The Christmas Letter

I've been suffering from blogger's block, but maybe it will be good for me to work through that now.

My mom receives Christmas cards with Christmas letters in December. I read them when she leaves them lying around the house. I thought I would take a stab at writing my own.


My Christmas Letter 2011

I wept copiously on January 1st, 2011.
I went back to Bordeaux, France on January 13th and studied full time at the school for foreign students learning French on the Université Bordeaux III campus. I had serious jet lag and took up calligraphy. I listened to radio classique and practiced foundation hand and textura quadrata night after night.
I rented a harp and took harp lessons from the principal harpist of the Bordeaux orchestra. That was great.

My friend Ashlee from Alberta visited me for 10 days or so in February. We planned to go south to the Spanish border but my friendship with M. dissolved and the travel plans fell through.

In March I celebrated my 22nd birthday with champagne, a lovely cake, and some people I didn't know well but later grew to know better. One was a Winnipegger and her visiting boyfriend. The other was a robotics engineer from Australia.

In April I visited Ashlee in Edinburgh, Scotland. I went to the International Harp Festival and did a Wire-strung harp workshop. I also saw some great harp concerts and drank a lot of Irn Bru. I read some terrible, terrible chick lit on the shores of Loch Ness. I did not see Nessie. I ate food that I had heard mentioned by characters on Coronation Street (sausage rolls, eccles cakes, fish and chips and mushy peas that I regretted later on).

I worked a bit as a translator of French fitness videos into English. I also went into the recording studio to dub over a Pilates video and a Latin Aerobics video.

D. came and we went to St-Jean-de-Luz for a few days. We went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, and then ordered a bunch of food from the one euro menu at McDonalds, also in Bilbao. Then we went to a village called Etsaut (even French people didn't know where it was) and rented a donkey that we took hiking in the Pyrénées. We went to Paris. I was also in Paris in April. I do not like Paris. I did like Musée d'Orsay because I took an Art History course in Bordeaux and most of the paintings were in Musée d'Orsay. I surprised myself by how much I could enjoy museums. Now I'm all museum'd out and traveled out.

I came back to Winnipeg in time for convocation. Then I went back to Kenora and worked. I went to Toronto in August and found Jesus. I lost him sometime in November and I'm still trying to figure out where he is exactly (I checked at the right hand of God but God said that he thought he might have gone to the restroom).

I moved to Fredericton and lived with 11 roommates and a landlady with 7 or so cats. She bred Persians and Himalayans. I did three months of my B.Ed. before withdrawing and moving back to Kenora. When I write all this out and think about the things that I am not writing it does seem to make sense that I ended up back here.

My family is doing well. Dad retired last year. Mom retires next year. She is going on a trip to England this Spring. H. is studying Environmental Design at the University of Manitoba. She sleeps at school sometimes, when she sleeps at all. I am happy that she is so into what she's doing that she'll do that, but I also think that it's a messed up world we live in when people have to do that sort of thing for school. I. is in the army reserves and is going to B.C. in January to shoot snow packs and cause controlled avalanches. I think this is every man's dream job.


If this were a real letter I would come up with some conclusion. I'm not sure what it would be. I wonder if anyone would even care to read it because it seems like all I did was move around a lot. Other people usually write about trips (check), and births and deaths (I didn't really have any this year). I guess you could conclude that my life is fairly frivolous. I don't think I'm really a wanderer, I was just masquerading as one during 2011.

If I had one wish for 2012, it would be stability, and that we all learn to want what we have. Maybe that's two wishes.

Merry Christmas.

Just for the heck of it, here's a poem I wrote after reading my Mom's 2011 Christmas letter. She always writes a paragraph about me which always makes me feel a bit awkward.

I aborted that plan

came home

to wear slippers and drink

tea out of the fine china

gilt edges

I struggle.
I am normal.

I rant about technology

Luddite:
one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change.


This is apparently in the top 10% of lookups on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary (which happens to be my online dictionary of choice). 


I self-identify as a luddite. The irony of blogging about this is not lost on me.
I went to two workshops last week about using technology in the classroom. We learned about wikis, blogs, twitter and edmodo. I am not opposed to using technology in the classroom; there are ways in which it can be really useful. I do think that it's misused a lot though. Example: we were shown a blog where every student in a grade 1 classroom had their own blog. These kids do not know how to write yet! There were Smartboard screen caps showing the screen while an audio recording of their voices played explaining a pattern they had drawn. I would add a link here except I find the whole thing totally creepy and weird and do not think that 6-year olds should have an "online presence", so I am really not going to promote that. 


Apparently it's really motivating for students to write for an audience. My question is, if everyone is producing, who is the audience? We are all caught in up in our technological illusions of grandiosity. As a blogger, I am no exception. 


The future is here, and interpersonal communication is mediated through a cold, inhuman interface. Sure we can skype with people from around the world, but we can't hug them (but students are not allowed to hug each other in the school in which I intern anyway -- it's against the "hands off" policy).


I went to King's Landing today. It is a living museum that shows how people lived in the 1800s. Simple things that we take for granted took hours and hours to make. I, on the other hand, feel so removed from my own survival. My life is disturbingly abstract. I know nothing about agriculture, construction, or sewing. People were trapped in narrow, arduous lives 150 years ago by the lack of technology and the all-consuming task of surviving in the Canadian wilderness. Now I am chained to a computer because I am so dependent upon technology that I would most likely freeze or starve to death without it. 

When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed

Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game
Come to the front of the class and we'll measure your brain
We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name

Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game
Can't have the cream when the crop and the cream are the same
Liquid or gas no more than the glass will contain

When you talk about the hand of glory

A tale that's rather grim and gory

Is it just another children's story that's been de-clawed?

When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed

I think they're gonna make you start over
You don't want to start over
Put your backpack on your shoulder
Be the good little soldier
Take your places now
'Cause we're all predisposed

Measuring cups, play a new game
Front of the class, measure your brain
Give you a complex and we'll give it a name

When you talk about the hand of glory
A tale that's rather grim and gory
Is it just another children's story that's been de-clawed?
When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed

Put your backpack on your shoulder
Be the good little soldier
It's no different when your older
You're predisposed
That's all for questions now
The case is closed

Comic Sans

Disappointingly, I am not able to make this blog post in Comic Sans, but the topic is Comic Sans. The focus of my blog seems to be changing. I'm glad I specifically chose a vague name for my blog, because I seem to want to write about what ever I am thinking about, which is usually influenced by whatever I am doing. Last year I was living in France and trying to learn some French. This year I am learning about teaching.

I'm putting together a PowerPoint presentation for a lesson that I need to present for a Science Teaching Methods course. I'm going to actually teach this lesson to a grade 6 class in November as well, so I want it to be good. I had heard that using the font Comic Sans helped with reading comprehension, so I have decided to do most of the text on the slides in that font. 

I'm not a fan of Comic Sans, it's a pretty undignified typeface, but I think it will be just right for my lesson on Arthropods. 

I wanted to share this because I found it funny.

Getting educated in the Faculty of Education

It is not yet noon and my brain is already fried. I open up my locker and stare into it, immobile. I know I have to do my assignments one at a time, but which of the three readings that are due tomorrow should I start with?

My professors are not entirely to blame for the intensity of my schedule: many of my time commitments have been self-imposed. I have never been so intellectually stimulated by formal education as I am here. I sat in my morning class and trembled with excitement while we discussed Rousseau's Emile.

The things that we discuss in class only touch the surface of what I want to know. One of our assignments is to design the ideal classroom. I draw diagram after diagram of desk placement, but I'm also interested in how lighting affects learning, whether or not it would be a good idea to give my students stress balls, if 11-year olds can and should meditate, and something called rocking chair therapy (which apparently can be helpful to persons with ADHD). One of my profs uses a rain stick to get our attention. I would like to use a tibetan singing bowl, but would it be loud enough?

I want to research alternative/experimental schools. I don't know if I can find the time. I am reading a book of Short Creative Nonfiction (called In Fact, it is selected submissions from the first ten years of the journal Creative Nonfiction.). I can really only seem to find time to read it while I'm eating. All my other time gets consumed.

Other blogs I read

Maybe I should just start blogging about the crazy word usage of another blogger that I know. You can read his blog here:
http://consweatman.wordpress.com/

Last week, I learned the word panopticon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Amazing. How did this word escape me for 22 years?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXav-PljwtE
"Do you know what this is, son? This is the panopticon". I heard that song for the first time 5 years ago.

Today I started to read Con's blog and only got as far as "multifariously".

I read other blogs too, I think there's a section on my blog that shows which ones I follow. I really enjoy "Smother Goose" which is someone blogging about twisted children's tales. I also read my friend Sandy's blog. She's a journalist who likes to blog about cats.

Plugging my other blog

I would like to refer you all to my new blog:
http://meinmysmallcorner.blogspot.com/
The new one is about the Bible. I have no idea how many posts it will inspire, but people generally have a lot to say about the Bible so maybe I will too.

I will continue to post in this blog about everything else.

What am I modeling?

Here I am, living in Fredericton. I had my first day of orientation for my Education degree yesterday. One of the topics that stuck in my craw was "dress code". I know some of the other Ed students are struggling with this as well -- after 4 years as university students, we now have to put together a "professional wardrobe".

The thing is, with all this talk about us becoming role models, I am thinking very carefully about which values I want to model for the students. If I go out and buy a bunch of new clothes to wear during my practicum, I would consider that to be modeling consumerism and materialism. 

I was telling some of my fellow students about how I had scrounged in my mom's closet and had some vintage blouses from the '70s to wear. Did I detect a couple of strange looks? 

My practicum placement is in a middle school (grades 6-8). Students at that age are desperate to fit in and "be cool" (I remember this because I used to be that age and I wanted Roxy t shirts SO MUCH). I want to be the kind of role model that shows that confidence and self-respect have nothing to do with wearing the latest fashions. I want my dress-sense to express my sense of humour about myself and the world around me, and my desire to avoid conformity when it compromises my values. So while I will have to respect the dress codes rules and keep a kempt and modest appearance, I want to respect my own values as well. 

My landlady is taking me on a shopping trip to Value Village this weekend. Apparently the VV here is awesome. And thank goodness I bought so many cute pairs of shoes before I got so concerned with personal integrity. 

Resuming my wandering ways

So here I am using the free wi-fi at the Toronto airport. I'm about halfway to my destination: Fredericton. I am increasingly disillusioned with travelling and I long to settle somewhere and build something real. I had to take 7 pounds of clothing out of my suitcase at the airport, at the last minute (I was overweight).

I tried to watch movies on the plane but I am starting to feel like pop culture (in this case, Hollywood) contaminates me when I engage with it. I don't want to fall out of touch with the things that normal people do, but   I've been finding it hard to stomach. I watched five minutes of Red Riding Hood before I deemed it intolerable. Then I spent the rest of the time watching Never Let Me Go, which was extremely depressing. I guess it was maybe trying to make some points about medical science and ethics, but I feel like everyone who watches it will be like, I emotionally engaged for an hour an a half with the issue of medical ethics while I drank a soda and ate buttered popcorn.

I stopped by the bookstore in the airport. I always love seeing which books are being sold in airports, because it is a specific sort of demographic that they cater to (wealthier people who fly a lot) and I think the books reflect that. Some of the titles that jumped out at me: Learn Just Enough to Get Laid, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, The Power of Positive Thinking, Outliers, How the West Was Lost, and Becoming Enlightened by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. If only I could get enlightened on a plane. Sigh.

There was also a book about making friends, and turning online friends into real friends. I considered this book, because I don't know anyone in Fredericton and I don't want to spend too much time alone because my mind is a scary place. When I am alone I can either: a) be really reflective and self-examining, or b) watch tv online (especially Coronation Street -- it's like candy for my soul).

I am seriously contemplating getting my boots polished while I am here. They need it.

untitled

Googling how to spell spontaneity.

Gertrude Stein

I think I like Gertrude Stein she said she is much better to read if you haven't listened to too many opinions of her beforehand.

A painful process

I was going to compare my time in France to growing pains. As in, when much growth is undergone at one time, the body struggles to adapt, making it more painful than a slower change. This is probably true of my mental experience in France, but of course I'll never know how I would have been different had I never gone.

This isn't true of actual growing pains though. Apparently they are not associated with growth spurts, and doctors don't really know their cause. 

So you can pretty much disregard this whole post.

Sowing wild oats

I'm pretty tired, so this is going to be a copy-pasted explanation from Wikipedia (sorry):

"Sowing wild oats" is a phrase used since at least the 16th century; it appears in a 1542 tract by Thomas Beccon, a Protestant clergyman from Norfolk. Apparently, a similar expression was used in Roman Republican times already, e.g. by Plautus. The origin of the expression is the fact that wild oats, notably A. fatua, are a major weed in oat farming. Among European cereal grains, oats are hardest to tell apart from their weed relatives, which look almost alike but yield little grain. The life cycle of A. fatua is nearly synchronous with that of Common Oat (see also Vavilovian mimicry) and in former times it could only be kept at bay by checking one's oat plants one by one and hand-weeding the wild ones when they were in flower but the grains had not ripened yet, lest the wild oats seeded themselves out. Consequently, "sowing wild oats" became a way to describe unprofitable activities. Given the reputation of oat grain to have invigorating properties and the obvious connection between plant seeds and human "seed", it is not surprising that the meaning of the phrase shifted...''

O Canada

It's been a long time since I've written a post. I'd like to think that it isn't because I find my home and native land uninspiring, but rather that I spend less time sitting alone on the computer, feeling slightly lonely, and having no one to talk to other than the cyberspace, a place in which my blog is like a discount movie theatre with only a handful of people present, and most of them are napping.

I met F.'s family this weekend. We took his sister and some of her friends, including a German exchange student, out on my family's boat to watch the fireworks. I guess the boat is shabby: it has chunks missing from the upholstery, and the carpet is worn right through in places. The [Mani]toban girls seemed apprehensive. We waited in the boat at the edge of the water, just outside the space that was off-limits because it was too close to the fireworks. The restricted area was not marked in any way, we knew it was out of bounds because there was a police boat patrolling and occasionally flashing its lights. We packed 12 people into our boat. We saw people packed even tighter in boats. We waited almost an hour for the fireworks to start.

The fireworks were, according to F., the best he's seen in his life.


It's hard to capture this kind of moment in words. I was just thinking that it would be exactly the kind of thing I would want to stumble upon if I were a German exchange student in Canada... the kind of authentic experience, doing what the locals do, hearing what they talk about...


It was the kind of moment I felt happy to stumble upon myself.

L'Étranger

I wrote exams for four consecutive hours today (I am done 4/8). I am getting used to this whole writing exams every day thing now. I think I did okay on my politics exam today (I'm failing the course), so that made me feel a bit better.

I came back to my room and finished reading L'Étranger by Camus. I bought a copy that has a dossier in the back with literary criticism of the book. The cover of the book is Conference at night by Edward Hopper, so it also has an essay comparing the book to the painting. I didn't even realize it until I read about it in the dossier, but probably one of the reasons why I didn't have too much trouble understanding the book is that it's written in passé composé instead of passé simple.

My friend Robert

Two exams down, only 6 to go!

I wasn't allowed to use anything other than a pen for today's exam (Compte Rendu - listening to an audio clip and then writing a summary).

However, in my spare time I have been getting better acquainted with Le Robert.

Now when I talk to friends from back home who did immersion and I talked about tutoyer-ing and vousvoyer-ing, they don't know what I'm talking about sometimes. Tutoyer and vousvoyer are the verbs for calling someone ''tu'' or ''vous'' respectively. And it's a big issue and very nuanced: vousvoyer anyone older than you but don't vousvoyer a friend or they'll think you don't like them. Coworkers are complicated. I usually tutoyer my boss because he is kind of a chilled out hippie. Complicated stuff though.

So here's another great word: zozoter. Zozoter is an informal word for zézayer. Zézayer means to pronounce the French soft J (as in, je) as a z (example: ze veux). There are two words for doing this! French really is a rich language.

Another one that I like is coq-à-l'âne, which is a passage from one subject to another unrelated subject without any transition. A direct translation of this would be rooster-to-donkey, or cock-to-ass.

I am going to finish watching The Life of Émile Zola, winner of Best Picture in the 1937 Oscars. Before I saw this movie I had no idea that Le Figaro used to be published in English in the 19th century. I am certain that this movie will help me succeed on my Art History exam. I also intend to watch Madame Bovary and Les Enfants du Paradis if I have enough time.

Mon cher Robert, things I wish I'd been taught sooner and a massive aside about American missionaries in France

For next week's exams we are only allowed to have a monolingual French dictionary, so yesterday I went to the librairie to buy a dictionary. After much deliberation, I came home with Le Robert micro, and a copy of L'Étranger by Camus. I've read a few chapters in L'Étranger and although I don't understand everything, I understand enough to keep wading through, but néanmoins (nez-en-plus!!!), it's a pleasant wade.

Le Robert has become my new friend, and I lie in bed and flip through the pages, checking out the IPA spelling of words, finding out precisely what the phonetic difference is between dessous and dessus. I've also been wondering about how to pronounce words that being with in-. So if it's in + consonant, you get a nasal vowel 

as in, vin. French has 4 nasal vowels and you can say them all in the phrase ''un bon vin blanc''. 

But back to ''in-''. If it's followed by a vowel, it's not nasal, it's just ''in'' in IPA, which is like ''een'' if you compare it to English I guess. Mystery solved. Thanks Robert!

The whole IPA thing is really useful actually, I wish I had learned it sooner. 

Another thing I wish I had learned sooner: liaisons à l'oral. Either no one ever taught me this, or I wasn't paying attention. Basically, if a word ends with a consonant and the next word starts with a vowel, you tie them together. Example, ''les petits enfants'', you would pronounce the ''s'' in ''petits'' (normally it is silent). Oh but you pronounce it like a ''z''. Now that I come to think of it, this is kind of hard to explain and there are a bunch of other weird rules like the ''d'' at the end a word turns into a ''t'' when you do the liaison. 

I'm not big on memorizing grammar rules. I like to be told a rule and then pay attention to the pattern in things I read or hear, but if I am asked to articulate what the rule is later on, I've usually forgotten the specifics. I'll just write whatever ''sounds right''. Memorizing rules is all right for some, but grammar is just a means to an end for me, I just want to be understood.

This post is just about as boring as my weekend, which has so far consisted of taking breaks from my translation work to study for my exams. I watched the movie ''Potiche'' last night though. I enjoyed it. On Friday there was a picnic with some of the other students. A few of them are American missionaries and they had another American missionary at the picnic who was visiting. I struck up a conversation with this lady ''What do you think is the best English translation of the Bible?'' 

''What's your opinion on Jehovah's Witnesses?''

She eventually got that glint in her eye and I knew she was hoping to save me. I tried to tell her about my church back home and how it meant more to me than the Baptist church that I've been going to here. I wrote down the name of my Winnipeg church on the back of a receipt and told her to google it because my Minister puts her sermons online. 

I don't really understand the logic in sending American missionaries to France. University is free and they have their incredible sécurité sociale, so the state is looking after the vulnerable, and the people are probably too educated to get converted to American-style Christian fundamentalism.

It's hard for me to have a discussion about religion with anybody though because I really have never looked into it enough to feel that I have any sort of authority to argue any position. What's up with diehard Christians always citing the prophesies in the Bible as being proof that it's the word of God. Is that good proof?

This missionary also chatted with me about evolution, which is NOT a good way to convert me. I told her, my belief in evolution is in no way at odds with an allegorical interpretation of Genesis, but she was all ''it is literally 24 hours per day in the Genesis story''. Even though I suggested that since the Earth wasn't formed there would be a different conception of time. Nope, she was pretty sure that all Evolutionists started with the notion that there was no God and took it from there, so they had faulty reasoning. I pointed out that Darwin was a Christian and didn't publish his results for years because of that. But according the the missionary he lost his faith later on. 

But she never directly answered my question: is the devil responsible for carbon dating and fossils?

Sigh. I should get back to work.

Soulagement par Bibliothèque

I've had the onglet (tab) open to write this entry for a few days already. But it's hard to know where to begin to describe how much I love the library here.

I am currently sitting in the foul-tasting weekend sandwich between the last week of classes and my week of 7 exams. For dessert, I'm having a vacation in France with my boyfriend. He is like high quality pistachio ice cream. But I digress...

English books have become part of my soutien here. The library has around 6 rows of shelves of English books on the second story (première étage by French standards). There are 6 more rows on the troisième étage, but I just found those since I've been too busy on the first floor.

Last week I found the Canadian section. It is about two shelves big and 50% Margaret Atwood. I took out a book called ''A North American Eduction'' by Clark Blaise. I really enjoyed it. Here is an article about him from The National Post: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/afterword/archive/2009/02/18/philip-marchand-our-greatest-unsung-writer-what-if-clark-blaise-had-remained-here.aspx

I've gotten into reading John Fante because Charles Bukowski was a fan. I read Ask the Dust, and I read The Wine of Youth, which is short stories that Bukowski explicitly mentions in one of his poems:
''the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.''

-The Wine of Forever

Right now I'm reading Full of Life, also by Fante. I've read at least 14 books cover-to-cover since September, not including two books I read in French (La Salle de Bain by Toussaint, and La Place by Annie Ernaux), and a few more books I dipped into but never finished. 

If you return a book late to the library here, there is no fine, but you are banned from taking out books for the number of days you were late turning in your overdue books. 

There is something so delightful about this narrowed selection of books in a French library. First of all, they are there for French students who study English, so they are books that have somehow been deemed ''worth the effort'' to read in one's second language. They all have a certain quality. It is hard to define French taste in English books. They are pretty into Poe. 

I suppose I should read more in French than in English since I'm here, but the ease of reading in English and the tasty selection of books makes reading these books a guilty pleasure that I can't resist. But if there is one thing about the French people I've noticed, is that they tend not to feel guilty about their pleasures. So this is just mon délice, tout simplement.

The Belly of Paris

I've been working on a new batch of translations for my employer, and the word that I'm hesitating on right now is ''ventre''. I think I will translate it as stomach. I have a degree in Biology, so I know that a stomach should be the actual organ, but I've checked some online dictionaries and they do have ''the abdominal region'' as one of the definitions.

Most of the time if you look up a French-English translation for ''ventre'' it will give you ''belly''. You even have Émile Zola's ''Le Ventre de Paris'' translated as ''The Belly of Paris'', which I think sounds terrible. When I hear someone talk about a belly, the image coming to my mind is that of a paunch. I think most people who are using this word nowadays are using it in a context more like that. Perhaps it's time for the bilingual dictionaries to update.

Unpacking my adjectives

I just returned from a week in Scotland. I am happy to be back in France, going through Irn Bru withdrawal and recovering from severe fish-and-chips (and mushy peas) induced indigestion.

While I was over in Scotland, I identified a few terms that have been confusing me:

Britain, Great Britain, the UK, British.

Britain is England and Wales.
Great Britain is that land mass that contains England, Scotland and Wales.
The UK is the clump of those three countries PLUS Northern Ireland.
For the definition of British, I have:

''of or pertaining to Great Britain or its inhabitants''.

Meaning that Scottish things could be British. Like fish and chips maybe. But not haggis  (which was alright by the way, not too exciting, it just tastes kind of peppery).

All in all, I had quite a few experiences in Scotland: I read chick lit on the shores of Lock Ness, I did a workshop in wire-strung clarsach at the Edinburgh International harp festival, I bought a ''jumper'' (what we would call a sweater) in a charity shop, I rode at the top of double decker buses, I ate food that I had heard mentioned on Coronation Street (sausage roll, eccles cake), I got mild shin splints...

Le 31 mars

Le 31 mars 2011, Pessac, France. Le printemps est largement épanoui. Les feuilles des arbres s'écartent. C'est comme une bénédiction.

Art History

I know practically nothing about art or history, so I have been trying to study a lot for my test tomorrow. Of course, I have ended up just going off on a lot of fun internet tangents instead. I read most of the French Wikipedia page on the history of the corset... this was because I was originally looking for the French term for choker (ras le cou), because I was pretty sure I'd written it down wrong in class... my notes said the French words for rat-of-ass (rat-de-cul) with a question mark beside it.

Anyway, that's what the model is wearing in Manet's Olympia. I've noticed a lot of differences between the French wikipedia and English wikipedia pages about the painting. If I had time, I would go into some examples but I should get back to studying. I'll just say, I think in order to understand a piece of art you need to know the history of the country whose citizen painted it. So it's nice that Olympia is at Musée d'Orsay and not in some godforsaken Anglo-Saxon country.

I also stumbled upon this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1310438/Kate-Moss-poses-cover-Bryan-Ferrys-album-Olympia.html

Olympia is an early pin up? What? I have no idea who this musician is, but I think he's totally got the wrong end of the stick here. I'm basing this on you know, well, one class and some Wikipedia research. But hey, it was a class taught by a curator of a French art gallery. And that Wikipedia research was bilingual.

Oh, but the reason I wanted to blog right now was because ''shawl'' is spelled ''châle'' in French. How crazy is that?

''1662, originally of a type of scarf worn in Asia, from Urdu and other Indian languages, from Pers. shal, sometimes said to be named for Shaliat, town in India where it was first manufactured. ''


I'm going to have a hell of a time remembering how to spell that on the test tomorrow.

Rebecca Black and Cyber bullying

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

I think most people who use social networking sites on the internet (ie Facebook) will have seen the youtube video for Rebecca Black's song ''Friday''. This song basically became popular because people think it's really terrible.

Rebecca Black is actually a 13 year old girl whose parents (both veterinarians) paid a couple thousand dollars for their daughter to record this song and make a video. She's taken a couple years of vocal lessons, and she did not write the song. When she went to record a song she chose between ''Friday'' and a song about ''adult love'' but she related more to Friday since she said she hadn't experienced ''adult love'' yet. I watched her interview on ''Good Morning America'' and she seemed really sweet and humble and said that she didn't think she was the best singer, but she didn't think she was the worst singer. They asked her about the meanest online comment she'd had and she said that someone told her to go cut herself.

Rebecca Black: there is nothing wrong with you or your song. The lyrics are in no way more inane than any other hit pop song that is released nowadays. If this song had a bunch of references to drinking and sex nobody would even have commented on the vacuousness of it. I think this is a catchy pop song. I think the lyrics are appropriate for a 13 year old.

As far as people who say that this is the worst song they've ever heard, I don't know if they sit at home listening to Beethoven all day, but there is a lot of really terrible music being made nowadays. For example, I hate metal or punk music. I can't listen to music that lacks a melody. There is music being made that is just like being slammed against a wall of angry noise. I wonder that people enjoy this. I wonder if there is something very dark and twisted in their souls to make them want to self-flagellate with this aural punishment. Dark and twisted like the souls of people who want to tell a 13 year old to cut herself because her song captures the meaninglessness of pop music quite aptly.

Esperanto

 "C'est abus de dire que nous avons une langue naturelle; les langues sont par institution arbitraires et conventions des peuples." (It's misuse to say that we have a natural language; languages are by institution arbitrary and conventions of peoples.)

François Rabelais

There are a million tangents I could go on on Wikipedia. Actually there are over 3.5 million in English. Every once in a while I'll read a French page too.

Tonight I'm going to see Cyrano de Bergerac, so I was reading it (in English) on Project Gutenberg. That is a good website too. I got kind of distracted and started at looking at books they had in Latin (I'm learning Latin right now). Then I looked at the books they had in Esperanto (La Aventuroj de Alicio en Mirlando ...)

I proceeded to read the Wikipedia page about Esperanto. I always thought it was kind of a joke. The only thing I thought of when someone said Esperanto was that William Shatner made a film in Esperanto.

Here are some interesting facts from the article:

''Esperanto is the 26th language.^[3]Worldwide, there are 6,912 recognized languages.''
''There is evidence that learning Esperanto may provide a superior foundation for learning languages in general, and some primary schools teach it as preparation for learning other foreign languages''
''The first World Congress of Esperanto was organized in France in 1905.''
'' Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust''


I think the ideals of the creation of Esperanto are pretty beautiful. The creator, Lazarus Zamenhof, wanted to create a ''an easy-to-learn and politically neutral language that would foster peace and international understanding between people with different regional and/or national languages''.


All in all, a very interesting article. A very interesting concept. I actually say an Esperanto club meeting poster on campus here a few months back. I think I would quite like to learn Esperanto. I'll probably wait until I'm back in Canada though so I can focus on learning French right now.

Littérature Français Actuelle

"Finalement, ce qui constitue l'ossature de l'existence, ce n'est ni la famille, ni la carrière, ni ce que d'autres diront ou penseront de vous, mais quelques instants de cette nature, soulevés par une lévitation plus sereine encore que celle de l'amour, et que la vie nous distribue avec une parcimonie à la mesure de notre faible coeur."

Nicolas Bouvier, L'Usage du Monde

(Loosely translated as: In the end, the very bones of existence are not family, a career, or what others say or think of you, but the few instances of this nature when you are lifted up by a levitation that is more serene than that which you feel when you are in love... I'm still trying to work out what the last part means or how it could be translated.. if anyone knows, post a comment).


Littérature Français Actuelle is probably my favorite class I'm taking here. I still hate analyzing literature, but my prof has a way of lecturing where everything she says is interesting, whereas I usually feel that literary analysis is extremely dull.


Today we were studying an excerpt from L'Usage du Monde by Bouvier. We are working right now on the theme ''Le Voyage'' in the excerpts my prof chooses for us. Bouvier apparently traveled a lot, and traveled slowly, over land, on foot. 


I know a couple of people who take life slowly and are present in every moment. I really admire that. I agree with the idea of the slow voyage: travelling on foot, meeting people, being open to spontaneity and getting lost in the journey. However, I tend to be somewhat of a control freak, so I get anxious when I don't have a plan. 


Most people feel like they don't have the time to take a slow voyage. Time is a luxury. I can't help feeling that time is a burden. I don't hear many people complain about having too much time. Sometimes I feel like I'm being crushed under the weight of the hugeness of every moment. 


To return to Bouvier's quote though, he's talking about the exquisite moments that happen during one's travels. I don't think these moments are confined to people who are travelling though. It seems to me that if a person is living a certain way, even in their hometown, they can capture a few moments of ecstasy. Travelling just seems like a short cut. For some, anyway.

The Missing Button

One of the stove top knobs in my dorm has gone missing again. Last term one went missing, and then the second, so I had to go to the housing office to complain because I couldn't cook anything any more. The upside to the sometimes deplorable conditions of student life in France is that whenever I need to complain I learn new vocabulary words. When I first arrived I learned moldy carpet (moquette moisi). There is no French word for knob, they use bouton, the same word that is used for button. En revanche, the French have two words for ''river''. A ''fleuve'' is a river that flows into a sea or ocean, and a ''rivière'' does not. Vive la langue française!*


*The French also do some wild things with punctuation: there is apparently supposed to be a space between a colon and a preceding word. This goes for some other punctuation marks too,  I think the exclamation mark is included but I'm a bit hazy about the details. One thing I'm pretty sure of.. when a nationality is used as an adjective the first letter is not capitalized... hence ''la langue française''.

La France: Sounds and Smells

I had laser eye surgery in September 2009 and since then I have not been able to see as clearly as I used to with glasses or contacts. Understandably, there have been times when I've been quite upset about this. I remember one of those times when I was talking to my mom about going to France and how disappointed I was that I wouldn't be able to see things over in Europe as clearly as I wanted to see them. My mom also has less-than-perfect vision, and she travels to Europe every Spring. She told me that even if I couldn't see it the way I wanted to, I would still be able to experience all the smells and sounds and tastes.

The smells, sounds and tastes in France tend to be pretty pleasant. I currently have a head cold so I'm not smelling as well as I usually can. Yesterday in class people were complaining about a bad smell and my teacher opened the window. Then we realized that it was coming from the construction next door. I could faintly smell it, and was grateful that my nose was plugged it because I could tell that it was a really strong, unpleasant odor. Later, on my walk home from class, I walked past a guy and the scent of his cologne managed to waft past all the mucus into my nose. My friend A. is right about every man in France smelling like a boy on his way to a Grade 8 dance.

Grocery Shopping

One of my favorite things to do in a foreign country is go to the grocery store and see what people are eating. I like to check out what the people ahead of me in line are buying and imagine what kind of meals they might be cooking.

Today as I approached the supermarket I saw a roly-poly man coming out (the stereotype is true... it is much rarer to see this in France than back in Canada). Anyway, he was holding in his arms two boxes of coca-cola upon which were balanced a package of bacon bits and two containers of crème fraîche.

I suppose I shouldn't judge... I put maple syrup on my pasta sometimes.

genialischer kitsch - Tchaikovsky, kitsch of genius

Introduction:


Elton John and his partner have a child. This child's godmother is Lady Gaga. How do I know this? I read an interview with Elton John's partner in Macleans magazine. Elton John's partner, David Furnish is the man responsible for bringing us ''Gnomeo and Juliet'', which my boyfriend thinks is an awful premise for a film, and he was wondering where anyone would get the idea of using garden gnomes to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet. I said that gnomes were ''in'' right now. He disagreed. I said, ''kitschy things are cool right now. Look at the success of a website like Etsy''. So we started to argue about whether kitschy things are cool, but I was already on a wikipedia tangent to see if I really understood what kitchy meant...


Objective:


Define the word kitschy. Bonus points for etymology.


Method:


Google the following search terms: ''kitchy'' ''kitchy etymology'' ''kitchy defintion'' ''camp'' ''camper'' (I went off on another tangent).


Results:


Kitsch is a German loanword. Some of my internet sources tell me it means trash. Some essay written by some girl from the department of art history at The University of Chicago said that some people suggested it was an inversion of the French word ''chic''. Which would kind of make it Verlan, but the word kitsch has been around since the 1925 markets in Munich, which as far as I know is longer than Verlan has been around. 


Apparently I am not the only person confused about the definition of kitsch. Pretty much every website I went to said something different. I think the most useful definition was from wordnetweb.princeton.edu ''excessively garish or sentimental art; usually considered in bad taste''. I like this definition because my boyfriend agreed that ''cutesy'' things are in style, and I'm going to say that ''cutesy'' and ''sentimental'' are basically synonyms, so we can both be right.


Conclusion:


1. Kitsch is cool.
2. Gnomes are kitschy

*The ''camp'' tangent:

Wikipedia made a connection between kitsch and camp by saying something about postmodernism in the '80s. Then wikipedia says that camp  '' refers to an ironic appreciation of that which might otherwise be considered corny''. Depending on the website, I was reading that the word ''camp'' is either from 17th century French, or French slang ''camper'', meaning ''to pose in an exaggerated fashion''. I was not able to verify this. The closest I got was ''Établir, placer quelque chose avec décision et vigueur'' which would be ''establish, or place something decisively and with vigor (or with effect)''.

You know, it's not really cool for someone to admit that they don't know the definition of a word that's always being tossed around. I've become a lot more comfortable than I used to be admitting that I don't know the meaning of a word that somebody is using. Sometimes the other person defines it for me, and I learn a new word. Sometimes they can't define it and I realize that we're having a pointless discussion because neither of us knows what we're talking about.

Lady Gaga

For my français écrit classe we have to write an argumentative paper. Fortunately I already had an idea in mind. The other day my chéri sent me the link to watch the Lady Gaga video for ''Telephone'' because there is some harp in it. I wasn't overly impressed by the 5 seconds of harp in the song. What I did find bouleversant was  how borderline pornographic it was. I mean, we basically see everything except Lady's muff in this video (except I would bet my first-born harp that Lady Gaga does not have a muff). Lady Gaga is basically the equivalent of a Barbie doll, except most self-respecting people strip down their Barbie dolls and make them have simulated sex in the privacy of their own homes rather than on youtube with over a billion views.

I digress. The main reason I wanted to blog about this is because Lady Gaga is often lauded or scorned for her outré fashion sense. Outré being the past participle of the French verb ''outrer'' which means to go beyond. And if you are me, you are wondering if Lady Gaga can speak French (because I just saw a tweet that she made that was in French). Some websites say yes, and I guess the proof is at 3:52 in the ''Bad Romance'' video where she says like, three words in French:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I

To finish off my Lady Gaga rant, I will just summarize my feelings by saying that her ''performance art'' is pretty vacuous. It entertains people, but entertainment and art aren't necessarily the same thing. She talks like she is empowered by her wacky fashions, but I don't see anything empowering about obligatory Brazillian waxes every few weeks.

Today's word: Inondation

Inondation is the French word for flood. In English, we say "inundation". But usually we say flood. Sometimes I hear people used "inundated" in English in a more figurative sense. This word comes from Latin " inundatus" which means wave. I am often kind of dismayed in class when an Anglophone asked what a French word means when it has an English cognate. Really? Maybe you should learn your own language before trying to learn another one. It can certainly help. There are quite a few Asians in my classes and I'm pretty sure they don't have anything to go on for cognates. I can't imagine how difficult that would be. Although I think most of them probably know some English already, and they have little electronic translators that they bring to class.


I have been reading a French novel and refusing to look up any words and just guess the meanings based on the context. I finally broke down because I knew the protagonist was playing a game, and he threw one of the pieces at his girlfriend and she started to lose blood. Before that part of the book I had just imagined that this game that I didn't recognize the name of was maybe tiddlywinks. So after she started losing blood I looked up the word: it was darts. That made more sense.

Gay Paree by Charles Bukowski

gay paree
---------
the cafes in Paris are just like you imagine
they are:
very well-dressed people, snobs, and
the snob-waiter comes up and takes your
order
as if you were a 
leper.
but after you get your wine
you feel better
you begin to feel like a snob
yourself
and you give the guy at the next table
a sidelong glance
he catches you and
you twitch your nose
a bit as if you had just smelled
dogshit
then you
look away.

and the food
when it arrives 
is always too mild.
the French are delicate with their
spices.

and
as you eat and drink
you realize that everybody is
terrorized:

too bad
too bad
such a lovely city
full of cowards.

then more wine brings more
realization:
Paris is the world and the world
is
Paris.

drink to it
and
because of
it.

The only tourist in Havana - Leonard Cohen

The only tourist in Havana turns his thoughts homeward 
By Leonard Cohen


Come, my brothers,

let us govern Canada,
let us find our serious heads,
let us dump asbestos on the White House,
let us make the French talk English,

not only here but everywhere,
let us torture the Senate individually

until they confess,
let us purge the New Party,
let us encourage the dark races

so they'll be lenient

when they take over,
let us make the CBC talk English,
let us all lean in one direction

and float down

to the coast of Florida,
let us have tourism,
let us flirt with the enemy,
let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards,
let us sell snow

to under-developed nations,
(It is true one of our national leaders
was a Roman Catholic?)
let us terrorize Alaska,
let us unite

Church and State,
let us not take it lying down,
let us have two Governor Generals

at the same time,
let us have another official language,
let us determine what it will be,
let us give a Canada Council Fellowship

to the most original suggestion,
let us teach sex in the home

to parents,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.

and pull out at the last moment,
my brothers, come,
our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere

like Gladstone bags abandoned

after a coup d'état,
let us put them on very quickly,
let us maintain a stony silence

on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Havana
April 1961

Il vaut mieux rester sous la couette...

It has been pretty chilly here lately by Bordeaux standards, hovering around 0 degrees C. My language partner here (whom I only ever met once in person and now just have her on facebook) made a status update about how cold it was and that she didn't want to take her chin out from under the couette... which is the French word for duvet. But why is that the French word? Doesn't "duvet" sound like a French word?

It is actually. It means "down" in French. It can also apparently mean sleeping bag (which I would have called un sac de couchage... which is also used and a much more literal translation from English).

So just to clarify this further: "duvet" is the Great Britain English word, and the American word is "comforter". "Duvet" is a French word, but the French word for "duvet" is "couette". Unfortunately I have to pull my chin out of my couette regardless, because I have to go to my Grammar class.

O Canada

I was lying in bed the other night going over the French lyrics to ''O Canada'', our national anthem, and I realized that the French lyrics were actually really different than the English lyrics. Today I did a little bit of research on the internet and learned some new things about our national anthem (I actually knew very little about the anthem before other than the English words... and some of the French words, but more like the sounds that the French words make without actually understanding what the words were).

''O Canada'' has only been our official anthem since 1980. Before that the anthem was still officially ''God Save the Queen''. The lyrics of ''O Canada'' are from a French poem written in the 1880s by some guy from Québec (Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier). If the original French words were translated directly into English, they would be:

O Canada! Land of our forefathers
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As in thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic of the most brilliant exploits.

Ch.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.

*and Canada is being tutoyer'd by the Poet. Which I just noticed...


I got that information from this website:
http://cougar.pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/symbl/anthem-eng.cfm#a8
There is also a French version that I was reading:
http://pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/symbl/anthem-fra.cfm#a8


But be warned, even though the websites look the same, the content is slightly different. For example, the French website has a literal translation of the English lyrics into French, and the English website has the literal translation of the French into English. 


What a country.

Encore!

I went to see my favorite musician perform last night (Joanna Newsom). It was an amazing concert. I love the energy when I am in a crowd of French people at a good concert. There was a standing ovation and an encore. After the encore, the crowd kept clapping and trying pretty hard for a second encore. She didn't give one. A roadie walked out onstage and waved to the applauding crowd and then started taking things down. Then everybody left.

I've been to two concerts here in France where the crowd went wild afterwards for an encore... but I have never actually heard a French person shout for an encore. I definitely heard "bravo"... but I never heard "encore". "Encore" is the French word for again. Wikipedia tells me this:
" Though the word derives from French, French-speaking people commonly use either une autre, un rappel or the Latin bis in the same circumstances".


From my experience, I would say Wikipedia a raison.

Contrasts

Exactly one month ago I left France to return to Canada for a visit. Tomorrow I am heading back to la France. I wanted to write down some observations that I made about the contrasts between the two countries. I'm going to do this quickly so I can get back to packing. I'm telling myself that maybe I will edit this later, but I probably won't.

First of all, the jet lag was awful. It wasn't just a seven hour time change, it was a 30 degree Celsius temperature drop. Another thing that was difficult was readjusting to the food. From what I've heard, France (and most of Europe for that matter) doesn't allow their food to be genetically modified. The grapes all have seeds in France! I don't even know if you can get grapes with seeds at all in Canada at this point. They just don't sell because seeds are bitter, and they're kind of a hassle.

I have been finding that the food in Canada is a lot more expensive. It is also much cheaper to buy processed, prepackaged food in Canada than it is to buy fresh ingredients. In France I find it to be the opposite. I think this could very well be related to North American obesity, and the thinness of French people, even though there is a fair amount of fat in their diet. Here is the thing: humans need fat to live. I was talking to my sister yesterday about food groups, and I told her that I didn't take much stock in food groups. To me, there are three things a body needs to live: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Then there are vitamins and minerals. Hey, I'm not a nutritionist or anything, but my friend and I came up with two rules that seem to work for healthy eating:
Mildred's rule: If you can't pronounce one of the ingredients, it's bad
N's rule: If it has more than 5 ingredients, it's bad.

This works for me. I also completely object to anything low-fat or sugar-free. In France I found yogurt that was sweetened with stevia. I thought that was pretty neat. Stevia has kind of a weird taste though. A little metallic or something.

 I think that another reason that French people are thinner is that they aren't obsessed with removing the sugar or fat from their food. They ENJOY their food. They eat things that are delicious. They eat chocolate for breakfast: chocolate cereals, nutella, chocolatines (croissant-like things containing CHOCOLATE). When you eat fats, you feel full.

Anyway, I've been finding the food here hard to stomach, so I've been sucking back the pepto bismal on the recommendation of one of my friends who lived in Berlin for 6 weeks. Apparently he experienced a lot of indigestion when he came back, too.

One food that doesn't cause indigestion, but is awesome: yams. I never eat yams in France because they are kind of expensive (they are imported from Israel). In Canada, they are imported from the States and they are pretty cheap. Actually, I just did a quick wikipedia on this, and these things I am eating in Canada are SWEET POTATOES which is a completely different vegetable than YAMS.Yams only grow in Africa, Oceania, Asia, and Latin America. I'm going to have to try these Israeli yams and see if they taste differently.

I`m going to stop talking about food for a moment and write about the contrasts within Winnipeg itself. Winnipeg is a cold city. It wasn't even the coldness I found so difficult, it was the contrast between being warm inside and going outside where it is 40 degrees colder. The buildings in downtown Winnipeg are all connected by a series of skywalks or underground tunnels. It is a strange city. I have no idea why people live here. I am going to miss my loved ones terribly, but I feel that it is time for me to leave. My skin is dry and falling off, and my cuir chevelu (my hair leather - aka my scalp) is disgustingly flaky. It's through no fault of my own. I've been trying all sorts of moisturizers and shampoos to stop by body from falling apart here, but I have to conclude at this point that I don't belong here. But I am leaving plenty of dead skin cells behind for the dust mites to remember me by.