perfectly expressed. The story was sad, being the base for the film The Moulin Rouge (which Rachael explained later when I pointed out several similarities).

            

There is one good thing about tragic love stories like that, ending in poverty and death and suffering, if there is such a thing as a bright side here. I usually come out of them with a better perspective on my own life and whatever happens to be going on at the time. Because at least it’s not as bad as dying of consumption right after you finally resolve traumatic differences with the love of your life.

            

I did come out of the ballet with a few impressions or questions that I feel were not really intended by the creative director. Do male ballerinas have a special name or are they just called dancers? How does one find ballerina costume dresses for typical retail sale (because let me tell you what, they were all beautifully and elegantly shaped, with a sort of classic coloring and design that looked good on all of the dancers, which is no easy feat—a few times, I became completely absorbed with watching how the material moved instead of the dancers.) And an observation—If you do something with enough purpose mixed with casualness, no one will ever question that it wasn’t supposed to be like that. For instance, several times when the dancers performed lifts, the dresses of their partners would fall into their eyes or cover their faces entirely, and the ballerinas would gracefully move their arms as if it was part of the dance and push aside the material. I only noticed because for some reason the idea of the dancer not able to see where he was going really bothered me.

            

That was a late night for Rachael and me, especially because I had a while to travel on the metro. I think I’m one of the farthest people out from the center of Paris. Which makes sense when you think about the fact that Montmartre used to be a suburb outside of Paris before Paris decided to have a growth explosion and kind of ate the neighborhood. Which in French is called a quartier or an arrondissement. Arrondissement implies a larger area though. If you look at a map of Paris, it is divided into 20 arrondissements, arranged like the carapace of a snail. The first one is in the center, with the rest swirling out from that point.  Montmartre is the 18^th arrondissement north of the city. Rachael’s is the 14^th and she is near the southern end of the city. Reid Hall is situated north of Rachael, but south of the direct center of Paris, in the arrondissement of Montparnasse. That is also the train station is that Rachael, Katie, and I took to go on our weekend voyage!

            

Some quick details of that—we started planning this trip toward the beginning of the week, around Tuesday or Wednesday. We had a few setbacks where we thought the weather would be too bad over the weekend in the areas we were looking at, so we formulated a back-up plan. We decided though that we didn’t like the back-up plan, which was to travel to Auxerre, a city southwest of Paris. Rachael thought what we’d seen about the city was a tourist trap and talking to other people, like our host families, about the trip seemed to confirm that. So we went back to the original plan to venture to Rennes, a city northeast of Paris in the province of Bretagne (close to Normandy, where we had our orientation week before arriving in Paris.)

            

So Thursday evening we booked our hotel, went to the train station, bought our tickets and a special discount pass, then went home to pack and prepare for travelling the next morning.

We all woke up this Friday morning around five am (shudder), and met at the train station around 6:50. The train left the station without any incident and a nice French man moved over in his seat so that I could be closer to Rachael and Katie. I ended up flubbering a little because I wasn’t expecting the sudden gesture of kindness, but managed a “merci” and sat down.

            

After a two hour train ride, we arrived at the Rennes gare (train station) and realized that in our bustle to get the initial details sorted, we’d completely forgotten to look up directions from the station to our hotel.

After a lot of walking (always more walking then one could desire) and hauling our bags around, we reached out hotel. Maps at bus stops are helpful things. It’s on the outskirts of the city, which is actually quite pleasant because it’s quieter than Paris ever is, even in the wee hours of the morning. There’s a lot of grass and a river running through the city, which is very similar to Paris. There are a lot of other similarities too, to the point that Rennes almost feels like a less populated, congested (and certainly smaller) version of Paris. It has a good vibe to it.

The hotel is situated around a lot of residences which are exactly as one would picture French living quarters to appear. Lots of plants and flowers all around the walkways, painted shutters, balconies with wrought iron. It oozes charm and I have been successfully wooed.

So I’m trying to get my fill of fresh air and quiet while we’re here. Also in our wanderings today, we found an extended square with a lot of quirky shops. Found a movie shop, which I kind of splurged on because they had all the right movies for great prices. Got some Cedric Klapisch films and some American ones with French dubbing! It makes me really happy and chuckly. There was also a sort of cult fiction shop with lots of pacman and star wars paraphernalia. Eventually we settled in our rooms (when we arrived, we couldn’t go up because the rooms weren’t ready), went out again to get a grocery store/picnic dinner, gorged ourselves on food, and then hung out in our rooms for some quiet relaxation time, the likes of which we have not really experienced since arriving. Tomorrow, we’re hitting the town hard and hoping to explore as much as we can because we have an early train on Sunday to catch back to Paris.

As a general update on life, classes continue, and I don’t particularly feel like talking about that because it’s class and it’s French and they’re together, so it makes my head swim. And Rachael thinks they’re all poopie-heads. “Except for the nice language lady who talks all nice and clear and helps you when you feel stupid. But the other ones are poopie heads for sure.” This moment brought to you by Rachael and her sleepy mumbles.

A bientot! <3